How to save the world.

It's up to us.

In the Western world, the term “sentient being” is not your every-day word. We think in terms of human beings or other kinds. But sentience is more descriptive since it denotes the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively, not to overlook thinking. Any conscious being is a sentient being, including all creatures capable of sensing and responding to its world.

Unfortunately, being human has caused us to evolve into being human-centric and set aside our connections to other creatures and the environment that enables our existence. We forget (or if you prefer, went unmindful) of the food chain that begins with the tiniest of creatures and goes all the way to the top—us humans. Cutting that chain and destroying the environment within which all sentient beings live is an unfailing prescription for our ultimate disaster. We are well down the road toward that end for a simple reason—unmindfulness of our aggregate interconnectivity with the rest of life. Our priorities are going south fast. While we are distracted with lesser matters, our support systems are not. They are progressing toward ultimate demise due to our negligence. And if we wish to continue as a species, we need to quickly get back to basics.

What is the most basic of all? It is the matter that connects us to all other creatures—THE MIND, the human-mind being one part of that larger whole. If we can get a handle on that, everything else will fall into proper alignment, and we will survive.

If you haven’t yet watched the Netflix documentary (The Social Dilemma), it is high time you did. There is no other informative communication I am aware of that emphasizes the critical importance of finding your anchor within. We are now living in a sea of turbulent manipulation, waging a losing battle with AI machines designed to draw us into a spider web, from which there is no escape. And with no anchor, we will all be swept into a collective nightmare. Our progress as a human society has risen to the point leading to anarchy and ultimate destruction. This excellent film tells you the truth when few others will about just how lost we are and paints a terminal annihilation portrait. It is a must-watch!

Western civilization has taken us a long way toward the “good life,” but it has, at the same time, brought with it our lack of being mindful of the most important of all: THE MIND, that has given us those good things. To make needed corrections takes us to the other side of the earth and the wisdom that has evolved there (and largely ignored here). 

A towering giant of Eastern Wisdom was Bodhidharma—the man credited with starting the movement of understanding THE MIND. This credit (given the long view) has been misplaced since what he “started” goes back many thousands of years preceding his life. The name of that movement has, like everything else, changed, but the codified essence has remained the same. What began as dhyāna (going back in recorded history, and probably earlier) changed into Chan (Chinese Buddhism), eventually into Zen when the movement traveled to Japan and then to the rest of the world.

Zen is not, nor has it ever been, a religion (even though it is known as Zen Buddhism). Instead, it is the most thorough-going exploration of THE MIND ever conceived. Properly named, it should be called “Buddhist Zen” because this was the method employed by The Buddha to realize his Enlightenment (which Westerners mistake for the European form—The Enlightenment that occurred in Europe during the intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and continues to this day. That form of enlightenment was centered on rational thought. Enlightenment in the East was the opposite: Not thinking—that aspect, common to all sentient beings—intuition, which goes to the core of THE MIND, what we all need to grasp if we wish to survive.

In the West (going back to the Greek philosophers), we consider the mind as thoughts and emotions, never considering that these aspects must originate from somewhere. And that, “somewhere,” is THE MIND, not my mind nor yours. THE MIND is not up for ownership. It can’t be possessed or even found through rational thought since it is the source of what follows—thoughts and emotions. All sentient beings share this mind, along with us humans, and once understood, brings about a radical transformation needed to save us all.

Bodhidharma said this about understanding THE MIND: “If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both. Those who don’t understand, don’t understand understanding. And those who understand, understand not understanding. People capable of true vision know that the mind is empty. They transcend both understanding and not understanding. The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding.”

For Westerners, a translation is needed. Trying to grasp THE MIND with the rational mind is like a fish trying to grasp water, forgetting how to swim, and not even aware of water. Both reality and THE MIND are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp. What does Bodhidharma mean about “understanding understanding?” He means just that: “Both reality and The Mind are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp.” True vision must arise from the more fundamental aspect: where the rational faculties originate (where the anchor within resides). And from that aspect, we all have the same untapped potential to realize that nothing—absolutely nothing, can exist apart from the opposite, in this case, “not understanding.” Neither understanding nor not understanding must come from a MIND that is neither.

When we understand that, then only will we have the true vision—a vision that links all sentient beings together as a single unified being—THE MIND that is empty of all either/or. True vision is unified, and it isn’t. It is ultimately unified (realized through intuition) in an empty MIND, and it is divided rationally. Humans are so excessively left-brain, rationally oriented that we are quickly becoming so smart it is killing us to our discredit. Think about that. Better yet, don’t think about it. 

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”—Bodhidharma

Dancing through life

Watching two accomplished ballroom dancers is a delight. They move in graceful, fluid motions almost as a single entity. One leads; the other follows. If there is no cooperation, then harmony is broken with both trying to lead, and the motion is jerky and chaotic. 

If neither leads, there is no motion. If you look at what’s happening in Washington right now, you can see the non-dance of chaos. Whether we move or don’t, dance can only occur if there is a floor to dance on. 

Dancers don’t move through thin air. In a certain sense, we are like those dancers. We move in a relationship with others across the immovable floor of life. Our movements are either fluid, graceful, or chaotic, depending on how we cooperate. It’s a matter of giving and taking. Two gives or two takes end in stalemate. We have invented a saying to express this dance. It is called “What goes around comes around.” We reap what we sow. 

In Buddhism, this is called karma and works the same way. The floor beneath the dance is, of course, the immovable foundation of our life—our mind. If it moved, the dancers would be shaken. But since it is stable, the dance can proceed: One half leading, the other half following. And the dance can only happen with these three things—The immovable floor and the two partners. When all three functions in harmony, the dance of life is a beautiful thing.

It ain't my job!

Some years ago, my teacher painted calligraphy for me that said, “A single drop of rain waters 10,000 pines.” While not literally true, it was a metaphor that spoke to this idea that all it takes is one ray of light to cut through the darkness and open up the possibility that other lights will follow. This morning I came across a similar expression: “Everything was impossible until someone did it.” I like that idea, but unfortunately, too often, many essential matters remain impossible because we are waiting for someone else to do what is needed.

Maybe it is just human nature to have this attitude that it ain’t my job and assume that what needs doing is undoubtedly being done by somebody else. But is that assumption correct? It’s been my experience during a reasonably long life that the premise is wrong. The evidence of the fallacy is everywhere around us. I see it with the growing volume of mail asking for donations to help those in need. The lines of people standing in soup kitchens keep growing while wealthy politicians suck the financial life of our nation off for themselves and make decisions to cut off support for the needy. I’ve seen it since childhood when I noticed people going to church and listening intently (or so it seemed) to sermons but then going on with their ordinary lives of selfishness. The earth’s atmosphere keeps getting hotter and hotter, and many people stay in states of denial for the same reason—surely somebody else will solve this problem. Still, the prevailing attitude of, I’m too busy with more important matters remains a dominant force.

I remember a story from childhood about the little red hen who kept asking for help baking her bread, and nobody offered assistance, yet when it came time to eat, everyone wanted a portion. Then, of course, there is the Aesop Fable of the grasshopper and the ants. The grasshopper played away the time of harvest while the ants stored food away for the hard times of winter. Then there is the story of a dog in the manger who wouldn’t eat what was offered but sure as heck didn’t want to share what he saw as “his.” Supposedly Aesop lived roughly 2,600 years ago in ancient Greece. The dog in the manger story appeared in both the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew, so it would appear that human nature hasn’t changed much in a long time.

In the East, it is called karma. Colloquially we have the expression, “What goes around, comes around.” The principle addresses what follows actions (either for the good or bad) and is universal, regardless of time or place. We know the guide yet mostly ignore the wisdom. The question is, why? More than likely, the answer comes from a conflict between continuously changing conditions and priorities stuck in time. When sea changes occur, we all have the choice either clinging to preferences that fall in the grand scheme or adapting.

I’ve written about this latter matter and observed, “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” You can read about it in my post of Small Steps. Nobody can drink the whole ocean at once, but one sip followed by another, with patience and perseverance, enables us to move mountains.

The point of my post this morning is that our assumptions are, more times than not, merely delusional. What needs to be done to make our world a habitable and desirable place to live for our selves and our loved ones into the future depends on what we do today because collectively, we are creating our tomorrows’ moment by moment. Each day we have the opportunity to create a better world or a worse one. We make either heaven or hell with a single drop of rain, or not. Every positive action, however small it may be, makes a difference. Contrary to the title of this post, it is my job, because there is nobody but me’s of this world to do it.

Danger in paradise.

The fusion of two worlds

Sixteenth-century Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross wrote a poem that narrates the journey of the soul from it’s bodily home to its union with God. 

He called the journey “The Dark Night of the Soul,” because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of union with God. The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and fusion with God. The Christian experience assumes a soul separated from God that seeks reunion whereas the Buddhist perspective recognizes no separation. Instead, unification takes place when the conceptual image of a false self is replaced by the actual experience of selfhood.

However, it must be said, that the key Christian scriptural passage that speaks to this matter comes from the 12^th chapter in the Book of John verses 24-25 which says, “Very truly I tell you unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” 

This is the English translation of the Greek, which camouflages the actual meaning of true human life due to translation limitations, and this inaccuracy has lead to widespread misunderstandings. In the Greek, the first two uses of the word life meant soul—a conceptual equivalent of the self, and the latter meant the real self. The Greek word for soul/life was ψυχή better known as psyche, one of two manifestations of the source of life ζωή/zōē, the last Greek term used in this scripture.

How to understand this? When the soul dies the presence of God shines forth. Another word for soul is ego, thus death of the ego unveils the source, which is eternal (no birth/no death and unconditional). That being the case, ζωή is ever-present but something without conditions: thus unseen. ζωή can never be perceived, only experienced. On the other hand, the ego is an unreal image—an illusion of the self, which is clearly evident. Nevertheless illusions have a hard way of immediately subsiding; the memory passes slowly at the same time that the light begins to dawn. The seed grows slowly and remains separate as an idea but when it dies, unity with all things emerges.

Roughly a century following the death of The Buddha, his teachings had moved out of India, along the Silk Road and into the Middle East, arriving during the era of the Greek philosophers. Evidence of his understanding, regarding illusion, can be found in the writings of Plato in an allegory called Plato’s Cave. In this allegory Plato describes a tenable argument involving this fundamental illusion and the resulting consequences on those so deluded. He also addresses the duty and price to be paid by philosophers who attempt to shine the light on truth. In essence, Plato says that coming out of darkness and into the light involves both courage and pain.

Eckhart Tolle speaks to this process as follows: “It (dark night of the soul) is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.  The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.  Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything.” 

Before, normal was egocentric and afterwards the center, begins to fade into a depressive, immature darkness. This is a stage of jeopardy and disorientation when we yearn for retention of our awakening yet can’t seem to grasp and hold onto what is our hearts desire.

The Buddha properly pointed out that to desire anything, even a lusting for enlightenment, is a sure prescription for suffering, and when we think about it, this makes immanent sense. Once true love is awakened, then only do we know for sure what it is. Up to that point, true love remains a product of our imagination; a wishful fantasy. But once we know, then we have a dilemma: what was previously a less than satisfying but acceptable idea, by comparison, now becomes a colorless and shallow experience that lives on as a not yet forgotten memory.

There’s a story is told in the Platform Sutra of a conversation held between Daman Hongren (fifth Chinese Chan patriarch) and Dajian Huineng (sixth Chinese Chan patriarch). Huineng was an illiterate, unschooled commoner who upon hearing the Diamond Cutter Sutra recited, realized enlightenment and subsequently sought out Hongren. When Huineng met the patriarch he was assigned the lowly job of rice-pounder, where he remained for many months before proving his worth to Hongren.

The conversation between the two was thus: Hongren—“A seeker of the path risks his life for the dharma. Should he not do so?” Then he asked, “Is the rice ready?”  Huineng— “Ready long ago, only waiting for the sieve.” Two questions, a single short answer which reveals the nature of enlightenment—both sudden and gradual. Sudden since the awakening happened quickly but fullness required the sifting of life’s sieve. The rice was ready but the lingering, residual chaff must be blown away by the winds of life.

In the words of the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.’ Sometimes when we awaken, we realize that how we have lived and behaved has simply been out of line and nonproductive. It is a painful experience to observe ourselves from a space of neutral honesty and watch as we often go out of integrity to appeal to mental images we have created, and hurt people we love in the process. This observation of the false ‘self’ we have created in our minds is one of the first steps of becoming ‘enlightened’ if you will, and in this observation there is no gaining taking place. There is only the crumbling away of what you are not.’”

It takes many years of continuing adversity before our dawning matures. Once the seed of awakening is planted, the world changes forever, there is no turning back to old ways, yet maturity takes a long time.  But, like Huineng, chaff of the old familiar way remains. It is natural once we awaken into the dawn of truth to retain the whisper of what is now dead yet lingers on in memory. And during this time we are in jeopardy, trapped between two worlds: one dead and gone, the other fresh and naïve, like an infant not yet able to stand alone with the indwelling spirit of eternity beating in our heart.

Seeing clearly.

Today is Sunday, the day in the week when Christians around the world go to church, hoping to hear a sermon of inspiration and goodwill. Therefore, I am offering this post as a sermon that will accomplish those two things: Inspiration and goodwill.

To begin, I would like to address sight and vision. Macular degeneration is a condition that results in a loss of sight in the center of your eye due to damage to the retina. Some sight remains peripherally but is mostly lost looking straight on. There is no known cure for macular degeneration, but there is for degenerative vision.

There are parallels to this physical condition that we know of as such things as bias, preconceived notions, fixed opinions, denial, and unfounded belief systems, all of which emerge from a self-understanding centered on the ego. All of these conditions serve the function of filters blinding us to unfettered clarity; true vision—seeing things as they are, without distortion. These impediments lock us into inflexible ideologies, opposed to, and at odds with, other similarly embedded ideologies. The impediments are clouded windows through which we see and understand the world and ourselves. It’s like being in a cave with two openings: One looking outward and the other looking inward, both of which are clouded and contaminated, obscuring clear vision. One gives us ideas concerning ourselves and the other, ideas concerning the world, and both are shrouded.

The undeniable correction is to remove the impediments and see without filters of distortion (call it spiritual surgery). Within Christian mysticism, the term that captures the principle of this unfettered clarity is “thusness,” which means things as they are. This “thus” means an unveiling of what is present, and thereby also an elementary confirmation, an original principle of truth prior to conceptual differentiation.  

Meister Eckhart, (the 13th-century German Theologian and mystic), used this expression to signify unattached oneness or unity. Such a view of unification, when intuitively experienced, removes the impediments and allows clear seeing.

One of the most misunderstood passages in the Bible is John 15:13, which looks like this in Koine Greek (the ancient form of Greek used to write The New Testament): “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” and is ordinarily translated into English as, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” I’m not employing Greek here to impress you but rather to prove a point. The two highlighted words provide insight into the true meaning of this passage. 

The first highlighted word (ἀγάπην) means universal, unconditional love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance. There is only one kind of love that is unconditional (e.g., no strings attached), and that kind of love can come only from God. All other forms of love are conditional and contingent upon changing circumstances.

The second highlighted word (ψυχὴν) is the life of a particular form: Life of the psyche, in other words, ideas, thoughts, ideologies, biases—any and all manifestations of the mind. In Koine Greek, there were three different forms of life that depicted the Greek’s different views of life. This form of life (“ψυχὴν”) is the form used here and is the root word of our present understanding of “psychology” or “psychiatry.” The second form of life was “ζοε” (pronounced Zoe—long A sound at the end—and meant the unified, ultimate source of everything. The third life form was “βιος,” the root word underscoring biology—our physical being.  To grasp the significance (as it relates to seeing clearly) it’s necessary to understand John 15:13 in the original language, not the English translation.

Thus, to come up with the correct translation of John 15:13, it is necessary to understand the words first in Koine Greek. Rendered in that way, the passage should be: “Greater love (e.g., unconditional) has no one than this, that one lay down his ‘mind manifestations’ for his friends.” And why might understanding be the highest act of love? Simple: It’s impacted ideologies (dug-in biases) that separate us all from one another and drives us into camps of close-minded hostility: The same quality, that at present, lies at the core of polar oppositions, dividing people everywhere and leading to the political gridlock that paralyzes our current government (and those around the world) where compromise becomes an impossibility. 

Often times, spirituality and contemporary living appear to be at odds. Nothing could be more incorrect. Seeing clearly is essential to human progress, and at the present time, we seem to be stuck in ruts of ideologies of irreconcilable opposition, believing all the while in the flawed principle of “I’m right, and you’re wrong.”

Talk without action is cheap (and worthless)

Have you ever wondered what Rip Van Winkle must have thought when he awakened after having been asleep for twenty years? Time had moved on. Circumstances had changed. It must have been quite startling, but more than likely after a few days he just went back to sleep again.

We all do that sort of thing. One day we are walking along with our norms, not even aware of anything different and suddenly a Galileo shows up and shocks our norms, and then we go back to sleep again. We adjust to whatever comes our way, before very long these shocking turns of events just blend into our norms again, and we return to our sleepwalk. So we go through these ups and downs only to have them eventually smooth out.

For most of human history, the gap between the norms and the shocks took place every so many thousand of years. Back then (whenever that was) we had the luxury of getting comfortable with our fantasies. Now the gap is getting shorter and shorter to the point that the shocks are more normal than the norms. Makes you wonder about what a norm really is when everything is abnormal. While certainly stimulating it can become a bit tiring, disturbing, and disorienting. For example, the notion of a “bully pulpit” has changed radically since Teddy Roosevelt coined the term. He meant it as an adjective meaning superb or wonderful—A Presidential platform that enabled TR to bring about needed reform of a positive nature. In the 115 years since his term, “bully” is no longer an adjective but has become a literal transitive verb, meaning anything but wonderful.

In commenting on his own failing memory, Mark Twain said, “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.” Aging memory, like aging anything, can’t be trusted. 

I wonder if I’m alone in my reminiscing about the good old days (that may never have been)? Were they ever all that good? How far back do we have to go to find that whimsical Shangri-La? I suspect that the grass always looks greener in the rearview mirror even though when we were at that past juncture, the rearview greenery still looked more appealing. Nevertheless, we do seem to prefer the past we never had to the present we do have. We’re a curious species.

This tendency to grow accustomed to the normal status quo, however egregious, may be our undoing. It’s very curious how, if we wait long enough, what used to be unacceptable becomes the new acceptable norms. Edmund Burke, an Irish political philosopher, was once regarded as the father of modern conservatism. When you examine what he said in the 18th century, in light of today’s political environment, it’s unlikely he would still be considered as such. Among the many pearls of wisdom Burke expressed are the following:

“There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.” And “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” This latter has been recast and expressed as, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” The wording has changed but the sentiment is the same.

It has become unavoidably clear that nothing positive happens without courage and a willingness to pay a price for the betterment of all people. Examples of the small few who found it within themselves to stare evil in the face, and regardlessly pay the price, range from modern heroes and heroines such as Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who sacrificed his career as a whistleblower to speak the truth about our current “leader,” or the 17 celebrities who actively work to protect our environment, regardless of political consequences. These are the stars who light the path of goodness that allow us to walk in relative freedom.

There are some who dogmatically cling to the idea that our current misfortunes are the result of past wrongs and we are now reaping the winds of karmic justice. Consequently, they argue, we should accept our growing demise. There is some truth to that observation but there is an alternative perspective I wrote about recently in a post called “In the world: enlightened social responsibility.” In that post, I addressed this issue by posing related questions such as, “What role do we play in this vast drama of life. Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society?”

After all else, we create our world of tomorrow by actions taken today. We define ourselves, not by what we say, but rather by what we do. There is a single-minded purpose to Dharma Space: to promote the well-being of one and all. It takes courage to first cast aside the delusions of egotism but once we find our deepest nature, we must act from the place of indiscriminate unity, and that too takes a different kind of courage: the kind of willingly sticking out our necks and exposing ourselves to the ax of evil. If we don’t do that then the purpose of enlightenment and being a Bodhisattva stands in question.

Being special.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Not many books on Zen have achieved the notoriety of Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. The message is simple and straightforward, yet the instruction runs counter to our ordinary way of living.

All of us aspire to become an expert, and few indeed are those who think of themselves as a beginner. Our desire for being someone special works against such simplicity. We reason if the solutions of yesterday worked, then why not apply them again today.

The answer to that thought ought to be self-evident in the West, but due to the lack of familiarity with Eastern Wisdom, it has not attained the status it deserves. The reason is that yesterday was, and today is today. Nothing in life is constant, and as circumstances change, the challenges change as well.

Change is inevitable and continuous. There is nothing spiritual or psychological about that. Change becomes a problem when we desire to turn continuous change into an ideology of permanence. When that conversion occurs, it becomes like trying to bulwark the tides with the consequent result of pulverizing us into the sand.

How we manage change in our lives determines the quality of how we experience life and what we create. All of us want goodness and resist adversity. That is a natural way, but neither of these remains permanent. Thus, we have a choice to savor the good and accept the inevitable loss. Facing what is, as a continuous beginner—versus trying to force what we want as an expert—opens up many possibilities that are not available to those who resist and cling.

The bucket rule of politics and economics

There's a hole in our bucket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Have or To Be?

Is having the same as being?

It has now been sixty-three years since I sat in my high school algebra class. I remember very little of that room, except for one thing that has stayed with me and been a guiding light throughout my life. That one thing was a banner; my teacher hung above the blackboard that read, “He who perseveres attains the expansion.” 

I imagine she meant it as an encouragement to stay the course and learn algebra. I understood it in a much broader sense: as a way of living—to stay the course through adversity and never give up, particularly during times of extreme suffering. At the time, I knew nothing about psychology, religion, or spirituality but those words of encouragement took me into the realm of all three.

My childhood was a mixed bag of both suffering and fun. The fun part was an escape from the suffering, but I never really escaped until decades later, when, due to a crisis of major proportions, I entered the realm of self-understanding. And that led me to psychology, religion, and spirituality. I suffered, and I got to the point of readiness when I was desperate to fathom why.

I first became aware of Zen because rumor had it that the practice was all about understanding suffering and finding release. It did both. But I was unclear how and why, and that took me to psychology—Erich Fromm and Carl Jung, and ultimately The Buddha. 

Fromm’s ideas were very similar to those of The Buddha, and I came to realize something essential: people have a tendency to regard spirituality and psychology as two different matters, and I found that was not true. Both spirituality and psychology are concerned with a single matter: the human mind. 

Both Fromm and The Buddha recognized a dichotomy between “having” and “being,” but it was The Buddha who found the link that joined the two together, explained how and why they were linked, and found a solution that put being as the dominating force. I found myself agreeing with both that having (to excess) became a poisoning of the spirit, and there was a watershed moment in my life when what I thought was my spirit became broken, thus my quest to solve the dilemma.

To The Buddha, both “having” and “being” coexisted, but it was the illusion of a misunderstood sense of being (the ego) that overrode and blocked genuine “beingness.” Before dealing with the ego, there seemed to be no genuine “beingness” since this latter remained hidden beneath a perceptible ego, with its multiple dimensions of insatiable greed, simply because our awareness told us that “having” was “being,”—the more we had, the more real our sense of beingness. For me, the problem was, the more I had, the more corrupted I became, and the connection eventually imploded, leaving me with nothing but being, which was impossible to articulate since beingness was naked and without identification.

My life has been regulated by that basic principle of perseverance. I never understood the compelling force until I began my study of the mystics and enlightened psychologists. It is that force of self-determination that struggles to be free of bondage to things so dominating today. It is perseverance through thick and thin, good times and bad, never wavering from the desire to be free (as it did for me) that compels us all who don’t settle for things but demands for themselves self-actualization.

There’s a Youtube video of an interview with Erich Fromm. I encourage you to take the time and watch it, and as you do appreciate, this interview happened more than sixty years ago, yet the social and cultural conditions he described then are as real now than in 1958 (even more so).

Many people are off-put with mystical matters, thinking, “oh, that’s too unorthodox and not for me,” but everyone wants to understand themselves. Note that Fromm’s comments concerning people’s ideas concerning means becoming ends—A haunting premonition of today’s attitudes today. We have created a vacuous society that relies more and more on things and less and less on what matters—genuine beingness.

“As always, Erich Fromm speaks with wisdom, compassion, learning, and insight into the problems of individuals trapped in a social world that is needlessly cruel and hostile.”—Noam Chomsky.

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.”

Post Mueller; Continuing manipulation, or not.

Global Interconnectivity.

As I write this post, 91 days remain until the next US presidential election. We are now living in the post-Mueller era, and some key issues need to be addressed between now and November. It is most likely few even read the Mueller Report, fewer still are those who understood, and the tiniest of all are those who adequately grasped the essentials of what was learned. Nevertheless, global policies have been shaped without the slightest understanding of the implications going forward.

I am in a somewhat unique position to lay out the underpinnings of what has been learned (but not applied). Why? Because I had a career in the advertising business, I have a long history with Zen and am a bit of a tech junkie. While those seemingly disparate pieces appear to be unrelated, they are intimately joined at the hip.

First, let’s consider the essentials of “how” our democratic system was, and continues to be, subverted. And to understand this critical “how” we need to wind the clock backward (further back for the other part) to pre-9/11, during that time, the world was waking up to the fact of global terrorism. At that juncture, we were scrambling to develop means to anticipate probable next strikes, by identifying the who, what, where, and when of terrorist activities.

In those days, the NSA was leading the charge under the “management” of Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, CIA, and later national security analyst for CNN. Under his steerage was a low-level NSA operative by the name of Bill Binney, who happened to be a brilliant cryptologist and long-time National Security Agency analyst. Binney developed a sophisticated program named ThinThread for gathering data capable of providing clues, in real-time, of potential terrorist threats. See the documentary about this by going here. His method was based on the same technology later employed by Cambridge Analytica to manipulate voters during the 2016 campaign that led to electing Donald Trump POTUS. 

In simplistic terms, Binney began with an observation that terrorists used Social Media and other electronic devices (e.g., Cell phones…anything connected to the Internet) to garner sympathy for their cause, recruit such people, frighten many, and communicate with associates in planning, organizing and perpetrating terrorist attacks. Then he went the next step and developed precise “psychographic” personality profiles of those so inclined to malevolence. 

Psychographics (vs. demographics) emerged gradually 30+ years previously. It was used by advertising folk (one of whom was me) to identify probable targets (e.g., target marketing) to receive messages to induce potential customers to buy X, Y, or Z, based on the ingrained preconceived idea that unless they did, they were nobody. 

Demographics concerns such matters as age, gender, income, education, etc., whereas psychographics concerns what such people actually do (lifestyle choices: what they buy, where they go and when, what their interests are, etc.). The latter is much better in targeting potential customers and was just beginning to emerge when I was in the advertising industry. Back then, it was very crude and rudimentary compared to today. 

Now nearly every person on earth participates in Social Media of some sort, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or others. And when combined with the capability to do what Binney designed (but was never used by Hayden/NSA): To develop “psychographic” personality profiles, a potent tool for manipulation emerges that can be employed to find weak spots and exploit them to one advantage or another, from sending out instant, tailor-made messages to manipulate the uninformed via email, news feeds, etc. 

The Mueller Report pulled back the curtain to reveal how foreign governments can, and do, manipulate voter attitudes by taking advantage of preconceived biases and stoking them into tribal camps of opposition that destroy our freedoms. Few in Congress seemed to understand how this threat (and theft of private, personal data) is used to undermine democracy. Consequently, the manipulation continues, and as Mueller stated, it is being used to this very day, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Freedom is not freedom when our inherent preconceived attitudes and biases are manipulated in ways of which we are not aware of.

Cambridge Analytica, as a company, has been washed away by the tides of rage, time and change, but the methods continue to flourish and will most likely never end. All of the tech giants continue to use the same techniques. It should surprise nobody to observe that every time you do anything on the Internet (just as I am doing this very moment) “big brother” is listening, forming psychographic profiles and developing messages to steer you to physical and virtual spaces (Dharma Space; that also) to fulfill your interests.

Indra's Net of cosmic consciousness.

So much for today. Now let’s turn the clock back really, really far to the time of The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, which was written in stages, beginning from at least 500 years following the death of The Buddha. He died approximately 483/400 BCE, or in other words, a very long time ago. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra goes by an alternate handle of Indra’s Net (which simplistically explains the teaching). Imagine a net that encompasses and links together, every sentient being (e.g., humans, dogs, cats, elephants—any conscious being, perhaps even plants). All aspects of consciousness are knit together into a cosmic net. 

And why does this make sense? Simply because consciousness is primal, eternal, indiscriminate, unconditional, and is the basis of all life. At that deep and profound level of existence, all is interdependently linked, in a way similar to the technology used today to manipulate us all. The difference here is that, unlike the technology of today, when a person awakens to this level of existence, the tide shifts away from egotistical manipulation for malevolent means to unity, serenity, and the experience of eternal life, right here, right now.

Ah, if only: Politicians and all others would awaken to two truths—one of conditional, intertwined connections of opposition and the other of unconditional unity. What a transformed world it would be to such awakenings!