The critical nature of genuine self awakening.

When contemplating the myriad problems of today’s world you might come up with a list such as the following:

• The COVID-19 pandemic

• The Middle East debacle

• Unchecked global climate change (warming)

• A growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else

• Spreading violence

• Hatred and intolerance

• Political gridlock

• Toxic pollution of the environment

• Loss of genuine liberties

• (add your own)

While all of these are problems of enormous concern, there is a core root that underlies and drives them all: a misidentification of who we are individually and collectively. So long as our answer to identity boils down to a vacillating self-image (ego) the natural result is fear, greed, possessiveness, selfishness, isolation, irresponsibility, despair, and a victim mentality that leaves us all heading for a cave of seeming security.

Recently Avram Noam Chomsky observed that “As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism, or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.” While a grim statement that shocks us into states of denial and disbelief, his observations are true.

The question is, what must we all do in order to escape from this inevitable outcome? The answer is not the ostrich method of avoidance, denial, and ignorance. On the contrary what we must all do is transform our self-understanding, from an isolated individual to a connected member of the human race, which was (and remains) the solution to suffering offered by The Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. The solution does not change because the nature of being human does not change. 

At the central core of all of us is an indefinable state of unconditional consciousness that is the same for everyone. The problem is that while this state is the source of all aspects of awareness, itself is not detectable and we are all prone to consider real only things with conditions that can be detected. This is a case of the eye not being aware of the eye. However, in this case, it is the inner eye (URNA) instead of the detectable eye, and as the father of Zen wrote, it is in this state of mind that all discrimination ceases to exist. Out of this indiscriminate state arises sentient discrimination that leads us to the mistaken notion that each of is a dependent ego at odds with every other human, vacillating and contingent on an uncertain world and that “ego idea” then produces the undesirable qualities listed above.

In the recent past, a form of meditation (MBSR) has become prominent in helping many to cease attachment to waves of thinking, many of which are destructive to self and others. While very helpful, it only one of two dimensions outlined by The Buddha in his Eight Fold Path. MBSR rests upon one of these two: right mindfulness (Sanskrit: samyak-smṛti/sammā-sati) and is the essential path to a genuine awakening of our true, indiscriminate nature (who we truly are). The other dimension of mind (right concentration (Sanskrit: samyak-samādhi/sammā-samādhi) is not widely known, but by any other name is Zen/Dhyāna, with a history going back into an unrecorded time, long before The Buddha. 

The two disciplines were intended to be practiced as a combined pair but in today’s world, they have been split apart. MBSR has become quite useful in stilling the mind and helping practitioners to stay present instead of lost in speculation. However, the issue of identity remains an esoteric matter leaving those who practice MBSR only, still holding fast to a perceptible and insecure self-understanding. Importantly it is Zen that produces the desired result of a sense of SELF that is unconditional, whole, perfect, and unshaken. This quality alone delivers the awareness that we are all unified, none better; none diminished in any way. 

As awful as the laundry list of contemporary problems may be, those and unknown others will flourish unless we can experience this state of indiscriminate, undiscovered unity, inherent in us all. 

Praise and blame: the perception of differences.

Happiness or madness? Once we’ve considered thinking, let’s take a look at not thinking. And the very first issue that needs to be explored is a question: What difference does it make, this matter of thinking or not? 

So what, we should ask? As established in the post Thinking, The Buddha considered thinking so crucial that he said: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” On the other hand, the father of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as Not thinking. How do we put these two apparently contradictory statements together? And, so what?

What do we know about Zen and how it influenced The Buddha? Zen was the means employed by The Buddha to realize his enlightenment. Having experience enlightenment, he understood the root of all thinking and not thinking was his true, indiscriminate mind, where all is united⎯the wellspring of both nothing and everything. At this level of consciousness, there is neither this nor that (thinking or not thinking). You would be right to say such things as, I must deal with everyday craziness; I have a job to which I must attend and am surrounded by disagreeable people; I’m a practical person, the world seems to be going to Hell, and I don’t have time or patience for esoteric, useless nonsense. 

In the Breakthrough Sermon, Bodhidharma said, “The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.”

So how then is the mind to be understood? To begin to fathom the mind, we must first consider which mind is up for consideration. I addressed that issue in a previous post⎯ True You and Me. Then we need to acknowledge the difference between a source and a manifestation. What we ordinarily consider our mind are manifestations (ideas, images, emotions: fleeting psychic phenomena, in other words, thoughts, and what results from thoughts). When such views are rooted in fantasy, and the image of self, they are always theoretical reflections that are self-centered. These thoughts emanate from the wrong root, the root of ego, and that emanation is self-centered lousy fruit. The world created from this root is expressive of the nature of the root.

In the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus is on record of having said, “By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”  

The point is that the world we create with our thoughts is always a reflection of the root. The parallel here is that dreams can grow into very different kinds of manifestations. The critical key is the nature of the root. If the root is the ego, there is only one kind of fruit⎯bad. To grow better fruit, it is necessary to dig deeper, down to the source of all thought or non-thoughts: our pure mind.

From the same Breakthrough Sermon Bodhidharma said: “If you use your mind (your rational, conceptual-producing mind) to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind (your true mind) or reality. If you study reality without using your mind (your rational mind), you’ll understand both.”

It becomes clear after reading Bodhidharma that he acknowledged both the pure mind (where there is no discrimination) and the “everyday, quotidian (e.g., ordinary) rational mind” of discrimination. These two are present in us all. One is virtual and based on being able to discriminate one thing from another thing (and becomes the source of all conflict), and the pure mind: the source of everything, where there is no discrimination and no friction. For a conflict to exist, the perception of difference has to exist. If there is no perception of difference, there is no conflict.

So how is this understanding supposed to help us in everyday life? It helps us to recognize that we are all the same (conflicted at one level of consciousness that is virtual) and not conflicted or different at a deeper level of consciousness that is real. It puts everything into the proper alignment and perspective. When we find ourselves embroiled in conflict and adversity, we need to notice which mind is the cause of the conflict. It can’t be the pure mind since for conflict to arise, the perception of discriminate differences must exist. 

In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, it says, when referring to the true mind, “In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya (the true mind) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?”

Q and A: Beyond Boxes

Image via Wikipedia

“Thinking outside the box”—A familiar expression that suggests creativity beyond normal limitations. Everyone has heard this expression and in a general way understands the intent. But let’s push this a bit. Let’s do some Q and A outside the box about boxes.

Q: What’s a box?
A: A container within which something exists.
Q: What else?
A: The container establishes boundaries and limitations.
Q: What if there is nothing in the box?
A: It still contains air. Air is not “nothing” but is “no-thing.”
Q: What does that mean?
A: It means that air is not a thing but rather the absence of things and without the absence, it would be impossible to place “things” in the box.
Q: So does that mean that both things (form) and no-things (emptiness) are interdependent?
A: Exactly.

Lao Tsu pointed this out centuries ago yet we dwell on forms and ignore emptiness. Here is what he had to say...

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there”
Stanza 11—Tao Te Ching

You might ask what value is it to 21st-century people to consider this arcane, centuries-old musing of an ancient Chinese sage? The answer is mutual respect. Every human who has ever lived knows their form and profit but it is rare to find anyone who knows their emptiness (and usefulness). 

When we place limits on our form we diminish our potential (usefulness). Profit comes from form; Usefulness from emptiness. We may profit by acknowledging what we know, but how useful are we to ourselves and others when we ignore or denigrate what we don’t know? When we box things in we see them within limitations which we ourselves establish. Space and emptiness have no limits but form does. When we define with concepts we create, we limit both form and emptiness and force ourselves to stay within those limits.

To cherish only what we know at the expense of difference is a violation and diminution of our space and that of others. Why are we so afraid of what we can’t perceive? Why do we fear differences? Why do we prefer boxes and limitations when we can have infinity? 

Is it that we have no eyes to see or ears to hear? A box is useful when we acknowledge both the contents and the context and it matters little whether the box belongs to us or another. In any event, immortal space is shared space; only mortal form limits and changes. Genuine emancipation happens when we can release our attachment to mortality and embrace the emptiness of immortality, without confining it to conceptual limitations.

Getting saved??

Where to throw the lifeline?

Let me state the obvious: Being saved requires someone to save. An extension of this thought concerns the apparent need to be saved. Only someone who believes they are lost need to worry him or herself with finding their way. 

A fool is someone who is not lost, isn’t yet remains convinced they are. Consequently, if someone is persuaded they need to be saved, only then does a savior make any sense. And this brings us to that central of all issues: duality and separation.

Where does the idea come from that “people of the book” (e.g., Jews, Christians, and Muslims) need saving? Those three religions hold a common understanding based on a shared segment of the Old Testament. The first five books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, the book of Numbers, and Deuteronomy—comprise the Torah, the story of Israel from the Genesis creation narrative to the death of Moses. Genesis is common to all three religions. Jews, Christians, and Muslims share the story of creation involving Adam and Eve, who allegedly disobeyed God by eating an apple and were cast out of paradise and thus in need of being saved. 

But (and this is a big “but”) since Adam and Eve were stained with sin (as well as their progeny), they were incapable of saving themselves and thus needed a savior. And here is where the story begins to divide amongst the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. All three accepted the inherent nature of mankind as fallen, being condemned by God due to original sin, but how they were reconciled significantly varied.

The Christian answer to this dilemma is that God took pity on mankind because he loved them so much that he “sent his only begotten son” to take the sins of the world upon himself and offer himself as a sacrifice to appease God (who demanded justice as recompense). By being crucified on a cross, died, was buried, overcame death by rising from the dead, and bringing the Holy Spirit to abide in the hearts of those who confessed their sinful nature and accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. 

Only if that confession took place would God grant reconciliation, forgiveness and give believers a new heart filled with the Holy Spirit to replace an old heart that was filled with sin. In essence, that was, and is, the story that continues to inspire those who consider themselves as “born again.” Everyone else who chose to not accept this story was regarded as heretics and damned to Hell.

So the essence of this proposition boils down to believing in the original sin of Adam and Eve. If that part of the story breaks down, then the entire story of needing a savior likewise falls apart. I have written a commentary on this story, which speaks to some serious flaws in the story. It will convince no one who considers this creation story as historical fact and has closed his or her mind to alternate interpretations. Nevertheless, it is a reasonable commentary of a metaphor with a deeper meaning that comes very close to the Buddhist understanding. 

The significant difference between the two is the notion of duality, separation, and where to find the kingdom of Heaven. Here is what Jesus is recorded as having said about Heaven and finding your true self: 

“If your leaders say, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in the Heavens,’ then the birds will be before you. If they say, ‘It is in the ocean,’ then the fish will be before you. But the Kingdom is inside of you and the Kingdom is outside of you. When you know yourself, then you will know that you are of the flesh of the living Father. But if you know yourself not, then you live in poverty and that poverty is you.”—Gospel of Thomas 3.

Others have suggested that we are not lost but instead consider ourselves to be. To a person of Zen, words are a mixed blessing. They can lead you astray or open your mind to the music of the muses. One of the greatest mystical poets of all time was RabindranathTagore.  Sadly, while he lived, he was little known outside of the Calcutta area, and not known at all outside of India. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Tagore, “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.”

One of Tagor’s resonate themes is opening doors. Here is one facet from his poetic jewel Journey Home. 

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.” 

Similarly, one of the great Zen Masters (Hakuin Zenji) wrote a famous poem called The Song of Zazen, which opens like this, 

“From the beginning all beings are Buddha. Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas. How near the truth, yet how far we seek. Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst!’ Like the son of a rich man wand’ring poor on this earth, we endlessly circle the six worlds. The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.” 

Jesus likewise wrote the parable of the Prodigal Son, which in essence expresses the same truth of a man who has the blessing from the beginning but wanders far and wide before realizing that all along, he must return home to find what he had lost.

The principle treasure of Buddhist understanding is that we are not lost or in need of saving. We have never been separated from our source (our inherent and eternally indwelling, indiscriminate true self), which remains obscure due to ego delusion. We are all in essence Buddha’s awaiting awakening, and once that true nature is revealed, your entire self-understanding and the universal view are transformed for all time. You then know in the depth of your core that we are all united, one and the same—none better and none lesser and fundamentally indiscriminate. There is profound liberty that comes with the realization that we can never be anywhere that God is not, and in God’s eyes, we are all equal and loved without conditions.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” The Apostle Paul—Romans12:2

“First awaken the mind that reads, and then you’ll understand.”—Zen Master Bassui Tokushō

Traveling theatre

The masks we wear.

When I was much younger there was no television, only radio and it was referred to as a “theatre of the mind.” Unlike television, where we see visual performances on screens across the room, we saw performances in the imaginary theatre of the mind. 

In some ways, the imagination was more vivid and pictorial than watching images on a TV screen. Ours was an internal screen (actually our screen was the primary visual cortex located at the back of our brain). What none of us realized then with radio, or now with television, was that the ultimate screen remained, located in our brains rather than across the room.

We all look out upon our moving, conditional, changing world and see what we all take to be real. In fact what we are seeing remain images being projected upon that internal screen—our primary visual cortex. Images are all just shadows of what’s real. And out of that projection, we form an idea of who we are; one self-image built upon other images and none of it real. 

Nevertheless, we take it (our egos/self-images) as real and become persuaded, guarded and protective of that fabricated image, feeling insulted and inflamed when the role requires a different sort of performance. Some are fabricated out of harsh experiences and formed into negative self-images (hateful and hated) while others fabricate theirs out of more genteel material and fabricate loving self-images, with every step in between. 

Regardless of harshness, genteel, or anywhere in between, all of the end results are unreal simply because the material is unreal. The base material determines the end result. As the saying goes, “You can’t make filet mignon out of hamburger.” The fundamental point here is that we all take our ideas of whom and what we are far too seriously, never realizing how conditionally unreal we are actually. 

How much better, for everyone if we all recognized this fact and lightened our emotional/mental load and became what we truly are—performers, acting out changing roles. And as performers, we adapt to changing circumstances with changing roles and play the part as circumstances dictate.

And a part of this traveling theatre is the recognition that we are also real observers. So we play the roles, with a chuckle in our hearts, knowing full well that we can perform as the role dictates and at the end of the day leave the roles behind and go home to ourselves. It is important to us all to see conditional life as just a show. We are the players; all different. Conditional life is the stage, and the real us—all the same, are the observers: as different and distinct as snowflakes yet fundamentally just indiscriminate snow. Distinctive snowflakes melt into indistinct snow and that becomes the water of unity.

The Watcher

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.”—The opening stanza of Chapter 16 of The Tao Te Ching

This post is more than likely going to result in a big yawn since the message should be self-evident, but probably not. Go see a movie (it’s instructive to my point), and you’ll undoubtedly notice two things: (1) You are sitting in your seat and (2) you’re seeing images moving on a screen. No-brainer. Watch TV; Same thing. Neither of those images is real, and you know that. 

So far, so good. Now take it to a not-so-evident level—You see the world, and it moves. There is still you, but is what you see real? That is taken for granted as being real, but as far as your mind is concerned it is no different from a movie or TV. Your true mind doesn’t distinguish. It just notices movement, and you could be asleep and, in principle, it is the same. Dreams come, they go, and there must be you who sees what moves. That you, the true Self, is a constant. Yet it is not yours. It never moves and it can’t be found. It just watches, listens, smells, tastes, and feels. It perceives everything but in itself is nothing.

“Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.”—Chapter 14 of The Tao Te Ching

Separating wheat from chaff.

Throughout recorded history, there is evidence that agriculture began as far back as 20,000 BCE. For that long we have recognized that in harvesting grain, the good and the bad grew together, and it was necessary to separate the two in order to glean the good. Consequently, numerous texts can be found that illustrate the practice of separating the wheat from the chaff for extracting the useful from that which is not.

I mention this as a means to illustrate an important distinction between religion and spirituality. It is commonly accepted that spirituality runs through the core of religious thought, from any and all corners of our human global community. My issue of the day challenges this view. And the reason, for any serious student of history, is that religious dogma has perhaps never been as blatant a bludgeon as it is today. And religion is now being used as a means of political manipulation to appeal to the most base and egregious of human tendencies, all the while employing twisted thinking by using holy texts to justify really bad behavior.

So, the question becomes: Can the purity of spirituality be extracted from the hull of religious trappings that appear on the surface as piety? Is this a matter of a wolf in sheep’s clothing? And to answer that question all we need to do is reflect back to the answers of two of the greatest spiritual leaders of all time: The Christ and The Buddha. 

Without cherry-picking scripture, but instead looking at the big picture, it is unavoidably clear that The Christ came into continuous conflict with the religious institutions of his day and often times was very critical of their hypocritical nature. The Buddha likewise castigated the religious institutions of his time and place by urging his followers to rely on what is good for one and all, instead of relying on religious institutions or holy men.

Ultimately economics, religious thought, and politics run together like wheat and chaff. Can these matters be successfully isolated? Probably not, but it is instructive to do so momentarily and once examined, bring them back together into the blended conglomerate they represent. Can we, as a human society honestly go forward with the attitude that a political/economic system that divides people into camps of haves and have-nots be justified by quoting scripture? To do that requires mind-numbing, mental flip-flops that defy all moral reasons. But yet that is what is taking place today.

The free enterprise system of economics is allegedly based on individual initiatives, but without integrating the element of morality into the mix, it descends downward into a disgusting slugfest of greed and selfishness. The buggy-man of the free enterprise system was Karl Marx who is known for his stance that, “Religion is the opium of the people.” He did not, however, say that spirituality was an opiate. Ultimately this comes down to a much more fundamental issue which is best expressed as a question: Is spirituality something we do, or what we are?

If you are of the mind, as many are, that our core nature is in need of an overhaul or renovation, and can only be cleansed by divine intervention, then perhaps there could be a place for a religious or spiritual practice that is foreign to the nature of man. On the other hand, the alternative view is that we are fundamentally spiritual to the core, and no overhaul is required. Consequently, there is no way of being human as “non-spiritual” beings. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

In this case, the need is not one of renovation but clearing away the impediments that distort our thinking into conclaves of alienation, superiority, and self-righteous obscurity. In other words, clearing the mind of twisted perspectives that seem to justify self-centered behavior but instead move us toward rejoining the human family as indiscriminate vessels of compassion and love.

So then I return to the beginning matter of separating the wheat from the chaff. Is that a worthwhile endeavor? And if it is, then what does it mean to be religious yet not spiritual? Or, said alternatively, how can we best express our fundamental spiritual nature without diluting it with extraneous and dogmatic teachings that stand in the way?

One of the greatest Zen Masters of all time was Rinzai Zen Master Bassui Tokushō (1327–1387), born in modern-day Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. He said to his students (about reading scriptures and trying to glean understanding): 

“One whose dharma eye has truly been opened will know the original great wisdom. Why would he then have a strong desire to study? Delicious food has no value to one who has had his fill.” He went on to say, “First open the mind that reads, and then you’ll know what you are reading.”

Or if you prefer the expression of The Apostle Paul: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”— 1 Corinthians 11-12

It is the darkness of the human heart that impedes genuine knowing; the chaff that encases the kernel. Said differently, remove the plank in your eye before you can see the speck in another.—Matthew 7:5

Then only will we be able to see clearly, without the filter of bias.

The bottom line: Religious texts can be (and often are) used as band-aids to justify bad behavior that stands in direct conflict with the heart of spiritual unity. 

Bassui was correct: the essential task is to cut through the dross that shrouds the purity of the human heart. Once that has become established, there is no need to keep reading, over and over religious texts that, at best are admixtures of wheat within the chaff. Once your eye is clear you’ll be able to see what ought to be evident, but isn’t.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”―Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart

The Power of Deception.

A couple of days ago, The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit was convened at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. The President of the Family Research Council (Tony Perkins) introduced the keynote speaker, Vice President Mike Pence, and said of him: He understands himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican,” in that order.

Yet Pence’s speech was as far away from the essential nature of genuine Christianity as one might be. His chosen venue has been designated as an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and what he said affirmed that assessment. 

If you wanted to sum up the speech into a nutshell it would be, look how great we are under Trump—chest-thumping and ideological superiority (e.g., us, the white-hats against them: the black-hats). 

Nothing about his speech promoted unity and caring for our fellow man but instead promoted the opposite. Following a panel titled “How Gender Ideology Harms Children,” which included Dr. Michelle Cretella from the American College of Pediatricians, (also designated an ultra-right-wing quasi-religious hate group), Pence echoed the panel’s perspective that those who define themselves as LGBT are just sick individuals who are determined to break God’s intentions. They are sinful and need to change their ways. 

According to the Family Research Council’s website, the Values Voter Summit was created in 2006 to “provide a forum to help inform and mobilize citizens across America to preserve the bedrock values of traditional marriage, religious liberty, the sanctity of life and limited government that make our nation strong.” 

Cretella has been excoriated by The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) with a response, titled: “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse,” saying that Cretella pushes a perspective of “political and ideological agendas not based on science and facts.”  I would add further, the ideology is anything but Christian in nature, which if geared to the teachings of Christ, to treat your neighbor as yourself. 

SAHM destroyed Cretella’s position showing how she cherry-picked bad science to reach her conclusion. Nevertheless, Pence continues to endorse Cretella’s conclusion with his own bad theology and in so doing destroys his own view of himself as being “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican.” And why might I say such a thing? To answer that question we must first define some theological terms and say what it means to be a real Christian instead of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

To the second issue (e.g., a real Christian) one must abide by the essential teaching of Christ to “love one another as I have loved you.” It is specious to claim the title without abiding by the essential teaching of the founder. And to the first issue (e.g., Theological terms) when Jesus taught that sort of love he was referring to a term found only in the New Testament. The term, in Koine Greek, is ἀγαπάω (agapē ) and meant “unconditional love”, or if you prefer “love with no strings attached—be they gender, race, ideology or any other means of discrimination”. So the concluding question here is whether or not Pence, and his puppet master Trump, are in fact promoting genuine Christian unity and love amongst all people, or a faux Christian wanna-be agenda that promotes division and one-up-man-ship? 

Laying down one’s life.

Yesterday the world watched as friends and family eulogized the life of John McCain. It was a testament of sacrifice for fundamental principles that, for him, rose above partisan politics. 

His life and mine were forged in the blast furnace of Vietnam. Forever after, he faced the challenges of living without giving in to fear. In his own words, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.” He knew that in the marrow of his bones. Five and a half years in Hanoi’s main Hỏa Lò Prison (“Hanoi Hilton”), changed McCain from an irreverent, cocky renegade into a man who would dedicate the rest of his life fighting for those fundamental principles by not yielding to the fears of ordinary men and women.

John McCain was a warrior compatriot of mine. The war changed us both but our subsequent vectors were different. He went down one path, and I went down another. You know where his led, but mine led me on a spiritual journey trying to find solace from the demons that entered my mind and soul, causing a never-ending psychological and emotional maelstrom that has continued to plague my entire adult life.

My pilgrimage took me onto the path of Zen because it claimed to be a means for alleviating suffering. It did what it claimed, and then, I continued on to seminary where I learned how to read both ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, the latter of which was the original language of The New Testament. As a result, I became aware of those concepts held by the ancient Greeks about life. They saw life in three aspects: two that comprised our human vessel and one that made us into sentient beings sparked by the breath of our creator. These three aspects have now become known as our biological being (βίος), our psychological being (ψυχὴν), and our spiritual being (ζωή). 

All three were represented in those words from Koine Greek, and yesterday during John McCain’s eulogy, the significance of those different principles came out in a reading by Senator Lindsey Graham.

John was a man who lived a life of high principles so I imagine neither he nor his family would be offended by my rectifying a misunderstanding—a meaningful and significant misunderstanding that is both needed now more than ever within our political sphere and should be embraced by all people throughout all times and all places. The misunderstanding of which I speak concerns those three different words for “life” rendered in Koine Greek

The passage read by Senator Graham was John 15:13 which has been translated into English and reads: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The common way of understanding this passage means to sacrifice one’s bodily being (to die biologically) as an act of supreme love. 

But that is not what the passage meant when written in Koine Greek. And to grasp the true understanding, we need to see it in the original language which reads as follows: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” and came to be understood as stated above. I don’t expect many, if any, to read Koine Greek so a bit of guidance is required. I have highlighted in red the keyword ψυχὴν.

The standard, universally accepted manual for translating from Koine Greek into English is Strong’s Concordance, and when we turn to Strong, we find the true meaning for “ψυχὴν.” It means, among various concepts, that which determines the personality of a person, in this case, the mind, and is the basis for our grasp of the psyche (e.g., psychology).

If that passage of John 15:13 meant what Senator Graham conveyed (e.g., to die biologically), then the passage would have been written this way: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν βίος αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” yet it was not.

Properly translated this passage means “ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s ideas for one’s friends.” In other words, to set aside one’s ideologies as the supreme act of love. And when you consider what divides us more than anything else, it is clinging to our ideas and rejecting those of others. Thus, the supreme act of love conveyed by The Christ had nothing to do with dying biologically. Instead, Jesus saw the source of hatred as ideas that divide us, and, therefore saw the solution to hatred as love—setting aside dividing ideas. It is hard to imagine a time in human history when that message is more germane than now.

And perhaps the most surprising realization of all is that this true understanding of love is almost identical to that expressed by the father of Zen—Bodhidharma, who defined Zen as “not thinking.” When you don’t think, what remains is a purity of mind. The Japanese form of Zen considers the mind and heart not as two different matters, but as one united entity (heart/mind). “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”

Things are not what they seem.

Baobab Tree 

One of the most challenging spiritual matters to comprehend is the relationship between matter—which is clearly discriminately conditional, governed by the law of discernment, and karma, with a beginning and an ending—and spirit which is unified, whole without a beginning or an end, and not subject to karma. 

How we wonder, are these two dimensions not dual? Obviously, one is conditional, and the other is unconditional. Two very different natures that are somehow joined into an inseparable, single reality of unity.

 
The Gita helps us to understand by grasping the philosophy and language of the time when it was written. From that frame of reference, two words/concepts are essential: Purusha (spirit) and Prakriti (everything else). Prakriti is the field of what can be known objectively, the field of phenomena (perceived through the senses), the world of whatever has “name and form:” that is, not only of matter and energy but also of the mind.

Purusha, on the other hand, permeates and infuses Prakriti. It is everywhere present but unseen. From that perspective, the notion of duality disappears since Prakriti emanates (grows from) Purusha. Think of the relationship between the two as the perception and functioning of the strange giant Baobab Tree from Madagascar. If ever there was an odd part of Prakriti that illustrated the relationship, this tree would be the perfect example. The trunk is clearly not divided yet the branches are, and they grow inseparable from a unified trunk. Obviously, neither could exist alone, both grow out of an unseen subterranean root system, hidden beneath the ground, and the spirit of the tree (sap) flows freely throughout.

The illustrated example is close except for one thing: both are phenomenal versions of Prakriti. To complete the picture (still only approximate), we need to add a dimension of reflection. In the same way that the Lotus reaches upward, originating from beneath the mud of the unconscious, and emerges into the light from the shimmering waters as discriminate form, so too, we can add the streams of graduating clarity. 

While we can’t see into the mud of the unconscious, we know it is still a version of consciousness, and by penetrating into the depths, we can release the spirit until it enters the world of Prakriti. And how exactly would that penetration be accomplished? 

Here again, the Gita guides the way: Samadhi. Two schools of thought exist, sudden and gradual enlightenment. Ordinarily, samadhi can be entered only following a long period of meditation, and after many years of ardent endeavor. But in one verse of The Gita (5:28), a significant word sada, “always” is portrayed. Once this state of deep concentration becomes established, the person lives in spiritual freedom, or moksha, permanently. 

The enlightenment experience is a singularly intense experience which tells one his or her place in the scheme of things. This is more often than not a once and for all experience, which will cause the experiencer never again to doubt his or her relationship with or to the Self, others, the world, and whatever one may believe is beyond the world. This experience is enormously validating or empowering and is unlike any other experience one can have. 

Since non-dual reality cannot be divided into incremental parts, it cannot be grasped little by little as the gradual enlightenment approach implies. The non-dual must be realized all at once (suddenly) as a whole or not at all. As sada is always present, once Purusha is experienced, it can never again come and go, as Prakriti surely does. The right vs. wrong of Prakriti becomes right and wrong of Purusha.

“Things are not what they seem; nor are they otherwise.”