Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

of both body and mind and the whole universe. You see that because of that, it canfinish, it can end. You see what a scientist sees: the complete emptiness of thematerial which makes up this cosmos, this universe of solar systems and planets andmonasteries and whatever else. You can see it as all empty. All that is left isconsciousness.You see this physical world as empty and you know how it came out of emptiness. Itarose because of a cause, which means that one day this whole universe will vanish inthe same way. This mind comes from a cause and one day it too will vanish, butunlike the physical universe, it does not re-arise. Most minds take a long time, but assoon as you see the Dhamma and become an Arahant, you know why this mind willvanish after Parinibbāna. It says in the Therīgāthā , ‘Your mind will surely vanish’,parābhavati, (Thag, 1144) ‘will disappear’, vidhamissatti’ (Thag, 184). I like totranslate that as ‘will be destroyed’. Why? Because the cause, the craving ‘to be’, hasbeen destroyed. All those three cravings kāmatahā, vibhavatahā, and bhavatahā,have been destroyed. Craving for sensory pleasure is what drives worldlings; thecraving ‘to be’ is what drives monks.In the end all cravings, including the craving to destroy things, are nothing more thanthe craving ‘to be’. The craving to destroy comes from thinking there is an existingthing that you now want to annihilate. Please understand the difference betweenannihilation and cessation. These are two different words chosen carefully by theBuddha. Annihilation means destroying something that is already there, uccheda isthe Pāli word. Cheda means to destroy, to cut something to bits. You can’t cut whatwasn’t there to begin with; you can’t destroy ‘nothing’. But the process, the emptyprocess is different. The word for an ‘empty process ceasing’, for the whole universeto vanish, is Nirodha. This is what you experience little by little, little by little. In theAguttara Nikāya, the experience that the commentaries call the ninth jhāna, as saññāvedayitanirodha, the ‘cessation of all that is perceived and felt’, That is, the cessationof the mind, is likened to ‘Nibbāna here and now’ by the Buddha.So this is what you can experience in this life, and it challenges all of your theories.You can see and understand the yedhammā hetuppabhavā tesa hetu tathāgato āha,315