First awaken your mind…

The famous Zen Master Bassui Tokushō (circa 1327–1387) was said to have told his students, “First awaken the mind that reads and then you’ll understand what you read.” We think we read with our left-brain because our language centers are located there. We thus imagine that reading is a rational and analytic process, but this is only half true. A parrot can be trained to speak but the bird has no idea what it is saying. We know people like that. The mouth moves but sheer nonsense comes out. More times than not we call such people politicians mouthing nonsense but saying nothing meaningful.

The mind that reads is not our rational mind. The mind that reads is a mind of insight, compassion, and wisdom. This is our true mind that can’t be found. The ego/rational mind can be found because it is full of images, and chatters like a Jaybird barking commands. The master of our rational mind orchestrates all of these commands. Our ego opposes anything and everyone who doesn’t kowtow. So we have both an unseen real self and mind, and an imaginary false self and mind. Only one is real, but can’t be found. The other is unreal but stands in clear view.

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.

Coming and going.

“The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking, achieves without doing a thing.”—Lao Tzu: TaoTe Ching

The quote above has special significance to anyone who has unveiled their true nature. And I use the term “unveil” instead of achieving with intent. Indeed our true nature, for all practical purposes, is buried deep within and must be uncovered. It never comes and never leaves. 

Until that moment our sense of self is anything but permanent. It comes and it goes, riding the waves of good times and bad, dangling on a string of judgments. The importance of the principle is of such significance that it represents a pillar among various Buddhist sects in metaphorical terms of guests and hosts. If you Google “Zen, guest and host” you’ll end up with more than 780,000 hits all of which examine the matter from every conceivable direction.

The essence, however, is very simple even though the means of “achieving without doing” can boggle the mind with infinite permutations. In essence “The Master” is your very own mind; the one that sees without looking. The impediment to unveiling this master is a mind that is seen, not the mind that sees. The Buddha taught that our true mind can’t be seen, it can only be experienced through samādhi the awakening of our never-leaving body of truth. While difficult to explain, when awakening occurs there is no turning back. Only then we know what before was only a figment of our imaginations.

When we think of truth we imagine matters in rational terms; the product of our mind that is seen. While this distinction may appear esoteric it is central to genuine awakening—Hard to ascertain but incredibly powerful when experienced. The difference between the two was laid out by Nāgārjuna in his doctrine of two truths:

“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.”

Nāgārjuna taught that “true things” exist fundamentally and can be perceived as such by the senses, while “false things” do not exist as they are perceived. The difference? Truth conceived conventionally keeps ultimate truth concealed. Things appear to our logical mind to contain an independent, self-nature, that is flawed by bias and preconceived ideas, but in his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), Nāgārjuna provided a logical defense that all things are empty of such a nature but are instead interdependently related. Even emptiness itself has no inherent, independent self-nature. 

Consequently, what we imagine is a fabrication. While the rational mind of relative truth is necessary to lead us to ultimate truth, so long as we do not let go and see clearly, we will forever be in bondage. It is the experience of awakening to our true nature (not the appearance) that sets us free to enjoy the fruits of the master that never leaves.

Thoughts on Self Nature.

Over the years, having read, studied, and experienced the voice of enlightened people and considering my own, I have attempted to capture, with words, the essential nature of humanity and the opposite: Our corrupted nature. 

The latter has produced an eternity of evil and destruction globally, while the former has countered evil with goodness. I have personally experienced the transformation of self-destructive thoughts, words, and deeds into genuine benevolence. I have likewise witnessed the attempt to feign piety that clearly stood as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. People of the world seem to know that transparent evil is undesirable, and consequently, they try to conceal the heart of darkness with a camouflage of pretended allure. 

This effort, like the opposite of transparency, is affirmed by those who, similarly, play the same game. The pretenders flock together, as do those who choose to reveal a purity of heart, having nothing to hide. These two forces oppose one another and speak a different language.

But God would not allow me such relief, but instead brought back to me the more excellent relief of that magnificent young lady in the dawning of adulthood. It was then I found my true nature of completion and realized, contrary to what I had come to believe, that I was the essence of internal love that she alone had seen in me a half-century before. It was unquestionably a miracle and so clearly the act of a loving God that it was unavoidable to not see what had been there all along, but lay hidden beneath that sense of self-hatred. “Then I knew fully, even as I am fully known,” and at last, I came to understand the mature language of the heart that joined my heart with hers around the core of a unified, indwelling presence of God.

It has been my experience that the language of love, compassion, and tenderness is impossible to articulate with words. In contrast, the language of pretense and deception comes in convincing forms more difficult to detect, except to those who, by nature, have passed beyond words and found their true self-nature. To the former, the task is one of mime. To the latter, the charge comes naturally. The communication challenge for humanity is to find a way to bridge that gap to inspire the minds of those still lost, to a higher standard beyond these surrogates of truth, much like a teacher with advanced education and knowledge must employ with children, not yet schooled. 

Having once been an unschooled child, a teacher knows both the language of a child and the language of the heart. The opposite is not valid. It is as the Apostle Paul stated in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, 

“…where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 

Paul’s words, in essence,  are the same as the words of Meister Eckhart, the German theologian and philosopher who lived during the 15th century: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

While still a child having little maturity and life experience, lost to the voice of others, I defined myself as incomplete and worthless according to the opinions of those who appeared to hate me, for reasons I failed to understand. The result was I conformed to unworthiness and attempted the impossible of persuading both myself and those who’s voice I valued, that I was worthy of their affection and love. In essence, I did not love myself because I placed more value or their opinions than on my inherent completeness.

It took many years for this self-deception to fully ripen into the unnatural result of pure self-hatred, so thorough that I found no reason to continue living. The only contradiction to this perceived sense of self-hate was the pure, unselfish love that poured out of a magnificent young lady in the dawning of adult life. And that love, where our hearts beat as one, was lost to my own naïve and innocent error, thus driving the stake of self-hatred and associated guilt even deeper. 

The ensuing suffering I then experienced continued up the birth of my daughter, who seemed to come as a gift from God to show me through experience how to recapture selfless love again. For 20 years she, and I grew together within the realm of unconditional love, and when she was gone, I returned once again to the hell of self-hatred left with the whisper of the lost love of both my first love and my daughter. Again, I found no reason to continue living, sought the ultimate release, and readied myself for bodily death.

At long last, I understand the meaning of selfless love. It does not mean to sacrifice and give up what is of value. It means instead to lose the sense of an artificial and perverted self, shaped by the opinions of others and affirmed by my desire to be loved, to cast off the unreal that hid the real. By losing the artificial, I found the truth. And this true self-nature is united as a single purity of heart, not only with my first love and my daughter but with the breadth of humanity. 

True love needs no interpretation or indirect translation thru the medium of words. It is pure, recognizable, and when my eyes finally opened, I knew what I had previously known only in part. Then, at last, I experienced what Eckhart had said, “The eye with which God sees me is the same eye by which I see God.” Or, as the native Indians have said, “Before we can truly understand another person, we must walk a mile in their moccasins. Before we can walk in another person’s moccasins, we must first take off our own.” 

The old self-hatred had to fall away before I could see the new Self-love, and when it did, I came to know that the ideas I had previously held of myself as a false self, alienated from others, unveiled a true Self that united with God and the world. 

Thus selfless love is a love that loses the artificial and is replaced with the real. Selfless love is Self-full love that echoes, in a circular fashion from one heart to another. What goes forth comes from within. Which in itself is already joined with a passion that indwells the heart of another. And when that happens, there is no separation between your true self and the true self of another. That, to me, is the definition of genuine compassion: to experience the love and agony of your beloved, and they of you. You become echoes of each other, and your hearts beat as one.