“Okay...Okay...When I use the term "trap" I do because of this constant question of "liberation" or "freedom" and what exactly that means. When energy is expressed as a form, is it actually "trapped"? Is this what needs to be vanquished in order to become enlightened?”
Wow. Big questions. I mean B I G. Or are they only small? IMHO, I am currently struggling with notions of liberation and freedom—I’ll try to keep you posted! 
“It seems to me a lot of doctrines try to constantly cleanse or negate or judge this natural arising and from observing this, I am just getting the message that the goal is to eliminate the arising of phenomenon. This however, does not satisfy me either. This seems to lead to an oblivion, where even energy itself turns in upon itself.”
Yeah, paths of asceticism—deny, negate, suppress. As opposed to paths of (?)—indulgence, greed, embrace. Kinda’ two-sided. To me it seems more about not being attached to arising or becoming phenomena. This seems like a negation (the “not”), but it’s kinda’ not-not being attached to arising phenomena either. So, not an elimination nor a multiplication, but a…?
Hmm, to me it’s kinda’ like an extension of the “negation of desire” when, say, casting a sigil (or doing other forms of magic/k): you want to rid yourself of the desire for the desired outcome, but in ridding yourself of this desire you don’t want to merely focus on the riddance—it amounts to the same thing. It seems sorta’ like living, as is said, “in the here and now,” but perhaps not even that.
I mean, in the arising or becoming of phenomena there seems, from a view, the meeting of two wave fronts: we can think (or imagine) one as the future and one as the past. To me, it is the immediate intersection of these waves that create the here and the now within which patterns of energy become manifest. So each pattern of energy (human, mouse, star, helium atom, etc.) has both a history and a past which serve to perpetuate that which comes before and that which will follow. However, no pattern of energy is entirely stable (no pattern is eternal = patterns in flux), so at some apex in time there will be a transformation (a catastrophe) which shifts the way one pattern of energy is related different patterns of energy. This will depend upon how a particular pattern is interacting within the larger patterns.
However, perhaps the trick, if one can be so profane as to call it such, is to learn to ignore or be impartial to time. It seems to me that in giving up the ride on the crest of the crashing waves, we might instead see how the wave crashes only into itself (a mobius strip)—there really is only “the sound of one hand clapping,” as some say. But again, neti-neti: “not this-not this” (or more commonly “not this-not that”).
However, and like I said, I’m still working on freedom and liberation—here and now—so take that as you will.
I do feel that oblivion isn’t meant to be satisfying, but it’s not meant not to be satisfying either. Does this appear as fence sitting to some? How does it appear to others? Neti-neti.
I also feel that ‘oblivion’ and other similar words (‘nothing’, ‘emptiness’, ‘everything’, ‘eternal’, ‘void’, ‘infinity’—for examples) have poor meanings or are generally misunderstood. May, you might recall {everything, nothing}, eh? And like I am saying over in the “Left and right,” thread, it seems to me unreasonable to equate across pairs of dichotomies. In other words, I see no real way to establish that oblivion is or isn’t satisfying nor that the opposite of oblivion is or isn’t satisfying. But don’t believe this. Neti-neti.
“Is this the ultimate liberation? Is it still possible to have energy ‘expressed’ or trapped into patterns and still consider that energy to be ‘liberated’?”
What does the Fool say when s/he steps off the cliff? Does s/he fall or does s/he fly?
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or does s/he sense bamboo? |
