Monday 8:20 p.m.
There's no secret in how to do the Mahamudra meditations I've been reading about. It's easy. You negate the self in the self: the self in the object; and then get into the mind. Where is it? What size is it, etc.? You are supposed to do this until you realise there are no sentient beings! Nae bother!
When you start off with the false sense of self in yourself, and trying to negate that ... well, the Theravadins don't get any further than that! Actually, might take you a while to figure out what they might be talking about when they go on about this self thing.
Negating the self in the object should be a lot easier. Like your own wee self, it doesn't exist the way you think it exists. It seems to have a permanence and solidity which the buddhisty boys say it doesn't have. They say there's nothing there that isn't constantly changing into something else. Also, it doesn't exist from it's own side, but due to causes and conditions outside of itself.
This is much easier with the candle flame. It is the same candle flame in five minutes time, but everything has changed. The flame is dependent on the wick, the oxygen in the air and whatever the candle is made of.
It's not as easy when you look at the candle itself. If it wasn't lit, but just sitting there, it looks like it would sit there unchanging forever. You wonder what it might be dependent upon because everything is interdependent in buddhism and nothing is separate. Well, it's dependent on the temperature of the room since it would expand, and thus change, if it got warmer. It might even melt.
The candle has a name and a function. They say there is not all that much more you can be dead certain of.
(If I knew anything about Plato, I'd have to write something here about Forms. These might be archetypal abstract ideas, but I know bugger all about Plato. Anybody out there know about Forms? This has a capital because a form isn't something in this instance you fill up to get a driving license).
Once you have sorted out your view of reality by staring at the candle for a bit, you are supposed to get up and get busy. These meditations are for folk who are not monks and have lots of do, like ... well, whatever flatheids do to stay flatheids. Anyway, when you are between meditation sessions, you are supposed to try to hold a view of reality in your head, I think.
To achieve ultimate reality, I mark everything with mahamudra, The Great Seal of Emptiness This is the quintessence of non-duality.Milarepa.
We're talking here about getting to grips with the illusory nature of reality. I'm getting told in this book I'm reading that nothing is real, that everything is illusory. I think I'm supposed to walk about with a strong idea of the emptiness of everything, and that nothing is as it appears to be.
If you believed in God, you'd have to think that he's taking the piss. Everyone born with their heads jammed up their backsides, totally mystified, going around talking crap about things which aren't really there.
I think this Thrangu boy might be a bit hard core, Jack! But he's not saying there's nothing there, is he? Well, Jack, he's seems to be stressing that there really is very, very little out there. I know physics tells us that there really is very, very little out there, but that's not the way it looks!!
Sometimes it seems as if you're being asked to give up all the anchors and let everything slip slide away. You are not who you think you are. It's not what you think it is. This is very hard stuff. This is not really happening the way you think it is happening.
Of course, the reason why you might spend some time of this stuff is because it's supposed to help you with the old afflictive emotions. Proceeding towards equanimity by way of contentment, satisfaction, satiation ... but very slowly!
Some people don't seem to be much more than a whole lot of afflictive emotions. I think that's who they think they are. They might call it their personality. Let's get rid of that crabbit basturn and replace him with a nice chappie who smiles a lot! You can see how if you were a bit mentally unstable like most of the folk who land on this blog that this stuff would just be the last straw! Nee, naw. Here come the men in the white coats.
Whoever you are, I've always relied on the kindness of strangers.
The flat is full of just little old me until tomorrow night. Then I have to go to Aviemore. This is not for ski-ing. This is because you can get a train right there from the beautiful, wonderful city, and it's quite far away. Hmmm? Anyway, it's not happening to me the way I think it's happening to me so there's no point in clinging to that bitter resentment at being dragged out of my hut so I could enjoy myself. See? Works on everything.
3 comments:
I've yet to meet someone mentally stable. Thinking you're stable and everyone else is unstable, could well provide a sense of stability. PS you could try reading milarepa in the new testament version by castaneda.
When I studied science in HS and realized that everything was constantly moving and changing the idea totally intrigued me.
The idea of the cup of coffee on the table and none of it was stable and unchanging. That you could see the coffee move easily, but the motion in the cup and table was slower, but constant. That with enough patience you could see them change as well made me really happy.
I like the idea that things in my world are constantly in a state of change, that things become other things.
It isn't so much that they aren't there, it is more that they aren't going to always be whatever label you assign to them, the candle becomes heat, light and a puddle of wax, which can become another candle.
I know I won't live forever and take a lot of comfort in that idea. What happens to this body is that it gets recycled into the ocean and the tiny flake I think of as "me" gets released into the universe. I find the idea I don't have to be "me" forever a good thing.
Eventually I'll learn enough that the "me" part will stop getting anchored in bodies and just be free to wander the universe and enjoy all the changes.
But then you know I'm a nutter. All humans are, it is tied to the form.
Albert? I never read a word of Castenada, which I'm glad of since the boy who wrote Was God A Spaceman? said he'd got it all wrong.
Marie. Very interesting comment indeed! Hotboy
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