Monday, March 15, 2010

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 2, Section LIV

As usual, I'm using the translation here, and as usual, I'm not one who has been given a decoder ring.

Getting rid of discriminations - or, removing attachments to various phenomena is a key goal for Buddhists.

The key point of this chapter could be summed up to be this:

What are the various features of the false imagination, Mahāmati? They are the discriminations as regards (1) words (abhilāpa), (2) meaning, (3) individual marks, (4) property, (5) self-nature, (6) cause, (7) philosophical views, (8) reasoning, (9) birth, (10) no-birth, (11) dependence, and (12) bondage and emancipation. These, Mahāmati, are the various features of the false imagination. 

 A bit of expansion on a couple of them though would be in order: regarding self-nature, it is clear here the discrimination with regard to self-nature is: "This is just it, and there is no other."  It can't be put in a box (and it can't not be put in a box!)

When we chant  Buddha-nature pervades the whole universe...we're not kidding.

One more bit here:

What is the discrimination of birth? It means getting attached to the notion that things come into existence and go out of it according to causation.
What is the discrimination of no-birth? It is to discriminate that all things are from the beginning unborn, that the causeless substances which were not, come into existence by reason of causation.

 This relentless viewpoint of non-duality is naturally self-referential, in that this text is not "outside" the system - even though it is!

But the really really really key point here (I know, I keep saying that), is that when one acts according to these concepts, when one truly is acting from a stance of non-duality, then one can be said to be transcending the nasty stuff.

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