Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
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Once you see impermanence, it’s not seeing, “Oh, it was like<br />
this before, and now it’s like this.” It’s seeing, “It was before,<br />
and now it’s gone.” Seeing that every experience is and then<br />
is gone, seeing that there actually is no “me” that’s<br />
changing. The person who existed when I was young, the<br />
person who will exist when I am old, all of these things are<br />
just moment-to-moment experience. There actually is no<br />
being. Life is much more fluid than we think, fluid in the<br />
sense of no static entity. For example, when you look at<br />
water, you think it’s a single thing – one body of water, but<br />
actually it’s many, many particles of water flowing together.<br />
anattasaññā<br />
When you see this in regards to your stream of conscious<br />
experience, then you see anatta. You see anatta based on<br />
impermanence and based on suffering, because if it’s<br />
suffering, then you can’t say it belongs to you. If it causes<br />
you suffering, you shouldn’t cling to it; if you cling to it, it<br />
only causes you more suffering. You can’t control it, and you<br />
know that you can’t control it because it causes you<br />
suffering. If you could control it, it wouldn’t cause you<br />
suffering.<br />
This is the theory, but the perception must arise in our<br />
practice. Impermanence, suffering and non-self are right<br />
here and right now. They’re in my voice. Notice when the<br />
voice stops, you’re still thinking about it. It’s still going<br />
through the mind, you can still remember the sound of it,<br />
and normally, because of that, we think of it as continuous.<br />
My voice is still there; it’s just sometimes noisy and<br />
sometimes quiet, but you think I’m talking, so when people<br />
make noise during the talk, you say, “Shh, the monk is<br />
talking now,” even though maybe the monk has stopped<br />
talking. Or someone interrupts you, and you say, “I’m in the<br />
middle of a talk. I’m giving a talk now.” We think like this.<br />
We think, “I’m talking to you now”, when actually there is<br />
only the experience of sound arising at the ear. Once I stop,<br />
the sound has stopped. Seeing this is our practice. When<br />
you see this, this is what leads you to understand non-self.<br />
People have a hard time understanding non-self. What does<br />
it mean? Does it mean that I have no soul? Does it mean that<br />
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