Some Insights While Reading the Bardo Thodol - On Perceiving the Nature of Impermanence

The Mind's ability to perceive the nature of impermanence with respect to phenomena requires the immediate awareness of both the arising and the cessation, the beginning and the end, the appearing and the vanishing, of phenomena within the Eye of the Mind. On a fundamental level of Being, we are re-conceptualizing the nature of phenomena according to its entire timeline. On a psychological level, it causes the Mind to redefine phenomena to include its ultimate demise, away from defining it purely upon our current sense of experience of it, which is what gives it its sense of permanence. And in doing so, we extinguish our sense of time with respect to experiencing phenomena, allowing us to simply dwell within pure consciousness, our timeless sense of our own Mind.

Even though these sensations arise, we observe them from a distance, without self-identification, without entanglement, without Attachment. This enables the Mind to apprehend phenomena where, lacking permanence and a sense of inherent reality, there is a sense of dispassion with respect to it. This opens up for us the awareness of the potential of experiencing the world in a different way, in a way where we learn that we do not have to be angry in situations that are typically associated with anger, or envious in situations that are commonly associated with envy, and so on. There is no need to attach those sorts of negative meanings to events in life, that it is wholly possible to interpret the world in a way that is radically different from what is perhaps more commonly done, in accordance with equanimity.

The Mind's ability to skillfully perceive impermanence in this world will determine its ability to do so in the Bardo of death. This world here is like a place of preparation. With respect to the Darkness of Ignorance and the line of trauma that runs through the course of sentient beings, the knowledge of impermanence is the means by which trauma is overcome. Beyond the emptiness and voidness that we fear lies beyond the pretense of a material self, there is the Radiant Pure White Light, it is the Natural Mind.

submitted by /u/unknown_poo
[link] [comments]

from Buddhism https://ift.tt/2SnHUHF