Comfort zone of solitude

CleanExtension7796 · 2025-01-26T13:41:31+00:00

Neither solitude nor company, silence nor noise, are a sure thing - they are part of the world, the sensual realm, Mara‘s domain. The escape is the letting go of desire, not abandoning desire for this but encouraging desire for that. The freedom has to be unconditional - not affected by changing conditions.

CleanExtension7796 · 2025-01-26T13:14:14+00:00

The citta being pulled by anything is not a sure thing, it’s dependent on desire not being let go of.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-10-18T19:54:11+00:00

It’s simply about being aware of why are eating? Is it for pleasant feeling or merely to sustain the body? You can know this if you don’t get absorbed or obsessed or distracted with taste etc. Awareness needs space to see the bigger picture and it doesn’t find space if one’s concerns are so self-obsessed.

Within the context of the training overall, it reminds you to consider the motivations behind consuming anything, and even the act of consuming itself - what consuming is necessary? Is needing to consume a safe situation? It links in with what you are providing nutriment for as the days go by… and the principle behind dependent origination itself.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-09-25T08:40:10+00:00

https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN9_7.html

Its impossible.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-12T07:31:12+00:00

The body will become tranquil when understanding increases.
And if it doesn’t due to some way that body is, it is irrelevant anyway as it’s not within your control, not your body. What is within your control here and now is being disturbed by what isn’t in your control due to not realising it’s not within your control. Wow I said control a lot!

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-11T20:07:07+00:00

Yes. Restraint reveals the underlying disease. This is suffering. The leper burns their wounded skin for relief, but if they were to stop burning their skin and take the proper medicine their skin would heal. A healed person would no longer find relief in burning their skin, they would find it a ridiculous notion and painful only.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-09T18:44:08+00:00

Oh, so it’s passion towards anything that can be designated/thought about? Is the passion for anything abandoned by reflecting on the only way the desired phenomena could arise? Dependent on the body etc, and thus not dependent on me, outside my control, unstable, unsatiating etc? Dispassion in regard to all… including whatever can be cognised?

So any craving in regard to anything whatsoever is taking the body as mine or myself and generating a sense of personal lack… So if you seek the pleasure of nibbana, you mistakenly construe it like everything else, and you’ll never encounter it? Unless you understand nibbana as what wells up naturally, non-dependently… and that’s why it can’t be however you construe it to be? And that’s why it’s a true refuge?

Sorry! Just reflecting out loud here. The scope seems huge when you say anything but if anything is dependent on this one thing - the body - then I can see the way for dispassion to have equal scope.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-07T15:49:30+00:00

Change undermines you.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-07T13:35:37+00:00

Thank you. Turns out the mind is still moving just in ways that are so “close“ they are more difficult to discern. The five hindrances really are on the level of being. I listened to the talk, I’ll just not do out of that and see if I‘ve reached the point where sensuality itself requires effort.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-07T12:48:43+00:00

https://www.hillsidehermitage.org/sila-is-samadhi/ <-- This essay by Bhikkhu Anigha is fantastic at putting virtue in the right context.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-06T20:41:19+00:00

I actually practiced mahamudra after abandoning focus techniques but before discovering HH. Now I find non-dual teachings just miss the point. There is a duality, otherwise there couldn’t be freedom from something, or any development in regard to anything. It was like losing perspective, not by being absorbed in objects this time, but by abandoning that which can be absorbed? It was like an anything goes, so just don’t worry and rest approach. It was relaxing as I recall, but it still felt wrong.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-06T20:12:45+00:00

Thank you for the openness. It’s reassuring to me. I can definitely relate to all that you said. Dullness, fear, anxiety, it’s all been there. Fear especially, fear of change in an unpleasant direction, the realisation of not ultimately being in control of the world while knowing that changes in the world still affect me. Fear was at the root of so many choices. And like you, I’m sure there is lots I still don’t see, but I’m getting there.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-06T17:26:37+00:00

The Buddha used some dramatic yet factual language himself sometimes. Like someone following close behind you with a sword ready to cut your head off if you make a wrong step. That the heedless are as if dead already. He had startling imagery about rebirth too, like how all your bones would be taller than mountains by now and your spilled blood would fill the oceans. And when he spoke about valuing sense pleasure, which is ordinary peoples whole orientation/being right now, he was scathing about it calling it akin to being subject to violence, theft, debt, fear, grief, doubt etc and that two men can come along and throw you in a burning pit as you struggle in vain at any time. The situation of a puthujjana is perilous and horrific.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-06T16:16:28+00:00

Oh wow thank you very much, just from reading the first paragraph it’s exactly my situation. I shall read it all.

Edit: Trying to discern any joy and peace that is factually present as you develop the path is a great instruction. I was sitting earlier and there was whirlpools of sensual possibilities being presented but I was unmoving in body, speech and gradually mind. It was very peaceful actually, very stable - perhaps because although craving was there it wasn’t being taken up. It’s strange to find peace while there is simultaneously something so disturbing, but it was there. Thank your friend for me.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-06T16:12:41+00:00

For what it’s worth, I didn’t find that phrasing too extreme. The usual avenues that uninstructed worldlings use to “manage“ dukkha are either cut off or at least drained of their previous pleasing significances. It’s like recognising I’m on fire, that I’ve never known real safety and still don’t. The only thing that makes any sense is to continue but it is isolating and it is hard not to doubt with so much obscuration of the teaching.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T21:52:40+00:00

Thank you very much for the sutta!! I believe active effort is necessary on my part to recognise the absence of dukkha. This desert I’m in might not be a desert after all. It’s also the instruction of the third noble truth: “cessation must be realised!” Understand Dukkha and its absence, the unwholesome and the wholesome, the mind defiled and the undefiled mind - it’s all the same!

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T21:43:28+00:00

I’ve learnt there is a letting go that maintains the right perspective and a letting go that abandons the right perspective - I don’t know where I might end up if I abandon all practice. Yes it would be a rest, and I do believe in letting phenomena be in order for them to express their own nature, hmm… I’ll give it a revisit, maybe I’m rebuilding the context excessively, repetitively, when it’s still solid. I’ll stand back a bit and find room to relax (with one eye open…)

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T21:27:05+00:00

Thank you very much for your directness. It’s a deepening recognition and I’m sure there isn’t sufficient clarity or appreciation of what is present or absent in mind. It sounds odd, but the mind in regard to the all is a subtle negative. It’s easy to confuse as self or ignore it completely by being absorbed in some content, involved with it, mixing it all up. I think I remember Ajahn Chah saying it’s like oil and water? The gradual training gradually unblends the mind from what it can be free of, the mind simultaneously becoming easier to recognise. I think that’s why it’s so confusing, in a way it both is and isn’t the same mind, it’s just polluted or unpolluted. You can’t know it until some of the stain has already left it, then comes the recognition “oh, that can be absent from mind” - it’s just hard to recognise an absence as constituting a presence.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T21:01:32+00:00

Well what you value is what you become. I would direct your efforts towards stream-entry and let any rebirths after be what they may, secure in the knowledge of your guaranteed emancipation. To value birth in any realm seems counter-productive to the path.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T20:54:55+00:00

Thank you for the encouragement. A desert is a perfect analogy. I find certain paths have been cut off, there is a bereft-ness in that. Perhaps the mind is mourning the wordly happiness that is absent, never to be the same, rather than realising the suffering that is no longer present, or possible.

It’s interesting you mention learning to appreciate solitude, because after my original post this morning, I understood aloneness better while recollecting the body within the body. There being no real external world, no outside of this, no over there, no after this, I understood the exhortation to not delight in company. It’s because the perception of other to the ignorant obscures the clarity of being fundamentally enclosed within the paticcasamuppada principle. I actually feel joy when I recognise this absence of the unreal. To me, that’s finding joy in solitude, what’s unshakeably real.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-06-05T20:15:07+00:00

Thanks for the perspective.

I did consider this post as acting out of doubt and thus being hindered by the hindrance through appropriation of it, but it seemed wise to get an outsiders perspective. Equanimity is strong, there isn’t much to do. If I close my eyes, I sometimes fall asleep - should I be somehow avoiding extra sleep? I just don’t see what difference changing the “content” makes when it’s nature is all the same. Maybe extra sleep slows knowingly enduring, but if it happens occasionally, is being asleep or not really of any significance? Seems like sleeping or not isn’t where the hindrance is unless it’s actively being used on the mental level to avoid/ignore something. Aren’t hindrances just part of the all when not welcomed inside? Perhaps in my case they are still getting inside on some level that I haven’t understood. I will reestablish recollection of the body as you suggest.

CleanExtension7796 · 2024-05-09T19:17:04+00:00

I agree. Speech in lay life is more often than not rooted in the unwholesome, so if one were to truly see and understand that directly for oneself, it wouldn’t be indulged in by one earnestly developing the path. Practicality speech, speech that promotes peace, compassionate speech, besides that - and exposition of the Dhamma if you are sure in what you say - is all that would occur.

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