One of my friends sent me a response from a Buddhist. The last part of the response caught my attention which I thought was rather odd.
Liberation, according to the Buddha, is not meant to transcend the world, but to lift us out of our ignorance about the nature of things and how they function.
What this person is getting at is the world is suffering, impermanent, always changing, and there is no atman. While it is true that the Buddha said this, it is not true that knowing this is liberation. Liberation is about transcending the conditioned world. It is about realizing what is not suffering, not changing and what is our atman which is the only refuge available for us according to the Buddha. To be sure, there is no refuge in the Five Aggregates (our psychophysical body). The aggregates are never other than suffering and impermanent—nor are these aggregates a refuge like the atman.
If you are a person disposed to nihilism you are going to look at Buddhism with a limited view—certainly, not the right, full view. After you’ve searched and searched for the truth, ultimately, you conclude that this life is for nothing. Eventually, you die—that’s it. The big blank. I find it difficult to talk people out of this nihilist view of life. One of my friends is a neuroscientist who insists that consciousness is made by the brain and that when the body dies, so does our consciousness (consciousness in Buddhism is the transmigrant from this life to the next). I certainly can’t bust down the door of this person’s mind and shoot this crazy view who has them hostage. I am just hoping they will grow out of such a view.
Many Buddhists these days have no idea what Buddhism is really about. Liberation consists in seeing the unconditioned which is undying. But in order to do this we have to break our ties with the conditioned—stop clinging to it as if it were the only reality.
It is fascinating, it is like they do not really understand buddhism at all. They cling to a bundle of thought-constructions and when they are told that there is that which is not a thought-construction, that thought-construction is merely an illusion of discrimination; they then think this means that there is only this bundle of constructions and then nothing; they cannot intuitively see that there is something beyond thought-construction.
That's not even talking about the very real function of Mind as bodhi, which is signless, non-abiding and purely itself; when told that there is this pure function of mind (bodhi) which is the indivisible luminosity, and that this is what is erroneously discriminated through the skhandas; they say that it cannot be, that it isn't so. But this is confirmed through direct experience.
It's just made me realize more and more that perhaps the buddha had it right when he thought that this couldn't be taught to many. It seems only a few have the eyes to see the truth and the rest stumble around blind quoting scripture and taking thought-construction for the ultimate.
Perhaps what is best is to cease trying to teach others for now and to just continue my own path; it's unfortunate but it seems like its a dead end, to keep trying to show people what they have to directly experience. Especially considering there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding regarding the teachings; there's really no point. It seems most cannot understand it because, as i've experienced, it is something that must be directly experienced and that direct experience transcends language.
Posted by: Mr.Nobody | July 13, 2016 at 04:24 AM