Cut off likes and dislikes, easy to say, almost impossible to do

There is nothing difficult about the Great Way,
But, avoid choosing!
Only when you neither love nor hate,
Does it appear in all clarity.

A hair's breadth of deviation from it, And deep gulf is set between heaven and earth. If you want to get hold of what it looks like, Do not be anti- or pro- anything.

The conflict of longing and loathing, --
This is the disease of the mind.
Not knowing the profound meaning of things,
We disturb our peace of mind to no purpose.

Perfect like a Great Space,
The Way has nothing lacking, nothing in excess.
Truly, because of our accepting and rejecting,
We have not the suchness of things.

R. H. Blyth Translation

When his questioners try to pin the Buddha down about whether his consciousness survives after death, he rebukes them by saying that even here and now the consciousness of a Tathāgata is untraceable, since there is no means of measuring or knowing it. The awakened mind is said to be unattached to anything in the world — like a bird that does not alight upon and thus get bound to any object of experience.
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“Consciousness-unestablished, infinite, luminous all around
Here it is that earth and water, fire and wind, no footing find.
Here again are long and short, subtle and gross, pleasant and unpleasant
Name and form, all comes to an end without exceptions.
With the cessation of consciousness each is here brought to an end.”

Kevatta Sutta

Brother, whatever is the range of the six spheres of contact, that itself is the range of prolific conceptualisation. And whatever is the range of prolific conceptualisation, that itself is the range of the six spheres of contact. By the utter detachment from, and the cessation of the six spheres of contact, there comes to be the cessation, the allyment, of prolific conceptualisation.”

Koṭṭhita Sutta

(Interestingly, in Zen Buddhism, when those kind of things were asked the Zen master suddenly hit the questioner with a stick or gave a thundering cry.)

"stream-entrant" is a person who has seen the Dharma and consequently, has dropped the first three fetters (saŋyojana) that bind a being to rebirth, namely self-view (sakkāya-ditthi), clinging to rites and rituals (sīlabbata-parāmāsa), and skeptical indecision (Vicikitsa).

But as sotāpanna’s cessation is split second for immediately consciousness returns then works as the normal six sense bases consciousness.

So sotāpanna should continue to observe the object and drop it persistently because she/he is still sekha who needs much more practice until the final realization.

Being detached, dropping the object, that moment is untraceable. Although the Buddha’s five aggregates headed by consciousness were still working after his complete Enlightenment, as the Buddha is always in that detached state, his consciousness is untraceable – this is called the Awakened state. So Enlightenment is not fantasy at all but somewhat palpable and even logical, happening neither in heaven nor in the temple nor in the Sutta but only in one’s own perceptive process.

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Good to know our sources, how it started before first zen master was chasing somebody with stick :¨)

Submitted September 02, 2019 at 11:59AM by OnePoint11 https://ift.tt/2lrtbAB