Identity?

The dissolving ego.

The last two posts (Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death and Karma and The Wheel of Dharma) were critical in understanding how we get into on-going trouble and how to get emancipated. Both messages may have seemed arcane and esoteric. I am aware of the difficulty, particularly among Western audiences, when coming to terms with the essential aspects of these messages. For that reason, I employed metaphors of dust and viruses. 

However, the wisdom contained in these two is so important that I want to go to the heart of the teaching, pull out the core, and do a summation, in layman’s terms. What lies at the core of them both is how we understand our human nature. Everyone, in all times and places, develops a sense of who they are, who others are, how we regard our self-understanding, and what this means to our place in the world. The admonition of the Golden Rule:  “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets,” is not incorrect. However, essential to that teaching takes us to the core of not only that teaching, but also to the core of the last two posts. Do we hate ourselves? Love ourselves? Think we are God’s gift to the world? Or perhaps a piece of crap. Whatever self-view we possess determines how we treat others and what we expect from them. Any and all, unenlightened view of ourselves, boils down to one simple principle, and how we understand that principle: Ego.

I could readily quote innumerable passages from exalted Zen Masters that speak to this matter of ego and self-understanding, but not now. If you are interested in that sort of presentation, you can click on the “SEO keyword” ego, located at the bottom of this post, and it will take you to numerous other posts about this matter of a deluded idea of who we are. Today, however, I want to speak in common terms that anyone can understand if they are so inclined. I will take you to the waters, but I can’t make you drink.

So what exactly is an “ego” and how does it make a difference, to ourselves, to others, and to the world. The word, in all languages and traditions, means “I,” not any “I” but the honest, in-the-dark-of-night “I,” when it is still, and nobody is watching. In that darkness, nobody is observing us, there is nobody to impress or be persuaded, and there is just you, in the dark, alone with your own thoughts—which could keep you awake at night. Our egos are a corrupted notion that we all create to identify ourselves. It is formed, shaped, refined, and comes to be essential to everything we say and do. Importantly, the ego is an idea, an image of self (self-image) that depends on many inputs. Those inputs come from family, friends, teachers, significant others—many, many sources, over a long period of time.

In the simplest of terms, it boils down to building an identity out of bricks of clay. And perhaps the most important of those bricks come early in life—how we were treated as children by those in whom we were most vested: those that mattered most—our family and/or the people we trusted and considered significant to our wellbeing. If those treated us kindly, we developed a good sense of ourselves. If they treated us badly, we developed a poor sense of ourselves. And those initial building blocks served as the foundation of what followed, which may, or may not, have reinforced those initial ideas. But even at a young age, what we came to think of ourselves, determined how we behaved and the feed-back we received resulting from that behavior. “As you think, so shall you become.”  That principle is universal, and you can find it presented from many sources.

Let’s take the next step in this progression. Suppose our significant, trusted people, critical to shaping those initial building blocks, treated us kindly. In such a case, our ego-sense becomes attached to those people, and then something terrible happens: They die or go away. What then happens is devastating to our mental/emotional wellbeing: We suffer. On the other hand, consider the opposite—We are treated poorly (and we come to regard ourselves poorly), nevertheless becoming attached to our own, now-ingested opinion, set in motion by those people. Both of these are forms of attachment, and they are both just ideas (images if you prefer). In the first case, we have attached to what we like, and in the other case, we are attached to what we don’t like.

Life is a moving ship on a body of water, that changes with the tides of life. Up and down, the waves move, and our egos bounce like a cork on the surface. There is no stability with that arrangement—only turbulence. What we fail to consider is what lies beneath those changing waves; at the sea bottom where nothing changes. That analogy is not about turbulent water or the bottom of the sea. It concerns identity, changing, or not. At the base depths of our thinking mind is the subconscious mind; way down there where our thoughts are “out of sight/out of mind.” Only they are never out of mind. They have just moved from our conscious/thinking mind into our subconscious mind, but they never leave. In that universal way, we are all trapped; some thinking poorly of themselves and others thinking they are superior to others.

What the quests for our true (not imagined) self entails is plunging, through whatever came before: the entire, cumulative formation of the ego, to the depths of our souls, and experiencing—not thinking—our genuine Self. This pathway is not one of rational thinking but is instead a transforming, intimately personal Spiritual experience. And when I say, “Spiritual,” I do not mean a religious one. I do mean the genuine experience of your very own spirit, that has no clothing, no identity, no “ego,” no anything. You then wake up (e.g., the term “Buddha” means awaken) to an indiscriminate, universal unity with all, that is not an isolated “you” but is the same as everyone else. In that spiritual realm, there is not an iota of difference between you and anyone, regardless of whatever bodily differences, or idea you may hold of yourself. Then you are a true man (or woman) with rank. 

The ego, at that moment, evaporates like the disappearance of mist upon the rising of the sun, and you realize the one doing the quest is one and the same as the one being sought after. And at that moment, that comes like a flash of lightning, your entire understanding changes radically—the self is transformed into Self as a worm is transformed into a butterfly. And then you have returned to a non-identity that never left.

Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death.

Everyone has days when they think to themself, “This really sucks. How did I get myself into this mess?” For no apparent reason, life just seems to take a sharp turn, and we find ourselves in the off-ramp. 

Actually, there is a reason but not one that is readily apparent. The reason is contained in the dharma teaching of the Wheel of Life and Death leading to suffering, which we surely do when such a day hits us. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this wheel has another side called the Wheel of Dharma. One side explains how we got ourselves into this mess. The other side tells us how we can find relief (emancipation). The teaching says that both sides are reflections of karma—bad karma on one side, good karma on the other. Today we’ll look at the bad news, and tomorrow we’ll end on a positive note. 

So how does karma work? Karma spreads much like an indiscriminate virus. It affects everyone, spreads like wildfire, and has nothing to do with hopes, prayers, or anything of a religious nature.  It’s like this: Picture yourself on a dusty road on a sweltering and sweaty day. Every step you take, you’re kicking up dust, which goes airborne where it sticks like mud to your sweaty body and enters your mouth and lungs. In a nutshell, that’s karma: Cause and effect. You kicked up the dust, and you suck it in. No dust, no sucking. Of course, there are other people on that same road, and all of your dust kickings migrates to them as well. So not only do we have an impact on our self, but we impact them also. They don’t like it, and neither do we, but the responsibility lies firmly with us. We did the kicking.

Now the best thing is to not kick up the dust in the first place, or spread a virus. The second best thing is to own up to what we’ve done and make a wrong, right. Avoidance is always the preferred route, but sometimes kicking dust (or catching a virus) is unavoidable, and we make wrong without the intention to do so. There are, of course, some who seem to take sadistic pleasure in doing wrong, but as the saying goes, “What goes around, comes around.” So that’s karma, but now let’s see how we get on this dusty road in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to walk along a dustless path? That’s tomorrow’s story. Today is about viruses, dust, and grit, and mud in the mouth.

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha taught about many causal links. The most critical causal link pertains to the dust (my metaphor). Here is how this link plays out. It starts out with branches high up on a tree of misery. It is called The miserly mind, greed, and jealousy, which comes from a trunk of ignorance, which in turn arises from indolence, which comes from inversions of truth (four inversions), which comes from a taproot called doubting mind. These causal links are like a tree. At the bottom is a root that grows upward into branches of bad karma.

So let’s start at the bottom (the taproot), which the Buddha says is doubting mind. This root is easy to understand, given our nature as sensory beings. We trust what we can lay our hands on and question what we can’t. Form is tangible stuff. Emptiness is not. We see a form and think, “that’s it—nothing else.” It takes a leap of faith to go beyond form and accept emptiness. Most of us are remiss in taking that leap since a leap into the unknown is fraught with fear. That’s doubting mind.

Doubting mind morphs into the four truth inversions. What are the four? They are Bliss/Suffering, Eternal/impermanent, Self/non-self, and Pure/impure. These are like four two-sided coins with truth on one side and inversions on the other. Without the leap out of doubting mind, we find our self distorting truth (inverting it). We imagine that everything is impure, egotistical, impermanent, and full of suffering. After all, isn’t that one of the Buddha’s premiere teachings—life is suffering? Yes, it is, but that is just the first of four noble truths, and if we stop there, we miss the pay-off: there is a way off this dusty path. Doubting leaves us stuck with these four inversions. Acting on faith leads us to a better path with no dust (tomorrow).

Okay, let’s move along to the next link in the chain: indolence. There are a couple of definitions of indolence, (1) avoidance, and (2) fear stemming from a lack of confidence. The first definition could apply for a host of reasons. Avoidance is what we might do when we are persuaded of a particular point of view. We know this condition as denial or clinging or close-mindedness. It occurs when we are attached to something and are not open to other possibilities, even when those other possibilities could positively restructure our lives. The second way of considering indolence is fear, with a similar outcome. A lack of confidence can be like an excuse for doing nothing when something needs to be done. Knowledge is not an issue. Doubt-based fear is. Which leads to hesitation and inaction. In either case, indolence keeps us stuck because of doubt. Because of indolence, we stay on that dusty path absolutely convinced that it is the only path, and we are just going to get used to it.

Now we’re moving up the tree and starting to branch out. Next comes ignorance. When we cling to a particular perspective, come Hell or high water, we are subject to ignorance (close-minded). What started with doubt, transformed into avoidance, and that leaves us ignorant. On the other hand, when we leap out in faith, we discover what would otherwise not be possible, but that is tomorrow’s story.

Being close-minded and ignorant makes us cranky and produces a nasty attitude which the Buddha calls a miserly mind, replete with greed and jealousy. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? When we are persuaded that all is suffering with no way off the dusty path with endless mouths full of mud, we get possessive, greedy, and jealous. Those other folks seem to be getting ahead of us, the storms are coming and we better batten down the hatch. Nobody wants to be around a greedy miser who is defensive, possessive, jealous, and hostile. And guess what? We just defined bad karma and a lot of people we know of.

All of this from that evil tap root spewing up poison and growing a bad tree, which is called the Wheel of Life and Death. And the reason it is called that is because such behavior keeps producing suffering, which causes us to just keep on repeating until we get tired of the misery we create for ourselves and adopt a better way. But that better way violates everything we think we know but might be worth a shot. Who needs dust in the mouth? Tomorrow, a better path—The Wheel of Dharma. Now that we understand the Wheel of Life and Death, the opposite should be easy to explain (but hard to do).

Karma and the Wheel of Dharma

Wheel of The Dharma

Yesterday we looked at the causal links that produce bad karma. Today we’ll look at the other side—the wheel of Dharma, leading to good karma and emancipation. 

One of the essential points discussed yesterday was, “Acting on faith…” The question is, faith in what? And the answer is faith in the other side of form. Faith that there really is this thing called emptiness (otherwise known as pure consciousness): The dimension that contains truth, rather than inversions of truth.

To remind you, the inversions of truth were suffering, impermanence, non-self, and life of impurity. The reason that faith is required is that emptiness is not accessible through our ordinary sensory faculties, and to get to that place of truth we must let go of what we can sense only, and are so sure of what we think we know—the ordinary manner of discernment. The path to truth is spiritual rather than perceptual. 

When we follow that path, then we experience the opposite of truth inversions. The dimensions of manifested truth are bliss, permanence, our true self, and a life of indiscriminate purity: the realm of consciousness without conditions and the joint actions of the right choices and judgments. This is the realm where everything is unified before or after consciousness takes shape or form (which is a myth we use for the sake of convenience; time is a fabrication—there is no actual time). Albert Einstein made a similar observation: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” That being the case, there is no such thing as this or that: No self-absorbed choices, or judgments, and thus no error.

When we make choices, we believe those choices are right, in an unexamined way, we attach these choices to our unenlightened sense of self and become self-righteousness, defensive, and often hostile in our defense. And this belief, along with wrong concomitant actions, can at times lead us to be close-minded and violently defensive. There are numerous problems with this approach, and all of these put dust in our mouths, infects us (and others) with bad karma, and forces us to see who is to blame: Our deluded sense of self.

When most people think about “compassion,” they think of Buddhism. And in fact, this is accurate portraiture. Unfortunately, our idea of compassion, without transformation of our idea of self, is usually a way of gaining the accolades of others and fueling our egos. We may do the right thing but with a desire for applause. Unlike today, The Buddha didn’t recommend fueling our self-image or anesthetizing ourselves through drugs or make-nice-ego-building therapy. That’s the approach of today, but more than likely, that is not what The Buddha had in mind. He did not seem to be in favor of sustaining long term suffering through indolence. Quite the contrary, he may have been the original tough-love advocate. What he seemed to have recommended was to take off the rose-colored glasses and look deeply into how we create our own suffering. He prescribed harsh medicine, which was designed to make it crystal clear who was doing what to whom and recommended 12 chains of interdependent causal links that pointed the finger at us. As Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”

Tough-love for sure, but his wisdom was flawless. None of us will take the necessary leap into the void of pure, unconditional consciousness until we see beyond a shadow of a doubt that the dusty road is intolerable, and we’re not going to take it anymore. More than likely, he wanted us to see beyond any doubt that we alone create our own path to destruction. When we follow the conditional, dualistic path, leading to choices and judgments of one thing versus another thing (in this case, life versus death), we get clear about the futility of our presumptions and beliefs. And what exactly did he want us to see?

What do most of us believe? We believe in what we perceive: The four inversions of truth—that life is impermanent, dominated by a false self (which we call ego), completely impure and over the top with suffering. Why is that? Quite simply, the perception-based means of discernment is designed for choosing between one thing and another thing, and when we couple this to a false self, we become self-righteous, defensively so. 

Now pause here and think about a serious question. Does anyone reading this really believe that Buddhism could last for 2,500 years as a significant force for emancipation if it was based on those four inversions? Even the village idiot could come up with that list, and the whole proposition would evaporate before it reached anyone’s perceptual capacities. So why did he want us to see the futility of those patently obvious facts? Because combined, they define how to keep eating dust and infecting others. He wanted us to be very clear about that. He wanted to teach us all about Nirvana vs. Saṃsāra, how they are related, how to get off of the path to perdition, and what to do to solve this universal problem that destroys everything. Only when we stand at the precipice of the mortal abyss will any of us choose a new path.

So if that combination doesn’t work—and it never has and never will—what will get us off the dusty path? Well, how about the opposite: Faith in the unseen realm of indiscriminate unity. This prescription is the ultimate form of dependent origination and is also what came to be known as The Two Truth Doctrine. This is the Wall that the Ladder of form rests against. Form is empty consciousness applied; Empty consciousness is form without application. The eternal, pure, blissful self is what has gone by the name of Buddha-Nature: our true nature—pure consciousness, which flows across the mythical bridge into form. 

In fact, there is no bridge since Buddha-nature/consciousness is undivided. Separation is just an idea that we choose to believe for many reasons. We imagine separation because we can’t perceive the void and thus assume that it doesn’t exist. And furthermore, our ideas concerning a void, are flawed. Emptiness is not actually empty. It is instead the wellspring of unadulterated wisdom and right vision—Unconditional truth. Or expressed alternately, The Dharmakaya: Body of truth, or The Womb of The Buddha that exists in us all. We, too, can awaken, and The Buddha gave us a road-map. 

We have too much dust in our eyes (a plank, if you prefer) and clouding our minds and don’t realize that without consciousness (The Dharmakaya), no detection of any form would be possible. The entire universe is a function of consciousness, or said another way: The universe is nothing other than the primordial mind in manifestation: The residual karma we previously created and the result, that The Buddha taught us about in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa 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 actual mind is the source (consciousness) and, as such, can’t see itself. We can only perceive fabricated (imaginary form) manifestations. The ego-mind of duality is self-creating, self-destructive, and pleasure-seeking at the expense of others. That is not the real mind. It is the fabricated mind with ego at the core.

So how exactly do we awaken to this awareness? How does it function? The same way that the other tree functioned from the taproot upward into branches of good karma. At the bottom is a tap root without doubt, which we call faith—in the unseen source (emptiness). Faith grows upward into four truths, instead of inversions. These truths then move up to the opposite of indolence, which is openness, receptivity, and confidence, which in turn destroys ignorance and turns a mind that is miserly, greedy, and jealous into a joyous mind that is giving, and sharing.

When this turn-about takes place, we meet our true self for the very first time. The Buddha said this about this transformation: “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. Oh, great King! If impermanence, suffering, the Void, and the non-self are killed, you must be equal to me.” He was speaking to King Ajatasatru in the 25th chapter of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. 

Now comes two big questions: If we understand this message correctly, isn’t The Buddha saying that when this transformation occurs, doesn’t that eliminate the duality of discrimination, which makes us equal with one another and with the Buddha? And which of those two types would you rather hang out with? A loaded question for sure, but the answer should be crystal clear. Bad karma flows from one path (the dusty, infectious one), and good karma flows from the other path (one lined with gold). 

Never let it be said that our presumptions and beliefs don’t dominate us. What we believe will radically transform our lives.
I’ll end for today with a parable of two sons from The Dharma:

There once lived two sons of a king. Each of the sons became gravely ill, and the royal doctor was summoned. Upon a thorough examination, the royal doctor prescribed an unusual medication. Not being familiar with the medication, the sons were apprehensive. The first son clung tightly to conventional medications normally prescribed, became worse, and died. The surviving son saw clearly what had occurred with his brother because of doubt. Upon witnessing his brother’s death, he became desperate. Despite his preconceived beliefs and the unconventional nature of the doctor’s prescription, he overcame his doubt and decided to follow the advice of the royal doctor. To his amazement, his leap of faith resulted in an unexpected outcome: What began as apprehension and fear of the unknown, developed into a trusting relationship with the doctor, and he soon became well. In time the relationship between the wise son and the doctor blossomed, and the son was rewarded: The doctor shared his cherished remedies, not known to conventional doctors. And thus, his knowledge survived through the wise son who passes such knowledge on to all who are receptive and can likewise overcome their seeds of doubt.

The son who doubted and died is everyman. The royal doctor is the Tathagata, and the wise son represents all who hear of the unconventional remedy, overcome their doubt, and live. These will continue on and pass to others the good and certain medications of the doctor—they are the Bodhisattvas of the dharma.

In this mortal incarnation, I’ve been both sons. I spent a lot of time on that dusty path, in my egotistically, blinded state of mind, followed the path most taken, suffered a great amount, and refused to take the unorthodox medicine. The truth is that I was ignorant and not even aware there was any medicine, orthodox or otherwise. I nearly died, mortally, but while standing at the abyss, I happened upon the good doctor who had always been there, (unseen) and figured I had nothing to lose by switching to the road less traveled, ingesting unorthodox medicine and that saved me. Now I pass it on to you. 

And BTW: My present incarnation (as I appear to others) is that of a Gemini with two aspects, cemented together in a state of dependent origination (as we all are). Not only am I aware of both sides, the nature of them both, and just how they are needed to exist, but also able to see how my own karma is being created, as it unfolds. It is sort of like watching my own created movies and knowing I am the creator, the director, all of the actors, and the one sitting in a seat, located in a theater of the mind, but knowing simultaneously that the actual Mind is The Watcher, observing, but without judgment. So the ending question here is this: How do you like infecting those you supposedly love? And how does dust taste? And are you ready to take a leap of faith into emptiness and start living well?

The Big Bang and immeasurable silence.

Singularity and the void.

Back in the period before pandemic social-distancing, the story of Stephen Hawking was playing in movie theaters: The Theory of Everything. Recently I watched a biographical documentary film about his life. He has been credited with the “proof” that nothing beyond naturally occurring physical conditions contributed to the Big Bang and therefore concluded there was no God. 

In his view (solely based on a universe governed by physical, conditional matter), there was no before and no space beyond the moment of singularity. Accordingly, everything we know, including time, began with the Big Bang.

What Hawking did not consider was the context of the void within which the Big Bang occurred, that according to all scientists, has no limitations or boundaries. Earlier cosmologists argued that the expansion of the universe would eventually slow, come to a stop and then begin to collapse back to the beginning: a sort of Cosmic Breath, resulting in an eternal continuing series of black hole/singularities with expansions and contractions.  However, contrary to the orthodoxy of the time, no evidence has been found to support this process. Instead, there is evidence to the contrary: expansion is speeding up into the unconditional void.

One of the preeminent foundations, upon which Hawking’s conclusions rest, is the definition of space as understood within the field of General Relativity. Einstein argued that physical objects are not located in space, but rather have a ‘spatial extent.’ Seen in this way, the concept of empty space loses its meaning. Instead, space is an abstraction based on the relationships between objects, and without objects (due to the confluence of space and time), there would be neither space nor time at the point of singularity. 

The development of quantum mechanics complicated the modern interpretation of a vacuum by requiring indeterminacy. In the late 20th century, this principle was also understood to predict a fundamental uncertainty in the number of particles in a region of space, leading to predictions of ‘virtual particles’ arising spontaneously out of the void.

The scientific conclusions don’t address the limitless void since there is nothing to measure in a vacuum. However, to those who subscribe to the precepts of Zen, the void is everything yet nothing. According to Zen Master Huang Po:

“To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe. Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void, and yet this mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this, I mean that it does exist but, in a way, too marvelous for us to comprehend. It is an existence, which is no existence, a non-existence, which is nevertheless existence. To the ancients, to find the true essence of life, it was necessary to cast off body and mind. When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha.”

Similarly, Bodhidharma stated: “To say that the real Dharmakāya of the Buddha resembles the Void is another way of saying that the Dharmakāya is the Void and that the Void is the Dharmakāya ... they are one and the same thing... 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.”

It isn’t necessary to grasp either the highly technical nature of theoretical physics or the higher spiritual nature of Zen to understand the dimensions of The Big Bang, the context within which it occurred, and that of the infinite nature of the Void. All that is necessary is to understand a relatively simple matter: dependent origination, which says that everything that exists arises and ceases along with an opposite dimension. 

A simple example will suffice. “There is no up without a down. There is no in without an out. There is no phenomenon without noumenon. There is no physics without metaphysics. And there is nothing conditional without an unconditional dimension.” Thus to prove anything regarding the beginning of the universe (which Hawking later recanted) without considering the void is like showing the existence of fish without finding water. His latter perspective was that the universe was unconditional (no beginning, no end, no limits of any kind), which is precisely the position held by enlightened individuals. 

At Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Hawking said that “philosophy is dead,” and further, “philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science;” that scientists “have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

Stephen Hawking was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 2006: America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the Russian Fundamental Physics Prize in 2012. It is easy to agree with Hawking that there is no God, since “God” is a simple handle we use to speak of the ineffable source of everything. That, however, doesn’t really address the essential issue. With all due respect for his amazing insights and accomplishments, until the scientific community deals with the void and the Mind, the work will remain incomplete.

In the world: enlightened social responsibility.

Covered with the slim of injustice

There appears to be a contradictory challenge in many spiritual pursuits. Picking and choosing often seem like resisting “just” action resulting from self-inflicted karma of the past. And by resisting, we attempt to alleviate our suffering by violating the principle of karmic justice, thus contributing to more bad karma and corresponding suffering. We rarely recognize how such suffering leads to the eradication of the ego and on to a higher level of spiritual life.

On the other hand, there is a temptation to avoid appropriate social responsibility based on the flawed notion that those who suffer deserve to because of their own past karma, and by interdicting this process we merely exacerbate their learning process, sparing them from spiritual advancement.—Side note: My significant other has a problem remembering this word, which means “to worsen.” Instead, she inserts the one word she can remember, that sounds the same but has a different meaning: masturbate, which significantly alters the meaning 😉. Closely aligned with this avoidance comes the matter of discrimination and judgment. We know that to discriminate between good and evil seems to necessarily involve judgment. So how do we walk this razor’s edge between enlightened social responsibility while not tampering with the karmic process leading to a heightened spiritual awareness?

There is a delicate balance between being in the world but not of the world: the fine line of being flawed and not flawed at the same time. To clarify this seeming dilemma, it is perhaps helpful to turn to a couple of ancient stories and a few contemporary examples. 

The first story concerns Huike the second Chán (e.g., the Chinese precursor of Zen) patriarch. He was a scholar in both Buddhist scriptures and classical Chinese texts. Huike met his teacher Bodhidharma (the first patriarch), at Shaolin Temple in 528 CE when he was about 40 years of age. Legend has it that Bodhidharma initially refused to teach Huike who then stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave all night until the snow reached his waist. In the morning, Bodhidharma asked him why he was still there. Huike replied that he wanted a teacher to “open the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings.” Bodhidharma refused, saying, “How can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would just be a waste of effort.” Finally, to prove his resolve, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma as a token of his sincerity. He was then accepted as a student, and Bodhidharma changed his name from Shenguang Ji (his secular surname) to Huike, which means “Wisdom and Capacity.” Try to imagine the depth of anguish Huike must have endured before this, that inspired him with such motivation and determination. Can any of us, in honesty, say that we show that sort of resolve?

Huike did not immediately display wisdom but instead struggled to find The Way. It took some years before he found the key that unlocked the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings. On one occasion, Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is anxious. Please pacify it.” Bodhidharma replied, “Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.” Huike said, “Although I’ve sought it, I cannot find it.” “There,” Bodhidharma replied, “I have pacified your mind.” Upon hearing this, Huike realized enlightenment.

The second story involves ten stages of the gradual-Chán-school (Soto) illustrated by Chinese Chán Master Chino Kukuan, who painted ten pictures illustrating the steps to emancipation. The movement from anguish to freedom has been depicted in many ways since Buddhism began to take shape, but, in essence, the key that unlocked Huike’s gate of the elixir of universal compassion is the same gate in these ten-fold stages. And that key entails a seemingly strange illusion: being liberated from the beginning yet remaining unaware until the true mind realizes it has never been imprisoned in the first place. If we are already whole, then we can’t become whole. Nevertheless, the quest to become whole and emancipated is an ageless and futile proposition because the true mind is what is doing the seeking. Trying to find your true mind is like looking for your eyeglasses while wearing them.

Ten pictures depict the search for an ox, an allegory for the search of our true nature. Although awakening is instantaneous, the practice, which precipitates it, may be experienced as occurring in a series of stages. This process may be understood as gestation and then suddenly birth. The ox-herding pictures are an attempt to aid the progress toward enlightenment by exemplifying certain steps, which begin in darkness and proceed in stages ending in enlightenment and a return to the world (which was never left). However, having gone through suffering associated with being in the bondage of the mind, the return is accompanied by a radically altered view of what is bondage and an appreciation of genuine compassion.

Now we are in the world, and the question becomes, “What role do we play in this vast drama of life?” Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? In our complex world, even attempting to determine how things are is a daunting challenge since all is changing at light speed. Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society? And to answer this thorny question, we turn to Plato and his allegory of The Cave. 

Plato wrote this allegory as a part of The Republic around 380 BCE. The larger purpose of The Republic concerned Plato’s ideas of justice, as well as the order and character of both a just man and a just city-state. The Cave specifically addressed the effect of education, and the lack of it, on our true nature. The allegory is structured as a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. The setting for the story involved people who have been imprisoned in a cave (their own mind), chained in a fixed position so they can’t move, with a fire at their back, thus casting shadows on the cave wall of themselves. They are left to see only their shadows and come to believe they and their shadows are the same thing.

The two, observe this situation while Socrates points out to Plato’s brother the despicable nature of the prisoner’s plight as well as the civil, spiritual, and political obligation by those who see the truth to those remaining in bondage. When the fact is pointed out, the prisoners lash out and excoriate those who wish to free them, claiming that they, instead of their intended deliverers, are right while their liberators are wrong. They would instead rather choose to remain chained and protect their convictions than to be set free. Such people surround us to this day, denying what is crystal clear.

Given this conundrum, Glaucon asks Socrates why the liberators need to endure the slings and arrows of the prisoners but instead just enjoy the truth and let those in bondage remain pleased and in bondage. And it is here that Socrates states his case for a just man and his duty to society. According to Socrates/Plato, a just man is one who has found the truth and rather than “taking the money and running” returns to honor his duty to assist those trapped in their ignorance, which just happens to be the same definition The Buddha offered for a Bodhisattva: a suffering servant (also the name given to Jesus).

The Cave conjures up the antithesis of just men in the contemporary characters of congressional members who do “take the money and run” and of Paul Ryan, who reflects the teachings of Ayn Rand, who saw little need for government. In his eyes, they are “takers,” dependent on the entitlements of government. This view continues to govern the sense of obligation by members of Congress to carry out their responsibility. The view of a just man and his duty to a society held by these gentlemen (and a host of others) was the opposite of the view held by Plato. Just let them eat cake (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, in French) is their mantra.

So back to the questions: “What role do we play in this vast drama of life.” Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society? To many, the answer moves along the path of self (ego) preservation and the easy way: the safe way where avoidance of challenges to their tightly held dogmas of destruction reign supreme. To them, there is a clear right and a corresponding clear wrong: “makers” and “takers.”  But there is another way: the way of the Bodhisattva who fights for the rights of those still in bondage, trapped by the shadows of the mind, despite the slights and arrows cast at them. They have seen the light of truth and know it is not theirs to possess. They gladly become suffering servants because they have been in bondage themselves and know in their marrow how ignorance is not bliss. When they see injustice, evil and self-destructive actions taking place, they do intercede and fight for those unable to fight against the tyranny of the mind and covered with the slime imposed on them by those who care only for their profit regardless of harm inflicted on others.

There seems to be a subtle and fine line between liberating people in physical bondage and bondage of the mind. We must fight for those who are physically imprisoned in one way or another, be it oppression of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion, finances, or any other form of unjust discrimination, yet recognize that until people are freed from the bondage of the mind, there will never be ultimate freedom and liberty for all. The mind is everything! We must be in the world but not of the world.  If we, who have endured suffering and found release, don’t help those in need, we too will continue as doomed to a hell we deserve.

What we don’t know can hurt us.

The realm of reality.

Many, if not most, of the problems we encounter as humans are due to what we either don’t know or refuse to know. Such a lack has a way of catching us off guard at the worst possible moments, usually late in the game when there is little we can do to stop, or at least slow the progression toward disaster. 

The coronavirus pandemic is a case in point. So long as we can be aware of the sign-posts, we can prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. Hope, however, must be realistic and in line with those sign-posts, or it remains pie in the sky. What we don’t know can, and many times does, hurt us.

Without knowing, we live in two realms at once: The realm of rational conditions (the mortal one) and a realm beyond conditions, where immortality lives. Think of the realm of immortality as the ground from which our mortal lives grow. It is very much like growing a garden. If the immortal soil is full of nutrients, then the odds are better, the mortal produce will be nutritious.

The realm of mortal conditions is our ordinary realm, where one thing stands in opposition to another. Mortally, we have a beginning and an ending. In this realm, differentiation is the criteria and is based on the senses that tell us how we are all different. Our sense of sight says to us, light is different from darkness. Our auditory sense tells us that sound is different from silence, and so on—each of our senses discriminates one thing from another different sensory thing.

The immortal realm is the realm of unity, where everything is the same. And unlike what grows, the immortal ground has no beginning nor end. That’s the good soil and is the unconditional realm of the spirit: The ground of all being—the well-spring of all. And these two realms are irrevocably joined together in perfect harmony. Should one realm disappear, the other would disappear. When one appears, the other appears. They define one another, and without an opposite, neither can be understood, just as without light, darkness would have no meaning. One is an abstraction—an illusion that appears to our senses as real, whereas the other, while invisible to the senses, is reality itself.

To our collective misfortune, the ordinary realm (e.g., the conditional) is what governs our world and is the root of all woe. It is because we imagine our life will end that we fear death, never realizing that genuine life never ends. Mortality segues into immortality, and life goes on. However, when we think we get only one shot, we see ourselves as distinct, separate, and different only. Then the mortal realm becomes a place where tribal wars of opposition rule the day, where nobody genuinely “reaches across the aisle,” and compromise becomes impossible, except as disingenuous lip-service.

It is within the silence of the mind where we discover our true, immortal worth. When all thinking ceases, it is there we find our true nature. Yet, as The Buddha taught, in emptiness, there is no mind and no self, so we call them both by abstract names to become aware. Without abstraction, only silence prevails, but it is within silence where we become enlightened to that which is the source of all awareness.

To most of the western world, Zen is a strange and confusing matter, most often utterly misunderstood. The founder of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as “not thinking.” And the great master Huang Po taught: “Whatever the senses apprehend resembles an illusion, including everything ranging from mental concepts to living beings. Our Founder—The Buddha, preached to his disciple's naught (e.g., nothing) but total abstraction leading to the elimination of sense-perception. In this total abstraction does the Way of the Buddhas flourish; while from discrimination between this and that a host of demons blazes forth!” — The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, (The teacher of Zen Master Rinzai).

If westerners had lived in the eastern world, Zen would not seem strange. Instead, the odds are favorable that Zen would be understood as the means The Buddha employed to experience enlightenment. Many in the western world have become aware of the practice of mindfulness meditation in helping to quiet the mind, leading to less stress and improved health. However, what has not yet become well established is the next stage beyond mindfulness. 

Quieting the mortal mind is a sign-post on the way to what follows. First, the chatter must be regulated and brought under control. Then, and only then, is it possible to move on to the deeper stage of Samādhi attained by the practice of dhyāna (e.g., the ancient name given to the practice of Zen—the last step in the Eight Fold Path, otherwise known as Right Concentration). The preceding step (the seventh) was known as Right mindfulness, the level that is now so popular. There is nothing wrong with mindfulness. But there is more beyond that sign-post on the way, but following that, the going gets tougher.

The great Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa said, “My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.” The beginning would be more aligned with Right mindfulness, whereas Right Concentration is more aligned with finishing up the journey.

Dreams and delusions.

Chuang Tzu's Dream of reality.

The expression, “You are living in a dream world” is understood to mean you are out of touch with reality. I know, as a result of conversations with my friends, that during this pandemic, dreams are becoming more frequent and seemingly real. I, too, have experienced the same thing. This could be the result of being forced into isolation and the resulting anxiety we are all experiencing. What dwells in our subconscious is coming out of the closet, perhaps as the result of limited input.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, “Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?”

Many people don’t know what the term “Buddha” means. It means “awake,” and within the context of  The Buddha, it meant “awakened one, or enlightened one,” which is not limited to The Buddha, Buddhists, or any other restrictively defined persons. The path The Buddha traveled toward awakening was intimately linked to the practice of Zen—the pathway that encompasses long periods of draining the swamp of the delusions living in our subconscious. Hardly anyone is aware of such delusions for a simple reason: They reside in consciousness at the unconscious level which naturally comes out at night, sometimes in very strange ways that seem very real, like being a butterfly. Only when we come out of a sleep state are we able to realize what we experienced were dreams. And sometimes even then we are not quite sure if they were real or not.

Modern-day psychologist and psychiatrists, for the most part, agree that whatever is rooted in our subconsciousness can, and often does, disrupt our waking lives since we have been programmed by prior experiences and learning (some of which produce biases, preconceived beliefs, and dogma) which then become dominating forces that filter our sense of “what’s real.” All of us are affected by what we can perceive and nobody (ordinarily) can perceive the source of perception that bypasses these powerful, embedded delusions that shape our lives.

Zen provides that avenue, the means, to plunge into the depths of consciousness, through and down to that source. And when you arrive at the source you “wake up” to suchness—things as they are without the delusions that control our lives, most importantly who we are and who we are not (an ego). Only then do we experience, and realize, that pure consciousness is identical in every sentient being. That is the place of ultimate union with everything—a place of unconditional connectivity, liberated from the controlling force of delusions. It doesn’t mean you have necessarily completely drained the swamp. Some obstacles are too deeply rooted and can come out to “play” in destructive ways.

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said: “The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.”

Understanding that prescription is one thing, experiencing it is another. The prior is an intellectual fabrication—a road map, while the latter is real, no speculation required. The experience of waking up is the ultimate form of clarity, serenity, and hope. Without that, we are all in a prison of the mind and have no clue.

Politics of fear.

I first wrote this post some years ago and reposted it again during the 2016 run-up to the Presidential elections. Since then some conditions have changed significantly—such as the COVID-19 pandemic and a concomitant global economic disaster—and others have not since that first post. From time to time I revisit my posts to see if any have legs that continue to walk. This one does so I’m reposting to remind myself and others of the basic issues at stake.

My primary focus in writing is spiritual, and purists resist the notion of mixing that focus with political commentaries. I’m not a purist but rather of the opinion that if spirituality is of any worth it must integrate with changing conditions otherwise, it will remain a matter of navel-gazing, good for the gazer but not much beyond that. I am committed to sharing the wealth and honoring the responsibility of a Bodhisattva.

So what are the basic issues at stake? In a few words: freedom, liberty, and equal justice. Those are the principles that underpin, not only our republic but are also the principles that all freedom-loving people desire, wherever they live, throughout time and space. Without those principles, it is questionable if any form of spiritual practice can prevail very long. Historically religious and spiritual leaders have been the keepers of moral standards that must guide any ship of state to ensure it steers clear of the rocky shoals. 

So then we come to the matter of before or after. Do spiritual leaders have an obligation to proactively influence captains, crews, and occupants of the ship before it ends up on the shoals? Or must they react only once the ship is wrecked? And what obligation, if any, do the occupants have to the captain, or to the ship? Those are penetrating questions that must be thoughtfully considered. Human history shows examples of both the before and the after, but perhaps the most poignant statement came from Edmund Burke, the 18th century Anglo Irish political philosopher—“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

As you will see from the link provided above, some question remains about the exact wording of that quote and who said it but the spirit is the same. Today good men and women are being bullied and subjugated into cowardice conduct by a man who is incapable of leading the free world, but is talented in divide and conquer. He is a master of instilling fear, not only into the hearts and minds of the occupants of the ship but also the lieutenants who are critical to keeping the ship off the rocky shoals.

Unless you’ve been away on a distant planet, out of communications with people here on earth, you know that awhile ago an equivalent of “deep throat,” from within the Trump administration, warned of the hazards of his leadership. In effect, this amounts to an administrative coup that could very likely make the man even more paranoid than he is already, increasing the hazards instead of the opposite. As of the present moment he holds millions of our citizens' hostage, using them as political pawns in a deadly game of getting his way at the expense of their lives by demanding our economy reopen while the coronavirus still flourishes. 

Years ago another New York Times article appeared written by Tom Edsall—professor of journalism at Columbia University and political commentator writing on events inside and outside of Washington. He grappled with controversial perspectives from a cross-section of social scientists who are researching the matter of “genopolitics”: the premise that we are hard-wired to see life through defined prisms that determine our political perspectives and affiliations. 

His article was inconclusive but ended by saying, “With so much riding on political outcomes—from default on the national debt to an attack on Syria, to attitudes toward climate change—understanding key factors contributing to the thinking of elected officials and voters becomes crucial. Every avenue for understanding human behavior should be on the table: how do we evaluate our goals? How should we judge trade-offs? And just how do we actually make decisions?” I couldn’t agree more with Edsall. Indeed every avenue for understanding human behavior should be on the table, and that takes me to the focus of this post.

So long as we remain ignorant of the fundamental basis of being human, geopolitics or not, will make little difference and I (and many others) will continue to spin our wheels. The only relevant question is this: What is the fundamental basis of being human? And the related question: What happens when we fail to understand this central issue? The answer to that last question is painfully obvious: We continue on with the same failed behavior, dictated by fear, and as always—we fight over differences, to our mutual destruction. 

All of us are riding in the same boat, enlightened together with the unenlightened. There are not two boats, only one, and how we collectively behave determines the outcome of us all. And to the first question, the fundamental basis of being human: Unity. Underneath all is our unity. As wise men and women have noted in the past—when water is subjected to the freeze of negativity, it turns into divided ice crystals. Heat ice with the warmth of unity and it turns back into indivisible water. We are all fundamentally water. After that, nature and nurture can and do shape us into divided conclaves. During this time of isolation from one another we are being forced to see the value of unity. It is essential, as it has always been, but ordinarily it is not as evident.

We are the only animal on earth that has to learn how to be human. Ducks know, without being taught, how to be ducks. The same for every other animal, except us. We have to learn what it means, from the depths of our souls outward what it means to be “good men and women,” and until we do, evil will reign.

Uncertainty and instability.

The winds of change.

At the current time, conditional uncertainty and instability are running rampant throughout the world, and this is causing big problems for business maintenance and expansion. Few companies know which end is up—where to locate their facilities; to close a factory (or not) to quarantine workers due to rampantly spreading viruses (never seen before); how many employees to hire (at what price) or fire; when, if ever, trade wars will end and bring stability back to a manageable level; to invest (or not) in productivity measures—which reduces their short-term P/E ratio if they do invest, and thus reduces demand by investors to purchase their public offerings. 

All of that has no geographic restrictions since the entire world is going through the same turbulent conditions at the same time, increasing the odds of a global recession (or worse yet, a sustained depression). Not only is “no man an island,” but “no company is an island.”  While we may wish to Make America Great Again, we might as well wish for Santa Claus, so long as we believe such a thing is possible, at the expense of other nations. The notion of making a nation great (at the expense of other nations) has about as much chance of success as making yourself great at the expense of your partner. Being self-centered, whether with a partner or other nations, is doomed from the outset.

There has never been a time like this in history where trade is more interconnected than now. And this interconnection has become common-coin with people around the world, due to the Internet. Conditional interdependence is now perfectly obvious (to those who care to see the handwriting on the wall—some don’t—which is amazingly puzzling). We are creatures of habit, holding onto “the way things used to be” and paying mightily for our ignorance. Now we are fighting for survival against a coronavirus, never encountered before, and discovering the conditional differences between those who have chosen to throw caution to the wind and those who are willing to do the necessary (but undoubtedly not the convenient) to minimize the damage. For reasons not universally obvious, there are those who choose to attempt to bulwark the ever-changing tides of life and prefer to see life through the lens of “never change” instead of “ever change.”

Many years ago, when I first began my Zen practice and inquiry, my entree primer was a book written by Alan Watts—The Wisdom of Insecurity (catchy title) that did indeed captured my attention, and I thought, how is insecurity “wise?”. After having read that book I began to see how wise insecurity actually is since Watts spelled out what was, and is, perfectly obvious (every conditional thing is changing all of the time, whether we notice it or not). The wisdom is to not hold onto stuff that changes because it creates suffering, in two different ways: Either because we hold onto what we like and love (assuming it will remain static, but it doesn’t) or we resist what we don’t like and love, but it comes upon our shores anyway. Now we have invented a slogan that captures the essential idea: “What goes around, comes around.” And some people refer to this pattern as karma—an essential aspect of understanding the dharma of the Buddha.

However, as said previously: We are creatures of habit and learn slowly, most vividly through suffering. Nobody enjoys suffering yet nobody can avoid it. The very first truth of the Four Noble Truths is “life is dukkha”—translated into English as suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, etc.. When first I read this truth, I had not yet understood (or even been exposed to) the difference between conditional life and unconditional life. Consequently, I digested this first truth as an inescapable death sentence, which of course it is so long as we see life as purely conditional—everything is changing and dukkha is unavoidable. What a bitter pill to swallow! As the saying whimsically goes, “Nobody gets out of here alive.” 

But then an amazing and unexpected thing occurred: I experienced the unconditional realm, didn’t grasp the profound significance and subsequently spent the next 30+ years attempting to understand the ineffable mystery. I could not pretend the experience never happened, try as I may, but instead was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (Note: There is no bottom; no top; no East nor West; no anything in the realm of unconditionality). Yet how does anyone pretend an experience, that never ends, did not happen? I suppose Galileo found himself in the same dilemma when he observed that the earth was not the center of the universe, at a time when The Church maintained it was. It is impossible, and when it happens, you have a simple yet profoundly tricky decision to make: To either find the truth and share it (thus ensuring slings and arrows) or keep quiet and stay in comfort.

The truth I discovered to explain the experience is the other truth, beyond the first, that Nagarjuna expressed roughly 400-500 years following the death of The Buddha. What Nagarjuna said filled in the blank of my understanding. He said:

“The teaching by the Buddhas of the dharma has recourse to two truths: The world-ensconced truth and the truth which is the highest sense. Those who do not know the distribution of the two kinds of truth, do not know the profound ‘point’ in the teaching of the Buddha. The highest sense of the truth is not taught apart from practical behavior, and without having understood the highest sense one cannot understand nirvana.”

This came to be known as The Two Truth Doctrine and can be simply stated like this: The pathway to the highest (unconditional) truth must go forward along the path of conditional truth, the latter of which is provisional (e.g., temporary and changes). And these two are interdependent, neither of which can exist without the other. This relationship is known in Buddhist vernacular as “dependent origination,” and when properly understood informs three important matters that help us all to understand every dimension of the world in which we live. The three matters are (1) absolutely nothing has independent existence (e.g, self-contained, separate or existing as an island), (2) everything is inexorably linked together, and (3) The poles of these two truths are utterly opposite in nature—One side is conditional, always changing, and full to overflowing with suffering, leads to saṃsāra and the other pole is unconditional, never changes and is Nirvana itself (śūnyatā—emptiness/utter bliss).

Uncertainty and instability are the never-ending dimensions of the contingent world in which we live, perhaps best illustrated by the consequences of the world’s largest bridge collapsing (e.g., The Three Gorges Dam), leaving in the deluge the devastation of 400 million lives. Such unplanned, collateral damage will continue to disrupt planning for the future, be that from an industrial perspective or any other conditional perspective. 

We have codified this dilemma with sayings such as, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” On one level, we all know this is true. But on a higher level, the opposite is true, and that latter truth remains unknown. Too bad, because this other truth is where solace from the winds of change resides. There is no solace within a conditional and crumbling world. It is there that suffering prevails. And the only way out of misery is to awaken to both truths.