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No Opposition Between Dream and Reality in the Teachings
Today we study the thirty-ninth thesis, which emphasizes that the modes of presenting the teachings—such as the numbers of conditions (nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty-four), the numbers of feelings (three or four), the numbers of aggregates (two, three, four, five), the numbers of sense bases and realms (twelve sense bases, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-four, twenty-seven realms), and the numbers of consciousnesses (five, seven, eight, nine)—are all skillful means to support practice, not absolute truths. A flexible attitude, not being attached to numbers or forms, helps us avoid dogmatism and opens the space for the tradition to continue to develop according to the needs of practice and modern science, just as we use models to describe reality.
In the Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing, there are sixteen breath exercises divided into four groups (body, feelings, mind, objects of mind), but it is entirely possible to expand with additional contemplations such as impermanence, non-self, desirelessness, cessation, interbeing, dependent co-arising… in order to nourish non-discriminative wisdom and support our practice. This approach evokes the spirit of science—open, ready to let go of old notions to discover new horizons of truth.