Buddha Teaching about Fire: Los Angeles WildFire

And what is the fire element?

The fire element may be internal or external. 

And what is the internal fire element? 

Anything internal, pertaining to an individual that’s fire, fiery, and appropriated. This includes: that which warms, that which ages, that which heats you up when feverish, that which properly digests food and drink; or anything else internal, pertaining to an individual, that’s fire, fiery, and appropriated. 

This is called the internal fire element. 

And what is the external fire element? 

There comes a time when the external fire element flares up. It burns up houses, villages, towns, cities, countries, and regions until it reaches a green field, a roadside, a cliff’s edge, a body of water, or cleared parkland, where it’s extinguished due to not being fed. 

There comes a time when they go looking for a fire, taking just a chicken feather or a scrap of sinew as kindling.

This is called the external fire element. 

The internal fire element and the external fire element are just the fire element. 

So for all its great age, the fire element will be revealed as impermanent, liable to end, vanish, and perish. 

This should be truly seen with right understanding like this: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’ When you truly see with right understanding, you grow disillusioned with the fire element, detaching the mind from the fire element.

What then of this ephemeral body appropriated by craving? Rather than ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘I am’, they consider it to be none of these things.

This is said by Buddha in Middle Length Discourse 28

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