Core principles

Certain core principles define any human endeavor, and this is true of Buddhism. One of the core principles is dependent origination which underscores nearly all Buddhist thought. Another is impermanence. Another core principle is emptiness, which is an aspect of dependent origination and serves as the basis for the Heart Sutra—Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form.

To many, this equality between form and emptiness is confusing. It seems impossible that perceptible form can be the same thing as emptiness, which is imperceptible, yet the Heart Sutra tells us they are the same. Dependent origination helps us to understand, which says that nothing exists as a mutually discrete entity, separate and apart from anything else. Instead, things arise and cease to exist simultaneously—Rain and water are one; a mother and a child are one. Neither rain nor a child can exist separate and apart from a source. These are just two examples among an infinite set of pairs. The ultimate pair is form and emptiness; Nothing is more fundamental than that—Everything else is a subset.

It would be impossible to separate rain from water or a child from a mother. This is easy to understand. What is not so easy to understand is that all forms are paired with emptiness. Buddhism teaches that all phenomena are impermanent and simple reflection affirms this. Nothing lasts, and clinging or resisting the impermanence of form creates suffering; thus, bliss is not found in phenomenal life. So, where is there a source of hope? Our hope lies imperceptibly beneath impermanence at the heart of decay. And what is that heart? Huang Po (Japanese—Obaku; 9th century China) was particularly lucid in his teaching about this. In the Chün Chou Record he said this:

“To say that the real Dharmakaya (the Absolute) of the Buddha resembles the Void is another way of saying that the Dharmakaya is the Void and that the Void is the Dharmakaya...they are one and the same thing...When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha...the void is not really void but the realm of the real Dharma. This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning...this great Nirvanic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.”

From Huang Po’s perspective, there is a bonded connection between phenomena and this One Mind—They too are the same thing. Neither can exist apart from the other. Hear what he said about his connection...

“To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe. Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of Mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void, yet this Mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this, I mean that it does exist but, in a way, too marvelous for us to comprehend. It is an existence which is no existence, a non-existence which is nevertheless existence.”

“To the ancients, to find the true essence of life, it was necessary to cast off body and mind. When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha.” In an unexplainable way, Mind is no-Mind, which is, of course, the Heart Sutra teaches—Form is emptiness. This Void/Emptiness is the ground out of which impermanent forms arise. It is Buddha-nature (Buddha dhatu—womb of the Buddha: Our essential nature). And the pearl of hope contained in this understanding is that while phenomenal life blows away like dust in the wind, our true nature never passes away. Our intrinsic nature is both natural (phenomenal and finite) and transcendent (noumenal and infinite). We are both form and emptiness. To savor, just the impermanence aspect of Zen without transcendence is to suck on an empty clamshell and imagine a full stomach.

Discrimination

Discrimination is understood as both an aspect of reality and something we should avoid. On the one hand, we are taught to be discriminating—to choose wisely one thing and not another. On the other hand, we are aware that to discriminate unwisely—against one group of people in favor of others—is a form of undesirable bias. The obvious key to these opposite perspectives is discernment guided by wisdom.

One of the premier Mahayana Sutras—The one Bodhidharma considered as foundational—is the Lankavatara. The surprising teaching of this sutra is that there is no such thing as discrimination within the framework of genuine Nobel Wisdom (Ultimate Reality)—these are presented as polar opposites. This teaching clearly states that discrimination (of any kind) is a manifestation of ignorance; of misinterpreting what we perceive as real and not understanding that perception occurs in the mind. The Buddha said that it is like seeing one’s own image in a mirror and taking the image as real, or seeing the moon reflected on the surface of the water and taking it to be the actual moon. To see in this way is dualistic whereas to see truly is a matter of Oneness revealed within inmost consciousness.
However, short of this unity, our fashion is to grasp the illusions and become attached, forever discriminating and thus never attaining tranquility. “By tranquility is meant Oneness, and Oneness gives birth to the highest Samadhi which is gained by entering into the realm of Noble Wisdom that is realizable only within one’s inmost consciousness.”

“Not realizing that the perceived world is only something seen of the mind itself, the ‘ignorant and simple-minded’ cling to the infinite vastness of external objects as this vs. that, imagining that they have a self-nature of their own, and fall into habit-energies based on false imagining. The result of this ignorance is minds which ‘burn with the fires of greed, anger, and folly,’  (e.g., the nature of an ego) finding delight in a world of multitudinous forms, their thoughts obsessed with ideas of birth, growth and destruction, not well understanding what is meant by existence and non-existence, and being impressed by erroneous discriminations and speculations since beginningless time, fall into the habit of grasping this and that and thereby becoming attached to them.”

When, by virtue of our discriminating minds, we are attracted, we cling. And when we are repulsed we resist. In our mind the world is ordered by objects which we like and don’t like; actions which we endorse and those we repudiate; thoughts which we desire and bring us joy and others we wish to avoid. We see the external, objective manifestations (forms) and go completely unaware of the unseen emptiness which undergirds all forms. Because of this, our nature is to cling to objective symbols of reality—names, signs, and ideas; as our mind moves along these channels, feeding on multiplicities of objects and fall into the notion of an ego-soul and what belongs to it; making discriminations of good and bad among appearances and cling to the agreeable. As we thus cling, we oppose the truth of our ignorance and therefore are trapped in karma born of greed, anger, and folly. The accumulation of karma then goes on and we become imprisoned in a cocoon of discrimination and are unable to free ourselves from the rounds of birth and death.

The beginning chapter concludes in this way... “In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?”

Perpetual Motion

Our daughter tried for a long time to build a perpetual motion machine from her Legos. She wasn’t the first to give this a shot, but as attractive as the idea seems, no one has succeeded. The physical law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can’t be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form into another. In that conversion, the generated energy must never fall below the energy used to keep the motion going.

I’ve often wondered about the fit between a perpetual energy machine and the way our minds function. The parallels are insightful and instructive in understanding the meditative process. We have a machine within us that manufactures products that are then converted into energy used to fuel the machine, which produces more products in a never-ending feedback loop. The machine in question is the self, which for illustration purposes, let’s call a “thinker.” This thinker manufactures the products of thought, and these thoughts are used/converted by the thinker-machine into energy, which sustains the self-thinker. In a pure sense, this process is a perpetual motion machine. The critical question is whether or not the energy used is equal to the power generated?

Taking this process apart can be quite educational in guiding the meditation practice. What happens on the cushion? It goes like this: We sit down and turn on the machine. It begins to think. 

Actually, the machine is already on (it’s always running), but we just become aware when we sit down. Because we are mindful, we notice the object/thoughts. Because we have given our self, the instructions: (1) when we notice these object/thoughts, we neither cling to nor resist (forms of attachment), but (2) will instead concentrate on the breath. This works for a while, and then (3) the machine starts up once again. We repeat steps 1 thru 3, and then the cycle continues over and over. 

Some times we have a hard time even getting to the first step but instead are caught up in the pre-step #1 conversation because we are not sufficiently mindful to even notice the conversation. Other times we are mindful but not sufficiently concentrated. Yet other times, we can stay within the boundaries of steps 1 and 2 and rarer, yet the machine just stops with no more object/thoughts being manufactured. When that happens, the thinker goes on vacation, and we enter samadhi.

This machine operates according to a set of dynamic “instructions” within the five skandhas framework, which is worth considering. The first of the five is “form”: The physical/psychic/emotional capacities which constitute what sits on the cushion. The second is “feeling.” This includes sensations that our form feels with its functions. Accordingly, these feelings can be physical, mental, or emotional sensations. The third skandhas are “perceptions.” 

Ordinarily, we think of perception as being equivalent to sensing. It is hard to imagine sensing something which we don’t perceive (or vice versa). However, from a Skandhas point of view, perception includes a post-sensing aspect, which entails discrimination and judging; in other words, how we react to what we sense. We sense (become aware of) a particular object/thought, we vote on whether or not we like/don’t like the object/thought, and we move on to the fourth skandhas “will or volition,” where we choose how to react (cling or resist). 

And lastly, there is consciousness, what we could call mental state or mood. These dynamic instructions are operating continuously and are a critical aspect of what moves the “machine.”

It is not a given that these causal links must continue automatically in an unbroken fashion. In fact, the Heart Sutra tells us that these five are empty, which means that they don’t have a life of their own. They are causally linked, and they can be interdicted through mindfulness and redirected concentration. 

For example, a sensation in the knee is not pain. “Pain” is the result of the post-sensing aspect of discrimination, judging, and labeling. The feeling is just a sensation that we perceive, judge, label, choose how to respond, which then generates a mood. This entire chain of causal links occurs at lightning speed—so fast that it seems like a single thing, but it is not. 

When we sit and observe, we can see the separate links happening and realize that we don’t have to go along for the automatic trip. Try it the next time you sit. Observe the process and see if you can make a different choice. For example, if your knee is hurting, try to just stay with the sensation without turning it into a vote of “pain.” Just focus on the pure sensation and choose to not move. If you can cut the chain at this juncture, the remaining links will not materialize because they depend upon what occurs before their turn. For example, without the judgment of “pain,” there won’t be the next step of volition and without volition, no ensuing “mood.”

What this mindful/awareness/choice teaches us is that we can choose to alter our karma. We don’t have to accept our automatic instructions and the resulting karma that flows from our perpetual motion machines. Either we will run the engine, or it will ruin us.

The First Step

The Eight-fold Path is a road map for traveling from suffering to awakening. From a certain perspective, it is about traveling to Nirvana. But from another perspective, it is not a journey since there is nowhere to go from and nowhere to go to. This sounds like double-speak, but it is not. The keyword in these statements is perspective.

Suppose we are at a destination but don’t know. For whatever reason, we are confused. Maybe it is a case that we awaken from a dream into a fog bank so thick that it is impossible to see the nose on our face. In the dream, we imagined that we were at some other place, and when we awaken, we retain this dream. In such a state, we travel out of one dream into another. There seemed like a far-distant destination from this deluded perspective, but when the fog lifts and a new perspective emerges, we realize we have never left.

This is a non-journey or a journey depending on the perspective, either with or without the delusion of dreams and fog. It is important to know our beginning, as well as our destination. In the vast majority of cases, suffering results from being lost in the fog of delusions without realizing that we are already home. We lust for what we have already, but in ignorance, we are like people who die of thirst while in the vast sea of bliss. It is worth noting that to know you’re crazy, you must be sane. And to think you are sane, you must be crazy since you can neither think your way into sanity nor know you are crazy when you are.  “A fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.”  

We imagine ourselves in poverty only because we are not aware of our source. In such an imaginary state, we have no ability to harness abundance. Abundance, continuously available through the dharmakāya, can only be accessed through our physical form. And our physical form is nothing without the infinite, always-full, never-ending, well-spring of dharmakāya. 

These “aspects” of Buddha-Nature are inexorably joined and glued together through our spiritual aspect. The confluence of these three aspects is known in Buddhism as the “Trikaya”—the unseen/ever-lasting dharmakāya physical embodiment and spiritual dimension. From the perspective of dharmakāya, nothing is lacking. There is no suffering and nothing but the unending bliss of Nirvana. This is the Eight-fold Path destination, yet it has always been with us. Our beginning point for the journey is the dream-state and fog, and it is the task of the Path to remove the delusions which obscure the truth of our existence and allow us to see that we are already home.

Like any road map, it’s important to have the correct perspective or “viewpoint,” which is why the first step on this journey is the Right View. Without the correct view, it will be a case of the blind leading the blind, traveling forever and getting nowhere. From one perspective, this is non-dharma dharma. It is not a truth or teaching since there is no truth lacking, no teaching to be taught, no teacher to teach, and no student to learn. These entities do not exist independently. They are empty of intrinsic substance. 

This is the perspective of empty-emptiness—the ultimate non-truth truth. But most of us begin far away from this lofty goal of blissful Nirvana. For us, there is dharma—a partial truth which we pursue so long as the teaching retains merit. When we learn what we need to learn, we must release the teaching, as we must release everything. To embrace dharma is critical. To become attached is death. With one hand, we grasp, and with the other, we let go.

Critical to this first step of Right View is attachment and attaches, the principle of resistance, and one who resists. The Buddha preached a doctrine of non-self and a doctrine of Self depending on the object of attachment and the nature of the one who attaches. Those who concluded that nothing exists were taught the dharma of self. For those who concluded that everything exists, he taught the dharma of non-self. The nature of identity and the object of attachment determined which “medicine” was administered.

In truth, neither self nor non-self exists as independent entities. Both are subject to dependent origination. The self majesty as the Tathagatagarbha (Buddha-womb), the ultimate, non-differentiated source spoken of in the Heart Sutra and the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, is one dharma. The impermanent non-self/ego is a dharma that teaches about the other side. Such conclusions as “All conditioned things are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows; Like dew and also like lightning. Thus should they be contemplated,” are central to the teaching of the Diamond Sutra.

There is conditioned reality and unconditional reality. They exist as two book-ends propping up the dharma of dependent origination. Likewise, the premise that nothing exists (Nihilism) is the flip side of everything that exists (Absolutism). These, too, are likewise subject to dependent origination. To cling to one view (or another) at the other’s exclusion is still a form of attachment that perpetuates suffering. To cling to, resist, a non-self (ego) or a self is still attachment. It is not an issue of establishing the validity of one view vs. another view—which will involve never-ending speculation since both are true (dependently) and neither is true (independently). The issue is seeing all views, being rid of all views, and clinging to none.

Identity Crisis.

For the most part, the issue of identity doesn’t seem like a critical matter. It’s an assumed given until circumstances and conditions begin to shift in unavoidable ways. Such times of crisis bring into sharp and painful focus the basis of our assumptions. A young person, almost overnight, moves from youth into the turbulent seas of puberty, and suddenly the question of identity looms large. An adult having spent years building a career suddenly faces a job crisis and begins to wonder about what lies down the road. In the autumn of our lives, we may look back upon our springs and summers and question the vacuousness of life in bitterness. Such moments of crisis precipitate troubling questions about identity, stability, and security.

Many years ago, I read my very first book on Zen Buddhism by Alan Watts—The Wisdom of Insecurity. The book left me with a haunting and indelible feeling in my gut and forced me to question the basis of my own identity and security. I’ll never forget the primary message: The only secure thing is essentially dead. Everything else is insecure. Why? Because life means change. Life is movement, and anything that moves is not a good basis for security. Before going further, please go back and read my posts on “The Wall” and “The Ladder.”

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Siddhartha came up with a solution for suffering and established the Four Nobel Truths: 1. Life means suffering 2. The origin of suffering is attachment 3. The cessation of suffering is attainable, and 4. There is a path to the cessation of suffering. At the very heart of the problem of suffering lies attachment—Clinging to matters we wish to retain and resisting what we don’t. Both are forms of attachment, and both are directly tied to one-legged ladders leaning against non-existent walls. And the pinnacle of the path is learning how to detach from shifting sands and experience the wall. In the West, crises are to be avoided. Curiously our view is tied to our obsession with independence, which has the unintended consequence of stranding us with no life raft when the storms arrive. It is one of the two aspects of attachment—resistance, the precursor of fear.

In the East, a crisis is understood more realistically, as both danger and opportunity. This way of understanding is even built into the Chinese orthography with two characters pronounced as “Wei Ji” (shown above), reflecting the balanced and realistic view that danger and opportunity are complimentary (two-legged ladder). The truth of danger is that it does bring crisis and, if managed properly, can lead to extraordinary opportunities. But when the tidal waves of adversity strike, it sweeps us away from our independent moorings, and we discover a choice: Either we ride our illusions to the bottom, or we switch to a different and more stable ship. In my next posting, I intend to take the next step and begin to explore the nature of identity and the foundation upon which it stands.