Realizing Awakened Consciousness by Richard P. Boyle

Author:Richard P. Boyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL092000, Religion/Buddhism/Zen (see also Philosophy/Zen), PHI025000, Philosophy/Zen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

I find that a very good framework for understanding. We can have a transforming experience of the empty nature of phenomena and still appreciate the fact that there is a lot more work to do.

BOYLE: So because the cultivation is gradual, it’s not so easy to pick milestones to talk about, as it is for sudden awakening?

GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. The particular moment of an experience is a big milestone, but then there is the gradual process of integrating that experience into our daily life. That takes years of practice for most people. One’s life experience and meditative experience continually reveal those places where we’re still attached and where we get caught in some identification or other.

BOYLE: You would catch yourself getting caught?

GOLDSTEIN: Yes, but of course, when we are caught, we are usually lost. If we were really awake, we wouldn’t be caught. But in the moment when we begin to be mindful of being caught, the fruit of that initial experience is that even the “caughtness” is seen as not self. We see long-established habit patterns still playing themselves out, but they no longer have the same power because underneath we understand that this habit itself is selfless. So the habit has loosened up a lot. This really helps; an understanding of selflessness has helped me a lot over the years, even in times of being caught in various things, by freeing my mind from a lot of self-judgment about my failings. Because as I said, I now understand that caughtness itself is selfless. That’s really quite a benefit, because self-judgment is a very prevalent pattern in people’s minds.

BOYLE: Now when you are caught, you just notice it and proceed?

GOLDSTEIN: Yes, just investigate it and ask, How did I get caught here? without all those undertones of self-judgment. I’ll give you an example. At one point I was on retreat and a strong feeling of guilt came up about something I had done. It was just an unskillful act, but it came up in my mind and I was seeing it and not feeling very good about it. I was really caught by it, caught by the guilt. At a certain point I started wondering, What’s going on here, why am I getting so caught in the guilt? So I looked more carefully, more mindfully, and I saw basically that guilt was an ego trip. It was just a lot of “I,” a lot of self-ing in a negative way. “I’m so bad,” but with an emphasis on the “I.” As soon as I saw that guilt was just a trick of the ego, then I used a kind of expression that sometimes you find in texts, where Mara will appear to the Buddha and the Buddha will say, “Mara, I see you.” So that’s what I did with the guilt: Mara, I see you. This is just a trick of the ego, and in that moment the guilt really dissolved. I then began to see the difference between guilt and remorse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.