As well as being experienced in the outer world, the suffering of inner homelessness and and the joy of inner homecoming can be felt acutely as parts of the journey toward spiritual and psychological maturity. Sam guided our reflections this Sunday, drawing particularly on the insights of Christina Feldman.
We listened to a talk by Christina Feldman, given July 10, 2019 at the IMS, titled “Homelessness and homecoming”. We cannot post this talk here but if you’d like to hear it again, please contact Sam directly.
At the start of our meeting, Sam read two quotes, which follow.
After asking the Buddha ten standard philosophical questions, Vacchagotta receives only the terse response, “I don’t hold that view.” Finally, exasperated, Vacchagotta blurts out,
“Then does Master Gotama hold any speculative view at all?”
“Vaccha, ‘speculative view’ is something with which the Tathāgata has nothing whatsoever to do. . . . With the destruction, fading away, cessation, giving up and relinquishing of all conceivings, all excogitations, all I-making, mine-making and the underlying tendency to conceit, the Tathāgata is liberated through not clinging.”
“But, Master Gotama, a bhikkhu whose mind is thus liberated: Where does he reappear [after death]?”
“‘Reappear,’ Vaccha, does not apply.”
The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings oa, by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro
There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond. It is a place of nothingness, a place of nonpossession and of nonattachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this is why I call it Nibbāna.
Samyutta Nikāya, 1092-5
Burlington Buddhist Sangha 