To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Saturday, February 29, 2020

The inner vertigo

I sit down in a room, quiet and half dark and watch the act of breathing - the bodily sensation of air touching the tip of the nose: I experience sensing the bodily sensation at an interval of space. I can place the bodily sensation in space as sensed from the direction in which I am. But when I follow that direction back and look for the "I", then I am no longer there, but in another place, I have no place in space. I see and sense space and the "things" in it from a place where I am not. Space is complete without "I" and there is no room for "I" in space at all. This I call the inner vertigo.

Nanamoli Thera

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