Small Boat, Great Mountain - Amaro Bhikkhu

The Search for Freedom

And I had a profound intuition that freedom is possible—that there is this potential we have as human beings to be totally free, and that there is something utterly pure, uninhibited, and uninhibitable within us

 It never crossed my mind that freedom could come only from within. Until then, I had been looking for freedom in that which was inherently bounded. My misguided way of finding freedom was by defying conventions, by trying not to be inhibited by the rules of society or the dictates of my personality or the conditioning of my body. I appeared free on the outside, but on the inside I was a prisoner of my beliefs and behaviors. It was only by turning my attention inward that I could discover the freedom that was already there... It is not like we need to become free. It is a matter of discovering that quality of being that is inherently unhindered and unbounded.

Conventional Truth and Ultimate

Truth The longer I stayed, the more I began to pay attention to Ajahn Chah’s repeated emphasis on the relationship between convention and liberation, conventional reality and ultimate reality. The things of this world are merely conventions of our own creation. Once we establish them, we proceed to get lost in or blinded by them. This gives rise to confusion, difficulty, and struggle. One of the great challenges of spiritual practice is to create the conventions, pick them up, and use them without confusion. We can recite the Buddha’s name, bow, chant, follow techniques and routines, pick up all these attributes of being a Buddhist, and then, without any hypocrisy, also recognize that everything is totally empty. There is no Buddhist!... if you think you really are a Buddhist, you are totally lost.

What Is a Living Being?

A certain amount of spiritual maturity hinges on understanding the nature of conventional reality. So much of our conditioning is predicated on the assumption that there is such a thing as a “real” living being. We see ourselves in terms of the limitations of the body and the personality, and we define what we are within those bounds. We assume then that other beings are also limited little pockets of beingness that float around in the cosmos.

Where Are We?

Mind does not exist in space. Three-dimensional space exists only in relationship to the world of physical form.

 The material form is giving us the clue of separateness, but that separateness is entirely dependent on the material world. In terms of mind, place does not apply. The mind is not anywhere. We are here, but we are not here. Those limitations of separate individuality are conventions that have a relative but not an absolute value.
 We create the illusion of separateness and individuality through our belief in the sense world. When we start to let go of the sense world, particularly the way we relate to physical form, then we start being able to expand the vision of what we are as beings. It’s not even a matter of seeing how we overlap with other beings; it’s a matter of realizing that we are of a piece with other beings

The Middle Way

 Meditation is a special kind of dance in which we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the practice of deconstructing the materialistic view of reality. The challenge is simultaneously to hold on and to let go; it is to see clearly what we are doing and at the same time see through it.

The way to know if what we are doing is worthwhile is to ask, “Does this lead to the end of suffering or does it not?” If it does, continue. If it does not, we need to switch our attention to what will. We can simply ask ourselves, “Am I experiencing dukkha? Is there a feeling of alienation or difficulty?” If there is, it means that we are clinging or hanging on to something. We need to see that the heart is attached somewhere and then make the gesture to loosen up, to let go. Sometimes we don’t notice where the suffering gets generated. We get so used to doing things in a particular way that we take it as a standard. But in meditation, we challenge the status quo. We investigate where there is a feeling of “dis-ease” and look to see what’s causing it. By stepping back and scanning the inner domain, it’s possible to find out where the attachment is and what’s causing it.

The Limitations of the Conditioned Mind

“Whenever you have feelings of love or hate for anything whatsoever, these will be your aides and partners in building parami (daily life practices that give the mind a firm ground in Dhamma (truth)). The Buddha-Dharma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of nonabiding.”

 In terms of physical reality, there is a coming and going. But there’s also that place of transcendence where there is no coming or going. Think about it. Where can we truly go? Do we ever really go anywhere? Wherever we go we are always “here,” right?

There is that sphere of being where there is no earth, no water, no fire, nor wind; no experience of infinity of space, of infinity of consciousness, of no-thingness, or even of neither-perception-nor-non-perception; here there is neither this world nor another world, neither moon nor sun; this sphere of being I call neither a coming nor a going nor a staying still, neither a dying nor a reappearance; it has no basis, no evolution, and no support: it is the end of dukkha (suffering). 
(ud. 8.1) Pali Canon, Udana aµ (the collection of “Inspired Utterances” of the Buddha)

“Where” Does Not Apply

This is the point that these teachings on nonabiding are trying to draw us to. The whole concept and construct of where-ness, the act of conceiving ourselves as this individual entity living at this spot in space and time, is a presumption.

 In the world of quantum physics, scientists now use such terms as “the well of being” or “the sea of potential” to refer to the primordial level of physical reality from which all particles and energies crystallize and into which they subsequently dissolve. The principle of non-locality in this realm means that the “place where something happens” cannot truly be defined, and that a single event can have exactly simultaneous effects in (apparently) widely separated places. Particles can accurately be described as being smeared out over the entirety of time and space. Terms like “single place” and “separate places” are seen to apply only as convenient fictions at certain levels of scale; at the level of the ultimate field, the sea of quantum foam, “place” has no real meaning. When you get down into the fine, subatomic realm, where-ness simply does not apply. There is no there there. Whether this principle is called nonabiding or non-locality, it’s both interesting and noteworthy that the same principle applies in both the physical and mental realms.

Still Flowing Water

Ajahn Chah would then explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects— sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions—flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. The untrained heart chases the delightful, runs away from the painful, and as a result, finds itself struggling, alienated, and miserable.

“When” Does Not Apply

There’s a verse about time by the Sixth Zen Patriarch that I love to quote. It says:
In this moment there is nothing which comes to be. In this moment there is nothing which ceases to be. Thus, in this moment, there is no birth and death to be brought to an end. Thus, the absolute peace is this present moment. Although it is just this moment,there is no limit to this moment, And herein is eternal delight.

Birth and death depend on time. Something apparently born in the past, living now, will die in the future. Once we let go of time, and if we also let go of thing-ness, we see there can be no real “thing” coming into being or dying; there is just the suchness of the present. In this way, there is no birth or death to be brought to an end. That’s how this moment is absolutely peaceful; it is outside of time, akaµliko.

We use such phrases as “this moment,” but they are not quite accurate because they still can give us an impression of the present as a small fragment of time. For even though it is just a moment, the present is limitless. In letting go of the structures of the past and future, we realize that this present is an infinite ocean, and the result of this realization is living in the eternal, the timeless.

Oil and Water

We can see the true nature of mind, mind-essence, which knows experience and in which all of life happens; and we can see that that transcendent quality is devoid of relationship to individuality, space, time, and movement. All of the objects of the world—its people, our routines and mind states—appear and disappear within that space.

Breathing and Walking

Mindfulness of breathing is a good way to work with this insight. Just notice the feeling of the breath as you follow the sensation of it. The breath is moving, but that which knows the breath is not moving.

The Faster You Hurry, the Slower You Go

Ajahn Sumedho talked repeatedly about being enlightened rather than becoming enlightened. Be awake now; be enlightened to the present moment. It is not about doing something now to become enlightened in the future. That kind of thinking is bound up with self and time and bears no fruit

“If your peace rests on the meditation mat, when you leave the mat you leave your peace behind.”

 When we give our hearts to whatever we do, to whatever we experience, or to what is happening around us, without personal agendas or preferences taking over, the space of rigpa, the space of awareness, is exactly the same.

The Buddha Is Awareness

When you come right down to it, awareness is not a thing. Nevertheless, it is an attribute of the fundamental nature of mind. Ajahn Chah would refer to that awareness, that knowing nature of mind, as Buddha:

The type of effort we need to develop is that which involves being clearer but doing less....We can relax without switching off, and consequently we can enjoy the fruits of our work. This is what we mean by letting go of becoming and learning to be. If we’re too tense and eager to get to the other end, we’re bound to fall off the tightrope.

We practice to end suffering, yet we get so attached to working with things in the mind that when the dukkha stops and the heart becomes spacious and empty, we can find ourselves feeling lost....When grasping ceases, the ultimate truth appears. It’s that simple. But the Buddha’s response was brief and succinct. He replied, “The cessation of grasping is deathlessness.” That’s it. On this point, the Dzogchen and Theravaµdan teachings are identical. When grasping stops, there is rigpa, there is deathlessness, the ending of suffering, dukkha-nirodha... If we don’t rush through looking for the next hit and we pay attention to the ending of dukkha, we open ourselves to purity, radiance, and peacefulness. By allowing our heart to fully taste what’s here, all so-called ordinary experience blossoms and opens, beautifully adorned like a golden orchid; it keeps getting brighter and clearer.

 Atammayataµis the realization that, in truth, there cannot be anything other than ultimate reality. There is no that. In letting go, in the complete abandonment of that, the whole relative subject-object world, even at its subtlest level, is broken apart and dissolved.

The body is in our mind rather than the mind in the body, right? What do we know about our body? We can see it. We can hear it. We can smell it. We can touch it. Where does seeing happen? In the mind. Where do we experience touch? In the mind. Where do we experience smelling? Where does that happen? In the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. We have never known anything about our body except through our mind. So our entire life, ever since infancy, everything we have ever known about our body and the world has happened in our mind. So, where is our body? It doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happens within our mind. It doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s all happening here. And in that here-ness, the world’s externality, its separateness has ceased....When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognize its true nature.

Reflective Inquiry

Oftentimes thinking gets painted as the big villain in meditation circles: “Yeah, my mind. . . . If only I could stop thinking, I’d be happy.” But actually, the thinking mind can be the most wonderful of helpers when it is used in the right way, particularly when investigating the feeling of selfhood. There’s a missed opportunity when we overlook the use of conceptual thought in this way. When you are experiencing, seeing, or doing something, ask a question like: “What is it that’s aware of this feeling? Who owns this moment? What is it that knows rigpa?(awareness)” The deliberate use of reflective thought or inquiry can reveal a set of unconscious assumptions, habits, and compulsions that we have set in motion. This can be very helpful and can yield great insight. We establish a steady, open mindfulness and then ask: “What is it that knows this? What is aware of this moment? Who is it that feels pain? Who is it that is having this fantasy? Who is it that is wondering about supper?”

Fear of Freedom

The Buddha said that the letting go of the sense of “I” is the supreme happiness (e.g., in ud. 2.1, and 4.1). But over the years we have become very fond of this character, haven’t we? As Ajahn Chah once said, “It is like having a dear friend whom you’ve known your whole life. You’ve been inseparable. Then the Buddha comes along and says that you and your friend have got to split up.” It’s heartbreaking. The ego is bereft. There is the feeling of diminution and loss. Then comes the sinking feeling of desperation.To the sense of self, being is always defined in terms of being some thing. But the practice and teachings clearly emphasize undefined being, an awareness: edgeless, colorless, infinite, omnipresent—you name it. When being is undefined in this way, it seems like death to the ego. And death is the worst thing.

“When were you ever made any the less by dying?” Rumi

Attending to the Deathless

In cosmological terms, the best place for liberation is in the human realm. There’s a good mixture of suffering and bliss, happiness and unhappiness here.

 This gesture of attending to the deathless is thus a core spiritual practice but not a complicated one. We simply withdraw our attention from the objects of the mind and incline the attention towards the deathless, the unborn. This is not a massive reconstruction program. It’s not like we have to do a whole lot. It’s very simple and natural. We relax and notice that which has been here all along, like noticing the space in a room. We don’t notice space, because it doesn’t grab our attention, it isn’t exciting. Similarly, nibbanaµ (freedom from cycle of birth and death) has no feature, no color, no taste, and no form, so we don’t realize it’s right here. The perceptual systems and the naming activity of the mind work on forms; that’s what they go to first. Therefore we tend to miss what’s always here.

The Anatomy of Cessation

  Geographically, it is impossible to journey to the end of the world. It’s only when we come to the cessation of the world, which literally means the cessation of its otherness, its thingness, will we reach the end of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. When we stop creating sense objects as absolute realities and stop seeing thoughts and feelings as solid things, there is cessation. To see that the world is within our minds is one way of working with these principles. The whole universe is embraced when we realize that it’s happening within our minds. And in that moment when we recognize that it all happens here, it ceases. Its thingness ceases. Its otherness ceases. Its substantiality ceases.

Touching the Earth

It is saying that even though we might have this enlightened, free space internally, it needs to be interfaced with the phenomenal world. Otherwise, there is no completion. This is why meditating with the eyes open is, in a way, such a useful bridge. We cultivate a vast internal space, but it is necessarily connected to the phenomenal world. If there is only an internal, subjective experience of enlightenment, we’re still caught.

But in reaching out to touch the earth, the Buddha recognized, yes, there is that which is transcendent and unconditioned. But humility demands not simply holding to the unconditioned and the transcendent...That gesture of reaching out from the transcendent is saying: “How could fully engaging with the sense world possibly corrupt the innate freedom of the heart? This freedom is uninterruptible, incorruptible, unconfusable by any sense experience. Therefore why not allow it all in?

Another phrase that expresses this same principle is “cittam| pabhassaram, akandukehi kilesehi,” meaning “the heart’s nature is intrinsically radiant; defilements are only visitors.” (a 1.61) It’s pointing out the fact that the heart’s nature is intrinsically pure and perfect. The things that appear to defile this purity are only visitors passing through, just wandering or drifting by. The heart’s nature cannot truly be corrupted by any of that.

Following from the zensite.com

Impurities are our false thinking and clinging (to things as real)
 'Expel all concurrent causes. Do not give rise to a single thought'
To lay down a thing is to lay down everything for ever, and this is called the laying down of all concurrent causes. When all concurrent causes have been laid down, false thinking will vanish with the non-arising of differentiation and the elimination of all attachments.

話頭 (hua-tou) refers to the practice of realising the origin or empty essence of thought, as it manifests in the mind as ‘words’. Through holding the hua tou, and caring for it appropriately, the light of wisdom (prajna) will appear, and the Mind Ground will be fully realised without error or hindrance, here and now. The hua tou turns the mind (as a sense organ) back upon itself so that with repeated enquiry, the mind's essence is realised.  All the sense organs, regardless of their distinctive sensory function, emerge from exactly the same‘empty’ (sunya) base, and therefore the return of one sense to its base is the automatic return of all senses to the original base.  It is the deep questioning of the word 'Who?' that is the most important factor - Who is hearing?, Who is writing?, Who is dragging this body around?, etc.  It is the enquiry that is the hua tou, rather than the content of its structure.  Whatever hua tou is used, the focusing of the mind upon the question brings the thoughts into one single stream, from their previously scattered condition.  Then all the thoughts, as they emerge from the empty base - regardless of their nature and content become immediately transformed and channelled into the hua tou. This is how Charles Luk (1898-1978) explains the hua tou practice:

‘When men were attached to material things, people of high spirituality became rare. The masters were then obliged to devise a poison-against-poison method called the hua t’ou which consists of the giving rise to a feeling of doubt (yi-qing – ‘doubting mind’) about WHO the seeker of Enlightenment is. Emphasis is on the word WHO which supports this vital doubt which comes from the student’s eagerness to know that which practices the Dharma. He knows that his body and intellect will cease to exist when he dies and are, therefore, transient and cannot realise permanent reality. He is keen to know about the prime mover of all his activities; hence his doubt which, growing larger and larger, will submerge his body, mind and environment to form a mass of fire which destroys all thoughts, feelings and passions like a re-hot stove which melts the snow that falls on it, as the masters put it. His monkey mind cannot stay in this scorching fire, and its death is automatically followed by the resurrection of his true mind which is pure and clean.

All beginners are inclined to give rise to all kinds of (false) thoughts; they have a pain in the legs and do not know how to undergo the training. The truth is that they should be firm in their determination to escape from the round of births and deaths. They should stick to the hua t'ou and no matter whether they walk, stand, sit or lie, they should grasp it. From morning to evening, they should look into this (word) "Who" until it becomes as clear as "the autumn moon reflected in a limpid pool". It should be clearly (and closely) inquired into and should be neither blurred nor unsteady. (If this can be achieved) why worry about the Buddha stage which seems unattainable? 

ZenTeachings/Master_Hsu-Yun_Discourses_and_Dharma_Words

Wise Kindness: Loving Is Not Liking

 As a preface to that, it’s also important to understand that loving everything doesn’t mean we have to like everything. Metta is better understood as “the heart that does not dwell in aversion.” Not dwelling in aversion towards anything, even our enemies....We need to recognize that there is no enemy. There is Dharma. There is no them or that or it. It all belongs. Fundamentally, everything belongs and has its place in nature....As soon as we find ourselves judging our own minds or the people around us with harshness, cultivating justifiable hatred for the government or our thinking minds or our erratic emotions or our damaged lives, there’s no vision of reality; it’s obscured. The attitude is not in accord with truth. So that hatred, that aversion becomes a sign for us that we’ve lost the path.

 I think it’s helpful to recognize this because what we think we’re capable of is very different from what we actually are capable of. We might think, “I could never do that. That’s impossible for me.” Yet I tell you, it is possible. That potential is there for all of us. And when we find that quality of total acceptance and absolute nonaversion, where there’s kindness and compassion, then there’s a tremendous quality of ease and release, a real nondiscrimination at last. For what kind of wisdom are we developing if it packs up and departs as soon as the going gets rough—as soon as the weather gets too hot, the “wrong” person is put in charge, or the body gets sick and uncomfortable?

A sincere spirit of loving-kindness is the most challenging thing to establish in the face of extreme bitterness and pain because to do so requires finding spaciousness around these experiences. This is where the heart most easily contracts and impacts itself. But we can pick up that quality and say, “Yes, this too is part of nature. This too is just the way it is.” Then, at that moment, there’s an expansion around it. We feel the space of emptiness that surrounds and pervades it and we see the whole thing is transparent. No matter how dense and real the feeling of “I and me and mine” is in that holding, we see in that spaciousness that not only is there space around it, but there is also light coming through.

True wisdom, far from being beyond the practice of kindness, actually depends on such undiscriminating acceptance of the beautiful and the ugly alike. When we stop running away from things that are apparently painful, even unbearable, and fully engage in the gesture of acceptance and surrender, there is a magical transformation. We transform the so-called difficulty and move into an entirely different state... Intensity is transformed by the purity of reflection. And when we are dealing with our own emotional life, that same kind of open and clear reception has a way of transmuting the emotional state. It doesn’t suppress it. The emotion shrivels; the energy of it gets changed into something that actually enlivens and brightens the mind—the heat is transformed into light...when the heart is completely liberated, it’s impossible to deliberately harm another being. It’s impossible to act acquisitively. It’s impossible to take advantage of another being sexually or use your sense world indulgently. It is simply impossible. You can’t lie or use speech in a harmful or deceitful way. It’s as if the force of spiritual gravity won’t allow it. There’s nothing there that could cause you to bend the truth.... Goodness feels good because the attitude resonates with reality. Lying and harming feel bad because they are dissonant with that reality of what we are. It’s as simple as that.

I am often reminded of a couple of lines from the verses of the Third Zen Patriarch, where he says, "All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power.” These teachings have been around for years, haven’t they? It seems to me that this is exactly the guidance we receive from the Tibetan tradition, particularly that last line, “with no exertion of the mind’s power”—no person doing anything. This is pointing to the intrinsically pure and free quality of mind. We take on certain conventional practices, like calming or brightening the mind, or waking up the mind, but we are just bringing the conditioned realm into alignment with the already existent basic reality. The intrinsic nature of mind is already totally peaceful, totally energetic, and totally awake. That’s its inherent nature.

Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

I find this a very helpful way of talking about it: the Buddha is that which is awake, that which knows, so taking refuge in the Buddha is taking refuge in the awareness of the mind. The Buddha arises from the Dharma. The Buddha is an attribute, knowing is an attribute of that fundamental reality. The Dharma is the ultimate object, the way things are. Its characteristic is emptiness. The Buddha is the ultimate subject, that which knows, that which is awake. So when the ultimate subject knows the ultimate object, when the mind that knows is aware of the way things are, what comes forth is Sangha, compassionate action. Sangha intrinsically flows forth from that quality. When there’s awareness of the way things are, then compassionate skillful means naturally arise and flow from that. The three refuges, as you can see, are all interwoven.

“To Be, or Not to Be” Is the Wrong Question

‘All exists’ is one extreme; ‘Nothing exists’ is the other extreme....The Buddha wouldn’t take the side of existence, being, and he wouldn’t take the side of nonbeing. He points out that “being is true” and “I am” both side with eternalism. And to say “nonexistence is true” or “I am not” sides with annihilationism, with nihilism.

The verses of the first Tsoknyi Rinpoche tell us: Mara is the mind clinging to like and dislike, so look into the essence of this magic, free from dualistic fixation. Realize that your mind is unfabricated primordial purity. There is no Buddha elsewhere. Look at your own face.

Another way that Ajahn Mun phrased it, in his enlightenment verses called “The Ballad of Liberation from the Khandhas,” is with this show stopper: The Dhamma stays as the Dhamma, the khandhas stay as the khandhas. That’s all. In the Sanskrit that would be skandhas: the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness. So the Dharma is the Dharma and the skandhas are the skandhas. There is the conditioned; there is the unconditioned. There is mind; there is mind-essence. That’s it. This is all we need to know.

Life Affirmation and Negation

So, similarly, when people ask, “What happens to the self when the body dies?” The answer is basically the same. The whole conception of the self is based upon a misapprehension, so the question doesn’t apply. The way we see our “selves” is a fundamental misapprehension that needs to be corrected. The practice is about learning to see clearly, to awaken to what really is.... said the Buddha. “Let me give you an example. Suppose we have a little fire burning here, made out of grass and sticks. And I say to you, ‘Have we a little fire here?’ You would say, ‘Yes, there’s a fire here.’ If we put the fire out, and then I ask you the question, ‘Where did the fire go? Did it go north, south, east, or west?’ What would you reply?” Vacchagotta said, “Well, the question doesn’t apply. It didn’t go anywhere, it just went out.” And the Buddha said, “Exactly so, Vacchagotta. The way you phrased the question presumes a reality that does not exist. Therefore, your question is not answerable in its own terms. ‘Reappear’ does not apply; ‘does not reappear’ does not apply . . .” (m 72.16-20)

He also made the point that, if the Tathaµgata had talked in terms of an “eternal and blessed life,” many of his disciples indeed would have been delighted with the idea but would have tended to cling to it with a passionate longing that would disturb all true peace and freedom. They thus would have become enmeshed in the powerful net of craving for existence. And while clinging to the idea of a beyond, for which by necessity they had to borrow all the coloring from this life, would they not have clung even more to the present, the more they pursued that imaginary beyond?

The Buddha replies: “Those who have reached the end have no criterion by which they can be measured. That which could be spoken of is no more. You cannot say ‘they do not exist.’ But when all modes of being, all phenomena, have been removed, all ways of speaking have gone too.” (sn 1076) This is what we refer to as parinibbana; it is where words and thoughts run out. It’s the rigpa zone. All language is based upon dualistic conceptions. So the Buddha is really being resolute by saying, “All ways of speaking have gone, too.” Beyond here, the buses don’t run. This is the end, the borderline. Language and concept can apply up to this point but not any further.

The Buddha is trying to discourage the habit of filling up space with ideas or some kind of belief or form. Instead, he is encouraging a direct realization of the truth so that we know for ourselves what that transcendent quality is. He’s encouraging us to establish that quality of knowing, of rigpa. Rather than creating an idea about something or an image or a memory of it or a plan to get it, we need to keep waking up to that, to keep coming to that. And that in itself is indescribable. We can talk about things like knowing, emptiness, lucidity, clarity, and so forth, but when the mind is fully awake to its own nature, the words run out. This is the “parinibbaµna effect”; it is an event horizon and marks a boundary with that which is beyond the realm of words. When the mind is truly awake, do we evaporate? Are we frozen solid? No. In fact, we are more alive than we have ever been before. There is a quality of total aliveness. Yet there’s also a complete lack of definition. In that moment we’re not male, we’re not female, we’re not old, we’re not young, we’re not any place, there is no time. It’s ownerless, timeless is-ness.

What are the four kinds of clinging? They are:

clinging to sense pleasure;
clinging to views and opinions;
clinging to conventions, to gurus, to meditation techniques, to an ethic, to specific religious forms; and
clinging to the idea of self.

The last four lines of the Metta Sutta are about the ending of clinging:

By not holding to fixed views
the pure-hearted one
having clarity of vision
being freed from all sense desires
is not born again into this world

 Rebirth cannot happen without ignorance and clinging.
Contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming. Then becoming leads to birth. At birth, there’s no turning back. The baby can’t go back inside again. At becoming it is almost too late to break the cycle. Once there is birth then it’s sealed—there is necessarily the whole lifespan, and during that lifespan there’s going to be sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair, aging, sickness, death.

In very practical terms, the nature of ultimate reality is not the problem—it sustains itself. The problem is that the heart loses sight of reality because of its addiction to craving.

We don’t feel unremitting bliss all the time, do we? If we intuit that there is an ultimate reality, which is pure and perfect and blissful, why don’t we continually experience that? What’s in the way? The reason is because of avijja and tan\haµ, ignorance and craving.

The pain is saying: “This really hurts. But somehow I know that this is not the ultimate reality.” We also know that “I can do something about this; it’s up to me.” So the faith that something is doable arises, and that faith is what launches us on the path of transcendence.

There is a feeling of hunger, a lack, or a longing that comes from the experience of suffering. If we are not awake to what’s going on, we think that what we lack is some thing—the new job, the new car, the new partner. Or we lack perfect health. We lack a decent meditation practice. We shouldn’t be hanging out with the Tibetan lamas; we should join the Theravaµdins at Abhayagiri. We should rejoin the Christians. We should move to Hawaii. It goes on and on. We go after any kind of external object or internal program to find the missing piece. This is the cycle of addiction, and it is a very common experience.


The Portable Retreat

 vajra song of the first tsoknyi rinpoche (tibetan)

Don’t wander, don’t wander, place mindfulness on guard;
Along the road of distraction, Mara lies in ambush.
Mara is the mind, clinging to like and dislike,
So look into the essence of this magic, free from dualistic fixation.
Realize that your mind is unfabricated primordial purity;
There is no Buddha elsewhere, look at your own face;
There is nothing else to search for, rest in your own place;
Non-meditation is spontaneous perfection so capture the royal seat.



Ajahn Amaro Small-Boat Great-Mountain