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Posted by josef on 11/3/2007, 3:53 pm, in reply to "Re: Practicing Nature Mysticism, a meditation"
24.32.223.X
--Previous Message--
: Lovely, josef. Many thanks.
:
: I like, in particular, this:
:
: "While I hold this flower in my hand, the Tao is in effect grasping
: the Tao; while I observe it with my eye and inhale its fragrance with my
: nose, the Tao is in effect observing and inhaling the Tao."
Steven, I'm glad you liked it. There is a further progression of the same meditation that because you liked this, I'll add now, not to argue it in any way, but just to allow you to see how the fiction of the "I" is seen by some.
"Having taken up the meditation posture, the adept reminds himself that being and objects are identical in nature with the undifferentiated non-substance of the void, of which all seeming entities are but transient manifestations. To hold that the ego or self is an independent entity is to deny the voidness of its nature and to suppose that it exists independently of all other manifestations of the void, which is also the One Mind. To accept that the ego is not real is to recognize its intrinsic voidness and its total interdependence on all manifestations of the void, and especially to conclude that no such thing as an ego principle can be isolated from the five constituents that together compose a person's body-mind.
The first step is "ascertaining the object to be negated.' The adept conceives of his 'self' as thought it really did exist, and recalls some of the occasions on which this 'I' has been made to suffer or rejoice by the words or actions of other people. He tried to note exactly what he takes this 'I' to be, for example what is its relationship to the rest of his body, mind, feeling and discriminations, and what are the constituents of which he deems it to be composed. He may perhaps reflect: 'I, Peter Jones, am undoubtedly a real person. I recall how upset I was when my sister called me a good-for-nothing in front of a lot of people, and how I enjoyed the critical acclaim that greeted my recent novel. By 'I', I mean this person seated here, an individual mind contained in an individual body, now enjoying the warmth of the sun and remembering how unpleasant it is to feel really cold. This 'I' is clearly related to my mind, since it can be hurt by disparagement and elated by praise; but also to my body, since it responds to warmth and shrinks from cold'
The second step, known as 'ascertaining pervasion', is to reflect that the 'I' must be one with or else separate from the five aggregates of personality--namely *form* (body, sense organs, etc), *feelings* (both physical and mental, including pleasant, unpleasant and neutral), *perceptions* (of colour, smell, taste, etc., as well as the ability to recognize, discriminate, identify), *conditionings* (including volitions, responses, reaction such as pride or fear, impulses, tendencies, judgements and movements of the mind to objects as when one reflects that something is desirable or otherwise) and *consciousness (awareness of things implying a separation of subject and object, and awareness of the other aggregates listed above). Logically the 'I' has to be either the same, or not the same as these five. One may perhaps reflect:
'If "I" is not something apart from these five aggregates, why do I tend to speak of "my boty, my perceptions", etc.? Surely that is tantamount to saying "my I" or "body's body"? How absurd that would sound! Very well, then, I must suppose the "I" means j ust my mind. Yet how can that be? Can mind feel cold or hunger, or require to be fed and clothed? Certainly not, but "I" does feel and require those things, so it seems more likely that "I" comprises all five of those aggregates including form (the body). But, in that case, eithere there must be five different "i"s, or else the five aggregates are really one-neither of which makes sense. Nor does it make the least sense to say that "I" is neither different from, nor the same as, the five aggregates.
The third step is called 'ascertaining the lack of true identity between the self and the five aggregates of personality'. One recognizes that the "I" must be different from those five, since each of them can be clearly recognized for what it is, whereas it appears that the "I" cannot be thus identified. He may reflect:
'So "I' is different from those five? Yet, though I can identify my body by touch, feel things as pleasant or otherwise, discriminate between red and green, not my tendency to enjoy working with my brain but not with my hands, and be conscious of that clump of trees over there as an object of my mind, I can by no means touch, feel, discriminate, enjoy or be conscious of as an object of my mind an entity apart from these five that is identifiable as "I". In short, "I" is just an empty concept having no recognizable validity at all.' Meditating thus, day after day, with unlimited variations, the adept is bound to reach this same conclusion again and again. Increasingly he will become convinced that "I" and "mind" are no more than conventional terms to disguise a fiction for the sake of day-to-day convenience. This recognition, when it moves from the intellectual level and becomes a matter of direct intuitive perception, brings liberation--Enlightenment."
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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