Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book - Revised and Expanded Edition

by Daniel M. Ingram

Awakening involves clearly perceiving universal characteristics of phenomena. While one can attempt to rest comfortably in the intellectual notion that these universal characteristics are there anyway and be comforted by teachings such as easily misconstrued statements like, “I have gained nothing by complete and unexcelled enlightenment,” the whole, core, essential, root point of all this is that there is something to be gained by becoming one of the people that can actually directly perceive the true nature of things clearly enough to change fundamentally the way reality is perceived in real-time. The straight truth is that the vast majority of people do not start out being able to do anything even close to this, and most are lucky to be able to stay with three breaths in sequence before wandering off into their neurotic crap, much less understand anything liberating about those breaths. The notion that everyone already is someone who can perceive reality the way the masters do without effort in real-time is a fantastic falsehood, lie, untruth, and in short, one great load of apathy-creating insanity.