The sixth item in the teaching on Cessation is very fascinating to me because it takes a real experience, pain, illness, disease, dis-ease and looks at it from thirty-seven steps, or angles and Chih-I specifically states that this can be done “while you are at your pillow [suffering from disease]. Understand that suffering is not suffering, and you will enter the pure and cool pond [of awakening].
It would be difficult or even impossible to write much here without plagiarizing or abusing quotes. Yet I know that to purchase the book it is contained in which costs close to $100 dollars is not an option for many people. Also I am aware that perhaps some who read this are not inclined to pursue this to the depth required to understand the book. I offer this as an apology to both the translator and to you the reader. I do hope that you can perhaps support the translator if not by purchasing this book then buy looking into other Buddhist texts Paul Swanson has translated, even some of Nichiren’s writings.
This section say that we are to look at all the ways in which we construct dualistic thoughts about our illness. Consider such thoughts a the contrast between suffering and non-suffering, or suffering and pleasure. Include other notions such as thriving and decay, or pure or impure. When pondering these dualities we live in and cling to it is important to realize there is a different possibility. That Buddhism teaches us about a space, thin as it may be, that resides between the polarities. Also how it is possible to live in such a way that it is neither suffering, nor non-suffering, that the reality is beyond our conventional words of expression.
When we apply one of the dualistic ways of thinking to any situation we are automatically fixed or stuck in that dualistic experience and that our experiences then mirror that fixation. However when we can begin to master an understanding that in actuality reality consists of both and neither at the same moment of time.
Let me see if I can illustrate this. Suppose you make a cause that results in a specific effect. Let’s say that you shoplift an item from a store. When I was very young I did such a thing. I ws in a Woolworth’s store back in the 50s and shoplifted a small bag of candy. The store did not catch me, my parents did however. My parents forced me quickly gobble all the candy in the bag and then drink hot water. All I can recall is that I vomited. Then after I cleaned myself up I had to go down to the store with my mother and in front of the manager I had to apologize and confess to my crime. My mother then paid for the candy and I had to do extra chores around the house.
As much as I often speak about the abuses of my parents, they were not evil people. In fact this one incident has stuck with me even though I am ashamed of having done it. I don’t think I’ve shared this before.
So, I committed a crime. I received an effect from the cause I made. Yet it isn’t over. What I think is important to remember or consider is that the pain of the effect from the cause I made can be looked at as either beneficial or harmful. What made it beneficial is what I did after that incident, I never stole again. I am the only one responsible for not stealing again, I am the one responsible for making that event beneficial to my life. The benefit or punishment is not inherent in the effect of eating, vomiting, apologizing, doing chores. It is my actions going forward that made the experience beneficial.
When we think about our situation and what we will do going forward it is important to remember that the outcome is not fixed. The outcome is a potential that has no good, no bad, no duality and is truly neither good not bad. Does that make sense.
In our illness there is no fixed or only dualist way to live or experience or think. There is only unlimited potential. It is up to you as to whether you assign it or fix it in some dualistic fashion. The pain is neither good, nor bad, nor neither good/bad. It is an unfixed experience without value, it is a potential for you to live and how you do so whether you insist on living in a dualistic manner or whether you mind can embrace the unfixed unrealized potential.
Going back to my candy shoplifting, there was an equal potential that I could have experienced it as cruel, unjust to me, that the candy was too small and insignificant item to warrant the punishment. I could have harbored notions of being treated unjustly. I could have rationalized the event saying such things as the store could afford the loss, or that somehow I deserved the candy because I didn’t have any. There are an infinite number of ways our minds are capable of constructing a reality.
It is possible that if I had gone down that pathway I might have begun a life of ever increasing episodes of behavior of theft or even worse. The punishment did not fix the outcome. The outcome remained as merely a collection of potentials waiting for me to act upon.
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