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Re: Engaging with Freedom
@Jeroen said:
From another thread…“Our free will is constrained by all manner of addictions and traumas, attractors and avoiders, old dreams and terrors. To call us ‘free’ would be a major stretch of the imagination.”
— meSo really a lot of the journey towards freedom is noticing where your mind is not free, and then making efforts to free it. At the same time a lot of impositions on our freedom take the form of burdens that we can choose to lay down, including society’s expectations of us having to be productive.
Free your mind first, then all other forms of freedom come easier.
Yes and no. I'd say yes that part of it is noticing where we're not free and making efforts to increase our freedom. So I would like general like to have more freedom in my day, to work less hours and have more free time to do the things I enjoy. I'd also like to be free mentally of some of the things that cause me suffering. And that journey requires a lot of work, from externally trying to change the world and the logic of current social relations to have the freedom to work less and still be able to live, to internally trying to change my mental habits to be free from attachments and wrong views that create suffering and dissatisfaction. And conventionally, I can say I want freedom of choice and freedom from suffering and privation.
Where I'm hesitant to agree is that there is a free will at all. What aspect of our volition (cetana) is free, unconditioned? This search is, again, like the search for the heartwood of a banana tree. You peel back layer after layer only to discover that it's ultimately "empty, void, without substance." This is purely speculative, but I don't think we have an aspect of the khandhas that's free, unconditioned. I think that the path can help condition us to act more skillfully, do less harm, understand causality to condition more happiness and less suffering (morality, kamma), and ultimately get us to a place where let go of craving and clinging and "touch the deathless" (awakening). What I think this means is that there's an aspect of consciousness that's primordial, fundamental, what the Buddha poetically refers to as:
'Consciousness without surface [vinnanam anidassanam],
endless, radiant all around,
has not been experienced through the earthness of earth ... the liquidity of liquid ... the fieriness of fire ... the windiness of wind ... the allness of the all.' (MN 49)
And this level of consciousness isn't conditioned, doesn't arise and cease, doesn't intend, etc. It's experienced when all craving and intentionality stops. It's not the same as our sensory experience of consciousness (vinnana-khandha), and it's not equivalent to a self or soul as it's not an individually existing thing unique to our being that drives us, but part of the fabric of reality itself (along with space-time). And looking back from this experience, we can see how all of our particular human experiences are conditioned, how they arise and cease, and we no longer cling to them with that same strength or imbue them with the same solidity as we once did.
In essence, you can't condition or create the unconditioned or even the experience of it, but you can condition an end to conditioning (a moment free from mental acts of attachment and intention), thereby opening up to the experience of the unconditioned already present and hidden in plain sight. Hence, as the Tao Te Ching says, the unwanting soul sees the hidden:
The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden. (Le Guin)
Or as the Buddha put it:
"For a person who knows & sees things as they actually are, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I feel disenchantment.' It is in the nature of things that a person who knows & sees things as they actually are feels disenchantment.
"For a person who feels disenchantment, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I grow dispassionate.' It is in the nature of things that a person who feels disenchantment grows dispassionate.
"For a dispassionate person, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I realize the knowledge & vision of release.' It is in the nature of things that a dispassionate person realizes the knowledge & vision of release. (AN 11.2, Thanissaro)
There's a level of reality that's intellectually unknowable to us, and we must paradoxically submit to the unknown, rest in it, become one with it by being able to let go of what isn't ours. In some sense, we're powerless because there's a limit to our agency, to what we can will and achieve in this world. We are not free from causality. "When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. "When this isn't, that isn't. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that" (MN 38).
And the lesson for us to somehow learn is that, to achieve a glimpse of ultimate reality, we must set aside all desires and grasping and acts of will, and in the midst of that silent awareness free from our normal experience of space and time and sense of self, we can touch the deathless and become liberated. The unknown is thus known, not through our intellect or striving or act of will, but through a direct experience of, dare I say, divine emptiness in the depths of our heart. Something quite difficult yet effortless to achieve if the conditions are right.
Jason
Re: Stabilizing heedfulness
For years I looked for ways to clear thoughts away so I could pay better attention not knowing that paying better attention clears thoughts away.
Re: Stabilizing heedfulness
Heedfulness is often about clearing the decks — if there is too much else going on in your head, it is difficult to be heedful. When the mind is empty, paying attention to the thing you are doing becomes easier.
Jeroen
Re: Engaging with Freedom
OP, I've heard recently a teaching on two freedoms and how they are not the freedom offered by Dharma. There is freedom from and freedom to. Freedom from x, y, z. In a way a lot of what we do is try to attain freedom from oppression, from our traumas, from even suffering. Or freedom to x, y, z. Freedom to live a good life. Freedom to do whatever we want to. Dharma offers a freedom that isn't from or to.
This teaching that was impressed upon me really shocked me because pretty much everything I do is well for those two modes of freedom. And even my dharma practice is about getting freedom from suffering and freedom to live a fuller life. But freedom in the dharma is something else entirely.
And thus I am presented with two things. My spiritual materialism and something so radical that my conventional mind cannot make sense of it.
taiyaki
Re: Finding more opportunities for generosity in daily life
Freeing ourselves from always responding to the phenomena around us in a particular way, so that any generosity that we foster might also be tempered with the skillful means to not inadvertently become the cause of another's suffering.
how
Re: Are Precepts commandments
It depends on how desperate the individual in question is.
For instance, If I am an alcoholic and I am working the 12 step. I am somewhat taking a vow not to drink. That to an alcoholic is life and death.
The same could be said for some people who practice dharma. It is a life and death affair. Precept or let's say vows are taken to the degree of desperation. I think choice is a luxury and for those who really suffer, the vows are truly something one has to really cling to.
But the axioms are quite different in Dharma. One has to really understand the nature of suffering and how karmic momentums work. Instead of a deity, judging you and causing you harm. It is your mind, and your life that is in question. So the level of responsibility is much grander. And if you want to even go wider, you're actually responsible for all of reality. It's somewhat much easier to blame a deity tbh.
The vows/precepts also become much more subtle in various traditions. Meaning less to do with what your external appearance is doing, verses what you're doing with your mind. And that isn't something anyone else is going to actually be able to notice. That's all on you.
I guess it's a question of why we then would take a vow. A vow is a kind of jail that we want to get out of as fast as possible. No one likes jails and rules. Even if they make logical or emotional sense to us. They are still a restriction.
But we also are naturally full of delusion, anger and lust. Which can be an issue, unless we decide to stop it. So maybe right now it feels like I have a choice. I can be wishy washy with my vows. But if I take karma seriously then there isn't much room for choice. The right answer is always obvious. I have to surrender to my vows because if I don't then I am surrendering to my delusion.
And lastly, moving beyond ourselves. To maintain a society and culture, which is conducive to spiritual practice and individual rights. Upholding whatever level of vow we can helps the virtuous momentum of reality.
So a long winded answer to say, yes it is a commandment. Not from God. Or anyone else. But from one's own naked heart. Love is a demand and responsibility.
taiyaki
Re: Do not convert?
@federica said:
I personally disagree with HHDL. It's a definite case of "If it's broke, then fix it.!"
I was baptised a RC. But in spite of honest efforts on my part to really try to connect with what the church taught me, and what my parents tried to lead me through, nothing ever quite completely gelled.And so it was that I discovered Buddhism.
Which, incidentally, my still-church-going mother introduced me to.
Every page of the book she sent me, sang my name, and called me thither.
And so, I went.
While my practice has definitely been an up-and-down, in-and-out adventure, I have never looked - or been tempted to go - back.Sorry your Holiness.
You're stuck with me.
I'm very much in agreement. If something ain't broke, don't fix it. But if something is broke...fix it! And I agree completely with that one phrase you used: "nothing ever quite completely gelled" with christianity with me, either.
vinlyn
Stabilizing heedfulness
For me maintaining heedfulness is often a kind of balancing act in paying attention. Like paddling a tippy boat across choppy waters from wind and other larger boats. Like keeping the unbroken attention of a wild squirrel living in the back yard or like me not burning breakfast every morning 
. But that's just some view of heedfulness through my eyes.
Beyond me, heedfulness is already stable.
I see it as calm and understanding. A careful attentiveness. The water unbothered by wind and boats, inviting and supportive. A quiet understanding the squirrel is wild and will do what wild squirrels do. A perfect breakfast because without me, there's no one here to burn it.
I would truly like to be as stable as I perceive heedfulness.
Maybe I will be just that.
Re: Engaging with Freedom
I think the way our freedom has been reduced in this regard is often obscured by the narrative we live in. For example, we have more consumer choices available. But if we don't have enough extra money, we're aren't free to actually make them. We are also unaware of how much of common land and resources have been privatized, meaning we don't have the same access. Try finding someone to use the bathroom, for instance, without having to purchase something. We are also under the impression that we have more choices in where to work, but we're limited by who will actually purchase our labour and how much it's purchased for, which in turn limits our choices. And workplaces are essentially authoritarian, with work hours and conditions being dictated by owners, even bathroom breaks being dictated by them. And if we're very motivated to do better, we're limited by having to get specialized education that requires debt (assuming we get accepted into universities and for loans to live on), which constrains us. No matter where we look, our freedoms come with strings or are limited because we lack the means to fully utilize them.
Jason