Freeing Ourselves From Notions, Touching Nirvana

This is the third Dharma talk offered by Thay in the Body and Mind Are One Retreat, given at the YMCA of the Rockies, Estes Park, Colorado, on Monday, August 22nd, 2011. Thay shares with us the 4th mantra - "Darling, I suffer and I want you to know. I'm doing the best I can. Please help." We don't let others know about our suffering, or let them help us, because of our pride, because of our anger. A practitioner knows that when anger arises they should take good care of themselves and their anger with mindful breathing until their anger calms and they can see into the wrong perception behind their anger. Thay then shares about the 11th and 12th exercises of mindful breathing - 11) concentrating the mind and 12) liberating the mind. There are many objects of concentration but three are found throughout Buddhism - emptiness (sunyata), signlessness (animitta), and aimlessness (apranihita). These are also called the three doors of liberation. In the Sutra on Mindful Breathing, we are given four other objects of concentration - impermanence, non-craving, cessation, and letting go. We use these concentrations to free ourselves from the notions of being and non-being, birth and death, coming and going, sameness and otherness, and the four notions of self, man/human, living beings, and lifespan that the Diamond Sutra recommends that we remove. Freeing ourselves from these notions we are able to touch reality, to touch nirvana and realize our true nature - the nature of no-birth and no-death.