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Sumedho 148
Dependent Origination V
Letting go of desire
The arising of dukkha is due to the grasping of desires. The insight is that there is this origin of arising and that desire should be let go of. This is the Second Noble Truth: it is the insight knowledge of letting go.
Letting go is not a getting rid of or putting down with any aversion. Letting go means to be able to be with what is displeasing without dwelling in aversion – because aversion is an attachment. Fear, aversion – all this is grasping and clinging. Dispassion is acceptance and awareness of things as they are, letting go of the aversion to what is ugly or unpleasant.
Feeling (vedana) entails the dualism of the pleasant, the painful and the neutral; this applies to all the senses – taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell and thought. In mindfulness then, we are opening our mind to this, to the whole of life, which includes the beautiful, the ugly, the pleasing, the painful and the neutral. So in our reflection on the paticcasamutpada we see that it is connected to the Second Noble Truth.
The sequence of tanha-upadana-bhava is most helpful of investigating grasping. Grasping with aversion is pushing away; running away is upadana, trying to get hold of the beautiful, and possess it and keep it, seeking after the desirable, trying to get rid of the undesirable.
The more we contemplate upadana, the more insight arises: desire should be let go of. In the Second Noble Truth it is explained that suffering arises, it should be let go of, and then, through the practice of letting go and the understanding of what letting go is, we have the third insight into the Noble Truth: desire has been let go of – we actually know letting go.
In discussing the Second Noble Truth, there are the statements: There is the origin of suffering; it should be let go of; it has been let go of. And that is what practice is all about. That applies to each of the Noble Truths: there is the statement, what to do, then the result of that.
The First Noble Truth: there is suffering, it should be understood, it has been understood.
The Second Noble Truth: there is the origin of suffering, which is grasping of desire; it should be let go of; it has been let go of.
The Third Noble Truth: there is the cessation, nirodha; it should be realized; it has been realized.
The Fourth Noble Truth, the Path: there is the eightfold path, the way out of suffering, it should be developed, it has been developed.
This is insight knowledge…
154
Our practice is one of realizing cessation. That is when we talk about emptiness: we realize the empty mind, where there is no self. There is no sense of the mind being anybody. When there is no self, there is peace. Where there is me and mine, then there is no peace.
I observe that when there is no self, no attachment, then the way of relating to others is through metta (kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy), upekkha (serenity) – the brahma-viharas.
Ajahn Sumedho
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