CONDITIONED REALITY. By AJAHN BRAHM.

CONDITIONED REALITY.
By AJAHN BRAHM.

“The whole idea of non-self is difficult for many people because our conditioning will not allow us to see it. The whole idea of the Buddha’s teaching of suffering, of dukkha, is very difficult for people. Why? Because they don’t want to admit that life is suffering. The whole idea of celibate monks is very difficult.

We still want to have our sexual relationships. I seem to be forever reading articles in magazines by people who are trying to see if they can still have sex and be Enlightened at the same time. That’s what people want. As the old saying goes, “they want to have their cake and eat it at the same time”. You can’t have your cake and eat it. What that old saying means is that if you eat the cake it’s gone. You can’t keep the cake and also consume it. You can have one thing or the other. Often when I talk like that people are shocked. “What do you mean you have to be celibate to become Enlightened?” I say, “Yes, that’s true”, and they say, “Surely not,” wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, writhe, writhe, writhe!

What I’ve said is probably something that you will not agree with. Why, because that view goes completely against your perceptions. Informed by that view the thoughts go against it. You’re in that cycle.

But what about Ajahn Brahm, isn’t he in his own cycle of views and perceptions and thoughts? Isn’t that just a monk’s conditioning? The only way you can find out these things is to let go of all preconceived ideas and notions – make the mind so empty and so still that you can actually see things as they truly are and not through the eyes of a monk. See things not through the eyes of a sexually involved man or woman, not through the eyes of an Asian or a Westerner. But to see things as just empty of all those labels and positions” let go of so much that all of those ideas, positions, thoughts, and feelings completely vanish. Do you know what that’s called? It’s called jhāna, deep meditation.

What you have to do to be able to see the truth is to creep up on it, silently, invisibly. That’s the only way you can overcome the conditioning. In Buddhism we say the five hindrances –sensory desire, ill will, restlessness and worry, sloth and torpor, and doubt – are what stop you from seeing clearly. Basically sensory desire and ill will are the two main hindrances. They are only overcome in those deep meditations called jhānas. The mystics, the people who sit meditation and get into deep states of mind, are overcoming all of their conditioning temporarily. They are letting go of all they have been taught, all they have ever thought, all that could be true or not true, and then they can see reality outside of conditions.”

Source: CONDITIONED REALITY.

By AJAHN BRAHM.

[https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/08/16/10-conditioned-reality/](https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/08/16/10-conditioned-reality/)