Yesterday I surveyed my elderly mother’s “back yard” as she is in hospital recovery.
Walking around – the best way to survey! – I noticed what appeared to be dog poop. Unpleasant vedana! At least I didnt step in it. Curiously, there was quite the volume of it within a particular radius.
I noticed where the mind went immediately: Someone is talking advantage of my mother’s absence and letting their dog go and do its business in her yard.
I began establishing a deterrence: Grab a sheet of paper; write in bold letters PLEASE DO NOT LET YOUR DOG IN THIS YARD; laminate it for weather-proofing; and affix it to the back yard gate.
I even rummaged in the car garage for any semblance of a rope to tie the gate so that someone would have to make quite the (public) effort to gain entrance. I found such object and did an ineffective job securing the gate thus.
Anyway, a couple of hours later visiting with my mother I pulled out my phone. Just for kicks, I googled “fox droppings.” Interestingly I started seeing photos of wild animal “scat” that very much resembled what I saw in my mother’s back yard.
In fact, I narrowed it down to raccoon droppings. At which point I went on the neighborhood Facebook group to inquire whether anyone had observed raccoon droppings in their yard.
Amazingly, the neighbor next door posted “Yes, we have a mulberry tree and you’re observing raccoon droppings with the mulberry seeds.”
Happily satisfied that no one was taking advantage of my elderly, absent mother, I began the inquiry on how quickly the brain created a story about a devious neighbor and so on and so forth.
Is there a sutta where the Buddha talks to our tendency to create and latch on to story so quickly?
That simile implies a rebuttal to taming or harnessing the mind through meditation (only)? Because the rest of the Jain ascetic’s argument is confusing — whether via faith or direct experience it’s impossible ?
Bhante’s note is interesting as I’ve been studying the famous paragraph in the Kalpa Sutra where Mahavira crosses the legs next to the Sal tree and gains…. something but I’m not sure what Buddhists consider this. Another topic alas.
This makes me think of the passage from the Honeyball Sutta (MN 18):
Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, that one thinks about. What one thinks about, that one mentally proliferates. With what one has mentally proliferated as the source, perceptions and notions [born of] mental proliferation beset one…
“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that’s as quick to change as the mind.
So much so that it’s not easy to give a simile for how quickly the mind changes.”
I.e., the teaching on the five khandas escapes an easy analogy (except for the simile for each individual khanda). In which case the khandas as a kind of gestalt can represent creating stories (from a reified sense of This is Happening to Me – or My Mother).
Apparently this is solved because the system says it is … although I would rather keep the gentle debate open a while longer so as to reach consensus in my mind.
For whatever you imagine it is, Yena yena hi maññanti,
it turns out to be something else. Tato taṁ hoti aññathā;
And that is what is false in it, Tañhi tassa musā hoti,
for the ephemeral is deceptive by nature. Mosadhammañhi ittaraṁ.
?
… although I would rather keep the gentle debate open a while longer so as to reach consensus in my mind.