When you plunge into Buddhist waters you’ll find yourself in a sea of strange language and foreign concepts. You almost need a codebook to make any sense of it. Some people want to learn about Buddhism but get discouraged due to this challenging situation.
This is unfortunate since once you find the Rosetta Stone you’ll be amazed to discover a richness of understanding, unique in the collection of human knowledge. I’ve labored long to learn the code since I wanted to find out how to explain the incredible transformation I experienced many years ago.
So consider me as a code breaker: a resource for you to mine your own treasure. Starting today I’m going to repeat a series I ran some time ago on the central linchpin of Buddhism that will unlock your treasure chest. And the topic will be something with which you have lived your entire life, couldn’t survive a single moment without and yet you can’t even find: Your very own mind and I’m not referring to the product of your mind (thoughts, emotions, and images) but rather, call it, the factory that produces these three.
It is indeed a profound mystery. The Buddha said that in teaching the dharma it’s important to begin simply and start from a base of familiarity so I’m going to do that; begin simply. You’ll take that first step, we’ll progress in sequential baby-steps, and before long you’ll find that you know how to swim in this foreign sea.
The first step—Find your mind; the source of all thoughts and non-thoughts. That’s not a fanciful command. It’s a simple request. Right now as you’re reading this I want you to find your mind. Do it now. You couldn’t read this without your mind, so just locate it now.
I have no idea where you may be as you read this. You may be in India (I know some of you live there) or you may be in Israel (others are), The United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Vietnam…many different places, but wherever you live I know for a fact that none of you can do that simple thing I just asked you to do: find your mind.
And why am I so confident? People around the world are very different yet 100% the same in this regard: We all have the exact same mind—the same mind as a buddha—yet nobody can find it because it can’t be done. Nobody can find their own mind for two reasons. The first reason is because the mind isn’t an objective thing, which can be located, identified or discovered. The mind can only be intuited or inferred. And the second reason for my confidence is that even if it could be found (which it can’t), there is no “you” to find it.
I suppose, even at this simple beginning, you are already confused. It is outrageous for me to say what I just said but the disturbance you are now experiencing in response to my request is a critical part of learning the code. Don’t get frustrated over your inability. Steep yourself in the confusion. Let that experience wash over you because unlike other spiritual traditions, doubt and frustration are to Buddhism as a surfboard is to waves. With no doubt, there is nothing to pursue and solve. And unless you learn to find your mind the game of life gets extraordinarily confusing and difficult.
So that’s enough for today. Squirm in your frustration for another day and come back tomorrow for the next step: Finding out what isn’t your mind, because the first step and the second step are mirror images. What we think is our mind, isn’t. What we think isn’t our mind, is. If that sounds strange just hang out with it until tomorrow. Come back and we’ll continue. But to give you a nudge in the right direction, take a look at the footnote.
Master Hsuan Hua writes about this matter in the opening section of The ShurangamaSutra. He points out two aspects of our mind: One aspect superficial but unreal, the other hidden but real. He says that the hidden part is like an internal gold mine, which must be excavated in order to be of value. This gold mine is everywhere but not seen. The superficial part is also everywhere but seen and it is this superficial part that lies at the root of suffering. He says: “Buddha-nature is found within our afflictions. Everyone has afflictions and everyone has Buddha-nature. In an ordinary person, it is the afflictions, rather than Buddha-nature, that are apparent...Genuine wisdom arises out of genuine stupidity. When ice [afflictions] turns to water, there is wisdom; when water [wisdom] freezes into ice, there is stupidity. Afflictions are nothing but stupidity.”—See more here.
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.
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.”
