There
are 3 Mental Fermentations (Âsavas):
The Blessed Buddha
once said: Bhikkhus, there are 3 mental fermentations.
What are these three mental concoctions?
1:
The mental Fermentation joined with Sensuality..
2: The mental Fermentation linked with Becoming..
3: The mental Fermentation associated with Ignorance..
These
are the three mental fermentations.
The
Noble
8-fold Way is to be developed for the direct experience of these
three
fermentations,
for the full understanding of them, for their complete
elimination, and for
their final overcoming, abandoning and leaving all behind...
Comments:
1: The mental
fermentation (āsava) linked with sensuality is the false assumption,
that sensing always
brings pleasure, while actually sensing also is associated with
pain and also neutral feeling, which is far the most common!
2: The mental
fermentation associated with becoming is like the banal yet common
wishing: May I become rich, beautiful, and famous,
not noticing that any becoming
inevitably is associated with change, decay, death, and thus
suffering too!
3:
The mental fermentation associated with ignorance is the misconceptions we
make by inaccurate approximation, undue generalization and
over-projection:
Ex: We make the observation: The horizon is linear. Then we assume, project
and
simplify by conceptual
generalization: 'The earth must be flat', which is a false
mentally ‘brewed=fermented’
misconception…
For quite
a while many would chop
off your head, if you suggested anything else, than that screaming error…
During biological fermentation sugar, water and yeast ferments into
alcohol...
The alcohol was not there to begin with... It was made up by the
fermentation!
During mental fermentation observations, mixed with ideas and
assumptions
ferments into a misconception, that was not there in the raw
observation data...
The
misconception 'pancake earth' is not to be seen in an (almost) flat
horizon!
This 'pancake round disc earth' concept is a false idea fermented
and invented
by the mind desperately trying to predict the relations between the
data
it gets...
Mind misconstrues and misconceives these relations, and thus misunderstands...
Notably mind ferments the three universal characteristics into their
opposites:
Mind misconceives what actually is impermanent, as it was
everlasting.
Mind misunderstands what ultimately is suffering, as it was
happiness..
Mind mistakes what fundamentally is impersonal as me, mine, what I
am & my self..
For Details on the 3 or 4 Mental Fermentations
(āsava) see:
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/The_7_Persons.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/III/Final_Abilities.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Uprooting_Ability.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Naturally_Radiant.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/library/DPPN/wtb/a/aasava.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/The_Proximate_Cause.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Cause_of_Ignorance.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/Suprahuman_Force_VI.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/The_Three_Fermentations.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/III/Freed_from_Fermentation.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/The_9_Supremes_Explained.htm
Source (edited extract):
The Grouped Sayings of the Buddha.
Samyutta Nikāya.
Book [V:56] section 45: The Way. 163: The fermentations ...
http://store.pariyatti.org/Connected-Discourses-of-the-Buddha_p_1379.html
http://what-buddha-said.net/library/ati_website/html/tipitaka/sn/index.html.
