Sam led our reflections this past Sunday, focusing on the way in which the rise and fall of the Five Aggregates — the elements of all experience — can actually bring us joy.
Sam played the talk “Intoxicated with Reality” by Eugene Cash, given at Spirit Rock:
https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/68/talk/32320/
Some quotes he read too:
Whenever he sees with insight the rise and fall of the aggregates, he is full of joy and happiness. To the discerning one this reflects the Deathless [Nirvana]
“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”
Suzuki Roshi
When I realized that no moment can be repeated, then I became enlightened.
ibid.
“The dharma I have reached is deep, hard to see, difficult to awaken to, quiet and excellent, not confined by thought, subtle, sensed by the wise. But people love their place (alaya): they delight and revel in their place. It is hard for people who love, delight, and revel in their place to [see these two grounds; the ground of conditioned arising and the ground of nirvana (the stilling of inclinations, the relinquishing of bases, the fading away of reactivity, desirelessness, ceasing). ]
From the Buddha
