Clinging to our Prison

We’re speaking about a mental or spiritual prison, but it has the same meaning as a concrete prison… People are actually delighted to go and get locked up in spiritual prison. This is a very queer aspect of the spiritual prison. – Buddhadasa, “The Prison of Life”

Along the same theme of my last post, The Seduction of the Commonplace, we find this from the Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu from Thailand.

Another story I heard recently comes from Geshe Michael Roach, in his teachings on the Bodhcaryavatara (Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) from Shantideva (c. 8th Century). It’s a Tibetan joke (which I’m told often involve shit and flies):

Two flies are sitting on a big piece of shit. One fly says to the other, “Ya know, I don’t think I’d want to be born in a pureland.” The other fly asks why not and the fly replies, “because I don’t think there would be any shit there.”

It’s the idea that YES, we do have to give some things up in our path to awakening. What is it we cling to – sometimes ever so stubbornly – that holds us back from the grace of awakening? Views, pleasures, anger, desires, complacency: these are the most likely candidates. Something to meditate on…