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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.