[Buddha-l] the benefits of Jayarava's discussion

[jkirk]

"Bhikkhu Bodhi also translates appamāda as vigilance and I got
the idea from him. I still prefer
not-blind-drunk-on-the-objects-of-the-senses, but vigilance has
the advantage of brevity."

Ah yes, and I think you mentioned him in the same article but I
was scurrying to copy what I needed and overlooked him. A word
extra--it seems to me that 'vigilance' (in English) historically
tends to have strong Christian overtones relating to morality
(sin, in a word), whereas the Buddha's message seems to me to
have more to do with vigilance about one's actual practice and
how one is (or is not) instructed by it.

Heh--was pleased to see you have some 90 articles on your blog so
I see much happy reading ahead of me.
Joanna 

-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
[mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Jayarava
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:25 AM


Thanks Joanna

I'm delighted that you found something useful in my blog, and
that you read my essay on the Buddha's last words! You've made my
week, although no doubt the worldly winds will blow from the
other direction soon enough.

I should say that my ideas owe a great deal to other people. It
was Richard Gombrich, in his 2006 Numata Letcures at SOAS, that
first alerted me to dhammas being _mental_ phenomena. How did
_that_ get by me for 12 years? Those lectures will soon appear in
book form which I eagerly await. I find Richard's articles really
quite scintillating at times. He's also very generous in
responding to emails. Lovely man.

A lot of credit goes to my friend Gambhiradaka as well. We were
looking at a 300ft high rock which after several weeks on retreat
had not changed even a tiny bit as far as I could see. So why, I
asked, do we bang on about everything changing all the time? His
response was to ask me to close my eyes. I did, and at that point
I saw everything in a new light! Closing my eyes, as he knew it
would, radically changed my _experience_ of the rock in a moment
- from sight-citta to memory-citta. So perhaps, I thought, it is
experience that changes more than things (whatever things are)?
Perhaps it is experience that changes from moment to moment, and
is dependently arisen? 

Nagabodhi listened carefully when I started raving about this
stuff, and confirmed for me that I was on the right track.

Bhikkhu Bodhi also translates appamāda as vigilance and I got the
idea from him. I still prefer
not-blind-drunk-on-the-objects-of-the-senses, but vigilance has
the advantage of brevity.

The problem with 'things' is that we can only use our experience
- via the six sense bases - to know them. Try to confirm your
feeling of being embodied for instance, and you have to rely on
sight, touch, smell perhaps. There seems no way to short cut this
for knowing about things. The fact that there is broad agreement
on the experience of things is suggestive of existence, but
cannot be confirmed. On the other hand it's not that things don't
exist, just that we only have fickle experience to go on. And all
of the basic teachings of Buddhism make more sense to me in this
frame of reference than in any other I've so far come across.

Thanks for taking time out to read my blog, and for sharing your
enthusiasm!
Jayarava


      

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