Month: November 2010

The point of what I wrote is that sometimes a physical posture or a set of movements can provide those fresh eyes to see things as they are. I walk a lot, and it helps me to get down to empty, so the bigger picture can emerge.

Sounds like you are up against it with family, and friends aren’t much help; I can sympathize with your desperation, sometimes the breathing is just there for me and the mind and the stretch I have come to learn follow.

The Gautamid, later referred to as the Buddha, I think was clear in the Pali Cannon in stating that action born of intent is the source of karma. Now the difficulty is that rather the intent is for good or for evil or for neither, the result is nevertheless karma if there is intent. Making waves, as it were.

The Gautamid taught that intention gives rise to a station of consciousness, from which the graspings ultimately emerge (grasping after self with regard to body, feeling, mind, habitual activity, or consciousness). The existence of the graspings is synonymous with suffering; “my body, my feeling, my mind, my routine, my consciousness”.

The practice the Gautamid said was his own, both before and after enlightenment, was the intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths. At the same time, he described this practice as a thing satisfactory in and of itself, without regard to any attainment. His practice began, he said, with sitting down cross-legged, holding the body erect, setting mindfulness in front, and being mindful of inhalation, mindful of exhalation.

It comes down to this: there are physical practices of prayer, in the lotus, on the knees, doing the Sufi zikir or dancing, doing Tai-Chi, and these practices focus attention on action that arises from the stretch of ligaments without the exercise of volition. The extent of the movement of breath in and the extent of the movement of breath out guides the extent of the stretch and activity appropriate in the instant. The place of occurrence of consciousness is the embodiment of stretch and breath, and the impact of the occurrence of consciousness on the fascial stretch aligns the spine and allows feeling throughout the body and to the surface of the skin. When we witness how the place of occurrence of consciousness can be conditioned by attachment, aversion, or ignorance, the witness frees the occurrence of consciousness.

There’s nobody there, the only real practice is the one that’s necessary to breathe and stretch and feel at the moment, and somehow I need the lotus to find the intuition of my heart.

I had to read that first sentence a few times: “According to Buddhism all suffering is due to a gap between our views about reality and the way reality truly is.” Also the second and subsequent sentences! Ha ha!

Now I would say according to the Gautamid suffering is the five groups of grasping, and again per the Gautamid the origin of suffering is ignorance. The cessation of suffering is the cessation of ignorance, and the eight-fold path leads to the cessation of ignorance.

Ready to jump on me, buddy? I bet you are! -In the lecture on the six-fold sense field in Majjhima Nikaya (three), we discover that the experience of sense organ, sense object, consciousness, impact, and feeling with regard to each of the six senses completes the eight-fold path. In Samyutta Nikaya in the chapter on “intent concentration on in-breaths and out-breaths”, we find that the Gautamid’s practice before and after his enlightenment keyed on mindfulness of in-breaths and out-breaths, and included as the second part of the practice mindfulness of the length of the particular movement of breath (didn’t Dogen’s teacher contradict the wisdom of this instruction?).

In my practice, the length of the particular movement of breath informs the extent of physical stretch and reciprocal activity through the place of occurrence of consciousness, and there is feeling. It’s sufficient to be where I am 24/7, and yet I agree with you: a witness of the placement of consciousness conditioned by ignorance, aversion, or attraction frees the place of occurrence of consciousness, and hence “seeing true nature” is a natural part of well-being that is to be expected in daily life.