Guests and Hosts

The road to nowhere.

Imagine the relationship between a guest (who checks in and out) and a host who accommodates the guest. These two are essential to one another. Without a host, the guest would have nowhere to stay. And without guests, a host would go broke due to a lack of revenue. Thus they are two aspects of a quest that are intended to lead to the desired destination.

Now about the quest: Why does anyone go on a quest? The obvious answer is to move towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Thus the precondition that motivates such a journey is to find what is presumed to be somewhere else, but for sure not here. Clearly, there is no justification or purpose to journey far and wide if the treasure is already in hand. What if the desired treasure IS already in hand but the traveler remains unaware? In that case, the treasure will never be found, because it is not located “far and wide.”

Now about the host: Unlike a guest, the host never moves anywhere, any time. If the host did move, how would the guest find a place of rest and nurture? In that case, the host would be a moving target. Thus the host is fixed and permanent, and the guest is always on the move and impermanent. In fact, the guest can, and does, have a beginning and an ending; is born and dies. Not so for the host; no birth, no death—permanent and eternal. And one more thing: The desired treasure is a “bird in hand,” not in the bush, only that bird seems to likewise fly in and fly away. Try to catch the bird by closing your hand and the bird flies away before the hand is closed.

Now consider this: “All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water; apart from the water there is no ice, apart from beings no Buddha. How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar, like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.”—Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku

The treasure we all seek is already within, and in Zen literature, the treasure (the host) is called “Buddha-Nature:” our essential nature—who we all are at the core. The problem is the traveler is unaware. The presumption is a quest will lead to a distant goal that is already present, and thus we are “…like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.” We, the travelers are the water: fluid and forever moving. The host is ice, solid, and unmoving. 

“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.”—Rabindranath Tagore. Wherever the traveler goes, the host comes along, like a shadow that never leaves.

The suchness of Earth Day.

This year Earth Day slipped by without my notice. Perhaps that was because I, like everyone else, was transfixed on COVID-19 and my top-of-mind priorities were thus in flux.

Seeing things as they truly are, without delusions or bias, is a serious challenge to world survival. The Buddha referred to himself as the Tathāgata, which is a derivative of the East Asian term Tathatā: the true basis of reality. Ordinarily, if we think of it at all, we think of spiritual awakening as some sort of magical state of mind. According to the 5th-century Chinese Mahayana scripture entitled Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, the state of suchness/tathatā manifests in the highest wisdom with sublime attributes and is thus the womb of the Buddha.

In the world of today, living in a state of denial represents a threat of massive proportions, not only to those who choose to stay blind but to us all. Putting one’s head in the sand of ignorance does not ensure safety. On the contrary, closing our eyes to the very real consequences of a warming climate accomplishes nothing more than ensuring the ultimate end of a world that enables life. 

On this day (Earth Day) we had an opportunity to do our part to find our voice of courage and speak up to ensure, not only our own survival but the survival of our own progeny, not to mention all sentient beings. What we all need is to recognize that every step of human progress, from the very beginning, has been contingent on having a livable environment. And unless we wake up soon we will find ourselves in an environment so hostile that life will no longer be possible. The signs of this progressing devastation may already be experienced as indicated in this article that reveals everything from growing allergies to ultimate destruction.

The critical nature of genuine self awakening.

When contemplating the myriad problems of today’s world you might come up with a list such as the following:

• The COVID-19 pandemic

• The Middle East debacle

• Unchecked global climate change (warming)

• A growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else

• Spreading violence

• Hatred and intolerance

• Political gridlock

• Toxic pollution of the environment

• Loss of genuine liberties

• (add your own)

While all of these are problems of enormous concern, there is a core root that underlies and drives them all: a misidentification of who we are individually and collectively. So long as our answer to identity boils down to a vacillating self-image (ego) the natural result is fear, greed, possessiveness, selfishness, isolation, irresponsibility, despair, and a victim mentality that leaves us all heading for a cave of seeming security.

Recently Avram Noam Chomsky observed that “As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism, or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.” While a grim statement that shocks us into states of denial and disbelief, his observations are true.

The question is, what must we all do in order to escape from this inevitable outcome? The answer is not the ostrich method of avoidance, denial, and ignorance. On the contrary what we must all do is transform our self-understanding, from an isolated individual to a connected member of the human race, which was (and remains) the solution to suffering offered by The Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. The solution does not change because the nature of being human does not change. 

At the central core of all of us is an indefinable state of unconditional consciousness that is the same for everyone. The problem is that while this state is the source of all aspects of awareness, itself is not detectable and we are all prone to consider real only things with conditions that can be detected. This is a case of the eye not being aware of the eye. However, in this case, it is the inner eye (URNA) instead of the detectable eye, and as the father of Zen wrote, it is in this state of mind that all discrimination ceases to exist. Out of this indiscriminate state arises sentient discrimination that leads us to the mistaken notion that each of is a dependent ego at odds with every other human, vacillating and contingent on an uncertain world and that “ego idea” then produces the undesirable qualities listed above.

In the recent past, a form of meditation (MBSR) has become prominent in helping many to cease attachment to waves of thinking, many of which are destructive to self and others. While very helpful, it only one of two dimensions outlined by The Buddha in his Eight Fold Path. MBSR rests upon one of these two: right mindfulness (Sanskrit: samyak-smṛti/sammā-sati) and is the essential path to a genuine awakening of our true, indiscriminate nature (who we truly are). The other dimension of mind (right concentration (Sanskrit: samyak-samādhi/sammā-samādhi) is not widely known, but by any other name is Zen/Dhyāna, with a history going back into an unrecorded time, long before The Buddha. 

The two disciplines were intended to be practiced as a combined pair but in today’s world, they have been split apart. MBSR has become quite useful in stilling the mind and helping practitioners to stay present instead of lost in speculation. However, the issue of identity remains an esoteric matter leaving those who practice MBSR only, still holding fast to a perceptible and insecure self-understanding. Importantly it is Zen that produces the desired result of a sense of SELF that is unconditional, whole, perfect, and unshaken. This quality alone delivers the awareness that we are all unified, none better; none diminished in any way. 

As awful as the laundry list of contemporary problems may be, those and unknown others will flourish unless we can experience this state of indiscriminate, undiscovered unity, inherent in us all. 

Right, wrong and the realm of harmony.

Two of the most prominent figures in the history of Zen were

Nagarjuna and Bodhidharma. Both had meaningful perspectives on the matter of discrimination—not the ordinary way of judgmental opposition, instead of the ability to discern differences. By itself, perceptual discrimination is unavoidable and without contention. The color white is discriminately different from the color red,  just as up is clearly the opposite from down. Seen in that way it is a matter of common sense to perceive differences.

However, when the matter of egoic judgment enters the arena, conflict is sure to arise. Calling someone egotistical is a sure-fire way of creating hostility, yet the vast majority of the human race functions in a way to protect their egoic views, without the awareness that most all of the time, hardened views are rooted in the soil of their egos, where defending their views is the same as defending their sense of self. None of us can possibly perceive anything in the same way. We are all looking through lenses of our histories, experiences, personality traits, predispositions, hardened beliefs and mostly driven by a defensive ego, all convinced that their views alone are right at the expense of those who disagree. 

Our world would be a heaven on earth if setting aside our view that only our views are right. Everyone would then see things in the same way with peace, harmony, and joy reigning universally. It might be boring but it would bring harmony. I have never met anyone who pursued a path they were convinced was the wrong path. If they are not wedded to an intractable position to which they have taken claim (e.g., rooted in their egos), and remain open to the lessons life can teach, it is quite possible to learn that what seemed certain in the beginning can be transformed into a perspective contrary to what they initially thought. However, even with an enlightened perspective, the ego will resist the admission of error.

Nagarjuna, in the explication of The Buddha’s understanding of the Self, created what has since become known as “The Two Truth Doctrine,” which says that enlightenment begins by first becoming aware of the difference between ordinary truth (e.g., the realm of right vs. wrong) and sublime truth where unity prevails, but we are only freed from bondage by intuitively experiencing this sublime realm. Until that experience occurs, the process remains a fabrication of intellectual discernment: an idea. It is the “experience” of penetrating the constructed and defensive ego to find our essential Self that liberates the human mind from the bondage of “versus” and conflict.

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

Tick, tick, tick.

The invisible connected links.

Observation—seeing clearly—should not be confused with making judgments. It is simply seeing what’s present, right now and acting appropriately. What was present in times past is now gone and what may have been an appropriate action then, is no longer. 

Why is it that we cling to yesterday’s decisions and feel compelled to justify, or even apologize, for those past, now-gone conditions? Then was then and it is now today, replete with a brand new set of circumstances—opportunities to make choices based on what is now present. We can release ourselves from both errors (which may not have been errors) and victories (which in hindsight could be seen as errors) by noticing the tick, tick, tick of changing space/time.

But alas we are not noticing that tick, tick, tick except when we pause, look inward, and track the dots that lead us all to where we are today. Disparaging our, perhaps, poor choices, of the past with thoughts about, “If I had it all to do over again” is somewhat delusional and a waste of time, since such a thing is an impossibility. We can’t return to the past, and even if we could who can say we’d take with us the wisdom acquired by making past choices and learning the lessons that can only be learned within constantly changing circumstances.

If you haven’t yet watched the movie “The Butterfly Effect” you may want to come up to speed with this idea of If I had it all to do over again. It is a story about a young man who could do it all over again and every time he made a different choice the result made things worse. The movie was based on chaos theory, a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. The theory was first put forth by American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. 

The documentary about this is available on Prime Video and the movie, based on the theory, is available on Netflix. I suppose you could label this by another name called “The domino theory” which was the political justification for many wars fought to ensure the dominos fell in a chosen direction. Of course, they never did, since eventually one decision led to an unpredictable set of other conditions such as those illustrated at the designated link—The War to end all wars. It’s the same principle with a different label. Furthermore, we have a rather dismal historical record of forecasting the most significant waves of change, as pointed out by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book “The Black Swan.” Our crystal ball of significant future events is without doubt, cloudy.

Many years ago, when I first stepped onto the path of Zen, I read a book about this constantly changing landscape. It was called The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. At the time it seemed a shocking idea, simply because I too had not been noticing the tick, tick, tick. And after reading his book, it wasn’t so shocking. I then began to notice, and the path of Zen became deeper and deeper until it ultimately led me to the state of immanent Self-discovery. 

All that time I thought I knew who I was. The world was telling me. I was making error upon error (or so I thought at the time) and getting the expected feedback. The dominos kept falling and eventually the world summed up their evaluations and I bought their feedback hook, line, and sinker. I had been trapped, without knowing, in a state of clinging to all of those judgments which led me to a point of crisis and that in turn led me an implosion of my sense of self (ego), which in turn led me to the discovery of the indefinable state of my true Self-nature—the source or capacity of perception we know as pure, undefiled consciousness, completely lacking description, but is the same in every sentient being. From that moment on, I knew precisely what (who?) I was, and I also then knew what I was not—the ego formation we all fabricate out of whatever we perceive and bounded within the framework of what can be perceived, and never the one who perceives.

Like everyone else I could not return to my past (nor can I now) and reconstruct anything, but what I could do was construct a future (only for me) based on two fundamental matters: Choices that arose from that core awareness (e.g., who I was and who I was not) plus accepting the constant flow of change. I can assure you that the same is within reach of every living being. It sounds easy in words but is incredibly difficult in the doing. Learning how to not think—How Bodhidharma defined Zen—is most difficult but is the pathway leading from intuition: The state beyond rational thought—the motherload of all wisdom.

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 perfect is the enemy of the good.

The Impossible Dream

I admire intelligent people and try to profit from their words of wisdom. Shakespeare is one of my favorites, and one of his quotes is a “go-to” for me: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” 

Now for the topic of the day: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Many wise and famous people have said as much…

• Voltaire: “The best is the enemy of the good.”

• Confucius: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”

• Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”

I know; I’m repeating myself and thus beating a dead horse, but I can’t escape my past (e.g., education and experience in the advertising business). While working within that industry, I learned an important and fundamental principle of persuasion: Frequency. 

The more a person hears the same message, the better the odds of breaking through barriers and making a difference. And this issue is important with significant barriers. And yes, I am aware of the psychology of the “Backfire Effect,”—The tendency for us all to dig in and defend an opinion that appears to be at odds with, and contradicts, opinion of our own. 

It is really tough to break through the barrier of tightly held dogmas for a simple reason: Egotism. It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature to resist admitting error since it seems to threaten our egos. That barrier is what keeps us all locked in, hunkered down, and ready to defend to the death (sometimes literally) our ideologies, preconceived notions, and biases. 

Those matters constitute adornments that define our egos: We become our ideas (or so it seems), and one of the most destructive, and instructive, ideas is this business of The perfect is the enemy of the good. That idea, without exception, leads to a lack of progress unless we can be persuaded that our pursuit is a Don Quixote quest of jousting with windmills and singing The Impossible Dream of perfection, or nothing at all.

Bringing it home.

Initial dawning and ripple effects.

For those who may think Zen has no practical impact on their lives, guess again. 

How so? In spite of ignorance concerning this amazing practice, Zen is not a religion. Instead, it is, perhaps, the only means available for unveiling our deepest nature and becoming aware that nobody is who they think they are; good, bad, or in-between.

The Buddha’s “diagnosis” for unveiling this true nature was/is like a stone dropped into the water. Initially, there is only the penetration but then the ripple effects just keep on expanding like waves rolling outward from the source. His Four Noble Truths lay out the sickness and his Eight Fold Path reveals the remedy. And central to that remedy is what we now call Zen, but was then known as Dhyāna—absorption, so deep and intense that the imagined “you” simply (well not so simply) vanishes and the real “you” emerges, which in naked-relief is not a “you.” Instead, it is seen for what it is as “unity” with the rest of humanity (not to mention other sentient forms).

Why is this so critical and eternally important to all sentient beings? Because it eradicates that imagined self-image and replaces it with who/what we all are, and that removes all human conflicts. So, as in my own case, that self-image was one of hatred of myself. Importantly any image (the self included) is not real. It is only imagined, as all images are. We would never delude ourselves that moving images we see on our TV are real, but we make that error all of the time with ourselves. Living with a sense of self-hatred is poisonous and nearly led me to commit suicide. 

At the other end of this ego spectrum lies the delusion of superiority. It was Eckhart who said that humanity in the poorest state is considered by God equal to an emperor or Pope.  Any and all aspects of self-delusion (e.g., good, bad or in between) hides our genuine connection with the rest of humanity.

Attachment of every kind leaves one vulnerable to suffering when the object of attachment dies, which all conditional phenomena eventually do. That part of attachment is clearer than when the object of attachment is ourselves. You’d think that wouldn’t be a problem since when we die we won’t experience anything, suffering included. How could we? We’re already dead and imagine we don’t suffer at all. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I can’t say for sure what we experience when we die (although there is an explanation) but I can say for sure how I suffered, thinking all the while I was a terrible person who deserved only one thing: To die. Until that bubble broke I was moving toward the brink of suicide. I am not aware of any other method for accomplishing this eradication of the unreal and unveiling the real at the same time. I certainly don’t know everything and maybe there is another method but if so such a method is “the best-kept secret” of all space/time. If that isn’t practical I can’t imagine what is.

Bandaids and fish.

The hidden root.

We live within an unfortunate protocol as the standard for treating pain and suffering, which is easily articulated by an analogy of a bandaid covering a festering wound. 

Determining causes, by necessity, takes us beneath the surface to find the root. Unexpectedly, the world of medical science is now playing catch up and turning to some surprising spiritual sources that don’t fit within scientific orthodoxy but work nevertheless.

We’re all familiar with the Chinese proverb of, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The proverb seems to imply an either/or. The problem with this either/or sentiment is it assumes the man will stay alive long enough to learn to fish. In the world of today that is not a luxury, we can afford. We must do both or the patient will starve before learning. Many millions around the world die daily waiting for the fish to arrive.

In the Breakthrough Sermon, Bodhidharma said, “The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.”

The Buddha spent his life ferreting out the root cause of suffering and began his diagnosis with the first of Four Nobel Truths: Life (e.g., mortal or conditional) is suffering. That observation took place more than 2,500 years ago but until recently his diagnosis ran under the radar of medical orthodoxy. Pathfinders have always made inroads by bucking the tide of conventional wisdom and this is certainly true for Dr. John E. Sarno, previously Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the prestigious Institute of Rusk Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center.

Sarno’s most notable achievement was the development of his diagnosis, and treatment of tension myoneural syndrome (TMS), which is currently not accepted by mainstream medicine. Nevertheless, according to Sarno, TMS is a psychosomatic illness causing chronic back, neck, and limb pain which is not relieved by standard medical treatments.

Dr. Sarno noted in his practice that back surgery wasn’t working; it was failing to bring effective relief to his patients. He also noted unsatisfactory results from physical therapy, as well as from steroidal injections, and all the other therapeutic techniques commonly administered. He instinctively felt that there had to be something else going on with back pain. So he began to look more deeply into his patients’ charts where he noticed that his back pain patients also had many other things going on with their health. In addition to back pain, many had bouts of the shoulder and hip pain, knee pain, foot and hand pain, skin problems, anxiety, depression, migraines, ulcers, irritable bowel, heartburn, frequent urination, and allergies. Dr. Sarno shrewdly noted that where there’s smoke there’s often fire.

After having lived forty years with the belief that I was unworthy, I stood at the abyss of such despair that I seriously considered suicide. It was at that critical point that I left the world behind and lived in a Zen monastery and discovered, that the cause of my suffering was rooted in my mind. What I had previously believed, was a fabricated idea and the product of cultural myths, judgments, and misinformation. It took me quite a long time to root out the poison that existed in thought only.

Thankfully, while there I ate a few fish, lived, and then learned to fish. And then I came to a surprising realization: If I could pass on both the eating and the learning then just about anyone could as well. After all, the wisdom of The Buddha was not mine to selfishly possess. It belongs to the global community.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Looking in the rear-view mirror appears to be advantageous to looking ahead. The past tells you from where you’ve come, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you where you’re going. It may, however, enable you to see a vector pointing forward. But what if that backward view says, you’re on the wrong road and heading for an abyss? Robert Frost best conveyed this dilemma in his poem The Road Not Taken.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both,
And be one traveler, long I stood,
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay,
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Frost’s poetic journey into the unknown could be seen as foolhardy unless that vector was fraught with doubts about your life and where it suggested you were going next. That was certainly true in my case. As I looked back over 40 years, I could see abundant evidence that I was on the wrong path and had come to the inescapable conclusion that something was seriously wrong. But what? At that critical juncture—the dividing of ways forward, I felt without value and was in a state of existential crisis. When every indicator says to continue with fear and tribulation, leaping into the unknown isn’t as foolhardy as it might otherwise seem.

Without a clue, I was a ripe candidate for what I later learned was called the Southern School of Chan (sudden enlightenment)—The way began by Shenhui, a disciple of Zen Master Huineng back in China during the 7th century CE and developed into what is now Rinzai Zen. As I look back, taking the right fork in the road, seems providential, and maybe even coincidental. At that time, I didn’t even know about the roots of Rinzai or how it was different from Soto. It has taken me almost that long to become educated about that leap. All I knew then was what lay behind me was self-destructive, and unless I found a better path forward, my goose was cooked.

As it turned out, my teacher was the blend of both Soto and Rinzai, and his dharma name was Eido (the combination of Eisai/Yōsai Zenji and Dōgen Zenji)—The two Zen masters responsible for fostering Soto and Rinzai Zen in Japan. I can say, without any hesitation, that under his guidance, my life was transformed, and I came to experience my complete worth. 

It took me the first 40 to reach the point of sensing utter worthlessness, an instance to realize transformation, and the next 40 to mature. If there was ever proof of dependent arising, I would be it. 

In the 8th century CE, an Indian Buddhist philosopher by the name of Śhāntideva said that to be able to deny something, we first have to know what it is we’re denying. The logic of that statement is peerless. He went on to say, 

“Without contacting the entity that is imputed, you will not apprehend the absence of the entity.” The value of first knowing vacillating despair made it possible to see the firmness of fulfillment.

During the years following our meeting, Eido Roshi fell into disrepute for sexual misconduct. I can’t condone what he did in that respect, but I will be forever grateful for what he did for me. The founder of the Rinzai Zen (Lin Chi) used the idiom “True Man of no rank” because, within our ineffable, transcendent sphere, there is no conditional right nor wrong. Eido lived, as he taught—on two levels at the same time. The level that erred is the same level we all endure. That level is flawed, but Eido’s “True Man of no rank” was without blemish. And this is true for us all.

It is not up to me or anyone to judge and condemn his actions. The Buddha said, “Do not be the judge of people; do not make assumptions about others. A person is destroyed by holding judgments about others.”  Sage advise we should all take to heart.

Eido Roshi died February 18, 2018, at Shōgen-ji, Minokamo, in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and will be buried at Dai Bosatsu Zendo (where we met so many years ago, and the place of my transformation) on Tuesday, April 24, 2081. Gassho Eido!

Pearls of Wisdom

Arjuna and Krisha

The Bhagavad Gita is considered, unquestionably, one of Eastern spiritual literature’s most profound masterpieces. According to Mahatma Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual poem with deep philosophy and divinity. There is a wide range of views on the exact time of writing, authorship (traditionally ascribed to the Sage Vyasa), and historical occurrence. Upon reading, these differences in opinion fade from understanding the human mind and relationship to the divine. 

For those preoccupied with such details, they may explore here and beyond. I leave these matters to the scholars and other “experts.” My interest is how the wisdom expressed in The Gita impacts all humankind's lives, any time, anywhere.

From time to time, I will post excerpts from The Gita, as translated by Eknath Easwaran. In his words, “The Gita’s subject is ‘the war within,’ the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious, and that ‘The language of battle is often found in the scriptures, for it conveys the strenuous, long, drawn-out campaign we must wage to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ego, the cause of all our suffering and sorrow.’”

The setting of The Gita in a battlefield has been interpreted as an allegory for the ethical and moral struggles of human life.

“In profound meditation, they (e.g., the ancients) found, when consciousness is so acutely focused that it is utterly withdrawn from the body and mind, it enters a kind of singularity (Throughout Eastern spirituality this is known as Samadhi) in which the sense of a separate ego disappears. In this state, the supreme climax of meditation, the seers discovered a core of consciousness beyond time and change. They called it simply Atman, the Self.”