The Warren Buffet axiom of spiritual wholeness.

That is THE question.

“If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.”—Warren Buffett

While nearly everyone is concerned about money right now, this is not a post about earning more or preserving what you may have. It is instead a post about not earning a living. I begin with that quote from Buffet because it aligns with the flip side of a spiritual principle that has made a difference in my life: 

“If your spiritual experience doesn't last 40 years, don't consider giving it credence for even 40 seconds.”

Of course, that’s only possible in hindsight after having lived an extended mortal life. Longevity comes along with a firm perspective that can only be established by looking backward and noticing two phases: 

• First is the phase of “chasing the white rabbit,” sparked by curiosity, wedded with the conviction that down a magical hole lies what Alice sought.

• The second phase answers Alice’s question of “who in the world am I ?” and despite her twisted journey, she says to the Queen of Hearts, “My name is Alice, so please your Majesty.”

What Alice doesn't learn, but we must, is that while Alice thinks she has affirmed her identity with a name, neither she nor we are a name, not even an identity. Our names may change, we may continue phase-one without realizing we are still on a quest to find ourselves, but no-one needs to go anywhere to find themselves.

But going on a quest is essential to have the experience that it is a trip to nowhere. Until then, we will continue the chase, or simply give up thinking we will ever honestly answer the question of “who in the world am I ?”. And that is where the flip side of Buffet’s investment philosophy comes into play. If we don’t give up, what all of us find is we are far, far beyond an identity, name, or any other means of defining ourselves. We are instead, contrary to the messages of our world, already complete, whole, and full of love. There is nowhere to go and nothing to possess that we don’t have already. That is not a fantasy, nor does it take place in “never-never-land.” Instead, it is real, and it takes place in “ever-ever-land.”   

“All beings by nature are Buddha,

As ice by nature is water.

Apart from water, there is no ice;

Apart from beings, no Buddha.

How sad that people ignore the near

And search for truth afar:

Like someone in the midst of water

Crying out in thirst,

Like a child of a wealthy home

Wandering among the poor.”

Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku’s Song of Zazen

 
As odd as this discovery might seem, our real nature is hidden beneath the one we think we are, as gold is hidden beneath what lies above.

Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me.

Who’s that in there?

I began posting to Dharma Space 10+ years ago, recognizing the task before me was an impossible one: Trying to convey with words and images that which can never be adequately accomplished. Ineffable matters are beyond description. 

Lao Tzu began his now-famous Tao Te Ching with this very thought: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

I chose this joisting at windmills for an excellent reason. I was (and am) persuaded that if I could influence just a few, with seeds of doubt that challenged preconceived, dogmatic stances (held by the majority), there was the possibility of making a substantial, positive difference in how we think about, and relate to, one another.

If you’ve spent any time reading and mulling over what I post here, then you’ll know that I don’t wed myself to any particular spiritual venue but instead take wisdom from wherever I’ve found it. My task is then to digest and synthesize these pearls and recast them in a way that a contemporary reader can grasp. I consider this an obligation since some may not have been exposed to the breadth and variety of spiritual practices I have. So my methods are, by design, an attempt to simplify something that can be a bit daunting. Consequently, I employ frames of reference understood by an audience that is more than likely far removed from my topic. Such is the case in today’s post.

Often we learn something within a given context (for example, grammar) and don’t apply it in a different context. It’s a bit like becoming accustomed to a person in one context and then finding them in another. When that happens (if you’re like me), you may find yourself saying, “I think I know that person, but for the life of me, I can’t recall from where.” Our memories are constructed in such a way that we file data under particular headings, and when we encounter something familiar, but out of context, we are disoriented until we can remember the file heading. Then we say, “Oh yes, that’s where I know them from.” Today’s topic is one of those I can’t recall from where, déjà vu re-positionings, only I’m going to fill in the blanks for you. And the context takes you back to grammar school.

I wasn’t very interested in, or good at grammar—all of those conjugations, parts of speech, and diagramming left me cold. But there was one part of this discipline I did find intriguing: subjects and objects. The rule was, as you may recall, an object was a noun—a person, animal, place, thing, or an idea. And similarly, a subject was what (or whom) the sentence was about. 

To determine the subject of a sentence, the rule was first to isolate the verb and then make a question by placing “who?” or “what?” before the verb, the answer to that question was the subject. Not so hard until you write a sentence like, “I see myself.”  That was a thorny problem because it had to be based on the presumption that the subject and the object were the same.

The clear and obvious conclusion was that if I looked in a mirror, what I would see was the objective part of me. But what part of me was doing the seeing? Was it not the subjective me? Later on (long after grammar school), I learned about the word “sentience”: awareness—a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness—which just happens to be universally distributed among all sentient beings in an indiscriminate, unconditional way. Then I wondered: Can an object lacking sentience be “aware?” Unless there was something else to learn, regarding stones and other objects lacking sentience, it seemed reasonably clear that the subjective part of me was the part seeing that objective me in the mirror. And furthermore objects lacking sentience can’t be aware of anything, much less themselves.

I must confess that putting these seemingly disparate pieces together was a moment of enlightening amazement. Obviously, inside of me (and every other sentient being), was an unseen faculty of consciousness that could rightly be called the subjective nature—but lacking ordinary definitions—that was exactly like every other sentient being: the seer seeing objects, including sentient objects, but not necessarily aware ones. All objects are discriminately unique and different, yet subjectively, there are no differences because sentience is a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.

Ah-ha, I thought: I’m two people perfectly fused into a single being. Remove the sentient part, then I’d turn into a stone or remove the non-sentient part, and I’d turn into a ghost. One part of me (the objective element) is 100% differentiated, unique, and set apart from every other object (like unique snowflakes). The subjective element is 100% undifferentiated, just the same as every other hidden subject (like fundamental snow). Melt the snow, and it all becomes H2O (water). This latter is the basis of unity (what brings us all together), and the prior is the basis for discrimination (what pits us all against each other). And neither the objective nor the subjective me (or you) could possibly exist apart from the other. These are not two but rather one, inseparable entity. Now that is pretty cool: ghost and a non-ghost, at the same time!

Castles in the sky of mind.

Our castle in the sky.

Imagine a house floating in space. In every direction outside the house, the same void exists. Our lives, as far as we know, exist solely within that house with no awareness that anything exists outside, nor are we aware that our house is suspended in space.

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and as our lives continue, our experiences are shaped by what we can perceive only. As life rolls on, we either grow accustomed to our limited familiarity, enclosed within our house, or we become dissatisfied. And, of course, eventually, the house (as all things do) wears out. 

Occasionally, very seldom I suspect, we yearn to know if anything lies beyond the limits of the walls, and when that happens, two doorways appear in the walls. A way out, and beyond, is suddenly available and we feel we must choose the right door, thinking one leads to a better place, and the other to a worse place. Either door leads to the unknown, and we fear to open the wrong door, and with a roll of the dice and great trepidation, we choose to open one but not the other. 

And as we fall into an infinite void, we find out it is neither good nor bad. It is just a void that enclosed our house and all houses. We can see the outside of our house and notice an innumerable number of other houses, all floating in space. What we could never know, is what would happen, for sure, had we chosen the other door. But now being on the outside, we realize that any and all doors lead to the same space—an unconditional realm of peace, harmony, unity, and muses singing songs love. 

All doors lead to the same space, and it doesn’t matter which door we choose. That house is your body and exists in the sky of mind—that which we know of as cosmic consciousness. So long as the house exists, you (the real you) live imprisoned, never realizing that you are in bondage with freedom a hair’s breadth away. 

Freedom is casting off the chains of the house and soaring in the infinite void of our collective, all-inclusive consciousness. Only then do we become aware of our bondage, and only then do we realize what freedom is truly. And eventually, we get another castle in the sky and forget the freedom we once had and will have yet again.

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.

The Little Red Hen, Redux

According to Wikipedia, The Little Red Hen is an old folk tale, most likely of Russian origin, that was used during the 1880s as a story that offered a transition to less blatant religious and moralistic tales while still emphasizing a clear moral. I have taken the liberty of reframing the tale in order to illustrate the spiritual evolution that raises one from selfishness to awareness of the Higher Self and unity with all. Following is the recast tale.

THE LITTLE RED HEN
Once upon a time, there lived a little red hen. She called all of her spiritual neighbors together and said, “If we plant these seeds, we shall eat the bread of truth. Who will help me plant them?”
“Not I,” said the cow.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did. 

The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.
“Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Out of my religious field,” said the pig.
“I’d lose my affiliation,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my comfort,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last, it came time to bake the bread.
“Who will help me bake the bread?” asked the little red hen.
“That would invade my spare time,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my right to quack,” said the duck.
“I’m a dropout and never learned how,” oinked the pig.
“If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, “No, I shall eat all five loaves.”
“Unfair!” cried the cow.
“Outlier!” screamed the duck.
“I demand an equal share!” yelled the goose.
The pig just grunted in disdain.
And they all painted picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then the farmer (The True Self) came. He said to the little red hen, “You must not be so greedy.”
“But I earned the bread,” said the little red hen.
“Exactly,” said the farmer. “That is what makes our free will system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he or she wants. But under our exclusive (an impossibility) earthly regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.”

And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, “I am so grateful, for now, I truly understand. When I eat, everyone eats with me. Before I have been the cow, the duck, the goose, and the pig.”

And her neighbors became quite content in her. She continued baking bread because she joined the “game” and got her bread free, which she ate with her Self, who just happened to be her united friends. And all the side-liners smiled. “Fairness” had been established and they came to know themselves, in the Little Red Hen.

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that the indiscriminate hen planted, reaped, baked, and ate together with her lazy friends.

So I end my reframed tale with voices of my own: Moo, quack, honk, grunt, and cock-a-doodle-do. I’ve been them all and just perhaps, so too have we all.

How high is the sky, how deep is the ocean of consciousness?

The depths of consciousness

The Buddhist concept of 9 levels of consciousness provides a great template for a life of transformative change. And it matters not at all what religion you choose. The teaching of the close interconnectedness of all living things is universal. It shows how changes we make for the better in our lives lead to positive changes in others. We are all connected like myriad cogwheels, which is true regardless of any religious affiliation.

It is doubtful that anyone questions the depth of the first five levels of consciousness since we use these 24/7 to interface with the outside world in which we live: Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are as deep as the vast majority go. And their world is understood based on these perceptible, objective measurements. The next level is the commingling (gestalt) of these five, and we know it as the “quotidian” (e.g., common/everyday) mind of thoughts and emotions. For most, these first 6 levels of consciousness are where we spend most of our time performing daily activities. 

Then comes a deeper level of consciousness of inward-looking rather than an outward orientation. This 7th level is what we would call the discriminating mind, concerned with the sense of self (ego) and our ability to distinguish between good and evil. Everything is separated, mutually exclusive, alienated between opposites, based on the first six levels of perception and processing, like an upside-down tree with roots in the air.

Deeper yet is the 8th level, where the seeds of karma from previous lives reside. This level is known as the Alaya-vijnana: The Storehouse Consciousness: the place where all the actions and experiences in this life and previous lives generated by the seven consciousnesses are stored as karma. It is the only level of consciousness that comes along with every mortal birth. This compendium level influences the workings of the other seven consciousnesses by coloring (biasing) the layers of consciousness above (e.g.,. metaphorically, rose-colored glasses). 

Because of the karmic seeds (Vāsanā) contained in the storehouse, one may die a premature death, be stricken with unexpected disease or inexplicable misfortune, be overcome by strong desires, aversions, and obsessions, can think and do things that one should never even imagine by the judgment of the level of morality of the ego. So strong is the influence of these seeds, a person may not wish to harm anyone and yet end up killing a hundred or a thousand people. He or she is, in fact, acting out to the influence of past karma contained in the karmic storehouse.

The base consciousness—the foundation of them all, is like the ocean floor. It is known as the ground of all being and is free from the impurities and filters of karma. Therefore, it is called the fundamental pure consciousness, without blemish of any kind (e.g., Vāsanā, based preconceived notions). This is the ground level basis of all life, and being free of impurities, it is known as emptiness (Śūnyatā in Sanskrit—the realm of Enlightenment). Upon this base lies the deep and the waves of change. Yet, unexpectedly, at this level, one finds within themselves a structure of wisdom and compassion, without limits). No ocean exists without both a base and the waters above. This level was illustrated in a parable told by Jesus in Luke 6:46-48 when the base is washed clean of what lay above.

The “how-to” exercise of genuine awakening to all levels is a matter of going within, plunging downward, deep through the depths of darkness, into and through the “mud” of the sub-conscious, facing and resolving the obstacles that block our true nature and thus releasing the seeds of loving-kindness. It is like the shaft of a lotus plant, reaching upward through the depths toward the sun. Becoming aware of the entire fullness of mind entails first dissolving the artificial sense of individual existence, as a single drop merges with the ocean. 

When you are set free from knowing who you are not, then immediately, faster than a bolt of lightning, you become Self-aware, not as an image, but rather that which you are truly: Identical to, and merged with, every other drop that constitutes the entire ocean of consciousness. This profound process concludes with the realization of inherent perfection, the ancient Greeks called teleos—completion or arrival.

Understanding our mind is essential to the discernment of our true nature, and without that understanding, we will remain vulnerable to the influence of the ignorant and despots. The father of Zen said this: “The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like the root of a tree. All a tree’s fruit and flowers, 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.”—Bodhidharma, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

Question: Does suffering have a positive side?

Someone close to me asked this question, and to give a proper answer, I found it necessary to first define some terms. 

Suffering is a mental/emotional response to not getting what we want. Next, I had to define who is experiencing this suffering and how this entity perceives a positive outcome. And by positive, I mean the perception of satisfaction.  Our ordinary way of answering this entity question is with the answer of me. Yet who is this me? And how is this me perceived or experienced?

By understanding the mechanics of perception, we can better understand how “I” becomes the core of corruption and sadness. Perception requires several dimensions. First, there must be a sensory system. We have five interdependent components of our system: sight, smell, auditory, touch, taste, and a thinking processor. Signals from each element are transmitted from objects to particular registry locations in our brain where they are identified, merged with other sensory dimensions into a gestalt, and coded into words and thoughts. For example, the object of a rose is fabricated into a mental image constructed from the merged registry’s of sight, smell, and touch, which is then labeled Rose.

The second aspect of perception entails observation of objects. For objects to be sensed, they must be distinguished from other objects, and to be understood, they must be differentiated (e.g., discriminated) into two opposite dimensions. An object is defined as an observable thing. Observation can be either physical or mental. An idea is a mental image (or object), whereas a rose is a physical object that becomes a mental image. The idea of a rose is different than an actual rose, and the word rose is different yet. Both the word and an idea are abstractions, or codes, to represent a real rose and both enable imagination and communication. To be perceived and understood, an object requires contrast (discriminate properties). For example, the idea of up only makes sense given the opposite of down; in opposed to out, a rose opposed to a non-rose.

The third and most important dimension of perception regards one who perceives (an observer) and the understanding that a true perceiver can’t perceive itself, since this perceiver has no observable properties or limiting identity yet can perceive anything objectively configured. This perceiver is our spiritual nature (versus our objective nature) and is understood as the true, unconditional mind. The mind is the locus of all perceptions, whereas the ordinary way of understanding the mind is a manifestation of the true mind (mental images, thoughts, and emotions).

Now we return to this idea of me. The same process of perception is involved with this me; only in the case of self-identification, there is no object to perceive except a physical body and a mental image of who we think we are: an ego or soul. In various traditions (religious, philosophical, etc.), the term “soul” was considered to be the psyche, from which the word “psychology” arises. The ancient Greeks expressed this as ψυχή, (e.g., Soul) and within the Buddhist tradition, it was known as Atman or Moksha. And it was understood in a similar fashion: The origin within human nature that produces mental images, thoughts, and emotions. Alternatively, the soul was understood as ego—the universal word for “I.” 

This mental image is now mostly understood as a totally fabricated, imaginary entity. Nevertheless, the image satisfies the requirement of being a conditional, discriminate object, which can be perceived by the one doing the perceiving. Thus there is an object of perception (self-image) and our spiritual being that is perceiving. It is essential to not confuse two terms: self and mind. Both the true Self and the true Mind are used synonymously. Neither has any identifiable properties since neither are objects. However, we have ideas about both. We imagine that the mind is the manifestation rather than the source. The distinction between a manifestation and the source is preeminent. 

The source of creation is vastly different from what is fabricated or created, just as a manufacturing plant is different from what is manufactured in the plant. The ideas we possess about ourselves are simply the product of imagination. Whether we label these ideas as ego/self-image or soul, they remain imaginary. We imagine a self that is an objective fabrication rather than who we truly are: The unconditional spiritual source. And as with anything else, there must be the two opposite parts that allow perception to occur. Importantly these two (self-image and the Self, represented by the image) are opposite in nature, just as up is opposite from down. The ego/soul is perceived, and we conclude, “that’s me.” But the ego is not the true self. It is a fabricated image to represent the self, and this ego is entirely unaware of the one creating and perceiving the image because the perceiver can’t be seen. The true Self is not conditionally objective; instead, it is unconditional without a limiting identity, which means that the true Self is identical in every sentient being, and is known as Buddha-nature. But to realize this within yourself is the antithesis of who we think we are. Meister Eckhart, perhaps the greatest of all Christian mystics—very close in his understanding to the most esteemed Zen Masters said: 

“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell.” 

Of course, he was speaking of cracking the ego to discover our true nature within. We, humans, are superior problem solvers, but we only solve obvious ones, and we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we are continuously satisfied, there is no perceived problem and, thus, nothing to solve. People live their entire lives, denying their own suffering. Still, suffering is unavoidable so long as we misunderstand our true, unconditional nature but instead see ourselves as a vulnerable and conditional soul or ego. Suffering then is the seed of motivation to learn both who we are not and who we are truly. 

The ego is continuously vulnerable to suffering and wrongly concludes that possessing one object (which, when lost) can be solved by possessing another object to replace the one lost. Thus, the ego is possessive and greedy. This never works since all things change. After experiencing this failing process over and over, the ego is overwhelmed, suffers continuously, and becomes angry, hostile, blameful, and often violent. This strategy ultimately implodes, and the ego tries a very different approach but is not quick to commit suicide and eradicate itself.

The problem all along is this process of perception and conclusion of judgmental discrimination, me vs. not me, good vs. evil, all of which are concerned with objects and judgment. At long last, after endless suffering, the ego/soul begins to die, and we pursue a path of true Self-emergence and unity with our source, which has no identifying properties. This death of what is fabricated reveals what has been there all along, as a clear sky is revealed when clouds move away and are characterized within different spiritual disciplines in different ways.

The Buddhist manner of addressing this process is nearly the same as the Christian manner. When The Christ was quoted as saying in John 12:24-25 (“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.”) he wasn’t saying anything significantly different than The Buddha when he distinguished between the Dharmakāya (body of truth as the source of all manifestations) and the misidentification of ourselves. Immortality encloses mortality. 

The question becomes, how to get rid of the conditional illusions or images we hold of ourselves and merge with our unconditional selves? How is this pragmatically accomplished? And the answer is to stop the process of abstract thinking (imagining) at least long enough to realize our true nature. The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as not thinking. Thinking, in simple terms, is the perception of virtual ideas and images. When we don’t think, what we are left with is the true Self-perceiver (The spiritual Mind) that is unified and unconditional (no discriminate properties). This true Self-perceiver is who all of us are, unconditionally and without limited identity. This is the essential conscious energy that permeates all life and is the place of constant peace and tranquility. This part of us never changes. It was never born, doesn’t die, and is without judgment. There is nothing to discriminate or judge since it is unconditional, unified, and whole.

In The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, he taught: 

“Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain.”

If there were no suffering, we would never search for the truth. It is anguish and suffering that goes on impelling us to reach beyond. This entire dawning of genuine, unified, Self-awareness (soul-awareness) could not happen without solving the problem of perceived suffering. Suffering alone provides the engine of motivation, and that is the value of suffering.

We are now deeply involved in a time when suffering is vast. Not only are we trying to survive a global pandemic, but we are also facing a warming climate that will ultimately mean our destruction, we are perhaps, at long last, coming to terms with racism, millions are now unemployed, losing their means of living and facing starvation. Hatred and violence are running rampid and the outlook, from a mortal perspective is grim. And yet, there is a rising tide of motivation to solve these issues. It may be the dawn of a time of significant transformation.

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.

In the world: enlightened social responsibility.

Covered with the slim of injustice

There appears to be a contradictory challenge in many spiritual pursuits. Picking and choosing often seem like resisting “just” action resulting from self-inflicted karma of the past. And by resisting, we attempt to alleviate our suffering by violating the principle of karmic justice, thus contributing to more bad karma and corresponding suffering. We rarely recognize how such suffering leads to the eradication of the ego and on to a higher level of spiritual life.

On the other hand, there is a temptation to avoid appropriate social responsibility based on the flawed notion that those who suffer deserve to because of their own past karma, and by interdicting this process we merely exacerbate their learning process, sparing them from spiritual advancement.—Side note: My significant other has a problem remembering this word, which means “to worsen.” Instead, she inserts the one word she can remember, that sounds the same but has a different meaning: masturbate, which significantly alters the meaning 😉. Closely aligned with this avoidance comes the matter of discrimination and judgment. We know that to discriminate between good and evil seems to necessarily involve judgment. So how do we walk this razor’s edge between enlightened social responsibility while not tampering with the karmic process leading to a heightened spiritual awareness?

There is a delicate balance between being in the world but not of the world: the fine line of being flawed and not flawed at the same time. To clarify this seeming dilemma, it is perhaps helpful to turn to a couple of ancient stories and a few contemporary examples. 

The first story concerns Huike the second Chán (e.g., the Chinese precursor of Zen) patriarch. He was a scholar in both Buddhist scriptures and classical Chinese texts. Huike met his teacher Bodhidharma (the first patriarch), at Shaolin Temple in 528 CE when he was about 40 years of age. Legend has it that Bodhidharma initially refused to teach Huike who then stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave all night until the snow reached his waist. In the morning, Bodhidharma asked him why he was still there. Huike replied that he wanted a teacher to “open the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings.” Bodhidharma refused, saying, “How can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would just be a waste of effort.” Finally, to prove his resolve, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma as a token of his sincerity. He was then accepted as a student, and Bodhidharma changed his name from Shenguang Ji (his secular surname) to Huike, which means “Wisdom and Capacity.” Try to imagine the depth of anguish Huike must have endured before this, that inspired him with such motivation and determination. Can any of us, in honesty, say that we show that sort of resolve?

Huike did not immediately display wisdom but instead struggled to find The Way. It took some years before he found the key that unlocked the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings. On one occasion, Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is anxious. Please pacify it.” Bodhidharma replied, “Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.” Huike said, “Although I’ve sought it, I cannot find it.” “There,” Bodhidharma replied, “I have pacified your mind.” Upon hearing this, Huike realized enlightenment.

The second story involves ten stages of the gradual-Chán-school (Soto) illustrated by Chinese Chán Master Chino Kukuan, who painted ten pictures illustrating the steps to emancipation. The movement from anguish to freedom has been depicted in many ways since Buddhism began to take shape, but, in essence, the key that unlocked Huike’s gate of the elixir of universal compassion is the same gate in these ten-fold stages. And that key entails a seemingly strange illusion: being liberated from the beginning yet remaining unaware until the true mind realizes it has never been imprisoned in the first place. If we are already whole, then we can’t become whole. Nevertheless, the quest to become whole and emancipated is an ageless and futile proposition because the true mind is what is doing the seeking. Trying to find your true mind is like looking for your eyeglasses while wearing them.

Ten pictures depict the search for an ox, an allegory for the search of our true nature. Although awakening is instantaneous, the practice, which precipitates it, may be experienced as occurring in a series of stages. This process may be understood as gestation and then suddenly birth. The ox-herding pictures are an attempt to aid the progress toward enlightenment by exemplifying certain steps, which begin in darkness and proceed in stages ending in enlightenment and a return to the world (which was never left). However, having gone through suffering associated with being in the bondage of the mind, the return is accompanied by a radically altered view of what is bondage and an appreciation of genuine compassion.

Now we are in the world, and the question becomes, “What role do we play in this vast drama of life?” Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? In our complex world, even attempting to determine how things are is a daunting challenge since all is changing at light speed. Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society? And to answer this thorny question, we turn to Plato and his allegory of The Cave. 

Plato wrote this allegory as a part of The Republic around 380 BCE. The larger purpose of The Republic concerned Plato’s ideas of justice, as well as the order and character of both a just man and a just city-state. The Cave specifically addressed the effect of education, and the lack of it, on our true nature. The allegory is structured as a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. The setting for the story involved people who have been imprisoned in a cave (their own mind), chained in a fixed position so they can’t move, with a fire at their back, thus casting shadows on the cave wall of themselves. They are left to see only their shadows and come to believe they and their shadows are the same thing.

The two, observe this situation while Socrates points out to Plato’s brother the despicable nature of the prisoner’s plight as well as the civil, spiritual, and political obligation by those who see the truth to those remaining in bondage. When the fact is pointed out, the prisoners lash out and excoriate those who wish to free them, claiming that they, instead of their intended deliverers, are right while their liberators are wrong. They would instead rather choose to remain chained and protect their convictions than to be set free. Such people surround us to this day, denying what is crystal clear.

Given this conundrum, Glaucon asks Socrates why the liberators need to endure the slings and arrows of the prisoners but instead just enjoy the truth and let those in bondage remain pleased and in bondage. And it is here that Socrates states his case for a just man and his duty to society. According to Socrates/Plato, a just man is one who has found the truth and rather than “taking the money and running” returns to honor his duty to assist those trapped in their ignorance, which just happens to be the same definition The Buddha offered for a Bodhisattva: a suffering servant (also the name given to Jesus).

The Cave conjures up the antithesis of just men in the contemporary characters of congressional members who do “take the money and run” and of Paul Ryan, who reflects the teachings of Ayn Rand, who saw little need for government. In his eyes, they are “takers,” dependent on the entitlements of government. This view continues to govern the sense of obligation by members of Congress to carry out their responsibility. The view of a just man and his duty to a society held by these gentlemen (and a host of others) was the opposite of the view held by Plato. Just let them eat cake (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, in French) is their mantra.

So back to the questions: “What role do we play in this vast drama of life.” Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society? To many, the answer moves along the path of self (ego) preservation and the easy way: the safe way where avoidance of challenges to their tightly held dogmas of destruction reign supreme. To them, there is a clear right and a corresponding clear wrong: “makers” and “takers.”  But there is another way: the way of the Bodhisattva who fights for the rights of those still in bondage, trapped by the shadows of the mind, despite the slights and arrows cast at them. They have seen the light of truth and know it is not theirs to possess. They gladly become suffering servants because they have been in bondage themselves and know in their marrow how ignorance is not bliss. When they see injustice, evil and self-destructive actions taking place, they do intercede and fight for those unable to fight against the tyranny of the mind and covered with the slime imposed on them by those who care only for their profit regardless of harm inflicted on others.

There seems to be a subtle and fine line between liberating people in physical bondage and bondage of the mind. We must fight for those who are physically imprisoned in one way or another, be it oppression of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion, finances, or any other form of unjust discrimination, yet recognize that until people are freed from the bondage of the mind, there will never be ultimate freedom and liberty for all. The mind is everything! We must be in the world but not of the world.  If we, who have endured suffering and found release, don’t help those in need, we too will continue as doomed to a hell we deserve.