Unpacking the abbreviated quality of passages

I have noticed over the years that a certain abbreviated quality can often be found in the discourses of the Buddha in the example of the first noble truth which is suffering.  It is only after going through the Pali Nikayas does one find what exactly it is that suffers.  The answer is the five grasping aggregates (pañcupādānakkhandhā).

Yesterday, I was looking at this passage from the Sutta-Nipāta (H. Siddhattissa’s translation).

“In the world, such a wise monk who is freed from desire and attachment attains the immortal, the tranquil and deathless state of Nibbana” (204).

I also looked at K. R. Norman’s translation.

“Having discarded desire and passion, the bhikkhu possessing knowledge here as arrived at the undying, peace, the [unshakable state of quenching].”

I ask myself just what kind of desire and attachment/passion is this wise monk freed from so that he attains nirvana?  Here is the obvious answer.  It is desire and attachment/passion for the conditioned which includes the five grasping aggregates that he is freed from.

The deathless, quenching state of nirvana is beyond our conditioned world and certainly beyond the five grasping aggregates, including the six senses the most difficult being the last, which is our mental life.

To get to this divine place we have to go back to 203.

“He compares this body to a corpse and thinking that this body is the same as a corpse and a corpse the same as this body, he removes desire for his own body.”

K. R. Norman’s translation is as follows:

‘As is this, so is that; as is that, so is this’ (Understanding this) one would discard desire for the body both [inside and outside.]

Everything that the monk, not yet feed, beholds is conditioned; far from the other shore of nirvana.  Our monk is still unable to discard, totally, desire for the body both inner and outer.  But he is making progress.  He is making intuition possible.  He can at least tell what has to be discarded which is take away everything as Plotinus would say.  And in that sudden removal of everything conditioned, one reaches the yonder unconditioned shore of nirvana!

Comments

[Jung]

Dave, In genuine Zen, with the self-evidential affirmation of a clear breakthrough to pure mind, transcendence is what matters most. At that specific point of one's spiritual evolution or the great return to the sheer nirvana of svabhava, transcendence is something that must occur unconditionally. The last word remains a mystery for most quasi seekers of the truth that lies in realizing the true nature of their own self.

The pure unconditionality of the Buddha Mind is impervious to any analysis, the proximity of any arisen condition, or permutation of phenomenal differentiation, and thus this unconditionality is and was considered dark [obscure] by the old sages.

Though the true light once the encounter is at hand emerges as blinding to the initially awakened soul, the sheer compassion and force of its nobility and healing power are unmistakable. It is this very light (Bodhi-Citta) the awakened bodhisattva learns to cultivate, by not only producing more of it but also controlling its creative nature in whatever need might be at hand, according to worldly conditions, as expedient means to save any spirit in distress from the conditional realities of Marra, all considered as dukkha and the path of darkness and suffering.

Though these effects of said cultivation and application of bodhicitta are not always immediate, the end-result is always the same. The awakening of the distressed and realization of the illusion instantly or gradually comes at hand and releases that which cannot transcend due to the defilements, habit energy (of holding on to the former) and their colelctive unreality. This is the true work of any genuine bodhisattva which is a spiritual being and not ever a conditioned formation be it bones and flesh or anything artificially built.

So, to hark back to the initial stage, transcendence is the way that leads the once blind via a single-pointed intuitive power over that last, seemingly impossible gap at the end of Hakuin´s bridge, and over to the shore of countless Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

To quote the great sage; "When the man crosses the bridge. The bridge flows and the water stands still".

Solve this mystery and experience the transcendence yourself, on the very miraculous nature that guided your eyeballs over this screen and regulated your very heartbeats and breathing as a mere conditioned tool to your own true self, urgently in need to face itself as purely such and nothing else.

[dave b]

As long as you think in terms of five agregates rather than just the body, you are still deceived by the corrupted scriptures, because Buddha undoubtedly said only sakkaya (the body) and not pañca khandha (5 aggregates), which by including vijñana in there causes the heresy of no soul.

Vijñana in some passages in the nikayas is transmigrant, is the soul, as you often point out; yet when the scholastic budologists expanded Buddha's sakkaya into their made up list of
pañca khandha they turned the very self, the soul, the vijñana, into a member of the non-self. This alteration of Buddha's terminology in the 4 main nikayas is the origin of the whole heresy.

But luckily the Dhammapada is free of the heretical concept of pañca khandha, so if you go by it rather than the heretical 4 main nikayas, you will not be deceived.