2020 Issue 02 (Enlightened Times)

Enlightened TIMES Issue 2, 2020 Vesak at Dhammaloka. Entry to the 2020 rains retreat at Bodhinyana Monastery. Photo by Boon Tan Dear Ajahn Brahmali I listened to your talk live yesterday (Vesak Day), on making Buddha your spiritual friend (the PM session). I enjoyed your talk very much and made a Graphic Recording of its content. I would like to share it with the BSWA community. With metta, June Yeo. Lay Disciple from Singapore Release --- The Naturalness of ‘Letting-Go’ By Dennis Sheppard bring about a rebirth. We are that the brain’s filtered still to fully appreciate and make understanding means ignorance Buddhist practitioners (like me) real the truth and beauty of the remains so strong. often lament the difficulty of universal nature of mind. We still letting go. How do we let go? see the external as the other. Having said all of this, Any serious meditator who the Human condition in practises to ‘experience’ what The karmic process that fact displays very natural, the Buddha was pointing to brought us into existence plays comparable resonances of will usually find themselves out for most of us until we what it is to let go in the realm exploring this conundrum. are old and worn out. Death of consciousness. Investigating Our practice is deep enough then comes as a release from this way prepares us to be ready to understand the stillness of the physical aging to allow to know the Supra Mundane consciousness, nested beneath the mind to condition a new experience of consciousness the movement of mind that body and a new circumstance ending. To do this we must creates our world and our being. depending on our karma. It is know consciousness and We know without doubt that usually the subconscious and how it works intimately. So, as it is all mind created. Indeed, unconscious nature of our an example, we can see the we may have experienced the consciousness that is at play resonance of ‘letting-go’ when extraordinary nature of our here. We start to understand the we can look at what it is to ‘drop body and the world finishing in way consciousness is iterating off to sleep’. This is a change in our mind, in what the Buddha beyond any definition of fast, the state of our consciousness. labelled ‘Mundane’ knowledge. as it begins and ends in the It is something that most have Further, some of us may have present moment. The countless little awareness of because our experienced consciousness cycles and build-up of this consciousness is not usually finishing, which will lead to conditioning of consciousness awake when this happens, the cessation of mind should does create a strong belief we are most likely to be it be in place at death. This is in what the physical brain subconscious or unconscious an experience labelled ‘Supra filters from the mind. Indeed, as it happens. Practising waking Mundane’ by the Buddha. I infer most of us believe the brain into a dream lucidly is a way to that when the Buddha used the is the mind. We do not realise know, and perhaps even semi word Mundane, he did so to that the mind is beyond the consciously direct a dream show that our work is still not activity and the consciousness once asleep. It seems to confirm done, we still habitually grasp being sequestered by the we have innate will, but in onto our being and the world. brain. Beyond this, it seems to fact it continues the delusion. It is true that the Buddha did be a very rare circumstance Anyway, the phase transition say that anyone experiencing for someone to be aware of from awake to sleep is a process cessation would become a what it is to know beyond we do not usually witness. We ‘stream winner’, enlightenment consciousness. Certainly, people are awake and then we are within a maximum seven the Buddha called Arahant have asleep. I experience it like a rebirths in the idiomatic developed to be this knowing. quantum mechanical process language of the time. He also In the realm of consciousness where the mind goes into a explained that this process can however, many people, dreamy state of uncertainty and be quicker as a “Once-Returner, especially children up to ages instability, with random images Non-Returner, or Arahant” in 5 to 7 years are aware of the and thoughts, somewhat akin this life. We know that we need life they have come from. Many to a ‘false vacuum’ in Physics. to let go completely to fully people remember their past lives And then sleep! So, tiredness realise, we know that the path either spontaneously or because overwhelms, then subconscious is not about attainment, but we of a happening, traumatic or imagery and then a direct still grasp. So finely balanced otherwise and indeed my work unconscious release into sleep. is the wisdom and delusion as a hypnotherapist has assisted During sleep there is further found at the heart of the present many people to remember. subconscious and unconscious moment, that fear prevents us For those of us who find past processes at work to rest, from walking through the door lives problematic, the work of rejuvenate and recalibrate our of enlightenment. This is so Professor Stevenson (1918-2007) body and the mental processes because there is still a residual Chair of Psychiatry, University of to recreate and sustain us over belief in the consciousness of Virginia, will be an enlightening the course of our life. So, I am death and this will naturally read. It remains true however pointing to this ‘Release’ into sleep as a ‘phase transition’ we body have some control in sleep ness of mind is a practice that can come to terms with and be as indeed we have some con- can be realised. The Buddha’s aware of. This can help enable trol in our sleep to keep us safe Eightfold path of practice will the practice of being aware and alive, but at the bird’s death, eventually lead you right into when letting go into the Supra it is said to ‘drop off the perch’. the heart of the present mo- Mundane and cessation. It To further Illustrate this point ment where the still conscious- demonstrates the limited nature I remember many years ago, I ness identifying the boundary of our will and in the end shows had the opportunity to arrange of the mind will stand forth. the empty pre and ongoing for some BSWA members along As refined as this experience conditioning we all live with. with some of our monks to visit is, the Buddha has labelled it It is not enough to have just the morgue at the beginning Mundane. It is still in the realm the Right View; we need also of each annual rains retreat. of Samsara and is subject to to develop the Right Intention. We were invited to observe birth, death, and rebirth, how- (the two wisdom elements of autopsies and did so mindfully ever the practitioner will now the Noble Eight-Fold path). and respectfully. Observation know beyond any doubt that Specifically to know the right of these corpses showed how their being, along with the intention that allows letting the release of the life we knew, world they are born into is mind go. These two factors, along allowed the individual and com- made. All the physical has uni- with the support of the rest pounded constituents that once fied and subsumed into the still of the eight-fold path, enable made up the physical nature of consciousness that contains us to move beyond physical the person, to collapse back into it all. The subtle pleasure and conditioning and further, their own field of conscious- beauty of the stillness will now beyond the mental conditioning ness. These components, once allow Mindfulness to engage that creates the mind beyond animated with a life and ego, with it as a still datum against the body and the world. This go their own way. The fluids the apparent nature of life as it allows the cessation experience succumb to gravity’s laws and plays out in the world. The prac- to be viable at death when where the person could have titioner can now concentrate it has been experienced and once held in its waste, it now on deepening the practice by understood. When this knowing flowed freely in some cases. penetrating this pure conscious- is in place, the mind will unify Seeing and understanding the ness with Mindfulness. This will naturally at death. way mind ‘lets go’ (releases) a eventually allow you to see that body at death has great merit. even this still consciousness In the end, understanding and It demonstrates how the phys- finishes deeper again, right on being with this ‘sleep release’ ical process finishes ready for the balance point of the pres- is as natural as being with the recycling. The birds drop off the ent Moment. The still datum is ‘letting go release’ of our body perch and our bodies go back to gone. The boundaries of mind at death, however it goes with- nature. These illustrations show have gone. Consciousness is out saying that the ‘letting go how limited our understanding finished. Cessation! This real- release’ at death requires the can become when we equate isation, along with an under- mind to be totally awake for the mind as being the brain, standing of the on/off nature of cessation. It is this fact that without understanding the con- phase transitions that govern introduces doubt and confusion sciousness driving everything in the change in all energy states, into the letting go process.

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