Fear, dust, roots and emancipation.

Our times and circumstances have changed much in the 13 years since I first wrote, published and posted, this to my blog (as written and quoted below) on 12/21/07.

• In that year, our US President was George W. Bush. 
• On April 16, a student went on a killing spree on the Virginia Tech Campus leaving over 30 students dead. 
• Rupert Murdoch acquired Dow Jones & Co, which includes the Wall Street Journal.
• Violent thunderstorms roared through parts of Alabama and three other US states in the region.
• One of the deadliest tornadoes in Kansas history destroyed Greensburg’s town as it took the brunt of 200 mph winds.
• Blizzards and severe snowstorms swept through Denver and the surrounding areas.
• One of the largest and deadliest fires in US history raged in Southern California, fanned by the Santa Ana winds destroying 400,000 acres and 2,000 homes.
• The Apple Computer Company announced the release of the very first iPhone.
• Apple Introduced its first-ever iTouch with built-in WiFi and touch screen, following the prior release of their iTouch on June 29th.
• NASA launched the Phoenix Mars Lander during August. The Phoenix spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It successfully landed on Mars during May 2008 and is used as an instrument to thoroughly examine the planet’s soil.
• The presidential candidates who decided to run for the highest office in the land—yes, that too was an election year—were (Republicans:) Mitt Romney, Rudi Guliani, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Tommy Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, Fred Thompson and (Democrats :) Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich. Some had already dropped out by the end of 2007 before the race even begun. The outcome, which is now known, was the victory of Barack Obama—our 44th POTUS. 

These and many other circumstances occurred in 2007 and may be found by clicking here.

Now fast forward till today, in late 2020, and observe how times and circumstances have changed. All things are changing moment by moment. Changes too small to notice until a retrospective (such as this post) is presented for consideration. The seeds of current events were planted in 2007, and the seeds that evolved into events in that year were planted eons ago, moment by moment. No real dividing lines are demarcating one moment from the next, as though sequential stone walls were constructed in the space between moments. 

Instead, karma underpins all conditions. It is the foundation of the life we know. It flows like droplets merged into a moving stream, no longer detected as droplets but rather as indivisible water. Such is the nature of conditional life. “What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.”—The Buddha

Some things, however, remain the same. The wisdom that transcends time and place remains the same. That is what follows and may be summarized as fear, dust, and emancipation—being set free, which all desire.

“Also, emancipation is non-apprehension. One who has apprehension may be likened to a king who fears and slanders the strong neighboring state and has apprehension. Now, with emancipation, there is nothing of the kind. This is like annihilating enmity, as a consequence of which there is no longer any apprehension. The same is the case with emancipation. It has no apprehension or fear. Non-apprehension is the Tathagata.

Also, there is no dust or defilement in emancipation as when in the spring months, after sundown, the wind raises up a cloud of dust. Now, in emancipation, nothing of this kind obtains. Where there is no cloud of dust, there is true emancipation. True emancipation is the Tathagata.

Also, emancipation is fearlessness. It is like the lion, who has no fear of any beast. The same is the case with emancipation. It has no fear of any Maras. Fearlessness is true emancipation. True emancipation is the Tathagata.

Also, emancipation subdues all kinds of indolence. One who is indolent is greedy. With true emancipation, nothing such as this comes about. This is true emancipation. True emancipation is the Tathagata.

Also, emancipation is segregating oneself from all existences, excising all suffering, obtaining all aspects of peace, and eternally cutting off desire, ill-will, and ignorance, and severing oneself from the roots of all illusions. Cutting the roots of illusion [ doubt] is emancipation. True emancipation is the Tathagata.”

From The Mahaparinirvana Sutra—Chapter 7

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.

Solomon and a divided nation

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, there lived a king of great wisdom. Each day the king would hold court and hear the pleas of his people. One day, two opponents came before him for his adjudication over a matter of extreme importance concerning the state’s child. One of the opponents pleaded with the king to slash to the child’s support to the bone, arguing that the state will flounder and die unless the child is starved. His opponent argued that unless the king waged war on his neighbors and robbed their coffers, there wouldn’t be enough money to continue supporting the child, and it would likewise die. The king saw that to preserve the child of state, he would need to adopt a middle way between these two extremes, reducing the child’s support and avoiding war, which greatly angered both opponents but saved the child.

Nirvāna

What does life look like when you awaken? It looks exactly the same, but in another way, everything has changed, only it hasn’t. I suppose that sounds abstruse, but actually, it isn’t. Our natural mind is pure and unconditional. It is always with us yet beyond detection. It is the source of everything but has no nature at all. It is like a mirror that reflects whatever passes before it but in itself contains nothing.

Today during our meditation group, a helicopter flew overhead. As it approached, the sound gradually came in contact with our ears; the sound grew stronger and then faded as it moved on. Without thinking about where the helicopter came from and where it went, the sound was just sound and left no tracks. The conditions changed, but our mind didn’t—it remained silent, aware, pure as a mirror, and reflecting the sound.

Upon awakening, we become aware of awareness itself: The mirror. Until that point, we are consumed with making something out of the sounds and other forms of perception and thus never wake up to our unconditional mind. Nirvāna is the state of being free from suffering and is understood as “blowing out”—referring in the Buddhist context, to the blowing away the smoke of greed, hatred, and delusion. It is a state of soteriological release.

“Soteriological release” means (in essence) salvation, but not in the ordinary way of understanding. In The Diamond Sutra (verse 25), The Buddha said:

“There are in fact no sentient beings for the Tathagata to liberate. If there were sentient beings liberated by the Tathagata, it would mean that the Tathagata holds the notions of a self, a person, a sentient being, or a life span. Subhuti, when the Tathagata says ‘I’, there is actually no ‘I’. Yet ordinary beings think there is a real ‘I’. Subhuti, the Tathagata says that ordinary beings are in fact not ordinary beings. Therefore they are called ordinary beings.”

When first read, I didn’t understand, but upon further reflection, I did see the wisdom. The Buddha (e.g., Tathagata) was telling us that we ordinary humans hold onto the idea there is such a thing as a “self.”—separate, distinct and unique from all others, and to retain this notion is what leads us away from Nirvāna and into the land of never-ending suffering. This idea of personality is what we must lose to be free—be saved (liberated), not being saved by God for inherent sin.

Our conditional mind and unconditional mind are often portrayed as the difference between smoke and fire. We can see the smoke of thoughts, which emanate from the fire of mind. When thoughts are blown out, the smoke goes away and we lose that mind that deceives us, thus producing the idea of a conditional, distinct personality and find our true mind where we are One with all. 

That no-mind state is what is known as Nirvāna: our natural mind, which has always been present. The mirror never comes or goes. Without it perception would be impossible. The mind moves and it doesn’t and everything is just a reflection of the way things are.

Gaining and losing.

Much truth here.

“Have you found Jesus? I didn’t know he was lost.”

Okay, so it’s an old joke and more than likely considered sacrilegious by Christians lacking a sense of humor. That likelihood aside, there’s an important point buried in the comedy. And the point? You can’t find what’s never lost, Jesus or anything else. So why does that seem like such a big deal? Simply because of a fundamental belief embedded in our culture that created havoc in my life until I came to my senses. I’ll walk you through the subterfuge, and I’m sure you’ll find your own resonance.

Suppose you’ve been told your entire life that you’re no good, and the reason is that you have been rejected by God. Maybe it took some time, but eventually, you came to believe the lie. And once the idea became a matter of belief, it became cast in stone where it became a plague infecting every relationship you subsequently had, most notably the one you had with yourself. 

And since it was now a sure thing, you began to act as if it were true: That you were no good, and boy did you get confirming feedback, and the belief just became more and more embedded. That vector takes you step-by-step to the big moment of reckoning: suicide. And the reason is really also pretty simple: Rejection by God, and there is nothing you can do about that except take your licks.

And why am I so sure about this? Because I just described my life, except for the last chapter, which is this: You can’t find what’s never been lost. I’ll leave you to try that on for yourself, but here’s a clue: What is absolutely good, can never be conditionally no good.

Will the real Buddha please stand up?

Sixty-four years ago a television game show began running here in the U.S. The show was called To Tell The Truth and involved three challengers, an announcer and a panel of celebrities. The game began with the announcer asking each of the challengers to state their name and their role.

All three claimed to be the same person but only one was telling the truth. For example, each of the challengers might say, “I’m Willie Sutton and I rob banks.” Then the announcer read aloud a detailed description of the claimed identity. The game proceeded by the panelists asking each of the challengers questions and the challengers answered. The goal of the game was for the panelists to determine both the pretenders and the real person.

After asking a number of questions the announcer said, “Will the real Willie Sutton please stand up?” If the panelists were successful they would have guessed the real person. Often the pretenders proved to be accomplished liars and succeeded in throwing the panelists off track.

I remind you of this because we all play that game ourselves. Only we are both the challengers and the panelist but the goal is the same: To determine our real identity. And just like the game show our ego lies to us, pretending to be who we are truly, and this fellow is a very good liar; so good that we aren’t even aware there is another. And there is another difference: Our true identity (not really an identity) is invisible and doesn’t speak.

Consequently, we’re not even able to ask questions and get answers. In our imaginations, we picture The Buddha as an Indian person in flowing robes with floppy ear lobes who lived 2,500 years ago. And indeed such a person did live. His name was Śākyamuni (“Sage of the Śākyas”) and also known as Siddhārtha Gautama. That person succeeded in the identity game and discovered his true, not to be found non-identity and then came to be known as the Tathāgata which means, paradoxically, both one who has thus gone (tathā-gata) and one who has thus come (tathā-āgata).

In other words, he found out who he was and returned to tell us the truth. So what did he discover? Who was he really? And why does that matter to us? He discovered his own not to be found mind and in so doing he discovered who he was not. And it matters to us because the nature of his true identity is the same for you and me. We have the same mind, which is known as bodhi (the mind of enlightenment). In fact, this same mind is The Buddha, not that ancient person with floppy ear lobes. His true identity, and ours, is the not-to-be found mind. There is no other real Buddha except that non-identity.

We choose names for everything but all names are abstractions rather than the real thing. In the case of a non-identity, what names should be chosen? We could call it any name and each would be as non-good as the next. The Buddha chose the name “mind” but in The Diamond Sutra, he said there is no mind therefore we call it mind. The Apostle Paul called it “The mind of Christ.” We could call it “dog” and in each and every case the name would be an abstraction to represent something that can’t be found, but nevertheless is the source of everything.

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said this: “The Buddha is the mind. There is no Buddha except the mind; no mind but the Buddha.” The term Buddha actually means to awaken, and what a Buddha awakens to is their complete, true non-self. When that occurs, desire (the culprit that sets the engine of suffering in motion) goes away, and the reason is actually quite simple. Desire is the flip side of fulfillment.

Only someone who experiences himself or herself being un-fulfilled, desires. The experience of completion destroys desire. The ego can never experience completion because it is never fulfilled. However, the real person we are is always fulfilled and it is the real person who wakes up and discovers completion. So, as peculiar as that may seem, the real question is, “Why does that matter?”

It matters because the shocking truth means that we are all essentially Buddhas awaiting discovery. We spend our entire lives trying to find ourselves going down one blind alley after another and every time we find nothing substantial. We are all Don Quixote chasing windmills. The only real and lasting part of us is our not-to-be found mind. Only that is substantial. Everything else is just a feather in the wind.

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 wisdom for solving our irreconcilable problems.

Meet Nagarjuna

Our world is drowning in a sea of rights vs. wrongs, governments trapped in ideological deadlocks, conflicts and wars, based on the same, religions likewise immersed in egocentric, self-righteousness (that results in an ever-increasing division of sects), news spun as fake, political alienation, and of course, a global pandemic that is decimating both people and economies. And lest we not forget: Global climate changes, that if not addressed soon, will eliminate us all. It is thus time to pull Nagarjuna out of the closet and dust him off.

We begin this dusting off in a familiar fashion; I need to introduce readers to Nagarjuna. He was a wise sage who lived a long time ago, roughly 1,800 years ago (150–250 CE), about 600 years following The Buddha’s death and, according to modern scholars, was thought to have resided in Southern India. In the Zen tradition, he is the 14th Patriarch. He is also recognized as a patriarch in Tantric and Amitabha Buddhism.

While considered a philosopher of incomparable standing, he put no stock in philosophy, claiming his mission was the apologist of the Buddha’s transcendent wisdom—Beyond any rational articulation. In that sense, he was a sort of Apostle Paul of Buddhism. The Buddha attempted to convey, with words, matters beyond words. The Buddha, like The Christ, was consequently recondite and rarely understood. Nagarjuna set out to correct that and, in the process, created what is now known as The Middle Way—of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

The reason he is so critical to today’s world is that he was able to show, in a less mind-boggling way, that we live within a world of seeming contradictions that, when carefully examined, are not contradictory. To most, we live in a relative world, governed by conditional rights vs. conditional wrongs with nothing beyond. Nagarjuna used the logical method of his era to articulate how there is no contradiction. At that point, ancient Indian scholars employed a method of logic called a tetralemma: an algorithm with four dimensions (affirmation, negation, equivalence, and neither). In terms of conditional rights versus conditional wrongs, it would look like this:

1. Explicit absolute right exists: affirmation of absolute right, implicit negation absolute wrong.
2. Explicit absolute right does not exist: affirmation of absolute wrong, implicit negation absolute right.
3. Explicit absolute right both exists and does not exist: both implicit affirmation and negation.
4. Explicit absolute right neither exists nor does not exist: implicit neither affirmation nor negation.

He thus created the Two Truth Doctrine of conditional truth and unconditional truth. That doctrine stated, so long as this tetralemma method of logic is used alone, there is no way to reconcile either a conditional absolute right or a conditional absolute wrong since all conditions are contingent. That is where Nagarjuna began, but it is not where he ended. He then went to the next level—to the unconditional, which has no contingencies (beyond rational understanding) and pointed out there was a fifth dimension: none of the above.

“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.”

Allow me to translate for you. We ordinarily consider truth as conditionally contingent (e.g., one thing contingent upon something else, such as right and wrong). Still, there is an ultimate truth beyond contingencies, and these two (while appearing as two), are actually two sides of the same thing. They arise dependent upon one another, and neither can exist without the other, sort of like the inside and outside of a roof. One of these truths is a truth of discriminate opposition (e.g., this vs. that; right vs. wrong—the core dilemma), but the other is the truth of indiscriminate union. We must use the conventional truth to lead us to the higher truth since the conventional is the coin of standard logic and communications (words), and we use this truth to know how it is different from the higher. But unless we experience the higher truth, we will forever be lost in a conditionally, contingent, rational trap.

Then he stated a subset of this doctrine. That conventional truth was a matter of tangible form, but the higher truth was of imperceptible emptiness (thus, what the Buddha had said in the Heart Sutra/Sutra of Perfect Wisdom: Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form). Nagarjuna reasoned that if this ineffable dimension of emptiness was valid, then it must apply to everything, including emptiness, thus empty emptiness, which creates an inseparable feedback union back to form again. The two are forever fused together.

So how does this affect the problems of today? It “can” revolutionize the dilemma of egotism and self-righteousness. When properly understood and experienced, it means that the obstacle standing in the way of the higher truth is the perceptible illusion of the self (ego: the contingent, conditional image). Once that illusion is eliminated, we experience our true self (unconditional non-image) that is the same for all people. 

There is no discrimination at this higher truth level (e.g., distinction), and consequently, there is no absolute right vs. wrong, but neither is there not an absolute right nor wrong (independent of each other). Everything is unconditionally, indiscriminately united, yet not conditionally. Thus it can neither be said that truth either exists or does not. If all of us could “get that,” the conflicts of the world would vanish in a flash, and we would at long last know peace and unity among all things.

Freedom

The driving force that has compelled all cultures, at all times, is the desire for freedom. How are we to understand this desire that defines us all? Read histories from any culture, and you’ll find this force at work. Wars to subjugate others, for being set free and independent, to the shaping of religions (e.g., The Exodus)—It’s all there and continues to this day.

But one stem on this branch of freedom addresses the motherlode of all bondage: Bondage of the mind—The firm conviction that we are in bondage and slaves to desire. No other compulsion is more endemic and pernicious than this one. And until we awaken to our inherent freedom, we will never be free, regardless of phenomenal conditions (that always change). Beneath the apparent trap lies freedom, and the two— phenomenal and noumenal—can never be pulled apart.

So strong is the desire to escape the tyranny of consciousness and the restrictive boundaries of perception—to unlock the prisons of thought, in which we chain ourselves, lies the hope to reveal a better version of who we are. It is a never-ending desire that when all other forms of phenomenal freedom are achieved, we remain unsatisfied and feel the compulsion to move through a door of awakening to the bedrock nature of who and what we are.

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!

The fundamental “why” of suffering.

Everyone suffers, nobody wants to, and the vast majority of

The truth about suffering and change.

humanity wonders “why.” The short, answer is desire (or craving): We suffer because we crave something (or someone) and so long as we possess or achieve the object(s) of our desire, all is well, but nothing lasts forever, and when that object is no longer ours, we suffer. We attach our identities to many forms, and when those forms of dependency change for the worst, the experience of loss is nearly identical for us. In a very powerful way, we are yo-yo’s on the string of our dependencies, none of which we can control. And the principle reason we build dependent identities in the first place is that (1) we think there is such a thing as a lasting identity, and (2) we surely do not know who and what we are. If we did, then we would have no need to go searching for what we have already. Desire per se is not the problem. Attachment is.

But that’s only a surface answer. We desire many positive things, such as a desire to be free of suffering. We desire to love and to be loved. We desire joy, compassion, kindness, freedom, humility, and other desirable human qualities. Are we not supposed to desires such things? What would life be like without those positive qualities?

So the short answer is not enough since mortal life, albeit fleeting, would be grim without those qualities. To adequately explain the problem of suffering, it is necessary to not only understand the locus of suffering but to experience the opposite, which is joy. The easy part is the explanation. The hard part is the experience. Yet once we experience the two extremes, we must not attempt to trap and retain the experience. To do so would just be attaching ourselves all over again, with the same outcome. Trying to make permanent (and retain it) would then be like wiping excrements from our “arses” and then holding onto the soiled tissue.

One of the most preeminent Buddhist patriarchs (Nāgārjuna) summed up this challenge with what has now become known as The Two Truth Doctrine.

In Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the two truths doctrine explains an overarching transcendent truth (Dharma) of the two aspects that join all things together. The two aspects are dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and emptiness (śūnyatā). And here is the exposition by Nāgārjuna.

“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention (e.g., relative/conditional truth—my addition) and an ultimate (absolute/unconditional—my addition) truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.”

Delving into the essence of this doctrine can be daunting. However, when the dust is blown away, the answer appears in radiant splendor. Relative truth is based on the perception of what we can see, touch, feel, smell, hear, and think. That perception tells us we are all different, distinct and judgmentally, relatively worthy, or not. That seeming truth is the basis of our ordinary sense of self (e.g., ego). And so long as anyone understands themselves, and others, that way, there will be conflicts of dogmatic “rights” vs. tightly entrenched “wrongs.” War (of one form or another) will perpetuate, and suffering will be the outcome.

Critical to this perspective is the two-fold premises of śūnyatā/emptiness and (pratītyasamutpāda)/dependent origination—the combined principle saying that everything can exist only with an opposite dimension, and this truth transcends all changes. This way of understanding human nature, and conduct, is a given and applies to all changes. Consequently, conditional truth exists only because of unconditional truth. The core of this view is consciousness without conditions. While the shell—the container surrounding that core level, is capable of being perceived. The shell is conditionally objective in nature, and everything objective is always changing. Ultimately anything with an objective nature will die. All conditional, material things go through a life-cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death.

To arrive at the core we must break through the outer material shell. Yet it is this central core that destroys that shell of egotism, and thus enables us to experience transcendental existence. Anything that is unconditional is without differentiation, and therefore identical to things that seem different perceptibly. And neither the relative shell nor the unconditional core can exist apart from the other—they are a single, united, composite entity, just as a shell contains a nut-meat.

Consequently, the challenge appears to be illogical. It would seem that the awareness of the unconditional must emerge before we have the equipment required to perform the task. The central problem is, thus, how? The answer is that ultimate truth (that seems locked away and out of touch) must initiate the process of destroying the false object-based ego-fabrication from the inside/out as a baby turtle must peck away the outer encasement to be set free and live.

What appears above is an explanation but not the experience (which alone will set you free from suffering). Zen Master Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki said: 

“If you really experience ‘IT’ with your positive shining soul, you really find freedom. No one will be able to control you with names or memory of words—Socrates, Christ, Buddha. Those teachers were talking about consciousness. Consciousness is common to everyone. When you find your true consciousness, you will not need the names or words of any teacher.”

The experience alone will set you free from suffering, and arising simultaneously will be the realization that all of us are absolutely the same at the core. The core of unconditionally, transcendent truth and wisdom are eternally present all of the time, and we go throughout life unaware of our own capacity. As a result, we shape our lives—by unknowing design—to be yo-yo’s with waves of suffering and joy: a package deal that can’t be broken any more than magnets can be torn apart.

The core of pure, unadulterated consciousness just reflects like a mirror. It never dies; it doesn’t make judgments of good and bad; it eradicates the fear of dying since it is eternal, and at that deep level of being, we will know with certainty that there is serenity amid relative disaster. We—our eternal essence—can not die! It is only the outer shell that will die, and then we will be set free from a prison we didn’t know existed—the prison of the mind: The ultimate prison, within which all other forms of bondage exist. The greatest, the supreme task of life is to be set free from that prison. Then we will be transformed and our mind renewed.

But for sure, some may say, yes that may be so but what about the relative suffering of the world? Are we to simply “take the money and run” into seclusion with our new-found wisdom and security? And the answer to that question is the mission of a Bodhisattva—one who has experienced unconditional unity—the experience just depicted and chose to return into the fray to heighten awareness that suffering has a solution.

And what must never be ignored is the value of suffering itself: The motivation that compels us all to seek a solution. Bodhidharma pointed out that we must accept suffering with gratitude since when we experience it, only then are we compelled to reach beyond misery to find the way to bliss and eternal joy. He said, 

“Every suffering is a buddha-seed because suffering impels us to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood.”

It is our natural, mortal tendency to resist what each of us considers the bad and savor only what we understand as the good. Still, the nature of relative life is constant change—here today, gone tomorrow and therein is the dilemma and the solution: We must recognize that nobody wants to awaken from a good dream. We all aspire to steer clear of bad ones.

In conclusion, I’ll share a poem of profound wisdom written by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (or simply Rūmī), the 13th-century poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. It is called The Guest House.

“Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

It is challenging to notice that a door closing, by definition, has another side that is known as a door opening. Closing and opening are the two haves of the same matter of growth. Life and death are to be seen like this. That is transcendent dharma.

Nature of mind and the desire for liberation.

What traps us? The Buddha taught us that we trap ourselves because of deluded thinking. We misunderstand our true nature and thus imagine that we’re fundamentally broken. And in this cloud of ignorance, we experience frustration, anxiety and remain firmly persuaded that we’re flat tires and desire a new one.

   
On the one hand, we are corrupted and do need a new one. Evidence of such corruption surrounds us. But when seen from a fundamental level there is nothing to save. This sounds like double-talk but only because we don’t understand our true nature.  If we did there would be no confusion.

In the commentary on the Diamond Sutra, Huang-Po said, “Buddhas and beings share the same identical mind. It’s like space: it doesn’t contain anything and isn’t affected by anything. When the great wheel of the sun rises, and light fills the whole world, space doesn’t become brighter. When the sun sets, and darkness fills the whole world, space doesn’t become darker. The states of light and darkness alternate and succeed one another, while the nature of space is vast and changeless. The mind of buddhas and beings is like this. Here, The Buddha says to save all beings in order to get rid of the delusion of liberation so that we can see our true nature.” 

Because we rely solely on bodily manifestations, a conclusion of corruption is inescapable and from that common logical premise, desire arises. From that perspective this is correct. But we are not fundamentally a body. As Huang-Po points out, fundamentally we share the same mind space as a Buddha. The mind is the production factory and our body is what’s produced. This is an important distinction. To not recognize this error is like imagining that our car manufactured itself and just suddenly appeared in our garage one day. Obviously, our car was produced somewhere and just as obviously so was our body. But then some will say, “This is nonsense. Our body was produced through the biological union between our father and mother.” Okay, so where did their bodies come from? This sequence must go all the way back to the beginninglessness of time, and we’re still left with the same dilemma.

On the other hand, consider the possibility that there is a difference between an objective body and an ineffable spirit that inhabits and is integrated with the body. An object is inanimate and has no consciousness or power to do anything, much less produce itself. Ah but a spiritual mind is an entirely different matter. Our spiritual mind produces everything, either for the good or for the worse depending on what we think. So long as we dwell only on bodily manifestations of pain and suffering without understanding the source, our mind will convert what is unreal into something that seems real, in a fashion similar to being in a dream without being aware that our dream is just an illusion.  Our spirit is the engine. Our body is the vehicle of motion and unless we see this distinction we’re left with the swing between the rising sun of goodness and the darkness of despair, plus the conclusion of being a flat tire.

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.