Transformation

Buddhism has been around so long that it is hard to recall the locus—the seed from which it grows. But by recalling the condensed teaching of the Buddha, the essence is the very first point: Life (e.g., mortal) is suffering. Everything else about Buddhism is centered around that locus. So whenever we become overwhelmed with the multiplicity of the branches springing from this ancient practice, all we have to do is remember the root: Life is Suffering. This is why Buddhism has such an enduring appeal—Everyone suffers, and nobody wants to. And no more thorough practice has ever been conceived to understand suffering and provide a means for overcoming it than Buddhism. Suffering springs from our mind and begins with how we perceive and understand ourselves and the world we live in. And this is why Buddhism is a full exposition of our minds.

Master Hsuan Hua writes about this matter in the opening section of The Shurangama Sutra. He points out two aspects of our mind: Superficial, but unreal, the other hidden, but real. He says that the hidden part is like an internal gold mine that must be excavated to be valuable. 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,

“ The Buddha-nature is found within our afflictions. Everyone has afflictions, and everyone has a Buddha-nature. In an ordinary person, it is the afflictions, rather than the 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.”

The word stupidity may sound harsh and uncaring, but sometimes stark truth is more effective than placation. The critical point of his statement (and a message of the Sutra) is that there is a crucial relationship between suffering and wisdom. Both of these rest on a fundamental principle of faith—That at the core of our being, there is the supreme good, which is ubiquitous. Unlike other religions where faith is in an external God, in Buddhism, faith concerns a serene commitment in the practice of the Buddha’s teaching and trust in enlightened or highly developed beings, such as Buddhas or bodhisattvas (those aiming to become a Buddha).

Many people get confused with words, especially the word “Buddha-nature.” When the uninformed hear that word, they start thinking about a ghost that they imagine looks like some ancient Indian person. What we believe makes a difference. But instead of the label Buddha-nature, we could call it “Mind-nature” because Buddha means awakened. When we awaken to our right primordial minds, our world is transformed. Buddha-nature is the unseen gold mine that inhabits all of life. Without accepting that core, we are incapable of accessing wisdom, and without understanding, we are all trapped in suffering. The flip side of suffering is bliss, just as the flip side of up is down, but when we are immersed in the down, it is most difficult to “pull ourselves up from the bootstraps” and rise above misery. During those downtimes, it seems that everything is down.

We have all had conversations about the essential nature of people. Some say that we are rotten to the core—that there is no vital good there. Such people have given up on their own human family. This voice is split between those who believe in God and those who don’t. On the one hand, if there is to be any essence of good, it is purely the result of that good coming from an external God. The “non-believers” hold no hope at all—Just rotten to the core. Neither of these voices acknowledges intrinsic worth. To one, the worth is infused; to the other, there is none.

The eternal presence of Buddha-nature (e.g., the pure/not polluted mind of consciousness) is a contrary voice of faith: The recognition of intrinsic, essential worth, present in life. This gold mine, which, when accepted in faith, manifests in wisdom amid affliction and turns ice into water.

The isness of IS.

Everyone desires certainty, but it doesn’t come about; the ground beneath our feet is different from what it was yesterday, and consequently, only new solutions will work today. We surely know that in today’s world with COVID-19.

We can’t recycle old solutions, we must create new ones to fit today’s terrain. That makes unquestionable sense so why do we not see the shifting sands? Perhaps we don’t see it because we don’t want to. It is easier to shape life as we want it to be, instead of the way it is. “Suchness” or “thusness” is the desirable way of the heart: Accepting what is vs. what we wish. Desiring what is not, is a fool’s journey since what exists in this present moment is all there can ever be. The clock doesn’t run backward. That, however, does not stop us from engaging in fantasy and wishful thinking.

This sage observation is not singularly a matter of psychology or spirituality but is also a reflection of biological necessity and survival. According to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, 

“…it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” 

Numerous examples of failed societies can be found⎯from the Vikings in Greenland to the Jews who were deceived in Nazi Germany, believing Hitler would not follow through with his final solution⎯when refusal to adapt and blindness ruled the day. There is no guilt implied here. Often times circumstances shift suddenly and being creatures of habit, we are lulled into states of denial. When people or other species have not adapted, they have perished. This is as much a psychological matter as it is a spiritual one.

We have some psychological blind spots that can be dangerous. Cognitive dissonance is one of these blind spots. So is “herding,” “crowd mentality,” (a significant problem today in social networks), the “boiling frog syndrome,” “denial” and so too bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism⎯bias against accepting what is and desiring what is egocentric, fear-induced and self-serving. 

Learning to accept the essential goodness in all things requires releasing ourselves from fear, and then embracing the unity in all. When we see ourselves in others then we can say as Shantideva, the 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar, said: “When I act for the sake of others, No amazement or conceit arises. Just like feeding myself, I hope for nothing in return.”

Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me.

Who’s that in there?

I began posting to Dharma Space 10+ years ago, recognizing the task before me was an impossible one: Trying to convey with words and images that which can never be adequately accomplished. Ineffable matters are beyond description. 

Lao Tzu began his now-famous Tao Te Ching with this very thought: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

I chose this joisting at windmills for an excellent reason. I was (and am) persuaded that if I could influence just a few, with seeds of doubt that challenged preconceived, dogmatic stances (held by the majority), there was the possibility of making a substantial, positive difference in how we think about, and relate to, one another.

If you’ve spent any time reading and mulling over what I post here, then you’ll know that I don’t wed myself to any particular spiritual venue but instead take wisdom from wherever I’ve found it. My task is then to digest and synthesize these pearls and recast them in a way that a contemporary reader can grasp. I consider this an obligation since some may not have been exposed to the breadth and variety of spiritual practices I have. So my methods are, by design, an attempt to simplify something that can be a bit daunting. Consequently, I employ frames of reference understood by an audience that is more than likely far removed from my topic. Such is the case in today’s post.

Often we learn something within a given context (for example, grammar) and don’t apply it in a different context. It’s a bit like becoming accustomed to a person in one context and then finding them in another. When that happens (if you’re like me), you may find yourself saying, “I think I know that person, but for the life of me, I can’t recall from where.” Our memories are constructed in such a way that we file data under particular headings, and when we encounter something familiar, but out of context, we are disoriented until we can remember the file heading. Then we say, “Oh yes, that’s where I know them from.” Today’s topic is one of those I can’t recall from where, déjà vu re-positionings, only I’m going to fill in the blanks for you. And the context takes you back to grammar school.

I wasn’t very interested in, or good at grammar—all of those conjugations, parts of speech, and diagramming left me cold. But there was one part of this discipline I did find intriguing: subjects and objects. The rule was, as you may recall, an object was a noun—a person, animal, place, thing, or an idea. And similarly, a subject was what (or whom) the sentence was about. 

To determine the subject of a sentence, the rule was first to isolate the verb and then make a question by placing “who?” or “what?” before the verb, the answer to that question was the subject. Not so hard until you write a sentence like, “I see myself.”  That was a thorny problem because it had to be based on the presumption that the subject and the object were the same.

The clear and obvious conclusion was that if I looked in a mirror, what I would see was the objective part of me. But what part of me was doing the seeing? Was it not the subjective me? Later on (long after grammar school), I learned about the word “sentience”: awareness—a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness—which just happens to be universally distributed among all sentient beings in an indiscriminate, unconditional way. Then I wondered: Can an object lacking sentience be “aware?” Unless there was something else to learn, regarding stones and other objects lacking sentience, it seemed reasonably clear that the subjective part of me was the part seeing that objective me in the mirror. And furthermore objects lacking sentience can’t be aware of anything, much less themselves.

I must confess that putting these seemingly disparate pieces together was a moment of enlightening amazement. Obviously, inside of me (and every other sentient being), was an unseen faculty of consciousness that could rightly be called the subjective nature—but lacking ordinary definitions—that was exactly like every other sentient being: the seer seeing objects, including sentient objects, but not necessarily aware ones. All objects are discriminately unique and different, yet subjectively, there are no differences because sentience is a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.

Ah-ha, I thought: I’m two people perfectly fused into a single being. Remove the sentient part, then I’d turn into a stone or remove the non-sentient part, and I’d turn into a ghost. One part of me (the objective element) is 100% differentiated, unique, and set apart from every other object (like unique snowflakes). The subjective element is 100% undifferentiated, just the same as every other hidden subject (like fundamental snow). Melt the snow, and it all becomes H2O (water). This latter is the basis of unity (what brings us all together), and the prior is the basis for discrimination (what pits us all against each other). And neither the objective nor the subjective me (or you) could possibly exist apart from the other. These are not two but rather one, inseparable entity. Now that is pretty cool: ghost and a non-ghost, at the same time!

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.

The lens through which we see the world

Ego, by Hsiao-Yen Jones

Bias; vested interests; preconceived ideas; discrimination: All forms of distortion that shape our view of the world and our selves. Birds of a feather flocking together against birds with different feathers, but underneath the feathers, all just birds with no defining labels. What do you have when you get rid of feathers? Birds. What do we have when we get rid of our delusions? The real you and me: all humans, with no defining properties: A true man, without rank.

What we are not ordinarily aware of is that every single person is looking at life through the filter of a fabricated artifact that is continuously distorting our view of the world around us. Beneath the false remains the true, but to get through what lies beneath, we have to plunge through subconscious fears. Most recently, I wrote about this subconscious barrier in a post Dreams and delusions.

We think highly of ourselves and thus look down on others not like us. We reason that our views are right, so others must be wrong. We adore accolades, so we play to the adoring audiences. When seen through this egotistical artifact, we do so unaware of our bias and assume that our rose-colored glasses shade the world. We are the center of us, and the world conforms to our image. Love ourselves: love the world. Hate ourselves: hate the world. 

But first, we must come to know ourselves; The one beneath the lie. Without that awareness, we delude ourselves with thoughts of superiority (the opposite or somewhere in between), believing we wear the clothes of an emperor. Who is this self? Is that the one we are genuinely: The one that is dependent upon the votes of birds like us, who vacillates on the whim and opinions of others; who needs reinforcement to be whole and complete? Or the self, that is already whole, eternal, steady, loved, and loves? The ego needs everything because it is always incomplete and unreal. Our true self is eternally whole, complete, and needs nothing. In the 14th century a mystic by the name of Meister Eckhart said this concerning how one head, stands in comparison to another:

“Humanity in the poorest and most despised human being is just as complete as in the Pope or the Emperor.” And we know what sort of clothing the Emperor wears—none.

Fundamental humanity is not flawed in any way. It is complete already. The flaw is what stands in the form of our human birthright that puts one head above another. The ego is the archenemy of our authentic, united selves, and God. But at the ground level of our humanness, we are equal and good, whether Pope, Emperor, Buddha, or an average person. Remove the enemy, and our unity shows through.

Zen philosophy?

Philosophy is oftentimes regarded as an artificial covering, at best-reflecting approximations. One Webster definition is “...a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means.” Another is “...a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought.” 

To many—especially Westerners—Zen is seen as an esoteric philosophy, with little relevance to everyday life. This view hasn’t changed much since The Buddha walked the earth 2,500 years ago and perhaps for a good reason. Theories about life rarely match reality. They may be useful in limited mapping situations, but it is impossible to develop a theory or philosophy which fits life perfectly.

Theories and philosophies should always be measured against the standard of reality. Knowing something as a bone-embedded fact always wins the day against speculation. The proof of such comparison thus comes down upon how reality is understood. Are our senses to be trusted? Do we see clearly (without bias or distortion)? Do we know what is real? Seeing from within a cloud of obscurity is not the same as a vision on a clear day, and for this reason, the practice of Zen is concerned with clearing away the ego-mind to reveal our untarnished original mind. In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha and a bodhisattva named Mahāmat spoke about these matters and said...

“To philosophers, the conception of the Tathāgata-womb seems devoid of purity and soiled by these external manifestations. Still, it is not so understood by the Tathāgatas—to them, it is not a proposition of philosophy but an intuitive experience as real as though it was an amalaka fruit held in the palm of their hand.”

The Tathāgata-womb is self-evident. The Sanskrit word used is Tathāgatagarbha, which is rendered as the Buddha womb. The term Tathāgata means—one who has thus gone (Tathā-gata) or one who has thus come (Tathā-agata), the import is one who has transcended the ordinary view of reality. Is this birth-place in some distant place? Zen teaches that it is ubiquitous; there is no coming nor going since it is impossible to be where it is not.

This is, of course, a difficult thing to embrace. When we think of the exemplary and pure nature of a Buddha, and compare this incomparable state to our own, it seems impossible to accept that we too contain this nature (e.g., Buddha-Nature) but that is what Zen teaches. But it is one thing to think such a purity resides in us, as a philosophical consideration and quite another to experience it intuitively. When the latter occurs, all doubt goes away, and you are transformed forever. Then only do you truly know yourself as one who looks into their own heart and finds eternity.

In this sense, Zen is not a philosophy. It is opposed to speculation and philosophy of all kinds. The preeminent focus of Zen is to intuitively experience the purity and clear vision that comes from our very own being. And when that happens, reality is seen in a radically new way.

The high price of choice: winning battles, losing wars.

My way or the highway?

The boundary line between sleep and wakefulness is anything but clear. Ordinarily, we think we know the difference. When sleeping, sometimes we dream, and it isn’t clear. But when we wake up, we say to ourselves, “Oh, that was just a dream.”  

Dreams can seem very real and sometimes terrifying. Research has shown that between 25% to 50% of people die while asleep. While not conclusive, evidence suggests that little difference exists between such things as heart rate, blood pressure, anxiety states, and stress hormones produced due to wakeful states of stress and sleep states of stress. The body doesn’t distinguish. Our reasoning is that one state (wakeful state of consciousness) is real, while the sleep state is not. 

To fathom the Buddhist understanding of highest, or ultimate reality, it is necessary to come to terms with the basis of differentiation. And when this is explored the conclusion is that the vast majority of the human race is never awake but is instead in a state of perpetual sleep, not knowing the difference between reality and unreality. 

To unlock this mystery, we need to examine this matter of discrimination. Why do we see things as mutually discrete and different? Isn’t it sufficient that they appear that way? Things are different, at least perceptually. We see, smell, taste, feel, hear, and imagine them as being different and mutually discrete. How could it be otherwise? That alone should justify discrimination—shouldn’t it?

According to the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, this is seeing only one half of the picture—and not the important half—of reality which is transcendent to perception. There is a state of consciousness, referred to as the highest (or ultimate reality) where all differences do not appear. It is not a state based on normal means of perception but is rather experienced intuitively. It is the root consciousness from which all perception arises. This state is not determined logically, accessed philosophically, or described by words or other symbols. It’s discerned directly—by-passing all conditions which restrict and limit reality. In this sense, it could be said that discrimination both exists and it doesn’t exist.

At the level of conditioned, mutually discrete life, which we routinely enjoy, there is no question that discrimination (e.g., differentiation) exists. Objectively things are perceived to be different, and it is impossible to avoid making judgments and expressing preferences about these objective forms. And from the basis of unconditional, the highest reality, it is equally clear that discrimination does not exist. 

At this level, all objective forms simply don’t exist. So, on the one hand, we perceive differences, make preferences, fight over such differences, and are unavoidably trapped by the choices we make—as a monkey reaching into a jar with a narrow neck to latch onto a piece of food with a closed fist. The only way the monkey can become released is to let go of the food, relax the fist, and withdraw its hand. On the other hand, we can see that there is ultimately only unity where discrimination-based choice is pointless. If there is no difference (and we imagine that there is), we live in a dream world, believing that differences are real, making choices based on that imaginary dream, and paying the karmic price.

While this view of reality may seem strange, it is eminently practical. When we see responsive, feed-back violence occurring around us, we need to take a step out of the fray and notice that no one is winning. That should be our clue to which state of consciousness is prevailing. It doesn’t necessarily mean we can step out of the unreality of our realm of perception and into the ultimate realm, but it will alert us to the price we will pay by continuing to fight battles and lose the ultimate war. 

Each side can justify retributive responsiveness. The question is always, who started it, and how do differences fit with our preconceived convictions—who took the first shot? This line of argument can be (and often is) taken all the way back to the beginning of beginningless time. In The Lanka, the Buddha, correctly points out that in the realm of ultimate reality there is no cause and effect which functions within ordinary, objective life. Cause and effect, like all of ordinary life, is an illusion with roots in our mind. One way leads to a never-ending cycle of winning battles, losing wars, suffering, and the other leads to compassion, harmony, and tranquility. The choice is always before us, and we must accept the benefits and consequences of our choices. Karmic results are unavoidable in the realm of one opposed to another. While asleep, we are all monkeys; trapped by our grasping.

The four faces of us all.

The distortions we imagine.

There is a Japanese saying: “We have three faces: The first face, we show to the world. The second face, we show to our family and friends. The third face, we never show anyone and it is the truest reflection of who we are.”

There is, however, another Zen koan: “Who were you before your parents were born?” which transcends the first saying and points to our “original face”—Who all of us are before the clothing of expectations or definitions are applied is this original face, without form or definition—the one that can’t be seen that is doing the seeing. Look at it this way: If there is a face that can be perceived it can’t be who we are since it takes both a perceptible image (what is seen) and one who sees. All of us are that imperceptible seer, not an image.

The first face we show the world because we believe it is the expected ideal. The second face is the one we risk showing, based on the assumption that we can relax with family and friends: still a risk, but one we accept. The third face, the one we never show, is the one we fear the most and holds the greatest risk of exposure, persuading us that if ever revealed will destroy us. All three are unreal projections, based on our criteria within us that we construct. None of these are real. Instead, they are based on the expectations we each hold as yardsticks against which we measure who we imagine we are as acceptable beings, worthy of love.

The only face that is real is the fourth: the one that can’t be seen. This face alone holds no criteria of acceptability since by nature it is wholeness itself: complete, indiscriminate, lovable beyond measure and understanding of all, because IT is all. 

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

Already, not yet

The culmination of every spiritual journey is the realization of completion and unity. Many religions claim we are incomplete and must find the road to a far distant heavenly home. 

Johnny Cash made famous the song In the by and by there’ll be pie in the sky, meaning there will be a reward waiting for us in heaven if we do God’s will here on earth. Because we imagine incompletion we seek completion. Because we misunderstand our source and ourselves, we desire fulfillment even though we are from beginning to the end already full. Our cup runs over with goodness and we remain thirsty for what is already ours.

Acceptance of the already and not yet is a seeming paradox. How can both be true at the same time? The answer as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pointed out, is, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our true nature is spiritual, complete and there is nowhere to go. Our mortal nature is phenomenal, in a process, and we search for the already. We are like the man who looks through lenses, searching for the eyeglasses that sit upon his nose.

It was Zen Master Huang Po who expressed the doctrine of One Mind: “All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning: is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it  transcends all limits, measures, names, traces, and comparisons.”

Thus the idea of mind over matter is absurd. The mind is the matter in the exact same way that Emptiness is form (The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sūtra). Every atom of our material body is nothing other than the perfect integration of the One Mind and looking elsewhere for what is already ours is a fools journey.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is a story that reveals this truth.  The message of the Prodigal is the same as contained in the Song of Zazen written by one of the Zen giants (17th-century Hakuin Ekaku). Here are his words: 

“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.”  

What can be seen blinds us and keeps us ignorant of what is unseen. So, on the one hand, we are deceived by the conditional, discriminate nature of what we can perceive and on the other hand, our true nature is unconditionally indiscriminate, ineffable but full. And out of our sense of incompletion, we are consumed by desire, not realizing that we already possess what we seek.

The noble winning poet Rabindranath Tagore captured the journey beautifully when he wrote, “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.” 

So on this spring day, reflect on the labor of your life. Are you laboring for becoming complete? Or are you laboring to accept your never-ending completion? It makes a difference.

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.

A house of mirrors

Our reflections.

It’s dark, and you can’t see anything. Suddenly the lights are switched on. You’ve never seen the light before, so the glare hurts your eyes. 

Days go by, but gradually your eyes adjust, and what do you see? Everywhere you look, you see people with smiling faces who seem to adore you, and these people are exuding love and tenderness all directed at you. They tickle you. They feed you. They comfort you when you’re sad and play with you, and little by little, you come to believe that you’re exceptional. These people are your parents and friends, and they are your mirrors.

That time is extraordinary, but it doesn’t last. Soon you move on and come in contact with other people. You and they relate to each other in the same way—like mirrors. You reflect them, and they reflect you, and little by little each, and everyone learns how to manipulate their environment to glean the best outcome, the ego dance begins, and our identities take shape.

So long as anyone stays in that house of mirrors, there is no alternative but to experience themselves as a reflection. But this manipulation game is complex and often frustrating, fraught with anxiety, fear, and tension. The players don’t cooperate. They want their way instead of your way. Why are these people not adoring you but instead demanding that you love them? Where are those adoring parents when we need them? Why can’t everyone just get along? Why can’t everyone see things as you do, think as you do, construct the world, as you want? 

And the ego dance begins to come unglued, and you are lost, but what nobody realizes is at that moment of loss; that identity crisis is this is a blessing in disguise. Once that moment of disaster arrives, you are ready for the mirrors to fall away and find your true nature. And then, at last, you become the wholly complete person you’ve always been: The one looking into the mirrors; not the one reflected.

The real deal.

Over the years that I’ve been poking here and there, examining a host of religious and spiritual paths, I’ve noticed that from the perspective of each and every discipline, the adherents nearly without exception claimed that their chosen discipline alone was the truth at the exclusion of others.

And another unavoidable observation was (and is) that each adherent could quote chapter and verse from their holy texts to support their claims but revealed their ignorance by claiming to likewise know about other disciplines. Apparently, they differed with Mark Twain when he said, “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly, teaches me to suspect my own.”

These observations cast doubt over the entire lot and motivated me to dig deeper into various disciplines to avoid the same error. I may be a fool, but at least I try to keep it to myself. I agree with Mark Twain, who also said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I would be the first to admit that I don’t know in depth about all spiritual and/or religious paths, but I do know about mystical paths (particularly Zen and Gnostic Christianity) as well as the orthodox version of Christianity. I can make that statement, without apology, since I have a formal degree in Theology from one of the finest seminaries in the world and have been practicing, as well as studying, Zen for more than 40 years at this late stage in my life.

I must confess that I get a bit testy when someone, after spending at most a few minutes with Google, claims to know what has taken me many years to understand. And what annoys me even more is when a pastor, rabbi, guru, or other religious figures (who should know better) claims knowledge of matters they know nothing about yet makes unfounded claims and leads their “flock” into ignorance, either intentionally or not.

Now let me address what I said I would do some time ago: differentiate Zen from religions (particularly Buddhism) and I must start with an acceptable definition of religion. The broadly accepted definition is: “A communal structure for enabling coherent beliefs focusing on a system of thought which defines the supernatural, the sacred, the divine or of the highest truth.” 

And the key part of that definition that is pertinent to my discussion here is, …a system of thought… While it may seem peculiar to the average person, Zen is the antithesis of …a system of thought… because Zen, by design, is transcendent to thinking, and plunges to the foundation of all thought: the human mind. 

And in that sense it is pointless to have an argument with anyone about this, rooted in thinking. That’s point # 1. Point # 2 is that Zen, as a spiritual discipline, predates The Buddha (responsible for establishing Buddhism's religion ) by many thousands of years. The best estimate, based on solid academic study, is that the earliest record of dhyāna (the Sanskrit name for Zen) is found around 7,000 years ago, whereas the Buddha lived approximately 2,500 years ago. The Buddha employed dhyāna to realize his own enlightenment, and dhyāna remains one of the steps in his Eight Fold Path designed to attain awakening. Thus, pin Zen to Buddhism's tree is very much akin to saying that prayer is exclusive to Christianity and is a branch of that religion's tree.

While it is stimulating and somewhat educational to engage in discussions regarding various spiritual and/or religious paths, the fact is we have no choice except to tell each other lies or partial truths. Words alone are just that: lies or partial truths concerning ineffable matters. That point has been a tenant of Zen virtually since the beginning. Not only is this true of Zen, but it is also true of all religious and spiritual paths. 

Lao Tzu was quite right: “The Way cannot be told. The Name cannot be named. The nameless is the Way of Heaven and Earth. The named is Matrix of the Myriad Creatures. Eliminate desire to find the Way. Embrace desire to know the Creature. The two are identical, but differ in name as they arise. Identical they are called mysterious, mystery on mystery: the gate of many secrets.” 

In the end, none of us has any other choice except to employ illusion to point us to a place beyond illusion. I leave this post with two quotes, one from Mark Twain and the other from Plato. First Twain: “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” And then Plato: “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”  

When I make statements, I know that I am telling partial truths, and I am stupid to argue. It makes both of us more stupid. That’s the real deal and should make us all a bit more humble and less sure that our truth alone is the only one.

Discrimination or not? That is the question.

On the outside looking in.

To discriminate means what it says: to divide one thing from another. It begins with perception. We can see one thing only against a backdrop of difference. Orange and blue appear to the eye as two different things. What’s the opposite? No discrimination, where everything is the same.

The fundamental teaching of the entire New Testament can be summed up in one statement: non-discrimination, otherwise known as agape love (unconditional love). And the same thing is right for Buddhism. The names are different, but the principle is the same. Here the term used is compassion (ancient Indians didn’t know Greek), which actually means merging with another to the point where there is no longer you and me. There is just us.

Sadly many regard themselves as solid Judeo-Christians who have deluded themselves with the notion that they can practice hatred, discrimination, and bigotry as substitutes for love. But in fairness, many in every religion forget about the essence of their faith-expressions yet can quote chapter and verse to justify their disdain for their fellow humans.

Think about how magnificent life would be if we actually practiced love instead of hate. Then instead of attacking each other, we would exist in harmony. Now that would be revolutionary. 

Shantideva said this:

“All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself.  All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.”

That is only possible when there is no difference between oneself and others, which is, of course, what Jesus meant when he said,

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Easy to say and so hard to do.

Mirror Art

Buddhism teaches that the mind functions like a mirror. Whatever comes before a mirror is reflected precisely without discrimination nor bias. It also teaches that we are looking through lenses of discrimination and bias. Consequently, our reflections are filtered to present us with a viewpoint that appears before us as rational and justified. 

Since we are looking through lenses, we can’t see them. Nevertheless, what we see is colored by the lenses, and we naturally assume that life is colored that way. Look into a mirror, and what do you see? You see a face. If you are feeling sad, you’ll see a sad face. If you’re feeling happy, you’ll see a happy face. Our faces “reflect” what we are feeling. What we might fail to see is that others see our faces, and we see theirs. 

They are our mirrors, and we are their mirror. What appears before their mirror-mind is our face reflecting our feelings, and what appears before our mirror-mind is their face reflecting their feelings. Once we see this dynamic for what it is, we can create mirror art. If you want to see a happy face looking back at you, then wear a happy face. If you want to experience kindness, then act kindly. Whatever we put out comes back. Does anyone wish for suffering? No? Then create some new art.