Absolutely nothing to be grasped

An Eternal Now SG

Everything we encounter in life consists of ephemeral, transient stories (thoughts), sensations, visions, and sounds. It is an ever-stream flow that is coreless and cannot be pinned down. Everything is unsupported, transient, flickering, disjoint display (sensations, thoughts, visions, etc) that are empty of anything whatsoever. Yet by the power of our ignorance and latent tendencies, we solidify ‘things’ as coherent objects, we pin them down, focus on our projected perception on such solidified images and focus on them in a way that produces passions, aggression and sorrow, leading to all kinds of fantasies and suffering.

This crystallizing of a part of sensations into 'I, me, mine' and another part into 'objects' is the source of all misery.

Self – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Mind – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Body – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Things – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Events – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Money – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Life – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Pain – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Loss – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Death – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Power – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Sex – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Meditative bliss states – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Samadhi states – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Amazing spiritual powers, visiting other realms, seeing visions – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Transcendental states – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.
Awareness – empty – only ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes.

A brilliant play of shapes, forms, details. Moment by moment a universe displays in a brilliant, crystal-like clarity and splendour… and poof! It is a suchness that is the epithet of the Buddha – Tathagata – thus come, thus gone.

May all be liberated as mind, liberated as things and events, liberated as arising, liberated as subsiding.

Through a period of practice-enlightenment, our projecting tendencies wind down, and the "ephemeral stories, appearance-mirages, echoes" becomes only "ephemeral appearance-mirages, echoes" - an empty-selfreleasing-bliss-clarity where not a trace of self, contraction, passion, anger or sorrow remains - utterly traceless!

Moment by moment, arbitrary thoughts and concepts made absent in a state of nakedness by relaxing into our natural state, primordial suchness shines as ordinary, mundane, yet wonderful activities, transforming the way we live our 'life' and interact with apparent 'others'.

An Eternal Now SG

This must not remain a concept but an ongoing practice-enlightenment!

Pegembara SG

Reminds me of Ajahn Chah's "Living with the Cobra". It is only dukkha that arises and dukkha that ceases.

You should know that that which is arising and passing away is only the activity of mind. When something arises,it passes away and is followed by further arising and passing away. In the Way of Dhamma we call this arising and passing away ''birth and death''; and this is everything - this is all there is! When suffering has arisen, it passes away, and, when it has passed away, suffering arises again. There's just suffering arising and passing away.

When you see this much, you'll be able to know constantly this arising and passing away; and, when your knowing is constant, you'll see that this is really all there is. Everything is just birth and death. It's not as if there is anything which carries on. There's just this arising and passing away as it is - that's all.

This kind of seeing will give rise to a tranquil feeling of dispassion towards the world. Such a feeling arises when we see that actually there is nothing worth wanting; there is only arising and passing away, a being born followed by a dying. This is when the mind arrives at ''letting go'', letting everything go according to its own nature. Things arise and pass away in our mind, and we know. When happiness arises, we know; when dissatisfaction arises, we know. And this ''knowing happiness'' means that we don't identify with it as being ours. And likewise with dissatisfaction and unhappiness, we don't identify with them as being ours. When we no longer identify with and cling to happiness and suffering, we are simply left with the natural way of things.

So we say that mental activity is like the deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, it simply goes its own way. Even though it may be extremely poisonous, we are not affected by it; we don't go near it or take hold of it, and it doesn't bite us. The cobra does what is natural for a cobra to do. That's the way it is. If you are clever you'll leave it alone. And so you let be that which is good. You also let be that which is not good - let it be according to its own nature. Let be your liking and your disliking, the same way as you don't interfere with the cobra.

So, one who is intelligent will have this kind of attitude towards the various moods that arise in the mind. When goodness arises, we let it be good, but we know also. We understand its nature. And, too, we let be the not-good, we let it be according to its nature. We don't take hold of it because we don't want anything. We don't want evil, neither do we want good. We want neither heaviness nor lightness, happiness nor suffering. When, in this way, our wanting is at an end, peace is firmly established.

When we have this kind of peace established in our minds, we can depend on it. This peace, we say, has arisen out of confusion. Confusion has ended. The Buddha called the attainment of final enlightenment an ''extinguishing'', in the same way that fire is extinguished. We extinguish fire at the place at which it appears.

Wherever it is hot, that's where we can make it cool. And so it is with enlightenment. Nibbāna is found in samsāra. Enlightenment and delusion (samsāra) exist in the same place, just as do hot and cold. It's hot where it was cold and cold where it was hot. When heat arises, the coolness disappears, and when there is coolness,there's no more heat. In this way Nibbāna and samsāra are the same.

http://www.ajahnchah.org/book/Living_With_Cobra1.php