Divide or unite?

I love history. Knowing where we came from and how we got here is important. “Real” history—not the fairy-tale version we seem to prefer—teaches us valuable lessons. In particular, understanding the historical path leading to common-coin words and terms is paramount because words and terms are the building blocks of ideologies—the way we think and understanding what unites and divides us.

December 8 is an auspicious day few even know exists, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I’d like to write about another day of which nearly everyone, throughout the world, is aware—December 25, the day Christians (and others) celebrate the birth of Jesus. We know that day as Christmas. But time has erased from our collective memory the origin of the term “Christmas,”—The Christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus occurs on December 25. The English term Christmas (“mass on Christ’s day”) is of recent origin. The earlier term Yule (e.g., Yule-tide) may have derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter solstice: A purely secular root to what has become a day of giving and receiving gifts on Christmas, supposedly as a celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Since the early 20th century, Christmas has mostly become a secular holiday. In this secular celebration, a mythical figure named Santa Claus plays a pivotal role. For the most part, Christmas is a family holiday, observed by Christians and non-Christians, devoid of Christian elements. And we are now in the midst of “Black Fridays” (plural, since the day, has become an entire series of days), designating the annual rush to purchase the most for the least, in anticipation of getting ready for Santa Claus. “Black Friday” also has a historical path, but I don’t want to overlay one divergence on top of another, or I’d never get to the point. And what is that point? The point is the preference for myth over fact—Fake News or disinformation, making it nearly impossible to know which end is up. We seem to love snake-oil and those who sell it because we are essentially lazy and don’t make an effort to dig beneath the surface and discover what lies within.

There is a method in my madness for this short Christmas diversion, apart from the significance of December 8. The madness part is that I would delay. And the method part explains my reason, which is to illustrate how we (as a human family) have lost our way. As the saying goes: “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This very moment we are on the verge of doing just that—repeating a miserable era that emerged during the decade following 1930. That repetition has much to do with both December 8 and December 25.

Birth—biological birth is different from spiritual birth. In the Christian tradition, spiritual birth happens (or it doesn’t) when aspirants confess their sinful nature and accept the Holy Spirit (supposedly the aspect of a triune God—trinity, promised by Jesus) into their spiritual hearts and souls. Then, those “born again” become a new person, armed with The Spirit of God. The matter of salvation (e.g., being set free from the scourge of “sin”) presupposes being sinful in the first place. Without that presumption, the entire proposition falls into a thousand pieces, and like Humpty-Dumpty, can’t be put back together again: another divergent tale worth pondering, but for another time.

While few know the historical facts of Christmas (December 25), fewer still know the historical facts of Bodhi Day (December 8)—the Buddhist holiday that commemorates the day that the historical Buddha—Siddhartha Gautama (Shakyamuni), experienced enlightenment. According to tradition, Siddhartha had pursued and ultimately gave up years of extremely ascetic practice and resolved to sit under a “peepal tree” until he was free from suffering. Siddhartha sat beneath that tree, meditated until he found the root of suffering, and discovered how to liberate himself from it. That process of giving up asceticism was preceded by giving up what none of us would give up (great wealth) to travel the other path that lead to a dead-end. On the other side of that end lay the opening to ultimate freedom—a goal all humans desire; the mythical pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

When those living in the Western World think of enlightenment, they conjure up “THE Enlightenment,” an era when European politics, philosophy, science, and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply The Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, France, and Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. Ever since that era, the Western World has been on a path defined by rational thought and hardened ideologies. While Christians remained the largest religious group in the world in 2015, making up nearly a third (31%—2.3. billion) of Earth’s 7.3 billion people, they are fragmented into a myriad of schisms (e.g., denominations) too vast to count, each of which claims to be the sole keepers of the truth.

In the Eastern World, “enlightenment” is a very different matter. The idea of “moksha”—release from the cycle of continuing suffering by attaining a transcendent state of mind, is the gold standard. It is within this state of mind that one realizes unconditional truth. Opposing ideologies are anathema to this sort of enlightenment but is instead oriented toward realizing one’s true nature of unity (non-difference vs. ideological differences). And for that reason celebrating December 8 (Bodhi Day) is relevant to the current crisis of chaos around the world. We are in a meltdown mode because of the “I’m right/you’re wrong” vector of ideologies, which align with rational thinking, taking us further and further away from meltdown solutions. 

Solomon and a divided nation

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, there lived a king of great wisdom. Each day the king would hold court and hear the pleas of his people. One day, two opponents came before him for his adjudication over a matter of extreme importance concerning the state’s child. One of the opponents pleaded with the king to slash to the child’s support to the bone, arguing that the state will flounder and die unless the child is starved. His opponent argued that unless the king waged war on his neighbors and robbed their coffers, there wouldn’t be enough money to continue supporting the child, and it would likewise die. The king saw that to preserve the child of state, he would need to adopt a middle way between these two extremes, reducing the child’s support and avoiding war, which greatly angered both opponents but saved the child.

The we of you and me.

Previously, I published a book, The Non-Identity Crisis—The crisis that endangers our world. The topic of the book concerns a common mistake that everyone makes: We confuse functions with identity, and since we attach ourselves with these, we create unending hardship for others and ourselves.

Let me illustrate what I’m talking about with a small example. In a day, we perform many different functions. We get out of bed, go to the bathroom, prepare and eat meals, drive to various places, talk with people, assume specific roles, and do other things. While we are walking from our beds, we are performing a function called walking. During that time, we could rightly say that we are a walker. One who walks is a walker. One who prepares food is a preparer, driving/driver, talking/talker, so on and so forth. As our functions change, our sense of being changes accordingly.

This matter is compounded with other forms of more enduring activities that lead to misidentification. Some functions are vacillating and short-lived, such as eating or walking. Sometimes we eat, sometimes we walk, but these functions come and go frequently. However, other aspects are more enduring, such as being a parent, a spouse, or a volunteer. But even these can and do change. And there are other matters that we take on that define us, such as national, economic, political, religious, or ideological identities. All of the preceding can be, and are, combined. And all are changing and morphing. None of it stands still, but we do. That much is clearly evident and doesn’t require further explanation. So what’s the issue?

The issue is one of attaching our sense of being and worth to moving targets. If we ever took the time to truly understand ourselves (at the fundamental level), everything would be okay. We don’t, however, take the time to understand ourselves at this bedrock level. Instead, we understand ourselves based on these changing dimensions of mis-identity, and we suffer and create trouble because of this error. 

For example, we may consider ourselves (by way of illustration) as a prosperous American Republican, Christian, spouse, and parent. That is a complex combining, and each part of that combination changes. When we identify with each component (or the complex combination), we feel like our beingness is defined and vulnerable to attack. And then, we take the next step and defend these forms of identity against others who represent themselves differently.

Prosperity is then opposed to the disadvantaged; American is opposed to non-American; Democrat against Republican; Christian against non-Christian, etc. It is quite right that we flock together with birds of a feather to attack and get rid of birds with different feathers. If you wanted to articulate and characterize the core problem we are facing at this point in time, worldwide, it would emanate from this tendency to mis-identify and create forms of hostility against others not like us. This tendency makes it nearly impossible to break the logjam of dysfunction in Washington and worldwide, and that tendency is jeopardizing our mutual welfare.

What’s the solution? Actually, it isn’t that difficult to figure out, but it is challenging to solve. The answer is to take the time to find out who we are, at that fundamental level, because when we do that, we discover that we are one joint human family. Each of us adopts different ways of living. Each of us thinks other thoughts. Each of us performs a nearly infinite breadth of different functions, but none of that is who we are. Who we are is a matter of being, not doing.

So let’s spend some time examining this matter of beingness. Who and what are we? One part of us is clearly changing flesh, bones, related physical stuff, and if you haven’t noticed, all of that is in a continuous state of replication.

The rate of DNA replication for humans is about 50 nucleotides per second per replication fork (a Y-shaped part of a chromosome that is the site for DNA strand separation and then duplication). The physical aspect of us comprises trillions of chromosomes, and each and every one of them is continually being lost and replaced. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder who that wrinkly old guy is and where the young, handsome fellow went. The answer is that we are all sloughing off trillions of cells each and every moment of our lives. There is nothing of our physical being that is permanent, and one day that part of us will go the way of all flesh. But that’s okay because that is not who we are.

The other part of this identity matter is enduring, permanent, and invisible. It is never born and can’t die, but since it is hidden, we can’t detect it through ordinary sensory means. For sure, what we are not is an idea or image. Thoughts flit about like fireflies, but there must be one who is watching these ideas. Thinking doesn’t happen independently from a thinker, but as previously pointed out, thought is just a function: something we do, not who we are. This thing we call ego is an idea, otherwise known as a self-image. It’s a fabricated construction that has been bouncing around forever and is recorded in the literature as far back as 3,500 years ago in India and in ancient Greece. 

Freud co-opted the term as a part of his mapping of the psyche. The Greeks understood it in various ways ranging from the soul to a sense of self. The Buddha understood it as an unreal obstruction that was the source of suffering that blocked access to our true self, and if we’re honest, we can see that egotism is the source of much corruption and greed. The ego is a divisive manifestation that emerges from identifying with functions that leads to alienation and hostility against other not-like-us birds.

So we are neither purely physical nor ideas. We are something much more fundamental that doesn’t change. And what we discover when we thoroughly consider the matter is that this non-identifiable being, which is each of us, is precisely the same. That is our point of commonality, and that is the only thing we have in common. All of us are as unique and different as snowflakes, and all of us are fundamentally just snow.

The bucket rule of politics and economics

There's a hole in our bucket

I taught our daughter economics, at an early age. And my teaching device was an old bucket. I punched a few holes in the bottom of the bucket and then she started pouring in water, which of course ran out the holes. Then I punched in more holes and she again poured in water. This time she had to pour in more water at a faster rate. 

Eventually, I completely removed the bottom of the bucket and she discovered that no amount of water could be used to fill the bucket; it ran out as fast as she could pour it in. Then I said to her, “Water is like money. Unless you balance what you pour in with what comes out the bottom you’ll never succeed in having any money left over.” She understood. Our government never has.

Right now the spigot that regulates the flow is severely restricted, yet the out-flow is at a record high. What used to supply our needs—tax revenues from the middle class—is disappearing at an alarming rate leaving only one source: those with money, to pick up the tab. And this restriction is coinciding with a bucket with ever-growing holes. Republicans are crying foul and claiming class warfare. But I have a simple-minded question: Who pays? It requires lots of water to pour into a bucket with a disappearing bottom. The poor can’t pay. The middle-class is rapidly shrinking, so that leaves only those who can pay, but don’t.

There are presently lots of naysayers who say that the wealthy will just pull up anchor and flee to more favorable shores. Indeed they may and have. Nothing can stop them except only one thing: A sense of public responsibility. For far too long just about everyone, from the wealthy down to the chronically poor, have shed a sense of public responsibility and milked the system for every drop. Now we face a serious emergency and it remains to be seen if anyone, rich or poor, will change course and do the right thing. If not, then our prosperity will end rather quickly.

Presently Congress is in the process of making a bad situation worse by creating policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They take pride in enhancing the wealth of the prosperous (knowing if they do so they will be rewarded, under the table) while ensuring the death of millions due to mismanagement of a pandemic, people losing their jobs, and getting tossed out on the streets. Does this have anything to do with Zen? I think it does and here’s how: The essence of Zen is to bypass delusion and see clearly—things as they are, not as we wish them to be. Wishful thinking got us all into this mess and now we have lots of holes, not enough water, and are on the verge of disaster. 

Another parallel is the understanding that we are all connected. The super-wealthy may desire exclusive independence, but such a thing is not possible. In a civilized society, we share lots of things: The air we breathe, the water we drink, a common infrastructure that either allows prosperity or sinks us all, a food and money supply, and many other points of intersection. 

The notion that anyone can milk the system and get off scot-free is delusional. Individually and collectively we create karma either for the good or for the bad. We have no choice except to live with what we collectively create. And to continue with an ideological logjam while people are starving is madness. The resources of our nation do not belong to politicians. We supply these resources through our blood, sweat, and tears, and for the people in Washington to withhold what we have contributed is outrageous! We elected these people to represent us, not kill us. It’s 11:59 and unless we collectively wake up, midnight and the nightmares that come along will soon be here.

What’s there?

Seeing through the fog of delusion.

“Look straight ahead. What’s there? If you see it as it is, you will never err.” These were the words spoken by Bassui Tokushō, a Rinzai Zen Master just before he died in 1387 in what is modern-day Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. You might say these words were his chosen epitaph that summed up the essence of his life.

“Seeing what’s there” sounds incredibly easy. How could we not? We all have the same eyes, and the world we see is the same. Yet if we all saw the world “as it is,” instead of the way we would like it to be, or a way that confirms our preconceived beliefs and biases, it would be like Shunryu Suzuki referred to in his famous book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Bias, however, construed, gets in the way of clear vision and suddenly we see the world through “Rose Colored glasses” (which are usually not so rosey).

There’s a fresh or innocent perspective when we see as a child sees: an honesty that is neither right nor wrong. In such a state of mind, there is no ax to grind, imbedded beliefs to defend, nor convictions to uphold. Things just are, as they are. 

The Buddha referred to himself as the Tathāgata, a compound word composed of “tathā” and “gata.” Various translations of this Sanskrit word have been proposed, one of which is called reality as-it-is. In this case, the term means, “the one who has gone to suchness” or “the one who has arrived at suchness”—the quality referred to by Zen Master Bassui and Shunryu Suzuki: “Seeing what’s there.”

While apparently easy, in fact, to see things as they are requires moving beyond the ideas we hold of ourselves and others; the pride of ownership in positions to which we become attached; bigotry that colors clarity; fears of ego threat; and preconceived beliefs—all of which serve as clouded lenses through which we see. These ideas swirl around the ego, like a wheel swirls around a central axel. When these ideas are removed, the world appears just as it has always been. Here is how Ch’an Master Hongzhi put this to verse:

“Right here—at this pivotal axle,
opening the swinging gate and clearing the way—
it is able to respond effortlessly to circumstances;
the great function is free from hindrances.”

The challenge is to stay at this central core as the world swirls and changes around us. The easy part is to become trapped in the allure of holding fast to dogmas of inflexibility, defending our points of view and responding in-kind to insults, and attacks. The hard part is staying fully present in the ebb and flow, like balancing on a surfboard, leaning neither to the left nor the right. You can read an expanded version concerning such understanding by clicking here.

There are times, given their extreme nature, that dictate actions we might not see as virtuous. “Expedient Means” may seem to violate teachings thought to be fundamental to our convictions, but as a prior politician once said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He was no Zen Master, but he did articulate the essence of seeing things as they were and calling for expedient means. 

After all is said and done, the best advice for steering clear of conflict and getting sucked back into ego defense comes from Mark Twain: “Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” All of us can be stupid when we lose sight of what’s there.

Living in a world of “alternate-facts.”

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”—Mark Twain

In prior times deception was the exception (or so it seemed). Now it appears to have become the norm, and more than ever we need to be able to discern truth from lies, but since liars lie it is not so easy. And when statistics get involved, there are many ways to spin the truth. It is the nature of a liar to lie. There are many reasons liars fabricate and distort the truth. But the most important reason of all is, liars think they are something they are not—an ego. 

According to the dictionary, an impostor is one who assumes a false identity, or title, for the purpose of deception. It is somewhat irrelevant if a liar knows they are an impostor. So long as liars lie, they are impostors. Until such time as we truly know, who and what we are, we are subject to deception, and I will be the first to admit, I have deceived and been deceived many times in my mortal lifetime, never realizing I too was an impostor. I thought I knew who I was, but I didn’t. Only when I knew I wasn’t what I thought—an ego, did I discover my true immortal self. Until then I suffered greatly, and like an impostor, inflicted suffering upon others. 

In the West, much of the wisdom of the world has been lost to us, as it was to me until I began to study and practice Eastern Wisdom from some of the world’s greatest sages. I have thus been exposed to many of, what must be considered from a Western perspective, outlier treasure conveyors from the East, a few of whom I wish to share in this post so that you too might begin to find your hidden, immortal selves, cease being a mortal impostor and begin to discern the truth.

Since I’ve been blessed with the study of wisdom from the East, I’ve become familiar with some Buddhist vocabulary, and corresponding, underlying meanings, which are also foreign to the West. Foremost among this Eastern Vocabulary is the word “Dharma” and Dharmakāya—Sanskrit, which means “truth body” or “reality body.” The Dharmakāya is the wellspring of all truth and discernment of what is real. It is neither eastern nor western.

Shantideva, an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar and an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna said, “All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.” And the driving force that produces this suffering is the ego: the idea we hold of our selves.

In similar fashion, Zen Master Hakuin Ekakuin in his Song of Zazen wrote, “How near the truth, yet how far we seek. Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst!’ Like the son of a rich man wandering poor on this earth we endlessly circle the six worlds. The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.” 

When mediated through the illusion of an ego, morality becomes simplistic, inflexible, abstract and unjust, in spite of mortal intentions. In that case, the criteria are “what’s in it for me?” And from that vantage point, there is only a single sense of justice: Mine. 

In the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Chán Master Sheng-yen illustrates the relationship between the fabrication of our egos and our true nature by saying, “We practice (meaning meditation—zazen) until the self (ego) is gone. When the self disappears, all obstructions will be gone too. There cannot be a self (ego) that is free from all obstructions. If there is a sense of self, then there are also obstructions. There cannot be obstructions without a self to create and experience them, because the self (ego) is an obstruction. This is nondiscrimination of the highest order.” 

Our egos are an illusion, it tells us the half-truth that we are incomplete, not whole and imperfect and this, in turn, initiates desire: a greed response. What may (or may not) be known is that slowly, but surely, Eastern Wisdom is becoming human wisdom, lacking boundaries of either east or west. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, captured the essential point when he said, “We are not human beings having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having human experiences.” Some may say, I am not spiritually inclined but instead rely upon facts. 

Now facts are alternate, but the truth remains the truth, with no alternatives. Our mortal egos desire. Our immortal selves are already full and desire nothing. Truth has no boundaries. It is always whole, complete and perfect.“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”—The Buddha

Reflections of reality

Look in a mirror, and what do you see? You see your face looking back at you. You don’t delude yourself with the notion that a reflection is really you. It’s just a reflection: an image appearing in a mirror. In your mind’s eye, imagine yourself. That too is just an image appearing before you. Both the image in the mirror and the image in your mind are reflections of you, but it’s the real you that is seeing them both.

Those images—All images are reflections but not what’s real. In every case, it takes an ineffable real you and objective images for perception to occur. Just you or just images won’t do the job. Both are necessary; it takes one who watches and what is watched. Reality joined to a reflection of reality is what it takes to make sense of anything. If we can see a reflection of our self, (otherwise known as a self-image) then the image seen can’t possibly be who we truly are. The true seer is the one doing the seeing. The unreal us is the image being seen. We are not reflections. We are real people seeing thoughts, and what we see are just images. For those curious about the split between what’s real vs. reflections (otherwise known as duality), you might want to read my post “God in a Box ” by clicking here.

Who do you think you are?

By now you see the difference between a thought about things and the reality of things. One is abstract and the other isn’t, and the “isn’t” can’t be described. 

So who do you think you are? Are you an abstraction that can be described or a reality that can’t? And the truth is an abstraction has no power to do anything. An abstraction is unreal and wholly conceptual. Our real personhood is beyond thought because it is real, but it too can’t be found. But we think we can be found. When we look in a mirror, we see our image there. But who is seeing that image there? 

Is an image the same thing as the one doing the seeing? Is your car the same thing as the manufacturing facility? Are you the same thing as your source? And are you 100% sure the mirror is “out there” reflecting an image of you? Or is the mirror “in here” reflecting an image of an image of you? What’s the difference between “out there” and “in here”? Are you a thought image? What’s the difference between thinking and knowing? Give these questions some serious thought, or better yet begin to notice the limitations of rational thought. And then come back tomorrow as we go into the looking glass— the human mind that can’t be found.

Find It!

When you plunge into Buddhist waters you’ll find yourself in a sea of strange language and foreign concepts. You almost need a codebook to make any sense of it. Some people want to learn about Buddhism but get discouraged due to this challenging situation. 

This is unfortunate since once you find the Rosetta Stone you’ll be amazed to discover a richness of understanding, unique in the collection of human knowledge. I’ve labored long to learn the code since I wanted to find out how to explain the incredible transformation I experienced many years ago. 

So consider me as a code breaker: a resource for you to mine your own treasure. Starting today I’m going to repeat a series I ran some time ago on the central linchpin of Buddhism that will unlock your treasure chest. And the topic will be something with which you have lived your entire life, couldn’t survive a single moment without and yet you can’t even find: Your very own mind and I’m not referring to the product of your mind (thoughts, emotions, and images) but rather, call it, the factory that produces these three. 

It is indeed a profound mystery. The Buddha said that in teaching the dharma it’s important to begin simply and start from a base of familiarity so I’m going to do that; begin simply. You’ll take that first step, we’ll progress in sequential baby-steps, and before long you’ll find that you know how to swim in this foreign sea.

The first step—Find your mind; the source of all thoughts and non-thoughts. That’s not a fanciful command. It’s a simple request. Right now as you’re reading this I want you to find your mind. Do it now. You couldn’t read this without your mind, so just locate it now. 

I have no idea where you may be as you read this. You may be in India (I know some of you live there) or you may be in Israel (others are), The United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Vietnam…many different places, but wherever you live I know for a fact that none of you can do that simple thing I just asked you to do: find your mind. 

And why am I so confident? People around the world are very different yet 100% the same in this regard: We all have the exact same mind—the same mind as a buddha—yet nobody can find it because it can’t be done. Nobody can find their own mind for two reasons. The first reason is because the mind isn’t an objective thing, which can be located, identified or discovered. The mind can only be intuited or inferred. And the second reason for my confidence is that even if it could be found (which it can’t), there is no “you” to find it.

I suppose, even at this simple beginning, you are already confused. It is outrageous for me to say what I just said but the disturbance you are now experiencing in response to my request is a critical part of learning the code. Don’t get frustrated over your inability. Steep yourself in the confusion. Let that experience wash over you because unlike other spiritual traditions, doubt and frustration are to Buddhism as a surfboard is to waves. With no doubt, there is nothing to pursue and solve. And unless you learn to find your mind the game of life gets extraordinarily confusing and difficult. 

So that’s enough for today. Squirm in your frustration for another day and come back tomorrow for the next step: Finding out what isn’t your mind, because the first step and the second step are mirror images. What we think is our mind, isn’t. What we think isn’t our mind, is. If that sounds strange just hang out with it until tomorrow. Come back and we’ll continue. But to give you a nudge in the right direction, take a look at the footnote.[1]

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[1] Master Hsuan Hua writes about this matter in the opening section of The ShurangamaSutra. He points out two aspects of our mind: One aspect superficial but unreal, the other hidden but real. He says that the hidden part is like an internal gold mine, which must be excavated in order to be of value. This gold mine is everywhere but not seen. The superficial part is also everywhere but seen and it is this superficial part that lies at the root of suffering. He says: “Buddha-nature is found within our afflictions. Everyone has afflictions and everyone has Buddha-nature. In an ordinary person, it is the afflictions, rather than Buddha-nature, that are apparent...Genuine wisdom arises out of genuine stupidity. When ice [afflictions] turns to water, there is wisdom; when water [wisdom] freezes into ice, there is stupidity. Afflictions are nothing but stupidity.”—See more here.

Who the heck am I?

The sky of mind

If you’ve been reading my blog, more than likely you’ve come to realize that I’m an outlier. I don’t fit the ordinary categories, and that disturbs some people, but the truth is neither do you. 

What people believe overrides truth nearly every time. I haven’t always been so unorthodox, in fact, most of my life I was just like everyone else: screwed up but not aware there was any other way. So I want to tell you a little bit how I went from normal (and screwed up) to abnormal and at peace.

In 1964 I did a terrible thing: I went to Vietnam as a Marine and killed a lot of people. What I hadn’t bargained for was that it killed me—spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. For years following my two years perpetuating socially acceptable mayhem on my own human family, I suffered greatly and was eventually brought to my knees, so full of despair that on a morning 16 years later I made a decision to either commit suicide or get to the bottom of my unexplained dilemma. Obviously, I made the choice of getting to the bottom of my suffering and this took me into strange lands.

I then went to live in a Zen monastery and subsequently experienced a profound awakening, within both the framework of Zen and Christianity. The result of that dual experience of non-duality opened up a doorway into a realm I didn’t know existed and allowed me to live with peace. I then made a pledge to spend the rest of my mortal life passing on the lessons I had learned. So now I share my hybrid and unorthodox strangeness with whoever has ears to hear and a receptive eye.

I have now honored this commitment by teaching, leading meditation groups, writing (this blog), and thus far six books, the latest of which is Impostor—Living in a world of Alternate Facts, which is available free of charge by clicking here. This is a part of my pledge: To give back what I’ve learned. There are many things I don’t know about and I steer clear of speaking and writing about such things. But I know a lot about transforming your mind, leaving behind a life of sorrow and discovering the wellspring of joy that lives within all people. I write about that, only. If I can pass on that, it’s enough because that can change your life and leave this world a better place.

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.”

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.

Dressing up

An acknowledged cultural tradition is to dress for the occasion. We might wear our comfy and tattered clothing while lounging about the house, but we dress up to be more presentable when we go out. 

This is a reasonable social convention, and the result of that convention is that we all expect certain conformity for the smooth operation of social cohesiveness.

The norms of what’s acceptable change over time. When I was younger the norms were different. It was expected that when you were going to fly on PanAm you would dress up. Everyone did. Now it’s rare to see anyone traveling in style. The same set of expectations prevailed for going to church. Everyone wore his or her Sunday best. No longer.

When we see a police officer dressed in uniform we expect something. A military uniform likewise carries a certain message. We have many such uniforms that convey messages and that’s helpful. We say that you can’t read a book by its cover but we do so nevertheless. What’s on the outside is more times than not considered more important than what’s on the inside, and if we aren’t willing to go that far we at least assume certain things about the insides based on what we observe on the outside.

Styles change and our expectations change accordingly. Some styles change less frequently and we call such styles “classic.” But are there styles that never change?  Probably not. Even our sense of beauty changes. If we had lived in Europe during the time when Rubens painted, female beauty was considered to be portly, buxom ladies. Now young ladies want to be pencil thin.

Masquerades and pretense are common where duplicity is the standard and our culture is fundamentally duplicitous; divided by oil and water ideologies. We swing around like monkeys on a vine from one preference to another. The question is, why? Perhaps the answer is that we’re dissatisfied and tire of things that eventually stop working. Life becomes boring after wearing the same old clothes day after day. But maybe the answer is a deeper matter of not having a settled mind, constantly searching for, but never finding ourselves. In such a state of mind, churning is inevitable, no lasting stability.

Some people spend their entire life looking for and never finding stability, peace, or a genuine self-knowing. It’s a sad thing to never discover your own solid ground floor. I know. I spent most of my life in such a turbulent state of mind, always questioning and never knowing. And then I found Zen (or maybe it found me; I don’t know), and the constant harangue of questioning lead to the answer of who I am, have always been, and will never stop being. My true identity is no identity, and so, likewise, is yours. Here there is no dressing up or changing styles. This is the place of continuous tranquility, peace, and contentment. So what sort of dress is expected of Zen? Whatever I choose, but now the outside is simply a convenience to facilitate social glue. The inside of me just laughs at the game and goes back to sleep.