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| Wait! Everything's burning? (SuckerPunch) |
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Gaya, at
Gaya Head, together with a thousand monastics. There he addressed them.
"Meditators, all is burning! And what is the
all that is burning?
- "The eye is burning,
- forms are burning,
- eye-consciousness is burning,
- eye-contact is burning, and
- whatever is felt as pleasant, painful, or
neither-painful-nor-pleasant which arises with eye-contact as its
indispensable condition, that too is burning!
Burning with what? Burning
with
- Burning with the fire of lust,
- with the fire of hate,
- with the fire of
delusion!
- I say it is burning with [re-]birth, aging, death, with sorrows,
with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
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| The remains of Gaya Head today (W) |
"Meditators, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus,
that person finds estrangement in the eye, finds estrangement in [visible] forms, finds
estrangement in eye-consciousness, finds estrangement in eye-contact,
and whatever is felt as pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant which arises with eye-contact as its indispensable
condition, in that too one finds estrangement.
- "One finds estrangement in the ear... in sounds...
- "One finds estrangement in the nose... in fragrances...
- "One finds estrangement in the tongue... in flavors...
- "One finds estrangement in the body... in tangibles...
- "One finds estrangement in the mind, finds estrangement in [mind objects one might call] ideas,
finds estrangement in mind-consciousness, finds estrangement in
mind-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant, painful, or
neither-painful-nor-pleasant which arises with mind-contact as its
indispensable condition, in that too one finds estrangement.
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| It was ALL wasting away incredibly fast. |
"When one finds estrangement, passion fades away. With the fading away of
passion, one is liberated. When liberated, knowledge spontaneously arises that one is
liberated. For one understands: 'Birth is exhausted, the higher life has been
lived, what can be done has been done [is accomplished], of this there is no more beyond.'"
That is what the Blessed One said. The meditators were glad, and they approved his words. Now during [the Buddha's] utterance, the hearts of those thousand meditators were liberated from the taints through letting go and clinging no more (SN 35.28).
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| Southern California is burning away and being reduced to smog and ashes (latimes.com). |
EXPLANATION OF TERMS
Ven. Nanamoli (a.k.a. Mr. Osbert John Moore)
The eye and five other sense bases: the six, beginning with the eye and ending with the mind, are called the six "Bases for Contact in oneself." They are are also known as the six
"doors" of perception.
Their
corresponding objects are called "external bases." (Translating the term as "sense-organ" is
both too material and too objective because the emphasis here is on the
subjective faculty of
seeing and so on. It is not the sensitive piece of flesh
seen
in someone else or in the mirror which, in so far as it is
visible, is not [the act of] "seeing" but "form" as the "external" object of the
seeing "eye in oneself."
And insofar as it is tangible, it is the object of
the body-base in oneself. And insofar as it is apprehended as a "bodily
feature," it is the object of the mind-base in oneself. Here the eye should
be taken simply as the perspective-pointing-inward-to-a-center in the
otherwise uncoordinated visual field consisting of colors [and shadows], which makes
them cognizable by eye-consciousness, and which is easy to mis-conceive of as
"I." The six Bases in Oneself are comparable to an empty village, and the
six External Bases to village-raiding robbers.
FORMS and other external sense media: the first of the six External Bases, respective objective
fields or objects of the six Bases in Oneself. The Pali word
rupa
[fine material] is used for the eye's object as for the first of the Five Aggregates (or Categories) of Clinging,
but here in the plural. Colors, the basis for the visual perspective of
the eye, are what is intended, primarily.
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