The First Three Fetters to Find the Path
Personality view
Attachment to rituals and techniques
Doubt
You canot figure out how to be aware. You cannot think yourself into awareness. Awareness is right now. It is not a matter of thinking about it, but being aware of thinking about it.
How do you stop thinking? Just stop. How do you stop? Just stop. Trusting is relaxing into it, it's just an attentiveness, which is an act of faith, its a trusting - saddha. It gives you perspective on anything you want to do. Ultimately, when we develop these techniques, it ends up that one has to trust in the mindfulness rather than in just "me and my willful efforts".
Awareness is right now. It is not a matter of thinking about things, but being aware of thinking about things. MINDFULNESS
About Your Body
You can look at yourself and not like what you see. You may be disgusted with your body and thin.k of it as loathsome. Asubha means "non-beautiful". Subha is "beautiful". With intuitive awareness - sati-sampajanna - you can find a sense of viraga - dispassion, which is a very cool feeling. It is very pleasant to be dispassionate - it is just a feeling of non-aversion.
SATI-SAMPAJANNA opens the way to the experience of viraga - dispassion. Doing the metta - the loving kindness meditation will help you lose critisism. With metta your are not being critical about anything.
The loving kindness meditation - metta - will help you lose critisism, which leads to dispassion and non-aversion. It can help you to very skillfully develop a more discriminative awareness of the unpleasant, of the non-beautiful without indulging in being critical, rejecting and being adverse to it.
The metta is basically sati-sampajanna. Sati-sampajanna accepts, it includes. Metta is one of those inclusive things, much more intuitive that conceptual.
If you try to think of metta as love, as in something you like, it is impossible to sustain metta when you get to things you can't stand, people you hate, etc. Metta is very hard to come to terms with on a conceptual level, almost impossible. But in terms of sati-sampajanna, its accepting, because it includes everying you like and dislike. Metta is not analytical, you do not dwell on why you hate someone, not trying to figure something out -- it includes the whole thing: the feeling, the person and yourself - all in the same moment. Its an embracing, a point that includes and is non-critical. Your are not trying to figure out anything, but just to open and accept, being patient with it
Metta, in terms of sati-sampajanna, is accepting because it includes everything you like and dislike. It is not analytical. Its an embracing, a point that includes everything and is non-critical. Be open and accepting and have patience.
Food and Sati-Sampajanna
Notice your attitude towards food - the greed, the aversion or the guilt about eating or enjoying good food - include it all. Sati-sampajanna is the only attitude towards food that you need - it means not making eating into any hassle. Greed brings about guilt - then it gets complicated.
If you try to rid yourself of greed, pleasure, bad thoughts, etc. - you are trying to kill everything - including yourself. Taking asceticism to the attakilamathanuyoga - the position of annihilation. The opposite extreme - kamasukhallikanuyaog - is "eat, drink and be merry". These are conditions we set up in our minds. Always wanting life to be a party or thinking that any pleasure is wrong is a condition that we create. The samana - monastic - life is right now, its like this. It is opening to what we tend not to notice when we're seeking these two extremes as our goal.
Life is like this. Most of our experience is neither one extreme or another - it is like this. Neither/nor, it's that we don't notice if we're primed to the extremes.
With beauty, beautiful things - it is better to come from sati-sampajanna rather than from personal attachment, the desire to possess them. This would be seeing beauty through ignorance. When experiencing beauty from sati-sampajanna can just be aware of the beauty as beauty. It includes your tendencies to own it, take it, touch it or fear it: it includes all of that. But when letting go of than, then beauty is joy.
If you get too involed with what is in your head, after awhile you don't even notice anything outside.
Sati-sampajanna is experiencing life from a center-point, from the still point that includes rather than from the point that excludes. If we want life to be a party, we cannot sustain that delusion. We get depressed and want to annihilate ourselves in some way.
Weather includes beautiful days, rainy days and HOT days. Suffering is caused by aversion - I don't like this, I don't want life to be like this.
The body-sweeping practice, you can pay attention to neutral sensation. At first it is difficult to find neutral senstions because you don't pay attention to them. Its easy to notice the extremes of pleasure and pain - noticing the little details of sensation such as your lips. If your lips are chapped, you notice. If you are getting pleasure from your lips, you notice. But when there is neither pleasure or pain, there is still sensation, but it is neutral. So, you are allowing neutrality to be conscious.
By paying attention to neutral things, you are allowing neutrality to be conscious.
Consciousness is like a mirror, a mirror reflects - it doesn't just reflect the beautiful or the ugly. It reflects everything that is in front of it. But to awaken to the way it is, you are not looking at the obvious, but recognising the sublety behind the extrems of beauty and ugliness.
When you're seeking happiness and trying to get away from pain and misery, you are caught in always trying to get something or hold on to something. When you see life as it is, it can bring out the good qualities in others.
Identity
Is any person or any condition absolutely right or absolutely wrong? Can right or wrong, good or bad be absolute? When you dissect it, look at it in terms of sati-sampajanna, the way it is now, there is nothing to it. But this is how we can get ourselves completely caught up in illusions.
We'll sacrifice our life for an illusion, to try to protect our identities, our ideas, our territories. It is just an illusion we created, a convention, to believe that, say, the land belongs to anyone, yet we will commit atrocious acts over territory. Its an illusion, a convention.
Personality view
Attachment to rituals and techniques
Doubt
You canot figure out how to be aware. You cannot think yourself into awareness. Awareness is right now. It is not a matter of thinking about it, but being aware of thinking about it.
How do you stop thinking? Just stop. How do you stop? Just stop. Trusting is relaxing into it, it's just an attentiveness, which is an act of faith, its a trusting - saddha. It gives you perspective on anything you want to do. Ultimately, when we develop these techniques, it ends up that one has to trust in the mindfulness rather than in just "me and my willful efforts".
Awareness is right now. It is not a matter of thinking about things, but being aware of thinking about things. MINDFULNESS
About Your Body
You can look at yourself and not like what you see. You may be disgusted with your body and thin.k of it as loathsome. Asubha means "non-beautiful". Subha is "beautiful". With intuitive awareness - sati-sampajanna - you can find a sense of viraga - dispassion, which is a very cool feeling. It is very pleasant to be dispassionate - it is just a feeling of non-aversion.
SATI-SAMPAJANNA opens the way to the experience of viraga - dispassion. Doing the metta - the loving kindness meditation will help you lose critisism. With metta your are not being critical about anything.
The loving kindness meditation - metta - will help you lose critisism, which leads to dispassion and non-aversion. It can help you to very skillfully develop a more discriminative awareness of the unpleasant, of the non-beautiful without indulging in being critical, rejecting and being adverse to it.
The metta is basically sati-sampajanna. Sati-sampajanna accepts, it includes. Metta is one of those inclusive things, much more intuitive that conceptual.
If you try to think of metta as love, as in something you like, it is impossible to sustain metta when you get to things you can't stand, people you hate, etc. Metta is very hard to come to terms with on a conceptual level, almost impossible. But in terms of sati-sampajanna, its accepting, because it includes everying you like and dislike. Metta is not analytical, you do not dwell on why you hate someone, not trying to figure something out -- it includes the whole thing: the feeling, the person and yourself - all in the same moment. Its an embracing, a point that includes and is non-critical. Your are not trying to figure out anything, but just to open and accept, being patient with it
Metta, in terms of sati-sampajanna, is accepting because it includes everything you like and dislike. It is not analytical. Its an embracing, a point that includes everything and is non-critical. Be open and accepting and have patience.
Food and Sati-Sampajanna
Notice your attitude towards food - the greed, the aversion or the guilt about eating or enjoying good food - include it all. Sati-sampajanna is the only attitude towards food that you need - it means not making eating into any hassle. Greed brings about guilt - then it gets complicated.
If you try to rid yourself of greed, pleasure, bad thoughts, etc. - you are trying to kill everything - including yourself. Taking asceticism to the attakilamathanuyoga - the position of annihilation. The opposite extreme - kamasukhallikanuyaog - is "eat, drink and be merry". These are conditions we set up in our minds. Always wanting life to be a party or thinking that any pleasure is wrong is a condition that we create. The samana - monastic - life is right now, its like this. It is opening to what we tend not to notice when we're seeking these two extremes as our goal.
Life is like this. Most of our experience is neither one extreme or another - it is like this. Neither/nor, it's that we don't notice if we're primed to the extremes.
With beauty, beautiful things - it is better to come from sati-sampajanna rather than from personal attachment, the desire to possess them. This would be seeing beauty through ignorance. When experiencing beauty from sati-sampajanna can just be aware of the beauty as beauty. It includes your tendencies to own it, take it, touch it or fear it: it includes all of that. But when letting go of than, then beauty is joy.
If you get too involed with what is in your head, after awhile you don't even notice anything outside.
Sati-sampajanna is experiencing life from a center-point, from the still point that includes rather than from the point that excludes. If we want life to be a party, we cannot sustain that delusion. We get depressed and want to annihilate ourselves in some way.
Weather includes beautiful days, rainy days and HOT days. Suffering is caused by aversion - I don't like this, I don't want life to be like this.
The body-sweeping practice, you can pay attention to neutral sensation. At first it is difficult to find neutral senstions because you don't pay attention to them. Its easy to notice the extremes of pleasure and pain - noticing the little details of sensation such as your lips. If your lips are chapped, you notice. If you are getting pleasure from your lips, you notice. But when there is neither pleasure or pain, there is still sensation, but it is neutral. So, you are allowing neutrality to be conscious.
By paying attention to neutral things, you are allowing neutrality to be conscious.
Consciousness is like a mirror, a mirror reflects - it doesn't just reflect the beautiful or the ugly. It reflects everything that is in front of it. But to awaken to the way it is, you are not looking at the obvious, but recognising the sublety behind the extrems of beauty and ugliness.
When you're seeking happiness and trying to get away from pain and misery, you are caught in always trying to get something or hold on to something. When you see life as it is, it can bring out the good qualities in others.
Identity
Is any person or any condition absolutely right or absolutely wrong? Can right or wrong, good or bad be absolute? When you dissect it, look at it in terms of sati-sampajanna, the way it is now, there is nothing to it. But this is how we can get ourselves completely caught up in illusions.
We'll sacrifice our life for an illusion, to try to protect our identities, our ideas, our territories. It is just an illusion we created, a convention, to believe that, say, the land belongs to anyone, yet we will commit atrocious acts over territory. Its an illusion, a convention.
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