Birds do it.

Here’s your basic Graduate Record Exam question: What event links the following people? The people are (not in any particular order): Max Planck, Cole Porter, James Clerk Maxwell, Mitch McConnell, Gautama Buddha, and Michael Faraday. 

And a second related question is, who was first to discover this point of intersection? Are you ready? You have twenty seconds to answer. Begin. (Sound of a clock ticking. Twenty seconds ends). Put your pencils down.

The correct answer is the principle of polarity. In 1900 Max Planck based his theory of quantum mechanics on polarity. Cole Porter wrote his song, “Let’s fall in love” in 1928, which is based on polarity (between love and the opposite). James Clerk Maxwell is accepted as the father of electromagnetic theory, which is based on the polarity of positive and negative charges. His theory, expressed in a paper titled On Physical Lines of Force was published in 1861. 

Mitch McConnell is the current senator from Kentucky and became famous for his polar opposition to Barack Obama and branded his party as the Party of No vs. Obama’s Yes we can. Gautama Buddha lived 2,500 years ago and discovered the fundamental principle of polarity as the governing force of everything (physical, spiritual or emotional) and expressed his understanding in the Dharma of dependent origination and corollary principle of everything/nothing (emptiness). And finally Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist, first isolated and identified benzene in 1825, which is likewise based on the chemical equivalent of attracting bonds of polarity.

Polarity is the fundamental principle, as Gautama discovered, of everything. Nothing can exist or be understood without this principle. It governs everything. Think about it: Love/hate, up/down, positive/negative, attraction/opposition, everything/nothing: the whole ball of wax (or not) is organized, held together, understood and energized by polarity. 

Contrast is central to perception and discrimination is being aware of one thing vs. another. Whereas discrimination sees things separately, unification brings them together. Duality and unity are likewise polar forces and bound together through dependent origination. Neither can exist without the other.

And yet, as powerful and ubiquitous as polarity is, it can be the most destructive of all forces. It can divide all people, result in the destruction of entire global systems, be the central ingredient of hostility, in weapons of mass destruction polarity can quite literally blow us all to kingdom come and be the ultimate force of our collective undoing. 

So here is the next GRE question. What is the central force that converts this power into a force of destruction? No time given for answering this question. The answer is something that is not real but is universally accepted as real. It is ego: the imaginary idea we hold of ourselves as being separate and special. Ego is the driving force of destruction: the corruptive force of meism.  It is this mythical force that stands at the center of polarity and keeps the forces of balance apart, and when ego is removed from this central position between opposites, harmony and power for the good of all is the result.

That awareness is the central premise of my second book: The Other Side of Midnight—The fundamental principle of polarity. If properly understood, polarity can be either the most positive, or the most negative force of all. That awareness can save your life, and mine, because if we don’t universally grasp the significance of polarity (and soon) we are all going down the tubes together.
“…birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, lets fall in love.” 

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. 

“Vision without execution is hallucination.”—Thomas Edison

Forwards or backward?

Two related issues: Vision and execution. One assumes vision comes first with execution following. There is, however, the opposite notion: First execution then the vision. This is clearly the difference between engineering and reverse engineering. The common coin presumption is that engineering depends on vision, and without that nothing can be created.

What would the other way around look like? It happens all of the time. Someone finds something and wonders, “How was this thing made?” Then begins a disassembly process, piece by piece, until the investigator finds out how the thing was made in the first place. But, you might say, “Yes but someone had to engineer the thing in the first place in order for reverse engineering to take place.” 

True enough, but the one doing the engineering doesn’t necessarily need to be another human being. If that was the case there would be no such thing as the science of physics, biology, or any other area of scientific investigation. Nature is full to overflowing with marvelous things being made, but not by humans.

So why am I pointing out this relationship? And what does this have to do with spirituality (which is the central focus of my writing)? The short and simple answer is because nothing is more concrete than a transforming, spiritual experience whether or not it can be explained, which it can’t. Everything I have been writing about for the past 20+ years is an attempt to do the impossible: To explain an ineffable spiritual experience that utterly transformed my life. An accurate explanation can’t be done, but I try nevertheless. It is akin to dancing around a fire without being consumed.

It took me nearly 30 years of concentrated study beyond that life-changing experience to reverse engineer it, and the best I have ever been able to do is like pointing to the light of the moon. The moon is real, not a hallucination, but it is not my finger either.

Spooky reality.

It’s quite amazing how physics is catching up to, and blurring the lines, between the age-old enemies of science and philosophy. Three articles have recently been published in respected scientific papers. One titled, “Quantum chicken-or-egg experiment blurs the distinction between before and after,”  the second reported on the “Nobel Prize Awarded to Two Quantum Physicists,” and the third “The Quantum Theory That Peels Away the Mystery of Measurement” occurred just three days ago.

All three make note of the growing consensus within the physics community that what Einstein referred to as “spooky” can be explained by a principle known as quantum entanglement that allows quanta, perhaps many thousands of miles apart, to reflect a mystical connection that defies rational logic, where before and after are not sequential but rather simultaneously connected.

This chicken and egg, logical, conundrum was postulated, under a different name, nearly four millennia ago in India with the principle of “dependent origination”—Pratītyasamutpāda in Sanskrit.  It is a very simple principle to understand philosophically but, until now, made no logical sense. But then neither did the chicken and egg puzzle. 

At the simplest of philosophical levels, consider “up” and “down,” neither of which can exist without the other. When up arises, down arises simultaneously. When one disappears, the other disappears simultaneously. So too a mother and a child (e.g., chicken and egg). A mother can’t possibly be a mother until the instance of birth since that is how we understand the difference between a mother and a non-mother woman. Before that point of creation, a woman was not yet a mother.

The philosophy takes this a step further (as physics may one day) by pointing out that the nature of one thing is conjoined with another of a completely opposite nature; thus conditional and unconditional. Conditions (the realm of physics) are constantly in motion, even at the quantum level, whereas the unconditional (the realm of metaphysic) never changes, and just like chickens and eggs, one can’t exist without the other. Before the big bang, there was nothing, yet out of Singularity came everything—total opposites.

There are broad and meaningful implications to the latter philosophical observation, concerning the survival of the human race. And these implications takes us into human self-understanding that could save our collective behinds, but only by opening the door and embracing this new/old notion of universal connectivity: We are all different, yet exactly the same, simultaneously. Spooky! Yet not.

Getting to the other side

If I were wishing to cross a river to the other side I would need some means to get there. Maybe I would choose a boat and oars and propel myself across. But before I went to the trouble of obtaining the boat and oars, and expending the effort to cross, perhaps I might consider why I want to cross in the first place. Maybe someone has told me that on the other side it’s a better place than where I stand and I decided that they might be right.

The point is that we do things like moving from point “A” to point “B” for what we consider to be good reasons. We can’t know for sure whether or not our reasons are valid until we make the trip. Then only can we know, because we then have an actual experience of the other side to compare with the opposite shore. We refer to this as “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence.”

But as we all know, oftentimes the grass is not greener and then we have an embarrassing conundrum to deal with. Do we acknowledge this error in judgment, and attempt to come to terms with how we made the error? Or maybe we take another tack and pretend that the other side really is greener (when it is actually not) to justify our actions. Many people are remiss to acknowledge an error, feeling the pain of a diminished ego and humiliation. Rather than take the hit they choose to deny reality and continue to make the same mistake over and over again. Does this sound familiar? It should since we are living in a time when error upon error is being made, with no admission of wrongdoing.

This line of thought is leading to a discussion on crossing the river from “carnage” to a better place and the presumptions we use to support the making. In standard Buddhist practice, the presumption is that we move toward enlightenment by embracing a given set of precepts that we believe will purify our being and thus facilitate an experience we think of as enlightenment. If we have never crossed over we can only guess about the turf on the opposite shore. Maybe it will be greener and maybe not. But how would we know until we actually cross over? Perhaps the presumption is correct—that precepts produce the desired effect. But of equal value is to question the trip and the means to get across.

The Buddha probably wrestled with this predicament and learned through experience that his presumptions were flawed. His own prescription didn’t work. The more important question is a matter of order. Did The Buddha’s enlightenment come following the formula, or did the formula follow his enlightenment? This question is rarely considered but it is “the” question. Is it possible, for anyone—The Buddha included—to manifest ultimate goodness while enslaved within the grip of an ego? Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Or does genuine goodness and the evidence arise together?

The presumption of cause and effect (e.g., karma) leads us to examine in this way—Goodness (cause) and enlightenment (effect) or, enlightenment (cause) and goodness (effect)? One side of the river is a corrupted nature (an ego) which may desire to do good but is lacking the capacity, and on the other side of the river is the well-spring of goodness, but is lacking the arms and legs needed to propel us across. So long as anyone thinks in this divided manner they will never be able to move, much less across the river. Why? Because motion—any motion, and particularly the motion of enlightenment—is not a function of division but of unity.

The Buddha’s enlightenment occurred once he had surrendered from the Gordian Knot—the insolvable quandary which demanded this choice between cause and effect. Should he choose the side of ultimate goodness? Or ultimate depravity? That dilemma still stands as the ultimate challenge and there are no options to solve it today that didn’t exist in the time of The Buddha. The answer today, as then, is let go. It is not now, and will never be, possible to untie this knot by traveling a path other than The Middle Way. 

Goodness and the well-spring of Goodness arise together and disappear together. We are both at the same time, or we are neither. Not cause and effect, but rather cause-effect. We can’t earn goodness from the center of self because self serves self alone. When we exhaust this center, goodness bubbles to the surface naturally. It can’t be forced upward through the filter of ego. That plug is too strong to allow passage. When it is removed the flow begins, and until that happens the only movement which can happen originates from the ego.

And then we discover that enlightenment is not one shore against the other shore. Enlightenment is both shores and the river and all of life. It is not a destination but rather an experience of goodness which flows naturally, but only when the obstacle is removed.

The chicken or the egg?

Which comes first?

A fellow seeker sent me a private message concerning the limitations of language. The person will remain incognito except to say they are from an East Indian culture and is therefore a Kalyanamitra (the Sanskrit word for spiritual friend).

To reply to their inquiry I’d like to explore the paradox of the chicken/egg. This paradox has confounded human intelligence since the first consideration. It seems obvious that one can’t come before the other but how we wonder, is it possible to solve this paradox? It is indeed a puzzle, known as a tangled hierarchy that arises when by moving in one direction we return to where we began. From a conditional perspective, there is no way to solve this puzzle since one of these (either the chicken or the egg) is contingent on the other. So long as we continue thinking in the cause and effect way, we remain in the trap of conditions. But how else can we think? So long as we are confined within the sphere of conditional reality there is no other way of thinking; one thing leads to what seems to follow but can’t.

The same sort of paradox applies to philosophy: A pathway to follow that will lead us to the assumed desired end. The issue that turns both of these upside down is the limitation of reality that is constrained purely within the bounds of conditions or said another way, within the constraints of dependencies or contingencies. And why should we accept these constraints?

The interdependent nature of conditional life points clearly to contingencies and conditional dependencies, at least that part of life that appears. But the more central issue is this business of appearances. Is it possible that appearances are likewise contingent upon non-appearances? Rational logic confirms that only at the moment of conception, both a mother and a child come into being. How is it possible for a woman to be a mother without a child? And how can a child exist without a mother? Such things are obvious but what is not obvious is the relationship between appearances and non-appearances.

If we can substitute equivalences we might make some headway in grasping this seeming conundrum. In the study of mathematics, we are taught that things that are equal, are likewise equal to other things that are equal. Thus if A=B and B=C, then A equals C as well. So let’s give this a shot: Let’s call “appearances” conditional and “non-appearances” unconditional. Now we have the material for some spiritual math. The law of dependent origination says that nothing exists independently. Instead, things arise together (and are only understood) given a contextual framework. Thus the color black can only exist and be understood given the contextual framework of non-black and this understanding helps us to solve the chicken/egg, appearance/non-appearance problem.

The Buddha, and later Nāgārjuna, correctly stated that neither essence nor non-essence exists independently. So what does this have to do with the conditional and unconditional paradox? Actually, it is not so difficult to grasp so long as we accept the rule of dependent origination because that rule says that neither conditional reality nor unconditional reality can possibly exist as independent matters. We can’t of course detect anything unconditionally, since by definition conditions rely upon other conditions to be detected.

All conditional matters are detectable and we call such matters measurable dimensions of form. But what about the opposite of form: No-form? Can any form exist without an opposite? The Buddha said no. In fact, he said that form is the same thing as Śūnyatā (emptiness). In the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra, the  Buddha said, “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” 

Now lets’ return to the equivalency arrangement. Which comes first: a pathway (philosophy) that leads to an end? Or an end that leads to a philosophy (e.g., a sort of reverse engineering)? As a side note, this is somewhat like the politician who notices where his constituency is going and rushes to the head of the line to proclaim leadership. Suppose that the end and the beginnings are one and the same thing? Suppose that at the level of unconditional reality there is no difference between a beginning and an ending?

How can there be such a difference since detectable differences require other detectable differences (or so it appears)? But appearances aside, conditional reality and unconditional reality arise together and the unconditional dimension of every sentient being lies at the heart of us all. It is that dimension that lures each and every one of us away from attachment to material matters that seem to define us. It is that very indefinable heart of wisdom and compassion that says to us all “is this material world all there is? Must I become content with this despicable reliance on competition, alienation, hostility, and greed?” 

As good as any philosophy might be, it can never touch that undetectable heart. For any philosophy to be of ultimate worth it must begin following the realization of our true, indefinable nature of perfection. Otherwise, the path will lead us back to where it all begins (yet never begins, or ends) and then we will realize there is no path to lead us to where we are already and have never moved away from. My Kalyanamitra asked a question for which there is no acceptable conditional answer and to even attempt such an answer would be disingenuous. Perhaps if they can grasp the significance of this reply, which moves the discussion beyond the realm of conditions, they will look at the question in a more enlightened way.

Ideas and what ideas are about

Ideas about ideas

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

On the left side of our brain is the image factory, creating thought images, and on the right side of our brain is the watcher of the images. It’s a marvelous system, and both sides must function together. But since we have two sides, responsible for different functions, each side does things differently. The left side thinks in language (coded images). The right side “thinks” in pictures (interpreting the images). The left side talks but doesn’t understand, and the right side understands but doesn’t talk. Together the two sides make a great team, but individually they make for bad company.

The problem with our world today is that we are predominately left brain analyzers and have not been trained to make sense of what’s being analyzed. Education (in a normal sense) trains our language and analytics capacities but ignores our capacities that enhance compassion, creativity, and insight. Consequently, we are out of balance aggressors, dominated by our egos, and unaware that we are creating an abstract and unreal world that is progressively more violent and hostile.

The problem with identity is that we assume that an objective and independent watcher is doing the watching. We label that watcher as “me”—a self-image (otherwise called an ego). But here is where this must lead. So long as we see an image of ourselves, that image (ego) can’t possibly be the watcher because the watcher can’t see itself. So long as we see any images (self-image included), there is a difference between what is being watched and the watcher.

Some time ago, I read Paul Brok’s book “Into the Silent Land,” and wrote about what he had to say. Broks is an English neuropsychologist and science writer. The astonishing thing about our mind was laid out in these terms:

“That, which is basically inanimate ‘meat,’ can and routinely does animate with consciousness, cognition, imagination, feelings and every other aspect of our mental condition seems to float by as a given.” Due to FMRI imaging, it is possible to see certain parts of our brain light up when various thoughts and emotions are being processed. He observes that nothing remotely resembling any of these functions is found when a brain of a cadaver is dissected. It is indeed a mystery, yet we know neural activity occurs as abstractions of reality, but nobody can actually “touch” what is real.

The true person has no image dimension because all images are objective, whereas the true person is subjective. Subject/Object—Two halves joined together into a single real thing. One part can be seen (an image), and the other part can’t be seen (the watcher of the image). An image isn’t real. It just looks that way. The part that is real is the part that can’t be seen.

Digestion

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. If that is the case, then my life is worth it because examining is my passion.

Some think of life as one long process of digestion. Stuff gets shoved in one hole, time expires, and processed stuff comes out another hole. Not much thought about where the stuff comes from, how the holes got there in the first place, nor where (if anywhere) it all goes afterward. Actually, it’s not a bad metaphor. It just needs some fine-tuning and some critical thinking. So let’s break it down and do some examining together.

First, the holes: Let’s begin with one of those chicken and egg things. Which came first? Believe me, there is no logical answer by thinking inside the box. Both chickens and eggs are in the box. So what’s outside. Obviously, something beyond poultry. It’s sort of like the mother and child thought. When does a mother become a mother—Before of after a child? If before a child, then it may be a woman, but it’s not a mother. If, after a child, then how can a child be here first? Again, outside the box.

Getting outside is something that Siddhartha (The Buddha) and Nagarjuna (the 14th Patriarch of Buddhism) were really good at. And the reason they were is that they didn’t just think about being outside; they were outside and looked back to the inside. Ever wonder what that must look like—from the outside looking in, versus the ordinary view of being inside and trying to get out? It did and does make a difference when you can see the whole picture instead of a one-sided piece.

So what did they see that might be of use to us wannabees? What they saw and I have been trying to share (somewhat unsuccessfully) is that our view of life is inverted. What we see is what an old friend of mine called “seeing the inside of your own eyeballs.” Our view is severely constrained by the insane notion that the holes (and the stuff that goes in and out) just came into being all by itself, with no links to anything beyond. Our view is obscured because of what advertising folk calls “noise level.” In that business, there is a huge challenge in figuring out how to stand apart from the crowd of others who are also trying to stand out from you. It isn’t an easy task. What we fail to realize is that we are walking-talking noise machines almost all of the time, only the noise is not “out there” it is in here (buzzing brains: Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz). We are watching home movies nearly all of the time, and there is nobody home.

The amazing thing is that when we turn down the noise level—it can be done—we don’t just disappear. When our minds quiet down, what can be discovered is that there is some pretty incredible wisdom behind the cacophony, which is just waiting to get a turn. 

I’ll share just one tiny pearl here and reserve others for later: A ladder with one leg. No buyers? What’s so difficult about a ladder with one leg? How about the obvious: It wouldn’t stand. That seems so simple, doesn’t it? Even a three-year-old child can see the obvious problem. Yet we act like such a thing makes sense all the time, only we don’t call it a ladder. We call it “independence”: 

A one-legged ladder that stands by itself against a non-existent wall. Neither makes more sense than the other, so what is the alternative? How about two legs and a wall? Translation: The alternative is interdependence (two legs, at least—actually, there is an infinite number of legs) set against the wall of transcendence (meaning that while the wall is there, we just can’t put defining characteristics around it). If there were no walls, it would just fall down, even with two legs, or more. Before leaving this inaugural blog post, I would ask you to read a closing verse from Nagarjuna:

Like the flame of a lamp
The flow of matter and mind
Neither ends nor never ends.
This would end
If mind and matter failed to flow
From the dying of their past;
It would never end
If mind and matter failed to flow
From a past that never died.
If half this ended and half did not,
I would both end and never end,
Leaving half the grasper
Dead and half undead,
Half the grasped destroyed,
Half undestroyed.

It doesn’t get much better than that.