The Mirror Of Insight
The Mirror of Insight
THE BUDDHA AS STRATEGIST
by
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Copyright
copyright 2020 ṭhānissaro bhikkhu
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities.
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Metta Forest Monastery
Valley Center, CA 92082-1409
U.S.A.
additional resources
More Dhamma talks, books and translations by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu are available to download in digital audio and various ebook formats at dhammatalks.org.
printed copy
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CONTENTS
- Quotation
- Introduction
- 1 | Two Truths?
- 2 | Two Dilemmas
- 3 | The Varieties of Fabricated Experience
- 4 | The Mirror of Insight
Quotation
A meditator in Singapore once wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang, describing how he applied the Buddha’s teachings to everyday life: Whatever his mind focused on, he would try to see it as inconstant, stressful, and not-self. Ajaan Fuang had me write a letter in response, saying, “Do things ever say that they’re inconstant, stressful, and not-self? They never say it, so don’t go faulting them that way. Focus on what labels them, for that’s where the fault lies.” — “Awareness Itself”
Introduction
This essay on the Buddha’s strategies for gaining liberating insight falls into four parts. The first part calls into question an old interpretation of the Buddha as strategist: the theory, first fully formulated in the Commentary many centuries after the Buddha, that the Buddha taught two levels of truth, ultimate and conventional. The last three parts offer an alternative interpretation that seems more in line with the portrait of the Buddha as meditator and teacher as presented in the oldest extant record of his teachings: the Pali suttas, or discourses. The first part is by far the most technical section of the essay. Because of that, and because its purpose is simply to clear the ground for the remaining parts, if you are unfamiliar with the two-truth theory, you may want to skip it entirely and go straight to part 2. Then, if you are interested, you may return to part 1 at a later time. But if you’re already familiar with the two-truth theory, I ask that you put up with the technicalities so that you can read the remaining parts with fresh eyes.
