The distant place that lies within.

The expression, “Home is where the heart is,” suggests that our home is in union with another. The problem with that understanding is our sense of home is then wedded to the other’s well-being. So long as that union is well, our well-being will be good. However, the opposite is also true. Tying yourself to another can be dangerous, especially when the other jeopardizes our sense of stability and wholeness.

Another perspective is more favorably secure: the perspective that home lies within, right where your spiritual heart exists. The first view can be problematic, but so too can the latter. It all depends on how we understand and experience ourselves. If our view is one of self-love, that is one thing. If our view is self-hatred, that is even more dangerous than the first. In either case, wherever we go, we go with ourselves.

Both self-love and self-hatred can and do vary according to changing circumstances—everything of a mortal nature is constantly changing, and no one can stop that flow of mortal change. Consequently, it is necessary to look beyond mortality to get to the root of the matter.

Three different spiritual teachings point us to the resolution. The first comes from a familiar source (The teaching of Christ, as expressed by St.Paul the Apostle). The second and third sources are less familiar but dovetail with that of The Apostle. Let’s start with the second, move on to the third, and check back in to conclude with St.Paul.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest who thought deeply about the meaning of our existence and relationship with the Divine. Chardin held this unorthodox view that within our mortal shell was our true home. Accepting this perspective changes how we understand ourselves (and others) from a constantly evolving mortal being that ends in death to a never-changing immortal being that never ends.

The third source comes from one of the greatest spiritual poets, artists, and educational theorists who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 (Rabindranath Tagore). Few in the West have heard of Tagore, but he shared de Chardin’s perspective and conveyed his view through many of his works, not the least of which is his poem Journey Home.

“The time that my journey takes is long, and the way of it is long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light and pursued my

Voyage through the wildernesses of worlds, leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,

and that training is the most intricate, leading to a tune’s utter simplicity.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,

and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, ‘Here art thou!’

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand

Streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’”

Like de Chardin, Tagore was persuaded that the discovery of our true home—the one of spiritual essence—only came about through a quest within, where we find our eternal source.

Now, to tie all three together, let’s examine what St. Paul had to say in the book of 1 Corinthians. He said (metaphorically), “You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it” (the concluding point of 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Still, when taken literally, it unites with the other two perspectives that our true home—the one we can never leave lies at our spiritual core. There, alone, all of us can find the eternal spirit of love—our Divine essence. And when we see that core, we know that our essence is the same as the Divine. Short of that, we are all left with a self-understanding that bobs and weaves like a cork tossed about on the waves of change, sometimes loving and at other times with hatred. God is undivided love, and that is us.

Study the Way/Self

Mine; Not yours.

“To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.”

Dogen’s famous commentary on the self deserves careful consideration. “The Way,” of course, means the way of a Bodhisattva. Dogen says this way concerns the study of the self. Buddhism is essentially the way of taking a hard and thorough look at the most fundamental aspect of reality—the nature of identity, resolving the matter, putting it completely aside, and moving on. He did not say to just move on with the presumption that everything will be okay. Of course, that is a prescription for continued suffering, which is a function of the self. It is the self/ego that suffers and creates suffering.

After more than 40 years of extensive study following my own awakening, I have come to realize the evident truth about enlightenment; the truth as recorded throughout nearly all sutras—It is ever-present, nothing special (after-the-fact, but never before), always-on, and reduces down to a simple understanding of Tathāgata. Fundamentally it means “reality as-it-is,” alternatively understood as suchness. It is easy to write, difficult to experience, yet always possible by being continuously and fully present. Contrast this to being never present—lost in thinking about just about anything—that obstructs being present.

Dogen rightly arranged the order: First, study the self. Second, resolve the matter. Third, forget about it. And forth, be enlightened by all things by not continuing to dwell on this central issue once resolved. This order reflects the order taught by The Buddha. To be attached to anything is to ensure suffering, including being attached to the self or even The Buddha.

It is critically important to firmly establish our real identity as one and the same as The Buddha. We are not a fake and imaginary non-self. We are the Self (e.g., awakened), which is The Buddha. If we don’t resolve this matter, we will forever be guided and dominated by our ego-self and remain self-absorbed, producing ignorance, greed, and anger. It is only when we have finally resolved the phantom nature of the non-self and accepted the unborn/never-die identity of Buddha-Nature that we can genuinely do away with ignorance, greed, and anger. This must be the preliminary phase because otherwise, we continue to see ourselves as separate from and in competition with the rest of life. When we clearly see that we are interdependent and in harmony with life, then we can rest and begin to reflect the ever-present, virtuous qualities inherent of Buddha-Nature.

In that state of unity with all, we can be enlightened by all things because all things are a part of us. It is impossible to be intimate with anything from which we are separated. We can imagine unity in some abstract way, but that abstraction is still separate. Dogen knew, so he said, “cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others.” Body and mind are just formed elements—outward trappings, which keep us locked into the delusion of separateness and cause us to say things like “my” body, “my” mind. From the perspective of Buddha-Nature (our real nature), there is no “my.” There is only “us.”

The ending of Dogen’s commentary is especially instructive. He says, “life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.” What could that possibly mean? There is only one aspect of life with no tracks and lasts forever: Buddha-Nature, which is wholly enlightenment, and where there is wholly enlightenment, there is no enlightenment. Everything-Nothing is the same thing. We can’t see it because of self-created delusions, but it’s there. Our duty is to simply learn to cease not being present. Then only there is no duality. Then only there are no tracks because a track is an otherness. Buddha-Nature is whole. No tracks.

Transformation

Buddhism has been around so long that it is hard to recall the locus—the seed from which it grows. But by recalling the condensed teaching of the Buddha, the essence is the very first point: Life (e.g., mortal) is suffering. Everything else about Buddhism is centered around that locus. So whenever we become overwhelmed with the multiplicity of the branches springing from this ancient practice, all we have to do is remember the root: Life is Suffering. This is why Buddhism has such an enduring appeal—Everyone suffers, and nobody wants to. And no more thorough practice has ever been conceived to understand suffering and provide a means for overcoming it than Buddhism. Suffering springs from our mind and begins with how we perceive and understand ourselves and the world we live in. And this is why Buddhism is a full exposition of our minds.

Master Hsuan Hua writes about this matter in the opening section of The Shurangama Sutra. He points out two aspects of our mind: Superficial, but unreal, the other hidden, but real. He says that the hidden part is like an internal gold mine that must be excavated to be valuable. This gold mine is everywhere but not seen. The superficial part is also everywhere but seen, and it is this superficial part that lies at the root of suffering. He says,

“ The Buddha-nature is found within our afflictions. Everyone has afflictions, and everyone has a Buddha-nature. In an ordinary person, it is the afflictions, rather than the Buddha-nature, that are apparent...Genuine wisdom arises out of genuine stupidity. When ice [afflictions] turns to water, there is wisdom; when water (wisdom) freezes into ice, there is stupidity. Afflictions are nothing but stupidity.”

The word stupidity may sound harsh and uncaring, but sometimes stark truth is more effective than placation. The critical point of his statement (and a message of the Sutra) is that there is a crucial relationship between suffering and wisdom. Both of these rest on a fundamental principle of faith—That at the core of our being, there is the supreme good, which is ubiquitous. Unlike other religions where faith is in an external God, in Buddhism, faith concerns a serene commitment in the practice of the Buddha’s teaching and trust in enlightened or highly developed beings, such as Buddhas or bodhisattvas (those aiming to become a Buddha).

Many people get confused with words, especially the word “Buddha-nature.” When the uninformed hear that word, they start thinking about a ghost that they imagine looks like some ancient Indian person. What we believe makes a difference. But instead of the label Buddha-nature, we could call it “Mind-nature” because Buddha means awakened. When we awaken to our right primordial minds, our world is transformed. Buddha-nature is the unseen gold mine that inhabits all of life. Without accepting that core, we are incapable of accessing wisdom, and without understanding, we are all trapped in suffering. The flip side of suffering is bliss, just as the flip side of up is down, but when we are immersed in the down, it is most difficult to “pull ourselves up from the bootstraps” and rise above misery. During those downtimes, it seems that everything is down.

We have all had conversations about the essential nature of people. Some say that we are rotten to the core—that there is no vital good there. Such people have given up on their own human family. This voice is split between those who believe in God and those who don’t. On the one hand, if there is to be any essence of good, it is purely the result of that good coming from an external God. The “non-believers” hold no hope at all—Just rotten to the core. Neither of these voices acknowledges intrinsic worth. To one, the worth is infused; to the other, there is none.

The eternal presence of Buddha-nature (e.g., the pure/not polluted mind of consciousness) is a contrary voice of faith: The recognition of intrinsic, essential worth, present in life. This gold mine, which, when accepted in faith, manifests in wisdom amid affliction and turns ice into water.

Dancing through life

Watching two accomplished ballroom dancers is a delight. They move in graceful, fluid motions almost as a single entity. One leads; the other follows. If there is no cooperation, then harmony is broken with both trying to lead, and the motion is jerky and chaotic. 

If neither leads, there is no motion. If you look at what’s happening in Washington right now, you can see the non-dance of chaos. Whether we move or don’t, dance can only occur if there is a floor to dance on. 

Dancers don’t move through thin air. In a certain sense, we are like those dancers. We move in a relationship with others across the immovable floor of life. Our movements are either fluid, graceful, or chaotic, depending on how we cooperate. It’s a matter of giving and taking. Two gives or two takes end in stalemate. We have invented a saying to express this dance. It is called “What goes around comes around.” We reap what we sow. 

In Buddhism, this is called karma and works the same way. The floor beneath the dance is, of course, the immovable foundation of our life—our mind. If it moved, the dancers would be shaken. But since it is stable, the dance can proceed: One half leading, the other half following. And the dance can only happen with these three things—The immovable floor and the two partners. When all three functions in harmony, the dance of life is a beautiful thing.

The dharma of a duck.

Ducks doing what ducks do.

The 1956 Broadway production of My Fair Lady was the story of Eliza Doolittle, an English Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist so that she can get a better job. 

Higgins makes a bet with his associate Colonel Pickering that he can remake Eliza into a well-born lady, rises to the challenge, but becomes frustrated along the way. He then complains to Pickering: “Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that! Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags! They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hags! Pickering, why can’t a woman be more like a man?” and thus echoes the age-old desire to have people become more like they want them to be.

The flip side of this story was depicted in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, relating the story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian—who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew—who runs to overcome prejudice. A critical moment occurs in the film when Eric Liddell losses himself in his running and accidentally misses a church prayer meeting. It was then that his sister Jennie chastises him and accuses him of no longer caring about God. Eric tells her that though he intends to return to the China Mission eventually, he feels divinely inspired when running and that not to run would be to dishonor God, saying: “I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Both of these stories, portray situations of misidentification. In one case, it is Eliza who isn’t satisfied with who she is (and is criticized because she doesn’t fit the bill of how Higgins wants her to be), and the other case, it’s Liddell’s sister who is discontent with how she thinks Liddell ought to behave. Each story addresses the matter of conforming to someone’s standard.

While neither story may seem to have any spiritual connection, these are concerns addressed in both The Bhagavad Gita and the Bible. In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna (the embodiment of God) tells Arjuna that he (Krishna) is the essence of all beings, and each being must live up to their created nature. And when they reject that nature, they are in effect rejecting God. “By devotion to one’s own particular duty, everyone can attain perfection. By performing one’s own work, one worships the Creator who dwells in every creature. Such worship brings that person to fulfillment. It is better to perform one’s own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By fulfilling the obligations he is born with, a person never comes to grief. No one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke.” In the Gita, “dharma” is used to mean something’s inner nature, which is manifested without an expected outcome. 

In 1st Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul instructs his audience concerning spiritual gifts and says, “There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” Paul continues his teaching by saying, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” The chapter concludes with the notation that when all parts function together the Body of Christ is the result.

Lest anyone think this shoe doesn’t fit and these admonitions don’t apply, ask yourself how many times do you experience having others express a desire that you be more like them (or their notion of how you ought to be), or imposing that same desire on others, wishing them to conform to your image. 

This desire to be someone other than what we were created to be is one of our greatest flaws. It is most unlikely a duck can ever be anything other than a duck. It is the duck’s dharma to be a duck, and it is our dharma to be who and what we are created to be, whether endowed with one gift or something very different. A duck swims, and we function as our inborn, essential dharma dictates, without apology or self-justification. When these dharmas are performed selflessly, it is the same as worshiping the majesty of unique snowflakes with the recognition they are created from fundamental, indiscriminate snow.

While cold, water turns into discriminate snowflakes, and when heated by the warmth of the sun, it returns, once again to the great sea of indiscriminate water. 

Perception vs. Reality

Seeing you seeing me.

The President’s daughter Ivanka Trump says, “Perception is more important than reality.” Obviously, a distinction is made with that statement. The difference is that perception, alone, is not reality. 

More than likely, every person agrees there is a difference between the two. We know what perception is, but do we know what reality is? It is a nonsensical statement to say the two are different unless we can define both perception and reality. Ordinarily, everyone believes they know what reality is, but when pressed to explain it, hesitation arises, for a good reason. One of the most intelligent scientists to ever live (Albert Einstein) said this: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Could he be right?

Let’s test his hypothesis, and to do so, we must begin by defining some terms, such as what can be perceived and measured. Scientists deal with measurement. If something can be measured, the presumption is that it is real, and the opposite: No measurement=Not real. So far, so good with our test. So what can be measured? Anything objective can be measured. Non-objects can’t.

Given that, let’s return to grammar school and consider the following sentence: “I see me.” That sentence is instructive to our test. The word “I” is the subject, “see” is the verb, and “me” is the object. Now let’s consider the logic and the previous agreement: Any object can be measured and is thus real. 

If the grammar is correct (and it is), then “I” am not real because “I” is a subject, and a subject is different from an object. But wait! “I” am clearly real, and so are you. I am writing, and you are reading, so where is the fly in this ointment?

Now, look at the image at the top-right. There you see a picture of two people looking at each other. The clear conclusion is that every person (or sentient being: dog, cat, iguana, cow…any entity with consciousness, capable of perception) is both an object seen and a subject doing the seeing. Thus, it is an indisputable fact that any and every sentient being is both real and unreal at the same time. If so, can reality and illusion be a package deal: One part objective (and measurable, thus real, in scientific terms) and the other part subjective (and immeasurable, therefore unreal, according to the scientific criteria)?

If we (subjects) are unreal, then nobody can know anything, at all, about anyone else and what we think is real is merely an illusion. 

Einstein is correct. His hypothesis holds up, and this begs the question: How is perception different from reality? And one final point: When we refer to a self-image (ego/image of I), we refer to an unreal object that is seen. So who, or what is the subjective us that is doing the seeing? Obviously, it is the part of us that is allegedly unreal, but it is the only part of us that is real, despite Einstein or rational logic. 

The flip side of this coin is the real subjective aspect of us sees nothing but unreal illusions. Now answer the original question: What’s the difference between perception and reality?

Will the real Buddha please stand up?

Sixty-four years ago a television game show began running here in the U.S. The show was called To Tell The Truth and involved three challengers, an announcer and a panel of celebrities. The game began with the announcer asking each of the challengers to state their name and their role.

All three claimed to be the same person but only one was telling the truth. For example, each of the challengers might say, “I’m Willie Sutton and I rob banks.” Then the announcer read aloud a detailed description of the claimed identity. The game proceeded by the panelists asking each of the challengers questions and the challengers answered. The goal of the game was for the panelists to determine both the pretenders and the real person.

After asking a number of questions the announcer said, “Will the real Willie Sutton please stand up?” If the panelists were successful they would have guessed the real person. Often the pretenders proved to be accomplished liars and succeeded in throwing the panelists off track.

I remind you of this because we all play that game ourselves. Only we are both the challengers and the panelist but the goal is the same: To determine our real identity. And just like the game show our ego lies to us, pretending to be who we are truly, and this fellow is a very good liar; so good that we aren’t even aware there is another. And there is another difference: Our true identity (not really an identity) is invisible and doesn’t speak.

Consequently, we’re not even able to ask questions and get answers. In our imaginations, we picture The Buddha as an Indian person in flowing robes with floppy ear lobes who lived 2,500 years ago. And indeed such a person did live. His name was Śākyamuni (“Sage of the Śākyas”) and also known as Siddhārtha Gautama. That person succeeded in the identity game and discovered his true, not to be found non-identity and then came to be known as the Tathāgata which means, paradoxically, both one who has thus gone (tathā-gata) and one who has thus come (tathā-āgata).

In other words, he found out who he was and returned to tell us the truth. So what did he discover? Who was he really? And why does that matter to us? He discovered his own not to be found mind and in so doing he discovered who he was not. And it matters to us because the nature of his true identity is the same for you and me. We have the same mind, which is known as bodhi (the mind of enlightenment). In fact, this same mind is The Buddha, not that ancient person with floppy ear lobes. His true identity, and ours, is the not-to-be found mind. There is no other real Buddha except that non-identity.

We choose names for everything but all names are abstractions rather than the real thing. In the case of a non-identity, what names should be chosen? We could call it any name and each would be as non-good as the next. The Buddha chose the name “mind” but in The Diamond Sutra, he said there is no mind therefore we call it mind. The Apostle Paul called it “The mind of Christ.” We could call it “dog” and in each and every case the name would be an abstraction to represent something that can’t be found, but nevertheless is the source of everything.

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said this: “The Buddha is the mind. There is no Buddha except the mind; no mind but the Buddha.” The term Buddha actually means to awaken, and what a Buddha awakens to is their complete, true non-self. When that occurs, desire (the culprit that sets the engine of suffering in motion) goes away, and the reason is actually quite simple. Desire is the flip side of fulfillment.

Only someone who experiences himself or herself being un-fulfilled, desires. The experience of completion destroys desire. The ego can never experience completion because it is never fulfilled. However, the real person we are is always fulfilled and it is the real person who wakes up and discovers completion. So, as peculiar as that may seem, the real question is, “Why does that matter?”

It matters because the shocking truth means that we are all essentially Buddhas awaiting discovery. We spend our entire lives trying to find ourselves going down one blind alley after another and every time we find nothing substantial. We are all Don Quixote chasing windmills. The only real and lasting part of us is our not-to-be found mind. Only that is substantial. Everything else is just a feather in the wind.

Wisdom of the lotus.

Symbol of enlightened purity.

Unfortunately, most in the West have not been introduced to the depth and breadth of Eastern wisdom. It is more than a little arrogant and presumptuous to imagine that we Westerners are the sole keepers of the world’s great wisdom. One of the most profound of all Eastern sources is the Lotus Sūtra. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to profit from human wisdom, regardless of source. “Wisdom by any other source remains wisdom.”

The Lotus Sūtra is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all sutras, or sacred scriptures, of Buddhism. In it, The Buddha discusses the ultimate truth of life. The Sūtra’s key message is that Buddhahood, the supreme state of life, characterized by boundless compassion, wisdom, and courage, is inherent within every person without distinction of gender, ethnicity, social standing, or intellectual ability. Awakening to this inherent wealth changes your life for the better.

Of significance, the name “Lotus Sūtra” is symbolic of how a lotus grows. A lotus emerges from beneath the mud, reaching upward through clouded waters (adversity) to the light above. When the plant reaches the surface, it blossoms into a beautiful flower. 

This is a metaphor for how the human mind is purified. The seeds beneath the mud are symbolic of karmic seeds, buried deep within the subconscious. Liberation (e.g., enlightenment) is how those seeds move from a dormant stage upward into a conscious state that can reach the state of a purified, transformed mind. Many statues and symbols of The Buddha show him sitting or standing on a fully blossomed lotus flower. The lotus represents a wise and spiritually enlightened quality in a person; it represents somebody who carries out their tasks with little concern for any reward and full liberation from attachment.

The Sūtra is a teaching that encourages an active engagement with mundane life and all its challenges. Buddhahood is not an escape from these challenges but an inexhaustible source of positive energy to face and transform the sufferings and contradictions of life to create happiness.

I’m sharing just one example (The Parable of the burning house, following), without editing or redaction. The parable addresses the idea of “expedient means”—an important aspect of Mahayana wisdom as a commentary on the rash of “white lies” currently rampant throughout our political sphere. In this parable, The Buddha is conversing with Shariputra, one of the foremost disciples of the historical Buddha. Shariputra experienced enlightenment and became an arhat while still a young man. It was said he was second only to The Buddha in his ability to teach. He is credited with mastering and codifying The Buddha’s Abhidharma teachings, which became the third “basket” of the Tripitika.

“Shariputra, suppose that in a certain town in a certain country, there was a very rich man. He was far along in years, and his wealth was beyond measure. He had many fields, houses, and menservants. His own house was big and rambling, but it had only one gate. A great many people—a hundred, two hundred, perhaps as many as five hundred—lived in the house. The halls and rooms were old and decaying, the walls crumbling, the pillars rotten at their base, and the beams and rafters crooked and aslant. At that time, a fire suddenly broke out on all sides, spreading through the house’s rooms. The sons of the rich man, ten, twenty perhaps thirty, were inside the house. When the rich man saw the huge flames leaping up on every side, he was greatly alarmed and fearful and thought to himself, I can escape to safety through the flaming gate, but my sons are inside the burning house enjoying themselves and playing games, unaware, unknowing, without alarm or fear. The fire is closing in on them. Suffering and pain threaten them, yet their minds have no sense of loathing or peril, and they do not think of trying to escape!

Shariputra, this rich man thought to himself, I have strength in my body and arms. I can wrap them in a robe or place them on a bench and carry them out of the house. And then again he thought, this house has only one gate, and moreover it is narrow and small. My sons are very young, have no understanding, and love their games, being so engrossed in them that they are likely to be burned in the fire. I must explain to them why I am fearful and alarmed. The house is already in flames, and I must get them out quickly and not let them be burned up in the fire! Having thought in this way, he followed his plan and called to all his sons, saying, ‘You must come out at once!’ But though the father was moved by pity and gave good words of instruction, the sons were absorbed in their games and unwilling to heed them. They had no alarm, no fright, and in the end, no mind to leave the house. Moreover, they did not understand what the fire was, what the house was, and the danger. They merely raced about this way and that in play and looked at their father without heeding him.

At that time, the rich man had this thought: The house is already in flames from this huge fire. If my sons and I do not get out at once, we are certain to be burned. I must now invent some expedient means that will make it possible for the children to escape harm. The father understood his sons and knew what various toys and curious objects each child customarily liked and what would delight them. And so he said to them, ‘The kind of playthings you like are rare and hard to find. If you do not take them when you can, you will surely regret it later. For example, things like these goat-carts, deer-carts, and ox-carts. They are outside the gate now, where you can play with them. So you must come out of this burning house at once. Then whatever ones you want, I will give them all to you!’”

At that time, when the sons heard their father telling them about these rare playthings because such things were just what they had wanted, each felt emboldened in heart and, pushing and shoving one another, they all came wildly dashing out of the burning house. The father subsequently presents each of his sons with a large bejeweled carriage drawn by a pure white ox. When the Buddha asks Shariputra whether the father was guilty of falsehood, he answers.

“No, World-Honored One. This rich man simply made it possible for his sons to escape the peril of fire and preserve their lives. He did not commit a falsehood. Why do I say this? Because if they were able to preserve their lives, then they had already obtained a plaything of sorts. And how much more so when, through an expedient means, they are rescued from that burning house!”

The Buddha explains his father’s similes representing a compassionate Tathāgata who is like “a father to all the world,” and the sons representing humans who are “born into the threefold world, a burning house, rotten, and old.”

“Shariputra, that rich man first used three types of carriages to entice his sons, but later he gave them just the large carriage adorned with jewels, the safest, most comfortable kind of all. Despite this, that rich man was not guilty of falsehood. The Tathagata does the same, and he is without falsehood. First, he preaches the three vehicles to attract and guide living beings, but later, he employs just the Great Vehicle to save them. Why? The Tathagata possesses measureless wisdom, power, freedom from fear, the storehouse of the Dharma. He is capable of giving to all living beings the Dharma of the Great Vehicle. But not all of them are capable of receiving it. Shariputra, for this reason, you should understand that the Buddhas employ the power of expedient means. And because they do so, they make distinctions in the one Buddha vehicle and preach it as three.”

Being able to release oneself from hardened, inflexible rules that bind, and adapt in the interest of saving those in jeopardy, may appear unethical to many. Still, it must be considered who benefits when living by the law’s letter instead of the spirit beneath the law’s intent. Clinging to fixed ideologies can be (and often are) dangerous, even if such ideologies are considered Holy. To do so is like the rich man’s children who would rather play with their toys than save themselves.

Happiness

The secret of happiness.

Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief—The limerick, reflecting a child’s wondering: What will I be when I grow up? Every child thinks about that question. Every adult continues to wonder. It seems like a game of chance. 

The more important question, the one that is never asked, is not what but how. The “what” presumes the “how,” but it rarely works out the way we imagine. We really ought to think more about the latter and less about the former, since without understanding how “what”  becomes a game of chance.

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” So wrote Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

Every time I contemplate those words, an image pops into my mind of a mule trying to catch the carrot on the end of a stick attached to his head. The faster he goes, the faster the carrot moves away. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the pursuit takes us further and further away. The carrot is never eaten, and the mule starves in his pursuit.

It seems axiomatic that the fruit of whatever work we choose should result in happiness, if not immediately, then certainly after a time of diligence and perseverance. It’s the bargain we make, yet more times than not, the contract goes adrift. Could it be we are looking in the wrong direction? Forwards? Backward? Which way? How about within? And just maybe we need to first answer a more fundamental question of being because until we know who and what we are, we’re all chasing shadows and thinking all the while that happiness is a reward.

The highest wisdom says otherwise. This is what Krishna tells Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: 

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment, and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by the desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.”

Thich Nhat Hanh ends a talk in The Art of Mindful Living (Sounds True, 1992) with this: “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There is no way to peace; peace is the way. There is no way to enlightenment; enlightenment is the way.”

All right words, yet none of them will take us to happiness until we unveil our essential Selves (Atman). “Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be the unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential. Those who know the essential to be essential and the unessential to be unessential, dwelling in right thoughts, do arrive at the essential…We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”—The Dhammapada. 

Until such time as we awaken to our essence, our thoughts will be wrong, we’ll dwell on the unessential, happiness will remain a figment of our imaginations, and we’ll continue to chase the carrot.

You can’t prove a negative.

If you check the colloquial definition of you can’t prove a negative, you will find the following distinction:

Two sides. One Coin.

evidence of absence, or absence of evidence. That, of course, is an understanding based on the ability to discover or measure something, scientifically. The implication is there is something to be discovered, directly. There is, however, another way established by The Buddha in Chapter 22: On Pure Actions in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. This alternative way is called “fathoming.”

Here is the distinction expressed in that chapter: “If Dharma is eternal, one cannot gain it. It is like space. Who can gain it? In worldly life, what originally was not, but is now, is called the non-Eternal. The same with the Way. If the Way can be gained, this is nothing but the non-Eternal. If Dharma is the Eternal, there can be no gaining of anything, no arising, as in the case of the Buddha-Nature, which knows no gaining and no arising.”… “There are two kinds of Way. One is eternal, and the other the non-eternal. Enlightenment, too, is of two kinds. One is eternal, and the other non-eternal.”

Later in the same chapter comes “fathoming.” “There are two kinds of seeing. One is seeing by outer signs, and the other by fathoming…It is like seeing fire from afar, when one sees smoke. Actually, one does not see the fire. Though one does not see it, nothing is false here…Seeing the actions of the body and mouth, we say that we see the mind. The mind is not seen, but this is not false. This is seeing by outer signs…What is seeing by fathoming? We see the flower and the leaf, and we say we see the root. Though we do not see the root, this is not false.”

The actions of mind and body, by necessity, presumes (e.g., requires) the existence of the unseen Mind. Can we prove the existence of “up?” Up cannot be proven directly, but it can indirectly with the existence of “down.” These two are opposite sides of the same coin. Remove one side, and the other side will disappear.

In the same way, proving a negative, by necessity requires a positive. Remove one, and the other disappears. When a positive comes into being, a negative must likewise be present. So can a negative be proven? We may not be able to prove a negative directly, but without a negative, a positive could not exist.

A dried shit stick

None at all.

Google Analytics tells me the following post is an all-time favorite. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell me why, so I’m left to guess the reason. Nevertheless, I’m reposting since it has now been many years since the first posting. Now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, toilet paper has risen in the value of relative things, and the post may increase even more.

For some time now, there has been a burr growing under my saddle, which I have hesitated to acknowledge—the manner whereby we obscure clarity with holy robes. In Zen circles (and well beyond), this apparent piety takes many forms. We chant with an aura of mystery and a particular tone of voice. We use archaic language from cultures now dead. We employ a sort of pecking order or stature structure within our sanghas—toward what end? Such means are reasonable and accepted as standard everywhere, and yet it is disturbing when this happens among folk who should know better.

In ninth-century China, Chan Master Yúnmén Wényan (known in Japan as Ummon Zenji) made quite a fantastic impact by deflating all such forms of piety. His most famous one-liner stemmed from a question posed to him by a monk. The question from the monk was, “What’s the Buddha?” His answer: “A dried shit-stick.” If that doesn’t strip away holy robes, it is hard to imagine what would. And how should such an obvious statement of seeming disrespect be understood? The modern-day equivalent of a ninth-century “shit stick” would be Charmin toilet tissue used to wipe excrement from your anus and then flush it down the toilet. Getting rid of our egos is a most useful endeavor, but once that is accomplished, we need to resist attaching ourselves to the means and just flush it down the toilet. And this is true for all attempts: Once a task is completed, we need to move on and let go. Wearing a badge of superiority to broadcast accomplishments is a sure sign of egotism. And that translates into the conduct of greed, anger, and ignorance/close-mindedness.

This principle of non-attachment applies even to what is believed to be the Buddhist truth. “Before we understand, we depend on instruction. After we understand, instruction is irrelevant. The dharmas taught by the Tathagata sometimes teach existence and sometimes teach non-existence. They are all medicines suited to the illness. There is no single teaching. But in understanding such flexible teachings, if we should become attached to the existence or to non-existence, we will be stricken by the illness of dharma-attachment (inflexible truth—dogma). Teachings are only teachings. None of them are real.”—Chi-fo (aka Feng-seng)

Recently I was privileged to watch a talk given by a modern-day Zen Master—Roshi Shodo Harada. It was one of the clearest, unpretentious discussions I have ever heard about the Zen path, and it directly confronted this issue. What he said was simple: That the goal of Zen is to root out and penetrate beyond the ego down to our pure nature. His message was gentle and naked. He made no attempt to mystify his message, and because of this, it was perfectly evident that this was a man of great depth with no need to spin anything.

I wasn’t around in ninth-century China and thus didn’t hear Master Yúnmén’s talk, so I can only guess about his meaning, which resonates with statements made by other Zen Masters such as Bodhidharma in his encounter with Emperor Wu. When asked what measure of merit he would garner for his support of Buddhism, Bodhidharma said, “None at all.” 

The point of Bodhidharma’s response; the point of Master Yúnmén, and the point of Roshi Harada is the same—At the level of our pure nature, we are all equal and short of that depth we are all trapped in the ego-delusive thought that we are someone special who deserves exalted stature or reward. There are no clothes, or robes of piety—however grand, that sufficiently dress up the ego. All such clothing is nothing more than a “dried shit stick.” And once we arrive at the truth of ourselves, it is time to let go and move on with insight, freed of badges, and the baggage of dharma addiction. If you want to grasp this in other terms, consider the words of Ch’an Master Lin-chi: Being a true man (or woman if you prefer) without rank.

Where are we going?

Any road to nowhere.

When you cut through the extraneous and get down to the fundamental issue, knowing where we are and where we’re going is kind of important. And I’m not referring to your next business or vacation trip. I’m referring to the ultimate destination if there is one. 

That’s a rhetorical “if” statement. Obviously, we are here, and just as obviously we will die, at least the physical house within which we live and have our being.

If we’re unsure of our ultimate destination then the Cheshire Cat (see image) is quite correct: Any road will take us there. On the other hand, if there is an ultimate destination then we are either heading for it by what we think and do or we aren’t. Many are persuaded there is no ultimate destination so it doesn’t matter. Any road will get them to nowhere.

However, many are persuaded they will go either up to heaven in the sky or down to the bowels of Hell. Consequently, these folks make an attempt to do what they can to hedge their bets against some nasty brimstone (call it an insurance policy against unknowing) by doing their best to be agents for good, which is not necessarily a bad thing but the motive is questionable. They kind of know they haven’t met the requisite conditions to get where they want to go, but just maybe it will happen anyway.

Such thinking overlooks the possibility that there is nowhere to go other than where we are. Yesterday is a memory-dream and tomorrow is speculation. So the trip destination is like being inside a giant room, unaware that you are, and thus desiring to be in that room. Of course, this room is an unconditional one and as such can’t be either here or there, tomorrow, today or yesterday. And why would that be? Because it is beyond conditions (unconditional). And if it is unconditional then we don’t have to wait for the grave to get there. We’re already there. And why is that? Because it’s unconditional.

All sentient beings have consciousness—ever-present yet without any defining properties. It is always here, and there—everywhere yet nowhere. And the true nature of consciousness is Shunyata (emptiness). The ultimate nature of the mind is empty like it states in the Heart Sutra: “Likewise, consciousness is Empty, and Emptiness is also consciousness. So, natural Tathagatagarbha is the emptiness of the mind.” There is nowhere to go where it is not so why go anywhere?

Granted this perspective is not your ordinary view, which says that our earthly life is separated from both the good and the bad future places, and which way we go depends on thinking and behaving our way into one or the other. This view has a name: duality, which is the anathema of religious thought. Of course, this idea would contradict the fundamental dogmas of religions, which splits the matter into separate departments. This latter would indeed keep us separated from our source and make our union an impossible task of never making a mistake, or miming a formula that has changed over time that requires you to admit that you’re a bum and incapable of satisfying the necessary conditions. So what’re your options? Letting our source do what it does.

But if IT is unconditional (and hasn’t gone on vacation) then he/she/it lives within us, outside of us, beyond time and circumstances. And if that is true then we’re in for a very short journey because our destination is right back where we started.

As unlikely as you may think, this outlandish idea is precisely what the parable of the Prodigal Son says—taught by Jesus—or if you prefer the Zen version, it is what Hakuin Zenji, one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism, taught. The following is from his famous Song of Zazen…

“From the beginning all beings are Buddha.
Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas.
How near the truth, yet how far we seek.
Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst!’
Like the son of a rich man wand’ring poor on this earth, we endlessly circle the six worlds.
The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.’”

So where are you going? And are you sure? In the end, it matters little whether you’re sure or not because what we believe has no bearing on what’s real. But knowing certainly makes the non-trip more interesting.