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310 pages

English

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This remarkable book proves to be a wonderfully skilled guide in exploring the understanding of emptiness as the key insight in transforming our lives. Beginning by laying the foundation of the basic teachings, he explains how these teachings can be put into practice as 'ways of looking', which gradually unfold deeper understandings, greater freedom, and, in turn, more powerful ways of looking. This unique conception of insight as being ways of looking is fundamental to the whole approach, and it makes available profound skilful means to explore even further depths of Dharma wisdom.

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Buddhism

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780992848927
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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SEEING THAT FREES
Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising
ROB BURBEA
Copyright 2014 Rob Burbea
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Hermes Am ra Publications Gaia House West Ogwell Devon TQ12 6EW
publishing@hermesamara.com

ISBN: 978 0992848 927

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publishers wish to thank all those anonymous donors whose kind and generous financial assistance has supported the publication of this book
Contents
Foreword, by Joseph Goldstein
Abbreviations
Preface
Part One: Orientations
1 The Path of Emptiness is a Journey of Insight
2 Emptiness, Fabrication, and Dependent Arising
3 All is Void! - Initial Reactions, and Responses
Part Two: Tools and Provisions
4 The Cultivation of Insight
5 Sam dhi and its Place in Insight Practice
Part Three: Setting Out
6 Emptiness that s Easy to See
7 An Understanding of Mindfulness
8 Eyes Wide Open: Seeing Causes and Conditions
9 Stories, Personalities, Liberations
10 Dependent Origination (1)
Part Four: On Deepening Roads
11 The Experience of Self Beyond Personality
12 Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (1) - Anicca
13 Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (2) - Dukkha
14 Three More Liberating Ways of Looking: (3) - Anatt
15 Emptiness and Awareness (1)
Part Five: Of Highways and Byways
16 The Relationship with Concepts in Meditation
17 The Impossible Self
18 The Dependent Arising of Dualities
Part Six: Radical Discoveries
19 The Fading of Perception
20 Love, Emptiness, and the Healing of the Heart
21 Buildings and their Building Blocks, Deconstructed
Part Seven: Further Adventures, Further Findings
22 No Thing
23 The Nature of Walking
24 Emptiness Views and the Sustenance of Love
Part Eight: No Traveller, No Journey - The Nature of Mind, and of Time
25 Emptiness and Awareness (2)
26 About Time
27 Dependent Origination (2)
28 Dependent Cessation - The Unfabricated, The Deathless
Part Nine: Like a Dream, Like a Magician s Illusion...
29 Beyond the Beyond
30 Notions of the Ultimate
31 An Empowerment of Views
A Word of Gratitude
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
T he experience of emptiness is one of the most puzzling aspects of the Buddha s teaching. While we can intuitively understand and experience, at least to some extent, the truths of impermanence and unreliability, it may be difficult to relate to the term emptiness . In fact, in English, the word is not all that appealing. We may think of emptiness as a grey vacuity or as some state of deprivation. Yet, in the Buddha s teaching of liberation, of freedom from all suffering and distress, the realization of emptiness plays a central role.
Rob Burbea, in this remarkable book, Seeing That Frees , proves to be a wonderfully skilled guide in exploring the understanding of emptiness as the key insight in transforming our lives. This is not an easy journey. Beginning by laying the foundation of the basic teachings, he explains how these teachings can be put into practice as ways of looking that free and that gradually unfold deeper understandings, and so, in turn, more powerful ways of looking and even greater freedom. This unique conception of insight as being liberating ways of looking is fundamental to the whole approach, and it makes available profound skilful means to explore even further depths of Dharma wisdom.
Rob is like a scout who has gone ahead and explored the terrain, coming back to point out the implications of what we have been seeing, and then enticing us onwards. He shows how almost all of the Buddha s teachings can lead us towards understanding the fabrication, mutual interdependence, and, thus, the emptiness of all phenomena. And that it is this understanding of emptiness that frees the mind.
Following the thread of this understanding leads to great flexibility in how we view things, and it is this very flexibility that informs the entire approach to insight that is offered here. Many times throughout Seeing That Frees we discover how different and often opposing notions can be integrated into our practice. Instead of being caught up in a thicket of metaphysical views and opinions, the basic criterion here is, Does it help to free the mind?
Such discernment and understanding make possible a greater breadth in our approach to practice, which is illustrated in many ways throughout the book. For example, different traditions often hold quite different views regarding the place of analytical investigation and thought on the path: for some, they are an indispensable part of our journey; for others, they are seen merely as an obstacle. Rob very skilfully demonstrates the role that each of these perspectives can play as we deepen our practice.
Yet Seeing That Frees is much more than merely an attempt to form an approach that is broad and inclusive. Consistently, the limitations in and assumptions behind each view being considered are pointed out, and, each time, understandings that transcend that particular view are explored. Rob shows how so many of the insights that we might at first consider ultimately true are still only provisional, and yet he also shows how these very provisional perspectives can be used as vital stepping-stones towards a deeper and more complete understanding.
Another example of this progressive questioning and unfolding involves the various contrasting views of different traditions regarding the nature of awareness itself: Is awareness momentary? Is it a field? Is it the ground of Being? Rob has done a masterful job of highlighting how each particular view can help us see experience from a different perspective, and how each one furthers our ability to let go. But rather than simply resting in this appreciation of what each perspective offers, he goes on to demonstrate the conditional, fabricated nature of even the most sublime awareness, and then shows the emptiness of fabrication itself. In realizing emptiness, there is no place at all to take a stand; indeed, no place, and no one who stands.
It is rare to find a book that explores so deeply the philosophical underpinnings of awakening at the same time as offering the practical means to realize it. How does one talk about what is beyond mind, beyond concepts, beyond time? What does it mean to say that even emptiness is empty? Seeing That Frees does not shy away from these most difficult tasks of describing the un-describable. Although these descriptions could so easily become an exercise in abstraction, because this book is so rooted in experience, exploring with great subtlety and depth how we can put insights into emptiness into practice, it brings to life what Rob calls the awe-inspiring depth of mystery . This great book can inspire us to the highest goals of spiritual awakening.

Joseph Goldstein
Barre, Massachusetts
January, 2014
Abbreviations
AN
A ṅ guttara Nik ya
BCA
Bodhicary vat ra ( ntideva)
DN
D gha Nik ya
Dhp
Dhammapada
Iti
Itivuttaka
MA
Madhyamak la ṃ k ra ( ntarak ṣ ita)
MAV
Madhyamak vat ra (Chandrak rti)
MMK
M lamadhyamakak rik (N g rjuna)
MN
Majjhima Nik ya
SN
Sa ṃ yutta Nik ya
Sn
Sutta Nip ta
Skt.
Sanskrit language
Ud
Ud na
Preface
C uriosity and desire can be the most precious forces. For anyone curious about the Buddhist teachings on the nature of things and desiring to take their meditative practice and understanding deeper, my sincere hope is that this book will be a helpful resource. Its subjects - emptiness and dependent origination - are immensely rich and may be explored in a variety of ways. While purely scholastic approaches have their place and can have great value, it is primarily through practice that liberating insights are born and empowered. It is also mainly through practice that the fullness of the intimate connection between emptiness and dependent arising is understood. Guides to exploring the subtleties and nuances of practice and of insight as they deepen may therefore offer something useful.
This book is, first and foremost then, a kind of meditation manual - one that pursues into great depth a fundamental philosophical inquiry. It is a book about practice, and about the profoundly freeing insights that anyone who practises can discover and unfold for themselves firsthand. Although presupposing some experience in meditation, and particularly in mindfulness and insight meditation, there is an attempt to explain things - the teachings, most of the relevant terms, and the practices - starting from first principles.
The way of approaching emptiness presented here is based on what I have found helpful in my own years of practising with these subjects and also in teaching students both on and off retreat. Other ways of ordering the material would certainly have been possible and in some cases might have seemed simpler from a logical point of view. However, experience with the different responses of students to such teachings, the various kinds of needs that arise in the course of deepening practice, and the ways in which their insight typically tends to mature leads me to organize things in a slightly different fashion - in a structure that follows more the actual unfolding and refining of insight, and that hopefully better serves a practitioner as (s)he travels this path.
On the whole, teachings and