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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rapa" data-source="post: 428067" data-attributes="member: 212">Ignorance, according to the Buddha, means not understanding things as they really are, that is, not understanding the true nature of the phenomena comprised in our own experience. For each of us the world, in the ultimate sense, consists of our own “five aggregates” (pa�cakkhandha) – form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness. The world is “the all”: of the senses, their objects, and the corresponding types of consciousness. The instrument we must use to eliminate ignorance is wisdom (pa��aa). Wisdom therefore means the correct understanding of things as they really are, the correct understanding of our world: the five aggregates, the six sense spheres, the various types of consciousness.This wisdom is not reducible to mere conceptual knowledge, but must be direct and perceptual. It is not arrived at by a process of objectification, by standing back and distancing ourselves from our experience, but requires us to take a highly personal “insider’s view” in which we remain at once utterly immersed in our subjectivity yet unidentified with it. This view can only be obtained through systematic training. To arrive at the wisdom that cuts off the roots of suffering, one has to enter the stage of Buddhist meditative training called the development of insight (vipassanaa bhaavanaa). Insight means seeing directly into the true nature of our own body and mind, into the constitution of experience, and that is precisely what is aimed at by the practice of insight meditation. First, we have to develop a capacity for concentration, for sustained attention, by collecting the mind into one point through such practices as loving kindness meditation, the kasinas, or mindfulness of breathing. Then we use the concentrated mind, focused and unified, to explore the nature of experience as it unfolds from one moment to the next.The key factor in generating insight is mindfulness (sati): close, careful attention to what is happening to us and within us on the successive occasions of perception. Mindfulness does not attempt to manipulate the content of experience. It simply observes what is happening at each moment as it is actually happening. When we investigate our own experience with this concentrated, collected mind, observing everything with bare attention, we begin to understand the real nature of all conditioned things, for the nature of all conditioned existence is laid bare in our own mind and body. Within our own body and mind, within our five aggregates, we know and see the nature of the entire world.As mindfulness deepens, as we attend to the five aggregates, we see that they all share three characteristics. They are impermanent (anicca), arising and passing away countless times at every moment; they are vulnerable to suffering (dukkha); and they are empty of any substantial core that might be identified as a self (anattaa). These three characteristics inhere in everything conditioned. They are the true nature of all formations (sankhaaraa), of all things formed by causes and conditions. We can observe that everything within our experience arises and passes, and we thereby know that everything that comes into being everywhere must also pass away: whatever begins must end. We can observe that whatever aspect of our experience totters and collapses exposes us to suffering, and we thereby know that there is nothing in the conditioned world that is worth clinging to, for to cling is to suffer. We can see that all the constituents of our own being, our own five aggregates, are insubstantial, devoid of intrinsic essence, and we thereby know that all phenomena everywhere are without substance or selfhood. This direct experiential knowledge of the personal domain opens the door to universal knowledge. By knowing the nature of reality within the complex of our own five aggregates, we gain a certitude about the entire conditioned world throughout boundless space and time.But the truth about the conditioned world, in its full extent, is still not the ultimate truth. It is still a truth bound up with what is conditioned, formed, and perishable, and thus a defective truth. It is, in fact, only half the truth accessible to us, half the truth we must come to know. The Buddha says, “First comes insight into the real nature of phenomena, afterwards comes knowledge of Nibbaana” (pubbe dhamma.t.thiti�aa.na.m pacchaa nibbaane �aa.na.m Sa.myutta Nikaaya 12:70). As we contemplate the five aggregates, the mind becomes poised in unruffled equanimity, gaining a vantage point from which it can observe with crystal clarity the three characteristics stamped on all the constituents of being. When insight wisdom reaches its culmination, it strains the limits of the conditioned, and then the mind breaks out from conditioned phenomena into the unconditioned. By penetrating the nature of the conditioned world, it comes out on the other side of that world, steps into the domain of the unconditioned, the transcendent truth. And it is this supreme or ultimate truth (paramasacca) that the Buddha calls Nibbaana, deliverance from all suffering: “This is the supreme noble wisdom, the knowledge of the destruction of all suffering. One’s deliverance, being founded upon truth, is unshakable. For that is false which has a deceptive nature, and that is true which has an undeceptive nature, namely, Nibbaana. Therefore one who possesses this, possesses the supreme foundation of truth. For this is the supreme noble truth, Nibbaana, which has an undeceptive nature” (Majjhima Nikaaya 140).A Triadic UnityIt is important to note that until Truth is fully realized and embedded in our being, our accomplishments in the pursuit of Goodness and Beauty are partial and fragile. Without the realization of the transcendent Truth, Goodness, as moral virtue, has to be maintained with diligence. We are tempted to transgress the precepts, and if our determination to follow the decrees of morality falters, we may throw conscience to the wind and submit to our raw impulses. Thus Goodness not founded on direct realization of Truth is permeable by its opposite. The Buddha says that it is only with the first breakthrough to ultimate truth, the attainment of stream-entry (sotaapatti), that commitment to the Five Precepts becomes inviolable; and it is only the arahant or liberated one who has eradicated the deep tendencies from which immoral conduct springs. Thus the realization of Truth is necessary to secure, stabilize, and perfect the achievement of Goodness.The same applies to Beauty. The beautiful mind, attained by cultivating such divine qualities as love and compassion, must be kept beautiful by constant vigilance. Like any well-kept garden, if we don’t water it, weed it, and prune it day by day, it will become wild, disorderly, unsightly. The calm, bliss, and radiance of the concentrated mind are the rewards of earnest effort, and we cannot take these rewards for granted. Without heedfulness, the defilements will again break through into the topsoil of consciousness, distorting our thoughts and perverting our emotions. By attaining the jhaanas we might enjoy bliss and peace for aeons, but that bliss and peace will not be unshakable. In the absence of Truth, our attainments may decline, fade away, and vanish. It is only through the realization of Truth that the defilements are “cut off at the root, made baseless, annihilated, unable to arise again in the future.” Thus it is only through the realization of Truth that Beauty becomes for us an enduring achievement.So we see that among the three strands that make up true happiness – Goodness, Beauty, and Truth – Truth stands on a level of its own, incommensurate with the other two. It is at once the ground upon which Goodness and Beauty are stabilized, and the apex upon which they converge when taken to their furthest limits. Truth anchors Goodness and Beauty in the mind so they can never be lost, while at the same time it brings to perfection their own inherent potentials for excellence.To sum up, when we analyze closely the concept of happiness, we see that it consists of three strands: Goodness, Beauty, and Truth; or ethical purity, beauty of mind, and realization of truth. We begin embodying Goodness in our lives by observing the precepts, the codified principles of ethical behaviour. Then, with Goodness as the foundation, we strive for Beauty. We develop a beautiful mind through one of the exercises of mental development that lead to the purification of mind, of which I have discussed only one, the development of loving kindness. Then, when the mind becomes pure, calm, and radiant by means of concentration, we strive for the realization of Truth. We use the concentrated mind to investigate the nature of our own experience. First, we realize the nature of conditioned reality as manifested in our own “five aggregates” of bodily and mental phenomena, and then we realize the unconditioned reality, Nibbaana, the supreme truth. The realization of Nibbaana brings to fulfilment all three components of the goal, Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, merged into a triadic unity, an indissoluble whole. This whole confers upon our lives peace, harmony, and the highest happiness, what the Buddha called the unshakable liberation of the heart.Source: Bodhi Leaves No: 154 Copyright � Kandy; Buddhist Publication Society, (2001)</blockquote>

Verification: Asuwa dahayen wadi kalama keeyada?

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