Buddha

Seeing With The Eye of Dhamma
TO CULTIVATE MIND IS TO DEVELOP LIFE

By Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

Part 2 of 10

These interactions are sense contacts (phassas), through which feeling tones (vedanas) arise. Pleasant and unpleasant feeling tones happen because mind is the connecter at the moment of sense contact. When feeling tones arise and mind is ignorant, there’s liking when the feeling is pleasant and disliking when the feeling is unpleasant, thus afflictions (kilesas) such as greed, anger, and delusion also arise. Kilesas arise with both pleasant and unpleasant vedanas, so don’t blithely assume one kind is good and the other bad. Because these scenarios are repeated over and over again during life, they become habitual. The repetitive arising of kilesas develops familiarity with them—an inclination or tendency toward them happening again. These underlying tendencies toward afflictions are the anusayas.

The next aspect of kilesas to consider is tanha (craving, ignorant desire). There are two kinds of desire. One kind arises in conjunction with mindfulness and wisdom and shouldn’t be confused with craving. Tanha, however, is ignorant desire, wanting at odds with reality. For example, apprehending something as agreeable gives rise to liking. Lovable things are loved, and annoying things are disliked. Both cases are ignorant and create their concomitant desires: craving to get, craving to be, craving to get rid of, and craving to not be. Because they’re all happening in ignorance, such desires are tanha. Mind itself desires and feels tanha. Without mind, there wouldn’t be anything that craves.

When desire arises within ignorant mind, it naturally concocts thinking of the kind called upadana (clinging). Immediately following the desire is an assumption that “I desire,” that “I’m the one who gets,” “I’m the one who doesn’t get,” “I’m the one who is affected,” and so on. Ignorant desire begets upadana, ignorant clinging. We subsequently develop tendencies to cling and attach: to cling as “being me,” to cling to things as “mine,” to cling to sensuality, to cling to views and opinions, and to cling to foolish traditions and empty behaviors. Clinging creates mental entanglement and permeates the subconscious of each and every person.

Because we live our lives under the power of ignorance, we’re a problem for ourselves and others. Distress, oppression, and harmfulness occur on all sides, because our lives are full of such ignorant desire and clinging. All this is possible solely because of mind.

The preceding paragraphs demonstrate how anything and everything arises with mind, comes together with mind, and is connected with mind. Whatever state mind is in will dictate how events are understood and dealt with; therefore, it’s our duty to train mind, to make it advance and grow in the right way, to stop it from being foolish and making mistakes, to keep it from doing wrong and causing problems—in short, to prevent it from spreading dukkha.
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Words of the Buddha channel:

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Mingyur Rinpoche elaborated on this, emphasizing that the teaching in both is not to reify the awareness as self nor to perceive objects as having independent, substantial existence. Khyentse Rinpoche makes the same point: “Those who cling to the lucid or to the void aspect of the mind are caught in dualistic attachment to subject and object.”

In any instruction to rest in awareness, we need to understand that awareness implies recognizing its empty nature as well as its lucid aspect—and not getting attached to emptiness is equally important. Nagarjuna, one of the greatest of the Indian adepts, warns that even the view of emptiness can become a trap when grasped as a view. He writes, “It is sad to see those who mistakenly believe in material, concrete reality, but far more pitiful are those who are attached to emptiness.”

The question then arises: How do we cut through this subtle identification with the knowing capacity of mind, with awareness itself? At one point in my practice, a simple linguistic shift became a pathway for cutting through this identification. By changing how we language our experience (even silently to ourselves) from the active voice to the passive voice, we can settle effortlessly into a receptive, selfless mode.

For example, we usually think of what we’re doing in the active voice: “I’m moving, I’m thinking, I’m hearing.” In the passive voice, this might become: “Movement being known, thought being known, sounds being known.” This shift is striking because the “I” is no longer the subject of the action. Instead, things simply arise and are known effortlessly without a sense of self. As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted, much philosophy is “a shadow cast by grammar”; our language habits easily conjure a “self” behind experience.

The Buddha gave a succinct and powerful teaching on this in his discourse, The All. In this sutta, he described the totality of our experience in just six concise phrases: “the eye and visible objects, the ear and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and mental phenomena.” By being mindful of these six categories as being known, we gain glimpses—and sometimes sustained experiences—of selflessness, of empty phenomena rolling on.

To deepen this experience of selflessness, we can then ask the simple yet profound question: Known by what? In meditation, as different sounds arise, I may ask myself, Can I find what’s knowing this sound? The sound is being known—but by what? There’s nothing to find. And yet, as the Tibetan Dzogchen master Tulku Urgyen remarked, in searching for awareness, “the not finding is the finding.” This inquiry helps dissolve the subtle identification with the knowing itself, which, when unnoticed, perpetuates the felt sense of a knower.

Even after these transformative insights arise, the path continues. The 12th-century Korean Zen Master Chinul expressed this in his teachings on sudden awakening and gradual cultivation:

Although we have awakened to original nature, beginningless habit energies are extremely difficult to remove suddenly. Hindrances are formidable and habits are deeply ingrained. So how could you neglect gradual cultivation simply because of one moment of awakening? After awakening, you must constantly be on your guard. If deluded thoughts suddenly appear, do not follow after them. Then and only then will your practice reach completion.

Chinul’s follow-up reminder is equally vital:

Although you must cultivate further, you have already awakened suddenly to the fact that deluded thoughts are originally void and the mind’s nature is originally pure.
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Words of the Buddha channel:

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Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 1 of 3

Other Paths of Practice that Cultivate Nonduality

Many paths of practice may not explicitly emphasize nonduality, yet may lead to that understanding, even if it is described as “selflessness” or “emptiness of self.” Although the explicit term nonduality gained prominence in early Mahayana Prajnaparamita texts (1st century BCE–1st century CE), several hundred years after the Buddha lived, the experience it points to is already present in the well-known Bahiya Sutta from the Pali canon:

Then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus:
In the seen there will be merely the seen;
in the heard, merely the heard;
in the sensed, merely the sensed;
in the cognized, merely the cognized.
That is how you should train yourself.
When, Bahiya, for you in the seen there is merely the seen . . .
then, Bahiya, you will not be with that.
When you are not with that, you will not be in that,
When you are not in that,
then you will be neither here nor beyond nor in between the two.
Just this is the end of suffering.

Perhaps the term selflessness, then, more clearly reflects what the state of liberative nonduality reveals.

Right Effort

This raises interesting questions about different modes of practice. H.H. the Dalai Lama has recounted how even Milarepa, one of the greatest Tibetan yogis, faced tremendous difficulties and needed arduous effort over many years to attain complete enlightenment. In vipassana practice, significant emphasis is placed on mindfulness of the body, as it is the first of the four foundations of mindfulness the Buddha declared to be the direct path to awakening. Some teachers in this tradition emphasize the importance of strong effort to penetrate the object of meditation as a means of going beyond our conceptual understanding of it. However, this strong effort can sometimes reinforce the sense of someone actively exerting that effort.

Effortless Awareness

But even within methods that emphasize strong effort, proper practice naturally leads to a state of effortless awareness. From this state, the mind can open to what is called “gaining the vision of the dharma,” or the “opening of the dharma eye.” That marks the point at which the belief in self has been completely uprooted.

A salient point emerges here in both vipassana and explicitly nondual practices: how to rest in effortless awareness (however we arrive there) without identifying with that awareness, without making awareness the home of self, the last hold-out of “I.” Sometimes awareness feels boundless and centerless, yet this too can mask a subtle identification with self. Even in this wonderfully expansive state, there can be a subtle identification with awareness or a faint sense of someone experiencing it.

Mahasi Sayadaw, a renowned vipassana meditation master of the 20th century, highlighted one aspect of this in his talk “The Purification and Progress of Insight”:

At times there is nothing to note, with the body disappearing and the sense of touch lost. However, at this moment, knowing consciousness is still apparent. In the very clear, open space of the sky there remains only one very clear, blissful consciousness, which is very clear beyond comparison and very blissful. The yogi tends to delight in such clear, blissful consciousness. But this consciousness is not going to stay permanent. . . . It has to be noticed as “knowing, knowing.”

We see the same caution about identification with awareness in Dzogchen and other nondual traditions as well. In Dzogchen and Mahamudra, although using different terminology, the fundamental nature of mind is expressed as the union of clarity and emptiness. Thrangu Rinpoche observed that the nature of mind is sometimes obscured because the clarity aspect (knowing) obscures the emptiness aspect.

The Experience of Insight, A Natural Unfolding by Joseph Goldstein

heṭṭhā ... pādatalesu cakkāni jātāni, sahassārāni sanemikāni sanābhikāni sabbākāraparipūrāni...

Under the soles of His feet there are wheels, with a thousand rims and naves, complete in every way...


Thirty-two marks of a Great Man (mahā purisa lakkhaņa) in The Digha Nikaya, "Discourse of the Marks" (Pali: Lakkhaṇa Sutta) (DN 30)

As long as I live, may I support my parents. As long as I live, may I honor the elders in the family. As long as I live, may I speak gently. As long as I live, may I not speak divisively. As long as I live, may I live at home rid of the stain of stinginess, freely generous, open-handed, loving to let go, committed to charity, loving to give and to share. As long as I live, may I speak the truth. As long as I live, may I be free of anger, or should anger arise, may I quickly get rid of it.

In a former life, when Sakka was a human being, he undertook seven vows. And it was because of undertaking these that he achieved the status of Sakka.

A person who respects their parents,
and honors the elders in the family,
whose speech is gentle and courteous,
and has given up divisiveness;

who’s committed to getting rid of stinginess,
is truthful, and has mastered anger:
the gods of the thirty-three
say they really are a true person.”

Partial excerpts from SN 11.12 Sakkanāmasutta: Sakka’s Names

Seeing With The Eye of Dhamma
TO CULTIVATE MIND IS TO DEVELOP LIFE

By Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

Part 1 of 10

Having considered the natural conditions of human life, this chapter will consider what we ought to do with our humanity. We will examine life’s development (pattana) through the cultivation of mind (citta-bhavana).

Cultivating mind means making mind progress and thrive, which is the same as making life progress. Developing life means making it better and healthier. When the progress or increase isn’t for the better, that really shouldn’t be called “development” at all. Progress can be right or wrong; when wrong, it progresses without wisedirection. There is, for instance, worldly progress that brings problems in its wake—trouble, strife, oppression, and dukkha. There is progress in the field of education, but of the kind that doesn’t bring truly beneficial results, so that we still have delinquents and criminals throughout society, and more of them than ever. Among the educated classes, too, we have well-educated criminals. Clever people make clever crooks, creating long-lasting troubles for society. Such things happen when progress is wrong. If there is to be the right kind of progress, it must alwaysmove in the direction of well-being and fulfillment.

Cultivating (bhavana), much the same as developing (pattana), means to advance progress. Cultivating is used in the temples, and still has its ancient meaning, which has hardly changed at all, while developing is used outside of the temples and concerns the whole world, where its meaning has changed in accord with worldly trends, such as the emphasis on economics. Here, the term mental cultivation will be used when mind develops and makes progress wisely. Mental cultivation will necessarily develop life too, causing life to progress. Why is this so? Well, in reality, everything is connected with mind, everything arises with mind as captured in this Pali verse:

Jivitam attabhavo ca sukhadukkha ca kevala
Everything, including life, self-image, well-being, and pain,
Ekacittasamayutta
Occurs together with this single mind.
Lahuso vattate khano
Moments of time pass rapidly.


The whole experience of being alive is put together by mind, as if everything is created by mind. Suppose that people didn’t have minds, would they be able to do anything? We would be rather like logs of wood or chunks of rock, unable to do anything at all. Because there is mind, all sorts of things happen. Mind thinks, thus things happen.

Everything Happens Because There Is Mind

Mind is a wonder. If the body were without mind, there would be no life. Only because there is mind can the body operate at all. Mind functions by way of the senses, themedia between the inner and outer worlds. These sense media are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind, which are paired with forms, sounds, odors, flavors, tangibles, and mental objects. The inner and outer worlds are connected through them, with mind becoming active in the moment of sense contact. Mind wouldn’t have any means to operate if we lacked eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. It couldn’t function without them, as if there wasn’t any mind at all. Hence, comprehend the importance of the senses in making it possible for mind to function normally. It’s able to make contact with the outer world, with forms entering through the eyes, with sounds entering through the ears, with odors through the nose, with flavors through the tongue, with touches by way of body surfaces, and with mental objects and sensations occurring in mind itself.
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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Tapussa and Bhallika the Buddha’s First Disciple

By Bhante Shravasti Dhammika

In the Mahavacchagotta Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya the Buddha mentioned that he had many thousands of disciples, a good number of whom had attained one or another of the stages leading to enlightenment. However, the Buddha’s first disciples were the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika. During the Buddha’s fourth week at Uruvela, now called Bodh Gaya, these two men happened to be passing the outskirts of the village and saw him quietly meditating there. Impressed his serene looks and the aura of peace around him they approached him with an offering of barley gruel and honey balls. When the Buddha had finished eating the merchants asked if they could take refuge in him, i.e. become his disciples, and his Dhamma.

Free download available:

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Free Buddha Dharma ebook

Tapussa and Bhallika the Buddha’s First Disciple

By Bhante Shravasti Dhammika



Free download available:

https://budblooms.org/tapussa-and-bhallika-the-buddhas-first-disciple/
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Stupa of Takht-e Rostam (Thrones of Rostam, original name is unknown, a unique 4th–5th century Buddhist stupa-monastery complex located near the town of Aybak in northern Afghanistan's Samangan Province, during Kushano-Sasanian kingdom era. The main stupa is carved into the earth rather than built upward. From a distance, it appears as a large depression, but inside is a central stone core surrounded by a trench or moat.

Aloka, the peace dog, is an abandoned street dog which followed the monks during Thudong in India in 2022. The monks then adopted the dog and brought him back to the United States. He has a distinctive heart‑shaped marking on his forehead. Aloka follows the monks on 108-day, 3,700 km Thudong pilgrimage began from Fort Worth, Texas across nine US states ended in Washington DC.

HOW YOU DEVELOP THE VIPASSANA KNOWLEDGES TO SEE NIBBANA

By Pa Auk Tawya Sayadaw

Part 16 of 16

These three impulsion consciousnesses comprise, in fact, the twelfth knowledge: the Conformity Knowledge. Conformity to what? To what came before, and to what will come after. Thus they may be said to function as preparation for, access to and conformity with the Change of Lineage. Their repetition prepares the way for transition from the eight insight knowledges that came before (from the Arise&Perish Knowledge to the Formations-Equanimity Knowledge) with the formed as object to the thirty-seven dhammas of the Path&Fruition Knowledgeswith the Unformed as object.
The Conformity Knowledge is the last knowledge that has formations as its object.
5) A fourth impulsion consciousness arises, with Nibbana as object. This is the thirteenth knowledge: Change-of-Lineage Knowledge.
Although this consciousness knows the (unformed) Nibbana, it does not destroy the defilements: its function is to change the lineage from ordinary person to Noble.

6) A fifth impulsion consciousness arises, with Nibbana as object. This is the fourteenth knowledge, which destroys the appropriate defilements: Path Knowledge.
7) A sixth and seventh impulsion consciousness arises, with Nibbana as object. They are the fifteenth knowledge: Fruition Knowledge.
YOU REVIEW YOUR KNOWLEDGE
After this follows the last and sixteenth knowledge, the Reviewing Knowledge. It is five separate reviewings:
1) Reviewing the Path Knowledge.2) Reviewing the Fruition Knowledge.3) Reviewing the defilements that have been destroyed.4) Reviewing the defilements that have yet to be destroyed.5) Reviewing Nibbana.
Then you will have attained true knowledge of the Four Noble Truths, and will for yourself have realized Nibbana. With this realization, your mind will have become purified and free from wrong views. If you continue in this way, you will be able to attain Arahantship and Parinibbana. There are many more details about this development of vipassana, but we have had to leave them out, so as to make this explanation as brief as possible. The best way to learn about this practice is by undertaking a meditation course with a competent teacher, because then you can learn in a systematic way, step by step.
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Dhammapada, beloved and favorite teachings of the Buddha channel:

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Free Buddhism ebook


We Are All Translators
By Ajahn Munindo

Buddhist contemplations on: form and spirit, trust and belief, goal oriented practice, source oriented practice, formal and daily-life practice, knowing for yourself, wilfulness and relaxation, precepts, creativity, and other things…


Free download here:

https://cdn.amaravati.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/14/we-are-all-translators-2021-08-11.pdf
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Free Buddhism ebook


We Are All Translators
By Ajahn Munindo

Buddhist contemplations on: form and spirit, trust and belief, goal oriented practice, source oriented practice, formal and daily-life practice, knowing for yourself, wilfulness and relaxation, precepts, creativity, and other things…


Free download here:

https://cdn.amaravati.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/14/we-are-all-translators-2021-08-11.pdf
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These thoughts are often some expressions of “I am,” which in Pali is called mana, referring to the mind comparing oneself with others in one way or another or imagining oneself over time. Of note, mana is not uprooted from the mindstream until full enlightenment, so we do want to be mindful of it.

As mindfulness strengthens, we also become more aware of mental hindrances—desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness, and doubt. They are called hindrances because they obstruct the mind from developing wise discernment and concentration. Being mindful of these hindrances becomes a skillful and effective way of not being overcome by them.

Concentration

Along with mindfulness, concentration plays a critical role in stabilizing our understanding and realization of selfless nonduality. When concentration develops, it keeps the hindrances at bay, enabling us to see more clearly and explore more profoundly various aspects of the dharma.

The Buddha highlighted the necessity of developing concentration in one verse in the Dhammapada: “There can be no concentration in one who lacks wisdom. There can be no wisdom in one who lacks concentration. He who has concentration as well as wisdom is, indeed, close to nibbana.”

In a striking passage from the Pali canon, the Buddha tells Kassapa, one of his great disciples, about what leads to the longevity of the dharma: dwelling with reverence toward the Buddha, the dharma, the sangha, toward the training, and toward concentration—and how the absence of these five things leads to its decay. When I first came across this passage, I was surprised that of all the different mental qualities the Buddha might have mentioned with regard to a matter of such great import—the longevity of the teachings—he singled out concentration as being a key essential element for stabilizing awareness.
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Joseph Goldstein is cofounder and a guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and its Forest Refuge program, and helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. His books include A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, and Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.
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Part 1 of 3:

https://t.me/lorddivinebuddha/4964


Part 2 of 3:

https://t.me/dhammapadas/4446


Part 3 of 3:

https://t.me/wordsofbuddha/6209
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Words of the Buddha channel:

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Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 3 of 3

Mindfulness

The question then becomes: How to proceed? How do we practice stabilizing our glimpses of selfless awareness? We begin by strengthening the quality of mindfulness. Unless we have trained ourselves to observe our minds and what happens within them, we may not realize just how prevalent the continuous streams of thought are throughout the day. The effect of these unnoticed thoughts on the mind can be compared to a movie soundtrack. Often, we are hardly aware of it, being totally engrossed in the storyline. Yet the soundtrack is designed to manipulate our feelings in various ways—happy, tense, frightened, amused—all conditioned by a process we hardly notice.

Through practice, particularly in sessions of formal meditation, we may become somewhat adept at recognizing dramatic thoughts, those with a particular emotional charge. But much more frequently there are light thoughts that are brief and hardly leave a trace. While doing walking meditation on one recent retreat, I began to pay particular attention to these light and quickly passing thoughts. I was surprised to realize how often they arose and how many of them referenced a sense of self: a memory, a plan, a comment, or a judgment. It became clear that each time I was lost in one of these ephemeral thoughts, I was reinforcing a felt sense of self.

Dudjom Rinpoche, one of the most highly revered Dzogchen masters of the 20th century, wrote in A Heart-Jewel for the Fortunate:

When you are meditating, it is easy to identify your coarse thoughts when they arise suddenly. But until a few of your subtle thoughts have arisen and are recognized, you do not know that they are there. These are called “undercurrents of thought.” They are the sneaky thieves of meditation, and for that reason it is very important to post the guard of mindfulness.

All traditions teach the importance of cultivating and strengthening mindfulness. The Pali canon underscores the critical role of mindfulness in the well-known opening of the Satipatthana Sutta:

Bhikkhus, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of nibbana—namely, the four foundations of mindfulness.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche likewise highlights the importance of cultivating mindfulness in his commentary on The Lamp that Dispels Darkness:

Let the mind remain in a relaxed and open state. . . . Just as a young child cannot be left on its own but needs the constant attention of his parents so he won’t get lost, mindfulness is necessary so that the mind does not get lost in distraction. Mindfulness is not something that is acquired right away; perseverance is needed. It is necessary to be mindful not only while resting in the state of meditative evenness, but that mindfulness needs to be kept in any circumstances. While eating, while walking, etc., it is important to be constantly alert and vigilant in watching the condition of the mind.

Rinpoche continues:

So do not be satisfied by a mere glimpse of awareness but allow it to become unchangingly present. This is achieved through mindfulness and vigilance. At the beginning, vigilance means to pay constant attention to one’s state of mind, examining whether the mind is distracted or not from the recognition of awareness. This is a somewhat fabricated or contrived mindfulness. Mindfulness will develop gradually. . . . When the point is reached where a thought of desire or aversion arises, awareness is there at the same time, without having to purposefully arouse it. That is uncontrived, absolute mindfulness. At this stage, all thoughts will be liberated as they arise.

Insight Meditation, The Practice of Freedom by Joseph Goldstein

He eats blameless things,
he doesn’t eat blameworthy things.
When he gets food and clothes,
he avoids storing them up.

Having severed all bonds,
fetters large and small,
wherever he goes,
he goes without concern.

A white lotus,
fragrant and delightful,
sprouts in water and grows there,
but the water doesn’t cling to it.

Just so the Buddha is born in the world,
and lives in the world,
but the world doesn’t stick to him,
as water does not stick to the lotus.

A great blazing fire
dies down when the fuel runs out.
And when the coals have gone out
it’s said to be “extinguished”.


Free of greed, free of hate,
free of delusion, undefiled;
the giant, giving up his body,
undefiled, will be fully extinguished.

Partial excerpts from Thag 15.2 Udayittheragatha: Udayi
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