Fwd: 2nd try FW: emptiness that is the single highest teaching of the Buddha

[Guest guest]

GuruRatings , Insight <insight@s...> wrote:

 

Anatta is talked about only by Buddhists. Knowledge

and understanding can arise only in those people who have

been taught that all things are anatta and should not be

grasped or clung to.

 

 

Here we reach the word 'emptiness' of which it is said

that having seen it one will find contentment in Nirvana.

We must thoroughly understand that on the first level

emptiness is the absence of the feeling of 'I' and 'mine'.

If those feelings are still present then the mind is

not empty, it is disturbed by grasping and clinging.

'Empty' meaning free of the feeling of self or that

things that belong to self; and disturbed meaning

confused, depressed, in turmoil with the feeling of

'I' and 'mine'.

 

 

What are the characteristics of the state empty of

ego-consciousness? In the scriptures there is a teaching

of the Buddha which list four points:

 

Na aham kavicini - feeling that there is nothing

that is me.

 

Na kassaci kincanam kisminci - without worry or

doubt that anything might be me. This makes one pair,

the second pair is:

 

Na mama kavacini - feeling that there is nothing that

is 'mine'.

 

Kisminci kincanam natthi - without worry or doubt

that anything might be mine. (Anenjasappaya Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya)

 

At the moment that anyone's mind is freed

from these four things the Buddha held that to be emptiness.

The commentary sums it up concisely as 'na attanena' -

not taking things to be self and 'na attaniyena' - not

taking things to belong to self, and that is sufficient.

 

 

Try and imagine what it would be like when this grasping

consciousness

is not present. One doesn't look on anything anywhere as ever having

been,

as currently being, or as having the potential to be self or belong

to self. There is no self in the present and no

basis for anxiety regarding self in the past or future.

All things are dhammas, simply parts of nature. This

is the mind that is identical with emptiness. If

we say the mind has attained or realized emptiness it leads

some people to understand the mind is one thing

and emptiness another. To say that the mind has

realized emptiness is still not particularily correct.

Please understand that if the mind was not one and the

same thing as emptiness, there would be no way for

emptiness to be known. The mind in its natural state

is emptiness, it is an alien foolishness that enters

and obstructs the vision of emptiness. Consequently,

as soon as foolishness departs, the mind and emptiness

are one. The mind then knows itself. It doesn't need to

go anywhere else knowing objects, it holds to the knowing

of emptiness, knowing nothing other than the freedom

from 'self' amd 'belonging to self'.

 

 

It is this emptiness that is the single highest teaching

of the Buddha, so much so that in the Samyutta Nikaya the

Buddha says that there are no words spoken by the

Tathagata that are not concerned with sunnata. He says

in that sutta that the most profound teaching is that

which deals with emptiness, any other subject is superficial.

Only the teaching of sunnata is so profound that there

must be a Tathagata enlightened in the world for

it to be taught.

 

 

Heartwood from the Bo Tree

Ven.Buddhadasa bhikkhu

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