Glad your practice is interesting and fruitful.
I am practicing paying attention, simply, directly, clearly, naturally. As to why, why not? Again, it is hard to argue with, I think.
As to Truth Number Three, that is a great question.
It is somewhat complex, perhaps, or it is very simple.
As to suffering, it depends on what you mean by suffering, and how much suffering is a direct result of having been born, having 6 sense doors and conditioned by life (see MN 122.12). There is physical pain from various causes, and beyond that it is hard to convince myself there is much in the way of suffering but there are a few subtleties to this question that I still find interesting, and perhaps when I have resolved those questions I'll let you know something.
As to dependent origination, various scholastic interpretations regarding certain aspects of the timing and timeframe over which certain aspects apply varies, but I will give you mine for the sake of this discussion...
On ignorance depend volitional formations. On volitions formations depends consciousness. On consciousness depend name and form. On name and form depend the six organs of sense depends contact.
I will stop there, as those are the most interesting.
When one, such as myself, realizes that there is no agent, no doer, no seer, no perceiver, then the links of the chain are seen very differently.
As there is no sense of any doer, controller, perceiver, or subject in this field of manifestation, then ignorance must have ceased by this very structure of logic.
And, given that there is no sense of volitional formations, meaning created actions by a self or subject or doer, it is easy to notice also that there is no perceiver, meaning that there is no awareness that is not phenomena, meaning in the seeing only the seen, in the hearing only the heard, in the feeling, just the felt. This was clearly seen almost 9 years ago in April, 2003. Thus, when one sees through the sense of volition or will, one sees through the observer or consciousness.
This direct perception of things also sees through the division of mental and physical, as the fundamental experience of just this is undifferentiated in that way and this is as obvious as color to a person with good eyesight is.
This direct perception, by the same direct and comprehensive way of perceiving, knows that the base experience is also undifferentiated into 6 sense doors, though the various qualities that imply them still occur just as before.
To say there is contact is not wrong in relative terms, but the basic experience is at once more fundamental than that, as that would imply sense doors, which actually can't be found beyond the basic sensations that seem to imply them.
Vedena (often translated as feeling) still occurs, in that things are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Here things get tricky. Vedena is causal, and discrimination still functions. In very relative terms, pleasure is still preferable to pain. This is obvious and not strange or unexpected. And here is where things get the most interesting, as, despite the standard hype, you can have seen all that, clearly, unshakably, seemingly permanently, and yet emotions still occur, and that is what you are asking about.
That is my current interesting project at this time, and when something changes, I will let you know.
Can you really call it clinging when this shimmering, shifting, ephemeral field changes and fluxes and pulses on its own?
Can you really call it attraction or aversion when the illusion of the core that seemed to try to want to move towards or away from pleasure and pain no longer is anything?
What do you think?
Daniel
