..续本文上一页nd all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
(As You Like It, 11 7).
This sense of humour may seem rather grim now and then, as if mocking at what is holiest and dearest, at life itself. It is the grin of a skull which can look at life from the other side of the grave. Thus he who perceives and understands sorrow and the emptiness of sorrow, he perceives also a sense of the human comedy.
Through understanding the real nature of things, through understanding the nature and origin of sorrow and suffering, i.e. of actuality—weariness, repulsion, disgust (nibbidaa) arise which can only lead to passionlessness, dispassion (viraaga), the detachment from world and self, from matter and mind which is the real freedom and release (vimutti) for which we all are striving. Detachment, indeed, is not a morbid asceticism which aims at mortification of the flesh, or at subjection of the mind, but it should grow from understanding as necessarily as a flower in due season from a well developed plant. It is the knowledge of things as fearful (bhaya-.taa.na) and the knowledge of things as dangerous (aadiinava-.taa.na), the understanding of the evil of conditionality (sa.nkhaara-dukkha) and of the evil of changeability (vipari.naama-dukkha), which make craving and clinging impossible, because the object is no longer seen as one worthy to possess, but rather as one causing disgust. Craving for, and attachment to, disgusting states or things is impossible; and thus it is that the realization of suffering, so far from being pessimistic, leads to the deliverance from all suffering and even to the deliverance from a possible return.
Once a misconception is realized as such, it cannot be reinstated, but clarity of insight will lead to purity of virtue (siila-visuddhi), the first of the seven stages of Purity on the way to Nibbaana.
Virtue thus purified will further purify the mind with further progress on the Path of Holiness, till finally the fruit of Sainthood (arahatta-phala) is obtained, where a final death with no more rebirth will make an absolute end to all suffering, happy (sukha) because free from all sorrow, desirable (subha) because free from all desires, which are the causes of sorrow, eternal (dhuva) because free from becoming and rebirth which result in decay and death.
May all attain to that birth-less, death-less state, the supreme deliverance of heart and mind, Nibbaana.
The Process of Life
Kamma.m satte vibhajati yadida.m hiinapa.niitataa
Kamma makes the distinction between
different grades of beings.
Where life”s entirety can only be comprehended as an unsatisfactory process of change, the natural question will arise how this proceeding takes place. If this process is not only change and unsatisfactory (anicca-dukkha) but also a mere process of changes without an entity to pass on from change to change (anattaa), it will be asked what is it then that changes, what is it that suffers and passes on that suffering, what is it that proceeds
In a previous lecture we have seen already that Buddhism does not deny the inpiduality of the process, but merely the permanency of an inpidual.
Inpidual processes are differentiated and this is caused by kamma.
Beings are said to be owners of their deeds (kammasaka), for whatever we have of other possessions cannot be said to be ours in such an intimate degree as the actions, the deeds, which have produced this very existence and life. Of nothing else but our action, our kamma, can we be called owners in such an absolute sense, as over nothing else we have such absolute power of disposing.
We are called heirs to our deeds (ka…
《Touching the Essence - Six Lectures on Buddhism》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…