Why is it so difficult to reach Nibbana?

[IMA_FARANG]

Why is it so difficult to reach Nibbana

This is a Zen Buddhist story that might be relevant.

One there was a foolish man who was hungry,

He was given uncooked Rice, a cooking pot,, some fuel to cook the rice, matches, and a candle.

He lit the candle and with the lit candle he went looking for a fire to cook his Rice.

He searched and searched, bur he couldn't find a fire anywhere

So he stayed hungry.

The point of the story is this:.......

that if he really understood the thing called fire he would not have gone searching for it with a lit candle in his hand, would he?

Edited June 22, 2014 by IMA_FARANG

[arjunadawn]

Everyone has a sense of identity. But for most people it is mixed. The feeling of identity is made up of both the unchanging absolute and the ever changing relative. This mix leads to confusion precisely because nibbana is here now, because identification with mind and body causes you to pull away from being totally present in the moment to identify with and attach to a temporal and causative existence that has no substantial reality. This veil between what is real and not real is ignorance. The lifting of the veil reveals what has always been there.

You don't have to do anything. You just have to remove that which causes the unreal to appear and that is to eliminate the mind. Ultimately there is no teacher or teachings, just the recognition of being as you are. The sole purpose of a guru is just to continually remind you of this until the illusion falls away.

Hi TRD.

We have discussed this matter several times and in different ways but for some reason I continue not to understand.

Other than identifying with the unchanging absolute, as well as our weakness of identifying with the changing relative, "without body & mind, who are we really, or who really are we?"

From what I've gathered to date it sounds like we are a soul which consists of pure awareness but which is in a state lacking awareness.

You cannot identify with the absolute. Identification is a mental process and requires a mind as the knower, or subject, and an object to be known. The absolute is non dual, without form, so any attempt to identify with it would be conceptual. The only way of knowing what is at the centre of an onion is to peel away each layer. When everything is removed, only empty space remains.

The absolute cannot be known directly. The mind cannot take you there. The mind cannot go back prior to mind. It is the removal of ignorance which reveals the light. From what you have said in the past, and in a very eloquent way, it seems that your meditation practice of turning the attention back to awareness is doing just that. So why do you continue to need words as validation of your experience.

I'm conscious of trying to straddle both traditions, but as you are a practising Buddhist you will know that like the onion, the mind and body which appears to make you an individual along with all changing phenomena is anatta. Buddha avoided any metaphysical notions of a larger or universal Self as appears in the Vedic tradition and advised followers to only attend to the noble truths. In Vedanta there is the principle of "neti neti" (not this not this) to demonstrate that no idea or object can be the reality.

But whatever camp you are in, it makes no sense to say that "we are a soul which consists of pure awareness but which is in a state lacking awareness." As a Vedantin I would say there is only Self as the ultimate reality, which is the same as the absolute. A soul suggests a limited individuality which is impermanent and therefore unreal. Vedanta does refer to a soul (jiva) but it is perishable unlike the Christian version which is immortal. You see how you can spend a lifetime grappling with all these various belief systems and not get anywhere. You are left frustrated.

As to the second point, how can you have pure awareness that is lacking awareness?

What is causing the confusion is that you are imagining or projecting in your mind some kind of idealised state of pure awareness, but that imagining is tainted by the impurity of the mind that is imagining it, so you attribute to it a lack of awareness, which itself is an imagining, to explain why you are not experiencing it totally. This is self defeating, which is why you must put your trust in practice and the testimony of masters. In your case, has scripture not fulfilled its purpose? Has your practice not set you on the road of direct experience? In one of the Upanishads it says that scripture is as useful as a reservoir in a flood. If, as you have said, you are connecting with that silence within, albeit in a momentary way, then that essential discrimination is developing which reveals being as separate from phenomena and the illusion of individual self. Continue on that path and all doubts will be dispelled.

I've now read this multiple times over days- thank you. I've rarely been able to say so much in so short a space. I've even snapped the page image on iPad to chase down a few thoughts raised. Really provoking.