According to the Buddha, during the process of incorporealization our consciousness (vijnana) is perceptually oriented to carnal appearance (namarupa). Oriented this way, as our consciousness appropriates more of the flesh, we become increasingly more conscious of our carnal body which makes it more difficult to reverse (paravritti) this situation by meditation.
By the same token, when consciousness is no longer established in the corporeal, this is nirvana, i.e., liberation, which is an unbound state of consciousness. This liberation, moreover, is neither death nor annihilation. Our consciousness, which previously fell into samsaric life during biological conception is, intrinsically, the same consciousness that is now unbound (nirvana).
What brought us to this fall, viz., that we should be increasingly conscious of our body’s limitation which has for its end death? According to Buddhism, it is the excitation of desire, or the same, thirst that is responsible. In this sense, desire is a lack that moves us away from ourself to the other, ‘other’ in the sense of what we are not and never can be.
By comparison complete nirvana (parinirvana) is in the very self (pratyatman) in which stability of self, emancipation of self (vimukta-atman), and fulfillment of self is perfectly realized (S.iii.53–54). Accordingly, there is no tendency to be born (jati) into what one is not since there is no more lack or thirst. We are now always conscious of the unmanifest, the infinite, and the luminous (D.i.223).
Hi, I enjoy your work.
But if consciousness was better off before its "fall" into corporeal existence (being entombed in a body subject to death), then why did we "desire" and therefore fall at all? What and how could we have desired at all being that we were in a non-corporeal state?
One thing that bothers me whenever I encounter it in Zen sites, is the story of the monster "monk" who murdered a cat in order to make a "point". Having read the purported words of the original Buddha, I know he would have abhorred this. The Buddha protested what he called senseless animal sacrifices in his day, and a senseless animal sacrifice is just what the monster did--he sacrificed the cat's life to make a so-called point about his religion. This non-Buddhist creep should be stricken fromthe pages of Zen. He was a pollution.
I really like "The Zennist." (:
Posted by: Frank | April 28, 2008 at 03:48 AM