"There are three classes of conditions that hinder one from advancing along the path of Enlightenment. First, there are the allurements arising from the senses, from external conditions and from the discriminating mind. Second, there are the internal conditions of the mind, its thoughts, desires and mood....In the third class of impediments are placed the individual's instinctive and fundamental (and therefore most insidious and persistent) urges--the will to live and enjoy, the will to cherish one's personality, the will to propagate, which give rise to greed and lust, fear and anger, infatuation, pride and egoism." - Ashvaghosha
One person may call these things impediments while another calls them reasons to live. To most of us, you try to take away things like "the will to live and enjoy" or, god forbid, the will to propagate, and your cold, dead fingers won't get very far, no sirree. That's the stuffy stuff of monks, not me. But they are only hindrances when they occur under the radar, subconsciously inducing our behavior and distorting our world-view. Instincts will carry on of their own momentum regardless of our external efforts to suppress them--in fact they will likely metastasize into greed and lust and the rest of it because of that very suppression. No, freedom lies in bringing everything into the light and recognizing that none of it, neither the least nor the most unsettling of our senses, thoughts, or instincts, need cut us off from spirit. Jnana and mindfulness illuminate the impediments as just so much flotsam in the brief existence of the body-mind, and the body-mind as just so much jetsam headed back into the sea of consciousness from which it came.
One person may call these things impediments while another calls them reasons to live. To most of us, you try to take away things like "the will to live and enjoy" or, god forbid, the will to propagate, and your cold, dead fingers won't get very far, no sirree. That's the stuffy stuff of monks, not me. But they are only hindrances when they occur under the radar, subconsciously inducing our behavior and distorting our world-view. Instincts will carry on of their own momentum regardless of our external efforts to suppress them--in fact they will likely metastasize into greed and lust and the rest of it because of that very suppression. No, freedom lies in bringing everything into the light and recognizing that none of it, neither the least nor the most unsettling of our senses, thoughts, or instincts, need cut us off from spirit. Jnana and mindfulness illuminate the impediments as just so much flotsam in the brief existence of the body-mind, and the body-mind as just so much jetsam headed back into the sea of consciousness from which it came.
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