What is the state of Buddhist practice to a very high level? We can only do some theoretical **. I only know a little bit about it, and I don't know what kind of advanced state it is, but we can collect a lot of relevant information, listen to the descriptions of practitioners, and combine it with some personal experiences to get a simple sense of what that advanced state is. This state may theoretically be able to describe a non-detachable ten, but no matter what language is used and how it is described, it will be trapped by the boundaries of language. It's like swimming, no matter how many books you read, no matter how many techniques you understand, it's useless. As long as you don't go into the water to practice, you will never learn to swim, and you will never experience the feeling of swimming.
1.The experience of forgetting things and me
I myself have been meditating every day for nearly four or five years, and my level is not high, but I can also experience some feelings that cannot be expressed in words. One time I was meditating in the tea room when I felt a pain in my arm. At this time, I was not controlled by the pain, and I tried to observe the pain. At this moment, the sound of car horns came from the window again. At that moment, I suddenly felt that the pain in my arm and the honking outside the window were not part of my body, or that they were all part of my body. I felt like the dividing line between "myself" and "outside" was gone. Suddenly, I felt like I was one with everything......
Does this idea make sense? Isn't the dividing line between "me" and the outside world clear? ** is the dividing line, outside the body is the outside world, inside the body is oneself. But when we think about it, we find that this dividing line is not very obvious. For example, there are many bacteria in the human body that live in symbiosis with humans, and some bacteria are good for our body. Certain bacteria in the gut are important for our physical health and can also influence our mood. Some experiments have found that if a person's intestinal bacteria are replaced, the person's temperament may change. So are your bacteria part of "you"? Also, everyone cares about their children, and if the child is not feeling well, it is even worse than getting sick. So, is the child a part of "you"? There is a disease called "mirror tactile synesthesia". If you touch someone around you, you feel like you're touching him, and that feeling is very real. So may I ask ** or the boundaries of his body?
For the brain, the arm can be completely disregarded as part of the "self". The pain in the arm is just a message from outside the brain to the brain. And the sound of the horn outside the window is also a message transmitted to the brain from outside the brain. In this sense, there seems to be no clear difference between a sore arm and a horn. Then there is an external experience of "selflessness" in Buddhism.
The internal experience of "selflessness" is that none of the aggregates are part of "me." The external experience of "selflessness" is something external, a part of me. There is no absolute dividing line between me and the outside. Everything in the world is connected, and nothing exists alone. You can say, "I am not a separate being," or you can say, "I am the world."
At this point, you can say that "everything in the world is empty" or you can say that "everything in the world is one." These two sentences may sound like the same meaning, but the water in them is deep. Indian Buddhism insists that everything in the world is one, and Mahayana Buddhism insists that everything in the world is empty. What kind of realm is the difference, I have not experienced. But all this is not a play on words. Realizing that there is no absolute dividing line between yourself and the outside world can make you a better person.
2.Greed and hatred
We know that suffering is due to unfulfillment. In Buddhism, suffering comes from desire. This "desire" can mean that you like something but can't get it, or it can mean that you don't like something and you want to separate from it but can't be separated. This brings us to another Buddhist concept called the "Three Poisons." The so-called three poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance.
To be greedy is to be attracted to a thing. Money, the opposite sex, or fame, whatever it is, as long as you want it, this kind of affection is called greed.
Anger, which ostensibly means anger, refers to all negative emotions. Everything, if you have negative emotions about something and want to reject it, it's called resentment.
Therefore, greed and hatred are actually two sides of "desire". And because you have "desire", you will make automatic emotional judgments about all kinds of things, thinking that this is good and that is bad. If you wear "colored" glasses, you will no longer be accurate in your observation of the world, and this is stupidity. Foolishness is blinding.
Greed and hatred
So, if a practitioner wants to experience emptiness and get rid of naivety, he has to overcome desire. Where does desire come from? If you want to bring something to yourself, or want to take something away from yourself. The reason why you have lust is precisely because you think there is a dividing line between you and the outside world. For example, once I was on a business trip with a colleague, and when I slept at night, my colleague actually snored. That's when my little tantrum came up, and I wanted to wake him up and put him back to sleep. Of course, I didn't do that, I immediately meditated to observe my negative emotions and calmed down. At this time, I felt a connection between myself and him. His snoring entered my brain, and my brain had an emotional evaluation of the snoring sound, which led to the thought of "desire", which in turn affected me. If I had woken him up before, I would have separated myself from him, and I had a strong rejection of him. Now, I just need to separate myself from my "desires" and solve the problem. So recognizing selflessness and overcoming desire go hand in hand. Cultivating this kung fu to the highest level is "nirvana".
3.What is Nirvana?
Nirvana is the highest goal of Theravada practice, and attaining nirvana is an arhat, even if you have attained the right result. But in Buddhism, there is no hard and fast rule that says what you do is nirvana. Now people who study Buddhism speculate,Nirvana has four characteristics:1perfect well-being; 2.a sense of utter calm; 3.complete inner freedom; 4.Have a very clear knowledge and understanding of things around you.
So how can we achieve nirvana? There is a very important concept in Buddhism called "dependent arising." To summarize the origin in one sentence, it is "there is a cause for the other, and this life is the other for the other". Dependent arising is a chain of cause and effect. Everything happens for a reason, and everything happens for a result, and that result is the cause of another thing. And a special chain of dependent origin that belongs to human beings is called the "Twelve Causes" ......We live in this cause. Or you can say that we are controlled by karma. Everything we do is "conditional".
Nirvana is to get rid of the control of causes and conditions and become "unconditional." So nirvana is just a mystical state. Nowadays, there are many Buddhists who believe that it is impossible for a person to attain full nirvana, and that the most you can do is to pursue a state of unrestricted in one aspect, that is, in one aspect. Perhaps we should think of nirvana as a process, not as an end result. With each step you will be freer.
4.Beyond natural selection
From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the reason why we have to look at everything with emotion and color, and why we have greed and hatred, is the setting of natural selection for our brains. Anything that seems to be beneficial to the spread of our genes will cause us to be greedy if we think he is good, and vice versa will be bad and will produce resentment. You can think of Dharma as a way to transcend natural selection, because the setting of natural selection is inherently irrational.
The basic assumption that natural selection gives to each person is that you are special and that you are more important than others. We always judge good and bad from our own point of view. But this basic assumption cannot be correct, because there are so many creatures in the world, and it is impossible for each of them to be more important than others, and it is impossible for everyone to be special. Can we change our perspective? If you can step out of yourself and see the world from the perspective of God or the universe, then the concepts of "selflessness" and "emptiness" are natural. Selflessness and emptiness means that you are not special from anything else. A piece of rotten and smelly meat, which from a human point of view has bacteria in it, which is harmful to health, is obviously a bad thing. But from the point of view of bacteria, carrion is precisely the breeding ground for them. This is "color is emptiness". Recognizing this, this piece of meat is a piece of meat, and there is no such thing as good or bad.
Perhaps this is what Buddhism is all about: to liberate us from the limited perspective given by natural selection, to observe and experience the world on a higher level. Two thousand six hundred years ago, the Buddha realized the limits of natural selection to human thoughts. He didn't have any modern scientific tools, but he found the problem, found a solution to the problem, and developed a Buddhist system that integrates knowledge and action. The Buddha went very, very far so that it was difficult for later generations to really understand him. Two thousand six hundred years later, modern science allows us to discover the same problem again, so that we can learn from the Buddha's methods and confirm the Buddha's thoughts.
If the fate comes, it goes, when it gathers, it disperses, when it arises, when it arises, when it falls, it dies. Ji Xianwei.