The coin of ignorance: exploring both sides
In Buddhism, they talk about three (greed, anger, ignorance) or five (greed, anger, pride, envy, ignorance) poisons, or roots of suffering.
All of these can be collapsed into one: ignorance.
One side of the coin: ignorance of what we already are
And this ignorance can generally be seen as ignorance of what we really are, as Big Mind, Spirit, emptiness and form, Headless, absent of any I.
Other side of the coin: ignorance of the mechanisms of samsara
At the other side of the coin, this ignorance can be seen as ignorance of the mechanisms of Samsara. What, specifically, is it that happens when there is a mistaken identification. When Big Mind suddenly takes itself to be only a fragment of itself, as a part of the seen or as the seeing itself.
What is it that is really happening, and how can I explore that, over and over, in my own experience, so there is a gradually deepening familiarity with this process, eventually leading to a natural release from it.
Exploring the coin
There are many ways to explore either or both sides of this coin.
The Work: exploring both sides of the coin
Through The Work, we explore - in quite some detail, one way of looking at the mechanisms of samsara. What happens when there is a belief in a thought, when an abstraction is taken as truth itself? What are the consequences of this, in the many areas of my life? How does it unfold?
Towards the end of the inquiry, in question four and the turnarounds, we get to see who or what we are without this belief.
By doing this, over and over, on whatever beliefs remain and come up, we learn not only about the mechanisms of samsara but also what we are without beliefs. Gradually, there is more and more of a taste of and emerging into Big Mind.
Other approaches
The Big Mind process is another way to explore both sides of the coin, to almost infinite detail.
Headless experiments may not guide us through the terrain in the same detail as The Work and the Big Mind process, but they certainly set the stage for it by allowing us a taste of what we really are. From here, we are free to explore on our own, in as much detail as we want.
Labels: big mind process, headlessness, inquiry, samsara, suffering