Dear C. Saket,
Thanks for your kind words. I hope we all realise sotapanna, me en you too.
I am also very glad i have found Lal’s website. Lal emphazises very much the unfruitfullness of samsara and seeing the total picture. I am grateful that i am getting a glimps.
Sakkaya ditthi
For me the teachings on sakkaya ditthi are meant to express the fact that (since beginningless time) mind has become very familiar with the sense of a body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousnesses. It has become so familiar with those experiences that it regards those instinctively as ‘mine’ and as ‘this i am’. One does not do this ‘self’. It arises conditionally.
It is like mind wears five kinds/layers of clothing and has never seen her own nakedness and thinks ‘ i am those five kinds of clothing’ or ‘i am not without those five kind of clothing’.
Anyway, mind has become very intimately related to what it experiences and this has the form of views (‘i am what i experience’ or ‘those experiences are mine’). I belief, those views are called sakkaya ditthi’s and at the moment i have no problem to call them identity-views.
My mind was once so focussed that i lost the sense of a body. When i became aware of this, fear arose. I instinctively touched things, a sense of embodiment came back. Why did fear arise? I belief, because of a sakkaya ditthi. Because of the view ‘i am the experienced body’. So when one looses this experience of a body one becomes afraid. This is the netto-result of identification which is a form of viewing, a sakkaya ditthi.
Maybe this looks very theoretical for some people but for me it isn’t.
Sakkaya ditthi’s are a real obstacle for deeply relaxing the mind and body, letting go, for stress-release, for ending fear, ending panic. The neurotic mind, like mine, has strong sakkaya ditthi’s.
Siebe