How to save the world.

It's up to us.

In the Western world, the term “sentient being” is not your every-day word. We think in terms of human beings or other kinds. But sentience is more descriptive since it denotes the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively, not to overlook thinking. Any conscious being is a sentient being, including all creatures capable of sensing and responding to its world.

Unfortunately, being human has caused us to evolve into being human-centric and set aside our connections to other creatures and the environment that enables our existence. We forget (or if you prefer, went unmindful) of the food chain that begins with the tiniest of creatures and goes all the way to the top—us humans. Cutting that chain and destroying the environment within which all sentient beings live is an unfailing prescription for our ultimate disaster. We are well down the road toward that end for a simple reason—unmindfulness of our aggregate interconnectivity with the rest of life. Our priorities are going south fast. While we are distracted with lesser matters, our support systems are not. They are progressing toward ultimate demise due to our negligence. And if we wish to continue as a species, we need to quickly get back to basics.

What is the most basic of all? It is the matter that connects us to all other creatures—THE MIND, the human-mind being one part of that larger whole. If we can get a handle on that, everything else will fall into proper alignment, and we will survive.

If you haven’t yet watched the Netflix documentary (The Social Dilemma), it is high time you did. There is no other informative communication I am aware of that emphasizes the critical importance of finding your anchor within. We are now living in a sea of turbulent manipulation, waging a losing battle with AI machines designed to draw us into a spider web, from which there is no escape. And with no anchor, we will all be swept into a collective nightmare. Our progress as a human society has risen to the point leading to anarchy and ultimate destruction. This excellent film tells you the truth when few others will about just how lost we are and paints a terminal annihilation portrait. It is a must-watch!

Western civilization has taken us a long way toward the “good life,” but it has, at the same time, brought with it our lack of being mindful of the most important of all: THE MIND, that has given us those good things. To make needed corrections takes us to the other side of the earth and the wisdom that has evolved there (and largely ignored here). 

A towering giant of Eastern Wisdom was Bodhidharma—the man credited with starting the movement of understanding THE MIND. This credit (given the long view) has been misplaced since what he “started” goes back many thousands of years preceding his life. The name of that movement has, like everything else, changed, but the codified essence has remained the same. What began as dhyāna (going back in recorded history, and probably earlier) changed into Chan (Chinese Buddhism), eventually into Zen when the movement traveled to Japan and then to the rest of the world.

Zen is not, nor has it ever been, a religion (even though it is known as Zen Buddhism). Instead, it is the most thorough-going exploration of THE MIND ever conceived. Properly named, it should be called “Buddhist Zen” because this was the method employed by The Buddha to realize his Enlightenment (which Westerners mistake for the European form—The Enlightenment that occurred in Europe during the intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and continues to this day. That form of enlightenment was centered on rational thought. Enlightenment in the East was the opposite: Not thinking—that aspect, common to all sentient beings—intuition, which goes to the core of THE MIND, what we all need to grasp if we wish to survive.

In the West (going back to the Greek philosophers), we consider the mind as thoughts and emotions, never considering that these aspects must originate from somewhere. And that, “somewhere,” is THE MIND, not my mind nor yours. THE MIND is not up for ownership. It can’t be possessed or even found through rational thought since it is the source of what follows—thoughts and emotions. All sentient beings share this mind, along with us humans, and once understood, brings about a radical transformation needed to save us all.

Bodhidharma said this about understanding THE MIND: “If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both. Those who don’t understand, don’t understand understanding. And those who understand, understand not understanding. People capable of true vision know that the mind is empty. They transcend both understanding and not understanding. The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding.”

For Westerners, a translation is needed. Trying to grasp THE MIND with the rational mind is like a fish trying to grasp water, forgetting how to swim, and not even aware of water. Both reality and THE MIND are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp. What does Bodhidharma mean about “understanding understanding?” He means just that: “Both reality and The Mind are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp.” True vision must arise from the more fundamental aspect: where the rational faculties originate (where the anchor within resides). And from that aspect, we all have the same untapped potential to realize that nothing—absolutely nothing, can exist apart from the opposite, in this case, “not understanding.” Neither understanding nor not understanding must come from a MIND that is neither.

When we understand that, then only will we have the true vision—a vision that links all sentient beings together as a single unified being—THE MIND that is empty of all either/or. True vision is unified, and it isn’t. It is ultimately unified (realized through intuition) in an empty MIND, and it is divided rationally. Humans are so excessively left-brain, rationally oriented that we are quickly becoming so smart it is killing us to our discredit. Think about that. Better yet, don’t think about it. 

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”—Bodhidharma

Dancing through life

Watching two accomplished ballroom dancers is a delight. They move in graceful, fluid motions almost as a single entity. One leads; the other follows. If there is no cooperation, then harmony is broken with both trying to lead, and the motion is jerky and chaotic. 

If neither leads, there is no motion. If you look at what’s happening in Washington right now, you can see the non-dance of chaos. Whether we move or don’t, dance can only occur if there is a floor to dance on. 

Dancers don’t move through thin air. In a certain sense, we are like those dancers. We move in a relationship with others across the immovable floor of life. Our movements are either fluid, graceful, or chaotic, depending on how we cooperate. It’s a matter of giving and taking. Two gives or two takes end in stalemate. We have invented a saying to express this dance. It is called “What goes around comes around.” We reap what we sow. 

In Buddhism, this is called karma and works the same way. The floor beneath the dance is, of course, the immovable foundation of our life—our mind. If it moved, the dancers would be shaken. But since it is stable, the dance can proceed: One half leading, the other half following. And the dance can only happen with these three things—The immovable floor and the two partners. When all three functions in harmony, the dance of life is a beautiful thing.

The wisdom for solving our irreconcilable problems.

Meet Nagarjuna

Our world is drowning in a sea of rights vs. wrongs, governments trapped in ideological deadlocks, conflicts and wars, based on the same, religions likewise immersed in egocentric, self-righteousness (that results in an ever-increasing division of sects), news spun as fake, political alienation, and of course, a global pandemic that is decimating both people and economies. And lest we not forget: Global climate changes, that if not addressed soon, will eliminate us all. It is thus time to pull Nagarjuna out of the closet and dust him off.

We begin this dusting off in a familiar fashion; I need to introduce readers to Nagarjuna. He was a wise sage who lived a long time ago, roughly 1,800 years ago (150–250 CE), about 600 years following The Buddha’s death and, according to modern scholars, was thought to have resided in Southern India. In the Zen tradition, he is the 14th Patriarch. He is also recognized as a patriarch in Tantric and Amitabha Buddhism.

While considered a philosopher of incomparable standing, he put no stock in philosophy, claiming his mission was the apologist of the Buddha’s transcendent wisdom—Beyond any rational articulation. In that sense, he was a sort of Apostle Paul of Buddhism. The Buddha attempted to convey, with words, matters beyond words. The Buddha, like The Christ, was consequently recondite and rarely understood. Nagarjuna set out to correct that and, in the process, created what is now known as The Middle Way—of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

The reason he is so critical to today’s world is that he was able to show, in a less mind-boggling way, that we live within a world of seeming contradictions that, when carefully examined, are not contradictory. To most, we live in a relative world, governed by conditional rights vs. conditional wrongs with nothing beyond. Nagarjuna used the logical method of his era to articulate how there is no contradiction. At that point, ancient Indian scholars employed a method of logic called a tetralemma: an algorithm with four dimensions (affirmation, negation, equivalence, and neither). In terms of conditional rights versus conditional wrongs, it would look like this:

1. Explicit absolute right exists: affirmation of absolute right, implicit negation absolute wrong.
2. Explicit absolute right does not exist: affirmation of absolute wrong, implicit negation absolute right.
3. Explicit absolute right both exists and does not exist: both implicit affirmation and negation.
4. Explicit absolute right neither exists nor does not exist: implicit neither affirmation nor negation.

He thus created the Two Truth Doctrine of conditional truth and unconditional truth. That doctrine stated, so long as this tetralemma method of logic is used alone, there is no way to reconcile either a conditional absolute right or a conditional absolute wrong since all conditions are contingent. That is where Nagarjuna began, but it is not where he ended. He then went to the next level—to the unconditional, which has no contingencies (beyond rational understanding) and pointed out there was a fifth dimension: none of the above.

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

Allow me to translate for you. We ordinarily consider truth as conditionally contingent (e.g., one thing contingent upon something else, such as right and wrong). Still, there is an ultimate truth beyond contingencies, and these two (while appearing as two), are actually two sides of the same thing. They arise dependent upon one another, and neither can exist without the other, sort of like the inside and outside of a roof. One of these truths is a truth of discriminate opposition (e.g., this vs. that; right vs. wrong—the core dilemma), but the other is the truth of indiscriminate union. We must use the conventional truth to lead us to the higher truth since the conventional is the coin of standard logic and communications (words), and we use this truth to know how it is different from the higher. But unless we experience the higher truth, we will forever be lost in a conditionally, contingent, rational trap.

Then he stated a subset of this doctrine. That conventional truth was a matter of tangible form, but the higher truth was of imperceptible emptiness (thus, what the Buddha had said in the Heart Sutra/Sutra of Perfect Wisdom: Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form). Nagarjuna reasoned that if this ineffable dimension of emptiness was valid, then it must apply to everything, including emptiness, thus empty emptiness, which creates an inseparable feedback union back to form again. The two are forever fused together.

So how does this affect the problems of today? It “can” revolutionize the dilemma of egotism and self-righteousness. When properly understood and experienced, it means that the obstacle standing in the way of the higher truth is the perceptible illusion of the self (ego: the contingent, conditional image). Once that illusion is eliminated, we experience our true self (unconditional non-image) that is the same for all people. 

There is no discrimination at this higher truth level (e.g., distinction), and consequently, there is no absolute right vs. wrong, but neither is there not an absolute right nor wrong (independent of each other). Everything is unconditionally, indiscriminately united, yet not conditionally. Thus it can neither be said that truth either exists or does not. If all of us could “get that,” the conflicts of the world would vanish in a flash, and we would at long last know peace and unity among all things.

Freedom

The driving force that has compelled all cultures, at all times, is the desire for freedom. How are we to understand this desire that defines us all? Read histories from any culture, and you’ll find this force at work. Wars to subjugate others, for being set free and independent, to the shaping of religions (e.g., The Exodus)—It’s all there and continues to this day.

But one stem on this branch of freedom addresses the motherlode of all bondage: Bondage of the mind—The firm conviction that we are in bondage and slaves to desire. No other compulsion is more endemic and pernicious than this one. And until we awaken to our inherent freedom, we will never be free, regardless of phenomenal conditions (that always change). Beneath the apparent trap lies freedom, and the two— phenomenal and noumenal—can never be pulled apart.

So strong is the desire to escape the tyranny of consciousness and the restrictive boundaries of perception—to unlock the prisons of thought, in which we chain ourselves, lies the hope to reveal a better version of who we are. It is a never-ending desire that when all other forms of phenomenal freedom are achieved, we remain unsatisfied and feel the compulsion to move through a door of awakening to the bedrock nature of who and what we are.

Transcendence and the Middle Way

Choosing the middle doorway.

“The Middle Way” is a hallmark of Buddhist thought yet the term is often short-changed or converted into a sort of formula for advancing toward enlightenment—A pathway. Over the vast expanse of time since Buddhism became established, this pathway was been adorned with many different embellishments, not all of which are helpful.

Initially, The Middle Way meant “not this, not that; not not this, not not that”—both a negation and an affirmation at the same time: a position (or non-position) between all opposites, but especially between permanence and impermanence. Expressed in equivalent terms: Between immortality and mortality. Rather than an either/or, it was the position of both/and. During the epoch of The Buddha, Indian philosophy was wrestling with these two opposites. One school argued in favor of an absolute, the other school argued in favor of complete nihilism. Upon his enlightenment, The Buddha realized that neither school was right, nor were they wrong—thus The Middle Way.

And while this enlightened conclusion may have philosophically resolved the matter, the real power is to transcend the entire issue, in fact, to transcend all opposition or sameness. In Western thought, something is momentarily one thing or another at any given point in time and space. A “white” object is only a discrete white object and nothing else. A “good” thing is discretely a good thing. One set of beliefs are right and others are wrong. If a person is considered to be alive mortally they can’t be alive immortally; if a Buddhist, not a Christian. We enshrine such exclusive labels. Given the passage of time, space, and circumstances one thing may (or may not) transform from one discrete thing into another. The problem with this way of thinking is that it moves back into the same argument that was resolved by The Buddha more than 2,500 years ago—“not this, not that; not not this, not not that.” Sometimes it seems that we are doomed to keep repeating the same error endlessly.

For The Middle Way to have any usefulness (beyond philosophy) transcendence is required: to simply move beyond all opposites and do away with such views, in fact, to transcend all ideas of who we all think we are. Our greatest of all fears is mortal death. And this fear is based on the idea that mortality and immortality are mutually exclusive. We misunderstand that true life does not die. While we are mortal beings, within our mortal house (which surely dies) resides immortality.
 

To adopt view “A” (while excluding all “non-A” views) gets us stuck, or to use a Buddhist term “attached” which The Buddha taught is the nexus of suffering. Practically speaking, hardly a moment passes when we don’t find ourselves taking up a firm stance on something. We almost regard this way as virtuous. My country right or wrong; love it or leave it. My ideology is right. Yours is wrong. And we demand that our leaders embrace this hardened, bunker mentality. This way of taking up inflexible stances is wreaking our world. How can we be open-minded without being considered wishy-washy or a fence straddler? In the West, it is very difficult. 

To answer that question it is necessary to seriously consider this matter of “transcendence.” The truth is that everything has two-interdependent states vs. discrete, independent states. A “white” object can only be that way because it contains all other colors. Scientists proved that long ago through diffraction. Okay, then you would argue that the opposite of white is black and for sure is not in the light spectrum—it is the absence of light. And “white” means nothing, without the existence of the opposite color.  This “view” would be correct and not correct—not this, not that, not not this, not not that. Why? Because light and not light arise together just as a mother can only be a mother by virtue of having a child, or a child can only be a child by virtue of having a mother: the chicken and egg thing. 

This interdependent acknowledgment has a name in Buddhism. It’s called dependent origination which has been central to evolving Dharma (e.g., truth) teachings. 

There have been many enlightened Zen masters but one of my favorites is Huang Po. Here is what he had to say about this issue. “Once you stop arousing concepts and thinking in terms of existence and non-existence, long and short, other and self, active and passive, and suchlike, you will find that your Mind is intrinsically the Buddha, that the Buddha is intrinsically Mind, and that Mind resembles a void.”—From the Wan Ling Record. Huang Po is very succinct and cuts to the heart of the matter. He is talking here about transcending, just canning all conceptual matters and allowing your mind to rest with the understanding that there are no valid, exclusive positions and when we adopt a position (any) we are trapped like a monkey who reaches into a jar to get a goodie and won’t let go, thus imprisoning himself. We do it all of the time and pay a heavy price when we do.

At the core of each and every one of us, there is a place of peace—a void, without this vs. that. Call it what you will: Buddha, One Mind, Dharmakāya, The Absolute, Immortality, whatever. The label doesn’t matter. When we move away from that middle place we run the risk of creating karma (either good or bad). At the core, there is no karma because this is the unconditional realm (e.g., without conditions). Yet this core space can’t exist without a conditional jar and if we try to grasp it we’ll get just as stuck as the monkey. But maybe Huang Po would say just forget about jars and what’s inside. Just let it all go.

Nagarjuna’s teaching on essence.

The bloom of essence.

There’s an inherent danger in wrongly understanding the two facets of our virtual and non-virtual sides. The non-virtual side is easy to perceive. We are immersed in that side as fish are in the water. And yes, without being aware, there is a virtual side to all of us. 

“Virtual,” in this sense, means almost as described, but not wholly: Not essential. It’s tempting to focus on one side at the exclusion of the other. When The Buddha first passed on the teachings of the real (Atman/our True Self) and the unreal (anatman/our imagined self), this same misunderstanding arose. Orthodox Buddhism denies the existence of Atman/the true Self, claiming that everything is null and void, arguing one side but denying the other, which Nagarjuna nailed as nihilism yet to deny the ego/virtual, results in eternalism. 

This argument is counter to the premise of dependent origination, which is foundational to Buddhism as well as the teachings of The Buddha himself. The obvious point missed in this misunderstanding is that emptiness (the ineffable nature of the Self) is itself empty (non-empty and thus non-dual). Does the true Self exist? Nagarjuna would answer yes and no—the Middle Way. If the essence of Self exists, then nobody, except the true Self, would know without the counterweight of anatman. We only know by way of comparison and our perceptual capacities that adhere to anatman.

In the Western world, we were reared under the rule of law that says that if something is one way, it can’t be another way. The world is either black or white. If it is black, then by definition, it is not white (and the reverse). Nagarjuna—father of Mahāyāna Buddhism destroyed that comfort zone. We want things to be independent, discrete, separate, and tidy. If I am right, then you must be wrong. 

Our entire Western world functions as a subset of that logical premise, established by Aristotle with his Principle of non-contradiction (PNC): The assertion that if something is conditionally “B,” it can’t be “A” at the same time, in the same place. That conditional principle underscores our sense of justice, ethics, legal system, and everything else. It defines the contemporary problems that lead to vast irresponsibility and abuse all the way from interpersonal relations to environmental destruction. The PNC is inconsistent with the interconnectedness of life.

The fact of the matter is that nothing fits with the desire of “is” or “is not.” Mahāyāna Buddhism teaches The Middle Way—that nothing is independent, discrete, and separate. Rather everything arises interdependently. One side (to exist) requires another side. This notion of dependent origination/relativity is the natural manifestation of emptiness (Śūnyatā), which states that nothing contains an intrinsic substance, which is to say that reality exists in two, inseparable dimensions at once, that Nagarjuna labeled Conventional and Sublime or in his teaching on Essence and Non-essence. Importantly he did not say that essence does not exist. Nor did he say that non-essence exists. What he did say is that these two live interdependently. They are mirror images of one another, and neither can exist without the other (much less be fathomed). These are just alternative names we use to represent form and emptiness, which The Heart Sutra says is a single, indivisible reality.

Is there a self (anatman/ego)? A Self (Atman)? These concepts are abstractions and fabrications. The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra directly addresses the question and says, without equivocation, that the Self is just another name for Buddha-dhatu/the true immaculate Self—the only substantial reality. It stretches the definition of a Buddhist to deny Buddha-nature. It also says that self (conceptual/ego) is an illusion—that we all create (a fabrication) to identify our ineffable true nature. 

Modern neurology confirms this intuitive insight revealing that the ego is a sort of hologram which serves the purpose of separating ourselves from others, and this separation is, like the ego concept, which creates it, an illusion. The Sūtra further says that the Tathagata (the Buddha—our true Self-nature) teaches with expedient means by first teaching non-self as a preliminary to teaching the true Self. The logic of that progression is nothing short of brilliant. Until such time as we wrestle with and defeat ego/self, we are not going to come to terms with our essential Self-nature. We will hold on until the death with “Me-ism.”

Science is a marvelous tool but is limited to measurability. Yet no one has ever been able to measure the true mind (much less even find it), which according to numerous Buddhist texts, is the Buddha. We have come a long way over the centuries and can measure things today, not even imagined previously. Does that mean that reality comes and goes according to the capacity of tools? NO! Truth stands alone and is not conditioned by progress, however marvelous.

To read the details of Nagarjuna’s perspective on how essence and non-essence depend upon each other, go to—On Examination of Essence; The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Treatise of the Middle Way).

After all, is said and done, the bottom line is to not be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. Our egos/virtual reality and our True Self/true reality come as a package deal. It is impossible to separate the two (which are One). The important thing is to be continuously aware of the eternally, indwelling spiritual Self of love, and accept with gratitude that our virtual selves originate and function there as a result. 

“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, it is then more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success.” Henry David Thoreau

What’s real?

Good and Evil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nagarjuna explained this relationship in the following way:

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

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

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

A spoonful of honey.

The two books of life.

The idea of balancing sweetness with sorrow is particularly relevant in today’s world. In case you don’t know, A Spoonful of Sugar is a song from Walt Disney’s 1964 film about Mary Poppins—the nanny and teacher of two children in Edwardian London. 

She tells the children though tasks may be daunting, with a good attitude, they can still be done with joy. To those living in 1910 London, the notion of daunting (just preceding WWI; the war to end all wars and the era of the Spanish Flu) may have been drastically different from those of us living today. They never saw that war or the pandemic coming. Nor do we have a crystal ball that portends our future. We can only deal with what appears on our doorstep moment by moment. Nobody can see the future with clarity but the attitude part, regardless of time and place, is critical for keeping us from fighting to our mutual destruction. While in the midst of any catastrophe we can get lost in despair and opposition without a perspective of this balance between the sweet and the sorrow. Not only is this a good attitude perspective, but it is also a reflection of reality since nothing comes along cleansed of the opposite.

This observation has become a part of our colloquial quiver of expressions but has also been a part of human traditions going all the way back to one of the oldest known sacred texts in ancient India—The Vedas, written sometime between 1700–1100 BCE. The now-dead language of that time/place was Sanskrit and the two-part principle of balance was known as Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination or dependent arising)—a key principle of Buddhism.

Pratītyasamutpāda makes the eyes blur, but in simple terms, it means this sweet and sorrow balance—one thing arising with the opposite. Deeply understood, dependent origination is a very useful perspective because it brings us back from the brink of my way or the highway thinking. All too often in today’s world, we forget that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” It all depends on where we stand; our heritage, our traditions, the fish with whom we swim; all of it. 

And without this perspective of unity, we can get lost in talking at people (sometimes with fits of rage) to persuade them of our right points of view, rather than with people to gain understanding and empathy. The expression “United we stand, divided we fall” comes from ancient Greece and is found in the Bible (Matthew 12:25—“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”) And of course Abraham Lincoln borrowed the expression to make a point during the Civil War.

Over the eons (when not locked into right opposed to wrong) the perspective of balance has been embraced by many cultures and ethnic groups, in both simplistic and profound terms, such as the American Indian Proverb, “Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins,” or one of my favorites from the Islamic mystic Rumi in his poem, The Guest House:

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

Any aspect of human wisdom that spans that range of time and space, across all spiritual boundaries, should tell us all something very important regarding the centrality of what binds us together and conversely, what drives us apart into camps of my way or the highway tribes of opposition. Sweet with sorrow rise and fall together as the two indivisible aspects of life. However, sage advice is only sage when it is incorporated into everyday life. Otherwise, wisdom is not wise, but instead remains mere words in dust-covered books with no practical value.

Living in a world of “alternate-facts.”

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”—Mark Twain

In prior times deception was the exception (or so it seemed). Now it appears to have become the norm, and more than ever we need to be able to discern truth from lies, but since liars lie it is not so easy. And when statistics get involved, there are many ways to spin the truth. It is the nature of a liar to lie. There are many reasons liars fabricate and distort the truth. But the most important reason of all is, liars think they are something they are not—an ego. 

According to the dictionary, an impostor is one who assumes a false identity, or title, for the purpose of deception. It is somewhat irrelevant if a liar knows they are an impostor. So long as liars lie, they are impostors. Until such time as we truly know, who and what we are, we are subject to deception, and I will be the first to admit, I have deceived and been deceived many times in my mortal lifetime, never realizing I too was an impostor. I thought I knew who I was, but I didn’t. Only when I knew I wasn’t what I thought—an ego, did I discover my true immortal self. Until then I suffered greatly, and like an impostor, inflicted suffering upon others. 

In the West, much of the wisdom of the world has been lost to us, as it was to me until I began to study and practice Eastern Wisdom from some of the world’s greatest sages. I have thus been exposed to many of, what must be considered from a Western perspective, outlier treasure conveyors from the East, a few of whom I wish to share in this post so that you too might begin to find your hidden, immortal selves, cease being a mortal impostor and begin to discern the truth.

Since I’ve been blessed with the study of wisdom from the East, I’ve become familiar with some Buddhist vocabulary, and corresponding, underlying meanings, which are also foreign to the West. Foremost among this Eastern Vocabulary is the word “Dharma” and Dharmakāya—Sanskrit, which means “truth body” or “reality body.” The Dharmakāya is the wellspring of all truth and discernment of what is real. It is neither eastern nor western.

Shantideva, an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar and an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna said, “All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.” And the driving force that produces this suffering is the ego: the idea we hold of our selves.

In similar fashion, Zen Master Hakuin Ekakuin in his Song of Zazen wrote, “How near the truth, yet how far we seek. Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst!’ Like the son of a rich man wandering poor on this earth we endlessly circle the six worlds. The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.” 

When mediated through the illusion of an ego, morality becomes simplistic, inflexible, abstract and unjust, in spite of mortal intentions. In that case, the criteria are “what’s in it for me?” And from that vantage point, there is only a single sense of justice: Mine. 

In the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Chán Master Sheng-yen illustrates the relationship between the fabrication of our egos and our true nature by saying, “We practice (meaning meditation—zazen) until the self (ego) is gone. When the self disappears, all obstructions will be gone too. There cannot be a self (ego) that is free from all obstructions. If there is a sense of self, then there are also obstructions. There cannot be obstructions without a self to create and experience them, because the self (ego) is an obstruction. This is nondiscrimination of the highest order.” 

Our egos are an illusion, it tells us the half-truth that we are incomplete, not whole and imperfect and this, in turn, initiates desire: a greed response. What may (or may not) be known is that slowly, but surely, Eastern Wisdom is becoming human wisdom, lacking boundaries of either east or west. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, captured the essential point when he said, “We are not human beings having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having human experiences.” Some may say, I am not spiritually inclined but instead rely upon facts. 

Now facts are alternate, but the truth remains the truth, with no alternatives. Our mortal egos desire. Our immortal selves are already full and desire nothing. Truth has no boundaries. It is always whole, complete and perfect.“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”—The Buddha

Reality and perfection.

I am a subscriber to an email newsletter from Windmill, the header of which says: “You do not need to be ashamed of being imperfect. We were all made that way. You do not have to be ashamed that it’s so hard to work with your imperfections: the very tools you have for doing this are imperfect. We are all truly doing a difficult thing in being human.” 

I enjoy Windmill and think it is helpful in many ways. However, I want to address an essential point in this post within their header: “You do not need to be ashamed of being imperfect.” Due to some fortunate education, which others may not have been afforded, I learned to read Koine Greek—the language used to write the New Testament of the Bible and discovered much of value, not the least of which is how perfection was understood and defined way back then and has continued to find it’s way into modern culture.

The word “perfection,” properly defined in Koine Greek is not some abstract notion of being without flaw. The word (and it’s definition) is enlightening. The word for perfection is teleos and means complete or finished. Aristotle apparently said, “‘Nature does nothing in vain.’ So far, there’s no teleology to explain why you haven’t left the couch for several hours.”

Unfortunately, we still cling to the incorrect idea of being without flaw. I do agree it is impossible to be flawless living as a mortal. However, that is a side issue to what I want to convey in this post, which is reality. Until we get that issue right it doesn’t matter how we understanding anything, perfection included. 

So what is real? Those locked into the physics only, perspective, define reality as tangible, measurable phenomena (in other words objects known through the senses rather than through thought or intuition) or alternatively, a temporal or spatiotemporal (e.g., belonging to space-time) object of sensory experience as distinguished from noumenon. 

From this understanding, we can glean two essential points: There are measurable phenomena and noumenon (a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes). Noumenon goes by various names, among them Suchness and/or Thusness. Both terms arise from mystics, such as The Buddha or Meister Eckhart, as well as anyone who has plumbed the depths of consciousness to their ineffable core to find the true nature of reality—the basis, or foundation of all things (phenomena).

To repeat myself, what’s real? The realm of phenomena is physics based, and the realm of noumena is metaphysics based. Therefore there is a world, subject to perception (which we naturally assume as all there is). Does that make one right and the other wrong? Not at all. We humans are a mixed bag of both a physical, tangible, perceptible body (our house) and a metaphysical, intangible, unseen noumenal soul.  

Reality is thus like a coin with two sides (heads and tails) and perfection (completion/perfection) entails moving on a pathway leading to an awakening of that which is undetectable, yet the basis of all things. And when, at last, we awaken, it changes everything and we see with new eyes the two-fold nature of ourselves and others, one part of which is complete and the other part is a work in process— birth, change, growth and ultimately death of the “house” with the soul (which never dies) released to move on along the ultimate pathway to indwell another house.

“When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” and, “My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”—Rumi

Inherent goodness.

You are not made good by your beliefs. You are good already. When you realize your inherent goodness there is no longer a need to believe. Then you know.

Small steps.

Often, I’ve found myself faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges and felt as if I needed to swallow the entire ocean in a single gulp. The only result of that approach was fear, inaction, and coughing up the imagined impossibility. 

But after failing, I came to my senses and remembered an ancient bit of wisdom offered by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, roughly 2,600 hence. 

“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” 

The words of Lao Tzu are as useful today as they were a long time ago.

A friend sent me a link to words of wisdom offered by the oldest living person. He just happens to be a Zen man and offered similar thoughts concerning a healthy life. They are worth your time reading. I confess to having a problem with one of his tips: to have no choices but rather accept everything as it comes. 

Like everything, the tip has two sides. One side is the peace that comes with feeling the smooth caress of the winds of change on your face in the coolness of the morning breeze. The other side is to get out of the hurricanes of life before devastation occurs. Those are the two sides spoken of by Lao Tzu in the first sentence of the above quote.

Knowing when to stay and when to leave takes art and experience, and both this ancient sage and the world’s oldest man agree, as I do, that breaking down giant challenges into small pieces makes for manageable tasks. Importantly is that first assessment of staying or moving. To inform that assessment, we can turn, not to an ancient sage, but rather to Mark Cane, the contemporary American climate scientist who advises, 

“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”

Regardless, there is always the first, small step or sip of water. Picking and choosing, as well as the wisdom of recognizing our self-imposed captivity, are seeming contradictions, but that is the true nature of Zen: To hold no fixed perspectives but rather use expedient means—upaya-Kausalya, measured and dictated by unfolding and unanticipated circumstances. How very different such advice is from the embedded and rigid ideologies of today.