Primal ignorance and primal enlightenment.

When all of the pieces fit together

In a previous post: Our overturned world, I shared Patañjali’s view of the five kleshas as being the causes of suffering. His perspective that the very first klesha: ignorance of the true nature of reality, was the foundational cause of suffering. When this primal ignorance is overturned, the other four fall into place. That being the case, the question becomes, what is the opposite of primal ignorance? When ignorance falls away, what is our natural (primal) state of mind, and what is it that results and produces a state of transformation?

Some time ago, I wrote about two opposing states of karma: Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death, and Karma and the Wheel of Dharma. The Buddha compared two paths: one leading to the discriminate states of life versus death and the other, leading to our true nature—pure consciousness without any discriminate properties, known as Buddha-nature: the realm of unity or natural enlightenment. Can that realm be perceived? And if so what does it look like? The point was made that the entire universe is a function of consciousness, or said another way: the universe is nothing other than the primordial mind in manifestation. 

The Buddha taught in the Mahaparinirvana Sūtra, “Seeing the actions of 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.”  Of course, the mind is the source (consciousness) and as such, can’t see itself. We only see manifestations.

In that same Sūtra, he taught that “If impermanence is killed, what there is, is eternal Nirvana. If suffering is killed, one must gain bliss; if the void is killed, one must gain the real. If the non-self is killed, one must gain the True Self. O, great King! If impermanence, suffering, the Void, and the non-self are killed, you must be equal to me.”

Now we come to the critical point: unapplied consciousness has no properties. It is pure and indiscriminate. Only when consciousness is applied can discrimination occur. Until then, everything is unified and whole. 

A favorite sūtra of Bodhidharma was the Lankavatara. Here it says, “In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakāya (our true primordial mind of wisdom/consciousness) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?” 

Elsewhere Bodhidharma taught that the Dharmakāya was just another name for the Buddha and said, “When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha ... the void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma. This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning ... this great Nirvanic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.”

All of the above harmonizes with Nagarjuna’s Two Truth Doctrine and the teachings of many other Zen Masters that we have two minds (one a mind of manifestation with discriminate properties and the other the great Nirvanic Mind without discrimination of any kind). In truth, these are not two but rather the unified integration of ignorance and bliss. Rationally, it appears as if there are two but think of these two dimensions as you would a roof with an outside and an inside. 

There is only one roof. From the outside, there is light, and everything appears as discriminate, but from the darkness, in the attic (where no light exists), nothing can be seen, thus no discrimination. A roof is, however, a feeble example since the mind that can’t be seen contains nothing and everything at the same time. Everything comes from there, but until the moment of applied consciousness, there’s nothing perceptible. It’s an everything/nothing mind.  

The great Nirvanic Mind is not perceptible since it’s the ground out of which all perception emanates. It can only be experienced but in itself is “…far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind.” Here there is no life or death, no self or other, no birth or death, no misidentification (asmita), no attachment (raga), no anger following a loss (dvesha), no misunderstanding life, and death (abhinivesha), no versus of any kind. THIS is what a transformed mind is, and when you awaken to this realm, you discover nothing other than what has always been: your true self—the Mind of the Buddha, full to overflowing in wisdom (the opposite of primal ignorance). This is when all of the pieces fall into place—this is the true nature of reality.

The eye-glasses upon our nose.

Seeing only clouds of delusion.

Zen Master Huang Po (Huángbò Xīyùn) was one of the most important and revered teachers of all time. Among other contributions he was the teacher of Lin-chi (the founder of Rinzai Zen) and the promulgator of the inherent nature of the One Mind, being everything. His teaching on this reflected the Indian concept of the tathāgatagarbha—the idea that within all beings is the nature of the Buddha. Therefore, Huang Po taught that seeking the Buddha was futile as the Buddha already resided within:

This principle is one of the most difficult for aspirants to comprehend since the vast majority of the human race firmly believes Enlightenment IS to be attained and may spend their entire phenomenal lives seeking what they already possess. This idea of no attainment was eloquently articulated by the following:

“If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see the five elements of consciousness as void; the four physical elements as not constituting an ‘I’; the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one–if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash. He would no longer be entangled by the Triple World; he would be a World-Transcender. He would be without even the faintest tendency towards rebirth. If he should behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to welcome him, surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he would feel no desire to approach them. If he should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding him, he would experience no terror. He would just be himself, oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the Absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being. This, then, is the fundamental principle.”

His expositions reflected the same principle expressed roughly 1,600 years prior in the Bhagavad-Gita, which spoke of the eternal, yet obscured nature of the Self:

“Once identified with the Self, we know that although the body will die, we will not die; our awareness of this identity is not ruptured by the death of the physical body. Thus we have realized the essential immortality which is the birthright of every human being. To such a person, the Gita says, death is no more traumatic than taking off an old coat.”

If we could grasp and experience our essential nature, all fear for our destiny would disappear, we would awaken to our truth and realize Enlightenment in a flash. Yet we are lost in a cloud of delusion as one would be when looking through the lenses of eyeglasses positioned upon our noses.

Flowers in the sky of mind.

What dies, and what doesn't.

I’d like to tell you a story I call “Cleansing bubbles” about my own transformation.

One of life’s most enduring themes has been to find ourselves. The quest begins early, reaches a peak during adolescence and tails off afterward, largely because of frustration. Defining our identities is thus a universal pursuit that rarely culminates in anything real. If it reaches a conclusion, at all, it travels down the road of ego construction and maintenance. 

More times than not, nothing beyond ever occurs and we process what we think of ourselves in terms of how others see us, from moment to endless ever-changing moment. One moment a good self-image; the next a bad one. Our sense of who we are dances on the end of a tether like a boat anchored in a turbulent sea. Rather than finding our true, united nature, the quest is driven to enhance our differences. 

In the words Aśvaghoṣa: “In the all-conserving mind (âlaya-vijñâna) ignorance obtains; and from the non-enlightenment starts that which sees, that which represents, that which apprehends an objective world, and that which constantly particularises. This is called the ego (manas).” 

But as we shall see, there are two ends of this stick: one end that is emerging and the other end the seed from which the ego grows. In contemporary terminology, we lust for individuating ourselves at the expense of uniting ourselves. That universal quest to find ourselves is a dance of inside-the box futility. From beginning to end this entire process is flawed and based on a moving target dependent upon changing circumstances. All of life is changing and within change, there is no stability, except in the realm of stillness we call the soul—the hidden spirit awaiting discovery.

The quest was of particular importance to me since I never knew my father. The man I thought was my father was a sadistic beast who took pleasure in beating me, laughing all the while. The result on my psyche was devastating and hammered home the final nail in the coffin on my sense of self-worth when mixed with a broken love-affair during my young adult life, and the horrors of two years as a combat Marine fighting in Vietnam to survive by killing innocent people. 

I was 48 years of age, suicidal and a complete mess when I fled to a Zen monastery. By that time the seeds of disaster, planted in my subconscious had grown and flourished into plants of misery. Had it not been for the loving kindness and guidance of the Rōshi of the monastery I would be long gone and not writing these words. Because of him, I found myself—not the phony one that dances on a string of dependency, but the real one that never changes.

There is no limit to what I didn’t know when I first began my journey to self awareness. I was naïve and uneducated in the ways of Zen. I didn’t understand Japanese. I hadn’t yet read the significant sūtras. I didn’t even understand MU—the koan given me to transform my mental processes. But I did understand one simple metaphor given me by the Rōshi that turned the waters of my consciousness from the clouded filth of my imagination to clarity and self-realization.

I was told that while I was practicing Zazen to silently watch my thoughts, as bubbles arising out of the depths, into and through my conscious awareness and breaking on the surface of the water (e.g., thoughts becoming actualized phenomena—actions). I was to never attach myself to the bubbles but rather just watch and let them come, one after another, seeing the chains of causation seeping out of my encased memory, connecting, moment by moment my past with my present. And then to take the next step and realize what I was watching were old-movies of a dead past. That I did for months on end. I watched. I cried over the afflictions of my past, I endured the pain until one day there were no more bubbles; just clear water, the “movie” stopped and I was at peace. It was the practice of Zazen, that when conjoined with all that came before, shattered one part of me and introduced me to the better.

And then the dawn! What I could never see through the clouded waters of consciousness, I could see once the waters were clear. I was not the despicable person I had been led to believe. I was a never-changing, timeless soul—perfect at the core, encased in a broken body of ignorance. When I shared that experience with Rōshi during dokusan, the light of the sun shown through his face and he beamed, “welcome home.” It took me years beyond before I understood what he meant, but forever after that experience, the real me never bobbed again.

I am still encased in that broken vessel which is crumbling faster and faster as I age—and will remain that way until my shell is no longer, but I reached a point in my life when I felt compelled to do what I could to share the wealth of my realization.

Years later, I came upon a story told by The Buddha in the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra. I share it to put flesh on the bones of my story: “‘Or perhaps, my friends, you can understand it like this: In a factory, statues of the Buddha are made by pouring liquid gold into moulds made of clay. In order to melt the gold into a liquid it has to be made so hot that the clay moulds become blackened and burnt. But when they have cooled down, the burnt, dirty moulds are broken and inside them the golden statues are revealed in all their beauty. In the same way, if we can break away our nasty feelings of greed and hatred we will find that underneath them, within us, we each have the hidden, perfect qualities of a Buddha, like pure shining gold.’

After finishing his explanations, The Buddha said to all the assembled holy men and women, ‘If you can learn to really understand this teaching, you will have understood one of the most important things that I saw when I became Enlightened, and you will see the way to perfect wisdom.’” 

That story is one of nine stories told to his followers near Rajagriha, in a great pavilion in the Sūtra. And rather than clay moulds becoming blackened and burnt, he saw upon his enlightenment a sky filled with beautiful lotus flowers which eventually wilted and died. But when they died a beautiful golden image of a Buddha meditating and radiating beams of light emerged out of the decay.

Like those flowers, “I” died that day (e.g., that broken, filthy jar-image of myself), and out of that broken vessel emerged the true me radiating from the depths of my soul, like light through the clear waters. Dying flowers; crumbling molds; bubbles arising from the depths of tragedy—Metaphors all, of equal magnitude. We are all so very different on the outside, yet at the core of our hearts and souls—where it really matters, we are the same; brothers and sisters bound forever together. If you can experience this transitional death of what doesn’t matter and the subsequent birth of what does, you will have entered into the timeless realm of purity, and you will feel “at home.”

The critical nature of genuine self awakening.

When contemplating the myriad problems of today’s world you might come up with a list such as the following:

• The COVID-19 pandemic

• The Middle East debacle

• Unchecked global climate change (warming)

• A growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else

• Spreading violence

• Hatred and intolerance

• Political gridlock

• Toxic pollution of the environment

• Loss of genuine liberties

• (add your own)

While all of these are problems of enormous concern, there is a core root that underlies and drives them all: a misidentification of who we are individually and collectively. So long as our answer to identity boils down to a vacillating self-image (ego) the natural result is fear, greed, possessiveness, selfishness, isolation, irresponsibility, despair, and a victim mentality that leaves us all heading for a cave of seeming security.

Recently Avram Noam Chomsky observed that “As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism, or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.” While a grim statement that shocks us into states of denial and disbelief, his observations are true.

The question is, what must we all do in order to escape from this inevitable outcome? The answer is not the ostrich method of avoidance, denial, and ignorance. On the contrary what we must all do is transform our self-understanding, from an isolated individual to a connected member of the human race, which was (and remains) the solution to suffering offered by The Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. The solution does not change because the nature of being human does not change. 

At the central core of all of us is an indefinable state of unconditional consciousness that is the same for everyone. The problem is that while this state is the source of all aspects of awareness, itself is not detectable and we are all prone to consider real only things with conditions that can be detected. This is a case of the eye not being aware of the eye. However, in this case, it is the inner eye (URNA) instead of the detectable eye, and as the father of Zen wrote, it is in this state of mind that all discrimination ceases to exist. Out of this indiscriminate state arises sentient discrimination that leads us to the mistaken notion that each of is a dependent ego at odds with every other human, vacillating and contingent on an uncertain world and that “ego idea” then produces the undesirable qualities listed above.

In the recent past, a form of meditation (MBSR) has become prominent in helping many to cease attachment to waves of thinking, many of which are destructive to self and others. While very helpful, it only one of two dimensions outlined by The Buddha in his Eight Fold Path. MBSR rests upon one of these two: right mindfulness (Sanskrit: samyak-smṛti/sammā-sati) and is the essential path to a genuine awakening of our true, indiscriminate nature (who we truly are). The other dimension of mind (right concentration (Sanskrit: samyak-samādhi/sammā-samādhi) is not widely known, but by any other name is Zen/Dhyāna, with a history going back into an unrecorded time, long before The Buddha. 

The two disciplines were intended to be practiced as a combined pair but in today’s world, they have been split apart. MBSR has become quite useful in stilling the mind and helping practitioners to stay present instead of lost in speculation. However, the issue of identity remains an esoteric matter leaving those who practice MBSR only, still holding fast to a perceptible and insecure self-understanding. Importantly it is Zen that produces the desired result of a sense of SELF that is unconditional, whole, perfect, and unshaken. This quality alone delivers the awareness that we are all unified, none better; none diminished in any way. 

As awful as the laundry list of contemporary problems may be, those and unknown others will flourish unless we can experience this state of indiscriminate, undiscovered unity, inherent in us all. 

Our imaginary and real self—understanding both

The tides of transformation.

Before getting too far into my topic, first, let me speak about how we all perceive the physical world within which we live, and our self-understanding that grows from that complex of perceptual dimensions. And I emphasize the word “complex” since, unless we are lacking one or more perceptual capacities—such as Helen Keller, who was lacking both the capacity to see and the capacity to hear, the standard interrelated complex—the Gestalt, depends upon five sensory capabilities, e.g., sight, sound, smelling, feeling, tasting and thinking. And yes, thinking, because it is an internal aspect that emerges from the co-mingling of the other four. 

We perceive, for example, a perfectly ripe peach through sight, smell, feeling, and tasting, and we form an image in our mind of that co-mingled combination and label the Gestalt with a chosen word “peach,” at least in English. In French, it would be “pêche,” or in German “Pfirsich.” The human experience of a sensorily perceived “peach” is universally the same regardless of the word used to describe it. Changing the term does not change the experience. Shakespeare used this premise when he had Juliet utter to her lover Romeo: “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is not hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;…” Romeo held the idea that, because their names were different, they could not be united.
 

An analogy of how a computer works is a helpful metaphor in understanding. A computer has three, interrelated functions: Input (the data entered to be processed), data processing, and output (something it reports or does). In line with this construction is the idiomatic term “GIGO”—Garbage in, garbage out. In other words, a computer will be limited by what goes in to be processed. And the output will never be any better than the input, thus “GIGO.” That is easy to comprehend in the case of a machine. 

But how about our self-understanding? The same involvements apply. If the mental construction of ourselves (fabricated from our perceived experiences) is garbage, then the thoughts about ourselves will likewise be garbage, and nobody wishes to think of themselves as garbage. All of us have a deeply held desire to be better than garbage—so we construct an imaginary self-image; an ego if you will, which in ancient languages across the entire world meant, and still means, “I.” And when anyone imagines themselves, they further imagine they are separate and apart from other “I’s.” We naturally perceive differences, only. Why? Because everything that can be perceived is different and seemingly incomplete. Nobody can perceive what is non-different (e.g., united and complete).
 

And for the most part, that imaginary construction of our selves is far less than who we are truly. But we are limited (just as a computer is) to our input. It is utterly accurate to say that what is imagined (in any way; self or otherwise) falls short of the truth of ourselves, which can never be perceived, in an ordinary way.
The difference between the imagined and the real is completely opposite in nature, and neither what is imagined nor real can possibly exist separate and apart from the other. 

Just as “up” is opposite from “down,” so too is the imagined opposite from the real. The imagined is constructed, by, and dependent upon, the capacities and limitations of our conditional/ perceptual tools. The real, being opposite in nature, is thus unconditional and can’t be perceived at all. And this is so because the conditional and the unconditional arise (and cease) together; they are in a sense, inseparable “Siamese-twins.” And the problem, universally, is hardly anyone has been blessed by experiencing the unconditional, always-perfect aspect of who they are, genuinely. And out of that, mismatch grows every evil known to mankind.
 

The world population does not have an identity crisis. Instead, we are having a non-identity crisis. And by that, I mean, hardly anyone has ever been blessed with experiencing the other, real side of themselves—the non-imagined, true aspect of our beingness. 

That is the crisis that all of us are presently having, and it is killing us, both figuratively and literally. The perceptual world all around us is changing at light-speed, and we are collectively going through a shedding process. 

What used to work for us, does no longer. We are being forced, by circumstances beyond our individual control, to adapt and change. We are lost and in a state of universal crisis. This is nothing new. It has been advancing upon us for a long time and is now reaching a crescendo. If we are to survive this, we must all learn how to “flatten the imaginary curve,” or we will over-tax the system, and it will crush us, suddenly and destructively.
 

Thus far, I have written a number of books on this tsunamic crisis which I will gladly send to you in PDF format, for no charge. The selections are The Other Side of Midnight—The Fundamental Principle of Polarity, The Non-Identity Crisis—The crisis that endangers our world, Impostor: Living in a world of Alternate-Facts, and More Over—Finding Your Worth Beneath Excess. All you need do is send me an email, with “Request for book” in the subject line and requesting a copy of your choice in the body, and in short order, I will respond with a PDF file copy. My email address is john.joh40@gmail.com.

The true you and me.

The Ancient Greek aphorism to “know thyself” is familiar even today. Most people throughout time and place believe they know themselves and can go to great length to describe their attributes, personality characteristics, along with strengths and weaknesses. Of course, as we age our comfort with these definitions changes and we seem to have an evolving self that morphs as the world changes around us. In that sense we seem lost to the vagaries of life, and are like sponges, soaking up the dimensions of our conditional world and that method is the standard way of “knowing ourselves.”

There is, however, another way of coming to self-understanding that was articulated by The Buddha in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. The dialogue in this sūtra is between The Buddha and his cousin, Ananda. And one of the principal teachings in the sūtra concerns this alternative way of knowing. In the process of the ensuing conversation, The Buddha identifies two types of minds; one that leads to unending suffering and the other that leads to genuine self-understanding. Here is what is said:

“The Buddha then compounds his cousin’s confusion by stating that there are fundamentally two kinds of mind:

Ananda, what are the two fundamentals? 

1. The first is the mind that is the basis of death and rebirth and has continued for the entirety of time, which has no beginning. This mind is dependent upon perceived objects, and it is this that you and all beings make use of and that each of you considers to be your own nature.
2. The second fundamental is enlightenment, which has no beginning; it is the original and pure essence of nirvana. It is the original understanding, the real nature of consciousness. All conditioned phenomena arise from it, and yet it is among those phenomena that beings lose track of it. They have lost track of this fundamental understanding, though it is active in them all day long, and because they remain unaware of it, they make the mistake of entering the various destinies.”

Unfortunately, even in the present day, we misunderstand  “mind” as the first and this leads to all the suffering of the world. And the second is the one the vast majority of humanity has missed. The obvious conclusion to this observation is that the solution to our contemporary troubles must begin with a proper grasp of our true mind, because we are prone to understand ourselves and others in the same fashion as this first kind of mind understands anything: as mutually discreet, perceived objects, all different with no connective spiritual tissue, only. Beneath our bodily form lies our true spiritual nature which never dies and is connected to all.

Fool that I am.

The fools prison

There’s a really curious matter regarding our self-understanding. For the most part, our unenlightened way of thinking about our self is governed by a mythical illusion, which we take to be wise and compassionate. 

We imagine this being covered in lots of different clothing and we call that person our ego. The term ego in Latin means “I,” cognate with the Greek “Εγώ (Ego)” meaning “I,” often used in English to mean the self, identity, or other related concepts.

When we express this in descriptive words we say things like, “I am an American, a Black man, a Christian, a Democrat, or any other handle.” We identify with such definitions, as we would clothing. So long as we conform to that way of defining our selves we are trapped within a prison of unflinching conformity without even realizing it. We thus live in delusion and always consider ourselves to be wise and compassionate. But are we really? Or are we deluding ourselves?

There is a test that nearly always works to reveal the truth. Can you give an unconditional gift, expecting nothing in return? With no expectation of reciprocal action? Or perhaps a trade is taking place: “I’ll give you this IF you give me something in return. And if you won’t return my favor, then I’ll stop giving you mine.” This latter is being launched by our ego because an ego is only interested in self-serving conditions. Our ego says to us, “What’s in this for me?” An ego lives within the delusion of separation, alienation and greed since that is the nature of an egos house. In that house we are fools believing that we’re not. A fool never knows they are a fool. And a Buddha never knows he/she is a Buddha. No one ever truly knows who he or she is that way. The measure of that arises by actions rather than words.

Nobody is an idea or a concept. Instead, we can learn what The Buddha said about this in The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. He said we are an indefinable, and undetectable entity known as the Tathāgatagarbha (loosly translated as the genesis or womb of the Buddha which lives within us all); Reality personified that can’t be found. He said that we don’t have real, separate identities. Instead he said we know ourselves by what we produce. Jesus said the same thing, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” An ego is a thornbush. Our real personhood shares unconditional wine.

We can talk a good game all day long but none of it means a thing. Show me your measure with your life and never mind the words. St. Francis of Assisi said it this way, “Preach the gospel. And if necessary, use words.”

Little Bear and Lily Pads

The kingdom of magic.

Many years ago I had an experience, which irrevocably changed my life. When it happened I knew it was transforming but I had no idea to what extent, nor did I have any contextual framework into which to fit the occurrence. 

It took many years more before I fully comprehended what had taken place, and the impact on my life. It is hard to speak of the experience in terms, which can be understood, but I’ll give it my best shot since I know how important it is to share what happened⎯not for my benefit but for those who may read this. 

In metaphorical terms, the floor of my bucket collapsed and I fell through Alice’s rabbit hole into a vast and unknown realm. I had lived 40 years by then with no clue that my sense of reality was questionable. It wasn’t what I hoped for but I never thought there was any other possibility. I was living just like everyone else, based on the notion that I knew who I was. I had a name, a career, relationships, and a long history. I functioned in all of the ordinary ways—in short, I had a well-defined identity and I was miserable even though by any conventional measure it appeared as if I were successful. 

I eventually reached a point when I took a serious look at the life I had fashioned and asked myself a hard question: Did I want to spend the rest of my days doing more of the same, and getting the same result? I decided that I didn’t, but by then I had a lot invested in a bad game with no idea what the alternatives might be. In spite of this dilemma I saw that if I was ever going to find the answer, I had better consider again, from the beginning, with the time I had left. So with that realization, I cut loose from my moorings and plunged into foreign waters.

Through a convoluted set of circumstances, I soon found myself living in a Zen monastery, which I first thought of like a halfway house to give me time to solve my mystery and chart a new life path. Little did I know that this choice would open the door to a wholly different realm, which would radically transform how I looked at the world and myself. When I say, “the floor of my bucket collapsed” what I mean is that my floor—the foundation of my life up to that point: my imagined identity; ego—was blocking discovery of my real, true nature. It was like wearing a coat that obscured my naked and real self. 

I had not been at the monastery very long and can’t explain why the collapse happened so soon. I have since read many stories about Zen monks spending years in dedicated practice before experiencing this metamorphous. I don’t know why it happened to me as it did. All I know is that when it happened it felt like I was being flushed down a toilet and when it was over “I” no longer existed. The “me”—identity, which was my floor, died there. And I was transformed from an isolated individual into an integrated sojourner and I joined the world for the first time, spiritually fresh, clean, naked, and raw.

As I look back over what I’ve just written it looks unbelievable and strange. I know that, but I also know—after having lived many years beyond that magical moment—that it is worth the risk of possible scorn to share it. If even a single person believes this story, they will know that it is possible for them to be transformed also. And if that means they will take a similar risk to cast aside what they think is real and discover the same reality that I did, then a good outcome will have resulted. You might be tempted to think this experience made me special. It had the opposite effect. I realized that we are all the same; none any more special than anyone else. In fact, I now realize that this whole wish to be special is a major obstacle to waking up to who we really are.

I am not a Zen master. I did not spend years of dedicated practice to achieve this transformation. There is no reason whatsoever that it should have come when it did, but it did. And if it happened for me it can happen for anyone. What I have learned since that moment of transformation is this new and unknown realm is neither new nor unknown. It is like a story I used to read to my daughter when she was very young—the story of Little Bear, who discovered that he didn’t need to wear a coat since he already had one. We too don’t need the extraneous cloak of an ego. We already have a true nature, which is always there beneath the cloak. I can only tell you that my deepest nature is infinitely finer than the extraneous one.

If you take the time to read Zen literature you’ll find this underlying, true nature called many names—Buddha-Nature, the One Mind, pure consciousness, True man without rank—the names don’t matter. Call it what you choose. Maybe the best name is Lily—the flower of life. The water lily grows on a pad floating on water, rooted in the muck, which is hidden in the deep. In many icons, the Buddha is shown sitting on that pad. What we all would be wise to not do is to gild our lilies, or put coats on bears who already have one.

Spooky reality.

It’s quite amazing how physics is catching up to, and blurring the lines, between the age-old enemies of science and philosophy. Three articles have recently been published in respected scientific papers. One titled, “Quantum chicken-or-egg experiment blurs the distinction between before and after,”  the second reported on the “Nobel Prize Awarded to Two Quantum Physicists,” and the third “The Quantum Theory That Peels Away the Mystery of Measurement” occurred just three days ago.

All three make note of the growing consensus within the physics community that what Einstein referred to as “spooky” can be explained by a principle known as quantum entanglement that allows quanta, perhaps many thousands of miles apart, to reflect a mystical connection that defies rational logic, where before and after are not sequential but rather simultaneously connected.

This chicken and egg, logical, conundrum was postulated, under a different name, nearly four millennia ago in India with the principle of “dependent origination”—Pratītyasamutpāda in Sanskrit.  It is a very simple principle to understand philosophically but, until now, made no logical sense. But then neither did the chicken and egg puzzle. 

At the simplest of philosophical levels, consider “up” and “down,” neither of which can exist without the other. When up arises, down arises simultaneously. When one disappears, the other disappears simultaneously. So too a mother and a child (e.g., chicken and egg). A mother can’t possibly be a mother until the instance of birth since that is how we understand the difference between a mother and a non-mother woman. Before that point of creation, a woman was not yet a mother.

The philosophy takes this a step further (as physics may one day) by pointing out that the nature of one thing is conjoined with another of a completely opposite nature; thus conditional and unconditional. Conditions (the realm of physics) are constantly in motion, even at the quantum level, whereas the unconditional (the realm of metaphysic) never changes, and just like chickens and eggs, one can’t exist without the other. Before the big bang, there was nothing, yet out of Singularity came everything—total opposites.

There are broad and meaningful implications to the latter philosophical observation, concerning the survival of the human race. And these implications takes us into human self-understanding that could save our collective behinds, but only by opening the door and embracing this new/old notion of universal connectivity: We are all different, yet exactly the same, simultaneously. Spooky! Yet not.

Surrendering from surrendering.

Before

After

Years ago when I first began to practice yoga, I heard a story of a revered yogi who arose one morning, before dawn, and went to meditate on the banks of the Ganges. The heat of the day was beginning to rise. To be more comfortable, he removed his robe. Not wanting it to blow away while he meditated, he folded it carefully, laid in on the river bank, covered it over with a mound of sand, and then proceeded with his practice. Time passed and when he opened his eyes he saw he’d been joined by many young aspirants all with mounds of sand shaped neatly in front of them.

“Immature beings with but a twig of awareness

Are incited by the demon of death.

Where they’ll be in the future depends on the karma they gathered in the past.

Doing evil deeds is meaningless.”

Young seekers all aspire to achievement and many times adopt meaningless rituals believing they contain some magical properties that will transport them to Nirvana. The following is excerpted from Mokchokpa’s Song of Advice in Nicole Riggs’ book on the Shangpa Lineage, Like An Illusion: Lives of the Shangpa Kagyu Masters.

Look at the two images above. The comparison is shocking! Both images are of The Buddha at different stages of enlightenment. On the left is the figure of a person determined to the point of death. At that stage, he had surrendered a life of luxury and everything else except the one thing that mattered most. He was austere and relying purely on the unreal part of himself. In contemporary vernacular, he was pulling himself up by his bootstraps. That road nearly killed him and he was “… incited by the demon of death.”

In his dying breath, he broke the chain of death, dropped body and mind, and gave up the final vestige of which he was holding. In a flash he suddenly became Self-aware. At that precise instant, he realized that to which every seeker aspires and had nothing more to surrender. He then shed the baggage of fear and turned into a person of serenity and love (the image on the right).

The process of Self-realization is like this. We move from reliance on illusions to surrendering to all illusions, even the illusion of God. It was Meister Eckhart who said this was the final frontier: giving up the idea of god to fuse with God. Whatever we can imagine is a barrier. When all images and ideas are gone, we dwell in the silence of the mind, and the only thing left is Pure awareness/The true Self: the source of all ideas and none.

Many times, in our desire for spiritual achievement, we replace the work of Self-realization with the surrogate of enhancing our self-image, thinking that if we look the part and reach down deeper into our limited reservoir to try-try-again, it will be enough to impress those upon whom we rely for the transparency of self-worth. The truth is that while the treasure of our True Self always lies buried beneath our feet, it takes much digging to rid ourselves of the impediments that block access to who we are truly. And once we complete the mining, there is nothing more to surrender. Then we are in the home we have never left and realize, like the ancient “stupid men,” there was never anything to surrender.

“When we renounce learning we have no troubles. 

The (ready) ‘yes,’ and (flattering) ‘yea;’⎯

Small is the difference they display

But mark their issues, good and ill;⎯

What space the gulf between shall fill?

What all men fear is indeed to be feared;

but how wide and without end

is the range of questions (asking to be discussed)!

The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased;

as if enjoying a full banquet,

as if mounted on a tower in spring.

I alone seem listless and still,

my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence.

I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look 

dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go.

The multitude of men all have enough and to spare.

I alone seem to have lost everything.

My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of chaos.

Ordinary men look bright and intelligent,

while I alone seem to be benighted.

They look full of discrimination,

while I alone am dull and confused.

I seem to be carried about as on the sea,

drifting as if I had nowhere to rest.

All men have their spheres of action,

while I alone seem dull and incapable, 

like a rude borderer. (Thus) I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao).”⎯Chapter 20: Tao Te Ching

It was the great Rabindranath Tagore who wrote in his poem: Journey Home:

“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.”

What none of us realize until we awaken, is that we are always at home in that innermost shrine. We have always been there and so long as that innermost shrine exists it is there we always will remain. It is impossible to make a journey to where you already exist.

Journey thru Hell to Heaven

I didn’t grow up with any religious or spiritual inclinations at all. I didn’t have any desire to ponder what I considered un-useful speculations. It was only after I was 40 years of age, having traveled far, suffered much and stood at death’s door twice that I began to reach into the unreachable for a practical reason: I wanted to live but knew there was something very wrong with the way I had lived thus far.

At that juncture, I chose to leave “the world” behind and close myself off from one dimension and close myself into another, and my choice was Zen. I chose that path because it held out the hope that I could learn to get beyond the horrors I had experienced that dwelled in memories too egregious to live with. These horrors occupied my unending thoughts, and Zen was all about cleansing my mind by suspending thought. I lived in a Zen monastery for nine months, during which time I joined hands with Dante and walked through the bowels of the Hell I had created. When my journey came to an end, I had drained myself of the infinite swamp of corruption that dwelt in memory only and cleansed my heart and mind of contamination.

I discovered something very rare and special during that time: when all cognitive processes are gone, what remained was emptiness—the face of God. By the time I arrived at seminary, I had seen that face and knew that God was the source of everything. So I began to construct a new life blending thoughts with no thoughts: God in my heart and thoughts in my head.

Seminary was a most curious experience for me. Theology is all about words, thinking, and objectifying what I knew could never be adequately expressed in words. The study of theology was thus most frustrating as I grappled with fusing my ineffable experience with an abstraction of the same thing. It was a process that took me years beyond to assimilate the two with some continuous and substantial academic study. I found myself in constant conflict with people who wanted to do what I had rejected: fill their heads with words and abstractions of an experience I knew was a road to nowhere.

However, one of the most helpful of all words came from Zen Master Bassui Tokusho, who said: 

“One moment seeing your own mind is better than reading ten thousand volumes of scriptures and incantations a day for ten thousand years; these formal practices form only causal conditions for a day of blessings, but when those blessings are exhausted again, you suffer the pains of miserable forms of existence. A moment of meditational effort, however, because it leads eventually to enlightenment, becomes a cause for the attainment of buddhahood.”

Nevertheless, I realized that if I was ever going to be able to convey the experience I had been graced with I had to travel the path they had chosen. It took me 30 years more before I was ready. I suppose it was like a pianist who must practice until the music comes out of them naturally.

There was a message spoken by Jesus in the middle of the beatitudes that says, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” (Mat. 5:8) The passage is not well understood, but it spoke directly to me. I had to read that passage in Koine Greek: the language used to write the New Testament, to really grasp the essence of that statement and when I did I found the key that unlocked the bridge between Zen (the discipline transcendent to words) and Christianity (a religion of words). To Zen, words are reflections: illusions of matters too deep to grasp with our true mind—dreams that dance on hot pavement and create heat waves. To the ordinary Christian, the heat waves are all there is.

So what was the key contained in that passage (Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.)? First, it’s necessary to understand what the authors of the New Testament meant by the Greek word λόγος (Logos, the English translation for The Word). Unlike our contemporary understanding of concepts, λόγος meant the embodiment of meaning expressed abstractly of the ineffable: the very matter that bent my brain for years on end. What Jesus intended in that statement of purity was to cleanse our hearts of an admixture of thoughts, whether good or evil.

When Western man imagines heart, they think of the organ that pumps blood. But to the Greeks, the heart was the center of life. However, to people of Zen, there is no difference between the heart and the mind and was known first by the Chinese as “xin” and later by the Japanese as “shin,” and there is a profound statement in both Chinese Zen (Chan) and Japanese: “Mu shin, Shin.” The little “shin” means that admixture of thought that affects our hearts, whether good or evil. When the admixture is gone, then “Shin” arises: the face of God—that space of emptiness out of which emerges our true nature and everything else. Shin is the unity between our corporeal selves and the source of all, and these two, as it turns out, are really not two. They are the two bound together aspects of life (embodiment): one part limited and objective and the other part eternal. Shin IS the embodiment of God within this limited body, and when anyone experiences that fusion, the world is changed forever.

So now I stand between the two worlds of East and West, and my challenge is to fuse the two just as they were for me, and neither the East nor the West seems to have any interest in fusing with anything not like them.

One of the greatest mystical poets of all time is Rabindranath Tagore.  Sadly, while he lived, he was little known outside of the Calcutta area, and not known at all outside of India, but he captured the essence of my journey when he said,

“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.” 

Is Buddhist compassion the same as Christian love?

The high bar of excellence.

The answer is, “it depends.” Unfortunately we rarely thoroughly examine colloquialisms, and pretentiousness has become rampant. Duplicity and deceit are so socially acceptable now they are nearly synonymous with contemporary life. 

The terms “compassion” and “love” have become so misused they are now cliches, lacking in true understanding. In some Asian cultures the issue of “face” is of such significance that being two-faced is integral to the culture, causing societal members to be continuously on guard for the potential for saving or losing face. To them, it’s a matter of their reputation, dignity, honor, prestige, and integrity. 

But this preoccupation is not limited to Asian cultures. It is prevalent throughout the world, wherever duplicity is found. The concern stands in conflict with spiritual principles, particularly in matters where surface and social expectations (the face presented to the world) diverge from internal convictions (the internal face). The Buddha said, “The greatest action is not conforming with the world’s ways, the greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances and the greatest effort is not concerned with results.” 

These principles reflect an attitude that transcends social expectations and platitudes concerned with duplicity. To live in duplicity reflects neither genuine Christian love (agape) nor genuine Buddhist compassion, both of which are near mirror reflections of one another. “Compassion is often thought of as akin to pity, but whereas pity may be condescending, compassion springs from a sense of the equality, unity, and interconnectedness of life. Genuine compassion is about empowering others, helping them unlock strength and courage from within their lives in order to overcome their problems.” 

And this human quality arises through true awakening to our inherent nature that fills us with the experience of unity and becomes so powerful as to render duplicity impossible. The highest love agápē (ἀγάπη) is found only in the New Testament and is translated as “unconditional love.” Love that is unconditional is not discriminatory or influenced by changing phenomenal conditions, but is instead steady throughout all conditions. 

The best expression of agápē love is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-12, which says, “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes (genuine awakening), the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

These genuine Buddhist and Christian expressions, however, while being the gold standards, are not universally embraced. Just because we know what is the standard, does not guarantee we comply. There are numerous examples in today’s world where hypocrisy, denial, and egotism flourish, most particularly within the sphere of politics. It’s a rare individual who, while lost within the grip of ego delusion, can rise above the influences and temptations of greed, anger, avarice, and possessiveness and “do the right thing.” 

Sadly our interpersonal, social, and political systems have become rife with concern for preserving “face,” currying special favors that align us with power and ignores the high bars of true compassion and love. Probably the best depiction of hypocrisy I have seen was displayed in the television series “The West Wing,” when the president (Martin Sheen) puts a faux-Christian in her place. The example stands in stark contrast to the behavior of true compassion and agápē love characteristic of a bodhisattva, who lives by a vow.