What is this Boundary Boundary-ed by?
Ajahn Sucitto: “…I think one of the not-quite-correct understandings, in my opinion, of the aggregates (physical and mental experiences) is that these are one’s self. Actually, it’s my understanding that they are the cosmos — which can be personally experienced.
“So it’s thoughts, moods, impressions, form external, form internal, perceptions as they arise in the minds of others, speech that one hears, etc… It’s a complete thing.
“It’s not like: I am this mass of aggregates. It’s: there is this mass of aggregates — which creates the impression of somebody here and somebody else there. They create a duality of self and the world. They create me and my mind. They create me watching my anger. They create the sense of distinction, in which the aspect that one’s so often dealing with is the isolated person who is confronted by forces that she or he feels challenged by, within what they call ‘themselves’ — their moods, their obsessions, their worries — and qualities they call ‘other people’ — other people’s moods, obsessions, and problems. Or indeed things of the non-human nature — creatures and even disembodied spirits and so on!
“So, in meeting that edge, whereby there’s a differentiation — self and other, me and my mind, my good side and my bad side, my aspiration and my frustrations, my stupid behavior and my attempts to do better — this differentiation, there’s an edge there. It’s really at that edge where the quality of the softening and the goodwill and the accepting and the non-separation has to be encouraged.
“Non-separation doesn’t mean ‘we’re all one’. It means that we’re letting it all be met as a undivided, even problematic cosmos of different energies, differing dispositions, different qualities, datus (elements), indrias (authorities, powers)… And then just opening the map up — external/internal, myself/yourself, all this as it is.
“So really, this boundary — what is it boundary-ed by? Is it bounded by I am better? Is it bounded by I am worse? Is it bounded by anxiety? This boundary — this is the bit we can really know. The rest of it is guesswork, actually. The boundary is the piece that we can really know. Because whatever else it is, we know — this particular edge is causing problems.”
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This is the first 5 minutes or so of a very rich talk by Ajahn Sucitto on the Aggregates, Stream Entry, Liberation, and much more. It’s called: Body — The Last Outpost of Sanity. Click here to listen.