Asked about the issue of desire he replies that holding is not the same as grasping. I've read this many times and admitted to him that I still don't get it. His illustration however does give a clear way of seeing the difference: that to hold something and to grip it are quite different activities.
From this he distinguished Desire from Thirst (Tanha). Desire is by itself innocuous. It is when the Ego becomes involved that it become "me desiring" and "me having" and "me not-having". This is when desire becomes Tanha.
The issue of Ego raised its head again and again. It is very clear to me now that indeed this is the central issue. He confirmed the idea that when we are no longer viewing things through ego then no-one gains and no-one loses: this is the key to liberation.
He introduced another idea from Vipassana meditation. When we experience something normally we get involved with that thing directly - this is happening (to me). He suggested tempering this response with a step back so that we identify not with the experience directly but with somebody who has started having the experience and will ride through the experience and see the experience decay - this gives us a greater firmness in the face of disturbances. This way we get the space and freedom from experience needed to develop liberation.
It is good to experience the "intensification" of taking precepts. I questioned this because I feel enormous pressure when I have taken precepts.
He very graciously confirmed that I was on the right track so that was encouraging. You're in the desert stage to borrow from Christianity he said. Apparently my 40days will end at some stage but I need to continue and double efforts.
The issue of women was the other big discussion. Unwise life is suffering he reiterated although most cannot face this fact of life. Even he admitted that he never suspected the nature of truth - it really is quite different from what we are brought up to believe. Furnished with the "wrong" ideas we make the wrong decisions in life and so we suffer.
I'm almost there on this subject. He used exactly the words I have used in this blog - that of coming of the addictions and drugs. The rational mind can easily see that physical and even emotional and spiritual fixation on a "sexual being" is a myth yet itis extremely habitual and intoxicating. Beliefs like "mutuality", "companionship" and "love" only help to obfuscate what is in reality only a heady mix of drugs and illusions.
Studying Romeo and Juliet for GCSE tutoring I have been brought into the centre of the debate on whether it is a tragedy or not. I immediately side with the traditional view and even see the story of "my muse" in this because there is the belief that we were ment to be together - even her sister subscribes to this view. Yet some argue that the story is simply an unfortunate sequence of events with no destiny or inevitability. I still wonder how I knew that things with "my muse" were going to end in tragedy the moment I saw her - like I was reliving something from the past. I guess maybe we relive lives again and again until we take the choice which leads out of the bottle. Also knowing that she was in mortal danger I now know is not so rare - a girl at old work knew a friend had a suspect heart attack last week and was trying to get in contact with him through me: such psychic connections are common and don't mean a lot in reality.
So the key is this issue of ego. If I'm honest I can see this now. The suffering in "my muse" was the belief that "I deserved her" and worse that "other didn't" (ok so they cheated on her and treated her with little respect but this casualness is what she actually wanted!) - that is not the problem : the problem is "my" ego and the sense that there was substance to all this beyond the sequence of events and phenomena that I experienced. Desires I had and have, but whether these get satisfied has no bearing on reality. It is not like "loving" her was like food or water. The venerable confirms this obvious truth. What hurts and what sends people to their graves in absurd myths like portrayed in a "Thousand and One Nights" is Ego and the "grasping" so hard that we end up exhaused and unable to live. The holding and the not-holding are harmless.
This links now with a discussion with another very wise venerable years ago. I questioned the difference between having and not-having and what "real" difference there was. There is no element or substance called having or not-having so what is the real difference? Can we tell what we have and what we don't have by any tests or experimentation? No it is simply an idea and a belief. The venerable was extremely impressed by the questioning but what he didn't know was that I was gonna have to struggle with the practice of the theory for so long... and that because of the delusions of drugs and habitual emotions and thoughts that surround the issue of possessing a partner.
The difference between having and not-having is simply ego. It is not a real material thing at all. Those who think they have a lot are the same as those who think they have nothing - it is only the fairy-tale that they are thinking that makes them different. This is what it is so tragic to see a person defending "their" property with their life and another trying to take someones property with their "life" - they can only clash horns because the other person has horns to clash - without their mutual relationship and behaviour there is no fight and no struggle.
This is the conditional nature of the world; that we are each caught up in "dramas" (to use the monastics word) that bring people together in a million different stories and roles and which create the bussle and turmoil of the world when at root there is really very few things to do and to spend time on.
Why are we so busy? we speculated that it was to escape the suffering of the last cycle of errors. This is how it perpetuates. Sooner of later we must just stop and takle stock of the situation and plot a new and orrect path. So will I? He recommends a 7day retreat... am I ready? That has been the question since the start!
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