Timeline for What is the source and meaning of this quote of the Buddha's: "Everything rests upon the tip of intention"?
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| Nov 23, 2022 at 20:51 | comment | added | yellow-saint | Book reference: google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Wisdom_of_Imperfection/… | |
| Nov 23, 2022 at 20:50 | comment | added | yellow-saint | From The Wisdom of Imperfection: "the Tibetan practice of Chöd (literally “to cut off”) during which a meditator would go to a particularly frightening place, like a cremation ground, and deliberately generate a state of fear so that the vivid sense of “I” would arise. Once this vivid feeling of “I” was generated, the meditator would look it directly in the face, so to speak, and recognize its completely fabricated nature. Recognizing that this “I” had no true existence would directly cut through ego-grasping (hence the name Chöd ), releasing the mind from the emotional distress of the fear" | |
| Nov 22, 2022 at 17:52 | comment | added | blue_ego | I had a similar experience perhaps...I was angry and thinking like that, then was fed up with myself, sat down to meditate, kept having the thoughts, but detachment from the anger...realizing that I gave up anger immediately, knowing “not mine...I don’t want this” so it was like my thoughts were possessed... | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 14:12 | comment | added | yellow-saint | Crikey! Nice one @OyaMist. Another relevant excerpt regarding intention: "a mendicant... focuses on the oneness dependent on the signless immersion of the heart... They understand: ‘Even this signless immersion of the heart is produced by choices and intentions.’ 11.5They understand: ‘But whatever is produced by choices and intentions is impermanent and liable to cessation.’ 11.6Knowing and seeing like this, their mind is freed from the defilements of sensuality, desire to be reborn, and ignorance. 11.7When they’re freed, they know they’re freed." | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 13:11 | comment | added | OyaMist | A really good meditation intent on emptiness is taught in MN121. > MN121:3.6: Now, as before, I usually practice the meditation on emptiness. > MN121:4.2: There is only this that is not emptiness, namely, the oneness dependent on the mendicant Saṅgha. | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 12:59 | history | edited | user17652 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 17, 2022 at 10:35 | history | edited | user17652 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 17, 2022 at 10:28 | history | edited | user17652 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 17, 2022 at 8:37 | comment | added | user17652 | @yellow-saint- yes, it becomes quite a conundrum, doesn't it? I'll be honest with you, I don't know of many people who can slice through fetters 4 & 5 in that way. It had taken me 3 months of daily looking, but there needed to be a strong feeling (anger) and what appeared to be an intention to act upon those strong feelings. That's the best time to catch the illusion, when it is front and centre and thus visible. Right intention is a practice-based system called the eightfold path, but even this is stripped of its systematization as one finds their own spontaneity and does their own thing. | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 6:19 | comment | added | yellow-saint | Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. I'm thinking how to 'put together' a really good meditative intention, pulling together all the ingredients that might condition it — in order to perceive emptiness in more and more ways. What I'm hearing from your answer is that it might be helpful to practice realising the conditionality of view / fabrication / 'putting together' / intention / sankhara at all — and, in particular, explore its non-self character. | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 6:12 | comment | added | yellow-saint | "what you intend or plan... becomes a support for the continuation of consciousness. If you don’t intend or plan or have underlying tendencies, this doesn’t become a support for the continuation of consciousness... That is how this entire mass of suffering ceases.". I suppose the point here is that it's not enough to just 'stop doing'; the point is to realise the empty nature of intention? | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 5:55 | comment | added | yellow-saint | I have to say, perceiving the emptiness of the active self is quite a tough nut to crack experientially. How to undermine the concept of conceiving without action on the side of the conceiver?! I suppose this gets to the depth within my question: what is right intention in meditation, if intention is illusory? Does "intending non-intention", along the lines of the Zen instruction "think non-thinking", seem like a decent line of practice? | |
| Nov 17, 2022 at 5:49 | comment | added | yellow-saint | I suppose you are referring to the Phena Sutta where "intention" is translated variously as "volitional formation", "mental formation", "choice" | |
| Nov 16, 2022 at 19:22 | history | answered | user17652 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |