🟧 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140 (Week of May 9, 2021)

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sunnat
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140

Post by sunnat »

'activating anicca' : If you have the experience it seems pretty clear. If you don't, it seems like an odd thing to say. Firstly, as Lord Buddhas last words indicate, training to be aware of anicca, or feeling the continual decomposition of all composed things, is paramount. When one experiences the total dissolution of the mind body phenomenon (called bhanga) one becomes truly aware of realities otherwise only dimly imagined, if conceived of at all.


As the ordinary life is (in order to maintain a semblance of an unchanging self) akin to constantly shoring up a dam that threatens to overflow, there comes a time, for the practicing meditator, when that wrong effort is abandoned and the dam starts to crumble, the water starts to flow and there is the stream and that is the activation of anicca, one simply starts to watch the flux of anicca rather than ignorantly interfering with it. That then is 'walking the path'. Just continuously observing anicca, and so the accumulated kamma resultants rise and pass away for good instead of being reacted to, and thus replanted, perpetuating the becoming.


And so the dhatu (element) vi bhanga (breaking, dividing, dissolving) sutta is about this stream entry. As such, mn148 is important in understanding that without abandoning the delight in pleasant feelings, abandoning the aversion to unpleasant feelings and abandoning the ignorance of neutral feeling, the reaching of true knowledge, wisdom, is impossible. It is simply the point on the wheel of becoming where one can stop and step off it and reach the goal.
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140

Post by pegembara »

SDC wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 6:13 pm
pegembara wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 3:46 pm
Not being born, how could he age? Not ageing, how could he die? Not dying, how could he be shaken? Not being shaken, why should he yearn?
This appears to show the awakening from the illusion of existence. There never was a birth, so how could there be aging and death?
Or perhaps the nature of the body has been thoroughly penetrated and although that body was born it was never “I” in the first place? No matter what happens to it, it isn’t happening to me.
That is one way of seeing.
Another is - Which part of the body was "born" first? The heart? Brain? Gut? Eyes? Or is it just the cells that were born first rather than the whole "body" all at once?

If there is no "body" in the ultimate sense, how can one talk about birth?
The anatta or empty nature of "things".

The ingenuity of analysis of the elements, aggregates, sense bases etc is to break up the illusion of a compact. "Things" are not things.
Without self or without an atta.
And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter: This is called right speech.
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Sam Vara
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140

Post by Sam Vara »

sunnat wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 11:45 pm 'activating anicca' : If you have the experience it seems pretty clear. If you don't, it seems like an odd thing to say. Firstly, as Lord Buddhas last words indicate, training to be aware of anicca, or feeling the continual decomposition of all composed things, is paramount. When one experiences the total dissolution of the mind body phenomenon (called bhanga) one becomes truly aware of realities otherwise only dimly imagined, if conceived of at all.
[....]And so the dhatu (element) vi bhanga (breaking, dividing, dissolving) sutta is about this stream entry.
Vibhanga seems to mean a mental process - something akin to analysis, or "breaking down" of a concept - as much as the experience of something actually breaking up into components. I don't deny for a second that things (our bodies, possessions, social arrangements, etc.) do dissolve, but is that what this sutta is about?

In particular, space (ākāso) is counted as an element here. How does this dissolve or decompose? The analysis of space seems to be the recognition that internal space (body cavities, etc.) are nothing special because they are just space element. The sutta doesn't say how this recognition takes place, but it seems to be an appreciation of the fact that space is unified, one thing, a form of the mind which pervades all possible experience, and that is the sense in which it is an element (i.e. not yielding to further analysis; it just is what it is, and the parts of space are just parts of the same thing). The meditator develops dispassion towards space, but it is difficult to see how s/he might experience that space actually decompose. The dissolution of such a space could only be the retrograde step of re-establishing barriers within it, places, the sense that it is merely the gaps between real and discrete objects.
sunnat
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140

Post by sunnat »

Yes, thank you. Nevertheless whatever space there is is constantly changing, as is the interface between various body parts.. 'and whatever else internally' and spaces. Is space composed or is it between composed things? I think I said all composed things decompose.
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140

Post by Sam Vara »

sunnat wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:27 am Yes, thank you. Nevertheless whatever space there is is constantly changing, as is the interface between various body parts.. 'and whatever else internally' and spaces. Is space composed or is it between composed things? I think I said all composed things decompose.
I think the point here is that space is an element precisely because it does not change. One might think, if space is "clung to", that there are separate bits of space which can change relative to one another. But having analysed it (vibhajati), we know
Now both the internal space element and the external space element are simply space element.
Without clinging, there is no "internal" or "external". Space is neither composed, nor merely between composed things. It extends through those composed things as well as between them, and is the precondition for their having extension (i.e. being any size or shape imaginable) and their being separate objects. The decomposition of things in space affects space not at all, which is why it is elemental.
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140 (Week of May 9, 2021)

Post by asahi »

Question about element , says if water is the basic element , that it cannot breakdown further to smaller part , is this the meaning ? Why not say feeling also an element ? Or perception ? :shrug:


:thanks:
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SDC
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140 (Week of May 9, 2021)

Post by SDC »

asahi wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 10:30 am Question about element , says if water is the basic element , that it cannot breakdown further to smaller part , is this the meaning ? Why not say feeling also an element ? Or perception ? :shrug:


:thanks:
There are descriptions of the five aggregates (SN 22.3), the six sense base (SN 14.1), form/formless/cessation (Iti 51), light/beauty/dimension of infinite space/dimension of infinite consciousness/nothingness/dimension of neither perception nor non-perception/cessation of perception and feeling (SN 14.11), initiative/persistence/exertion/strength/endurance/energy (AN 3.68), and nibbana (Iti 44), all in terms of elements. The four mahābhūta (great elements) - earth, water, fire, air - are described as rūpa (form), and when listed as six elements, include space and consciousness.

I’m not sure these would be considered smaller parts, just different aspects.
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140 (Week of May 9, 2021)

Post by asahi »

SDC wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 2:07 pm
There are descriptions of the five aggregates, six sense base, three as form/formless/cessation, seven as light/beauty/dimension of infinite space/dimension of infinite consciousness/nothingness/dimension of neither perception nor non-perception/cessation of perception and feeling, and nibbana, all in terms of elements. The four mahābhūta (great elements) - earth, water, fire, air - are described as rūpa (form), and when listed as six elements, include space and consciousness.

I’m not sure these would be considered smaller parts, just different aspects.
The highlighted part are 8 not 7 ?

Actually , rains is water element but it consist of earth element also .
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SDC
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Re: 📍 Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta MN 140 (Week of May 9, 2021)

Post by SDC »

asahi wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 2:23 pm
SDC wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 2:07 pm
There are descriptions of the five aggregates, six sense base, three as form/formless/cessation, seven as light/beauty/dimension of infinite space/dimension of infinite consciousness/nothingness/dimension of neither perception nor non-perception/cessation of perception and feeling, and nibbana, all in terms of elements. The four mahābhūta (great elements) - earth, water, fire, air - are described as rūpa (form), and when listed as six elements, include space and consciousness.

I’m not sure these would be considered smaller parts, just different aspects.
The highlighted part are 8 not 7 ?

Actually , rains is water element but it consist of earth element also .
See my edit, nibbana on its own
“Life is swept along, short is the life span; no shelters exist for one who has reached old age. Seeing clearly this danger in death, a seeker of peace should drop the world’s bait.” SN 1.3
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