In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;The Three Characteristics of Conditioned Existenceand#8221; Sangharakshita illustrates how perfect vision can arise, and concludes by showing how Buddhists have communicated their vision of reality in conceptual and imaginative terms.
FBA Dharmabyte from the full talk, and#8220;The Nature of Existence: Right Understanding,and#8221; given in 1968 as part of the series and#8220;The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path.and#8221;
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] Then secondly, conceptually speaking, perfect vision is often explained in terms of the three characteristics of all conditioned existence. And these are that conditioned existence is suffering, that it is impermanent, and that it is devoid of true selfhood. Perhaps I should say about a few words about each of these in terms. Poorly speaking, there are three kinds of suffering according to Buddhism. There's what we may describe as actual suffering, as when you have a toothache or you cut your finger and so on. There's potential suffering as when you possess something, you enjoy possessing it, but you can't lose it. If you lose it, there's suffering. So even though you enjoy it at present, potentially it is suffering in the sense that you may lose it one day or must lose it one day. And then there's what we may call essential or metaphysical suffering. The fact that nothing mundane, nothing earthly, nothing conditioned can give full or final satisfaction to the human heart or the human spirit, which can be satisfied ultimately only by the unconditioned, only by truth itself. And everything short of that therefore in a sense is the source of at least a very subtle kind of suffering. So this is the truth of suffering. Which means we may say in short that one will never be truly happy until one is enlightened. Everything falls short of that. And then impermanence, everything conditioned thing is impermanent. We know that only too well. Every day, every hour, every minute almost, we're made conscious. We're made aware of the fact that nothing lasts, nothing stays. Everything flows on. Nothing remains the same even for two consecutive seconds. We're growing all all the time, things are wearing out all the time. We have to repair our houses every now and then. Everything is changing, everything is fading, nothing lost, nothing is stable. We like to think it is. We like to think we're settled somewhere forever as it were. We like to think that we've got something as it were forever. But this forever that we're so fond of thinking of this, maybe for a few hours, it may be for a few days, a few years. It may be only for a few minutes. So this is one very important aspect of perfect vision as applied to mundane things, seeing clearly, seeing steadily. That everything is impermanent, everything transitory, that you can't cling onto anything for very long. The best for a little while, but in the end you have to relinquish it. And then finally, that conditioned existence is devoid of true selfhood. This is a rather difficult or rather abstruse aspect of perfect vision. It needs a whole lecture to itself, even a whole series of lectures. But we can only say at this stage, in the few minutes available to us, that nowhere in conditioned existence, and in ourselves as conditioned, do we find true being, true individuality, do we find reality of any sort? If we just turn our gaze even on ourselves, we become aware very often how empty, how unreal, how hollow we are. Very often we feel our thoughts are not real thoughts, our feelings are not real feelings, our emotions are not real emotions. We don't feel real ourselves, we don't feel genuine ourselves, we don't feel authentic ourselves. And we won't find genuine or authenticity or true selfhood on the level of the mundane at all, but only on the level of what we may call spiritual, or what we may call the unconditioned reality. So these three characteristics, seeing conditioned existence in these three ways, this is another aspect of perfect vision, another doctrinal category, giving conceptual expression to our experience of perfect vision. And thirdly and lastly, a vision we may say of karma and rebirth. This is presented very vividly sometimes almost pictorially in the Buddhist scriptures. When it's said, for instance, that the Buddha and other enlightened beings, on the night of their enlightenment, they saw passing before their eyes as it were a great panorama of birth and death and rebirth, not only of themselves. But of other living beings, in fact of all living beings and how they traced, how they tracked, life after life, the whole process of karma, how this action led to that result, and that action led to another kind of result, they saw it as it were clearly before their eyes. So this is another aspect of perfect vision. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] You [BLANK_AUDIO]
