Birds do it.

Here’s your basic Graduate Record Exam question: What event links the following people? The people are (not in any particular order): Max Planck, Cole Porter, James Clerk Maxwell, Mitch McConnell, Gautama Buddha, and Michael Faraday. 

And a second related question is, who was first to discover this point of intersection? Are you ready? You have twenty seconds to answer. Begin. (Sound of a clock ticking. Twenty seconds ends). Put your pencils down.

The correct answer is the principle of polarity. In 1900 Max Planck based his theory of quantum mechanics on polarity. Cole Porter wrote his song, “Let’s fall in love” in 1928, which is based on polarity (between love and the opposite). James Clerk Maxwell is accepted as the father of electromagnetic theory, which is based on the polarity of positive and negative charges. His theory, expressed in a paper titled On Physical Lines of Force was published in 1861. 

Mitch McConnell is the current senator from Kentucky and became famous for his polar opposition to Barack Obama and branded his party as the Party of No vs. Obama’s Yes we can. Gautama Buddha lived 2,500 years ago and discovered the fundamental principle of polarity as the governing force of everything (physical, spiritual or emotional) and expressed his understanding in the Dharma of dependent origination and corollary principle of everything/nothing (emptiness). And finally Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist, first isolated and identified benzene in 1825, which is likewise based on the chemical equivalent of attracting bonds of polarity.

Polarity is the fundamental principle, as Gautama discovered, of everything. Nothing can exist or be understood without this principle. It governs everything. Think about it: Love/hate, up/down, positive/negative, attraction/opposition, everything/nothing: the whole ball of wax (or not) is organized, held together, understood and energized by polarity. 

Contrast is central to perception and discrimination is being aware of one thing vs. another. Whereas discrimination sees things separately, unification brings them together. Duality and unity are likewise polar forces and bound together through dependent origination. Neither can exist without the other.

And yet, as powerful and ubiquitous as polarity is, it can be the most destructive of all forces. It can divide all people, result in the destruction of entire global systems, be the central ingredient of hostility, in weapons of mass destruction polarity can quite literally blow us all to kingdom come and be the ultimate force of our collective undoing. 

So here is the next GRE question. What is the central force that converts this power into a force of destruction? No time given for answering this question. The answer is something that is not real but is universally accepted as real. It is ego: the imaginary idea we hold of ourselves as being separate and special. Ego is the driving force of destruction: the corruptive force of meism.  It is this mythical force that stands at the center of polarity and keeps the forces of balance apart, and when ego is removed from this central position between opposites, harmony and power for the good of all is the result.

That awareness is the central premise of my second book: The Other Side of Midnight—The fundamental principle of polarity. If properly understood, polarity can be either the most positive, or the most negative force of all. That awareness can save your life, and mine, because if we don’t universally grasp the significance of polarity (and soon) we are all going down the tubes together.
“…birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, lets fall in love.” 

Nature of mind and the desire for liberation.

What traps us? The Buddha taught us that we trap ourselves because of deluded thinking. We misunderstand our true nature and thus imagine that we’re fundamentally broken. And in this cloud of ignorance, we experience frustration, anxiety and remain firmly persuaded that we’re flat tires and desire a new one.

   
On the one hand, we are corrupted and do need a new one. Evidence of such corruption surrounds us. But when seen from a fundamental level there is nothing to save. This sounds like double-talk but only because we don’t understand our true nature.  If we did there would be no confusion.

In the commentary on the Diamond Sutra, Huang-Po said, “Buddhas and beings share the same identical mind. It’s like space: it doesn’t contain anything and isn’t affected by anything. When the great wheel of the sun rises, and light fills the whole world, space doesn’t become brighter. When the sun sets, and darkness fills the whole world, space doesn’t become darker. The states of light and darkness alternate and succeed one another, while the nature of space is vast and changeless. The mind of buddhas and beings is like this. Here, The Buddha says to save all beings in order to get rid of the delusion of liberation so that we can see our true nature.” 

Because we rely solely on bodily manifestations, a conclusion of corruption is inescapable and from that common logical premise, desire arises. From that perspective this is correct. But we are not fundamentally a body. As Huang-Po points out, fundamentally we share the same mind space as a Buddha. The mind is the production factory and our body is what’s produced. This is an important distinction. To not recognize this error is like imagining that our car manufactured itself and just suddenly appeared in our garage one day. Obviously, our car was produced somewhere and just as obviously so was our body. But then some will say, “This is nonsense. Our body was produced through the biological union between our father and mother.” Okay, so where did their bodies come from? This sequence must go all the way back to the beginninglessness of time, and we’re still left with the same dilemma.

On the other hand, consider the possibility that there is a difference between an objective body and an ineffable spirit that inhabits and is integrated with the body. An object is inanimate and has no consciousness or power to do anything, much less produce itself. Ah but a spiritual mind is an entirely different matter. Our spiritual mind produces everything, either for the good or for the worse depending on what we think. So long as we dwell only on bodily manifestations of pain and suffering without understanding the source, our mind will convert what is unreal into something that seems real, in a fashion similar to being in a dream without being aware that our dream is just an illusion.  Our spirit is the engine. Our body is the vehicle of motion and unless we see this distinction we’re left with the swing between the rising sun of goodness and the darkness of despair, plus the conclusion of being a flat tire.

The opening hand of faith.

Many years ago, my teacher said that the process of awakening was like a hand that begins with a fist of fear and over time, through persistence and cleansing, opens like a morning blossom emitting fragrance and love…and then it becomes a fist again. This opening and closing continues time and again until one day, your hand remains open, fear no longer reigns, and you stay open, exposed, and vulnerable yet a blessing to the world. Then you are a suffering servant (e.g., Bodhisattva).

Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chödrön puts it this way: “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together, and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen—room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” 

Our hand opens when we feel safe and closes again when we sense fear approaching. Having neither optimistic nor pessimistic expectations are accepting the reality of life. There is room for it all. 

And one final observation: The cycle of opening and closing happens on a mortal level, yet when we truly awaken, the immortal part of us neither opens nor closes. Ordinarily, while awake during the day, we can open or close our eyes, but the eye of awakening to immortality is always on. Like a mirror, consciousness just is, reflecting whatever comes. It is fear and ignorance that clouds clarity and distorts true understanding.

The Paradox of Non-Choice

Some time ago, I wrote a post called “The High Price of Choice: Winning Battles, Losing Wars.” In that post, I spoke about making choices based on perceptual differences. This post extends the one I’ve called The Paradox of Non-Choice.

For over forty years, I’ve tried and failed to articulate an experience that transformed my life. In reflecting upon that time, I think of it as an experience in a chrysalis, moving from a view of myself as a miserable worm and being transformed into a beautiful butterfly. My self-image stunk, and I didn’t know much about an ego. The reason for my failure concerns words, which, by definition, are reflections of matters that can only be expressed about something else. The other thorny dilemma that has contributed to my failure is some things can never be adequately explained, and this was one of those.

But this morning, I awoke with a pictorial vision that gives me a way of articulating that indescribable experience. However, I can describe the picture you can imagine in your mind. If you can assimilate the essence of the picture, there’ll be a reasonably good chance of grasping that experience beyond words I’ve struggled to describe for these many years. And this, in turn, can give you the hope of realizing the goal of peace and harmony—unity with all things.

Picture in your mind a three-dimensional ball with an empty core. To help you see that, imagine “Wilson,” the soccer ball that became the sole partner of Tom Hanks in his movie Cast Away. For those who didn’t see the film, Hanks was a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashed in the South Pacific. Everything was lost except a soccer ball made by The Wilson Sporting Goods Company. To keep from going insane, Hanks developed a relationship with Wilson, keeping him from losing all hope.

Like Hanks, anyone can perceive the outside of a soccer ball, but no one can perceive the inside simultaneously (except through imagination, and imagination became the friend of Hanks). Perceiving anything (and understanding what is perceived) requires certain conditions, one of which is contrast. For example, the ball can’t be seen if everything is white and the ball’s surface is white. The outside of that ball is called correctly conditional—one thing contrasted with (or conditioned upon) another different thing. That being the case, we could label the outside “relative” or “conditional.”

Now, we come to the inside of the ball, which is empty. It’s invisible for two reasons: first, because the outside surface hides it, and second, because it’s empty, meaning nothing is there (except air, which can’t be seen). We could adequately label the inside unconditionally since emptiness, by definition, is a vacuum lacking limitations (except when seemingly confined, as in the case of the outer surface of a soccer ball). If we were to remove the outer surface, what was inside (nothing) would be the same as if there were no surfaces. It wouldn’t go anywhere since it was nowhere—yet everywhere—to begin with.

Now, we can describe the ball entirely: The outer surface is relatively conditional and perceptible, while the inside is unconditional and imperceptible. Thus, the ball is constructed within three dimensions—the outside has two sizes, and the inside has another. And (importantly) the outside is opposite from the inside (and in that sense also relative). Neither the outside of a ball nor the inside could exist without the other. But when the inside core is isolated, it is wholly unconditional. However, it can only be that way when confined within the outside conditional surface of the ball.

Now take the next step and relabel the ball as a living organism (one of which is a human), and this living organism is constituted in the same way as the ball with only one addition—consciousness. Consciousness is a two-way street: an unconditional source functions through perceptual mechanisms that are outwardly oriented to perceive relative conditional things. The one dimension that consciousness can’t perceive is consciousness itself since it is an unconditional, non-relative non-thing (no-thing/empty). Furthermore, anything unconditional is everywhere at once—outside and inside and completely lacking detection.

Since the function of consciousness is perception, it remains the source, wholly complete and undetectable (empty). As such, we need to be made aware of its presence. We know only things that are detectable and constituted of differing natures. And unfortunately, we differentiate (or discriminate) these things into judgments of good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, up/down, and on and on.

The problem here is that we conclude that everything is either this or that and go unaware that, at the core, everything is united into an unconditional, indefinable non-entity. Enlightenment is the pure sense of self-awakening (the experience of) penetrating through the outer surface of differentiated things and into the core, where we experience/realize that everything is constituted as nothing (meaning emptiness). We then “know” our true, fundamental nature, and at the exact moment as this dawning, we realize we are neither good nor bad, white or black, or any other this vs. that. With this dawning, we understand that everyone is the same at that fundamental level—all united and unconditionally the same. And that is the source of all hope and compassion—that we are One.

So the next time you’re tempted to judge yourself or another, remember Wilson the soccer ball and know that your true self is just as empty—and thus the same as everything else.

Lessons gleaned from a thermostat.

Spiritual homeostasis

Homeostasis defined: “Homeostasis is a characteristic of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant, condition of properties.”

It occurred to me when contemplating my Nest thermostat (which regulates temperature within my living space) that there is a spiritual form of homeostasis. First: How my thermostat works in regulating my living space temperature:

There are three modes from which I can choose: Off, either heat or cool, or heat and cool. 

The Off setting requires little explanation. It means there is no sensing of ambient temperature in my space and, therefore, no regulation of my “HVAC” system (e.g., heating, ventilation, and air conditioning). 

The heat or cool setting regulates my HVAC system to either heat or cool my space, but it won’t do both at the same time. If I set my thermostat to heat only—but not cool—then if the ambient temperature falls in my space below the setting I select (e.g., 68º for example), my HVAC system will maintain my space to maintain above 68º (+or-) a given selected range. And the opposite is true. Selection of cool only means if my ambient space rises above 75º (+or-) a given selected range, my HVAC system keeps the temperature in my space at the desired range by cooling when the ambient temperature reaches 75º.

The third option, heat and cool, will switch as required. For example: When my thermostat detects that the temperature in my space falls below 68º, the thermostat sends a message to my HVAC to turn on the heat. And if the temperature in my space rises above 75º, the thermostat sends a message to my HVAC to turn on the cooling. I find this last mode to be the most desirable. Also, I can select a schedule for different parts of the day/night. I like to sleep when the temperature is around 68º, which, as it turns out, is the ideal sleep temperature, but I prefer 75º during the day. 

We, too, have an internal system that regulates many aspects of our biology to maintain homeostasis, ranging from temperature (just like my living space) to blood sugar levels, blood pressure, sleep, and more. 

Now the spiritual equivalent to homeostasis and my thermostat. The Off position favors neither hot nor cold. It could be called “potential spiritual energy.” The hot or cool position is an either/or position, such as what routinely occurs in ordinary life when we make judgments (e.g., It’s either right or wrong, but not both at the same time). That position is equivalent to ego-driven life. And lastly comes the both/and position of heat and cool, or in other words, circumstantially appropriate regulation such as set forth by “upaya”—expedient means, rather than hardened rights or wrongs rules. What is particularly curious is this: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one IN Christ Jesus.”—Galatians 3:28. 

Not to be diverted, but clarification is needed here. It may seem insignificant to some, but exegetical scholars have noted this passage originally lacked the name “Jesus,” but instead read “...you are all one IN Christ.” Christ (Χριστός), in Koine Greek—The language used to write the New Testament—meant the Messiah; a title (anointed one), believed to be the personhood of God on earth. The significance is meaningful. “Jesus” was the given name, whereas Christ was a designated title, in the same fashion that “Gautama” was the given name of The Buddha (the title, that meant “awakened.”) 

And this: 

“Body is nothing more than emptiness; emptiness is nothing more than body.  The body is exactly empty, and emptiness is exactly body. The other four aspects of human existence—feeling, thought, will, and consciousness— are likewise nothing more than emptiness, and emptiness nothing more than they. All things are empty: Nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is pure, nothing is stained, nothing increases and nothing decreases. So, IN emptiness, there is no body, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining. There is nothing seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor tasted, nor touched, nor imagined. There is no ignorance and no end to ignorance.  There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to follow. There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain…”—The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra.

If you don’t see the connection, allow me to help, and notice, in particular, the word IN; emphasized to mean “in the presence of, exclusively.”  In the Off spiritual position, there is no discrimination between one thing or another. There is just potential spiritual energy. Only when there is a choice between the either/or vs. the both/and is there kinetic spiritual energy (e.g., in action/movement). One of those settings (e.g., the both/and) is what we could call “open-minded,” or circumstantially driven motion, rooted IN the source of all things. Three modes: Off—The source of all; Either/or—The cause of all suffering (ego); and Both/and—The resolution of all suffering (e.g., elimination of ego). It is a homeostatic spiritual system, nearly identical to every other system of balanced homeostatic necessity.

When IN the Off position (where conceptual thinking ceases—How Bodhidharma defined Zen) that all potential resides, where indiscriminate essence exists. And that potential can go in one of two directions: Ego-driven either/or (e.g., win/lose) vs. Essence driven both/and (e.g., win/win). It all depends on The Mind of No-Mind.

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.

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.

What’s real?

Good and Evil.

To say what’s real, by necessity must consider the opposite—What’s not real. Nothing can be understood in isolation. It is only possible to understand one thing when compared to the opposite. Love means nothing in isolation from indifference. Likewise, evil is understood against the comparison of goodness. Not only do reality and unreality define each other, but they are also opposite to each other. Everything has these two dimensions. Up and down can only exist together. They define each other, and the same relationship applies to everything: Black/white, in/out, and seen/unseen. What can be seen has perceptible qualities. The unseen lacks perceptible qualities and thus can’t be seen.

The Buddhist understanding of the relationship between reality and unreality is not different from the Christian understanding. It uses different words but in essence, it is the same. Both the Buddhist view, together with the Christian perspective, provides a more thorough understanding. Consider the following:

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”—2 Corinthians 4:18

Here, The Apostle Paul articulates the two sides of reality and points to how they are different. The seen is temporary but the unseen is eternal. What is eternal has no beginning nor end. However, what is seen has a beginning and an ending and is thus temporary. Where Buddhism differs from Christianity on this matter concerns opposing reality from unreality, or to use the Christian terms the unseen from the seen.

The dogmatic Christian teaching says that these two can be divided but when explored more thoroughly it can be shown that this dogmatic teaching is incorrect. The essential nature of God is love, which imbues the entire creation. The problem is not the reality of God’s love. The problem is one of perception. The love of God can’t be seen. It can only be experienced.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Romans 8: 38-39

We are inclined to differentiate between the physical and the spiritual. The implication of this view is that the physical and the spiritual dimensions are different and can be isolated from each other. The question must be, “how is it possible to extricate what enlivens us from the vehicle that contains life?” Forget about labels. Set aside how precisely spirit and mind are distinctly different and just considers the indivisible nature of spirit and body.

A body with no spirit would be a zombie and a spirit without a body would be a ghost. The Bible teaches that God is the animating aspect of us. Buddhism teaches that it is the universal mind. Neither the mind nor God can be conceptually grasped. They may be the same thing with different labels. Whatever label we choose makes no difference but what does make a difference is the characteristics of what arises from both, which is unconditional love (agape in the case of Christian thought, and compassion in the case of Buddhist thought).

Removing even these labels leaves us with the identical character of both: the inseparable nature of God’s love. The Buddhist explanation is preferable because it deals more directly with the inseparable nature between the spiritual and the physical, the real, and the unreal. In essence, the Buddhist understanding is that what we ordinarily consider real is a mistaken conclusion based on the perceptible nature of form, which can be seen. All forms can be seen. Nothing spiritual can be seen. Form, as Paul says, is temporary, but God’s love is eternal, yet can’t be seen (only experienced).

The Buddhist language uses the dimensions of “form” and “emptiness” in place of “seen” and “unseen” but the meaning is nearly identical. Here is where the majesty and ultimate saving power takes place. The Buddhist perspective says that these two: “form” and “emptiness” are not two. They are one single, indivisible matter, just as up and down are inseparable, just as we are inseparable from God’s love. Nothing can… “separate us from the love of God.”

Emptiness is the mirror opposite from matter just as up is the mirror opposite from down. Emptiness is 100% spiritual yet it can’t be perceived or measured. It is whole and complete. It is like space: everywhere and unseen but contains everything perceptible. Emptiness is neither empty nor changing. Emptiness doesn’t move and has no perceptible characteristics. Emptiness is our spiritual core. It is what makes us conscious, sentient beings. Emptiness is also subject to dependent origination, which means that emptiness is also empty and binds it to form.

Emptiness, albeit unseen is whole, complete, and perfect already, and is the unseen part of you and me. The union can’t be broken just like the up/down union can’t be broken. If we tried to do away with one side, the other side would cease to exist. Sometimes this form/emptiness arrangement goes by the handles of conditional/unconditional. The conditional part is divided between polar opposites and subject to cause and effect. The unconditional part is unified and not subject to anything. Conditions change. Unconditional matters are fixed and these two require each other.

The solution for all of us is to understand three things:

1. When we attach our self-worth to what is seen (but temporary), we are setting ourselves up for eventual heartache because these things pass away.
2. When we identify ourselves with what is spiritually eternal (God’s love) we realize a lasting sense of peace and stability that can’t be shaken.
3. These two—the seen and the unseen, are two parts of the same thing but only one part is absolutely real (the love of God). The other part is relatively real. Reality is relative and absolute, conditional, and unconditional.

Nagarjuna explained this relationship in the following way:

“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.”— The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), Nagarjuna

We are both the indivisible union of matter and spirit and the task of life is to work to realize the integration of these two but never question the inseparable nature of God’s love. How do we integrate? By being the agent of God’s love, first by accepting ourselves as the channel of divinity and then through action. We are the body of Christ and if Christ remains an intellectual abstraction instead of an indwelling reality, then there is no means of spreading God’s love and we are all doomed to rely solely on what passes away. Either God is real or not and there is an easy way to find out: Let go of ideas and start living a life of giving.

The presence (albeit unseen) is made evident through how we live our lives. It is what we produce, not what we say, that proves our divine nature. “You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes or figs from thistles?” And how is that evidence understood? “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” We create our own realities by being the agent of spiritual expression, either for good or for evil.

Who are we? A view from linguistics.

Who Dat?

Our sense of who and what we are determines how we relate to the world. In a prior post, I stuck a little toe into the great sea of language to illustrate a point of significance regarding the matter of identity. Today I want to further the discussion by beginning with Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (26 November 1857—22 February 1913). He is known as the founding father of semiotics—the study of signs and symbols as elements of communication behavior. 

His concept of the related chain of sign/signifier/signified/referent forms the core of this field of study. In brief, Saussure noted that something signified (an objective thing) is represented with a sign (a coded language form) by a signifier (a person) in terms of references to the thing. For example, the color black (a thing) must have a reference or contrast to something different from black (perhaps the color white) to be signified or detected. Once signified in a differentiated way from the referent, the signifier can then create a sign (the word “black”) to represent what has been signified.

If there is nothing signified, the entire language chain collapses since a sign can’t be established. We can’t create a language form other than to sign what is missing. For example, if there is nothing to be signified the best we can do is to create a sign called no-thing or nothing, to signify the lack of a thing. Since nothing is signified, the validity of a signifier is brought into question. Then we would have a no-signifier. In essence, the principle of signifier and signified must come and go together in matching cases. Nothing signified, no signifier. Something signified, signifier. That awareness is the beginning of language and communications and broadly acknowledged throughout the realm of linguistics.

This chain is quite similar to the Zen chain of causation in the following way: thing, thought, thinker; No-thing, no thought, no thinker. To remove any one of these, causes the chain to collapse. For example, a thinker only has meaning in reference to what a thinker does: thinks. If there is no thinking then the meaning of thinker is meaningless. Remove a thing and there is nothing (no-thing) and thus no thought. The central Zen question concerns the identity of “thinker.” Is a thinker who we imagine our self to be? The ordinary presumption is yes: we are a thinker who thinks thoughts. Rene Descarte established this seeming fact with his now famous, “I think therefore I am.” But this is an impossibility since when we stop thinking we don’t disappear even though the thinker does, thus the real us and a coming-and-going thinker must be two different entities.

What Saussure brought to the realm of language formation, Zen brings to the realm of identity formation. And the conclusion of Zen is that we—the true you and me are independent of a vacillating signifier/sign we call ego. Our true identity is solid and doesn’t move, because while things change, the referent is no change since we are not an objective thing. Instead, we are a subjective non-thing. And how is this awareness established? Through the Zen practice of not thinking which reveals the true, never-leaving you and me. 

The image of us (an objective sign) is meaningless without something signified (an objective thought), thus there is no signifier, which is a central premise of Zen: no-self (at least in an objective sign form). Our true non-sign self arises when there is no thought. We are the one signifying the lack of thought as well as the presence of thought. We see either the presence or the absence of thought and it takes both signified thought in reference to no thought for either to have meaning and this is true of all things, which must have a referent of difference to be signified. In physics, that principle is called relativity, and in Buddhism, it’s called dependent origination.

In the end, the self/no self-referent reveals the interconnected fabric of us. The sign (objective self-image/ego) can be seen to move and gyrate and the real us (no-self) never moves, and this, in turn, reveals a fabricated and discriminate mind (thoughts and emotions) and a real not-to-be-found indiscriminate true mind. The first is based on changing objective conditions/things (and is thus not substantial) and the second is based on the lack of objective things, which is unconditional and therefore substantial. 

Consequently, we are both real unconditionally and not real (based on objective conditions) at the same time. One part is born, grows big (unfortunately too big some times), decays and dies. The other part (the real us) is never born, doesn’t decay and lives forever. Unfortunately, the common-coin self-understanding is just the objective sign/symbol, which we label ego and unless we go to extraordinary means we rarely discover the real person that we are.

Q and A: Beyond Boxes

Image via Wikipedia

“Thinking outside the box”—A familiar expression that suggests creativity beyond normal limitations. Everyone has heard this expression and in a general way understands the intent. But let’s push this a bit. Let’s do some Q and A outside the box about boxes.

Q: What’s a box?
A: A container within which something exists.
Q: What else?
A: The container establishes boundaries and limitations.
Q: What if there is nothing in the box?
A: It still contains air. Air is not “nothing” but is “no-thing.”
Q: What does that mean?
A: It means that air is not a thing but rather the absence of things and without the absence, it would be impossible to place “things” in the box.
Q: So does that mean that both things (form) and no-things (emptiness) are interdependent?
A: Exactly.

Lao Tsu pointed this out centuries ago yet we dwell on forms and ignore emptiness. Here is what he had to say...

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there”
Stanza 11—Tao Te Ching

You might ask what value is it to 21st-century people to consider this arcane, centuries-old musing of an ancient Chinese sage? The answer is mutual respect. Every human who has ever lived knows their form and profit but it is rare to find anyone who knows their emptiness (and usefulness). 

When we place limits on our form we diminish our potential (usefulness). Profit comes from form; Usefulness from emptiness. We may profit by acknowledging what we know, but how useful are we to ourselves and others when we ignore or denigrate what we don’t know? When we box things in we see them within limitations which we ourselves establish. Space and emptiness have no limits but form does. When we define with concepts we create, we limit both form and emptiness and force ourselves to stay within those limits.

To cherish only what we know at the expense of difference is a violation and diminution of our space and that of others. Why are we so afraid of what we can’t perceive? Why do we fear differences? Why do we prefer boxes and limitations when we can have infinity? 

Is it that we have no eyes to see or ears to hear? A box is useful when we acknowledge both the contents and the context and it matters little whether the box belongs to us or another. In any event, immortal space is shared space; only mortal form limits and changes. Genuine emancipation happens when we can release our attachment to mortality and embrace the emptiness of immortality, without confining it to conceptual limitations.