We’ve moved into the territory of the creative and reactive mind, of the spiral path and samsara, and the pivotal role of feeling in the nidana chain. Here’s Dhivan going into this and translating all this lingo into everyday English.
And here’s a pic of the shrine with ‘robe and bowl’. Symbolic of a set of robes and begging bowl, but actually a blanket and a singing bowl. Things are often not what they seem.
On the first day of the This Being That Becomes retreat, Dhivan talks about the Buddha’s general formulation of conditionality, about the Four Noble Truths and about the three kinds of dukkha. The Buddha’s words to Ananda: ‘This dependent arising is deep and profound. It is from not understanding and penetrating this Dharma that people have become like a tangle of string covered in mould and matted like grass, unable to escape from samsara with its miseries, disasters and bad...
A shrine emerged based on the conditions on this retreat: Nayaka’s vison of a bowl and a robe, Dhivan and I talking about rupas resembling real human beings that inspire both of us, Khemaka and Carole setting out to make it happen, Dhivan’s trip to New Zealand to lead study where he received a set of visual images representing the nidana chain. All must have started though, with the Buddha being born,...
