All of
us know how difficult it is to free ourselves from craving. But to attain the
goal of Nirvana, Buddhists say that one has to put an end to all craving. How
does one do that?
There seems to be two
approaches. The first one is very similar to what Patanjali talks about.
It involves calming the
mind step by step till it reaches a state where it becomes indifferent to
worldly things – a point of neither perception, nor non perception. I call this
a neutral approach.
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| Cycle of births and deaths |
The other approach is to use the mind to realize the deeper implications of craving.
While the first approach is typical meditative approach, this one has some
flavor of ‘path of enquiry’ (Jñäna märga).
This involves systematic analysis of
the entire process of endless cycle of births and deaths, starting from the
root cause - craving.
Since this path also focuses completely on the chain of cause
and effect, it can also be viewed as a form of meditation. It is called Vipassana or ‘Insight Meditation’.
Buddha talks about both these alternatives to attain
Nirvana. Later Buddhists developed on the initial ideas of Buddha and came up
with an elaborate meditative practice called ‘Vishuddhi Mägga’ (the path to
purification).
In the next post, I am going to look at this latter approach
more from a neurological perspective.
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