Wrong beliefs and the actions that follow from such beliefs can generally be attributed to ignorance. Regrettably, ignorance breeds ignorance just like fear and hatred beget more fear and hatred. We are not burdened with a small amount of ignorance, either. We are well stocked up.
Ignorance is not easy to recognize within ourselves. It is extremely difficult, in fact. Speaking for myself, my first Zen awakening, if I can call it that, was to admit my ignorance of Buddhism—really admit it. Oddly, my ignorance became a kind of ally. By it I always reminded myself that I could be deluded. As a result, I paid close attention to the canon and classical Zen literature. I was always looking at my inventory of beliefs and assumptions about Buddhism, testing them against the canon.
One belief I held, was the belief that the Buddha denied the self. Assuming that I was really ignorant of this subject, I took a hard look at the Dhammapada and the Mijjhima-Nikaya (Horner’s trans.). I could not find a straightforward denial of self. What I did find, and much to my surprise, was that the Buddha kept saying we are not these Five Aggregates which makeup the psychophysical individual. Where this led me was not to a place of more ignorance but to the astonishing view that the Buddha was saying that within us there is something pristine and transcendent that we are not recognizing at the moment—and should!—if we expect to fully awaken.
Eventually, I became sure that there was something pure and absolute within me that was hidden (and of course, transcendent). If I was to make any real meaningful progress in Buddhism I had to discover it for myself.
At the gates of nirvana bodhi talks, everything else walks.
Posted by: azanshi | March 02, 2012 at 01:08 PM