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Another simple question
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01-12-2012, 03:15 AM
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ftpsoft
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This might be helpful, from 'Question Time With Ajahn Sumedho.'
I think it would be worthwhile you reading all of the questions and answers at the link, Bothi.
Question
: - This word 'citta' is used in the suttas for the subjective consciousness. If there's a citta from which the asavas (biases) are removed and a citta which is liberated, how does this fit in with the idea of self or no-self? How does one avoid self-view in thinking about the citta?
If there's no self, who is it that's aware and what is it that becomes enlightened?
Answer
:- This is where Buddhism excels. It totally frustrates that desire. The Buddha wouldn't give an inch on that, because that's the non-dualism of the Buddha's teaching. It's psychologically uninspiring. You're left with just letting go of things rather than holding on to the feeling of a God or Oneness or the Soul or the Subject with capital S, or the Overself, or the Atman or Brahman or whatever - because those are all perceptions and the Buddha was pointing to the grasping of perception.
The "I am" is a perception - isn't it? - and "God" is a perception. They're conventionally valid for communication and so forth, but as a practice, if you don't let go of perception then you tend to still have the illusion - an illusoriness coming from a belief in the perception of the overself, or God or the Oneness or Buddha Nature, or the divine substance or the divine essence, or something like that.
Like with monism - monistic thinking is very inspiring. "We're all one. We are one - that's our true nature - the one mind." And you can talk of the universal mind and the wholeness and the oneness of everything. That's very uplifting, that's the inspiration. But non-dualism doesn't inspire. It's deliberately psychologically non-inspiring because you're letting go of the desire for inspiration, of that desire and need and clutching at inspiring concepts. This doesn't mean that those concepts are wrong or that monistic thinking is wrong; but the Buddha very much reflected the attachment to it.
So, you're not an annihilationist saying there's nobody, nothing, no subject, but by non-dualism, you just let go of things till there's only the way things are.
Then who is it that knows? People say: "Then what is it that knows? Who is it that knows the way things are, who is it that's aware? What is it that's aware?" You want me to tell you? I mean you're aware aren't you? Why do you have to have a name for it?
Do you have to have a perception? Why can't there just be awareness? Why do you have to call it mine, or the eternal essence, or whatever? Why do you have to name it? Why not just be that, be aware.
Then you see the desire, the doubt, wanting to label it, add to it. It's avijja paccaya sankhara (creating conditions out of ignorance). The process goes on of wanting to complicate it by giving it a name, calling it something.
continued:
http://www.forestsangha.org/index.ph...edho&Itemid=25
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