Transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dharma of a duck.

Ducks doing what ducks do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaining and losing.

Much truth here.

“Have you found Jesus? I didn’t know he was lost.”

Okay, so it’s an old joke and more than likely considered sacrilegious by Christians lacking a sense of humor. That likelihood aside, there’s an important point buried in the comedy. And the point? You can’t find what’s never lost, Jesus or anything else. So why does that seem like such a big deal? Simply because of a fundamental belief embedded in our culture that created havoc in my life until I came to my senses. I’ll walk you through the subterfuge, and I’m sure you’ll find your own resonance.

Suppose you’ve been told your entire life that you’re no good, and the reason is that you have been rejected by God. Maybe it took some time, but eventually, you came to believe the lie. And once the idea became a matter of belief, it became cast in stone where it became a plague infecting every relationship you subsequently had, most notably the one you had with yourself. 

And since it was now a sure thing, you began to act as if it were true: That you were no good, and boy did you get confirming feedback, and the belief just became more and more embedded. That vector takes you step-by-step to the big moment of reckoning: suicide. And the reason is really also pretty simple: Rejection by God, and there is nothing you can do about that except take your licks.

And why am I so sure about this? Because I just described my life, except for the last chapter, which is this: You can’t find what’s never been lost. I’ll leave you to try that on for yourself, but here’s a clue: What is absolutely good, can never be conditionally no good.

Karma and Predestination

Fate vs. Karma

I’m somewhat of a hybrid anomaly. I never consciously intended to become spiritual, yet it happened anyway. Nor did I ever plan to study religions, yet that too occurred. It all began with a seeming mistake that led me into Yoga (Hatha at first), and have discovered how well it worked physically, I decided to explore further and found that Hatha was one of many forms of Yoga, one of which is Dhyāna Yoga (The Seventh Limb of Yoga). It was/is also known as the means of emerging Samādhi (mystical absorption), the aim of all Yogic practices, and the eighth step of the Buddha’s Nobel Eight Fold path toward enlightenment. I later learned that Dhyāna was the ancient Sanskrit name for what we now know as Zen.

And that became the path I followed (the Rinzai form) that changed my life. I never saw it coming. It’s similar to being blindsided by COVID, but with a different outcome. And once I had experienced and reaped the fruit of the path of awakening, I chose to return to school and obtain a degree in divinity as an ordained Christian Minister. This all happened after I had lived a lot of life, much of it challenging and full of suffering.

Fast forward forty-plus years later, and during recent times, I have wondered if all of this was just a fluke of destiny or perhaps a reflection of something unseen, more profound, yet nevertheless real—may be an extension of karma, or maybe even predestination, both of which I had learned through my own experience and in-depth study.

There is something I don’t like about either the idea of my destiny being predetermined or paying the price for my errors. Nevertheless, when I examine my life in hindsight, it is hard to ignore how it could have happened by serendipity or happenstance. So the question I have recently pondered whether there could be any validity to either idea (karma or predestination). Both rankle me, yet both might be true despite my distaste.

Karma makes much sense as cause and effect on a conditional plane. Feedback loops surround us everywhere—from an interpersonal level all the way to nature. It happens in the water cycle, and it happens when we attack someone. And it does not appear to be limited to individuals who seem separate and apart from other people. Still, as chaos theory tells us, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America eventually becomes a hurricane moving across the Atlantic from the coast of Africa. We must call that “collective karma”—The impact of everything linked together. What goes around comes around, and it’s hard to ignore the obvious. 

What could be more obvious is how karma continues from mortal life into the next. Once we die (mortally), logically, it is less evident that we carry forward what was incomplete in a previous mortal life. However, much of what I have experienced in this incarnation doesn’t seem possible to have occurred through happenstance. So there is some substance to continuing karma.

Predestination is somewhat akin to karma in that our mortal vector appears as a continuation—a righteous one that stems from the residue of previous mortal incarnations. If you buy into reincarnation, then why would it not make sense that we begin with a residue of unfinished business (e.g., karmic seeds carried forward within the eighth consciousness—Sanskrit, alayavijnana, thus the “pre” of destiny. Buddhist thought affirms that notion, and I can see the wisdom: A sort of do-over-opportunity to advance in our quest toward completion and enlightenment.

I do, however, question the validity of the sort of predestination proposed by John Calvin: Double predestination—the belief that God appointed the eternal destiny of some to salvation by grace while leaving the remainder to receive eternal damnation for all their sins. That notion directly contradicts the doctrine of unconditional love in the New Testament unless you see eternal damnation as “tough love.”

The final analysis comes down to belief and dogma, which The Buddha was adamantly opposed to, as expressed in the Kalama Sutra. The people of Kalama asked the Buddha whom to believe out of all the ascetics, sages, venerables, and holy ones who passed through their town like himself. They complained that they were confused by the many contradictions they discovered in what they heard. The Kalama Sutra is the Buddha’s reply.

• “Do not believe anything on mere hearsay.

• Do not believe in traditions merely because they are old and have been handed down for many generations and in many places.

• Do not believe anything on account of rumors or because people talk a great deal about it.

• Do not believe anything because you are shown the written testimony of some sage.

• Do not believe in what you have fancied, thinking because it is extraordinary, it must have been inspired by a god or other wonderful being.

• Do not believe anything merely because the presumption is in favor or because the custom of many years inclines you to take it as true.

• Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers or priests.

• But, whatever, after thorough investigation and reflection, you find to agree with reason and experience as conducive to the good and benefit of one and all and of the world at large, accept only that as true and shape your life in accordance with it.

The same text, said the Buddha, must be applied to his own teachings.

Do not accept any doctrine from reverence, but first, try it as gold tried by fire.”

Perpetual host; Holy ghost.

The Spirit arises

This is going to be a risky post since adherents to different faiths get disturbed by connecting dots of similarity. Nevertheless, I willingly choose to go where “angels fear to tread” since my topic is of utmost importance. The best way to begin is with a quote from Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” His point, and mine, is while the name may change, the essence stays the same.

I’ve danced around this burning bush numerous times trying to convey the essential point that our human nature is like a continually eroding house within which lives a permanent resident (with no name or status). Such posts as “Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me,” “Guests and Hosts,” “The Watcher,” “Transcendence and the Middle Way,” “Nature of mind and the desire for liberation,” “Already, not yet,” “Separating wheat from chaff,” “East meets West meets East,” “If it walks like a duck…” and others, all address the point of this post but not all reached across the aisle. Now I will. What may or may not be known is that while all religious traditions are different in their dogma, the mystical traditions of each are nearly identical.

But before that reaching, my springboard will be a quote from a towering giant in the long line of Zen Masters: Huang Po…

“The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word ‘Mind’ to symbolize the inexpressible reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not Mind at all. But he had to use some term or other, and his predecessors had often used ‘Mind.’ As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all, but familiar to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, ‘hsin’ means not only ‘mind,’ but ‘heart’ and, in some senses, at least, ‘spirit,’ or ‘soul,’—in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word Absolute, which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course, ‘the One Mind’ is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.”—Commentary by John Blofeld (Chu Ch’an): The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind.

That’s a safe segue onto the other side of the aisle that addresses the Christian principle of The Holy Ghost, who/which resides in “born again Christians.” The rose smells as sweet, but the name changes, as do the presuppositions. In the case of Zen, the host (True man of no rank), according to Master Lin Chin/Rinzai; Huang-Po’s student) was the eternal “REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.” 

The apparent difference between the teachings of orthodox Christianity and Zen, concerning the indwelling Spirit, is that Christian dogma says only those who confess Christ as Lord will be “born again” and receive the Holy Spirit. However, this dogma contradicts another fundamental aspect of Christian teaching, which says that God is eternal and omnipresent. Consequently, there is a fly in this ointment that was addressed by Meister Eckhart (Christian mystic)—“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Mystics (all) have plunged the depths to the essence of their natural being, whereas those who remain unenlightened see the surface and not the wisdom. For these, “…the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees.”

Belief and Truth

It is said that faith is more powerful than reality. I believe that it is. If I were to believe that I must have air to breathe and thought there was none, in spite of its ubiquitous presence, I would die from the lack. If I were to believe that I must have water and thought there was none I would die of thirst from that lack as well. When our beliefs (any at all) over-ride reality we suffer the consequences, in spite of what is real and true. If we are free yet believe that were are not, we are in bondage; poverty itself.

Many subscribe to the belief that in order to be spiritual it is necessary to embrace certain traditions, make specific statements of faith, and join with certain like-minded people as rites of passage to spiritual realms. The presumption here is that there is a formula that determines whether or not we are spiritual and acceptable to God. Perhaps the question is not how to be spiritual but rather, is it possible to not be spiritual at all. Believing that you are not spiritual (when you are) over-rides the reality in the same fashion that believing you need air when in the midst of air.

In The Song of Zazen, Hakuin Zenji said... “How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar: Like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst; Like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.” The story in the Bible about the Prodigal Son spoke the same truth.

Here is something to ponder—What is the spark which animates our being? Is it possible that we need to look no further than the end of our noses to discover what is ever-present? And isn’t it likely that we are crying out for God while in the midst of Spirit?

Probably the greatest Christian mystic to ever live was Meister Eckhart. He said this regarding the chasm between ideas and reality. 

“Man’s last and highest parting occurs when for God’s sake he takes leave of god. St. Paul took leave of god for God’s sake and gave up all that he might get from god as well as all he might give—together with every idea of god. In parting with these he parted with god for God’s sake and God remained in him as God is in his own nature—not as he is conceived by anyone to be—nor yet as something yet to be achieved, but more as an is-ness, as God really is. Then he and God were a unit, that is pure unity. Thus one becomes that real person for whom there can be no suffering, any more than the divine essence can suffer.”

To experience the ubiquitous spiritual presence of God it is always necessary to get rid of the belief that God is absent and we must take action. God is transcendent but god is a distillation: Eckhart’s idea which must be cast aside. Such an idea is a distortion of reality and removes us from that which we seek to find.

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.

Addiction

As the Covid-19 pandemic rages out of control, addiction once again is rising to the top of the news feed. Whenever crises rise, addiction rises in tandem and those so inclined scrambles for relief.
 

This post is thus particularly relevant in light of the present day problems to a wide variety of a host of objective “stuff.” Our common-coin manner of understanding addiction is too limited. When we think of someone addicted we see images in our mind of drug addicts or derelicts who were unable to overcome excessive opioid consumption. Maybe we’ll even go so far as to include someone who can’t control his or her consumption of food or sex. Whatever object is chosen—another person, drugs, alcohol, food, the greed for money or sex, becomes the god we must have to fill a sensed emptiness. Rarely, however, do we consider the average person exhibiting expressions of addiction, and that’s a problem.

Addiction, properly understood at the base level is craving: an excessive desire. Everybody falls victim to that. Whenever our normal comforts are disrupted, such as now, anxiety goes wild and we crave their return. We either crave what we like or resist what we don’t. Both are forms of craving (excessive desire). To get to the bottom of this dilemma we need to ask, “which part of me is craving and why?” Someone who is complete, doesn’t crave anything, so it must be the incomplete part of us—the part of us that says, “I need that to experience myself as complete and satisfied, and without getting that I will suffer.”

Meister Eckhart (the 14th century Christian German theologian, philosopher and mystic) said, “To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God. Man’s last and highest parting occurs when for God’s sake he takes leave of god. St. Paul took leave of god for God’s sake and gave up all that he might get from god as well as all he might give—together with every idea of god. In parting with these he parted with god for God’s sake and God remained in him as God is in his own nature—not as he is conceived by anyone to be—nor yet as something yet to be achieved, but more as an is-ness, as God really is. Then he and God were a unit, that is pure unity. Thus one becomes that real person for whom there can be no suffering, any more than the divine essence can suffer.”

A while ago I heard a man say, “I can understand how Christ can be in me, but how is it possible for me to be in Christ?” Clearly, this person had a rather limited view of both himself and of Christ and apparently didn’t believe what his own scripture told him about the nature of God. Christian scripture says that the nature of God is omnipresent. If this man truly believed this, the answer to his question would be clear: there is no place that God is not, so how is it possible for anyone to not be in Christ? The entire sea in which we swim is God. Fish are in the water and we are in God.

In our unknowing, we imagine that we are separate from the fullness of our creator, that we are not a unit and this, in turn, leads to a deep desire to become what we are already, thus we suffer. The Buddha also spoke in the Nipata Sutra about what happens due to ignorance:

“What is it that smothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it the most?’ ‘It is ignorance which smothers’ the Buddha replied, ‘and it heedlessness and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.” 

All people fear the pain of suffering and this makes us blind to the suffering of others. While locked in the grip of our egos, we think we’re the only ones suffering, and in that state of mind, we become greedy and uncaring. At the center of suffering lays this idea that we are separate and incomplete and that leads to the craving for what we have already.

The ancient Daoist admonition applies here, “Resist nothing and embrace everything today. The perfect day and night are within you. Let it all unfold like a blossom.” Picking and trying to retain only the good, while resisting what we imagine will darken our day, is the true addiction and that leads inevitably to suffering.

Does might make right?

The part of us that looks beyond immediate crisis has one answer and the part of us which takes over moment-by-moment has a different one. There is hypocrisy in this divide which seems to go by without recognition. 

It is somewhat easier to see this split in others than in ourselves. The oil that greases the machinery of our culture—money, says “in God we trust” but sadly a significant portion of that oil is devoted to buying tools of domination and this split shows up everywhere in our culture.

It shows up in Presidential debates when candidates get high marks for aggressive behavior. It shows up amidst audience cat-calls of “send her back” or “lock her up.” It shows up in comments of the pundits when they applaud one side with “taking the fight to the enemy.” It is bizarre for the “United” States to exhibit such behavior and maintain an indefeasible posture of unity. The proof of our unity (or not) doesn’t lie in campaign slogans and sound bites but rather in how we treat one another. It is telling that the candidates say one thing from a distance and another face to face. The disparity between this message split creates and inflames divisiveness amongst people who are already divided into hunkered down bastions of tribal self-righteousness.

When we attack another—whether that other is a candidate, our close associates, or other nations—we invite retaliation and get stroked for our “might makes right” behavior. It is very troubling that we have grown into a nation of divisive aggressors who seem to think that we should wear such behavior as a badge of honor.

We know the justification for this divide. It started when we were children— “He started it. It’s not my fault.” And that justification then becomes, “Let me hit him first before he hits me.” This entire give and take is flawed and is rooted in the mistaken idea that we are all separate, individual selves who, out of perceived necessity band together into tribes and packs of conformed aggression. Yes, we are different. We look different. We think differently and we hold opposing viewpoints, opinions and beliefs. And at a deeper level...the level not seen...we are united as one.

When we go to war because of our differences, without accepting our common humanity, we end up not only destroying others but ourselves as well. A long time ago someone very wise said, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” We didn’t take that counsel to heart then and seem incapable of doing so now. Shantideva, an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar, took a different view. He said, “When I act for the sake of others, No amazement or conceit arises. Just like feeding myself, I hope for nothing in return.” 

This view, of course, was offered not in singular acknowledgment of our differences but also in recognition of our sameness. We can’t help but wonder if perhaps our founding fathers of “A More Perfect Union” had Shantideva’s view in mind instead of the rancor we have settled upon.

Journey thru Hell to Heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.” 

Laying down one’s life.

Yesterday the world watched as friends and family eulogized the life of John McCain. It was a testament of sacrifice for fundamental principles that, for him, rose above partisan politics. 

His life and mine were forged in the blast furnace of Vietnam. Forever after, he faced the challenges of living without giving in to fear. In his own words, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.” He knew that in the marrow of his bones. Five and a half years in Hanoi’s main Hỏa Lò Prison (“Hanoi Hilton”), changed McCain from an irreverent, cocky renegade into a man who would dedicate the rest of his life fighting for those fundamental principles by not yielding to the fears of ordinary men and women.

John McCain was a warrior compatriot of mine. The war changed us both but our subsequent vectors were different. He went down one path, and I went down another. You know where his led, but mine led me on a spiritual journey trying to find solace from the demons that entered my mind and soul, causing a never-ending psychological and emotional maelstrom that has continued to plague my entire adult life.

My pilgrimage took me onto the path of Zen because it claimed to be a means for alleviating suffering. It did what it claimed, and then, I continued on to seminary where I learned how to read both ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, the latter of which was the original language of The New Testament. As a result, I became aware of those concepts held by the ancient Greeks about life. They saw life in three aspects: two that comprised our human vessel and one that made us into sentient beings sparked by the breath of our creator. These three aspects have now become known as our biological being (βίος), our psychological being (ψυχὴν), and our spiritual being (ζωή). 

All three were represented in those words from Koine Greek, and yesterday during John McCain’s eulogy, the significance of those different principles came out in a reading by Senator Lindsey Graham.

John was a man who lived a life of high principles so I imagine neither he nor his family would be offended by my rectifying a misunderstanding—a meaningful and significant misunderstanding that is both needed now more than ever within our political sphere and should be embraced by all people throughout all times and all places. The misunderstanding of which I speak concerns those three different words for “life” rendered in Koine Greek

The passage read by Senator Graham was John 15:13 which has been translated into English and reads: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The common way of understanding this passage means to sacrifice one’s bodily being (to die biologically) as an act of supreme love. 

But that is not what the passage meant when written in Koine Greek. And to grasp the true understanding, we need to see it in the original language which reads as follows: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” and came to be understood as stated above. I don’t expect many, if any, to read Koine Greek so a bit of guidance is required. I have highlighted in red the keyword ψυχὴν.

The standard, universally accepted manual for translating from Koine Greek into English is Strong’s Concordance, and when we turn to Strong, we find the true meaning for “ψυχὴν.” It means, among various concepts, that which determines the personality of a person, in this case, the mind, and is the basis for our grasp of the psyche (e.g., psychology).

If that passage of John 15:13 meant what Senator Graham conveyed (e.g., to die biologically), then the passage would have been written this way: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν βίος αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” yet it was not.

Properly translated this passage means “ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s ideas for one’s friends.” In other words, to set aside one’s ideologies as the supreme act of love. And when you consider what divides us more than anything else, it is clinging to our ideas and rejecting those of others. Thus, the supreme act of love conveyed by The Christ had nothing to do with dying biologically. Instead, Jesus saw the source of hatred as ideas that divide us, and, therefore saw the solution to hatred as love—setting aside dividing ideas. It is hard to imagine a time in human history when that message is more germane than now.

And perhaps the most surprising realization of all is that this true understanding of love is almost identical to that expressed by the father of Zen—Bodhidharma, who defined Zen as “not thinking.” When you don’t think, what remains is a purity of mind. The Japanese form of Zen considers the mind and heart not as two different matters, but as one united entity (heart/mind). “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”