Transformed Minds

In the letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul instructed his readers on how to discern God’s will, which we would have to consider, as he puts it, “pleasing and perfect.” The means by which this discernment was to be implemented was through mind transformation. 

Read it for yourself (Romans 12:2). For sure there may have been differences in how this prescription was offered from standard Buddhist teachings. However, Paul’s prescription is the same as what the Buddha taught—that unambiguous discernment is only possible through a renewal of mind: to purify and free the mind from self-centered discrimination.

It might be disturbing to both Christians and Buddhists to take the tack of mixing this instruction together under a common roof. Truth is the truth, however, and the genuine truth is not tied to anything. The truth that is conditional is not truth. That would be relative opinion or alternative facts. How can it be said on the one hand that everything is relative and the next that everything is absolute? 

Actually, these positions are harmonious—The Middle Way: Not this, Not that. Not not this, not not that. To explain: From the perspective of original mind there are transcendent truths and from the perspective of the phenomenal world, everything is relative. A “Dharma” means to comprehend or grasp transcendent truth—truth that lies beyond conditions of Christian, Buddhist or any other limitation. So on the one hand relativity is true and on the other hand, it is false—The Middle Way.

Yes, of course, this can become confusing but let’s return to mind transformation and renewal. What is there in our mind that needs transforming? And what is the result of such transformation or renewing? Let’s take this in reverse—renewing: to make new again. 

And how exactly is this renewing supposed to work? That question was posed to Jesus and his answer is recorded in the 18th chapter of Matthew (verse 3). In essence, he said, unless we change and become like little children the goal will not be reached. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus told his disciples that removing the impediment of discrimination was a necessary condition for entering the kingdom of heaven—becoming like little children. 

And what is the state of mind of little children? Well, we’d have to look at really little children since it doesn’t take very long before their egos begin to coalesce. Before that unfortunate emergence children still have their untainted original minds and they are like sponges soaking up, without judgment, whatever comes their way. It is a time of utter fascination where everything is new and wonderful! For little children seeing things as they are without bias is natural. They haven’t lived long enough to discriminate. Things just are what they are.

There are many ways to understand but a transformed mind is a mind made new again. It is a cleaned-up mind, made clear of impediments to clarity so that true vision is possible. So long as we cling to egocentric, my-way-or-the-highway positions we are not able to discern essential truths that come from God. 

So long as we remain stuck in one position or point of discrimination in opposition to others we are operating from the self-centered framework of duality. We may take the perspective that some people are God’s people and others are not but Jesus never taught that, and neither did Gautama Buddha. Jesus taught that God causes the sun to shine and sends the rain equally to all regardless of discrimination (Matthew 5:44). And Gautama taught that within the realm of pure mind, all are equally buddha—without discrimination. 

And in a similar fashion, Jesus taught “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Do you want to know what God looks like? To know, first get rid of what defiles your heart and mind. With nothing clouding your sight, then you’ll see clearly the kingdom of heaven. Recently the Pope said, “You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes. You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25.”

Transforming our mind has never been more needed than now. The mind which needs transforming (and thus renewed) is the ego-mind where discrimination and right vs. wrong rule the day. That mind is conditional, or contingent—completely dependent upon the center of self. A transformed mind is free of that limitation and able to discern God’s pleasing and perfect will.

That which we are.

Perhaps today you will meet someone for the first time and introductions will occur. You’ll inquire about them and they about you. “Tell me something about yourself,” you’ll ask, and that is how we begin. 

Who are you? Who are they? It is the natural way of understanding another as well as ourselves. And that matter is perhaps the most important question anyone will ever ask or answer. The reason? Because the manner in which we understand ourselves serves is the bridge to understanding another. 

Whatever we believe about ourselves, is how we assume others understand themselves. If we think of ourselves as an isolated, mutually discreet individual, then others must be that way also. And on the other hand, if we understand ourselves as united with all, that must be how others understand themselves. Two of the most profound examples of such understanding comes from the Bible and the story of The Buddha’s life.

The first comes from Exodus during the encounter between Moses and God: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites,’ ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

And the second is this: Following The Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he passed a stranger on the road who was so struck by The Buddha’s countenance that he asked him, “Are you a god?” The Buddha replied, “No. I am not. What are you then?” the man asked. And the Buddha said, “I am awake.”

These answers may seem dissimilar but maybe that is because we are trying to hard to keep these spiritual disciples apart and distinct. However, putting that desire aside, perhaps the answers are the same. How so? 

Our normal way of grasping these answers is by assuming the answers (e.g., “I am” and “I am awake” to be adjectives. Instead, consider the answers as pronouns: Not descriptions but rather statements of inexplicable nature. And just maybe, that is true for us all. We are awake (e.g., consciousness itself). We are who we are—inexplicably: the fundamental nature of awareness.

One size fits all.

Fat issue into skinny package

High profile people have a way of finding their opinions published in the news media, and this morning is a good example. Brad Pitt’s mom apparently felt inclined to express her perspective on the presidential competition with the following:  

“Any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian convictions concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon.”

So let me grasp this combo: Christian=family man=high morals=business experience=anti abortion=homophobia. According to Mama Pitt (Brad’s mom), that pretty much sums it up, thus “Vote for Mr. Romney.” I don’t know how Brad feels about his mom’s perspective, but if she were my mom, I think I’d want to hide her under the bed.

First of all, the implication here is that anyone labeling themselves Christian should be held in high esteem. There are ample reasons to question that premise. By way of example, consider the following, from another Christian:

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” And “Each one of us today may regret the fact that the advent of Christianity was the first occasion on which spiritual terror was introduced into the much freer ancient world.” 

Lest we forget, that was a quote from Mein Kampf by author Adolph Hitler. And granted his xenophobia in this quote concerned those ‘evil’ Jews, but he wasn’t fond of homosexuals either, never mind that scholars today think he probably was one. 

Between 1933–1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and somewhere between 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in extermination camps due to the orchestration of this fine Christian. So much for high Christian morals and homosexuals. But how about this other: “anti-abortion” wedded to Christians? Is the implication here that these two equate? Can a Christian, or any person of conscience, be against abortion (as an unswerving standard)? The problem with the law either for or against abortion is the expectation of justice. There are occasions when it is just to allow abortion and occurrences when it is just to not allow it. The law rarely acknowledges such wise discernment, and we end up fostering “anti-justice” in our desire to create a one-size-fits-all world.

I am not a high profile person, so my opinions don’t find their way into the published news media. But Dharma Space is my forum, and I can say what I want to my small audience, which might be a wee bit more intelligent than the average bear. What I wish is that all of us would stop such insane lumping together of complex issues and use the brains God gave us all. But perhaps that is expecting too much. 

Morning Stars and Oak Trees

There has probably never been a human who didn’t wonder about their own identity and how they fit into the world. 

This matter is what drove The Buddha to endure an ascetic life nearly to the point of death, only to surrender the quest and then experience his revolutionary enlightenment that has since shown millions the way to freedom. During his life, the Indian culture was deeply divided between those who believed in Brahman as the embodiment of permanence, and those who saw life as transient and thus meaningless. The atman (permanence) issue vs. anatman (impermanence) was central to this conflict, and The Buddha’s awakening.

Upon his enlightenment, he saw the morning star and shouted, “That’s it! That’s it! That’s me! That’s me that’s shining so brilliantly!” From the vast distance of 2,500 years, it seems arcane to consider what exactly he meant. Was he actually saying that he was the morning star?

There is a clue in the Mumonkan to this mystery in case number 37—Chao Chou’s, The Oak Tree in the courtyard. “A monk asked Chao Chou, What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west? Chao Chou said, ‘The oak tree in the courtyard.’” If that is the clue, then it isn’t a clear one, but it is there when we look closely and consider the circumstances which prevailed during Gautama’s time—The Atman/anatman debate, which is still a central issue.

What do we humans see when we open our eyes? We see objects, and we consider them “real.” Just as important is what we don’t see (and sense as “unreal”). Our reasoning is universal and wrong. We assume that what we can perceive is reality, and without realizing it, we take up the atman position—things are permanent. Or we take the opposite point of view by recognizing that all things are transient and thus impermanent (anatman). 

We see reality as an either/or proposition and have the same mindset for ourselves. We perceive ourselves as an objectification: a self-image that we view with our subjective faculty and call that projection “my self” (and assume that we are really the seer/atman). The apparent logic here is duality—object vs. subject; seer vs. seen: One part permanent (the subject which sees and is indefinable, yet real), the other part vaporous (the object which is seen, definable yet unreal). What we don’t do—but The Buddha did put the two pieces together. He saw that what he perceived were not two different dimensions but instead, One dimension comprised of two aspects, which he called The Middle Way.

This is the most challenging matter to comprehend but is vitally important—the coalescence of two aspects into One whole Subject/Object. Think carefully about this matter. So long as we see ourselves as either permanent or impermanent, we are left adrift. If permanent, then we conclude that we must be God, which alone is endless, and we are filled with aspects of denial of the impermanence of life. We pretend Nirvana where none exists. If impermanent, then life is worthless, and we adopt an ego-centric, hedonistic posture, which leads to the three poisons (greed, anger, and delusions—suffering). Neither conclusion works.

When The Buddha said, “That’s it! That’s it! That’s me! That’s me that’s shining so brilliantly!” he was acknowledging the fusion of opposites—The Middle Way. He was not one vs. the other. He was both the seer and seen, just as we all are. We are neither isolated and estranged from life, nor are we the singular force that eternally compels and creates life. We are Nagarjuna’s union of convention and ultimate. We are both the seer or the morning star and the star or an Oak Tree in the Courtyard, or the rising and setting of the sun, or any and every dimension of our individual existence. In that sense, our life is just our life, each moment, and nothing more. It is not the star that arose yesterday nor the Oak Tree of tomorrow. Whatever meets our eye, each changing moment is what we are, and not, and it was this reason that Bodhidharma came to China—To establish this unity. This Middle Way of the Buddha is how we make sense and peace of our identity and our world.

Crisis—Danger and Opportunity

Who am and who are you? To answer those questions, let’s go try a virtual experience. In your mind’s eye, I want you to see yourself in a movie theater.  You are there sitting next to your favorite movie-going buddy, and the main attraction begins. Make it your favorite of all time. Wow! This is a great movie. You are really engrossed, almost like you are in the film, except for one thing: You aren’t (in the movie). As much as you might be enjoying the experience of watching, you always know you’re not “in the movie.” The film is on the big screen across the room, and you are there in your seat. Two separate things: you (the watcher of the film) and the movie (projected onto the big screen).

If you were to describe that experience to your therapist you’d probably be prudent to avoid saying that you were in the movie. If you did say such a thing your therapist might give you a new name, like nuts and start making out some papers with labels of “delusional.” Please avoid such a report.

Now prepare yourself because I’m going to tell you something too incredible for it to register and you’ll probably want to start making those papers out for me. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a Buddhist—at least as far as I know. Maybe he was. But he did say something very Buddhist. He said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” which paraphrases a statement by The Christ in The New Testament. Many very intelligent people say smart things regardless of affiliation and labels. The occasion was the Republican State Convention on June 16, 1858. The place was the statehouse in the Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln had just been chosen as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to run against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. The details of what, where, and when are not particularly germane to my point but I throw them out for you to get the picture. What is germane is what he said during his acceptance speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln was of course referring to the Union and the looming cessation by the Southern states. And his point is applicable to who we all are as people.

Many Buddhist sages have said pretty much the same thing but meant it as a definition of reality—all of reality, but in our case, applied to people. Our house—our beingness—also can’t stand when divided against itself. There is no division separating our nameless essence from our physical and psychic being. They are a single, indivisible thing. We are not some name or a nameless essence. We are not a function or a nameless essence. The division is a phantom. It doesn’t exist, except in our illusionary minds, but never in fact. 

The very moment (down to an unmeasurable dimension of time) there is a watcher and there is what is watched. The instant there is something watched, there is a watcher. Watched and watcher arise together. Instantly. Not one first and then the next. They are flip sides of the same coin. And the opposite is true. When one vanishes, so does the other.

Ladders and Walls come into being and cease from being in a flash. They are bonded eternally together as partners and can’t be separated. So what’s this got to do with movies and who we are? Simple—but actually not so simple to put our heads around. What we normally do is imagine our identities, as separate and independent things (rather than linked, interdependent things). We are thinkers thinking thoughts—illusions lost in illusions. We have all kinds of ideas about ourselves. We imagine and label ourselves with Lao Tzu’s “ten thousand things.” And all of these ideas come to be who we think we are. 

When we meet someone we may be asked to introduce ourselves and how do we respond? “I am so-and-so”—we provide a name. What we don’t say is “Oh I am Ms. Nameless.” Either named or a name we call “nameless” is not who we are. We are both—an indivisible house. We are ladders with walls and it can’t be otherwise. You are real. You are not a fleeting and vaporous thought. Vaporous thoughts are just that: thoughts that vaporize. But you are the indivisible Union (Lincoln’s term) of essence and non-essence, otherwise known (in Buddhist terminology) as emptiness and form. They arise and cease together instantly.

One of the central Sutras in Buddhist practice is the Heart Sutra which says “Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness.” Essence and form are glued together. Maybe you prefer to name essence as God. That’s okay so long as you don’t try to conceptualize God as an imaginary being. God is transcendent—beyond defining characteristics (meaning nameless), so whatever handle you use is irrelevant. What is transcendent is bonded together, not two but One. God doesn’t come and go. Coming and going implies movement from one place to another. If you are essence—God is essence—there is no place that you are not, so how can you come and go? 

You’re already here. It is an illusion to imagine these as separate matters like sitting in the movie theater with our movie-buddy, watching a movie. There is no watcher without what is being observed. Nor is there something watched without a watcher. And to watch at all is not possible without the animating spirit of essence. Otherwise, we’re just talking about flesh, bones, blood, and everything that comes along for the ride.

But what happens in normal “everyday life?” We get caught up in our home movies (buzzing brains) and stop being. We replace being with thinking about being. We don’t eat cake. We think about eating cake and eat the illusion. We don’t just sit. We think about sitting and sit on an illusion. We love to multitask and think we are efficient and productive. 

Actually, we are being distracted with no focus. We don’t work at our jobs (which we may hate), so we think about hating the job and think about where we wish we were. We don’t work with our spouses to manage difficulties; we think about everything that is wrong with them and why they don’t do what we want them to. 

Nothing is scared that way. While we are thinkers, we are not be-ers, and there is nobody at home. And because we do that, we experience fear and anxiety. At the deepest part of our essence, we experience separation and lack of intimacy. There is no way we can be intimate with someone we don’t even know, and I am speaking about our own identity—our real SELF, not the illusionary one.

What we need is integration and what we get is self-created division. We have a primordial knowing about our unity (and lack thereof). When our sense of being is based purely on a fabricated self (otherwise known as ego—home movies), we are rightly fearful because that is shifting sand with no stability, just like one-legged ladders without a wall.

When our identities are tied purely to the shifting sands of life, we know we are vulnerable; nobody has to tell us. We know, and it fills us with anxiety and fear. It can, and often does, paralyze us into inaction, like a deer fixated on the headlights of an oncoming car, frozen with fear, desiring to know the next moment and not able to be in the only moment we’ll ever have: The present one. When identity crises arise, there is both danger and opportunity. We can stay in trouble, like the deer, or we can come to our senses and grasp the opportunity. So how do we get out of this trap that has dominated all of humankind since we first arrived as a species? That’s a matter for my next post.

Making Omelets

Ordinary—Extraordinary: two sides, one coin. The two come along as a single unit of life and can’t be pulled apart, however much we may want. 

Before I became aware of this partnership I knew only the ordinary and the glued-on suffering. It was what and who I thought I was. Life had a different plan, however. Adversity stripped away the outer, ordinary covering and I discovered the indefinable extraordinary that lay beneath. Here there was no suffering and since that discovery, my life has been geared to a single focus: to share that discovery and help others to find their own place of no suffering.

I have come to know that all of us have these same two, inextricable sides. As I age, the outer part of me becomes more decrepit. It’s unavoidable. When I was younger I could sit zazen for days and dwell in that place of no suffering. That is no longer possible. Now my body hurts most all the time, but fortunately, when I had the opportunity I found the quintessence of being human. And in the process, I discovered the difference between physical pain and spiritual/emotional suffering.

What is that extraordinary place? How can it be grasped? I don’t know how to adequately provide an acceptable answer and I’ve been trying to craft one for a very long time. Those who have traveled the path of Zen, and realized this extraordinary place have said, more eloquently than I could, that it transcends description. I believe that it does. 

Is it God? Is it Buddha-Nature? Are there any labels that will adequately suffice? I don’t think there are, but this lacking by no means implies that it is not real. Experience confirms its existence and my puny attempts here in Dharma Space are admittedly inadequate. But insufficient as they are, I do what I can to share the wealth.

My aging shell was cracked a long time ago and just keeps on going the way of all flesh. That will never stop. It is the way we are and I accept that erosion without sadness. But the truth is that there is an inner shell, more important than the outer one that must also be broken—the shell of the ego, known as our self-image. This shell is the primary one that denies access to the extraordinary place: The Dharma Space, where the truth of our freedom from suffering exists. There is nothing that anyone can do to stop the advance of physical degradation but everyone can, and must, be the agent of cracking their own inner shell if the taste of essence is to be experienced.

Around 700 years ago in Germany, a Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic by the name of Meister Eckhart said this...

“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you want to discover nature’s nakedness you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in, the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay.”

However, this quintessence might be described is limited to the linguistic symbols we must employ when we communicate. The danger of any communication, however, is to participate in a fraud, leading those still locked in suffering, to mistake the symbols of communication for the essence which are inadequately being described. That is the danger but it is a risk that must be accepted. The surrogate of words can never take the place of tasting the sweet divine nectar. And to so taste requires personal in-the-mouth experience. My words will not give anyone the taste. So be encouraged and beware. As you read, know that within, you possess a profound, indescribable treasure that lies hidden beneath your own shell. Breaking it hurts but so does giving birth.

God in a Box

The temptation

Confusions about the nature of God are always lurking in the background and complicating clarity. So I want to offer alternative perspectives on a fundamental Christian principle that arises from Matthew’s book in the Bible. Here’s the passage:

“For whoever wants to save his ‘life’ will lose it, but whoever loses his ‘life’ for me will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his ‘life.’” Matt 16:25-26

The New Testament of the Bible was written in Koine Greek. There are two different Greek words in this passage for life. As is the case in any translation, this difference is lost to the English eye, distorting the intended meaning. The two occasions in the first sentence mean “soul”—the Greek word used was psuche, from which we derive the English word Psyche as in Psychology (and has often been interpreted as ego—“I”). The other life in the second sentence means life eternal, in the absolute sense (In a word—essence—and the Greek word was Zoe).

Many Christians think of “soul” as the vessel of enduring life, which designates the individual, and we say things like “He’s got soul,” which means “personality.” Another ordinary expression is “soul-mate.” Another still—“soul-food” or “soul-brother.” The common-coin understanding of “soul” is selfhood, which is characterized by our idea of who we are: Our image of self or self-image—the idea, rather than the reality of our essential being.

An alternate reading, or understanding, of psuche, is mental faculties. The soul is often believed by ordinary Christians to represent that part of the person, which rises to heaven after death (or gets a ticket to another place). Still, such understanding could only make linguistic sense by merging psuche and Zoe, and that merging does not exist in the selected passage.

This passage from the Bible can be understood in a variety of ways. One way—the orthodox way—is that a person must lay down their life (tarnished soul or self-image, figuratively) and be born again thus receiving the essence of God lost in Eden—to trade in the old fallen person for a new person with the Holy Spirit resident in their being, which couldn’t be there before due to our polluted and fallen nature. In other words, to accept Christ’s payment, on the cross, to redeem us all from the debt owed for the sin of disobedience in Eden. God wants justice and demands payment; otherwise, the breach of separation will remain, and we’ll just head for purgatory.

This entire explanation rests on the head of a pin: the basis that there was, in fact, a debt to be paid for the unjustified sin of disobedience in Eden, which becomes moot if Eden was metaphorical vs. an actual place. That sin was seen by God as so horrific that it required the sacrificial death of God’s only son—a curious notion since Genesis 2 is the story about God creating another son, Adam. And what was that terrible sin? Eating an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, instead of fruit from the tree of life. In other words, trading away eternal life by gaining mortal discernment.

Clearly, the severe punishment was unwarranted since Adam and Eve didn’t yet possess the capacity to know they were making a bad choice until after they ate from the wrong tree. This would be equivalent to imprisoning your child (and their eternal progeny) because they made a poopie mess, for the rest of their life, before you potty trained them. They could only have known wrong following the choice, which equipped them with the requisite capacity for discernment, and to understand wrong, you must know what is right.

This presents a serious dilemma. Either God’s sense of justice was flawed (punishing the entire human race for a naïve choice). This story is a metaphor—the most logical possibility—in which case one needs to ferret out the more profound meaning. If you follow the story carefully, mortal discernment came along as a package deal which involved self-consciousness. Before eating the apple, neither Adam nor Eve had any self-consciousness. After they ate it, they became self-aware and covered their nakedness. Before that point (assuming there is a dimension of time called before and after—a separate topic, worthy of consideration), the two were naked as a jaybird and didn’t know there was anything else.

And forever after, good Christians regard their nakedness as evil—the stain of Satan/the serpent—and the temptation of Adam by Eve, which has caused a significant burden of guilt and perverted sexuality among millions of Christians for centuries. So the story goes, God was angry about the choice to trade away eternal life to get mortal discernment, so much so that he cut off the entire human race from his union, and thus created separation and duality. If a human father acted in such a heavy-handed and unjust fashion, he would appropriately find himself standing before a judge in a family court charged with child abuse.

On the other hand, there may be an alternate understanding. Perhaps the first understanding is not what Jesus meant at all. There is no support for this convoluted story, spoken by Jesus, anywhere in the Bible. The story is there, but not spoken by Jesus. The story has been knit together with various strands through a process known as proof-texting: the practice of using de-contextualized quotations from a document to establish a rhetorical proposition through an appeal to authority from other texts; A sort of a consensus by proxy (e.g., circular thinking). It is possible to knit pieces of different yarn together to make any fabric you wish. Isn’t it possible to see this as a metaphor with deep meaning rather than a factual account of a real place with real people and a real talking snake? The clear answer to that question is a resounding yes.

Perhaps what the text meant was that we must lose our mental/mortal illusions or ideas to experience God's immortal essence without fabricated mental images. This second possibility is very close to the Buddhist formulation. The lack of orthodox endorsement does not mean that there haven’t been solid Christians (Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, many others, and most important of all, Meister Eckhart—a German Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic who lived 700 years ago) accepted this second version. A case in point comes from him. Here is what he said:

“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.”

God, according to Eckhart, is “divine essence—is-ness.” Not an idea, but a nameless, indefinable, immortal reality from which there is no division. The Buddha used the expression “thusness” to speak of the ineffable. Eckhart’s “Is-ness” is the same as the Buddha’s “thusness.” Both mean unembellished essence.

These are very different viewpoints with very different results. The orthodox church promotes the first understanding, but many serious Christians accept the second. In any event, with mortal ego-centricity intact, suffering continues. Common (or uncommon) sense proves that.

By accepting the first explanation, a conventional born again Christian must only speak some words of acceptance (either silently or otherwise)—“I confess my sin of disobedience and accept Christ as my new lord and savior.” Nothing else is required or needed. The mortal ego-fabrication can stay entrenched and functioning with all associated corruption continuing, and no motivation to change it. No further action is required beyond the confessional words.

The presumption is that the Holy Spirit will, thereafter, do everything else with no action required from the corrupted person. After those words of confession, you become a robot moving at the dictate of the Holy Spirit (allegedly), and Katy bar the door for anyone questioning the convictions of a born again Christian since, in that case, it is God speaking through a person. To a serious Buddhist, this point of surrender is the starting point, not the ending.

By accepting the second explanation—not recognized by orthodox Christian dogma—there is a different form of acceptance: by ridding oneself of a fabricated mortal self-illusion (psuche/ego), it becomes possible to accept one’s immortal essence and reality as a genuine creation of, and inhabited by God, and by so doing acknowledge what has always been and can never be otherwise—the presence of God’s ubiquitous essence (Zoe). Duality is a myth. Unity has always been. If there were a trick of Satan (ego?), that trick was to create an image of God (A Matrix of illusion) that masks the reality of God.

If God actually (vs. metaphorically,) created duality, that would be the same as God undoing his intrinsic nature (his immortal essence, which by definition is unified, ubiquitous, and omnipresent). God is everywhere all of the time—and that means within and outside—so how can God come and go? And even if God could come and go, does that depend upon human behavior? To suggest such a perspective turns God into a sort of yo-yo traveler dependent upon mortal circumstances. The Bible says that God’s love is unconditional and that a defining mark is omnipresence.

There seems to be a conundrum here. The problem is not God’s immortal presence—God never left—but our mortal awareness, which is obscured by self-generated illusions of a soul, placing the ego (e.g., ego-centric) at the center in place of God. The only eternal thing is God’s ever-present essence. You—the mortal you—flesh, bones, blood, and matter (including mental fabrications), will pass away like leaves in the wind. However, your nameless immortal essence endures forever because it is never born, nor does it ever die.

To many, this is a critical and delicate matter. It was for me. I struggled with the apparent dilemma for years, thinking I had to choose one side or the other. The fact is there really was no choice, only the one I imagined. If the matter of handles can be set aside if only briefly, it is possible to examine the underlying metaphorical meaning which transcends words and labels. If you read my post on “The Wall—Essence,” you will see my thoughts about transcendence. In that realm, there are no names nor labels. These are things that we mortal folk use to communicate ideas. If God exists—and how can there be any serious question about the matter—then the nature of God is an eternally ever-present, immanent, transcendent essence—Zoe. The Buddha used the word “Dharmadhatu”—he didn’t speak Greek, to say the same thing. Immortal essence is blocked by the mortal illusion—psuche.

I do not refer to myself as a Buddhist or a Christian. These are just names that cannot encapsulate our intrinsic, essential self-understanding. Words are just boxes (limitations) that we must struggle to get beyond. The Buddha cautioned not to be attached to names, even holy ones. He said, “So-called Buddha-Nature is not something that has been made.” Words can be prisons when we become attached.

It is what lies beneath the words that matter. In the final analysis, God is not an idea. Not even a name, but is everywhere yet, not abiding in a particular place: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Spoken by Jesus; Matt 8:20) The Buddha expressed this non-abiding like this: “The Dharmata is Nirvana—the true essence of all Buddhas. Nirvana has no grotto or house to live in.” (Mahaparinirvana Sutra) The meaning of both of these expressions is that transcendence infuses all of existence yet is not restricted to place or form.

My blog’s name is “Dharma Space,” which means “Integration of one’s temporal nature with the underlying life principle by undoing of all egoistic falsehood”—thus accepting the indivisible conjunction of matter with essence. That premise is not limited to a particular perspective. I subscribe to the teachings of The Buddha because they come along with a minimum of baggage, with a complementary focus on freedom from dogma.

I also accept the truth about this integration from wherever it may be found. Jesus spoke such truth. Ego-centric humans have polluted the water of truth by pouring the poison of a mortal self-image into the well of life and ruined the lives of many in the process. Awakening is what Buddhism is about. That is the meaning of a Buddha: to awaken from a mortal ego’s self-created nightmare and accept your immortal essential nature. If you do that, it doesn’t matter what label you use. You can use the label of Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Jew. It won’t matter. You’ll be a Buddha with a meaningless label.

Moral Relativism

This notion has been fairly well broadcast recently. Perhaps it is being revisited due to the rising emergence of radical right-wing popularity. For example, Texas Governor, and aspiring Presidential candidate Rick Perry, recently hosted a national referendum in Houston’s Reliant Stadium—a call for prayer, beseeching God to come to the aid of our beleaguered nation. 

Perry is well known for his staunch opposition to moral relativism and is a proud supporter of the absolute/literal interpretation of God’s word—The Holy Bible. He finds comfort in surrounding himself with those who share his discriminatory views. Among these is the good Reverend John Hagee, who gained notoriety for declaring that Hurricane Katrina was God’s vengeance on the sinful New Orleans population and suggested that Jews had brought the Holocaust on themselves. Another in his camp is one of Hagee’s flock, Elva Spoor, who said she had come with the Cornerstone delegation so “God can bless us and give us rain and turn the nation back to God.” But what about gay people, she was asked? “God says he loves everyone, but he hates the sin,” said Spoor. “God says it is an aberration (did she mean ‘abomination’) to him.”

It is exceedingly unfortunate that political despots, who use the gospel of Christ to achieve their malevolent aims, have manipulated ignorant people to engage in unspeakable horrors. Click here and watch the sad history that emerged in Nazi Germany during an era quite similar to conditions prevailing today. Then read this and see how the apparently innocuous event in Houston bears striking similarities. My purpose here is not to denigrate the beliefs of others but rather to consider such positions through the lens of truth as conveyed by the Buddha, which by the way harmonizes quite well with the teachings of Christ, particularly when it comes to the unconditional nature and love of God for his creation.

There have always been those who have interpreted scripture literally rather than understanding the true intent and spirit underscoring the message. Rinzai Zen Master Bassui Tokushō (1327–1387) is reported to have told his students that to properly grasp the spirit of sutras, they must “first awaken the mind that reads” and then they would understand. In every religion, there have been similar rifts. Early Buddhists (the Hinayana) understood matters differently from the Mahayana—the prior more concerned with individual liberation and the latter concerned with enlightening humanity’s breadth. Similarly, the gospel of Christ is divided into the Old and the New Testament. You could say that the Old was more concerned with the law’s letter, whereas the New was concerned with the spirit.

Yet 2,000 years later, some proclaim themselves to be born again Christians and proceed to spread a gospel of hate emanating from a vengeful God of the Old Testament. Sadly some proclaim themselves to be Zennists but cling to Hinayana preoccupations.

Zen (as well as the true Christian gospel) essentially teaches both differences and oneness simultaneously. All of us are as different as snowflakes but fundamentally just snow. The soul of genuine spirituality is the lack of discrimination—a heart of compassion and unconditional love. Both Gautama and Jesus taught it. Few embrace it. Watch this.

Pie in the Mouth

In probing the layers of human physiology and psychology, Paul Broks, neuropsychologist/philosopher, leads us through a haunting journey in his book Into the Silent Land. 

 It is hard not to be stunned by reading his dissecting view of what it means to be human. We take so many things for granted. That, which is basically inanimate “meat,” can and routinely does animate with consciousness, cognition, imagination, feelings and every other aspect of our condition seems to float by as a given. This fundamental mystery is so ingrained into our being that it goes unnoticed, but not by Broks.

He asks alarming and provocative questions such as “Am I out there or in here?” when he portrays an imaginary man with a transparent skull, watching in a mirror his own brain functions. He notices, for us all, that the world exists inside the tissue residing between our ears. And when the tissue is carefully examined, no world, no mind, no ego/self, no soul, no perceptual capacities, nor consciousness—nothing but inanimate meat is found. Unable to locate, what we all take for granted, he suggests that we are neither “in here” nor “out there,” maybe somewhere between the space between the in and the out, and maybe nowhere at all.

Yet here I am writing these words, and there you are reading them, and so it has always been. We are nowhere and we are everywhere. Not to be found yet fully here. We are like holograms; mind manifestations, which appear or vanish when we are plugged in or out. The inescapable conclusion that arises from such a probe is that we are spirit. No other sensible conclusion is possible. This great mystery has puzzled and confounded humans since the dawn of time, thousands of years before there was the science of neurophysiology or neuropsycholgy. How is it possible that we function as we do, out of what is basically meat? The answer remains hidden beneath veils of mystery.

Anyone familiar with the Heart Sutra can’t help but observe the coincidence between Broks probe and the message contained in the sutra—that there is both delusion and non-delusion. There are human aspects rooted in illusion (which have no substantial reality) and there is the realm of all-pervasive, ever-present perfect peace which is, itself formless and void but nevertheless the well-spring of our existence. There is nothing to be found nor attained in the meat. And because of this “...The Bodhisattva relying on Prajnaparamita has no obstruction in his mind.” Prajna (wisdom)+ Paramita (perfection) means perfect wisdom. Such enlightenment comes with the acceptance of this great mystery, that there is nothing to be found yet we exist as manifestations of what we call God. That is the great mystery, not the animated meat!

And what is of equal fascination is how the Western mind grapples with this mystery versus how the Eastern mind does. Whereas the Eastern mind accepts the mystery as a given, the Western mind wants to probe beyond and explain the mystery—to understand it. To western thinking it is extraordinarily difficult to set the matter to rest, to drop it and just let it be. To Zen, a “nose” is not a nose (the convention of N_O_S_E) but rather the tweak of the object that lies between the eyes. Zen wishes us to wake up and feel the tweak—to move beyond all conventions, abstractions and models—and savor life as it is rather than to describe or understand it. 

“If one reaches the point where understanding fails, this is not such a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking. Perhaps there is nothing to figure out after all: perhaps we only need to wake up.” (Zen and the Birds of Appetite)

To Zen, even conventions such as “The Void,” “God” and “Self” are not to be understood but are rather to be experienced. Such a thrust moves us beyond holographic understandings, beyond ideas and beliefs systems—conventions about life—into the realm of life itself. Zen is about pie in the mouth, savored on the tongue instead of a perfect description of the pie that exists only in the holograms of our mind.