Coming and going.

To a person of Zen, words are a mixed blessing. They can lead you astray or open your mind to the music of the muses. 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 unknown outside of India. 

He and Lao Tzu awaken in me purity of heart unmatched by others. One of Tagor’s resonate themes is opening doors. Here is one facet from his poetic jewel, “Journey Home.”

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

All of us are travelers searching far and wide for what is closer than our own breath, seeking what has never left us. In our mind’s eye, we imagine ourselves’ indwelling presence, which we separate from what that presence witnesses. To Lin-Chi (the father of Rinzai Zen) such people are spiritual dilettantes. He said, 

“Zen students today are totally unaware of truth. They are like foraging goats that pick up whatever they bump into. They do not distinguish between the servant and the master, or between guest and host. People like this enter Zen with distorted minds and are unable to enter effectively into dynamic situations. They may be called true initiates, but actually they are really mundane people. Those who really leave attachments must master real, true perception to distinguish the enlightened from the obsessed, the genuine from the artificial, the unregenerate from the sage. If you can make these discernments, you can be said to have really left dependency. Professionally Buddhist clergy who cannot tell obsession from enlightenment have just left one social group and entered another social group. They cannot really be said to be independent. Now there is an obsession with Buddhism that is mixed in with the real thing. Those with clear eyes cut through both obsession and Buddhism. If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.”

If we listen with open minds, we can hear the connection between Tagore and Lin Chi. There is one who travels and one who is found. The traveler knocks on a billion alien doors and, in the end, returns to find the one who has never moved.  Guests come and go yet the host never leaves. The Buddha lived in India 2,500 years ago. Lao Tzu lived in China at roughly the same time. Lin Chi died in 866 CE, and in 1913 Tagore received the Nobel Prize for literature. 

The lives of these men span an eternity, yet their voices resonate with a familiar echo. After all this time, we are still chasing and becoming attached to the moving rabbit, unable to notice who is doing the chasing. Buddhism has begun to capture the attention of the Western mind, but sadly it still dwells on the bobbing at the expense of the one noticing the bobbing, and as Lin-Chi says, 

“Now, there is an obsession with Buddhism that is mixed in with the real thing. Those with clear eyes cut through both obsession and Buddhism. If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.” 

In our world today, we enshrine the sacred and spit on the ordinary. No wonder in our time we are reaping the poisonous fruit of divisiveness. 

Laws and Order?

Law and Order?

In 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote and published Future Shock, a book many considered to have caused a paradigm shift in how we think about and react to an unfolding future, particularly a future that speeds up and disrupts fixed societal standards. He followed with The Third Wave and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century in which he further delineated the plight of those who resist inevitable change. 

His solution? People who learned to ride the waves of change would be most likely to survive and do well. And those who didn’t adapt would be drowned by those waves of change.

Toffler was unusually prescient and precisely defined the turbulence of the present day. The short takeaway of Toffler’s thesis is this: We humans resist effervescent conditions that disrupt the status quo and thus cling to fixed standards, even when such measures may have never existed. Or if they did exist, we tend to imbue them with inflated and idealized values. In short, we don’t embrace change and end up trying to bulwark thin air. Furthermore, when such changes wash away set standards, we yearn for the “good old days” when law and order prevailed and seemed to ensure stability.

Another ancient sage by the name of Lao Tzu said this in chapter 57 of the Tao Te Ching:
Therefore the holy man says: I practice non-assertion and the people reform themselves. I love quietude, and the people of themselves become righteous. I use no diplomacy, and the people of themselves become rich. I have no desire, and the people of themselves remain simple.”

Some years earlier, Alan Watts came to mainstream attention with his book The Wisdom of Insecurity. He therein observed that our lust for stability was grossly out of kilter since nothing in the phenomenal, mortal world is stable⎯all is changing each and every moment, and to cling to the idea of stability was a sure-fire prescription for suffering and failure. I offer these two summations for a reason that is particularly germane today, and what it should tell us about the value of fixed standards, otherwise known as “laws.”

We, humans, are creatures of habit, and once we have made decisions, we are reluctant to admit the error of our ways. That peculiar habit has a name and a well-founded pedigreed in psychological terms. It is known as a “confirmation bias,” which means we are much more inclined to seek confirmation of our preconceived ideas than to seek the truth. While it may be understandable and even desirable to live with laws, it is likewise a problem when we try to box in change. It can’t be done, since no measures, or set of laws, can ever counter continuous change. So what to do?

The Buddha offered the perfect solution, which he called “upaya,” a Sanskrit word that translates as “expedient means,” where justice is built into the premise of change. Instead of inflexible laws, upaya is flexible guidelines that allow for the nature of change. Upaya is rooted in the inherent wisdom of all of mankind, whereas the desire for inflexible standards is rooted in the opposite incorrect thought⎯Because we are by nature immoral, the lack of laws will result in anarchy, thus we must have a crutch to compensate for our lack. Ultimately this issue boils down to what we think of one another: An extremely critical issue when wrestling with matters such as racism or xenophobia. Are we naturally moral? Or naturally immoral?

“The more restrictions and prohibitions are in the empire, the poorer grow the people. The more weapons the people have, the more troubled is the state. The more mandates and laws are enacted, the more there will be thieves and robbers.

Given the vector in the world today it is high time we reconsider how we understand one another, and rethink how we relate. This may seem like a risky venture but how much greater is the risk of the direction in which we are now heading?

Rules, guidelines and the real teacher.

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When we are lost—such as now during the global COVID-19 pandemic—it’s reasonable to think about finding our way. In such a frame of mind, the first order of business seems to be formulas, techniques, and guidelines that will help us. Once we do find our way, interest in such things falls away. Our natural tendency is to focus on the immediate crisis and ignore those looming in the background. Thus knowing whether or not we’re lost determines how useful these measures are.

Conventional wisdom suggests that we are all lost and can’t manage without the provision of rigid beliefs, firm rules, oppressive laws, and harsh punishment. We have become crippled by the notion of inadequacy and thus require the crutch of constraints and dependencies. Rather than develop internal resolve and strength, we creep along shackled by abstractions. 

As a human family, we are quite fearful that civilization will collapse into a state of immorality and anarchy without these guiding forces. The evidence of living, however, contradicts this view. The fact is that we are overflowing with legal constraints, rules, and guidelines, yet society becomes more debased every day. Prisons abound, and wars have become common.

How very different this conventional view is from genuine insight. In the 18th stanza of the Tao Te Ching, it says this...

“When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise.
When wisdom and intelligence are born,
The great pretense begins.
When there is no peace within the family,
Filial piety and devotion arise.
When the country is confused and in chaos
Loyal ministers appear.
Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone.
Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and love...”

On the surface, this seems bizarre, but the disparity between these two views alone deserves further consideration. What Lao Tzu is pointing out here is the difference between presumption, expectations, and reality. When we aspire to rules for changing conditions, the assumption is that we lack such wisdom. The aspiration toward transcendent wisdom and intelligence produces the opposite. By relinquishing the notion of lack, we discover fullness. Anything at all—Sainthood, wisdom, peace...even the Tao—when held at arm’s length denies us of the very thing we seek.

The danger here, however, is thinking that insight is automatic. It isn’t. What is missing is the fruit that grows from the experience of awakening to our abundant, already adequate, true nature. Henepola Gunaratana clarifies the matter this way:

“There are three integral factors in Buddhist meditation—morality, concentration, and wisdom. Those three factors grow together as your practice deepens. Each one influences the other, so you cultivate the three of them together, not one at a time. When you have the wisdom to truly understand a situation, compassion towards all parties involved is automatic, and compassion means that you restrain yourself from any thought, word, or deed that might harm yourself or others. Thus our behavior is automatically moral. It is only when we don’t understand things deeply that we create problems. If we fail to see the consequences of your own action, we will blunder. The fellow who waits to become totally moral before he begins to meditate is waiting for a ‘but’ that will never come. The ancient sages say that he is like a man waiting for the ocean to become calm so that he can take a bath.”

So are we really lost? Maybe we’ve just swallowed too much bathwater and the message that we are inadequate and in need of formulas when what we need is to awaken to the reality of our unified nature and inherent abilities. Lao Tzu shares with us a rare jewel—an insight that transcends conventional wisdom. In our desire to secure a better world, we place too much hope in perfect conditions without an appreciation that out of chaos comes order; out of family discord comes piety and devotion, and by renouncing the abstraction of kindness and morality, we rediscover what we think has been lost. When we seek a teacher, we stop looking for the real teacher—ourselves and our response to life.

Ego death?

Our mind is an amazing reality that emanates through a brain composed of different cells and neurons which function differently, yet results in a seamless understanding of the world and our selves. 

In a balanced way, our right and left hemispheres function so that we bring together very different modalities to form a balanced worldview, which is both analytical and compassionate. 

Unfortunately, most of us are not balanced due to a host of reasons and tend to be either overly analytic, reliant on symbols, concerned with differences, or overly affectively sensitive stemming from sensed assaults on our egos. For the most part, our left-brain rules the day and this hemisphere is the home of our ego (sense of self).

Our ego-mind perceives the world in a possessive and resistant way, which creates attachments and judgments. If we like (a judgment) something, our ego attaches in a favorable way. If we dislike (a judgment) something, our ego attaches in an unfavorable way. This clinging to conditions results in a brittle, judgmental, and inflexible perspective of our selves, others, and life. Whereas a balanced mind recognizes our interdependent union with all life, our ego-mind denies this and treasures exclusivity and independence.

The three poisons of the mind are manifestations of this out of balance ego exclusivity. As we grow and mature these poisons create strife for our selves and others. We respond to this strife in one of two ways: Blame and denial or learning. The first response just exacerbates the poisons whereas the latter choice moves us to the realization they are rooted in our out of balance ego-mind.

Life, in essence, is structured so that we either awaken or we continue to suffer. If we live long enough, are open-minded, and determined to see things as they truly are, we will eventually come to see the truth. And when this transformation happens, our ego (as the exclusive judge) dies—so to speak. The fact is this sense of self never dies but it is transformed in a balanced way so that we see the world in an enlightened fashion.

This transformation can be facilitated through Zen whereby we learn to quiet the constant chatter that emanates from our ego with its judgments and critiques, which normally overshadow our compassionate nature. This chatter is so loud and relentless, we could easily go through life with very little, if any, understanding of our pure and true nature which makes life worth living. It is unfortunate that few of us follow this path toward breakthrough and remain ignorant of our vast human potential.

Breaking through occurs when our left-brain chatter comes to a halt and we become aware of our always present true nature. This is a matter of subtraction—a sort of shedding—rather than adding or seeking. Lao Tzu put it this way: 

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.” And this...“In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”

Q and A: Beyond Boxes

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“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.

Surrendering from surrendering.

Before

After

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

“Immature beings with but a twig of awareness

Are incited by the demon of death.

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

Doing evil deeds is meaningless.”

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

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

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

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

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

“When we renounce learning we have no troubles. 

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

Small is the difference they display

But mark their issues, good and ill;⎯

What space the gulf between shall fill?

What all men fear is indeed to be feared;

but how wide and without end

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

The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased;

as if enjoying a full banquet,

as if mounted on a tower in spring.

I alone seem listless and still,

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

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

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

The multitude of men all have enough and to spare.

I alone seem to have lost everything.

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

Ordinary men look bright and intelligent,

while I alone seem to be benighted.

They look full of discrimination,

while I alone am dull and confused.

I seem to be carried about as on the sea,

drifting as if I had nowhere to rest.

All men have their spheres of action,

while I alone seem dull and incapable, 

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

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

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

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

The Watcher

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.”—The opening stanza of Chapter 16 of The Tao Te Ching

This post is more than likely going to result in a big yawn since the message should be self-evident, but probably not. Go see a movie (it’s instructive to my point), and you’ll undoubtedly notice two things: (1) You are sitting in your seat and (2) you’re seeing images moving on a screen. No-brainer. Watch TV; Same thing. Neither of those images is real, and you know that. 

So far, so good. Now take it to a not-so-evident level—You see the world, and it moves. There is still you, but is what you see real? That is taken for granted as being real, but as far as your mind is concerned it is no different from a movie or TV. Your true mind doesn’t distinguish. It just notices movement, and you could be asleep and, in principle, it is the same. Dreams come, they go, and there must be you who sees what moves. That you, the true Self, is a constant. Yet it is not yours. It never moves and it can’t be found. It just watches, listens, smells, tastes, and feels. It perceives everything but in itself is nothing.

“Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.”—Chapter 14 of The Tao Te Ching

The way we think.

Now that the Buddhist conception of the mind has been thoroughly delineated we turn our attention to something we do continuously and determines the nature of our world—what the mind produces: thoughts. 

Given the critical nature of thinking, it’s imperative to properly grasp what thinking is all about and how thinking (properly understood) leads us all to our true nature or perpetuates misery. So let’s take a stroll together down the reality road and examine the goal of seeing things as they are, without distortion or delusions. For our stroll, we need to begin with an agreement—to remove customary lenses, with which we are habitually comfortable. For the duration of our stroll, we make a pledge to set aside all preconceived views and be open to a new way of seeing.

First, let’s describe the terrain in Buddhist terms. What we are going to see in our minds-eye must be considered from within the framework of how Buddhists define reality, and once we establish this framework we’ll accept this definition until the end of our stroll. Following our stroll you may, if you wish, return to your ordinary way of looking at life. And in taking our stroll we will use an analytical tool called dependent origination (in Sanskrit, Pratītyasamutpāda) to pin together logic of a special kind.

Buddhists don’t accept the notion that conditional things exist separate and apart from an unconditional basis. To imagine that they do exist in such a manner is considered a delusion. All conditional things are dual in nature; they are clearly mutually discrete. That said, conditional duality exists within a non-dual, unconditional framework—the ground of all being. Neither conditional nor unconditional aspects have any independent reality. They are glued together, irrevocably. 

This beginning premise has vast repercussions. The correct view is that nothing has an independent nature which is exclusive and uncaused. Another way of saying this is that things arise together—are originated interdependently and are caused by other things or events. Thus a thinker only has meaning in terms of what a thinker produces (thoughts) and the converse—thoughts require one who thinks. Thoughts have no independent nature and neither do thinkers. These two arise together simultaneously. Thoughts are causally linked to perceptions, which in turn are causally linked to consciousness. Without consciousness, there would be no perceptions, without perceptions, there would be no thoughts and without thoughts, a thinker could not exist.

But words are devices which themselves have no independent nature. They too arise together with one who writes, speaks or hears. Words are mere devices used to extract and communicate about something. All of the words you are now reading only exist in your mind where they will bear the fruit of imagination. They are not the something itself. Words are reflections or abstractions which join my mind with your mind. Words have no intrinsic self-nature. They too are causally linked to thoughts. Instead of using a word like “thinker” we could easily substitute another name like “subject” and instead of using a name like “thoughts” we could substitute another name like “objects.” 

The relationship between thinker/thoughts is the same as between an ineffable subject and a perceptible object, the point is that it takes a subject to perceive an object just as it takes a thinker to perceive thoughts, and perception depends upon consciousness.

So we could then say that since one-half of these relationships (e.g., thinker apart from thoughts, or subject apart from object) is an impossibility, that such a split is “empty” of independent existence. It would be nonsensical to speak of a thinker without thoughts and in the same way, it would be nonsensical to speak of a subject without an object. None of these halves possess a self-nature except conceptually. And all of the foregoing pertains to our stroll down reality lane. Why? Because such conceptual distinctions are not real, only imagined.

This manner of speaking has a name. It is called dependent origination and occurs within the conditional realm, which itself has no self-nature. Just as a thinker has no meaning without thoughts, conditional reality has no meaning without unconditional reality. Everything is subject to this interdependent framework.

So given this, what would happen if we did away with one of these sides? For example, let’s say that we did away with thoughts. If that happened, by definition, the thinker should cease to exist. But wait a moment. Where does this relationship of thinker/thoughts exist, except in our minds? Outside of mind, there are no thoughts and therefore no thinkers. Both thinkers and thoughts are manifestations of mind and mind exists within our bodies. So if we stop thinking (and the thinker disappears) what does that suggest about our identity? 

Is it possible for us to disappear when thinking/thoughts disappear? Obviously not. So it is clear that the real us can’t be the thinker, otherwise, we would disappear when thoughts cease, which is the whole point. In fact, this non-thinking entity is how Bodhidharma defined Zen: Not thinking about anything is Zen, and that is who we truly are: A non-thinking ineffable entity that thinks thoughts, or no-thoughts. Sounds strange but when we cease conceptual thought what we are left with is The One Reality: Our True Nature.

So obviously the real us is independent of this thinker/thought arrangement. But if so, then this real us must exist outside the framework of conditional existence since a thinker/thought arrangement is a condition. Where does this stroll then lead us? It leads us into the unconditional realm which is known as the realm of the tathagatakaya (body of the Buddha Lankavatara Sutra) and accessed when we leave conceptual thinking behind...beyond thought and non-thought. 

To explain: The idea of thought is a thought. The idea of a non-thought is a thought about not-thinking. Both are thoughts and all thoughts are ideas about something but not the something which is thought about.

Why does this matter? It matters because when we become attached to what we perceive and think, and empower these images with notions (other thoughts) as being real we are subject to clinging to ephemeral and fleeting phantoms which produce suffering. Both things (and particularly thoughts about things) are fleeting. But the distinction between things and thoughts about things, is that things are just things (neither good nor bad—just what they are—suchness) but thoughts about things become judgments of good and bad. We like the good things (and try to grasp and retain them) and dislike the bad things (and try to resist them). Both grasping and resisting are forms of attachment to fleeting existence and attachment causes suffering.

Now let’s shift gears somewhat and come at this from a different perspective by thoroughly considering what is meant by unconditional. The obvious starting point is to understand that something which is unconditional is not dependent upon anything for existence. Anything would include (but not be limited by) time, space, circumstances, birth, death, form, emptiness—everything and nothing. Unconditional means transcendent to all conditions. No beginning, no ending, no circumstances, no form, no right or wrong. Every aspect or defining characteristic would have no place in a realm of unconditional reality, yet unconditional reality must be said to be empty of intrinsic existence since it is a form of complete emptiness and depends (yet it doesn’t depend) upon conditions through dependent origination. 

Unconditional reality is a profound enigma. For it to exist, conditional reality must exist, but in itself, it is dependent upon nothing. Thus it is said to exist and yet not exist. It neither has a self (intrinsic, independent nature) yet it does. In Buddhist cosmology this unconditional realm is know as Tathagatagarbha which means Buddha Womb/Buddha Matrix and is explained by The Buddha in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra to refer to the True Self or Essence of the Self within all sentient beings—the unconditioned, boundless, nurturing, sustaining, deathless and diamond-like Self of The Buddha, which is indiscernible to worldly, unawakened vision, as a result of conceptual obscurations (e.g., thoughts), inappropriate mental and behavioral tendencies and unclear perception.

Such a composite can only be understood as both conditioned and unconditioned, which means the unified source of both: an aspect with defining characteristics and an aspect without defining characteristic which arises simultaneously just as a thinker arises with thoughts. The aspects of Buddha-Nature with defining characteristics is the nirmanakaya—Buddhist vernacular for our physical being... (Incarnate Buddha) and the saṃbhogakāya—subtle body of the limitless form: link to the Dharmakaya. Both of these (e.g., nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya) are said to be subject to birth, death, and other conditions, yet Dharmakaya is subject to none.  The physical and psychic aspects of Buddha-Nature come and go. These aspects have form, but form and emptiness are a single riveted together matter. Form can’t exist without the context of emptiness. They arise together. An object (form) can only exist in space/time (emptiness). That form may be either physical or psychic. A thought is a psychic form—an abstraction, whereas physical forms appear to have substance and intrinsic/independent existence, but from a Buddhist point of view, not even physical form is real (meaning independent from emptiness).

From this point of view, all forms (physical and psychic) are manifestations of mind and lack intrinsic existence. The aspect which is without form is called the Dharmakaya (the true nature of the Buddha, which is identical with reality). This aspect can only be seen by a Buddha and those who have advanced to the highest state of consciousness since it is unconditional. What is conditional (anything with form) can’t see what is unconditional (emptiness—like space can’t be seen). 

This articulation is an attempt to understand the trikaya—the three aspects of Buddha-Nature. But this is a provisional attempt using form (words) to speak of something beyond all form so the attempt is flawed from the outset. As Lao Tzu stated, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.” 

The nameless is the Dharmakaya or Mind-essence. In truth, these aspects are a single, indivisible reality but for convenience sake, we speak of them as separate. The Dharmakaya goes by many names. Often times the name One Mind is used. It is always present yet never found. The mind has no conditions nor limiting qualities yet is always present and functioning. 

Bodhidharma called it mind-essence which may be a better expression since essence has a connotation of infused transcendence. But names and handles are not important. What is important is the essence to which names and handles point; like a finger pointing to the moon. To transcend all names and thoughts (abstractions) and access directly what is, without condition is what tathagatakaya means. Tatha means thusness or suchness—things as they are in their fullness (both conditional and unconditional). Tathagata is an alternative name given a Buddha: one who sees things as they are without delusion

There is a story about the second Zen patriarch (Hui-k'o) who asked Bodhidharma to help him make his mind stop. Bodhidharma said, “Show me this mind of yours, and I’ll make it stop.” Hui-k'o responded, “I’ve looked everywhere for my mind but can’t find it.” Bodhidharma said, “There. I’ve stopped it for you.” The point is that mind/Dharmakaya is not to be found. The idea or thought of mind must be stopped to access Mind. When we look at objects (a thought is an object) we see just objects: the perceptible form; the abstraction, but we don’t see essence because it can’t be seen. 

The purity of mind is what sees, not the organs we call eyes. Objects are containers of the essence but not essence itself and our eyes see objective things (but not essence). Meister Eckhart (famous Christian mystic) made this same point in distinguishing ideas from essence.

Each of us exists in fullness. We are not just decaying form. Fullness includes the essential dimension of Buddha-Nature—the Dharmakaya. Without this, no form could exist (because of dependent origination). When this is understood we see that we are both transient and eternal. We are both subject to beginning/ending and we are not. We are both subject to suffering and we are not. We both have no self/intrinsic nature and we do. Both subject and object fuse into a single thing. SELF and self are different yet the same. We and all of nature are the great mystery of life.

So now, if you wish, return to your ordinary way of understanding. Our stroll is completed.

What’s the difference —Thinking and Knowing?

Please describe the taste of an orange, the smell of rotting flesh, the feel of a feather brushing your skin, what fear looks like, the experience of giving birth, or the sound of rushing water. And use words for these descriptions. 

Do the words capture each of these experiences? Not even close, yet undoubtedly you know all of these experientially. Nothing in life, as experienced, is the same as how these same experiences are described. Our thoughts and words are always abstractions representing something but not the thing itself. You wouldn’t be satisfied eating an ephemeral thought of an orange, or stuffing a piece of paper into your mouth upon which you wrote the word “orange.” Ideas and expressions about experiences, as good as the words can ever be, are poor and unsatisfying substitutes for something real.

A long time ago a Chinese sage by the name of Lao Tzu said in The Tao Te Ching, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.”

“The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.” What can’t ever be named is beyond language and is itself the source of everything. What might this unnamed Tao be? Think clearly about non-thought. If you can grasp it then it won’t be it. A thought called “non-thought” is conceptual and remains just another thought. Grasping is about intellectual understanding but knowing is experiential. To know the one who detects either thought or the absence is to truly know yourself—The nameless.

The real deal.

Over the years that I’ve been poking here and there, examining a host of religious and spiritual paths, I’ve noticed that from the perspective of each and every discipline, the adherents nearly without exception claimed that their chosen discipline alone was the truth at the exclusion of others.

And another unavoidable observation was (and is) that each adherent could quote chapter and verse from their holy texts to support their claims but revealed their ignorance by claiming to likewise know about other disciplines. Apparently, they differed with Mark Twain when he said, “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly, teaches me to suspect my own.”

These observations cast doubt over the entire lot and motivated me to dig deeper into various disciplines to avoid the same error. I may be a fool, but at least I try to keep it to myself. I agree with Mark Twain, who also said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I would be the first to admit that I don’t know in depth about all spiritual and/or religious paths, but I do know about mystical paths (particularly Zen and Gnostic Christianity) as well as the orthodox version of Christianity. I can make that statement, without apology, since I have a formal degree in Theology from one of the finest seminaries in the world and have been practicing, as well as studying, Zen for more than 40 years at this late stage in my life.

I must confess that I get a bit testy when someone, after spending at most a few minutes with Google, claims to know what has taken me many years to understand. And what annoys me even more is when a pastor, rabbi, guru, or other religious figures (who should know better) claims knowledge of matters they know nothing about yet makes unfounded claims and leads their “flock” into ignorance, either intentionally or not.

Now let me address what I said I would do some time ago: differentiate Zen from religions (particularly Buddhism) and I must start with an acceptable definition of religion. The broadly accepted definition is: “A communal structure for enabling coherent beliefs focusing on a system of thought which defines the supernatural, the sacred, the divine or of the highest truth.” 

And the key part of that definition that is pertinent to my discussion here is, …a system of thought… While it may seem peculiar to the average person, Zen is the antithesis of …a system of thought… because Zen, by design, is transcendent to thinking, and plunges to the foundation of all thought: the human mind. 

And in that sense it is pointless to have an argument with anyone about this, rooted in thinking. That’s point # 1. Point # 2 is that Zen, as a spiritual discipline, predates The Buddha (responsible for establishing Buddhism's religion ) by many thousands of years. The best estimate, based on solid academic study, is that the earliest record of dhyāna (the Sanskrit name for Zen) is found around 7,000 years ago, whereas the Buddha lived approximately 2,500 years ago. The Buddha employed dhyāna to realize his own enlightenment, and dhyāna remains one of the steps in his Eight Fold Path designed to attain awakening. Thus, pin Zen to Buddhism's tree is very much akin to saying that prayer is exclusive to Christianity and is a branch of that religion's tree.

While it is stimulating and somewhat educational to engage in discussions regarding various spiritual and/or religious paths, the fact is we have no choice except to tell each other lies or partial truths. Words alone are just that: lies or partial truths concerning ineffable matters. That point has been a tenant of Zen virtually since the beginning. Not only is this true of Zen, but it is also true of all religious and spiritual paths. 

Lao Tzu was quite right: “The Way cannot be told. The Name cannot be named. The nameless is the Way of Heaven and Earth. The named is Matrix of the Myriad Creatures. Eliminate desire to find the Way. Embrace desire to know the Creature. The two are identical, but differ in name as they arise. Identical they are called mysterious, mystery on mystery: the gate of many secrets.” 

In the end, none of us has any other choice except to employ illusion to point us to a place beyond illusion. I leave this post with two quotes, one from Mark Twain and the other from Plato. First Twain: “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” And then Plato: “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”  

When I make statements, I know that I am telling partial truths, and I am stupid to argue. It makes both of us more stupid. That’s the real deal and should make us all a bit more humble and less sure that our truth alone is the only one.