I Wish Not for Three Wishes
Posted: Sunday, July 31, 2011
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
Many, many years ago I wished for a beautiful wife, three great kids, a beautiful home, and a great career. I got there by the time I was twenty-seven.
Later, I wished for spiritual enlightenment.
And now . . . I wish for nothing.
What is wishing? Does it want things to be different from what they are? If this is true, then can our fondest wishes ever satisfy us for long?
Is wishing, by its very nature, a product of our past and our projected future? Is wishing merely an attempted escape from reality, since both our past and future are mere fantasies of the mind, products of thought and imagining? Isn’t only this very moment real?
Even if we wish to “be in this moment” we are stepping out of that moment to wish, to attach to and then project the idea of “me” into a future experience. When we step out of that precious moment, then everything that follows can only be illusion.
If we live in illusions, we live in symbols of reality rather than reality itself. And when we live in symbols, we get it all wrong. We act in very unskillful ways based upon those illusions and symbols.
Plato’s Cave is a good example of this:
“Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials". The prisoners watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.
“Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.
Release from the cave
“Socrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.
"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see "even one of the things now said to be true," viz. the shadows on the wall?
“After some time on the surface, however, the freed prisoner would acclimatize. He would see more and more things around him, until he could look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the "source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing"
Return to the cave
Socrates next asks Glaucon to consider the condition of this man. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn't they kill him?"
This story is a good example of living in symbols and the reluctance to see anew each moment. A symbolic existence is one of ideas and concepts, the idea that life is somehow rewarding and exciting, that nothing desirable in our lives will ever change, and that there is a personal entity, a personal ego guiding our lives and controlling our destiny.
The experience of each moment clearly reveals the opposite of these ideas and concepts. Because we continually move away from our discontent by changing our positions both bodily and mentally, the illusion is that life is wonderful. Only when we can no longer move away from our physical or mental pain for one reason or another do we realize the tenuous and hazardous situation life really is.
The moment also reveals the truth of impermanence – that everything desirable will eventually change and the desired will become the disdained.
Finally, is the idea of me and mine, the concept of ego or a little man or woman existing behind all our thoughts and plans a reality or an illusion? This ego cannot exist in the realty of the moment, a choiceless moment of awareness that can only be experienced in the voidness of thought.
Ego is constructed by thought when we strategize to get what we want or get rid of what we hate. The moment, conversely, has no past, no future, and therefore no fertile grounds for the development of the illusionary self.
Existing truly in the moment is being in a place that is not a place, neither material nor non material. It's not annihilation, nor is it immortality of a soul or extended ego. It's neither existence nor non existence.
In trying to understand this, for example where a mind grounded in the moment goes after death, I like to use a couple of examples of what happens when we try to understand things, like momentary awareness, intellectually: It's like a mosquito trying to bite an iron ball. It's like an ant crawling across a page of Shakespeare and expected to understand the words.
The human mind, experienceing a scale such as momentary awareness without a past or future is not equipped to translate the experience. To think that there are people, and places for those people to go, are illusions to begin with.
Once the Buddha was asked by the wanderer Vacchagotta,
"Sir, what happens to the Enlightened One after death? Where does he go? The Buddha said "Wanderer, make a fire from the sticks that are lying around here." So he did and he lit the fire. Then the Buddha said, "Now throw some more sticks on to it. He did, and the Buddha asked "What’s happening?" Vacchagotta answered, Oh, the fire’s going well." The Buddha said, "Now stop throwing sticks on it." And after a while the fire went out. The Buddha said to him, "What happened to the fire?" "The fire’s gone out, Sir." The Buddha said, "Well, where did it go? Did it go forward? Backward? Right? Left? Up or down?" The wanderer said, "No it didn’t. It just went out." The Buddha said, "That’s right. That’s exactly what happens to the Enlightened One after death."
When no more sticks are thrown on the fire of passionate desire, of craving, of wanting, then the fire goes out. Since there is no kamma being created, there is nothing that needs to be reborn.
In other words, the self, that which thinks it goes here or there, does this or does that, is not real to begin with. Momentary awareness is a different reality altogether, or perhaps not a “reality" at all. These kinds of things can be understood only in deep meditation but never explainable intellectually.
So I make no wishes. I am satisfied to just be –totally, securely, all accepting - immersed in what each moment brings. My past kamma, my actions, my startegies and my lifestyles have conditioned the results I now experience. By not fighting against those results, and accepting whatever situation I find myself in, I avoid making additional kamma, additional causes that will reap their effects at a later time. By being still, my mind creates no new causes, no future results to be felt. That is called blowing out the flame.
"All acceptance is the key to the gateless gate" - Rev. Zen Master Jiyu-Kennett
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)I like your analogy of an afterlife with a burning fire.The Buddha said that all heavens are but temporary. Only Nibanna (enlightenment - Pali translation: Blowing out the flame) insures never returning to the realms of heavens and hells. The ending of experience. Thanks Dave.
Ask a simple question . . . :) Actually, this was really a trick question. Most of us assume that if our three wishes were granted we'd be happy, so we rhyme off things like money, love and health. The truth is if we ever got all the things we thought we needed to be happy, our needs would suddenly change. Happiness is an illusion I suppose, but it doesn't stop most of us from searching for it. You've learned to stop chasing something you can never find, and live in the moment. We would all benefit from learning to do that.I learned by accident that happiness can never be found outside of ourselves, only inside. I was looking for a place to hide out from bill collectors thirty three years ago after running up incredible debts trying and find happiness, and I stumbled upon a Zen monastery in northern CA. In order to stay there, undercover so to speak, I had to follow their routine. Amazingly, with no knowledge of Buddhism, or even any inclinations toward spirituality, the meditation itself cleared my head to such an extent that it changed my life forever. It was one of those so called epiphanies. Anyone can do it. Just get way over your head in debt and then escape to a Zen monastery:)I have a friend who 'had it all' but slowly lost all of his material possessions due to the economic situation. He said there was a kind of peace about having nothing else to lose. He said in some ways he looked at it as a blessing because it made him aware of what was important in life. Yours is an interesting story E.He had nothing. Now he has something that can never be taken away. But it's very difficult to voluntarily back away from those things that we think will make us happy, but over a lifetime realize that it really didn't work. Then it's too late, many times, to change our consciousness which will seek out the same situation, the same strategies, the same habitual patterns of delusion we are accustomed to, like taking a drug we know is bad for us but we cannot break our addiction.People who cannot only see the dangers of sensual, material existence, but have the courage to shift their consciousness away from that seductive trap are rare in the world.
Ah e, you have used the allegory of Plato's Cave --- you go tot he head of the class! It is something I used in my introduction to Philosophy course as a professor. It packs a potent and powerful psychic punch. I appreciate your insights. Blessings to you my friend.I'm flattered Ed. Thank you.
Best......e
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