CLINGING TO LIFE

生命

shēngmìng

吃喝玩乐 chīhēwánlè

Why does the human creature cling to life with his tortured mind?

Most cling to life because they cling to their possessions and they cling to their possessions so that they will feel SECURE.

Recently an advertisment, with the folly of all this genre, presented athletes declaring, "It is not what I have but who I am."

We must then ask, Who is he? He is someone who is clinging to what he has.

He may believe that it is not the Identity Drive for SECURITY that encourges him. If he were to look closely then he would see that it will be his mind that seeks to be the best, for SECURITY.

CRAVING and CLINGING are the consequences. 

Many cling to life because they are CONFUSED and without natural CONFIDENCE.

Life as Samsara presents it is a wonderful "liferaft." It does not conduct anyone out of the terrors of the wind and waves, when no port is in sight, but they feel that they are safe if they just live within the "nest" that is their liferaft.

A few cling to life because they are AVERSE to every other living human creature. 

They enjoy their AVERSION and are proud of that possession, because it holds them apart from others. It is they who are stained and they know the only way. Such is their clinging.

So we crave and cling to all that this life holds because of our Confusion, our Acquisitiveness that brings "security" and the Aversion that seems to bring "superiority."

Perhaps then you can see the problem! The human creature is not really clinging to Life at all. He has no idea what life is at all. He can view it with logic and define it with science, but he cannot embrace it until he releases himself from the net of strings. The strings are his support. The strings are life to his stained mind. 

He has invented the strings and believes them to be real. But those strings do not really exist at all.

Sometimes the strings get tangled... He may try to cut them with psychological knives and the scissors of education and a logical mind, but they are of no avail. In desperation he may try to bite through the strings. He may calm himself and with philosophy try to untie the knots. 

You will without doubt at some time listen to medics who will claim the threads will dissolve with pills or your pseudo-friends who say that you will forget the threads if you dance with Lucy in the Sky or Ecstasy, but unfortunately the threads still pull you in a hundred directions, towards false happiness and the accompanying suffering, when you come out of the clouds.

The God you invented inside you is not out there to call on, and anyway, when you reply to your sorrow in his name, he will tell you to keep praying and wait for the next time around.

                                    There is just one solution.

Buddhism will tell you everything is Empty. What the hell is the use of is that unless you can experience that Emptiness without conceptualizations and without pretty-colored rites and ceremonies?

The only solution is to really understand the Dharma beyond words and practice that Dharma within the tangle of the strings.

Gotama Buddha was asked this question:

"The inner tangle and the outer tangle

This generation is entangled in a tangle

And so I ask Gotama this question:

Who succeeds in untangling this tangle?"

His reply was:

'When a wise man, well established in virtue,

Develops consciousness and understanding,

Then as a bhikkhu, ardent and sagacious,

He succeeds in disentangling this tangle."

That virtue is not the blind virtue of religions, but the opening of the true mind to the natural virtue of Compassion, Gladness, Benevolent Affect and Equanimity that is not an intellectual indifference.

Consciousness and understanding are developed by meditational Absorption and by Contemplation, which must be applied within Stained Samsara.

All that is required as a prerequisite is that one be ardent and sagacious. At first, of course, opening that mind to natural Virtue.

The mind is naturally opened to Natural VIrtue when one rejects the Identity pursuit of False Happiness but the question remains, does the rejection of False Happiness and the Identity automtically then produce an ardent and sagacious person?

Ardency is the warmth of Passion, Eagerness and Enthusiasm.

Sagacity is the possesion of Keenness of discerning and judicious thought.

To be continued...

                                           DEVELOPING ARDENCY

                                           DEVELOPING SAGACITY