The Four Horses of Zen

In the Samyutta Agama sutra, the Buddha told a parable of four horses. There is an excellent one, a couple of lesser horses and a bad one. He said the best horse runs before it sees the shadow of the whip.  The second best will run just before the whip reaches his skin. The third one will run when it feels pain on his body, and the “bad” one will run after the pain penetrates into the marrow of his bones.

I was an unfortunate and stubborn horse, a glutton for punishment, as the saying goes. My ego was huge, and it took a long time and much beating before I was broken. Zen has many aphorisms. One fits this beating process. The saying is, “No suffering. No enlightenment. Little suffering. Little enlightenment. Great suffering. Great enlightenment.” 

The point of this aphorism is that there is a relationship between the depths of suffering and motivation. We, humans, are problem solvers par excellence, but we are also pragmatists with big egos. If we don’t acknowledge problems, there seems nothing to solve, and we don’t fix things we think are not broken. Our egos hate this idea of brokenness, but it’s the key that unlocks the mystery of awakening. Winston Churchill apparently said of Americans, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” 

Bodhidharma said that without suffering, there is no awakening, and he is quite right. When life is sailing along, and all is rosy, why bother fixing what’s not broken? In such a state, the last thing we want is to rock the boat and “see the shadow of the whip.” All of us want to preserve the good and avoid the bad, and while life is good, who needs to think about everything turning south? We’re not so wise in such moments. We imagine our state of prosperity will last forever and, consequently, rarely plan for the rainy day. Instead, we wait until we’re underwater and hoping for the Queen Mary to come sailing along.

In psychological terms, we are swayed by what’s known as The Normalcy Bias. We get used to what we assume are fixed norms and resist change. This is a particular problem in our world today and has led us all into political tribes, unwilling to even listen to others. 

The problem is, everything is in a state of change, norms included. A wise person will acknowledge change, learn about pulling up anchors, sense approaching tsunamis, and riding waves. Few of us have the foresight to anticipate coming catastrophes, but the truth is physical life doesn’t last forever. Sooner or later, we all end up broken and become fertilizer. By then, the opportunity to awaken this time around is gone.

Manifestations and mystery.

Do you drive a car? Wear clothing? Buy groceries at the store? These are everyday experiences that everyone knows well. We take such things for granted but no one is silly enough to think any of these just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. 

Every objective thing—food, clothing, tools…every single thing comes from a source. Your car was manufactured in a plant somewhere. The parts to assemble it came from many different places, and the raw materials were dug from the earth. Where did the raw materials come from? We don’t know nor care so long as our car works we are satisfied.

How did anything become available? Because of desire. Somebody, at some earlier time, wanted things and they then began to think: How, they imagined, can such a thing be made? Who besides me might want it? How much will they pay? Can I make a profit? 

Desire is the engine for production, thinking is the tool for bringing it into existence and your mind is the source of thinking, yet your mind can’t be found. 

 It’s a mystery! But the question must be asked: What is the taste of happiness? Do these ideas, these manifestations from our mind make us fulfilled? After a long time of indulging ideas and things, we develop an experience of being un-fulfilled. Then we are ready to let go of the engine of desire. Then we are ready to find the mystery that can’t be found.

Circumstances and suffering.

In your mind’s eye picture yourself on a boat floating down a river. Some parts of the river are tranquil pools and some parts are roaring rapids. The river flows continuously with every inch different from what existed the moment before and the water under our boat just keeps changing. 

We imagine the boat offers us security from the surge. And while we are in those tranquil pools there is very little risk; we just float along enjoying the day and basking in the calm. But the boat moves and the roaring rapids follow the calm, which at times puts holes in the bottom of our boat. So then we have a choice to either fix the holes or sink.

This imaginary reverie is a parable that speaks to attachment and identification. None of us is flowing down the river of life alone. Instead we choose to ride in big or small boats with others who make the same choice. But there are different boats on this river populated by people not like us. And then an unfortunate thing happens: We begin to attach our identities to our boat and when we do, we stop being able to even see the holes, much less repair them.

Everyone rides a boat. The name of our boat may be a particular political party, a family or gang, a union, a nation or a religious institution, or any one of a near infinite set of other configurations, with which we choose to identify. The boat becomes our identity and we cling to “our” boat for fear of drowning since none of us has ever learned to swim. The circumstances of our life are constantly changing like the river. The water is just water. Circumstances are just circumstances. The water is not to be feared and water doesn’t create suffering. It is our fear of being free of our boat that creates suffering. We can’t imagine that we can swim but instead remain prisoners on our boat.

In such a state of mind, we become defensive and hostile. When someone in one of those other boats criticizes our boat we suffer because our boat has become who we experience ourselves to be. To criticize our boat feels like the same thing as criticizing us. So then we put a shot across their bow and they respond in kind. We end up sinking their boat and they sink ours. Nobody wins. But the truth is that we are not our boat. Instead, we are swimmers, having never learned to swim, who have chosen to ride on boats. There is nothing about changing circumstances that produce suffering. That is purely the result of identifying with boats. Those boats are our ego we assume will carry us through the tides of life. But the boats/ego are not who we are. We mistakenly cling to these artificial identifications. Maybe we all need to get off our boats and find out that we can swim and survive.

Beyond 911—Over the cliff

It has been 15 years since 911, and it’s time to dust off a previous post that was painful to write and perhaps painful to read. I wrote about the side of a veteran’s life that nobody wanted to hear. We much prefer to bathe in the glory of war and avoid the aftermath. But as one who fought and has an aftermath, I thought it was important to paint the whole portrait.

Similarly, some time ago I wrote a book (The Non-Identity Crisis) that has the following on the dedication page:

“This book is dedicated, not to a person, but rather to an idea: the eradication of war and the end of suffering. In particular what I have to say in this book is dedicated to all who have experienced anguish resulting from the tragedy of 911. I write as a fallen warrior with my own wounds inflicted during a previous conflict—The Vietnam War. True for all warriors of any and ever war, the scars never go away, even the ones that lay buried deep in your mind. We learn mostly from our own suffering and if we wish to not keep repeating it, the only ones who can chart a new course are us.”

In this book I write a lot about what war is really like when we scratch away the veneer of glory. We are living in the aftermath of 911, Osama Bin Laden is now dead, and our actions years later reflect this trauma. Bin Laden is now gone but his legacy is not. There is a message in this book that addresses both our responsive actions and moving beyond the trap. I’d like to share with you a perspective from the book that may not been immediately evident:

“When you kill another, sooner or later their surviving loved ones will come after you. War is the ultimate failure of the human family and if we ever hope to live in peace we are the only ones who can create the conditions for that to happen. What we are doing right now around the world is continuing the legacy of war and thereby guaranteeing future conflicts. What I have to say throughout this book is how to end it. Holding onto the desire for vengeance and justification for killing that emanated from 911 virtually insures our collective downfall. The mantra of ‘Never Forget’ is a banner for that downfall and only appropriate for those who never fought. For those of us who have fought, we must forget and forgive or go insane. What Bin Laden started but couldn’t finish on 911—to bring down our culture—we may do to ourselves due to our attachment to revenge at all cost. Did he anticipate our predictable response? It’s impossible to say, but a fundamental rule of warfare is to know your enemy and goad him into a trap of his own making.”

If we are sincere in wishing to honor the sacrifices of our young men and women who so valiantly offer themselves to defend our way of life, the best way of doing that is to stop the insane path we are presently following, bring our warriors home and pay for their healing and restoring their lives.

Becoming Self Aware.

All of us eventually become creatures of habit and after the passage of time are lulled asleep into a state of blindness based on an assumption that what we think we know is true. 

Mark Twain said it best: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Someone who never knows the truth believes they do nevertheless.

Faith, by design, is a precarious state of being that asks us to accept particular aspects of the inaccessible, the imperceptible, the ineffable, and the immeasurable without challenge. And being given over to easy persuasion by those we trust, as being more astute and capable than ourselves, we come to a state of confidence in their esteemed judgments, and at long last embrace and take to be our very own, the ideas expressed by “the experts.”

What breaks this chain of presumption? Ought it not be success or failure? The measure of life as what works or doesn’t for one and all? Unfortunately this is rarely the case. What we believe, is held in higher regard than such concrete measures and we shape our lives, not so much by the good of all than we do by what supports our fanciful wishes: The hope for things being different than they truly are. 

Try, try again is the mantra. If at first we don’t succeed then try harder to shape what is not so into illusions of what we prefer. Be more perseverant, more tenacious, and resilient. And after such relentless assaults, even with the experience of not reaching the goal of the common good, we are remiss to let go and try a different path. Instead we hold fast to dogmas and reject the obvious, clinging forever to standards set by those in whom we have placed our trust. In psychological terms, this strange behavior is known as “confirmation bias,” a state of ignorance wherein we reject the truth and favor what confirms our preconceived beliefs. To do otherwise, we reason, will cause a loss of face and force us to admit error, neither of which our egos desire.

It is an exceedingly sad aspect of being human that leads us all into those habitual states of continuing ignorance, and it is not an aspect adopted only by the common man. Surrendering from our cherished ideas, valued though they are, seems risky work. Yet to reach the depths of our souls where the light of truth prevails, requires letting go of little to get all. Meister Eckhart, one of the greatest mystics of all time put the highest release like this:

“I will put into plain words what St. Paul means by wishing to depart from God. Man’s last and highest leave-taking is leaving god for God. St. Paul left god for God: he left everything he could give or take of God, every concept of God. In leaving these, he left god for God since God remained to him in his essential self, not as a concept of himself, or as an acquired thing, but God in his essential actuality.”

Even those who adopt open minds and are moving toward enlightenment fall prey to the trap, sometimes to the edge of death. The Buddha came to the final point of surrender before letting go of the greatest natural fear of all: The fear of death. When he reached the edge of the abyss, his choice was clear: Let go or die. Only then did he awaken to the essence of his True Self. Only then did he become genuinely Self Aware. 

Only when any of us faces the grim reaper and accepts what seems like our ultimate demise will we be ready to cast off the chains of illusion and meet, at long last, our true nature and know that, as Eckhart said: “God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.” 

And on the way to this exalted place of pure awareness, where do we place our faith? In the orthodoxy? Holy Scriptures? The experts? What shall we consider the anchor that binds us firmly to eternal life?

• “Do not believe anything on mere hearsay.

• Do not believe in traditions merely because they are old and have been handed down for many generations and in many places.

• Do not believe anything on account of rumors or because people talk a great deal about it.

• Do not believe anything because you are shown the written testimony of some ancient sage.

• Do not believe in what you have fancied, thinking that, because it is extraordinary, it must have been inspired by a god or other wonderful being.

• Do not believe anything merely because the presumption is in its favor, or because the custom of many years inclines you to take it as true.

• Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and priests.

• But, whatever, after thorough investigation and reflection, you find to agree with reason and experience, as conducive to the good and benefit of one and all and of the world at large, accept only that as true, and shape your life in accordance with it.

The same text, said the Buddha, must be applied to his own teachings.

• Do not accept any doctrine from reverence, but first, try it as gold is tried by fire.”⎯The Buddha: The Kalama Sutra

It is the fires by trial in life that burn away ignorance, but only when we are open to letting go of the unreal and ready for the real. And when once we meet our Self for the first time we are still left with a residue of the old, that lingers like unwanted dust and was previously considered to be gold, when all the while it was fools gold. Then we must learn a new way, no longer clinging to chains of the past but rather accepting wings of The Spirit, just as any baby learns to crawl before walking. And until our spiritual legs grow strong, we will wobble and fall again and again, until at last, we rest in the assurance that the core of our being is firm and immovable. Along the way to maturity we will be unaccustomed to the new way and think for a time as Lao Tzu:

“I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled.”

Karma and justice?

Our ordinary system of justice involves a vast legal system ranging from people wishing to regulate civil life, congress passing laws to reflect those wishes, policing governed by such laws, trials to determine guilt or innocence, lawyers employed to prosecute and defend, jurors reaching a verdict, judges judging, incarceration, and remediation. 

From beginning to end, that system can be (and often is) seriously flawed and enormously costly. Unjust laws can be passed, lawyers can be either silver-tongued orators who earn big bucks or incompetents who are overburdened and underpaid, judges can be bought, jails and prisons are vastly inadequate to the task of remediation, and in the final analysis, few of those convicted, sentenced and locked away are ever returned to society as reformed and productive citizens. In an ordinary way, justice is often unjust.

Karma, on the other hand, is cheap, flawless, always just, and operates independently of other created systems. But many people consider karma as some form of fatalism or judgment of the “gods.” Such people have been misinformed. Karma has nothing to do with such myths. It is instead simply cause and effect. The choices we make have both benefits and consequences. If I consistently make poor choices I consistently get poor results. Good choices=good results and this has nothing to do with “spirits” (either good or bad).

A simple example illustrates the point. However, before the example, I need to say something about this idea of justice, which is more times than not a legal issue. Karma is deeper than what is legal. Perhaps a better way of articulating karma is “appropriateness.”  If I poke you in the nose, more than likely you’ll poke me back. That’s appropriate justice. If I come to your aid in times of need, more than likely you’ll think kindly of me in my time of need. That’s also appropriate justice. 

If I am experiencing adversity today, more than likely I can look at my past and find the beginning seed that grew into adversity. That’s insight. If I want to experience better times tomorrow I can plant good seeds today. That’s wisdom. On the other hand, if I think I can enjoy a good tomorrow by planting bad seeds today, that’s ignorance. If I imagine that I can reach an enlightened state of mind while at the same time conducting my life in an unsavory manner that too is ignorant.

Adversity is appropriate justice in action. So too is the lack of adversity. In either case, we get what we have initiated, whether as individuals or as societies. If we are experiencing adversity—individually or socially—it is best to accept the natural outcome of karma and stop resisting it. Resistance is a futile activity that is motivated by a desire to escape justice and simply exacerbates suffering. We need to learn from our mistakes to create a better tomorrow.

Simple justice. It always works. That’s karma and it is the system that never stops. To listen to an excellent talk on karma click here.

To see ourselves truly.

The Scottish poet Robert Burns coined the phrase, “Ahh, to see ourselves as others see us...” and this way of seeing is indeed valuable. However, there is a more valuable way: To see ourselves as we truly are beyond the ordinary lens of perception. What is this strange way?

The Lankavatara was allegedly the sutra most revered by Bodhidharma: the father of Zen. Among the myriad sutras, the Lankavatara lays out the essential challenge inherent in the human dilemma. Here we see how the matter of perception leads us into error. The problem is that the world (including our thoughts) is perceived by-way-of discriminate forms, and we remain oblivious to the one doing the perceiving (ourselves). 

We see shapes and forms configured in different ways before us. We hear sounds tinkling or loud. We smell different aromas, and through this manner of distinguishing differences, we form judgments of like and dislike, clinging to the first and resisting the latter.

This process is essential and can’t be avoided, but unless we become aware—deeply aware—of the indiscriminate perceiver (who is beyond all color and form), we become mesmerized and enslaved by the dance of differentiation, all the while creating havoc for ourselves and others. The sutra says the result of this ignorance are minds which “burn with the fires of greed, anger and folly, 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.”

This unavoidable process leads to clinging to an evanescent world of objects. And as we cling, we oppose the truth of our unknowing 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 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 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 innermost consciousness. 

The unavoidable conclusion of seeing beyond the biased lens of perception is all of us are the same at the deepest level, none better or worse. It is all too easy to become trapped by the constant flow of tidal forces and forget that each of us is the master of our very own sea.

Tracking a koan.

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

The conversation between the two was thus: Hongren—“A seeker of the Path risks his life for the dharma. Should he not do so?” Then he asked, “Is the rice ready?”  Huineng—“Ready long ago, only waiting for the sieve.” 

Two questions, and a single short answer which reveals the nature of enlightenment—both sudden and gradual. Sudden, since awakening happened quickly, but fullness required the sifting of life’s sieve—The rice was ready, but the lingering, residual chaff had to be blown away by the winds of life.

The insight flowing from this conversation is enhanced through the lens of an ancient Greek word for perfection. The word is “Teleios,” which means having reached the finale—the logical culmination of maturation. Like birth, first, we come into this world, and then it takes many years of living to reach maturation.

More than forty years ago, I came to a realization of my true nature, but I also needed further shifting to fully grasp the magnitude of what had occurred. It is one thing to experience profound transformation, and it is another to allow it to flower and revolutionize your life. Besides, the initial experience was so contrary to the ordinary, that when it happens, I barely know which end was up. It took time to absorb the experience, allow it to infuse me, and to settle in.

One of the critical ingredients for me of this settling in concerned the Japanese words “mu” and “shin.” Mu is, of course, the Japanese word for “no,” and you find Mu in the koan about Jōshū’s dog: “A monk asked, ‘Does a dog have a Buddha-nature or not?’ The master said, ‘Mu (No)!’”

When I lived in a Zen monastery, this was my koan and for a long time it made no sense. In Zen, you are taught that Buddha-nature inhabits all sentient beings, one of which is a dog. So how could it be that Buddha-nature infuses everything but not a dog? But as life sifted me, it began to become a part of who I was, and ever so slowly, I understood. 

What I came to understand concerned variations on Mu. One of these is the obvious negation no. An alternative is nothing meaning the absence of something. And another is no-thing, (which is similar to nothing but more precise, meaning not a thing). These latter two can be combined, which rounds out the correct Buddhist understand of emptiness, which the Buddha said is form. Seen in this combined manner, emptiness becomes more than just the absence of form. It then becomes the wellspring of form (and everything else). Mu is not a phenomenal thing. Instead, it is the soil out of whch grows all things. If it was a thing, then it could not be all things.

The Heart Sutra says form is emptiness. That is a profound equation, but it rattles your brain. In a way this is the premier koan. We all think we know what form is. It’s the measurable stuff that surrounds us. We can sense it in every way. But emptiness is an entirely different kettle of fish. How can you perceive that? The truth is you can’t perceive emptiness. You can only experience it, and the reason is actually quite simple (but only when you understand—before that, it makes no sense). 

Emptiness is who we truly are. It has no discernible properties, but all form emanates from there and all form is infused with the indelible dimension of the ubiquitous power of creation. If emptiness had detectable properties, it would be limited. Buddha-Nature (your true nature) is not limited. Buddha-Nature is emptiness and it is you.

I was helped to fathom this when I learned a few things about the Chinese and the Japanese language. Every culture sees things differently, and these two languages see life in ways that are radically different from the English perspective. 

From a Western point of view, we have a heart, and we have a mind. We see these as two separate and different matters. Not so with the Chinese and the Japanese. The heart and the mind are one integrated whole, so they call it XIN (Chinese) or SHIN (Japanese), and both of these terms mean heart/mind—the integration of thinking and emotions. That was one piece of the puzzle.

The next piece concerned the seeming dichotomy between illusion and reality, and here again the cultural framing played an essential role. What we ordinarily consider real is what we can perceive, whether internally or externally. We see the objective world of form and the fabrication of thoughts and consider both real. But there is a problem here: Both our thoughts and the outside world of form are constantly changing, and both lure us into identity attachment and thus suffering. 

That part is the illusive dimension of XIN/SHIN, otherwise known as form. But The Buddha had said that form is emptiness, so in essence, he was saying that we could only perceive the manifestations but not the source of mind. In fact, this is what he had said in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra:

“Seeing the actions of body and mouth, we say that we see the mind. The mind is not seen, but this is not false. This is seeing by outer signs.” Elsewhere he spoke of finding the fire of mind only by seeing smoke.

When we look for the mind, we find nothing—the mind can’t see itself, and this is where Zen shines because what we aim for in zazen is a cessation of form, long enough to experience the lack. Bodhidharma had said: “That which exists, exists in relationship to that which doesn’t exist.” And Rinzai’s teacher Huang Po, was particularly lucid in his teaching about the relationship between abandoning form and finding yourself. In the Chun Chou Record, he said: 

“To say that the real Dharmakāya of the Buddha resembles the Void is another way of saying that the Dharmakāya is the Void and that the Void is the Dharmakāya ...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 Nirvānic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.”

One of the fascinating aspects of Zen study is to begin patching together apparently disparate pieces into a seamless tapestry of meaning. When we arrange all of these pieces, a picture emerges centered on this notion of Mu and Shin and what it reveals is this equation: “Mu shin=Shin” where the first part “Mu shin” (the absence of thoughts and emotions) is joined to our true nature (Shin) which is formless/the void/true mind/the Buddha/yourself. 

Formlessness is lacking form. It is emptiness itself: “…the void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma. This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning...this great Nirvānic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.” 

And that is who we are. Now the curious thing about my own awakening is what was taking place within me while immersing myself in Mu practice. Yes, I had been given the Jōshū’s dog koan, and yes, I was following the prescribed method, but there was a much deeper internal koan occurring that had been haunting me for many, many years, and there didn’t seem to be any way to either get rid of it or make rational sense of it. That koan was the mind-bender: who am I? So while I was immersing myself in dogs, this deeper koan was down there underneath. It didn’t seem to be even slightly related to dogs or Mu but what happened was that the answer to my who am I? question, emerged as the solution to the Mu koan because the answer to one is the answer to the other.

I had been struggling for years, believing all the time that I was a worthless excuse for humanity, and in my moment of awakening, I realized that I was already Teleios (complete). I knew, at the most fundamental level of me, I was perfect, had always been perfect, and would never stop being perfect, and ever so slowly, the winds of life began to blow away the chaff of the terrible part of me.

Not an idea

It is hard to imagine how it is possible that anyone could not notice the intensity of frantic energy in our world today, directed toward greed and alienation. On the one hand, we seem determined to grab our exclusive share of a shrinking pie, and on the other, we discover a growing gap between ourselves and others. 

These are two sides of a common coin which is rooted in the illusion of an independent self. The base-line presumption, which drives this race of the lemmings, is that we are an idea—a mental image that we have agreed to call a “self-image.” Buddhism, long ago, established this as an illusion. 

Fundamentally none of us is an idea, but so long as we remain so persuaded, we are destined to operate from what comes along for the ride: Fear and alienation. The self we imagine is continuously vulnerable, desirous, and isolated. The presumption, centered in this mirage, is that it is necessary to become possessive to survive. And when we do, we end up taking our lot from the hide of others, which results in progressive alienation. 

A person who exhibits a strong need to possess is a challenge to be with. The implied message in such a relationship is “for me to be complete, I must carve off and possess a piece of you.” The answer to this identity crisis is not to become complete by shoring up a false image but rather to transcend the idea and find our true, always complete, substantial self.

Making the Trade

Suppose that you grew up using a form of money which you assumed was actually worth something. You made that assumption because it allowed you to purchase things that brought you some tangible forms of comfort and sustenance. 

But over time, these forms no longer nurtured you, and you wanted a deeper level of meaning in your life. And then you learned that it might be possible to get what you desired but to do that, you’d be required to give up everything you had acquired and throw away all of the money you possessed. At that point, you’d be faced with the mother of all choices—relinquish everything you possessed (which was real and tangible but no longer valued) and leap into the void of uncertainty on the bet that there would actually be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That is a tough choice, and reflective of the adage about a bird’s value in hand is worth two in the bush. But what you had no way of knowing at that juncture was that your original assumption had been wrong—That your means of exchange (the money you possessed) was actually only worth what no longer satisfied you. But there it was, tangibly in your hand and in your bank account, ready for a continuing set of purchases which were no longer fulfilling.

This scenario is not an unusual one. In fact, it is so common that Aesop wrote a fable (The Dog in the manger) about it, which characterizes the moral as “People often begrudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.” The question is, Why do we hang onto anything that doesn’t fulfill us? And why are you so unwilling to risk the trade of getting rid of meaningless stuff to gain something which promises greater reward? Is it a matter of choosing the devil we know vs. the one we don’t know? Perhaps it is as simple as that.

There is a Zen story about a man who was an expert on dragons. He knew everything there was to know about dragons. In fact, he was so zealous in his dragon passion that he had filled his entire house with dragon paraphernalia. Everyone who wanted to know about dragons beat a path to his door. And then one day something else came to his door—a real dragon and the man was so shocked that he died on the spot! 

This is a parable that illustrates the difference between our intellectual understanding of enlightenment versus the actual experience. We all value the intellectual means of exchange, thinking it will bring us meaning, but what we discover in the process of living is that our ideas don’t fill our deepest desires for fulfillment. For that, we must relinquish thoughts and emotions (e.g., lose our minds)—throw it all away, and leap into the void of uncertainty.

On the side of the river of life with which we are familiar, there is the appearance of certainty (but no fulfillment) but to cross over to fulfillment means leaving certainty behind: Risking all and going for broke. For many, it seems like a risk too big to take, and it does, of course, require faith that you’ll not only survive the trip but come out more prosperous on the other side. Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you’re willing to settle for what life brings your way. If that is fulfilling, then there is no need to make a trade. It all comes down to our hopes for fulfillment.

Looking where it’s not

Where is it?

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.”

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching

A question to the Buddha: “What is that smoothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it the most.”

The Buddha’s Answer: “It is ignorance which smoothers,” the Buddha replied, “and it’s heedlessness and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.”
Nipata Sutra

These two points to a central and valuable truth: Desire affects our ability to see clearly. Lao Tzu says that we see the mystery of our being beyond names. In a state of desire, we see manifestations of what can be named. In other words, we see what we want to see, not what’s there. The Buddha said that desire pollutes the world, and ignorance smoothers it. After that, we are lead to greed and heedlessness (e.g., attributes of the ego), which renders the world invisible.

Obviously, the world referred to by Gautama is not the world the average person sees. They see a world manifested from the desire of the ego. We see what we imagine will deliver the object of desire—fulfillment. But suppose, just for the sake of being contrary, that the unseen world is already full, but because we misdiagnose the disease (dis-ease=dukkha), we think it is not full. Now we’re faced with an impossible dilemma: Trying to fill what is already full.

This is a profound paradox that illustrates the driving force beneath the problems we are confronted with every day. We think we are fundamentally incomplete and all the while we are complete. What can be insane than that? It is like a person searching everywhere for the nose on their own face. Without a mirror, we just look right past our own noses. Without finding our worth within, we go looking far and wide, while all the time, what we seek is already in our hands. No, desire means we think we are not already full, yet we are.

The Key to Fulfillment

What you’re about the read now is the result of having lived through extreme adversity, finding victory, and then looking back to find a rational explanation. 

What I write about here is that rational, rearview perspective. I never saw this view from the other side, which is to say while in the midst of anxiety. The vision presented here is a retrospective.

If you study Yoga or Buddhism you’ll learn a lot about a unique perspective about why people suffer and you can sum up the entirety of this perspective in one statement: “We suffer because we don’t have a proper grasp of what genuine reality is.” 

Usually the response to that summation is MEGO (My eyes glaze over). Everyone who has ever lived, or will ever live, begins with the unchallenged assumption that they know precisely what reality is. They can’t explain it. They just know in some unexplained way. If pressed we can come up with a few dimensions to frame our understanding. Such dimensions as tangibility, mutual discretion and measurement are ordinarily candidates for a definition. In other words if we can perceive stuff, that measured stuff is real. But hardly anyone thoroughly examines the relationship between that understanding and suffering. We measure stuff and people suffer—two observations, and these appear to have nothing to do with each other.

There was a man who devoted his life to a thorough examination of this matter and the world has never been the same since, at least for those who take the time to consider what he discovered. The man lived a long time ago (more than 2,500 years ago) and his name was Siddhartha, who became Gautama Buddha. What he discovered changed my life and the lives of millions since he lived. His understanding is contained in the first of eight steps which he identified to enable anyone to find a way to solve their own suffering problem, and that first step revolves around the interrelated matters of emptiness and dependent origination—my topics for this post.

To the ordinary eye, these two matters are obscure and foreign, but when looked at carefully the way forward becomes clear. The first of these—emptiness—challenges the premise of mutual discretion: that things are different and independent from other things. For example, we regard “up” as different from “down” and are persuaded that these two are independent matters. The same goes for in/out, forwards/backwards, or anything else, which have two opposing dimensions (everything does). 

To the ordinary eye these are always separate and opposite, just as Republicans and Democrats are—separate and opposed to one another. Emptiness says simply that this observation is both true and not true at the same time. It is not true that any pair can be divided. Instead these exist only as pairs. Without up, there could be no down. Without an “in” where would “out” be located? Each half of these pairs is not real by themselves but real only as pairs. To acknowledge the validity of one half you must accept the validity of the other half, otherwise neither is valid. Here the rule of discrimination governs all. It’s an either/or world of compromised choices with clear winners and clear losers. In a nutshell that’s emptiness. It goes much deeper than the nut but for the moment just stay with that.

Then we come to a kissing cousin of emptiness—dependent origination. This principle says that everything is linked together (just as the pairs are) and one thing causes another, which then cascades onto other things. The water cycle is a perfect example. Every aspect of this cycle is created by what came before and then creates the next step in the cycle, in a circular feedback that never ends. So long as we remain in the sphere of relative and conditional life none of these feedback cycles can ever be avoided because everything is in constant motion. When one dimension comes into existence what follows also comes into existence. Rising, heated water vapor ultimately cools and turns into rain. Birth ultimately turns into death. These cycles repeat endlessly without a beginning and without an ending. In a nutshell that’s dependent origination.

In our physical and conditional world, these two matters—emptiness and dependent origination point to why we suffer. We do so because we try to retain the good parts of these changing cycles and avoid the bad parts, but this is impossible to orchestrate. What brings us joy in one moment brings us sadness in the next. Nobody can stop the tides of anything, thus the conclusion that “life sucks.” And if that were the end of the matter then that conclusion would be correct. Fortunately that is not the end of the matter because emptiness and dependent origination are deeper matters.

The law of these two principles, if valid, would have to apply to everything including conditional life. Just as up can only exist with the partner of down, conditional life can only exist with the partner of unconditional life. Conditional life is empty by itself and real only with a partner. We can perceive anything and everything of conditional life because of the perceptible nature of objects, and these objects are always in opposition and in motion. The first and preliminary part of solving the suffering problem is thus to not cling but rather to savor each passing moment with the awareness that soon the savor will turn into the sour. Be here now is a familiar code for one form of Zen, but frankly, that premise sucks. Who truly looks forward to eventual sadness? It helps but it is insufficient.

Ultimate victory comes by moving beyond the conditional and into the unconditional where discrimination and sadness cease to exist. What brought me enduring grief was this cycle of destruction. I was trapped in one cycle after another and could find no relief. I never realized until I reached the end there was an alternative. Only when I ran out of gas did I say to myself, “To hell with this,” if I can’t find a better way I don’t want to live. 

Then I just sat down and refused to get up until I found the key. Only when I let go, completely, of the bargain of hope did I find the other side—the unconditional side, which I never knew existed. When it happened I was dumb-founded and wholly disoriented, but I was also in a state of mind without suffering! I had no idea what had transpired but I loved it. Before it happened I was full of despair. Afterwards I was whole and pure. But since I had experienced nothing but the cycles for my entire life, I kept waiting and expecting that blissful experience to pass away. It never passed and has remained a constant presence. It’s now been more than 40 years and it is still here.

Having said that, it is important to say that I’m still just as much affected by the swings as before. But no longer do the swings affect my stability. My true sense of being is now rock solid. Nothing causes it to waver. And this is what dependent origination means at the deeper level. Both sides are true together and neither side is true separately. And at a deeper level yet, is the ultimate value of Gautama’s understanding—his first step (Right View): while all of us are different, we are also the same, and neither of these truths is real separately. Conditionally we are apart. Unconditionally we are united.

Reifying Illusion

“Reifying”—An uncommon but important word. It means being confused about the nature of something fundamentally not real, but we believe it is. For example, we firmly believe our identity is substantially real, yet it changes as life ebbs and flows. 

Imagine that you go to a movie. When you enter the theater, you have no doubts about the film’s nature. You know that what appears on the screen is pure illusion. The movie might be quite involving to the point that you actually get swept up and affected, but never do you think you are actually in the movie. If you cannot distinguish the unreal nature of the movie from your normal reality, you would be called delusional and would be guilty of reification.

Our normal understanding of reality is that we are not “in the movies,” and we can thus compare this “normal” condition against other states of consciousness to establish whether or not they are real. It never occurs to us that the conditions we perceive are no better than what we see on the theater screen, yet there is very little difference between the two. 

The only difference is where the movie screen is located. The real movie screen is actually in our brains. Even the movie screen in the theater can only be perceived in our brain—we see two movies: One which we assume is in the theater and the other, which is actually a projection in our brain.

We have learned through modern neurology the same as what the Buddha said 2,500 years ago—That what we take for granted as real is actually an illusion. It is impossible to perceive anything without a brain, and our sense of objectivity is the result of projected images. Not knowing this, we then reify these images: Believing that the abstractions are real. If that is not bad enough, we assume that our real self (e.g., true Self) is nothing more than a perceptible object and label it a self-image (ego).

Our entire sense of reality is upside down. It turns out that what we have understood as real is actually nothing more than illusions and what we have thought was unreal (our true nature) is actually the only reality that exists. Our perceptions have fooled us and left us with a genuine mess. The result of this glitch is that we end up clinging to vapor and then suffering as it slides through our fingers. Little did we know that The Buddha has been right all along.

Pluses and Minuses

The notion that anything can exist, separate, and apart from any contextual framework is, of course, absurd. “Up” makes no sense apart from “down;” good and evil define one another. Everything is defined and understood in such a manner, and this is true of Buddhism as well.

There are two truths in Buddhism, just as there are two truths in everything. There is a negative truth and a positive truth. One truth concerns impermanence; the other permanence and neither could exist without the other, just as up couldn’t exist without down. Countless Zen Masters have spoken of these two truths in various ways. Nagarjuna used the terms conventional and ultimate truth. He further said that we will never be free until we know how they differ and experience the ultimate.

Sadly too often, just the negative/impermanence side is emphasized with no mention of the positive side. All phenomenal life is indeed impermanent, and clinging to what constantly changes does produce suffering. Various words and concepts are used to define this problem. Words like attachment or resistance are often employed, but the important point is that we create distress by linking our sense of well-being to a vapor.

While that part is indeed important, it is just the negative truth leaving a vacuum for the positive. Buddhism teaches that there is no substantial “mind” but rather a constellation of interdependent contributing factors. Sensory phenomena, perceptual capacities, mental processing, and consciousness contribute to a solid mind’s illusion. And our sense of self is a function of this illusion, which ultimately drives greed, anger, and ignorance. When we fathom the elusive nature of this constellation, we realize no basis for independent isolation and conflict.

This realization is an important milestone along the way to enlightenment. Before we can become genuinely self-aware, we must relinquish these negative and poisonous illusions. Simultaneous to the realization of who we aren’t is the realization of who we are. The enlightenment experience is affirmed by the esoteric and intuitive teachings intended for Bodhisattvas. The late and great Nyogen Senzaki said this was revealed in Sūtra such as the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa that teaches that our true nature is buddha—the universal, never-born One Mind, uniting us with all life. When we can embrace this constant presence, we finally know who we are, gain emancipation, and discover that we are not alone.