The distant place that lies within.

The expression, “Home is where the heart is,” suggests that our home is located in union with another. The problem with that understanding is our sense of home is then wedded to the other’s wellbeing. So long as that union is well, our sense of wellbeing is likewise well. However, the opposite is also true. Tying yourself to another can be a dangerous matter, especially when the other jeopardizes our sense of stability and wholeness.

Another perspective is more favorably secure: The perspective that home lies within, right where your spiritual heart exists. The first view can be problematic, but so too can the latter. It all depends on how we understand and experience ourselves. If our view is one of self-love, that is one thing. If our view is one of self-hatred, that is even more dangerous than the first. In either case, wherever we go, our-self goes with us.

Both self-love or self-hatred can, and do, vary according to changing circumstances—everything, of a mortal nature, is constantly changing, and there is no way anyone can stop that flow of mortal change. Consequently, to get to the root of the matter, it is necessary to look beyond mortality.

Three different spiritual teachings point us to the resolution. The first comes from a familiar source (The teaching of Christ, as expressed by St.Paul the Apostle). The second and third sources are less familiar but dovetail with that of The Apostle. Let’s start with the second, move on to the third, and circle back to conclude with St.Paul.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French philosopher, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest who thought deeply on the meaning of our existence and relationship with the Divine. Chardin held this unorthodox view that within our mortal shell was our true home. To accept this perspective changes how we understand ourselves (and others) from a constantly changing mortal being that ends in death to that of a never-changing immortal being that never ends.

The third source comes from one of the greatest spiritual poets, artists, and educational theorists who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 (Rabindranath Tagore). Few in The West have ever heard of Tagore, but he shared the perspective of de Chardin and conveyed his view through many of his works, not the least is his poem Journey Home.

“The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my

voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,

and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

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.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, ‘Here art thou!’

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand

streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’”

Like de Chardin, Tagore was persuaded that discovery of our true home—the one of spiritual essence, only came about on a quest within, where we find our eternal source.

Now, to tie all three together, let’s examine what St. Paul had to say in the book of 1 Corinthians. He said (metaphorically), “You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it” (the concluding point of 1 Corinthians 12:12-27), but when taken literally, it unites with the other two perspectives, that our true home—the one we can never leave lies at our spiritual core. There, alone, all of us can find the eternal spirit of love—our Divine essence. And when we find that core, we know that our essence is the same as the Divine. Short of that, we are all left with a self-understanding that bobs and weaves like a cork tossed about on the waves of change, sometimes loving and at other times with hatred. God is undivided love, and that is us.

Playing the hand we’re dealt.

Two sides: Winning and losing.

Many years ago, my Zen teacher told me: “Once you open your eyes, without bias, you’ll be amazed how many lessons of wisdom life will show you.” Little did I know at the early time just how true his counsel would be.

It is doubtful that any of us are dealt a flawless hand when we enter this mortal world. There are always a few losing cards, even in the best of hands. It isn’t nearly as important what we are dealt with but how we play that hand.

I learned how to play the bridge game even before I met my teacher and played as well as possible. Subsequently, we met; I took a sustained hiatus from the game and came back much later, following his wise counsel. I then began to play again and learned a wise lesson from that game that applies to life in general. That wise lesson was concerned with how to play the game of bridge and the game of life. And the lesson is this: If you are aware of the losing cards (that’s easier once you lose your biases—many people pretend to have no flaws), lose them early in the game—you’ll lose them anyway, so it’s always better to lose early.

The wisdom of losing early has multiple ripple effects across what comes next. One of the most important ripples is when you lose anything, you will empathize with others who also lose (everyone does sooner or later). And armed with that sense of empathy, you will be enabled to lend a hand to others who suffer later in your game. To lose late in the game may teach the same lesson, but you will have less mortal time left to apply the lesson, and the wisdom will be of little value, except to you. Doing good (not just talking good) in this life will then carry on into your next incarnation: Fewer beginning losers next time around.

A related lesson came to me from a member of our bridge club. Dear Gerry often said, “I don’t mind if I lose because when I lose, someone else wins.” She was a kind (yet competitive) player who taught me that losing wasn’t so bad, and that lesson relates to the first. Losing is just the other side of the coin of winning, and if we don’t give up during those losing times, the tide will eventually turn, and you’ll win again. But when you lose, you will know what it feels like and see life with the eyes of compassion and wisdom. And that lesson of never giving up (e.g., perseverance through thick and thin) is very wise as well. Why? Because most players of this game of life will relent first. And then, even if you have a losing hand, you’ll win by default. If the rabbit stops before the finish line—even if he is an inch away—the turtle will first cross. 

When life throws you the ball of losing, consider it a blessing, be grateful, and catch it. There are fewer lessons more important than knowing how to play the cards life deals you.

Our upside down world.

If you can, grasp that everything we perceive and process—whether internal or external-results from elusive images projected in our brain. You can then begin to appreciate the incredible miracle represented by the Buddha’s enlightenment. His understanding occurred 2,500 years before tools were developed, which allow us to validate his teachings from a neurological perspective. While the language used that long ago may seem arcane to us today, by transcending these barriers of time and culture, we can understand the true nature of ourselves and the world in which we have always existed.

Buddhism, by any measure, from the normal western perspective, seems strange only because we have been conditioned to see life in a particular way, which, as it turns out, is upside down. What we regard as “real” is not, and what we regard as not even perceptibly present turns out to be real. And because of this error, our understanding causes us to identify with illusions, which are simple mental projections. Not realizing this, we end up clinging to vapor and then suffering as it slides away. What is the solution?

First, as the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment says, we must become aware of what is happening. Without this first step, there is no hope of ever being set free from a never ending dream—a nightmare of suffering that keeps repeating endlessly. When the illusions of our lives begin to break down (which they inevitably do), we are faced with tragedy. We suffer, so we search for relief, which unfortunately may come in further addictions that bring temporary relief but never last. It is like suffering from thirst and drinking salt water, which just makes us thirstier.

If we are fortunate, we discover the Dharma (the truth as revealed by the Buddha) and begin to fathom the source of our dilemma. It may start by taking a class or reading a book. Slowly our eyes become open to what is genuinely real, and our hunger grows. What begins as an intellectual snack holds the potential of becoming a full-blown meal. What fills the belly of one who has savored true awakening won’t do someone else any good. Ideas don’t fill the emptiness in our guts. Only awakening to our true nature can satisfy that craving for substance.

This sutra hits the nail on the head. Of course, the prime motivator is anyone’s own state of mind. As Master Sheng-yen pointed out, “Generally, unless a sleeping person is having a nightmare, he or she will not want to wake up. The dreamer prefers to remain in the dream. In the same way, if your daily life is relatively pleasant, you probably won’t care to practice to realize that your life is illusory. No one likes to be awakened from nice dreams.”

This is a bit like the story of a salesman who came across a man sitting on his front porch smoking a pipe. The salesman noticed a large hole in his house's roof and asked the man why he didn’t fix it. The man responded, “If it ain’t raining, there’s no need, and when it is raining, it’s too late.” The time to awaken is before the rains of suffering arrive.

Danger in paradise.

The fusion of two worlds

Sixteenth-century Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross wrote a poem that narrates the journey of the soul from it’s bodily home to its union with God. 

He called the journey “The Dark Night of the Soul,” because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of union with God. The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and fusion with God. The Christian experience assumes a soul separated from God that seeks reunion whereas the Buddhist perspective recognizes no separation. Instead, unification takes place when the conceptual image of a false self is replaced by the actual experience of selfhood.

However, it must be said, that the key Christian scriptural passage that speaks to this matter comes from the 12^th chapter in the Book of John verses 24-25 which says, “Very truly I tell you unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” 

This is the English translation of the Greek, which camouflages the actual meaning of true human life due to translation limitations, and this inaccuracy has lead to widespread misunderstandings. In the Greek, the first two uses of the word life meant soul—a conceptual equivalent of the self, and the latter meant the real self. The Greek word for soul/life was ψυχή better known as psyche, one of two manifestations of the source of life ζωή/zōē, the last Greek term used in this scripture.

How to understand this? When the soul dies the presence of God shines forth. Another word for soul is ego, thus death of the ego unveils the source, which is eternal (no birth/no death and unconditional). That being the case, ζωή is ever-present but something without conditions: thus unseen. ζωή can never be perceived, only experienced. On the other hand, the ego is an unreal image—an illusion of the self, which is clearly evident. Nevertheless illusions have a hard way of immediately subsiding; the memory passes slowly at the same time that the light begins to dawn. The seed grows slowly and remains separate as an idea but when it dies, unity with all things emerges.

Roughly a century following the death of The Buddha, his teachings had moved out of India, along the Silk Road and into the Middle East, arriving during the era of the Greek philosophers. Evidence of his understanding, regarding illusion, can be found in the writings of Plato in an allegory called Plato’s Cave. In this allegory Plato describes a tenable argument involving this fundamental illusion and the resulting consequences on those so deluded. He also addresses the duty and price to be paid by philosophers who attempt to shine the light on truth. In essence, Plato says that coming out of darkness and into the light involves both courage and pain.

Eckhart Tolle speaks to this process as follows: “It (dark night of the soul) is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.  The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.  Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.” 

Before, normal was egocentric and afterwards the center, begins to fade into a depressive, immature darkness. This is a stage of jeopardy and disorientation when we yearn for retention of our awakening yet can’t seem to grasp and hold onto what is our hearts desire.

The Buddha properly pointed out that to desire anything, even a lusting for enlightenment, is a sure prescription for suffering, and when we think about it, this makes immanent sense. Once true love is awakened, then only do we know for sure what it is. Up to that point, true love remains a product of our imagination; a wishful fantasy. But once we know, then we have a dilemma: what was previously a less than satisfying but acceptable idea, by comparison, now becomes a colorless and shallow experience that lives on as a not yet forgotten memory.

There’s a story is told in the Platform Sutra of a conversation held between Daman Hongren (fifth Chinese Chan patriarch) and Dajian Huineng (sixth Chinese Chan patriarch). Huineng was an illiterate, unschooled commoner who upon hearing the Diamond Cutter Sutra recited, realized enlightenment and subsequently sought out Hongren. When Huineng met the patriarch he was assigned the lowly job of rice-pounder, where he remained for many months before proving his worth to Hongren.

The conversation between the two was thus: Hongren—“A seeker of the path risks his life for the dharma. Should he not do so?” Then he asked, “Is the rice ready?”  Huineng— “Ready long ago, only waiting for the sieve.” Two questions, a single short answer which reveals the nature of enlightenment—both sudden and gradual. Sudden since the awakening happened quickly but fullness required the sifting of life’s sieve. The rice was ready but the lingering, residual chaff must be blown away by the winds of life.

In the words of the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.’ Sometimes when we awaken, we realize that how we have lived and behaved has simply been out of line and nonproductive. It is a painful experience to observe ourselves from a space of neutral honesty and watch as we often go out of integrity to appeal to mental images we have created, and hurt people we love in the process. This observation of the false ‘self’ we have created in our minds is one of the first steps of becoming ‘enlightened’ if you will, and in this observation there is no gaining taking place. There is only the crumbling away of what you are not.’”

It takes many years of continuing adversity before our dawning matures. Once the seed of awakening is planted, the world changes forever, there is no turning back to old ways, yet maturity takes a long time.  But, like Huineng, chaff of the old familiar way remains. It is natural once we awaken into the dawn of truth to retain the whisper of what is now dead yet lingers on in memory. And during this time we are in jeopardy, trapped between two worlds: one dead and gone, the other fresh and naïve, like an infant not yet able to stand alone with the indwelling spirit of eternity beating in our heart.

The dharma of a duck.

Ducks doing what ducks do.

The 1956 Broadway production of My Fair Lady was the story of Eliza Doolittle, an English Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist so that she can get a better job. 

Higgins makes a bet with his associate Colonel Pickering that he can remake Eliza into a well-born lady, rises to the challenge, but becomes frustrated along the way. He then complains to Pickering: “Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that! Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags! They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hags! Pickering, why can’t a woman be more like a man?” and thus echoes the age-old desire to have people become more like they want them to be.

The flip side of this story was depicted in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, relating the story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian—who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew—who runs to overcome prejudice. A critical moment occurs in the film when Eric Liddell losses himself in his running and accidentally misses a church prayer meeting. It was then that his sister Jennie chastises him and accuses him of no longer caring about God. Eric tells her that though he intends to return to the China Mission eventually, he feels divinely inspired when running and that not to run would be to dishonor God, saying: “I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Both of these stories, portray situations of misidentification. In one case, it is Eliza who isn’t satisfied with who she is (and is criticized because she doesn’t fit the bill of how Higgins wants her to be), and the other case, it’s Liddell’s sister who is discontent with how she thinks Liddell ought to behave. Each story addresses the matter of conforming to someone’s standard.

While neither story may seem to have any spiritual connection, these are concerns addressed in both The Bhagavad Gita and the Bible. In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna (the embodiment of God) tells Arjuna that he (Krishna) is the essence of all beings, and each being must live up to their created nature. And when they reject that nature, they are in effect rejecting God. “By devotion to one’s own particular duty, everyone can attain perfection. By performing one’s own work, one worships the Creator who dwells in every creature. Such worship brings that person to fulfillment. It is better to perform one’s own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By fulfilling the obligations he is born with, a person never comes to grief. No one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke.” In the Gita, “dharma” is used to mean something’s inner nature, which is manifested without an expected outcome. 

In 1st Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul instructs his audience concerning spiritual gifts and says, “There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” Paul continues his teaching by saying, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” The chapter concludes with the notation that when all parts function together the Body of Christ is the result.

Lest anyone think this shoe doesn’t fit and these admonitions don’t apply, ask yourself how many times do you experience having others express a desire that you be more like them (or their notion of how you ought to be), or imposing that same desire on others, wishing them to conform to your image. 

This desire to be someone other than what we were created to be is one of our greatest flaws. It is most unlikely a duck can ever be anything other than a duck. It is the duck’s dharma to be a duck, and it is our dharma to be who and what we are created to be, whether endowed with one gift or something very different. A duck swims, and we function as our inborn, essential dharma dictates, without apology or self-justification. When these dharmas are performed selflessly, it is the same as worshiping the majesty of unique snowflakes with the recognition they are created from fundamental, indiscriminate snow.

While cold, water turns into discriminate snowflakes, and when heated by the warmth of the sun, it returns, once again to the great sea of indiscriminate water. 

Wisdom of the lotus.

Symbol of enlightened purity.

Unfortunately, most in the West have not been introduced to the depth and breadth of Eastern wisdom. It is more than a little arrogant and presumptuous to imagine that we Westerners are the sole keepers of the world’s great wisdom. One of the most profound of all Eastern sources is the Lotus Sūtra. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to profit from human wisdom, regardless of source. “Wisdom by any other source remains wisdom.”

The Lotus Sūtra is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all sutras, or sacred scriptures, of Buddhism. In it, The Buddha discusses the ultimate truth of life. The Sūtra’s key message is that Buddhahood, the supreme state of life, characterized by boundless compassion, wisdom, and courage, is inherent within every person without distinction of gender, ethnicity, social standing, or intellectual ability. Awakening to this inherent wealth changes your life for the better.

Of significance, the name “Lotus Sūtra” is symbolic of how a lotus grows. A lotus emerges from beneath the mud, reaching upward through clouded waters (adversity) to the light above. When the plant reaches the surface, it blossoms into a beautiful flower. 

This is a metaphor for how the human mind is purified. The seeds beneath the mud are symbolic of karmic seeds, buried deep within the subconscious. Liberation (e.g., enlightenment) is how those seeds move from a dormant stage upward into a conscious state that can reach the state of a purified, transformed mind. Many statues and symbols of The Buddha show him sitting or standing on a fully blossomed lotus flower. The lotus represents a wise and spiritually enlightened quality in a person; it represents somebody who carries out their tasks with little concern for any reward and full liberation from attachment.

The Sūtra is a teaching that encourages an active engagement with mundane life and all its challenges. Buddhahood is not an escape from these challenges but an inexhaustible source of positive energy to face and transform the sufferings and contradictions of life to create happiness.

I’m sharing just one example (The Parable of the burning house, following), without editing or redaction. The parable addresses the idea of “expedient means”—an important aspect of Mahayana wisdom as a commentary on the rash of “white lies” currently rampant throughout our political sphere. In this parable, The Buddha is conversing with Shariputra, one of the foremost disciples of the historical Buddha. Shariputra experienced enlightenment and became an arhat while still a young man. It was said he was second only to The Buddha in his ability to teach. He is credited with mastering and codifying The Buddha’s Abhidharma teachings, which became the third “basket” of the Tripitika.

“Shariputra, suppose that in a certain town in a certain country, there was a very rich man. He was far along in years, and his wealth was beyond measure. He had many fields, houses, and menservants. His own house was big and rambling, but it had only one gate. A great many people—a hundred, two hundred, perhaps as many as five hundred—lived in the house. The halls and rooms were old and decaying, the walls crumbling, the pillars rotten at their base, and the beams and rafters crooked and aslant. At that time, a fire suddenly broke out on all sides, spreading through the house’s rooms. The sons of the rich man, ten, twenty perhaps thirty, were inside the house. When the rich man saw the huge flames leaping up on every side, he was greatly alarmed and fearful and thought to himself, I can escape to safety through the flaming gate, but my sons are inside the burning house enjoying themselves and playing games, unaware, unknowing, without alarm or fear. The fire is closing in on them. Suffering and pain threaten them, yet their minds have no sense of loathing or peril, and they do not think of trying to escape!

Shariputra, this rich man thought to himself, I have strength in my body and arms. I can wrap them in a robe or place them on a bench and carry them out of the house. And then again he thought, this house has only one gate, and moreover it is narrow and small. My sons are very young, have no understanding, and love their games, being so engrossed in them that they are likely to be burned in the fire. I must explain to them why I am fearful and alarmed. The house is already in flames, and I must get them out quickly and not let them be burned up in the fire! Having thought in this way, he followed his plan and called to all his sons, saying, ‘You must come out at once!’ But though the father was moved by pity and gave good words of instruction, the sons were absorbed in their games and unwilling to heed them. They had no alarm, no fright, and in the end, no mind to leave the house. Moreover, they did not understand what the fire was, what the house was, and the danger. They merely raced about this way and that in play and looked at their father without heeding him.

At that time, the rich man had this thought: The house is already in flames from this huge fire. If my sons and I do not get out at once, we are certain to be burned. I must now invent some expedient means that will make it possible for the children to escape harm. The father understood his sons and knew what various toys and curious objects each child customarily liked and what would delight them. And so he said to them, ‘The kind of playthings you like are rare and hard to find. If you do not take them when you can, you will surely regret it later. For example, things like these goat-carts, deer-carts, and ox-carts. They are outside the gate now, where you can play with them. So you must come out of this burning house at once. Then whatever ones you want, I will give them all to you!’”

At that time, when the sons heard their father telling them about these rare playthings because such things were just what they had wanted, each felt emboldened in heart and, pushing and shoving one another, they all came wildly dashing out of the burning house. The father subsequently presents each of his sons with a large bejeweled carriage drawn by a pure white ox. When the Buddha asks Shariputra whether the father was guilty of falsehood, he answers.

“No, World-Honored One. This rich man simply made it possible for his sons to escape the peril of fire and preserve their lives. He did not commit a falsehood. Why do I say this? Because if they were able to preserve their lives, then they had already obtained a plaything of sorts. And how much more so when, through an expedient means, they are rescued from that burning house!”

The Buddha explains his father’s similes representing a compassionate Tathāgata who is like “a father to all the world,” and the sons representing humans who are “born into the threefold world, a burning house, rotten, and old.”

“Shariputra, that rich man first used three types of carriages to entice his sons, but later he gave them just the large carriage adorned with jewels, the safest, most comfortable kind of all. Despite this, that rich man was not guilty of falsehood. The Tathagata does the same, and he is without falsehood. First, he preaches the three vehicles to attract and guide living beings, but later, he employs just the Great Vehicle to save them. Why? The Tathagata possesses measureless wisdom, power, freedom from fear, the storehouse of the Dharma. He is capable of giving to all living beings the Dharma of the Great Vehicle. But not all of them are capable of receiving it. Shariputra, for this reason, you should understand that the Buddhas employ the power of expedient means. And because they do so, they make distinctions in the one Buddha vehicle and preach it as three.”

Being able to release oneself from hardened, inflexible rules that bind, and adapt in the interest of saving those in jeopardy, may appear unethical to many. Still, it must be considered who benefits when living by the law’s letter instead of the spirit beneath the law’s intent. Clinging to fixed ideologies can be (and often are) dangerous, even if such ideologies are considered Holy. To do so is like the rich man’s children who would rather play with their toys than save themselves.

Where’s Waldo—Finding A Buddha

My daughter and I loved reading stories together. She liked it since she was fascinated by the stories. I liked it because I loved being with her. The stories were secondary to me, but to her, they were everything. And one of her favorite stories was Where’s Waldo. 

For those of you who don’t know, the Where’s Waldo series are books show page after page of illustrations of thousands of little people engaged in various activities, and within this mass of little people, there is only one little Waldo. The trick is to pick out Waldo from the masses. She loved this game and would squeal with glee when she found Waldo. 

The most challenging pictures (and thus the most considerable challenge) was when Waldo stood in plain sight. Everyone expects Waldo to be hiding behind a fence post, a tree, or a hundred other people, so to discover him in plain sight proves to be the most difficult.

Have you ever wondered what a buddha would look like if he appeared today among the masses? I have, and wondered if he would be wearing a long, flowing robe, have droopy ear-lobes with a URNA in the middle of his forehead? If so, it wouldn’t be too challenging to pick him out. However, expecting a buddha to appear in physical form would reveal my ignorance since “buddha” is not a name like Donald but is instead symbolic, meaning “to awaken,” in the same way that “Christ” is not the last name of Jesus.

Some years ago, during a sesshin, I saw a buddha among those gathered with me, so I know what he looks like. You’re probably suspicious and wondering, “Did he really see a buddha? Was it a phantasm?” Or perhaps you’re just thinking, “this guy has lost it and is really nuts.” Nevertheless, I did see a buddha. As I looked around the room at all those participating in the sesshin, I saw a buddha in each and every person, completely unaware they were a buddha. I looked out at the gorgeous autumn foliage and saw buddhas everywhere. I looked up and saw a buddha on the wings of geese flying south. Everywhere I looked, I saw a buddha just like Waldo in plain sight.

There are three seeming puzzles here. The first is we are looking but not seeing. I experienced the opposite this morning when David—the wonderful man who brings me coffee every morning—appeared at my door. When he came, I not only looked at his exterior, but I “saw” his heart of generosity, and I felt beautiful! Then I told him how special he was, and then he felt beautiful, even though I was wearing my bathrobe, and he was dressed in chef’s clothing. We get so busy and distracted by things that aren’t important that we don’t find buddhas in the masses who surround us. 

A second challenge is that we expect a buddha to appear in a specific and limited form. It didn’t matter to me that David was dressed in the clothes of a chef. What mattered was his golden heart of generosity. And yet a third is that we don’t take seriously what the dharma tells us—That the nature of a buddha is ubiquitous, unbroken, and infinite, awaiting release as a submarine emerges from the depths into plain sight. 

We hear that teaching and think to ourselves, “That irascible blob next to me can’t be a buddha. Just look how poorly he/she behaves. A buddha would never act like that.” Well, if a buddha were bound up in delusions, focused on, and exclusively concerned with the heartaches that others carry, and expectations beyond their plights, then perhaps he/she would act poorly. But such is not the case because the emergence of our awakened buddha transforms everything

I was sad when I saw a buddha in those next to me in the sesshin because they didn’t know of their hearts of gold, and unless they awaken, what good is that enormous, untapped potential? Our broken and disfigured world desperately needs more awakened buddhas. And when we notice, when we see what lies at their depths (and not just how they appear before us), and tell them how lovely they are, their buddha is released from bondage, even when they think otherwise. Each of us alone is just a single Waldo hiding among the masses, but if all of those non-Waldos suddenly turned into Waldo, it would be amazing.

Years ago, I participated in a global effort to map a particular strand of DNA (as a part of the human genome project). My participation occurred through what is known as meta-computing. The idea is ingenious. Some smart people figured out that millions of computers around the world sit idle with available processing time. If all of those computers could be networked using the Internet, it would expand the number-crunching capacity logarithmically. Even a single supercomputer can’t match the combined processing capacity of millions networked together. But this utilization only works when a significant number of people with computers, that sit idly by, choose to participate.

The same is right with all of us. When everyone is asleep and looking for a buddha somewhere else—most notably when they doubt such a thing as a buddha—no participation happens. Do they have an ideology that causes them to deny awakening? Do they instead imagine they alone are awake (but aren’t) and think others are just dumb? It doesn’t matter what doctrine someone holds. What matters is what is. And that is a matter of the heart, not what appears. 
It is really time for everyone in the human race to wake up, stop looking for a buddha behind a fence post, or a tree, and start contributing to the global network. When we look in the wrong places, a buddha will never be found, and the world will continue to suffer. Seeing the unseen is often a matter of observing what is right in front of our faces.

“Merge together with all things. Everywhere is just right. Accordingly, we are told that from ancient to modern times, all dharmas are not concealed, always apparent, and exposed.”
Simply Drop Off Everything—Zen Teachings of Hongzhi Zhengjue

Happiness

The secret of happiness.

Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief—The limerick, reflecting a child’s wondering: What will I be when I grow up? Every child thinks about that question. Every adult continues to wonder. It seems like a game of chance. 

The more important question, the one that is never asked, is not what but how. The “what” presumes the “how,” but it rarely works out the way we imagine. We really ought to think more about the latter and less about the former, since without understanding how “what”  becomes a game of chance.

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” So wrote Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

Every time I contemplate those words, an image pops into my mind of a mule trying to catch the carrot on the end of a stick attached to his head. The faster he goes, the faster the carrot moves away. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the pursuit takes us further and further away. The carrot is never eaten, and the mule starves in his pursuit.

It seems axiomatic that the fruit of whatever work we choose should result in happiness, if not immediately, then certainly after a time of diligence and perseverance. It’s the bargain we make, yet more times than not, the contract goes adrift. Could it be we are looking in the wrong direction? Forwards? Backward? Which way? How about within? And just maybe we need to first answer a more fundamental question of being because until we know who and what we are, we’re all chasing shadows and thinking all the while that happiness is a reward.

The highest wisdom says otherwise. This is what Krishna tells Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: 

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment, and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by the desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.”

Thich Nhat Hanh ends a talk in The Art of Mindful Living (Sounds True, 1992) with this: “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There is no way to peace; peace is the way. There is no way to enlightenment; enlightenment is the way.”

All right words, yet none of them will take us to happiness until we unveil our essential Selves (Atman). “Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be the unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential. Those who know the essential to be essential and the unessential to be unessential, dwelling in right thoughts, do arrive at the essential…We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”—The Dhammapada. 

Until such time as we awaken to our essence, our thoughts will be wrong, we’ll dwell on the unessential, happiness will remain a figment of our imaginations, and we’ll continue to chase the carrot.

To Have or To Be?

Is having the same as being?

It has now been sixty-three years since I sat in my high school algebra class. I remember very little of that room, except for one thing that has stayed with me and been a guiding light throughout my life. That one thing was a banner; my teacher hung above the blackboard that read, “He who perseveres attains the expansion.” 

I imagine she meant it as an encouragement to stay the course and learn algebra. I understood it in a much broader sense: as a way of living—to stay the course through adversity and never give up, particularly during times of extreme suffering. At the time, I knew nothing about psychology, religion, or spirituality but those words of encouragement took me into the realm of all three.

My childhood was a mixed bag of both suffering and fun. The fun part was an escape from the suffering, but I never really escaped until decades later, when, due to a crisis of major proportions, I entered the realm of self-understanding. And that led me to psychology, religion, and spirituality. I suffered, and I got to the point of readiness when I was desperate to fathom why.

I first became aware of Zen because rumor had it that the practice was all about understanding suffering and finding release. It did both. But I was unclear how and why, and that took me to psychology—Erich Fromm and Carl Jung, and ultimately The Buddha. 

Fromm’s ideas were very similar to those of The Buddha, and I came to realize something essential: people have a tendency to regard spirituality and psychology as two different matters, and I found that was not true. Both spirituality and psychology are concerned with a single matter: the human mind. 

Both Fromm and The Buddha recognized a dichotomy between “having” and “being,” but it was The Buddha who found the link that joined the two together, explained how and why they were linked, and found a solution that put being as the dominating force. I found myself agreeing with both that having (to excess) became a poisoning of the spirit, and there was a watershed moment in my life when what I thought was my spirit became broken, thus my quest to solve the dilemma.

To The Buddha, both “having” and “being” coexisted, but it was the illusion of a misunderstood sense of being (the ego) that overrode and blocked genuine “beingness.” Before dealing with the ego, there seemed to be no genuine “beingness” since this latter remained hidden beneath a perceptible ego, with its multiple dimensions of insatiable greed, simply because our awareness told us that “having” was “being,”—the more we had, the more real our sense of beingness. For me, the problem was, the more I had, the more corrupted I became, and the connection eventually imploded, leaving me with nothing but being, which was impossible to articulate since beingness was naked and without identification.

My life has been regulated by that basic principle of perseverance. I never understood the compelling force until I began my study of the mystics and enlightened psychologists. It is that force of self-determination that struggles to be free of bondage to things so dominating today. It is perseverance through thick and thin, good times and bad, never wavering from the desire to be free (as it did for me) that compels us all who don’t settle for things but demands for themselves self-actualization.

There’s a Youtube video of an interview with Erich Fromm. I encourage you to take the time and watch it, and as you do appreciate, this interview happened more than sixty years ago, yet the social and cultural conditions he described then are as real now than in 1958 (even more so).

Many people are off-put with mystical matters, thinking, “oh, that’s too unorthodox and not for me,” but everyone wants to understand themselves. Note that Fromm’s comments concerning people’s ideas concerning means becoming ends—A haunting premonition of today’s attitudes today. We have created a vacuous society that relies more and more on things and less and less on what matters—genuine beingness.

“As always, Erich Fromm speaks with wisdom, compassion, learning, and insight into the problems of individuals trapped in a social world that is needlessly cruel and hostile.”—Noam Chomsky.

Freedom

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

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

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

The opening hand of faith.

Many years ago, my teacher said that the process of awakening was like a hand that begins with a fist of fear and over time, through persistence and cleansing, opens like a morning blossom emitting fragrance and love…and then it becomes a fist again. This opening and closing continues time and again until one day, your hand remains open, fear no longer reigns, and you stay open, exposed, and vulnerable yet a blessing to the world. Then you are a suffering servant (e.g., Bodhisattva).

Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chödrön puts it this way: “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together, and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen—room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” 

Our hand opens when we feel safe and closes again when we sense fear approaching. Having neither optimistic nor pessimistic expectations are accepting the reality of life. There is room for it all. 

And one final observation: The cycle of opening and closing happens on a mortal level, yet when we truly awaken, the immortal part of us neither opens nor closes. Ordinarily, while awake during the day, we can open or close our eyes, but the eye of awakening to immortality is always on. Like a mirror, consciousness just is, reflecting whatever comes. It is fear and ignorance that clouds clarity and distorts true understanding.