First I must say how much I have enjoyed this discussion, and have benefitted from your collective wisdom. Thank you, and I commit my self to following these suggestions.
May I ask, and I would be happy to read, about the concept of detachment. Detachment seems to indicate a polarity which may be exploited in order to achieve the “right view”. But who is detaching from what? Is the “I” detaching from itself? Or does detachment refer to a higher awareness of the self and its many components? Thank you
Good question. It is hard to give a good example but if I were to try: Let’s say there is a computer. The computer does not have any self-of-the-computer inside, it is just a conglomeration of metal, plastic, immaterial things (software), etc. and the computer also comes with a built-in virus. Because of this virus, the computer will act in certain ways some times. At one point, information might somehow get inside the computer from the internet or some external source, or maybe even develop this information itself, and the computer will realize this virus is unbeneficial and will gradually remove it, folder by folder until there is no more virus present in him.
This may not be the perfect example but that is how removal of craving is seen from a buddhist perspective. There is no self of the computer removing the virus, there is just information that has got into that machine and condition it to remove the virus. Just a string of conditioned actions done by a selfless machine/organism. The information conditioned some algorithms to work in a certain way, the algorithms conditioned the metal/plastic/software etc. of the computer to work in a certain way as to remove the virus, etc.
And in the case of beings, this virus (craving) + self view (the belief that there is a self) are the 2 fetters that are said to bound one to the round of existence. So when the virus is removed, there will be no more rebirth. It is like a self-sufficient fountain that recycles it’s own water and keeps doing that on and on, recycling it’s own fuel through an internal process (of patticasamupada) - and only when the fuel will be removed the fountain will stop working, otherwise it will continue to recycle it’s own fuel through the internal mechanism of patticasamupada and go on and on possibly forever.
It’s worth nothing that although it might look difficult to understand at first, most things are extremelly simple, only that one has not thought about things like that before. For example how craving exists because of feeling, or how feeling exists because of contact. It’s something extremely simple but people just never taught about things this way, never asked the question, never examined how a being technically works.
Thank you again for your wisdom from which I benefit. I appreciate your metaphor. I have written elsewhere about the computer as personality: Machine code as genetics, Rom as our conditioned subconscious, peripherals as aggregates, Ram as perception manifested and the operating/browser system as the illusory self. I don’t think it is terribly accurate, but good entertainment.
As I learn more about defilements contained within my ego I am astounded at the narrowness, and pettiness of my thoughts, and the attendant emotional reactions that accompany them I am grateful to have Buddhism as a sanctuary . I am happy to be here in the presence of so much collective wisdom.
If you can understand that part about machines and even came up with that simile, you will have no problem understanding the dhamma. Joking a little, as a transgender you took what is good from males - the brain, and what is good from womans - the personality
The way a beings work is not something of too high difficulty, Buddha himself said that, but it’s just that it takes some time to understand same as a computer or a car takes time to understand. There is of course a little trickery that comes at the end. One starts examining conditionality, the aggregates, the sense bases, etc. - and only at the end do the powerfull suttas about no-self arrive. That is the order in which the Buddha explained the dhamma to people, such as his 5 ascetic friends. On first day he explained conditionality, on the second day he explained the aggregates, etc. and only at the end he gave the powerful discourses about no-self. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mendis/wheel268.html
And this is also the order in which SN is built. After all this understanding in detail about how a being technically works, there comes a little trickery, cause if there would be no little trickery, everybody would understand it already.
LMAOROTFL…OH Brother, you are indeed a wise man in that you have hit the YIN/Yang of Trans-ness or Two Spirits awareness on the head. The question remains: Is this a good thing or a bad thing, or in my opinion BOTH. Thanks for the laugh and understanding. LOL
