Coming and going.

To a person of Zen, words are a mixed blessing. They can lead you astray or open your mind to the music of the muses. One of the greatest mystical poets of all time is Rabindranath Tagore.  Sadly, while he lived, he was little known outside of the Calcutta area and unknown outside of India. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perception vs. Reality

Seeing you seeing me.

The President’s daughter Ivanka Trump says, “Perception is more important than reality.” Obviously, a distinction is made with that statement. The difference is that perception, alone, is not reality. 

More than likely, every person agrees there is a difference between the two. We know what perception is, but do we know what reality is? It is a nonsensical statement to say the two are different unless we can define both perception and reality. Ordinarily, everyone believes they know what reality is, but when pressed to explain it, hesitation arises, for a good reason. One of the most intelligent scientists to ever live (Albert Einstein) said this: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Could he be right?

Let’s test his hypothesis, and to do so, we must begin by defining some terms, such as what can be perceived and measured. Scientists deal with measurement. If something can be measured, the presumption is that it is real, and the opposite: No measurement=Not real. So far, so good with our test. So what can be measured? Anything objective can be measured. Non-objects can’t.

Given that, let’s return to grammar school and consider the following sentence: “I see me.” That sentence is instructive to our test. The word “I” is the subject, “see” is the verb, and “me” is the object. Now let’s consider the logic and the previous agreement: Any object can be measured and is thus real. 

If the grammar is correct (and it is), then “I” am not real because “I” is a subject, and a subject is different from an object. But wait! “I” am clearly real, and so are you. I am writing, and you are reading, so where is the fly in this ointment?

Now, look at the image at the top-right. There you see a picture of two people looking at each other. The clear conclusion is that every person (or sentient being: dog, cat, iguana, cow…any entity with consciousness, capable of perception) is both an object seen and a subject doing the seeing. Thus, it is an indisputable fact that any and every sentient being is both real and unreal at the same time. If so, can reality and illusion be a package deal: One part objective (and measurable, thus real, in scientific terms) and the other part subjective (and immeasurable, therefore unreal, according to the scientific criteria)?

If we (subjects) are unreal, then nobody can know anything, at all, about anyone else and what we think is real is merely an illusion. 

Einstein is correct. His hypothesis holds up, and this begs the question: How is perception different from reality? And one final point: When we refer to a self-image (ego/image of I), we refer to an unreal object that is seen. So who, or what is the subjective us that is doing the seeing? Obviously, it is the part of us that is allegedly unreal, but it is the only part of us that is real, despite Einstein or rational logic. 

The flip side of this coin is the real subjective aspect of us sees nothing but unreal illusions. Now answer the original question: What’s the difference between perception and reality?

YOU

Thinkers think thoughts.

Thoughts produce thinkers.

Thoughts are about things.

Non-things are not thoughts.

Thoughts are not things.

Both thoughts and thinkers are unreal.

Non-things are not unreal.

Abstractions are thoughts about what’s real.

You are not an abstraction.

You are a real non-thing.

Thoughts about you are not real.

What is real is not a thought.

You are real and not a thought.

When you think, abstractions appear.

When you stop thinking, you appear.

Think about this and you’ll be lost in thought.

Don’t think about this and you’re ready, for the next thought.

The Paradox of Non-Choice

Some time ago, I wrote a post called “The High Price of Choice: Winning Battles, Losing Wars.” In that post, I spoke about making choices based on perceptual differences. This post extends the one I’ve called The Paradox of Non-Choice.

For over forty years, I’ve tried and failed to articulate an experience that transformed my life. In reflecting upon that time, I think of it as an experience in a chrysalis, moving from a view of myself as a miserable worm and being transformed into a beautiful butterfly. My self-image stunk, and I didn’t know much about an ego. The reason for my failure concerns words, which, by definition, are reflections of matters that can only be expressed about something else. The other thorny dilemma that has contributed to my failure is some things can never be adequately explained, and this was one of those.

But this morning, I awoke with a pictorial vision that gives me a way of articulating that indescribable experience. However, I can describe the picture you can imagine in your mind. If you can assimilate the essence of the picture, there’ll be a reasonably good chance of grasping that experience beyond words I’ve struggled to describe for these many years. And this, in turn, can give you the hope of realizing the goal of peace and harmony—unity with all things.

Picture in your mind a three-dimensional ball with an empty core. To help you see that, imagine “Wilson,” the soccer ball that became the sole partner of Tom Hanks in his movie Cast Away. For those who didn’t see the film, Hanks was a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashed in the South Pacific. Everything was lost except a soccer ball made by The Wilson Sporting Goods Company. To keep from going insane, Hanks developed a relationship with Wilson, keeping him from losing all hope.

Like Hanks, anyone can perceive the outside of a soccer ball, but no one can perceive the inside simultaneously (except through imagination, and imagination became the friend of Hanks). Perceiving anything (and understanding what is perceived) requires certain conditions, one of which is contrast. For example, the ball can’t be seen if everything is white and the ball’s surface is white. The outside of that ball is called correctly conditional—one thing contrasted with (or conditioned upon) another different thing. That being the case, we could label the outside “relative” or “conditional.”

Now, we come to the inside of the ball, which is empty. It’s invisible for two reasons: first, because the outside surface hides it, and second, because it’s empty, meaning nothing is there (except air, which can’t be seen). We could adequately label the inside unconditionally since emptiness, by definition, is a vacuum lacking limitations (except when seemingly confined, as in the case of the outer surface of a soccer ball). If we were to remove the outer surface, what was inside (nothing) would be the same as if there were no surfaces. It wouldn’t go anywhere since it was nowhere—yet everywhere—to begin with.

Now, we can describe the ball entirely: The outer surface is relatively conditional and perceptible, while the inside is unconditional and imperceptible. Thus, the ball is constructed within three dimensions—the outside has two sizes, and the inside has another. And (importantly) the outside is opposite from the inside (and in that sense also relative). Neither the outside of a ball nor the inside could exist without the other. But when the inside core is isolated, it is wholly unconditional. However, it can only be that way when confined within the outside conditional surface of the ball.

Now take the next step and relabel the ball as a living organism (one of which is a human), and this living organism is constituted in the same way as the ball with only one addition—consciousness. Consciousness is a two-way street: an unconditional source functions through perceptual mechanisms that are outwardly oriented to perceive relative conditional things. The one dimension that consciousness can’t perceive is consciousness itself since it is an unconditional, non-relative non-thing (no-thing/empty). Furthermore, anything unconditional is everywhere at once—outside and inside and completely lacking detection.

Since the function of consciousness is perception, it remains the source, wholly complete and undetectable (empty). As such, we need to be made aware of its presence. We know only things that are detectable and constituted of differing natures. And unfortunately, we differentiate (or discriminate) these things into judgments of good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, up/down, and on and on.

The problem here is that we conclude that everything is either this or that and go unaware that, at the core, everything is united into an unconditional, indefinable non-entity. Enlightenment is the pure sense of self-awakening (the experience of) penetrating through the outer surface of differentiated things and into the core, where we experience/realize that everything is constituted as nothing (meaning emptiness). We then “know” our true, fundamental nature, and at the exact moment as this dawning, we realize we are neither good nor bad, white or black, or any other this vs. that. With this dawning, we understand that everyone is the same at that fundamental level—all united and unconditionally the same. And that is the source of all hope and compassion—that we are One.

So the next time you’re tempted to judge yourself or another, remember Wilson the soccer ball and know that your true self is just as empty—and thus the same as everything else.

Thinking Outside The Box.

From time to time, it’s worth recycling some posts. This one, in particular, is such a post since it addresses the underpinnings of how life works, so desperately needed at the current time. All that we do is based on thinking. It happens so naturally we rarely connect the dots. The Buddha said, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” So today here is a follow-up post about thinking.

From the time of birth all the way to the end, we never stop thinking. We do it while we are awake, and while we’re sleeping, in the form of dreams. Only for brief moments is there a lull in this cerebral activity, and that is both a blessing and a curse. Because we think, we can imagine, and that allows us to create and invent things almost unimaginable. As we invent, others can experience and learn about our inventions and innovate improvements to create entirely new inventions. One creation serves as a building block for the next, and the creative process expands geometrically. There would appear to be no end to our creative capacities. The only obstacle to this process is what blocks clarity that impedes progress.

Thinking is a two-edged sword. Not only does it equip us with problem-solving skills, but it also provides us with the capacity to create problems. Because we think we can’t help thinking about ourselves, and we do this based on the nature of thoughts. A thought is, in simple terms, a mental image, a virtual projection manipulated in our brains. The image is not a real thing. It is an abstraction of something real. We open our eyes, and we see external images. We close our eyes, and we see internal images. What we fail to realize is that all images are actually being registered in our brains. What appears as “out there” is, in truth, nothing more than a virtual projection being registered in our primary visual cortex where it is “seen,” and based on this projection, our brain tells us “out there.”

But this is not the end of the matter. These images are then subjected to cognitive processing and recording in memory.  Some experiences are pleasurable, and others are not. When we experience pleasure, we want to grasp and retain comfort. When it is undesirable, we remember that as well and do our best to avoid such events occurring again. This is a learning process in which we engage to do what we can to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, but we soon learn that such a thing is beyond our control. What brings us pleasure in a moment brings us pain in the next. Phenomenal life is constantly changing.

This fundamental desire to avoid pain and retain pleasure is a trap that ends up creating the opposite of what we seek because we attach our sense of self-worth to moving targets. As the objects of desire come to an end, suffering follows. What we set out to avoid, soon comes our way. And out of this ebb and flow, we develop a sense of ourselves. We wonder about the one doing the thinking and make flawed conclusions. When adversity occurs, we imagine that we brought it upon ourselves—which is right in many cases. When pleasure comes our way, we imagine that we singularly created the conditions that made it possible. Gradually we form an image of ourselves, which we’ve learned to label an ego—a self-image that is no more real than every other abstraction produced by our brains.

All images are projections—the ones we see externally, which we presume is our real world of objects, the ones we see in our mind’s eye, and the images we develop about ourselves. None of it is anything other than abstract images recorded in our brains, not much different than the images projected onto a movie screen. All of it looks real, so we respond as if it were, and that results in significant problems for ourselves and people with whom we share our world. 

Out of this flaw of perception and processing comes certain conclusions. We conclude that we can trust some people and not others. We conclude that to survive and prosper, we must hoard and save for a rainy day. We conclude that greed is good, and we get angry when people draw attention to this flawed conclusion that jeopardizes our egotistical plans. Life then becomes a competition with winners and losers, and things turn out the same way as before. We wanted to maximize pleasure and avoid pain. The result is the opposite because our aggressive lust leads us into isolation, alienation, and jeopardy with the very same people we need to ensure our desires.

Thinking, thinking, thinking: It never stops from birth till death. It is both a blessing and a curse, and we thus create both wondrous inventions and means of destruction. As a result, life balances on a razor’s edge between greatness and evil. That’s life, so what’s Zen?

Long before there was science, of any kind, people were natural scientists and engaged in the scientific method. They wondered. They created hypotheses. They tested these ideas in various ways. They found out through trial and error what worked and what didn’t, and they learned just like scientists do today. Now we have formal sciences, and one of these is neurology: the study of the brain. Zen is the study of the mind and is conducted almost precisely as any science is done —through observation but not with tools. In Zen, the mind uses itself to examine what it produces: the coming and going of thoughts and emotions. When thoughts arise, they are observed as unreal images. When they subside, we are left with silence of what seems to be a definable observer, but in truth is simply consciousness.

We live in a time awash in technology and assume that it is based on electronics. But the principle of technology is much broader. Fundamentally technology means an application of knowledge, especially in a particular area that provides a means of accomplishing a task. Anything from a simple hammer to charting the cosmos properly belongs to the realm of technology.

The common-coin understanding of Zen is wrong. Ordinarily, Zen is considered to be a branch on the tree of Buddhism, but what many people don’t realize is that Zen came first, a long time before there was such a thing as the religion of Buddhism. The original name for Zen was dhyana and is recorded in history as far back as 7,000 years. The Buddha lived around 2,500 years ago and used the mental technology of Zen to experience his enlightenment. Properly speaking, it isn’t Zen Buddhism but rather Buddhist Zen—the mystical form of Buddhism. All orthodox religions have mystical arms, and all of them have meditation as a core principle. 

More than 300 years ago, Voltaire, a famous French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, defined mediation in a way quite similar to Bodhidharma (“Zen is not thinking”). He put it this way: “Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” While Zen isn’t electronic, it is similar since our brain works by exchanging electrical transmissions, and Zen is the most thoroughgoing technology ever conceived for fathoming the human mind.

Because of scientific advances that have occurred in our time, we know the human brain is the most sophisticated computer ever and is capable of calculation speeds a billion times faster than any machine yet built. Furthermore, it is “dual-core,” computing in parallel mode with entirely different methods. One side works like a serial processor (our left hemisphere), and the other works as a parallel processor (or right hemisphere). On the left side of our brain is the image factory, creating thought images, and on the right side of our brain is the one watching the images. The left creates code, and the right reads the code. The left is very good at analyzing, dissecting, and abstracting while the right interprets and says what it all means. The right side “thinks” in pictures (interpreting the images). The left side talks but doesn’t understand, and the right side understands but doesn’t talk. Together the two sides make a great team, but individually they make bad company.

Zen is the mental technology of using the mind to understand itself. The true mind watches the movement and arising of the code to grasp how the “machine” works. Everything perceived and processed is applied consciousness and is watched. There is a conditional and object-oriented aspect, and there is an unconditional objectless aspect. Both sides of our brain have no exclusive and independent status. Only when they function together are they of much use. It is much like a wheel: the outside moves while the inside is empty and is the axle around which the external wheel moves. Our conscious subjective center is unseen and without form. Our objective nature has form and is seen.

In a metaphorical way, our brain could be considered hardware and our mind software. Software instructs the hardware on how to operate. Together these two are mirror opposites and rely upon the other side. In Buddhist terminology, this relationship is called dependent arising, (alternatively dependent origination) which means they can only exist together. The two sides of our brain are mirror partners. An inside requires an outside. They come and go together. Neither side can exist separately. Everything can only exist in that way.

The entire universe, in infinite configuration and form, is mostly empty. If you delve into quantum physics, you arrive at nothing. If you go to the farthest reaches of space, you arrive at nothing. Before the Big-Bang, there was nothing. Now there is everything. Everything is the same thing as nothing. And this fantastic awareness comes about by merely watching the coming and going of the manifestations of our mind. Through Zen, we learn about both the subjective/empty and the objective/full nature of ourselves. And what we discover through this process of watching and learning is quite amazing. The primary lesson learned is that there is both an image that is not real and a conscious reality that watches the images.

We think in image forms. Thoughts are not real. They are abstractions, coded messages that represent something but are not what’s being described. In our minds-eye, we see a constant flow of images and ordinarily imagine these images are real and, in such a state of mind, go unaware that there is a conscious faculty that watching this flow. That’s what being aware of our thoughts means. There is “one” who is watching, and there is what’s being watched. In truth, this “one” is not a person, but rather a capacity and function.  Neither of these (the watcher or the watched) can exist by itself. It takes both for thinking to occur.

The problem with our world today is that we are predominantly left-brain analyzers and have not been trained to make sense of what’s being analyzed. The imagined self (ego) is self-righteous, self-centered, greedy, possessive, hostile, and angry. The problem with identity is that we assume that there are an objective and independent watcher doing the watching, and we label that watcher as “me”—a self-image (otherwise called an ego). But here is where this must lead. So long as we see an image of ourselves, that image (ego) can’t possibly be the watcher because the watcher can’t see itself. So long as we see any images (self-image included), there is a difference between what is being watched and the watcher.

Education (in a usual sense) trains our language and analytics capacities but ignores the functions that enhance compassion, creativity, and insight. Consequently, we are out of balance aggressors, dominated by our egos and unaware that we are creating an abstract and unreal world that is progressively more and more violent and hostile.

The true “person” has no image dimension because all images are objective, whereas the true person is subjective consciousness. Subject/Object—two halves joined together into a single real person. One part can be seen (an image), and the other part can’t be seen (consciousness watching the image). An image isn’t real. It just looks that way. The consciousness part that is real—unconditionally the same in all sentient beings—is the part that can’t be seen. The entire time of remaining in this image-based realm, restricted by conceptual thought, is, in fact, a reflection of reality: a dream. When we move beyond thinking to the reality of pure consciousness, we wake up into an imageless realm (the root from which all things emanate), that is too incredible to describe.

Perpetual host; Holy ghost.

The Spirit arises

This is going to be a risky post since adherents to different faiths get disturbed by connecting dots of similarity. Nevertheless, I willingly choose to go where “angels fear to tread” since my topic is of utmost importance. The best way to begin is with a quote from Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” His point, and mine, is while the name may change, the essence stays the same.

I’ve danced around this burning bush numerous times trying to convey the essential point that our human nature is like a continually eroding house within which lives a permanent resident (with no name or status). Such posts as “Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me,” “Guests and Hosts,” “The Watcher,” “Transcendence and the Middle Way,” “Nature of mind and the desire for liberation,” “Already, not yet,” “Separating wheat from chaff,” “East meets West meets East,” “If it walks like a duck…” and others, all address the point of this post but not all reached across the aisle. Now I will. What may or may not be known is that while all religious traditions are different in their dogma, the mystical traditions of each are nearly identical.

But before that reaching, my springboard will be a quote from a towering giant in the long line of Zen Masters: Huang Po…

“The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word ‘Mind’ to symbolize the inexpressible reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not Mind at all. But he had to use some term or other, and his predecessors had often used ‘Mind.’ As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all, but familiar to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, ‘hsin’ means not only ‘mind,’ but ‘heart’ and, in some senses, at least, ‘spirit,’ or ‘soul,’—in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word Absolute, which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course, ‘the One Mind’ is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.”—Commentary by John Blofeld (Chu Ch’an): The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind.

That’s a safe segue onto the other side of the aisle that addresses the Christian principle of The Holy Ghost, who/which resides in “born again Christians.” The rose smells as sweet, but the name changes, as do the presuppositions. In the case of Zen, the host (True man of no rank), according to Master Lin Chin/Rinzai; Huang-Po’s student) was the eternal “REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.” 

The apparent difference between the teachings of orthodox Christianity and Zen, concerning the indwelling Spirit, is that Christian dogma says only those who confess Christ as Lord will be “born again” and receive the Holy Spirit. However, this dogma contradicts another fundamental aspect of Christian teaching, which says that God is eternal and omnipresent. Consequently, there is a fly in this ointment that was addressed by Meister Eckhart (Christian mystic)—“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Mystics (all) have plunged the depths to the essence of their natural being, whereas those who remain unenlightened see the surface and not the wisdom. For these, “…the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees.”

Identity?

The dissolving ego.

The last two posts (Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death and Karma and The Wheel of Dharma) were critical in understanding how we get into on-going trouble and how to get emancipated. Both messages may have seemed arcane and esoteric. I am aware of the difficulty, particularly among Western audiences, when coming to terms with the essential aspects of these messages. For that reason, I employed metaphors of dust and viruses. 

However, the wisdom contained in these two is so important that I want to go to the heart of the teaching, pull out the core, and do a summation, in layman’s terms. What lies at the core of them both is how we understand our human nature. Everyone, in all times and places, develops a sense of who they are, who others are, how we regard our self-understanding, and what this means to our place in the world. The admonition of the Golden Rule:  “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets,” is not incorrect. However, essential to that teaching takes us to the core of not only that teaching, but also to the core of the last two posts. Do we hate ourselves? Love ourselves? Think we are God’s gift to the world? Or perhaps a piece of crap. Whatever self-view we possess determines how we treat others and what we expect from them. Any and all, unenlightened view of ourselves, boils down to one simple principle, and how we understand that principle: Ego.

I could readily quote innumerable passages from exalted Zen Masters that speak to this matter of ego and self-understanding, but not now. If you are interested in that sort of presentation, you can click on the “SEO keyword” ego, located at the bottom of this post, and it will take you to numerous other posts about this matter of a deluded idea of who we are. Today, however, I want to speak in common terms that anyone can understand if they are so inclined. I will take you to the waters, but I can’t make you drink.

So what exactly is an “ego” and how does it make a difference, to ourselves, to others, and to the world. The word, in all languages and traditions, means “I,” not any “I” but the honest, in-the-dark-of-night “I,” when it is still, and nobody is watching. In that darkness, nobody is observing us, there is nobody to impress or be persuaded, and there is just you, in the dark, alone with your own thoughts—which could keep you awake at night. Our egos are a corrupted notion that we all create to identify ourselves. It is formed, shaped, refined, and comes to be essential to everything we say and do. Importantly, the ego is an idea, an image of self (self-image) that depends on many inputs. Those inputs come from family, friends, teachers, significant others—many, many sources, over a long period of time.

In the simplest of terms, it boils down to building an identity out of bricks of clay. And perhaps the most important of those bricks come early in life—how we were treated as children by those in whom we were most vested: those that mattered most—our family and/or the people we trusted and considered significant to our wellbeing. If those treated us kindly, we developed a good sense of ourselves. If they treated us badly, we developed a poor sense of ourselves. And those initial building blocks served as the foundation of what followed, which may, or may not, have reinforced those initial ideas. But even at a young age, what we came to think of ourselves, determined how we behaved and the feed-back we received resulting from that behavior. “As you think, so shall you become.”  That principle is universal, and you can find it presented from many sources.

Let’s take the next step in this progression. Suppose our significant, trusted people, critical to shaping those initial building blocks, treated us kindly. In such a case, our ego-sense becomes attached to those people, and then something terrible happens: They die or go away. What then happens is devastating to our mental/emotional wellbeing: We suffer. On the other hand, consider the opposite—We are treated poorly (and we come to regard ourselves poorly), nevertheless becoming attached to our own, now-ingested opinion, set in motion by those people. Both of these are forms of attachment, and they are both just ideas (images if you prefer). In the first case, we have attached to what we like, and in the other case, we are attached to what we don’t like.

Life is a moving ship on a body of water, that changes with the tides of life. Up and down, the waves move, and our egos bounce like a cork on the surface. There is no stability with that arrangement—only turbulence. What we fail to consider is what lies beneath those changing waves; at the sea bottom where nothing changes. That analogy is not about turbulent water or the bottom of the sea. It concerns identity, changing, or not. At the base depths of our thinking mind is the subconscious mind; way down there where our thoughts are “out of sight/out of mind.” Only they are never out of mind. They have just moved from our conscious/thinking mind into our subconscious mind, but they never leave. In that universal way, we are all trapped; some thinking poorly of themselves and others thinking they are superior to others.

What the quests for our true (not imagined) self entails is plunging, through whatever came before: the entire, cumulative formation of the ego, to the depths of our souls, and experiencing—not thinking—our genuine Self. This pathway is not one of rational thinking but is instead a transforming, intimately personal Spiritual experience. And when I say, “Spiritual,” I do not mean a religious one. I do mean the genuine experience of your very own spirit, that has no clothing, no identity, no “ego,” no anything. You then wake up (e.g., the term “Buddha” means awaken) to an indiscriminate, universal unity with all, that is not an isolated “you” but is the same as everyone else. In that spiritual realm, there is not an iota of difference between you and anyone, regardless of whatever bodily differences, or idea you may hold of yourself. Then you are a true man (or woman) with rank. 

The ego, at that moment, evaporates like the disappearance of mist upon the rising of the sun, and you realize the one doing the quest is one and the same as the one being sought after. And at that moment, that comes like a flash of lightning, your entire understanding changes radically—the self is transformed into Self as a worm is transformed into a butterfly. And then you have returned to a non-identity that never left.

What we don’t know can hurt us.

The realm of reality.

Many, if not most, of the problems we encounter as humans are due to what we either don’t know or refuse to know. Such a lack has a way of catching us off guard at the worst possible moments, usually late in the game when there is little we can do to stop, or at least slow the progression toward disaster. 

The coronavirus pandemic is a case in point. So long as we can be aware of the sign-posts, we can prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. Hope, however, must be realistic and in line with those sign-posts, or it remains pie in the sky. What we don’t know can, and many times does, hurt us.

Without knowing, we live in two realms at once: The realm of rational conditions (the mortal one) and a realm beyond conditions, where immortality lives. Think of the realm of immortality as the ground from which our mortal lives grow. It is very much like growing a garden. If the immortal soil is full of nutrients, then the odds are better, the mortal produce will be nutritious.

The realm of mortal conditions is our ordinary realm, where one thing stands in opposition to another. Mortally, we have a beginning and an ending. In this realm, differentiation is the criteria and is based on the senses that tell us how we are all different. Our sense of sight says to us, light is different from darkness. Our auditory sense tells us that sound is different from silence, and so on—each of our senses discriminates one thing from another different sensory thing.

The immortal realm is the realm of unity, where everything is the same. And unlike what grows, the immortal ground has no beginning nor end. That’s the good soil and is the unconditional realm of the spirit: The ground of all being—the well-spring of all. And these two realms are irrevocably joined together in perfect harmony. Should one realm disappear, the other would disappear. When one appears, the other appears. They define one another, and without an opposite, neither can be understood, just as without light, darkness would have no meaning. One is an abstraction—an illusion that appears to our senses as real, whereas the other, while invisible to the senses, is reality itself.

To our collective misfortune, the ordinary realm (e.g., the conditional) is what governs our world and is the root of all woe. It is because we imagine our life will end that we fear death, never realizing that genuine life never ends. Mortality segues into immortality, and life goes on. However, when we think we get only one shot, we see ourselves as distinct, separate, and different only. Then the mortal realm becomes a place where tribal wars of opposition rule the day, where nobody genuinely “reaches across the aisle,” and compromise becomes impossible, except as disingenuous lip-service.

It is within the silence of the mind where we discover our true, immortal worth. When all thinking ceases, it is there we find our true nature. Yet, as The Buddha taught, in emptiness, there is no mind and no self, so we call them both by abstract names to become aware. Without abstraction, only silence prevails, but it is within silence where we become enlightened to that which is the source of all awareness.

To most of the western world, Zen is a strange and confusing matter, most often utterly misunderstood. The founder of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as “not thinking.” And the great master Huang Po taught: “Whatever the senses apprehend resembles an illusion, including everything ranging from mental concepts to living beings. Our Founder—The Buddha, preached to his disciple's naught (e.g., nothing) but total abstraction leading to the elimination of sense-perception. In this total abstraction does the Way of the Buddhas flourish; while from discrimination between this and that a host of demons blazes forth!” — The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, (The teacher of Zen Master Rinzai).

If westerners had lived in the eastern world, Zen would not seem strange. Instead, the odds are favorable that Zen would be understood as the means The Buddha employed to experience enlightenment. Many in the western world have become aware of the practice of mindfulness meditation in helping to quiet the mind, leading to less stress and improved health. However, what has not yet become well established is the next stage beyond mindfulness. 

Quieting the mortal mind is a sign-post on the way to what follows. First, the chatter must be regulated and brought under control. Then, and only then, is it possible to move on to the deeper stage of Samādhi attained by the practice of dhyāna (e.g., the ancient name given to the practice of Zen—the last step in the Eight Fold Path, otherwise known as Right Concentration). The preceding step (the seventh) was known as Right mindfulness, the level that is now so popular. There is nothing wrong with mindfulness. But there is more beyond that sign-post on the way, but following that, the going gets tougher.

The great Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa said, “My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.” The beginning would be more aligned with Right mindfulness, whereas Right Concentration is more aligned with finishing up the journey.

Dreams and delusions.

Chuang Tzu's Dream of reality.

The expression, “You are living in a dream world” is understood to mean you are out of touch with reality. I know, as a result of conversations with my friends, that during this pandemic, dreams are becoming more frequent and seemingly real. I, too, have experienced the same thing. This could be the result of being forced into isolation and the resulting anxiety we are all experiencing. What dwells in our subconscious is coming out of the closet, perhaps as the result of limited input.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, “Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?”

Many people don’t know what the term “Buddha” means. It means “awake,” and within the context of  The Buddha, it meant “awakened one, or enlightened one,” which is not limited to The Buddha, Buddhists, or any other restrictively defined persons. The path The Buddha traveled toward awakening was intimately linked to the practice of Zen—the pathway that encompasses long periods of draining the swamp of the delusions living in our subconscious. Hardly anyone is aware of such delusions for a simple reason: They reside in consciousness at the unconscious level which naturally comes out at night, sometimes in very strange ways that seem very real, like being a butterfly. Only when we come out of a sleep state are we able to realize what we experienced were dreams. And sometimes even then we are not quite sure if they were real or not.

Modern-day psychologist and psychiatrists, for the most part, agree that whatever is rooted in our subconsciousness can, and often does, disrupt our waking lives since we have been programmed by prior experiences and learning (some of which produce biases, preconceived beliefs, and dogma) which then become dominating forces that filter our sense of “what’s real.” All of us are affected by what we can perceive and nobody (ordinarily) can perceive the source of perception that bypasses these powerful, embedded delusions that shape our lives.

Zen provides that avenue, the means, to plunge into the depths of consciousness, through and down to that source. And when you arrive at the source you “wake up” to suchness—things as they are without the delusions that control our lives, most importantly who we are and who we are not (an ego). Only then do we experience, and realize, that pure consciousness is identical in every sentient being. That is the place of ultimate union with everything—a place of unconditional connectivity, liberated from the controlling force of delusions. It doesn’t mean you have necessarily completely drained the swamp. Some obstacles are too deeply rooted and can come out to “play” in destructive ways.

The father of Zen (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.”

Understanding that prescription is one thing, experiencing it is another. The prior is an intellectual fabrication—a road map, while the latter is real, no speculation required. The experience of waking up is the ultimate form of clarity, serenity, and hope. Without that, we are all in a prison of the mind and have no clue.

The road to nowhere and everywhere.

There are some essential differences between spirituality (particularly Zen) and religions, one of which is Buddhism. To ensure we are beginning on the same page, since we are coming from such a broad spectrum of backgrounds and experiential differences, I need to start off with a few pedantic definitions, the first of which is abstraction. 

The definition of abstraction that seems most germane to my purposes is “considered apart from concrete existence,” or “difficult to understand, such as an abstruse concept.” Abstraction is thus an image or idea about something but not the something itself. It’s a representation that may be interpreted in a variety of ways by anyone who considers the image or idea. When we consider any idea we all bring with us our own biases, preconceived notions, beliefs, experiences, and points of view, which serve as potent filters that govern our understandings and alter our sense of reality. All of these factors shape our thinking that may shut or open the door of our minds and you can notice these filters functioning when you have a conversation with anyone. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this sense of beauty (or ugliness) is determined mostly by these tightly held preconceived ideas. Birds of a kind find birds like themselves and reject birds not like them, based on such filters.

Some time ago I wrote a post called The Man in the moon: a whimsical expression about the discriminatory impact of labels, which causes us to make inappropriate judgments about others. Those labels serve the purpose of forming filters that quite effectively close that door of our minds and keep us trapped within dogmatic thought processes where we convince ourselves that such and such is true, simply because we have been conditioned by those biases, preconceived notions, beliefs, experiences, points of view and reinforced by agreements from our bird friends.

Contrast this process of filtering against a fundamental aspect of human nature of which we remain mostly unaware: suchness—things as they are cleansed of these filters. This term, suchness is not your everyday term, but mystics have used it across the ages to articulate a state of seeing that bypassed, or transcended bias. The Buddha used this term, and he considered it to be essential to awakening to the true nature of reality as being non-dual. To mystics, all things have a foundation in pure, uncontaminated awareness: a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness, which came to be known as Buddha-nature (sentience). And sentience means reflexive, mirror-like awareness, a state of consciousness prior to perception or thought. In essence, sentience=emptiness; there is nothing present in elementary or undifferentiated consciousness, just as there is nothing in a mirror until an image appears before it. 

The mirror doesn’t move, but what appears in the mirror comes and goes. The reflected images are transient. Perception plus bias produces abstraction, clouding things as they are.  At that very instant, the universe appears as dualistic: there is what is perceived and one perceiving—a false self that is imagined as the seer seeing objective things. This state of sentience is thus an indefinable subject: who we are truly, prior to any cognitive processes. Thoughts are abstractions: illusions. The Buddha called these illusions “dreams,” and said that he had awakened from the dreams and experienced sentience. He thus referred to himself as the Tathāgata: the Sanskrit name that means beyond all coming and going–beyond all transitory phenomena/objective forms. 

Consequently, he recognized that every conceivable perceptible form or subsequent idea was grounded in sentience, which has no beginning, ending, or limitation of any kind. Sentience has no definable properties and, as such, is without conditions (thus unconditional)—exactly the same among all sentient beings. Therefore it is the ground-of-all-being, which is the place of non-discriminate unity.

What is transitory, however, are the perceptions and ideas that appear before our empty faculty, and consequently, The Buddha said there is no difference between form and emptiness; they are one and the same. Without sentience there could be no perception at all and consequently these two: perceptible forms and empty sentience dependently originate each other. All things emanate from that empty source. The images look real, but they are just transitory phenomenal images. Since we remain unaware of our true source, the only reality we can grasp is transitory images, to which we cling, and by which we define ourselves. Since the images are here one moment and gone the next, our sense of self/ego rides the waves of suffering and bliss.