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On letting go
JaySon
Florida Veteran
in Philosophy
"Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace." Ajahn Chah
What does this mean to you?
For me... Know all thoughts and feelings that arise as impermanent and not self. Because they're impermanent and not self, they're not worth clinging to. When selfish desire arises, watch it fall away, knowing it too is impermanent and not self. When craving arises, know it as impermanent and not self and let it fall away.
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It's not just about thoughts; it's about every perceived compounded thing.
Much of letting go involves relaxation, but it is knowing what and where to relax that is the difficult thing. Finding the things one is clinging to is often not easy, as the effects of clinging often only manifest as fear and anxiety in the moment.
Letting go of all things leaves behind only zazen. And zazen is the only thing that matters. Its life and existence. As you move through your day and different thoughts That's how I live, letting go of the thoughts and feelings that come into my mind, letting go of problems, just trying to let it all go.and feelings come, let them also leave of their own accord.
It makes me think that to let go is actually to accept. Though it says not to accept blame or praise, to be averse to others blaming or praising us would amount to the same. To let go is to let be.
"Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace. Including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance."
-- Eckhart Tolle
I know he isn't Buddhist but he's pretty good.
I'm under the impression that it has a lot to do with the comings and goings through the six sense doors...
The charming nature of thought will often be present when contact is made through these sense doors...(their charming nature use to get me every time hook,line & sinker
)
I guess if one has an experiential understanding that thought itself is the thinker & feeling itself is the feeler then letting go is just having awareness of this.... (awareness being the grease which allows the axle to turn freely...so to speak)
"Transient alas; are all component things
Subject are they to birth and then decay
Having gained birth; to death the life flux swings
Bliss truly dawns when unrest dies away
"Sabbe dhamma nalam abhinivesaya" (Nothing whatsoever should be clung to)
Here is one we let go ...
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/21755/why-do-you-think-letting-go-is-so-difficult/p1
meanwhile ...
Letting go is actually a process that you come back to a few times, just as we occasionally get threads about it... you can try to mindfully find in your thoughts and your being all the places where you are clinging, where you are experiencing craving. Every so often you will find something new, a place where avoidance causes fear or desire causes jealousy, and with insight you can cure those places.
But really this is just training. This is inclining the mind towards understanding and then letting go, which according to the Buddha is helpful in meditation when moving towards samadhi.
Yeah, it is a little distressing knowing that in the final death-to-self, much that we regard as valuable in our lives must be burned up in the fire of experience.....
I certainly have not come to the platform of letting go completely or even mostly.... I am clinging stubbornly to ideas of progress, of advancement, of egotistical meaning.... I am realizing that I have to give up these vain thoughts, but I am not sure how to detach from them.
I want to make TRUE progress. But maybe my own ambition is part of the problem....
I constantly remove and move back the goal-posts. When I say "this is meaningless" I congratulate myself and come up with a "new" meaning. I am engaging in a mental hoarding and I secretly want even this post to be meaningful....
When will I learn?
@JaySon I think its a process. There is no such thing as progress I don't think. There is only the moment. You are at the stage you are. Let the attachments be, watch the attachments. Everyone gets caught out all the time. Life's a process of this stripping away of the externalities. Its painful, of course it is. Suffering shows us where the clinging is. In the words of Neem Karoli Baba (who I know is not Buddhist but I like it) 'Suffering brings us closer to God'. Let the suffering and the attachments be your teacher
I love Hesse's Siddartha because it shows that the journey cannot be separated from the realisation. He goes through numerous attachments, but without these attachments he would not come to self-realisation. Don't judge yourself for having attachments and seeking meaning, watch how the mind seeks the meaning.
'Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time- that is the basic message' Pema Chodron
Anyway, to let go for me is to exactly what you say that death to one self. Doesn't mean the destruction of the self, but the realisation that your the awareness behind the self which encompasses the self and the world. It is the destruction of meaning, as in the meaning humans create in relation to their own selves and individual lives, but it is the realisation of an abundance of meaning. You're swimming in meaning. Not the meaning of the human world, but just meaning itself. If that makes sense, which it probably doesn't. To realise that you, rather than being the little self of who your ego thinks you are and its relation to the world, are in fact the world in all its transience, that you are the leaf that blows in the wind.
I really don't know if that was helpful or had anything to do with this thread.
Good thoughts. It was helpful. I also like Neem Karoli Baba! - wish I knew him personally along with Ramana Maharshi!
If one thinks about it....Things, events experiences, ideas etc etc, come and go of their own accord (that's Anicca for ya )...so what is there really to let go of ?...
The desire to let go and the aversion towards holding on, are in themselves the attachment.....AKA that which clings...
Aversion.....................&......................Desire
The two sides of the same coin....
Can't have one without the other
'The truth is you can't try to let go. Trying is the opposite of letting go. To let go is to relinquish trying. To let go is much more like to let be'
Adyashanti
Life at times is like a conundrum (a paradox of sort) one not to be solved... just accepted...I guess acceptance is a great mystery solver....