SuttaCentral
It is almost as if the Teacher didn’t want to get bogged down and burdened thinking any of those are true and real when looked for. That those words could either be used to good function to help rid of craving and grasping or used for ill function to bolster and promulgate craving and grasping after the words/concepts themselves.
Let’s start with the notion that the secluded mind is a mind which is subject to subtle aversion.
This can be known by achieving cessation, resulting in the signless/emptiness or undirected contact afterwards. The mind will long to this state (which is seen as the mental state of the arahant).
After this, the jhana states can be used to correct this.
First, by seclusion and giving up, the first jhana is achieved.
Then the longing for nibbana is used to introduce subtle sadness, ending repulsion (to such a negative feeling). With this pleasure and pain are given up, which allows for experience of the fourth jhana.
Right there, they can end ignorance, by seeing the changing nature of the aggregates (of which feeling is one, I keep on it). With this the feeling aggregate is known, and with that ignorance ends. Together with these comes knowledge of freedom (of ignorance) and extinguishment (of greed, repulsion and ignorance, but also of the states of feeling).
Thing is, since the aggregates are fully known, there is no longer a need for seclusion nor non-involvement. Feeling is feeling. Feeling changes. It’s stressful when that change is accompanied by repulsion, it’s pleasant (with latent stress) when it’s accompanied by greed, and it’s subject to ignorance when the changing nature (altering between the two) is not known.
No need to stay away when you know this, since the mind knows when to disengage.
but the mind is detached from these perceptions
It can be fully engaged when knowing the changing nature.
By analogy of breath: breathing in is nothing but creating conditions for the cessation of breathing in, and at the same time creating conditions for the becoming of breathing out.
No need to be detached at all.
And to be honest, that’s what I ready with ven. Bua as well: if it’s the real thing you can make any effort and not change/destroy it. That’s the unchanging/pure Citta he describes.
Now we enter a problematic domain, from ven Bua’s “London teachings”:
This is the way of it, but the permanence (unchangingness) of the pure Citta is not the same as the world understands “permanence” to mean, so there is nobody who can understand the permanence of the pure Citta correctly except the arahants alone.
The problem with his teachings is that he goes a very long way to push this “unchanging” Citta in the realm of “existence beyond parinibbana”. Or at least make no effort to reduce this impression.
For example, also from London about the Citta of the Buddha at the moment of parinibbana:
From then on it was beyond the ability of anybody to follow and know, because he had gone beyond and was free from every kind of mundane convention (Sammuti).
By analogy: if we define life by terms of breathing (in/out) and this process stops, we can no longer define life since this stopping is neither in or out. There was a final out, and then … oh, no in and no out.
Ven Bua however appears to state that while in/out has stopped, there is something (the Citta) which is free from this beyond it.
Yet at the same time this “permanence” is not permanence as we know it.
In this life this is not that hard to understand: the mind knows breathing, it’s in, out, in, out all over again. Engage or don’t engage, this won’t change. And so the mind does not change along with in/out, or detached from it, or in some other state.
Yet when it comes to parinibbana: is this the permanence similar to the state of not breathing in and out, which is true for everything which is not life with breathing? Or something else entirely?
I get the impression ven. Bua aimed for the latter.
In our daily lifes we have the impression that we see, hear, feel know things from a certain perspective in time and space. There is a perspective. In a sense all living beings represent such a perspective on the world.
Brain, vinnana’s, senses, defilements, all work together to create this impression that mind is something local, personal and time bound.
But what Maha Boowa has seen is that this is not really ultimately true. It is also conditionaly arising, a construction and not some fixed reality.
What Maha Boowa says is that the local perspective can totally collapse. At that moment mind, as it were, gets absorbed in her own nature. In any jhana there is a still some perspective but not in what Maha Boowa describes.
This also means, and i have seen many teach this, the deathless is impossible to know from a personal perspective. The whole idea that me can know it, the ego, I can know it, it is impossible.
The peace free from death (Snp1.11) That is in fact what Maha Boowa describes as the Citta, the deathless. A stillness that is not mere a peace but also a knowing. Not a vinnana.
Yes, the message of Maha Boowa, and i believe of Sutta Buddha too is: it is impossible to cease. All what can cease is suffering but suffering is not me, not mine, not myself.
There are limitless of mind when it involves the four immeasurable that is because the object is limitless.
The heart base - Dhammapada
Verse 37: The mind wanders far and moves about alone: it is non-material; it lies in the cave (chamber) of the heart. Those who control their mind will be free from the bonds of Mara.
I do not wish to talk about Abhidhamma, it can be found cited in the suttas. The scholar may dismiss it but the evidence is there in the various sutta including Vinaya.
Sujato translates:
The mind travels far, wandering alone;
incorporeal, it hides in a cave.
Those who will restrain the mind
are freed from Māra’s bonds.
Suddhaso translates
The mind travels far, wanders alone,
incorporeal, self-sheltered;
those who restrain it
will be freed from Māra’s bonds.
Anandajoti translates:
Those who will restrain the mind that roams far,
is lonesome, without a body, hidden, gain release from the bonds of Māra.
Somehow this ’ heart thing’ is fallen away from translation. Such things happen all the time by the way.
One things to make some point, looks at other translations, and all ground for making a point is absent.
This dualism of mind and body, i can only accept it when mind is never absent.
I do not believe mind can really literally exist in space and traveling in space from a to b.
Not understanding what is mind and what is thinking has lead to a lot of confusion. I believe mind is a process ( a verb). When it is used as a noun it’s confusing. Technically there is nothing called mind as it’s a process. Thinking is a process that produces a thought at the end. The process used for thinking is the mind. The inputs used for thinking are from the five senses and external & internal ideas . ( ex. External idea: concept of rebirth. Internal idea: Pythagorean theorem you have in your memory)
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