I know there is no transgression beyond the Way things are. Cultural and natural conditions are always inseparable, changing, and inherently empty. Everything we think, feel, and perceive is a projection that mixes with the actuality of existence. We typically name this confluence “reality.”
I’m agitated, anxious, fearful, frustrated, overwhelmed, annoyed, exhausted, and confused by the myriad relative permutations of stories, meanings, views, beliefs that are carried along in the material and immaterial consciousness of humanity. I do not know how to navigate in relation to and existence with all of this “reality.” It’s too much, inane, and irrelevant for me to continue to attempt to take into mindful consideration for making choices of intention, attention, and activity. Though the difficulty I observe I am experiencing is that I am seemingly unable to disconnect from, transform, nor surpass the ubiquitous collective conditional consciousness that causally formed and continues to reinforce the views and beliefs that appear to be non-harmonious with the nature of the Way and hence seem to be causing suffering for me.
I do not have actual answers for what may resolve this situation universally and relatively, wholly. Meditation with right understanding helps relieve suffering temporarily. Mindful concentration in activity also helps relieve suffering temporarily. Believing any particular story also appears to relieve suffering temporarily, but likewise, so does acting towards satiating any particular desire.
Is there any salvation or resolution, or are these concepts of transgression–actually impossible notions of permanence, separation, and meaning? Cause and conditions persist in function which evolve with all else in open moving contingent existence.
It is my current observational belief that self-referential (aka ignorant) attachment to any single or assembled ideas, things, thoughts, feelings, senses, perceptions, desires (aka skandhas et cetera) is the onset of disharmony within the actual nature of existence.
While the Eightfold Path is the Buddhist way of practicing the end of suffering, I do not yet understand this endeavoring and the functional means by which it actually ends suffering. It seems so complicated of an accumulated borrowed consciousness to manage to be a viable means of practicing the daily activity of detachment, flexibility, goodness, attention, and open conscious awareness. Maybe this is precisely why I am so frustrated, because I do not yet see how and what I need to do in my own relative life that fulfills this practice of harmony within the Way.
November 11, 2011 at 3:32 pm |
Hello, just found your Blog and read your entry with interest. I have not understood all of it as I have to look a few words up (my mother tongue is not English). My path is not that of Buddhism but I have been reading a lot about it. I think Buddhism might not be so much about “understanding” what it all means but more an “experiencing” of the path, the exercises, the meditation ect. In doing so it will reveal itself. Be blessed
February 18, 2012 at 11:41 am |
Sorry for the delay in response.
I greatly appreciate that you have commented. In re-reading my post–I’ve been thinking a lot about non-transgression of reality lately as my main means for dealing with my relative conditional mental formations of aversion–all religious paths and practices as well as all honest personal practice paths may seem like the attempt at “understanding” what existence & life means, though I think you are accurate in pointing out that it is humanity’s means for “experiencing” our existential life. The shift in perspective to open, aware “experiencing” is arriving at the metaphorical heart of authentic practice, while the “understanding” is the activity of the mind; both aspects are parts of our lives: inseparable, changing, and empty. The Eightfold Path appears to go onwards in detailing the particular practice of these aspects. Onwardly in Buddhist practices, this is not my area of experience or understanding.