[Gem]

When I studied meditation at the ashram I wasn't particularly concerned with the nightly dhamma discourses, and I don't give much importance to the texts. Much of it seems childish to me, with all the little parables thrown in, but the dhamma talks relate directly to the meditation practice, which is what makes them relevant. During the first retreat I related to the teachings a bit, during the second retreat I related to a bit more, and on it went, so after maybe 20 retreats I had a good handle on the philosophy as it relates to mindfulness practice - which we call insight meditation or vipassana. That's probably why I prefer to speak in ways apart from citing texts, because the texts are quite crude overviews compared to the living meditation itself. For example, The difference between knowing all things are transient, and actually touching on the nature of transience, are two entirely different things. So, to me it doesn't matter if I understand what texts say - some of it I understand, some of it I don't understand, and some of it I suspect is just nonsense anyway. People will understand it in their own way, in accordance with their own insight, and there is no ‘one true meaning’ hidden in there somewhere.

All that is by the way, because the insight into the true nature of things is the only way of understanding. It can be articulated in different ways, and isn’t bound to a Buddhist lexicon. At the intellectual level where it 'makes sense' there's a good possibility that it might be true, but it will only ever become true according to insight - realisation. The text is quite menial in light of real life discovery, so it becomes unimportant.


The text can get into your head and become an authoritative voice of knowledge, which one starts to obey by confining themselves within the parameters of the discourse. You will see people people act this out on the threads as well, and it is certainly a pitfall in Buddhism and other religions.

Buddhist philosophy is about the fact of suffering and how to bring it to an end, and we feel adverse toward our disomforts and desire pleasing sensations; but this aversion toward what we think is suffering is only misconstruing suffering, blaming our pain and discomforts, when these are not what suffering is. Being adverse to this while desiring a more pleasing substitute is what they call of ‘dukkha’. I say, in modern terms, suffering is personal psychological reactivity. It is quite obvious obvious that reactivity unsettles the mind, but what I say is only meaningless intellectual drivel unless one checks for themselves what it is that disturbs their peace of mind, disrupts their meditation, or upsets their balance of equanimity.

The meditation is not more than the cessation of aversion and desire (which I call ‘reactivity’), so contentment is not attained as acquirement, but is rather the cessation or absence of that which disrupts mindfulness, namely 'reactivity'. In the meditation program people first learn the degree to which their minds are imbalanced and prone to agitation, then how they generate such reactivity themselves, and how habitual and out of control it might be. By learning all that insightfully (rather than intellectually), they understand why they are miserable, how they do it to themselves, how they spread it around to the detriment of other folk, and how it’s a simple matter of not doing that anymore – simple in principle, but difficult in practice.

That said, it doesn't mean anyone is expected to be perfect. On the contrary, nothing is judging anyone or remembering their sins... In ashram there are no comparisons between the novices squirming in discomfort in the back row of the hall and the experienced meditators sitting like a row of Buddha statues in front. There is no path from the back to the front in that sense there are white belts progressing to a black belt. It's just 'the truth of yourself' at all times.

That's why the vows of morality are taken, as the precept to not lie establishes a degree of honesty which delusion cannot withstand. When self-honest, there is that essence of knowing the truth, not as correct information, but as 'what it’s like' to be truthful. It is obscure, but any reader here immediately knows the thing itself, because we don't have to think up the truth in the way we concoct fabrications.