Rules, guidelines and the real teacher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Whack-a mole: A fundamental look at life.

The doctor whacking the moles of illness.

“Do easy things before they become too hard.
Difficult problems are best solved while they are easy.
Great projects are best started while they are small.

The Master never takes on more than she can handle,
which means that she leaves nothing undone.
When an affirmation is given too lightly,
keep your eyes open for trouble ahead.
When something seems too easy,
difficulty is hiding in the details.

The master expects great difficulty,
so the task is always easier than planned.”

These words, from Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching were written, by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu during the late 4th century BCE. The Tao Te Ching is overflowing with wisdom; some deep and profound and some every-day practical. There are many renditions of this essential notion (e.g., addressing life’s work with efficiency⎯doing what is easy, and recognizing the task will eventually become difficult). 

Others have expressed the same thought in slightly different ways, such as “Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”⎯Benjamin Franklin; or this from the Bible, “Don’t put it off; do it now! Don’t rest until you do.”⎯Proverbs 6:4. True wisdom doesn’t change but ways of expression do, making it more applicable to contemporary challenges. To illustrate this evolving notion I’ve chosen to cast Lao Tzu’s wisdom into the modern game of Whack-a mole.

So let’s layout the game and the adaptation. The game involves whacking a make-believe mole with a hammer so that he is knocked underground. But when he is whacked he just pops up again out of another hole. The challenge is to keep the mole underground as much as possible in a given period of time. That’s the game.

Now the adaptation: Pretend the mole represents health. So long as the mole is underground, health is maintained. Coming up through a hole means problems are emerging which require doctor visits. When we are young our physical nature is more vibrant and becomes less so as we age. In the adapted game, the number of holes through which the mole can emerge increases as we age thus requiring more visits to different doctors, who then “whack” the problem, driving the mole beneath the surface, where “health” exists. But doctors not only solve problems they create them, which necessitates visits to other doctors who do the same thing. I think you may see the analogy between the game and life.

While we’re young, health can be maintained much easier, by taking care of ourselves. But alas, when we are young we think we’ll live forever and besides health is more vibrant. If we do exercise wisdom, then we will have complied with the wisdom of Lao Tzu. If not then problems begin to multiply and cascade as we age, which then requires more doctor visits (more holes from which the mole can emerge), and, oh by the way, as we age we have less energy to fight off the problems of aging, which in many cases becomes the challenge of life. Eventually, the lack of energy results from not doing the easy while we are young and consequently, as aging advances we become consumed with the difficult⎯too many holes, moles, and trips with our heads exposed above ground for doctors to whack.

Of course we could adhere to the Mark Twain version and “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well,” in which case we won’t need to be concerned about difficult tomorrows since tomorrow will come anyway with more moles, more holes and a lot more whacking doctors!

Half full; half empty.

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.”

That’s the opening stanza of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It is a favorite of mine since it seems to encapsulate the essential spirit and challenge of being human.

Language is how we communicate with one another: Our medium of intellectual barter. Words have the power to shape our lives either for the good or for the bad. And the truth is that we all begin to imagine that what we think and say is the sine qua non of being human. We all fail to consider that words are simply abstractions; representations of something, but beneath the words lay the mystery—the nameless source from whence our words arise.

Then comes the matter of desire. Who or what is desiring and why? Someone who is complete and fulfilled has no need to desire anything. “But wait,” you might say: “Obviously we are all incomplete.” To that statement, we must say, yes and no. Yes, the objective part of us that can be named is continually learning, being exposed to an infinite set of changing conditions, and is incomplete. And if we were only an objective body that is growing and dying, then yes, we are incomplete.

But we are not only an object, which we call our body. We are also a subjective spirit, integrated completely within the body. It’s a mystery beyond rational understanding but nevertheless real. And this spiritual reality is indiscriminate, which means it is not divided. It is whole and complete already. Nothing can be added and nothing subtracted. It isn’t a matter of choosing one aspect (body) vs. another aspect (spirit) since it isn’t possible to separate them and still remain human.

Nevertheless, the seen part of us, which we see as all that we are, is desiring because that part is incomplete and functions within a sea of discrimination. “The named is the mother of ten thousand things,” none of whom accord with each other. It’s the central task of Zen to release ourselves from the illusion of abstraction—the limited idea—we hold of ourselves and find our truth where mystery resides.

The notion of dropping off body and mind was a primal issue for Zen Master Dōgen but more importantly, it was his dropping of the dropping that unlocked the door to his enlightenment.

The “idea” that there is a difference between body and mind can be a serious obstacle because it remains an intellectual abstraction of separation. And that idea divides us all and leaves us with the residue of alienation. Enlightenment is not an idea. It is an undivided, always present reality and to align ourselves with enlightenment is to realize our own mystery. Body/Spirit. Object/Subject: Same and different, but always indivisible.

The action of non-action.

“To act” presumes an actor. It would be absurd to speak of action otherwise. Action must therefore consider the source—this actor doing the acting to understand action. In a normal sense, action entails the will (volition) the capability of conscious choice to do one thing and deny another. And that volition is a reflection; the vote of the actor. To say “I desire” is an expression of such a will—the desire preceding action. But we must take a serious look at how we understand this one who acts to explore the motive.

In Buddhism (as well as Taoism) this matter is taken seriously. We all have a sense-of-self (the actor) which is constantly agitated, wounded and hungry. There is never enough to fill the belly of this actor, nor fences tall enough to guard what the self desires and possesses. The ego is never satisfied.

The Forty-Eighth stanza of the Tao Te Ching says: “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.”

Compare this to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:26-27: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

These views came from different times and places, yet they speak of the same faith dimension—trust that our lives are important and not lacking. Lao Tzu understood the source of the ultimate self as the Tao. Jesus understood that same source as “your heavenly father” but they were speaking of the same well-spring: The source of non-action which functions through our being. We (our bodies and our minds) are the arms and legs of the Tao/Our heavenly father. And when our action is thus centered, our action will not be our own. Lao Tzu referred to this as wu-wei or non-action since the will of ego is not involved.

The Basement

Many of my initial posts are building on a fundamental premise inherent in both Taoism and Buddhism—the premise of dependent origination. Simply stated, this is the simultaneous arising of apparent opposites. Death and life; Light and dark; Mother and child...Every dimension, observable or not. Nothing exists in isolation, and it is incorrect to think that one thing precedes another.

That premise is portrayed in Lao Tzu’s metaphorical relating to the primordial nameless and ten thousand things and is picked up and reflected as a Ladder and Wall in my posts. Since postings are sequential, with viewers entering various times, the reader may wonder what this “Wall” and “Ladder” are all about. Toward the objective of clarification, it would be helpful to the reader, to begin with, my initial post: “Digestion,” where the initial basement is laid.

This will be a common theme as I progress through the labyrinth of mystery and manifestations. It will be more useful to grasp the foundation before proceeding with interior decoration.