靈性英文課素材-No. 4
Every living being suffers. Life starts with crying; birth is a great suffering. And anyone who has been born is bound to encounter the sufferings of sickness and old age. But no matter how miserable one’s life may be, nobody wants to die, because death is a great suffering.
Throughout life, one encounters things that one does not like, and is separated from things that one likes. Unwanted things happen, wanted things do not happen, and one feels miserable.
Simply understanding this reality at the intellectual level will not liberate anyone. It can only give inspiration to look within oneself, in order to experience truth and to find the way out of misery. This is what Siddhattha Gotama did to become a Buddha: he started observing reality within the framework of his body like a research scientist, moving from gross, apparent truth to subtler truth, to the subtlest truth.
He found that whenever one develops craving, whether to keep a pleasant sensation or to get rid of an unpleasant one, and that craving is not fulfilled, then one starts suffering. And going further, at the subtlest level, he found that when seen with a fully collected mind, it is clear that attachment to the five aggregates is suffering. Intellectually one may understand that the material aggregate, the body, is not ‘I,’ not ‘mine,’ but merely an impersonal, changing phenomenon which is beyond one’s control; actually, however, one identifies with the body, and develops tremendous attachment to it. Similarly one develops attachment to the four mental aggregates of consciousness, perception, sensation, reaction, and clings to them as ‘I, mine’ despite their constantly changing nature. For conventional purposes one must use the words ‘I’ and ‘mine,’ but when one develops attachment to the five aggregates, one creates suffering for oneself. Wherever there is attachment, there is bound to be misery, and the greater the attachment, the greater the misery.
Now what is the cause of this attachment? He found that it arises because of the momentary reactions of liking and disliking. Liking develops into great craving; disliking into great aversion, the mirror image of craving, and both turn into attachment. And why these momentary reactions of liking and disliking? Anyone who observes himself will find that they occur because of bodily sensations. Whenever a pleasant sensation arises, one likes it and wants to retain and multiply it. Whenever an unpleasant sensation arises, one dislikes it and wants to get rid of it. Then why these sensations?
Clearly they occur because of the contact between any of the senses and an object of that particular sense: contact of the eye with a vision, of the ear with a sound, of the nose with an odor, of the tongue with a taste, of the body with something tangible, of the mind with a thought or an imagination. As soon as there is a contact, a sensation is bound to arise, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
The source of the process of suffering, the deepest cause, is ignorance. From ignorance starts the chain of events by which one generates mountains of misery for oneself. If ignorance can be eradicated, suffering will be eradicated.
How can one accomplish this? How can one break the chain? The flow of life, of mind and matter, has already begun.
Committing suicide will not solve the problem; it will only create fresh misery. Nor can one destroy the senses without destroying oneself. So long as the senses exist, contact is bound to occur with their respective objects, and whenever there is a contact, a sensation is bound to arise within the body. Now here, at the link of sensation, one can break the chain.
Previously, every sensation gave rise to a reaction of liking or disliking, which developed into great craving or aversion, great misery. But now, instead of reacting to sensation, you are learning just to observe equanimously, understanding, “This will also change.” In this way sensation gives rise only to wisdom, to the understanding of anicca. One stops the turning of the wheel of suffering and starts rotating it in the opposite direction, towards liberation.
Any moment in which one does not generate a newsaakh±ra, one of the old ones will arise on the surface of the mind, and along with it a sensation will start within the body.
If one remains equanimous, it passes away and another old reaction arises in its place. One continues to remain equanimous to physical sensations and the old saakh±r± continue to arise and pass away, one after another. If out of ignorance one reacts to sensations, then one multiplies the saakh±r±,multiplies one’s misery. But if one develops wisdom and does not react to sensations, then one after another the saakh±r±are eradicated, misery is eradicated.The entire path is a way to come out of misery. By practicing, you will find that you stop tying new knots, and that the old ones are automatically untied. Gradually you will progress towards a stage in which all saakh±r± leading to new birth, and therefore to new suffering, have been eradicated: the stage of total liberation, full enlightenment.