Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem:
This question has been bugging me in a weird way..
Instructions for MCTB 4th path, and descriptions of that state, go something like: everything is causal, happening-on-its-own, selfless, etc. it's just causal conditioned phenomena.
With the actualist method, you do have apperception happening on its own, and the process to an actual freedom happening on its own, etc. It seems like these two are talking about similar things.
But then there's the 'i'. Examples: 'i' have a choice whether to experience the moment with an affective filter or without. 'i' have a choice to feel whichever way i want. with an annoying tension in my head, it seems that the tension is just 'me' and 'i' have a choice whether to press on it and contort it or to let it go.
How does that fit in with the causal, selfless, happening-by-itself nature that 4th path talks about? It seems like with the 'me', 'i' do have a choice.. or the mind/intellect of this flesh&blood body has a choice.. whatever it is that does the choosing.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, eh? But what would happen otherwise?
Are your choices perfectly random? If not, they are conditioned, causal, self-evident, aren't they - I mean, they are your choices, if they aren't self-evident to you, well, how do you know you made them? A bit like digestion or associative memory or walking upright? They just happen when they need to?
Or Is it the intentions you mean, rather than choices? Intention is karma, man. If karma isn't causal, conditioned, happening on its own as it occurs, then I don't know what is.
Is it free will, freedom, you mean? Trying to pin down freedom is tricky business, goes entirely against the grain of freedom.
The issue of
control? What is control, then? Commenting what happens in real-time? The illusion that mental constructs are the conditions for all events?
What I keep noticing is how none of this is special, none of it is exempt from having conditions, from being a condition for something else, from causality. None of this is a refuge for me, mine, my self. There is nothing holding me up. There is no special place, or special function, or special feeling, or special sense impression, or special memory, or special anything. It is all the same, in this respect. Nothing is exempt. Everything is known in the same way (which is not the same as knowing everything). In particular, there is no knower or chooser who is somehow exempt from this. There is no high, special, refined Dhamma for special places or functions.
Wisdom/insight is not the clever use of mental processes - it is about surrender, relinquishment, renunciation of views and opinions and the sense of control that holding them conveys.
I ask cause I still meditate and it is weird switching between the two modes sometimes - one of walking around, choosing to enjoy the moment and not to have emotions arise, the other of seeing everything as happening by itself. The latter seems to really disempower the actualist method as it gives an appearance that i have no choice whether the emotion arises or whether my self is contracting.. but is that practice necessary to get to 4th path?
Hm. I've made good progress, letting the appreciation of this body experiencing what it experiences happen on its own terms, by itself, without interfering. Not empowering or disempowering, just very nice and clean when I do it. The attenuating effect this has on affective upwelling is noticeable but not of primary interest to me at this time. I'm not doing this to manipulate or control my emotions. I'm doing it because it's a fun and clean (pure/purifying) way to be.
Cheers,
Florian