Thank you for your kind words of support and advice. Thank you Lal. Thank you Yash RS. Thank you Waisaka. Thank you dosakkhayo, pathfinder, taryal, Dawson, jittananto. Thank you Sammasambodhi Gami.
About Aveccapasada in the Buddha: I made that comment about avecca pasada that Sammasambodhi Gami refers to several years ago. Since then I have learned from Waharaka Thero that etymologically the term means: ava – to dispel, reject, abandon; + icca – the desire for the attractive, the captivating (and deceiving) things in the world; in short, the baits of sansara, At the time I took it only for ‘unwavering confidence’, as most translations (not erroneously) have it. So now I understand: ‘through having rightly seen for myself the validity of the Buddha’s teaching, the desire (icca) for worldly things is gone (ava). Therefrom a great and unwavering confidence in the Buddha has arisen in me’. So the Thero shows how that ‘unwavering confidence’ arises. Most certainly not through ritualistic worship, chanting, symbolism and adoration. It is a question of understanding and accepting without having to force any of it on yourself. It will be worth it to reflect on this for a while.
I would like to share something now, if I may, about my path towards the Path.
Since childhood I have always been on my guard against any form of conditioning. Born in a Catholic country, I was told by family, friends and teachers : ‘ours is the true religion’. But why, I told myself, should ours be the true religion? Had I been born in a Muslim country to a Muslim family, I would have been told the same, but there the religion would have been Islam; or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Judaism. ‘ No, I will have to see for myself” I read books about world religions, philosophies, and as much of the ‘history of ideas’ as I came across and tried to come up with my own ‘worldview’. When I started reading the 6 schools of Indian philosophy, in particular bhedabheda Vedanta, all seemed so familiar (in sharp contrast to an ‘alien’, dogmatic, blind-belief religion, overseen, controlled and enforced by external authority into which I was born) . I ‘borrowed’ from the Upanishads, the Gita, Theosophy, even Mahayana and the Japanese schools. But I deemed all these to be quite inadequate.
I see two factors at work in conditioning. First, the sentimental one: ‘my parents love me so much, would they tell me a lie?’ – but they themselves had been likewise conditioned by their own parents, and these in turn by their own parents, and so on into the past. Hence we have traditions. And woe to the one who dares to break away or as much as raise questions. Then one becomes a rebel, an outcaste. The second is psychological: ‘ all these people around me, hundreds of thousands of them, believe in the same thing; they go to Church, hear Mass…can they all be wrong?’ The vast majority are quite happy to just follow (he who cannot think must believe); then they are guaranteed ‘the security in the greatest number’, and that is mighty easier than going on a search that, from the outset, seems daunting – and it IS daunting. The search could have gone perhaps to many kalpas into the future, but thanks to a Thero who rediscovered the Teaching and a self-appointed messenger, the search came to an end in 2017. This is why I am always so full of Gratitude to Lal.
As to my condition, I opted for the palliative route. So my concern is how to minimize the suffering, especially towards the end. Apart from that, there is nothing to fear.
May all attain the Deathless.
