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Teacher: Rodney Smith
Date: 2013-02-19
Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center
Series
- Dependent Origination 2013-01-22
Description
As we move through the links of Dependent Origination, one of the key areas for exploration are the linkages of craving, clinging, and becoming. What starts out as a simple feeling of pleasantness suddenly erupts into a needy and tumultuous sense-of-self. Dependent Origination explains the causal factors and conditions that led to full addiction and the reaction that followed. D.O. shows us how we carry over the remembrance of previous encounters that sets us up for our current display. Once the present is colored with the past, we carry the momentum of the past into that current relationship. An object is no longer seen for what it is (always neutral) but for what it has become through memory. We then chase after our memory like a cat would chase his tail, believing that the object is the same as the memory.
Homework
Begin noticing the pain that follows the pursuit of pleasure, and watch the psychic shift from clinging to craving. Craving is an addiction and is more mentally forceful and emotionally volatile than clinging. Notice how addiction to pleasure can lead to neediness, dependency, and the loss of vitality. See the value you get from an addiction and the limitation it has on your life. Can you notice the discontentment behind the pursuit? Are you reaching for pleasure to distance yourself from a painful state of mind? Are you looking out there so you won’t have to feel in here? Desire (craving) is sustained by giving something exaggerated significance. Notice how you become the person who is needy when the pleasant object moves from craving to clinging. Drop the charged thinking and just look at the desired object directly. Is the significance you are giving this object coming from the object itself?
Video
Link to view on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/60512336
TalkID=979 SeriesID=47
