Literature on ending Samsara on micro scale

score:2

Accepted answer

First of all, let me confirm that your perspective is valid. Most of my teachers held similar views. For example, my Zen Master used to say that rebirth occurs every second. My Tibetan Buddhism teacher said that rebirth in the higher worlds occurs when we enter Jhanas, and that an entire realm is created right at that moment - just like you said. At least two other teachers said things that amounted to the same idea: the world is a hallucination being constructed by our mind and in order to exit samsara we must stop constructing it. I remember one teacher saying the biggest challenge with students was to achieve what he called "immediacy", getting them shift attention to their mind on the moment-by-moment scale.

(I used to think that this sort of explanation was an upaya, a clever trick designed to lead people to psychological realizations. However, the further I go, the more I see for myself that this "reality is a construct" explanation is not a metaphor but is true in the literal sense. In my recent encounters I was demonstrated some very advanced techniques that put some strain on my structure of reality, to put it mildly.

Whether this world is real and dharma is ethical and psychological, or this world is a dream we dream and dharma is literal, the moment-by-moment phenomenological perspective remains valid. This is what Buddha called "the safe bet" - his teaching remains an invariant that is correct regardless of the exact interpretation.)

There is not much literature on the topic however. The closest I've seen are the works by Buddhadāsa, a Thai Theravada reformist. He held that "dhamma is akaliko" (timeless) means it plays out on moment-by-moment scale. He insisted on phenomenological explanation of rebirth. Among his books there is a rather detailed analysis of Twelve Nidanas done from this phenomenological perspective.

More post

Search Posts

Related post