emptyuniverse

Letting Go: The Truth of the Path (Magga Sacca)

The Buddha's message is that if we can see the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and empty nature of this dependently arisen conditioned situation, then we can patiently begin to let go of the craving and grasping that cause endless frustration due to the fact that the objects of that grasping are always slipping through our fingers. As he says in the Na Tumhaka Sutta (SN 35.101):

Whatever is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness & benefit. And what is not yours?

The eye is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness & benefit. Forms are not yours... Eye-consciousness is not yours... Eye-contact is not yours... Whatever arises in dependence on eye-contact, experienced either as pleasure, as pain, or as neither-pleasure-nor-pain, that too is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness & benefit.

The ear is not yours: let go of it...
The nose is not yours: let go of it...
The tongue is not yours: let go of it...
The body is not yours: let go of it...

The intellect is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness & benefit. Ideas are not yours... Intellect-consciousness is not yours... Intellect-contact is not yours... Whatever arises in dependence on intellect-contact, experienced either as pleasure, as pain, or as neither-pleasure-nor-pain, that too is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness & benefit.

The Buddha's message is that no phenomenon (dhamma): no thought, no craving, no philosophy, nothing at all, not even our most cherished notion of selfhood should be grasped at or clung to. And how exactly are we supposed to let go? By skillfully employing the three path aggregations of ethical conduct (sila), meditation (samadhi), and discernment (panna).

Ethical conduct and meditation calm and stabilize the conditioned mind so that discernment can begin to uproot the ignorant identification with both the conditioned body and mind which is the root cause of all needless suffering. Not identifying with conditioned phenomena, and thereby breaking these key links in the chain of dependent origination (ignorant identification, verbal and mental fabrication, craving) constitutes the truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.

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