Attending the Deathless

[Guest guest]

One

night while the Buddha was meditating, a brilliant and

beautiful devata named Rohitassa appeared in front of

him. He told the Buddha, "When I was a human being, I

was a spiritual seeker of psychic power, a sky walker.

Even though I journeyed with great determination and

resolution for one hundred years to reach the end of

the world, I could not come to the end of the world. I

died on the journey before I found it. So can you

tell me, is it possible to journey to the end of the

world?"

 

And the Buddha replied, "It is not possible to reach

the end of the world by walking, but I tell you that

unless you reach the end of the world, you will not

reach the end of suffering." Rohitassa was a bit

puzzled and said, "Please explain this to me,

Venerable Sir." The Buddha replied, "In this very

fathom-long body is the world, the origin of the

world, the cessation of the world and the way leading

to the cessation of the world" (Anguttara Nikaya 4.45,

Samyutta Nikaya 2.26).

 

In that instance the Buddha used the same exact

formulation as in the Four Noble Truths. The world,

or loka, means the world of our experience. That's

how the Buddha almost always uses the term "the

world". He's referring to the world as we experience

it. This includes only sight, sound, smell, taste,

touch, thought, emotion and feeling. That's it, That's

what "the world" is -my world, your world. It's the

direct experience of the planet, the world, the

cosmos. Here is the origin of the world, the cessation

of the world and the way leading to the cessation of

the world.

 

He said that as long as we create "me and my

experience" - "me in here" and "the world out there" -

we're stuck in the world of subject and object. Then

there is dukkha. And the way leading to the cessation

of that duality is the way leading to the cessation of

suffering. Geographically it is impossible to journey

to the end of the world. Only when we come to the

cessation of the world, which literally means the

cessation of it's otherness or thingness, will we

reach the end of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. When we

stop creating sense objects as absolute realities and

stop seeing thoughts and feelings as solid things,

there is cessation.

 

To see that the world is within our minds is one way

of working with these principles. The whole universe

is embraced when we realize that it is happening

within our minds. And in that moment when we

recognize that it all happens here, it ceases. It's

thingness ceases. Its otherness ceases. Its

substantiality ceases.

 

This is just one way of thinking and talking about it.

But I find this brings us much closer to the truth,

because in that respect, it's held in check. It's

known. But there's also the quality of its emptiness.

Its insubstantiality is known. We aren't imputing

solidity to it, a reality that it doesn't possess.

We're just looking directly at the world, knowing it

fully and completely."

 

 

Attending to the Deathless

by Ajahn Amaro, Abbot of Abhayagiri Buddhist

Monastery, Redwood Valley, California

Buddhadharma, The Practioner's Quarterly

(winter- 2003)

 

 

from the Jhanas

 

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