In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, we enter into the quiet, reflective world of Dhammadassin as listen to a single track titled The Unity of View, Meditation andamp; Action from the beautiful talk titled: Standing on Emptiness and#8211; a preview to Saturdayand#8217;s full podcast.
Talk given at the Triratna Buddhist Order women’s national weekend, August 2004
[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] And it's a teaching about totality, and in that characteristics of Tibetan way, it demands total commitment, total mobilization of our energies, terrific determination and watchfulness, a strength of receptivity and of applied will. In this little phrase, this little verse from the Kadampa Masters really said that to me, "I hold the spear of mindfulness at the gate of the mind, and when the emotions threaten, I too will threaten them. When they relax their grip, only then will I relax mine." So that's one for the warrior queens of mindfulness. We've got to get our inspiration from somewhere, and our Lord of the Rings is finished. So there's this constant combination of the three. But they also get talked of as a unification or becoming a unified sort of meeting point of view, meditation and action, which pattern of some of our particularly talked about, showing the view and conduct as a unity. So you get these phrases about descending with the view while ascending with the conduct. Or in terms of the Tibetan proverb, "As we mature, the sky comes closer to the air." But I've been trying to think about, just in a way have I relate to that, this descending with the view and ascending with the conduct. And I think the closest I've come to it as a sense of this is in two short dreams I had quite a few years ago, so I thought I'd just tell you then. So in the first one, I was lying on the ground and staked at my feet. There's this sky blue cloth with me lying on the ground. Staked at my feet is this cloth which is soaring over me like that. Very close. Flying over me, this sensual, pure, clean, rippling, silken cloth, moving, always in motion. Deeply affecting and sort of kinesthetic without me ever actually touching it. It's so close, it's showing me something without me grasping at it or even wanting to touch it in the sense of all my inner senses of vital Hawaiian, vital Hawaiian. And then not long after that, I had another dream about its sky blue cloth. But this time I had to wash it, and I had to wash it not in water but in the air. I had to dig a hole with my hands in this red air, no water, and dig a hole with my hands. And I had to rub the cloth in this air back and forth, back and forth. And as it got streaked with the ochre, my heart sort of expanded its joy and this sense that this was the cloth, this was it coming clean, it was coming clean. As it got more and more streaked. So I wanted to mention these dreams because somehow they evoke in me something of a feeling for view. Something about a sort of deeper alignment and also a unification somehow, kind of a unification, whether it's sky and earth or sort of inner senses coming together and being experienced, something like that. But also to sort of say something about view being not just heady. It's not just about thinking somehow, although I reckon thinking gets a bad name actually. I'm not sure we do enough of it. According to Edward the Bonable, thinking is exploring experience to a purpose. And if we don't do that we're sunk, so let's not get too polarized with thinking somehow. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [Music] [Music] You
