“Seeing Through the Mirage” with Jean this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

When the going gets tough, I find Pema Chodron’s advice very helpful. It’s simple, beautiful stated, and, in my experience, true. Her “Four Methods for Holding Your Seat” is one example of this advice. It’s intended for the times we get swept away by unwholesome mind states. It goes like this:

1. Don’t set up the target for the arrow.
2. Connect with the heart
3. See obstacles as teachers
4. Regard all that occurs as a dream.

She writes:

When we find ourselves captured by aggression, we can remember this: we don’t have to strike out, nor do we have to express what we’re feeling. We don’t have to feel hatred or shame. We can at least begin to question our assumptions. Could it be we are simply moving from one dreamlike state to another?

(For a fuller description of the Four Methods, go to https://www.lionsroar.com/holding-your-seat-when-the-going-gets-rough/)

One way to understand this “dreamlike state” is that it is what we fabricate in our minds based on our (mis)perceptions of reality. In other words, it is the stuff we add to the raw experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and cognizing.

A contemporary teacher, Dhamadipa, puts it this way: “Perception is like a mirage. We think the mirage is water but it’s not. What is actually there is heat, a road, etc. We are usually adding something to what we perceive or not perceiving. Both lead to clinging rather to joy or clarity and to the suffering that comes out of clinging.”

For me, one of the most simple, yet profound teachings on letting go of fabrication is in the Bahiya Sutta. In it, the Buddha describes the path to liberation as follows:

Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: 'In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.' In this way you should train yourself, Bahiya.

When, Bahiya, for you in the seen is merely what is seen... in the cognized is merely what is cognized, then, Bahiya, you will not be 'with that.' When, Bahiya, you are not 'with that,' then, Bahiya, you will not be 'in that.' When, Bahiya, you are not 'in that,' then, Bahiya, you will be neither here nor beyond nor in between the two. Just this is the end of suffering.

The Venerable Analayo puts it this way: stay receptively open to experience without proliferating it in various ways through recollective associations and memories.

Join us this Sunday for an exploration of proliferation, fabrication, and the path to freedom. Registration and Zoom information available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight

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