Insightful Contemplations

Naturalized bodhisattvas practice ten insightful contemplations and extinguish ten delusions. Even self, others, and knowledge are unreal' whatever form, whatever sensation, whatever phenomenon, cannot be grasped. There are no fixed definitions, no identity or otherness. So when they observe the practice of emptiness contemplation, they also practice a million perfections.

COMMENTARY

The ten insightful contemplations are called the four points of mindfulness, the three roots of goodness, and the contemplation of the three times. The four points of mindfulness up to the experience of nirvana are mindfulness of the body as impure, mindfulness of sensation as irritating, mindfulness of mind as inconstant, and mindfulness of phenomena as having no inherent identity. After nirvana, the four points of mindfulness are mindfulness of the body as spacelike, mindfulness of sensation as neither inside nor outside, mindfulness of mind as ungraspable, and mindfulness of phenomena as neither good nor bad. The three roots of goodness are freedom from greed, freedom from hatred, and freedom from folly. The three times contemplated are past, present, and future.

The above is from Zen and the Art of Insight by Thomas Cleary.

The Four points of mindfulness of the body as impure are the rupajhanas, meditations on form. The ones on this "spacelike" thing (which is the Space element, which is emptiness) are the arupajhanas, formless meditations.

The formless meditations are also known as the Four Wisdoms, which are mapped in the Five Wisdom Tathagathas, or in the Five Wheels.

The final 8 of the 8 meditations is the Wisdom of Self Reflection, which is the Mirror Wisdom, as the Mind is the Mirror.

As it says in the BCR:

The clear mirror hung high, he himself utters the words of Vairocana. The clear mirror is the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom, which represents the Dharmakaya, or Vairocana. The Zen master, uttering Vairocana's words, himself takes the place of the Buddha.

One more from the Cleary book Zen and the Art of Insight:

When bodhisattvas have not yet attained buddhahood, they make enlightenment into an affliction. When bodhisattvas attain buddhahood, they make afflictions into enlightenment. How so? By virtue of nonduality in ultimate truth, because the buddhas and all things are thus.

Submitted July 18, 2017 at 11:17AM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2taAgVa