When we read the scriptures might I suggest that we are trying to understand what Gotama meant when he said :” Nirvana is the extinction of dukkha.”
Since his death there have been many attempts to explain what he meant.
The Pali Cannon consists of 45 volumes.
The Chinese scriptures consist of 100 volumes , each of 1000 closely worded pages.
The Tibetan scriptures consist of 325 volumes.
The Dharma was transmitted orally for 500 years.
All of that contributed by highly intelligent philosophers and experts well experienced in the fruits of correct meditation who struggled to express their experiences logically.
This has resulted in his teaching being interpreted differently by many schools and factions. Even Zen, the teaching outside the scriptures, has fragmented.
Here is an attempt to get to the heart and core of Buddhism which lives hidden in this vast body of literature. Below is why zazen works :
Here is 21st century Zen – a direct pointing at the common human goal:
As the first signs of a central nervous system began to appear in the history of the evolution of life on our planet, the model that primordial, hypothetical creatures exhibited was:
State 1/ Passive but alert awareness.
State 2/ Reception of a stimulus.
The stimulus could be pleasure, the demands of appetite, danger or pain.
State 3/ Reacting to that stimulus by successful action guided by intellect [using conscious mental activity} until the stimulus is gone
Conscious mental activity is all the tools intellect has at its disposal; it is the perception, accumulation, recall and association of data – all thinking, imagining .planning and predicting etc.
The response to pleasure would be to sustain it; to appetite to satisfy it; to danger and pain, to avoid them. All responses would engage all the mental skills the primitive creature possessed.
State 4/ Return to a state of alert passive awareness.
Once the stimulus has been removed by finding a solution to the problems it presented, the possessor of such a system would return to a mental state of alert but passive awareness. You could say it would be reacquainted with its original mind. Or that it would have peace of mind – conventionally called happiness.
This is the model from which our own highly sophisticated central nervous system has evolved.
The rules that apply to the original primordial system also apply to ours.
However, for us, as life has grown more complex, the stimuli proliferated, and the responses to those stimuli have overwhelmed us to such an extent that modern men rarely if ever experience the first element of the model from which their central nervous system has evolved – alert, passive awareness – profound peace-of-mind.
Meditation (zazen) is a way to reacquaint us with that first element - passive awareness – peace of mind - and integrate it into our daily lives.
Since his death there have been many attempts to explain what he meant.
The Pali Cannon consists of 45 volumes.
The Chinese scriptures consist of 100 volumes , each of 1000 closely worded pages.
The Tibetan scriptures consist of 325 volumes.
The Dharma was transmitted orally for 500 years.
All of that contributed by highly intelligent philosophers and experts well experienced in the fruits of correct meditation who struggled to express their experiences logically.
This has resulted in his teaching being interpreted differently by many schools and factions. Even Zen, the teaching outside the scriptures, has fragmented.
Here is an attempt to get to the heart and core of Buddhism which lives hidden in this vast body of literature. Below is why zazen works :
Here is 21st century Zen – a direct pointing at the common human goal:
As the first signs of a central nervous system began to appear in the history of the evolution of life on our planet, the model that primordial, hypothetical creatures exhibited was:
State 1/ Passive but alert awareness.
State 2/ Reception of a stimulus.
The stimulus could be pleasure, the demands of appetite, danger or pain.
State 3/ Reacting to that stimulus by successful action guided by intellect [using conscious mental activity} until the stimulus is gone
Conscious mental activity is all the tools intellect has at its disposal; it is the perception, accumulation, recall and association of data – all thinking, imagining .planning and predicting etc.
The response to pleasure would be to sustain it; to appetite to satisfy it; to danger and pain, to avoid them. All responses would engage all the mental skills the primitive creature possessed.
State 4/ Return to a state of alert passive awareness.
Once the stimulus has been removed by finding a solution to the problems it presented, the possessor of such a system would return to a mental state of alert but passive awareness. You could say it would be reacquainted with its original mind. Or that it would have peace of mind – conventionally called happiness.
This is the model from which our own highly sophisticated central nervous system has evolved.
The rules that apply to the original primordial system also apply to ours.
However, for us, as life has grown more complex, the stimuli proliferated, and the responses to those stimuli have overwhelmed us to such an extent that modern men rarely if ever experience the first element of the model from which their central nervous system has evolved – alert, passive awareness – profound peace-of-mind.
Meditation (zazen) is a way to reacquaint us with that first element - passive awareness – peace of mind - and integrate it into our daily lives.
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