Where is this coming from in the mind:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU[/youtube]
Paticca Samuppada was insight into the mind that was passed on by the Buddha through his own observations on how our inner selves has come about into existence. This was like 5000 years ago.
What I want to do here is to try and tie up with what goes on inside our minds with how we verbalise external observations and in the process try and perhaps show up some of the limitations of the processes in the mind.
This is the general idea of our cycle of existence – we born we die and there is this part in the middle that we have to suffer with – so what goes on here in the mind and why we do things the way we do, why we decide on things the way we do, the ideas we do, the building of our environment the way we do, and perhaps the purpose of our lives we do. Understanding this will throw up a lot of questions about the mindbodysoul and its limitations and its existence. But this article is the big big picture of the small small detail of the unseen side of us. The Buddha got this by observation where his mind itself meets itself and he gets to see what it is like.
He had pointed out then I gather that:
One who sees paticcasamuppada
sees the Dhamma.
One who sees the Dhamma
sees paticcasamuppada..
One who sees the Paticca Samuppada sees the whole picture of existence.
Physically from birth to death and how the mind develops from birth to death.
Look at this diagram which I had got from some lectures in Malaysia.
This diagram holds everything that is anything of what we are (in our minds).
you notice that there are 12 steps to this diagram. These 12 steps are divided into sections: mainly 3 grouped sections and those at the bottom 1,2,and3.
This is the story of the movement of our mind. What we are doing now is looking in, back into what has become, by Pure Observation, and trying to figure out how it evolved from birth to death . To be able to see the things we cannot see and see how they work and how they limit ourselves from our full potential.
So first we born, we grow old and we die and in between we suffer along the way. So Buddha wanted to know WHY WE SUFFER along the way. He is saying we suffer because of our minds because of how it works.
For those of you who are interested in all those sections above you can look them up but what is more important is you “seeing” the big picture and what happens in your mind as per observing yourself. You see this you see the world, you see yourself, you see everything and know all because this is where it all happens. The Buddha found this 5000 years ago through observation and we just complicated everything with science of the fragmented detail. The mind is not a perfect tool. If it was we would all be the same. It has got this process called psychological thinking after the first observation where it can make what it wants in the mind. This makes us all different. It makes illusions. It makes lies and they called it subjective: everybody has their own thing. No 2 people need to look at the same thing the same way. They both make different stories in their mind for the same observation as they create the illusion based on their past experiences – which is also a lie stored away in the mind and they think it is real or a fact. In fact it is an illusion. It is the lie in the Truth of things that makes us different.
When we are born there is just unconsciousness. Have you seen a newborn baby just stare into space. He has still not figured out what has happened to him. There was no direction in his evolving self. He is just being. Is it true that a baby cannot see but a blur in front of him for a few weeks after birth. Then he uses his 5 sensors to see, touch,feel, smell and create mental construction of these entities. So now we are not just being but we are starting to become. We are not only observing our environment but there is cognition, understanding and strengthening of the self and the “I” and “me” is only starting to take control. Then the mind and body see’s that it has an emotional side to it. It is feeling. It likes some things and not others. Some feelings are pleasant and others not and some just does nothing to you. The mindbody soul has a lot to deal with now. Not only I am observing but I am feeling emotionally about things and also liking and disliking. Then the mind starts to choose: this for that and it starts to have preferences. The mindbodysoul is starting to gel up and form an entity. Then the mind looks back and sees what has happened to itself and it sees that it has made itself up by the choices it made and in doing so made an imaginary “self” in an imaginary “world”. He had not used facts to create his Truths. He has put together various illusions together to make what he thinks is a factual “Truth” in him. He has become by using one lie after another. So now he lives this lie for the rest of his life. He makes the future with this lie in him. He decides for others with this lie in him. He kills with this lie in him. He creates religions with this lie in him/her. He suffers but does not know that he suffers because he believes this lie in him is a fact.
Just to clarify the lie he/her is the illusion he created for himself when the mind uses its observations to add subjective thinking or psychological thinking to make up an entity from heresay and past experiences in the mind. So out of a fact by observation he created a lie in him by turning it in his mind and then using it as if it was a real entity when really it was a made up lie. Everything after the first observation is a lie. It is one lie on top of the other that created the city, that created the economy and the environment we live in now. Not wanting to confuse things but can you see that this made up lie of an illusion is not the same as that feeling of love or anger that you feel, because anger and love, the feeling that is, is really real and part of the makeup of the mindbodysoul. It is as real as your organs are real in your body. It plays itself out from an orchestra of parts in your body to bring on that feeling in you. Contrast this with an illusion, a lie your mind puts together that can trigger a feeling of love or anger. The danger to yourself and the world is this lie you make for yourself through psychological thinking. That is allowing time in mind to alter the fact of first observation to make an illusion not based on facts.
So this is the internal clockwork of the mind and what it turns out. I think it can be safely said you are just one big lie living a life of a lie in you until you see this and live accordingly. You then live knowing this is a lie in me an illusion made up, and that is not and this is a table and that is a chair and it is real. Feeling of love is real and part of me and so is anger and I am deciding what my future is and do I want to play the lie and live in a made up lie environment. Your mind makes those lie’s for you when you go past first observation.
So now look at this write up on art and see where it comes from as per the above observation:
A Point of View: How do we know real art when we see it?
The world of art, I have suggested, is full of fakes. Fake originality, fake emotion and the fake expertise of the critics – these are all around us and in such abundance that we hardly know where to look for the real thing. Or perhaps there is no real thing? Perhaps the world of art is just one vast pretence, in which we all take part since, after all, there is no real cost to it, except to those like Charles Saatchi, rich enough to splash out on junk? Perhaps anything is art if someone says that it is. “It’s all a matter of taste,” they say. But is there nothing to be said in reply? Do we have no way of distinguishing true from false art, or saying why art matters and how? I shall make a few positive suggestions.
and
In the face of sorrow, imperfection and the fleetingness of our affections and joys, we ask ourselves: “Why?” We need reassurance. We look to art for the proof that life in this world is meaningful and that suffering is not the pointless thing that it so often appears to be, but the necessary part of a larger and redeeming whole. Tragedies show us the triumph of dignity over destruction and compassion over despair. In a way that will always be mysterious, they endow suffering with a formal completion and thereby restore the moral equilibrium. The tragic hero is completed through his fate. His death is a sacrifice, and this sacrifice renews the world.
and
Tragedy reminds us that beauty is a redemptive presence in our lives. It is the face of love, shining in the midst of desolation. We should not be surprised that many of the most beautiful works of modern art have emerged in reaction to hatred and cruelty.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30495258
This is a talk on Paticca Samuppada by Bhante Punnaji in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Buddhist Priest is a doctor of medicine who became a monk – from healing the body to healing the mind.
Invited to the Vatican for dialogue:
Let us rejoice in the planting of seeds of peace, between Buddhists and Catholics, as Pope Francis hosts a special dialogue with Buddhist leaders from 23rd – 27th June 2015. Ven. Dr. M. Punnaji was invited to attend this dialogue.
Video capture:
Video:
Please try and watch this and understand it: it is the source of everything that is “new”. You have to leave the past in you behind for the “new” in you to emerge.
Art can find the pattern.