Oddly, the rock taught me to let go. When I started, I held tight and shut my eyes. Then the rock did nothing, so I opened one eye. Nothing happened. Then I opened the other eye. Metaphorically simple, that process took many years of letting go. Many years. So I let go, let be, let become and felt secure. Felt secure in my ephemeral existence. Secure in the vast comfort of the rock above, below, beneath.
And then the rock broke.
One day climbing I witnessed a rock fall that killed someone. A sharp crack, a roar, a cloud of dust. Gone the life. Gone the refuge. All gone. A blue sky day of death and change. On that day I learned the urgency of living here with commitment now, not later, not some day. Just now.
reading this i was reminded of the following verse Sn 4.15
Wanting a haven for myself,
I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to.
Seeing nothing in the end
but competition,
I felt discontent.
And then I saw
an arrow here,
so very hard to see,
embedded in the heart.
Overcome by this arrow
you run in all directions.
But simply on pulling it out
you don’t run,
you don’t sink.
I guess in your case
You don’t scramble up, Nor
you will fall down.
At a purely materialistic level, only the rock-body-brain exists. At an a bit more introspective level, a mind and even more, awareness, can be introduced. In this phase internal external ayatana can be described. At a more subtle degree of understanding the causally arisen sense object+sense base > consciousness > contact etc. This is beyond ontological explanation and relies on experiences in vipassana, with a mind of samadhi. The world exists/doesn’t exist are seen not to true, as categorical generalisations as stated in the Kaccayanagotta sutta, at Stream entry where the cessation (Nibbana) is seen.
Most would think of the mind as something which exists in the world as an ontological ‘reality’, in its own right. However I think the Kaccayanagotta Sutta doesn’t allow the mind to exist in this manner but rather says it doesn’t exist as we generally understand it. The mind has many different parts (like 31 parts of the body) and they are causally arisen, one after the next. There’s no single visible entity. It arises from what arises at the senses, and rapidly fades away, one after the next. It arises one at a time, idapaccayata.
Does this mean, to you, that “there is no rock”? Or “the rock is (merely) mind” because it " arises from what arises at the senses, and rapidly fades away, one after the next"?
Or were you meaning this, the above, only about the mind?
In that case, I think I agree with you, but I do not know if you agree with me.
Either way, we still use this word “mind” as if there were a “singular thing”. Just like we still use the words “sentient being” and “Buddha”.
There are certain religions that use stones as the central object of their rites, people of Animism in ancient times also believed that a large stone also had great force, but for me personally, I considered that the Buddha statue was only a a symbol to symbolize the presence of the Buddha in the real world ( because the real historical Buddha was already attained parinibbana more than 2,500 years ago ). For certain people whose spiritual development is not higher enough, such spiritual symbols like a statue might still be needed as an intermediary object to focusing the mind properly…
I don’t think that the Buddha taught that there is no person. The Buddha was asked directly if there was no self and he remained silent. He certainly said a lot about what wasn’t self, and picked apart what people tried to boil self down to, but I don’t think he ever said that there is nothing there. Being a person, a process if you will, is different than a fixed entity.
Also, a rock is not subject to four of the five aggregates of clinging.
[Does this mean, to you, that “there is no rock”?] - A thought born from contact at the mind.
[Or “the rock is (merely) mind” because it " arises from what arises at the senses, and rapidly fades away, one after the next"?] -A thought born from contact at the mind.
[Or were you meaning this, the above, only about the mind?] - A thought born from contact at the mind.
when there is eye contact: We see a rock
when there is mind contact : we think about a rock
If there is no contact whatsoever nothing would be discernible.
Would you say then, that “having fuel” is synonymous with “being aflame”?
That is sort of what the Ven Dōgen quote seems to be implying. Witnessing is synonymous with the sentient being. A seen rock is synonymous with the seeing sentient being.
It seems more of a philosophical point than a dhamma point, though.
I am just testing to waters to see what people here think of it.
Also, substantiating the above, some later (much later) Buddhist thinkers and practitioners will take Ven Dōgen’s comments and produce a vāda of “insentient buddha-nature”, or the buddha-likeness of “things”. Doctrines extrapolated from interpreting and re-interpreting the same quotations.
We can see in real-time almost the growth of new doctrines out of old ones.
