Question:

Avidya or Ignorance is impermanent, it doesn’t exist once it observes itself. Then why should one do anything about ignorance if ignorance doesn’t exist anyway? 

Answer:

This is where the Supreme Truth can be tricky, my dear. If partially understood, it can cause misinterpretations. Let’s attempt to understand the meaning of Ignorance or Avidya to prevent any misunderstanding. Let’s take the example of your own direct experience of dreaming.

When you assume you are the dream character, you unknowingly trap yourself in the dream world.

• • You forget that you are NOT the dream character.
  • You forget that you are NOT in a dream world.

This self-forgetfulness is Avidya, the ignorance of one’s true nature. But Avidya is impermanent. This is seen in several instances: 

• • When the dream ends naturally at the end of its shelf life, you remember you are not the dream character in a dream world. The Avidya ends.
  • When ‘You-The-Consciousness’ become aware that you are dreaming, you remember you are not the dream character in a dream world. The Avidya ends.

This shedding away of the incorrect understanding is termed as self-remembrance. This is a regularly occurring phenomenon; self-forgetfulness followed by self-remembrance; Avidya followed by Vidya. It is like a season that comes and goes without fail.

On one hand, when a season passes, it seems like it has ended; On the other hand, when the season returns, it looks like it never ended. 

Avidya has a similar pattern. It is not that the dream is an issue; the identification with the dream is the issue. This wrong identification must be eradicated, not the seasonal dream. On the recognition of nobodyness and nothingness, identification drops, and Shunyata is revealed. Nobody remains to identify with the dream anymore. That is the true meaning of completely eradicating Avidya.

So even if Avidya is impermanent and seasonal, the identification aspect needs to be worked on, not the seasonality of Avidya, my dear.

What happens when Shunyata is completely embraced? 

Once Shunyata is revealed, all is revealed as Avidya, including the ideas of permanence and impermanence. Shunyata is seen as everythingness in nothingness. Shunyata does not mean nothingness only. Seeing everythingness standing by itself is as ignorant as seeing nothingness, stand by itself. Hence, keep chugging on the path of direct seeing because simply the intellectualization of words will not suffice. When the journey from Anapana Satipatthana to Jhanas to Brahmavihara Metta to Shunyata [Samadhi levels] is directly seen (not intellectualized) then only the Buddha’s teachings about Avidya leading to suffering are revealed. 

Keep walking the path of wisdom!

#Buddha  #Swapna Nidra Gnyana Sadhana