Surrendering from inflexible positions.

Moving mountains.

The Buddha said we all suffer because we attach ourselves to ephemeral things: here today, gone tomorrow. Attachment to inflexible points of view seriously constrains our ease and compassionate responsiveness to life. We all encounter people who are absolutely convinced that their way is the only way of viewing reality regardless of the fit between such views and wise judgments. The zealot is often held in high esteem as a champion of justice whose self-appointed mission is to defend a particular perspective. Human history spills over with the blood of those on opposing sides of impacted positions.

Glaring examples stand out, ranging from the crusades of the 10th and 11th centuries to the blood baths and wholesale slaughter of both Muslims and Hindus when the British set the Indian Sub-Continent free. Examples continue down to the present day in Washington and around the world between opposing factions clinging to self-righteous positions. In the meantime, the people everywhere suffer from no new relief, and the ripple effects of their unwillingness to compromise are felt across the earth. All of this suffering is over alternate and inflexible points of view.

Such examples are easier to see in others than they are within our own ranks. For example, take opposing views within Buddhists’ ranks regarding f0rm and emptiness or self and Self. These disputes have been sustained for centuries within the Buddhist community. One side says there is nothing but form; emptiness is a myth. The opposing side says form and emptiness are the essential partnership upon which dependent origination rests. One side says the self does not exist and can quote scripture to prove their position. The opposing side says yes, the “ego-self” does not exist, but there is a higher Self (another example of dependent origination) and can quote scripture to prove their position. Extremists within all religious conclaves rule the days.

The Buddha’s wisdom says to speculate about nothing yet trust life and the eternal presence of your own enlightened mind. That is a formidable challenge when one feels passions arise. It is not easy to release ourselves from deep convictions, yet suffering occurs if we don’t. Others argue that suffering occurs if we do. Likewise, Jesus said we need to let go of inflexible ideologies. In John’s book, he is quoted as having said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Of course, that statement doesn’t track so well in English and might be one of the all-time greats of misunderstanding and justifying self-immolation. It means (as written in Koine Greek) there is no greater love than to surrender your ideas: a very Zen-like prescription (as written in Greek). Here, the English word, “life,” in Greek, is “psuche,” which means an expression of the mind. If the Washington politicians read Greek (instead of balance sheets and that not very well), we might all be better. The ultimate criterion is this: What position best establishes compassion for all and moves away from egocentricity? It is best to always be clear that we are connected in an interdependent web with all of life where there can be no my way or the highway simply because there is no me without you—the prime example of dependent origination.

My way or the highway.

If it isn’t patently clear by now, “my way” is the highway to somebody else, who considers “our way” the flip side of “their way.” Wouldn’t it be great if there were an absolute way where there was neither “my way” nor the other way around? This idea of a universally embraced absolute with everyone on the same page is a fool’s paradise. This dilemma has never been more apparent than now, and the factions are growing further and further apart. Why is this division increasing? The Buddha had the answer more than 2,500 years ago, and at the core of the answer lies the thorny matter of how to define oneself. 

The ordinary way is in terms of an ego (e.g., the idea, or image, of who we think we are). From that perspective, the possessive nature of “I” is “mine,” which is of course not “yours.” That’s a problem since mine is clearly different from yours (and the opposite). And never the twain shall meet. That being the case, what is the solution? The extraordinary way of enlightenment where possessiveness disappears since in an enlightened state of mind “I” fuses with “not I,” and the difference between you and me disappears.

From the perspective of “I,” ideologues are the chains that bind us, and dogma becomes the order of the day. Rules, regulations, and laws ensure the walls that divide us. On the other hand, when we become enlightened, dogmas also disappear. Everything is in a state of continuous change and what worked yesterday, does not work today. Conditions change moment by moment and without rules, the unenlightened are disoriented and lost.

However, once a person becomes enlightened, change segues into the wisdom of “expedient means.” Then the challenge shifts from inflexible rules to flexible adaptation, taking into account circumstances as they emerge. To one who has not reached that state of mind, expedient means translate as being dishonest or disingenuous. Since the ego standards of morality are wedded to the rules of that which is measurable and never changes. The very idea of defying objectivity is a poison pill to the unenlightened, and anyone who dances to a different tune is not to be taken seriously or to be trusted. However, according to Chán Master Sheng Yen, “When knowledge and views are established, knowing is the root of ignorance. When knowledge and views do not exist, seeing itself is nirvana.” 

Another Zen Master expressed the difference this way: “Before we understand, we depend on instruction. After we understand, instruction is irrelevant. The dharmas taught by the Tathagata (e.g., The Buddha) sometimes teach existence and sometimes teach non-existence. They are all medicines suited to the illness. There is no single teaching. But in understanding such flexible teachings, if we should become attached to existence or to non-existence, we will be stricken by the illness of dharma-attachment (inflexible truth). Teachings are only teachings. None of them are real.”—Chi-fo (aka Feng-seng). 

In the end, morality is not a one-size-fits-all. Instead, it is governed by that which benefits one and all, except of course those who are clearly wedded to ignorance and work to ensure everyone must be sacrificed on the altar of their ego-enhancement

The Paradox of Non-Choice

Some time ago, I wrote a post called “The High Price of Choice: Winning Battles, Losing Wars.” In that post, I spoke about making choices based on perceptual differences. This post extends the one I’ve called The Paradox of Non-Choice.

For over forty years, I’ve tried and failed to articulate an experience that transformed my life. In reflecting upon that time, I think of it as an experience in a chrysalis, moving from a view of myself as a miserable worm and being transformed into a beautiful butterfly. My self-image stunk, and I didn’t know much about an ego. The reason for my failure concerns words, which, by definition, are reflections of matters that can only be expressed about something else. The other thorny dilemma that has contributed to my failure is some things can never be adequately explained, and this was one of those.

But this morning, I awoke with a pictorial vision that gives me a way of articulating that indescribable experience. However, I can describe the picture you can imagine in your mind. If you can assimilate the essence of the picture, there’ll be a reasonably good chance of grasping that experience beyond words I’ve struggled to describe for these many years. And this, in turn, can give you the hope of realizing the goal of peace and harmony—unity with all things.

Picture in your mind a three-dimensional ball with an empty core. To help you see that, imagine “Wilson,” the soccer ball that became the sole partner of Tom Hanks in his movie Cast Away. For those who didn’t see the film, Hanks was a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashed in the South Pacific. Everything was lost except a soccer ball made by The Wilson Sporting Goods Company. To keep from going insane, Hanks developed a relationship with Wilson, keeping him from losing all hope.

Like Hanks, anyone can perceive the outside of a soccer ball, but no one can perceive the inside simultaneously (except through imagination, and imagination became the friend of Hanks). Perceiving anything (and understanding what is perceived) requires certain conditions, one of which is contrast. For example, the ball can’t be seen if everything is white and the ball’s surface is white. The outside of that ball is called correctly conditional—one thing contrasted with (or conditioned upon) another different thing. That being the case, we could label the outside “relative” or “conditional.”

Now, we come to the inside of the ball, which is empty. It’s invisible for two reasons: first, because the outside surface hides it, and second, because it’s empty, meaning nothing is there (except air, which can’t be seen). We could adequately label the inside unconditionally since emptiness, by definition, is a vacuum lacking limitations (except when seemingly confined, as in the case of the outer surface of a soccer ball). If we were to remove the outer surface, what was inside (nothing) would be the same as if there were no surfaces. It wouldn’t go anywhere since it was nowhere—yet everywhere—to begin with.

Now, we can describe the ball entirely: The outer surface is relatively conditional and perceptible, while the inside is unconditional and imperceptible. Thus, the ball is constructed within three dimensions—the outside has two sizes, and the inside has another. And (importantly) the outside is opposite from the inside (and in that sense also relative). Neither the outside of a ball nor the inside could exist without the other. But when the inside core is isolated, it is wholly unconditional. However, it can only be that way when confined within the outside conditional surface of the ball.

Now take the next step and relabel the ball as a living organism (one of which is a human), and this living organism is constituted in the same way as the ball with only one addition—consciousness. Consciousness is a two-way street: an unconditional source functions through perceptual mechanisms that are outwardly oriented to perceive relative conditional things. The one dimension that consciousness can’t perceive is consciousness itself since it is an unconditional, non-relative non-thing (no-thing/empty). Furthermore, anything unconditional is everywhere at once—outside and inside and completely lacking detection.

Since the function of consciousness is perception, it remains the source, wholly complete and undetectable (empty). As such, we need to be made aware of its presence. We know only things that are detectable and constituted of differing natures. And unfortunately, we differentiate (or discriminate) these things into judgments of good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, up/down, and on and on.

The problem here is that we conclude that everything is either this or that and go unaware that, at the core, everything is united into an unconditional, indefinable non-entity. Enlightenment is the pure sense of self-awakening (the experience of) penetrating through the outer surface of differentiated things and into the core, where we experience/realize that everything is constituted as nothing (meaning emptiness). We then “know” our true, fundamental nature, and at the exact moment as this dawning, we realize we are neither good nor bad, white or black, or any other this vs. that. With this dawning, we understand that everyone is the same at that fundamental level—all united and unconditionally the same. And that is the source of all hope and compassion—that we are One.

So the next time you’re tempted to judge yourself or another, remember Wilson the soccer ball and know that your true self is just as empty—and thus the same as everything else.

The Little Red Hen, Redux

According to Wikipedia, The Little Red Hen is an old folk tale, most likely of Russian origin, that was used during the 1880s as a story that offered a transition to less blatant religious and moralistic tales while still emphasizing a clear moral. I have taken the liberty of reframing the tale in order to illustrate the spiritual evolution that raises one from selfishness to awareness of the Higher Self and unity with all. Following is the recast tale.

THE LITTLE RED HEN
Once upon a time, there lived a little red hen. She called all of her spiritual neighbors together and said, “If we plant these seeds, we shall eat the bread of truth. Who will help me plant them?”
“Not I,” said the cow.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did. 

The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.
“Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Out of my religious field,” said the pig.
“I’d lose my affiliation,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my comfort,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last, it came time to bake the bread.
“Who will help me bake the bread?” asked the little red hen.
“That would invade my spare time,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my right to quack,” said the duck.
“I’m a dropout and never learned how,” oinked the pig.
“If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, “No, I shall eat all five loaves.”
“Unfair!” cried the cow.
“Outlier!” screamed the duck.
“I demand an equal share!” yelled the goose.
The pig just grunted in disdain.
And they all painted picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then the farmer (The True Self) came. He said to the little red hen, “You must not be so greedy.”
“But I earned the bread,” said the little red hen.
“Exactly,” said the farmer. “That is what makes our free will system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he or she wants. But under our exclusive (an impossibility) earthly regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.”

And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, “I am so grateful, for now, I truly understand. When I eat, everyone eats with me. Before I have been the cow, the duck, the goose, and the pig.”

And her neighbors became quite content in her. She continued baking bread because she joined the “game” and got her bread free, which she ate with her Self, who just happened to be her united friends. And all the side-liners smiled. “Fairness” had been established and they came to know themselves, in the Little Red Hen.

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that the indiscriminate hen planted, reaped, baked, and ate together with her lazy friends.

So I end my reframed tale with voices of my own: Moo, quack, honk, grunt, and cock-a-doodle-do. I’ve been them all and just perhaps, so too have we all.

Perpetual host; Holy ghost.

The Spirit arises

This is going to be a risky post since adherents to different faiths get disturbed by connecting dots of similarity. Nevertheless, I willingly choose to go where “angels fear to tread” since my topic is of utmost importance. The best way to begin is with a quote from Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” His point, and mine, is while the name may change, the essence stays the same.

I’ve danced around this burning bush numerous times trying to convey the essential point that our human nature is like a continually eroding house within which lives a permanent resident (with no name or status). Such posts as “Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me,” “Guests and Hosts,” “The Watcher,” “Transcendence and the Middle Way,” “Nature of mind and the desire for liberation,” “Already, not yet,” “Separating wheat from chaff,” “East meets West meets East,” “If it walks like a duck…” and others, all address the point of this post but not all reached across the aisle. Now I will. What may or may not be known is that while all religious traditions are different in their dogma, the mystical traditions of each are nearly identical.

But before that reaching, my springboard will be a quote from a towering giant in the long line of Zen Masters: Huang Po…

“The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word ‘Mind’ to symbolize the inexpressible reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not Mind at all. But he had to use some term or other, and his predecessors had often used ‘Mind.’ As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all, but familiar to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, ‘hsin’ means not only ‘mind,’ but ‘heart’ and, in some senses, at least, ‘spirit,’ or ‘soul,’—in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word Absolute, which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course, ‘the One Mind’ is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.”—Commentary by John Blofeld (Chu Ch’an): The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind.

That’s a safe segue onto the other side of the aisle that addresses the Christian principle of The Holy Ghost, who/which resides in “born again Christians.” The rose smells as sweet, but the name changes, as do the presuppositions. In the case of Zen, the host (True man of no rank), according to Master Lin Chin/Rinzai; Huang-Po’s student) was the eternal “REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.” 

The apparent difference between the teachings of orthodox Christianity and Zen, concerning the indwelling Spirit, is that Christian dogma says only those who confess Christ as Lord will be “born again” and receive the Holy Spirit. However, this dogma contradicts another fundamental aspect of Christian teaching, which says that God is eternal and omnipresent. Consequently, there is a fly in this ointment that was addressed by Meister Eckhart (Christian mystic)—“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Mystics (all) have plunged the depths to the essence of their natural being, whereas those who remain unenlightened see the surface and not the wisdom. For these, “…the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees.”

Identity?

The dissolving ego.

The last two posts (Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death and Karma and The Wheel of Dharma) were critical in understanding how we get into on-going trouble and how to get emancipated. Both messages may have seemed arcane and esoteric. I am aware of the difficulty, particularly among Western audiences, when coming to terms with the essential aspects of these messages. For that reason, I employed metaphors of dust and viruses. 

However, the wisdom contained in these two is so important that I want to go to the heart of the teaching, pull out the core, and do a summation, in layman’s terms. What lies at the core of them both is how we understand our human nature. Everyone, in all times and places, develops a sense of who they are, who others are, how we regard our self-understanding, and what this means to our place in the world. The admonition of the Golden Rule:  “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets,” is not incorrect. However, essential to that teaching takes us to the core of not only that teaching, but also to the core of the last two posts. Do we hate ourselves? Love ourselves? Think we are God’s gift to the world? Or perhaps a piece of crap. Whatever self-view we possess determines how we treat others and what we expect from them. Any and all, unenlightened view of ourselves, boils down to one simple principle, and how we understand that principle: Ego.

I could readily quote innumerable passages from exalted Zen Masters that speak to this matter of ego and self-understanding, but not now. If you are interested in that sort of presentation, you can click on the “SEO keyword” ego, located at the bottom of this post, and it will take you to numerous other posts about this matter of a deluded idea of who we are. Today, however, I want to speak in common terms that anyone can understand if they are so inclined. I will take you to the waters, but I can’t make you drink.

So what exactly is an “ego” and how does it make a difference, to ourselves, to others, and to the world. The word, in all languages and traditions, means “I,” not any “I” but the honest, in-the-dark-of-night “I,” when it is still, and nobody is watching. In that darkness, nobody is observing us, there is nobody to impress or be persuaded, and there is just you, in the dark, alone with your own thoughts—which could keep you awake at night. Our egos are a corrupted notion that we all create to identify ourselves. It is formed, shaped, refined, and comes to be essential to everything we say and do. Importantly, the ego is an idea, an image of self (self-image) that depends on many inputs. Those inputs come from family, friends, teachers, significant others—many, many sources, over a long period of time.

In the simplest of terms, it boils down to building an identity out of bricks of clay. And perhaps the most important of those bricks come early in life—how we were treated as children by those in whom we were most vested: those that mattered most—our family and/or the people we trusted and considered significant to our wellbeing. If those treated us kindly, we developed a good sense of ourselves. If they treated us badly, we developed a poor sense of ourselves. And those initial building blocks served as the foundation of what followed, which may, or may not, have reinforced those initial ideas. But even at a young age, what we came to think of ourselves, determined how we behaved and the feed-back we received resulting from that behavior. “As you think, so shall you become.”  That principle is universal, and you can find it presented from many sources.

Let’s take the next step in this progression. Suppose our significant, trusted people, critical to shaping those initial building blocks, treated us kindly. In such a case, our ego-sense becomes attached to those people, and then something terrible happens: They die or go away. What then happens is devastating to our mental/emotional wellbeing: We suffer. On the other hand, consider the opposite—We are treated poorly (and we come to regard ourselves poorly), nevertheless becoming attached to our own, now-ingested opinion, set in motion by those people. Both of these are forms of attachment, and they are both just ideas (images if you prefer). In the first case, we have attached to what we like, and in the other case, we are attached to what we don’t like.

Life is a moving ship on a body of water, that changes with the tides of life. Up and down, the waves move, and our egos bounce like a cork on the surface. There is no stability with that arrangement—only turbulence. What we fail to consider is what lies beneath those changing waves; at the sea bottom where nothing changes. That analogy is not about turbulent water or the bottom of the sea. It concerns identity, changing, or not. At the base depths of our thinking mind is the subconscious mind; way down there where our thoughts are “out of sight/out of mind.” Only they are never out of mind. They have just moved from our conscious/thinking mind into our subconscious mind, but they never leave. In that universal way, we are all trapped; some thinking poorly of themselves and others thinking they are superior to others.

What the quests for our true (not imagined) self entails is plunging, through whatever came before: the entire, cumulative formation of the ego, to the depths of our souls, and experiencing—not thinking—our genuine Self. This pathway is not one of rational thinking but is instead a transforming, intimately personal Spiritual experience. And when I say, “Spiritual,” I do not mean a religious one. I do mean the genuine experience of your very own spirit, that has no clothing, no identity, no “ego,” no anything. You then wake up (e.g., the term “Buddha” means awaken) to an indiscriminate, universal unity with all, that is not an isolated “you” but is the same as everyone else. In that spiritual realm, there is not an iota of difference between you and anyone, regardless of whatever bodily differences, or idea you may hold of yourself. Then you are a true man (or woman) with rank. 

The ego, at that moment, evaporates like the disappearance of mist upon the rising of the sun, and you realize the one doing the quest is one and the same as the one being sought after. And at that moment, that comes like a flash of lightning, your entire understanding changes radically—the self is transformed into Self as a worm is transformed into a butterfly. And then you have returned to a non-identity that never left.

In the world: enlightened social responsibility.

Covered with the slim of injustice

There appears to be a contradictory challenge in many spiritual pursuits. Picking and choosing often seem like resisting “just” action resulting from self-inflicted karma of the past. And by resisting, we attempt to alleviate our suffering by violating the principle of karmic justice, thus contributing to more bad karma and corresponding suffering. We rarely recognize how such suffering leads to the eradication of the ego and on to a higher level of spiritual life.

On the other hand, there is a temptation to avoid appropriate social responsibility based on the flawed notion that those who suffer deserve to because of their own past karma, and by interdicting this process we merely exacerbate their learning process, sparing them from spiritual advancement.—Side note: My significant other has a problem remembering this word, which means “to worsen.” Instead, she inserts the one word she can remember, that sounds the same but has a different meaning: masturbate, which significantly alters the meaning 😉. Closely aligned with this avoidance comes the matter of discrimination and judgment. We know that to discriminate between good and evil seems to necessarily involve judgment. So how do we walk this razor’s edge between enlightened social responsibility while not tampering with the karmic process leading to a heightened spiritual awareness?

There is a delicate balance between being in the world but not of the world: the fine line of being flawed and not flawed at the same time. To clarify this seeming dilemma, it is perhaps helpful to turn to a couple of ancient stories and a few contemporary examples. 

The first story concerns Huike the second Chán (e.g., the Chinese precursor of Zen) patriarch. He was a scholar in both Buddhist scriptures and classical Chinese texts. Huike met his teacher Bodhidharma (the first patriarch), at Shaolin Temple in 528 CE when he was about 40 years of age. Legend has it that Bodhidharma initially refused to teach Huike who then stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave all night until the snow reached his waist. In the morning, Bodhidharma asked him why he was still there. Huike replied that he wanted a teacher to “open the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings.” Bodhidharma refused, saying, “How can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would just be a waste of effort.” Finally, to prove his resolve, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma as a token of his sincerity. He was then accepted as a student, and Bodhidharma changed his name from Shenguang Ji (his secular surname) to Huike, which means “Wisdom and Capacity.” Try to imagine the depth of anguish Huike must have endured before this, that inspired him with such motivation and determination. Can any of us, in honesty, say that we show that sort of resolve?

Huike did not immediately display wisdom but instead struggled to find The Way. It took some years before he found the key that unlocked the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings. On one occasion, Huike said to Bodhidharma, “My mind is anxious. Please pacify it.” Bodhidharma replied, “Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.” Huike said, “Although I’ve sought it, I cannot find it.” “There,” Bodhidharma replied, “I have pacified your mind.” Upon hearing this, Huike realized enlightenment.

The second story involves ten stages of the gradual-Chán-school (Soto) illustrated by Chinese Chán Master Chino Kukuan, who painted ten pictures illustrating the steps to emancipation. The movement from anguish to freedom has been depicted in many ways since Buddhism began to take shape, but, in essence, the key that unlocked Huike’s gate of the elixir of universal compassion is the same gate in these ten-fold stages. And that key entails a seemingly strange illusion: being liberated from the beginning yet remaining unaware until the true mind realizes it has never been imprisoned in the first place. If we are already whole, then we can’t become whole. Nevertheless, the quest to become whole and emancipated is an ageless and futile proposition because the true mind is what is doing the seeking. Trying to find your true mind is like looking for your eyeglasses while wearing them.

Ten pictures depict the search for an ox, an allegory for the search of our true nature. Although awakening is instantaneous, the practice, which precipitates it, may be experienced as occurring in a series of stages. This process may be understood as gestation and then suddenly birth. The ox-herding pictures are an attempt to aid the progress toward enlightenment by exemplifying certain steps, which begin in darkness and proceed in stages ending in enlightenment and a return to the world (which was never left). However, having gone through suffering associated with being in the bondage of the mind, the return is accompanied by a radically altered view of what is bondage and an appreciation of genuine compassion.

Now we are in the world, and the question becomes, “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? In our complex world, even attempting to determine how things are is a daunting challenge since all is changing at light speed. Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society? And to answer this thorny question, we turn to Plato and his allegory of The Cave. 

Plato wrote this allegory as a part of The Republic around 380 BCE. The larger purpose of The Republic concerned Plato’s ideas of justice, as well as the order and character of both a just man and a just city-state. The Cave specifically addressed the effect of education, and the lack of it, on our true nature. The allegory is structured as a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. The setting for the story involved people who have been imprisoned in a cave (their own mind), chained in a fixed position so they can’t move, with a fire at their back, thus casting shadows on the cave wall of themselves. They are left to see only their shadows and come to believe they and their shadows are the same thing.

The two, observe this situation while Socrates points out to Plato’s brother the despicable nature of the prisoner’s plight as well as the civil, spiritual, and political obligation by those who see the truth to those remaining in bondage. When the fact is pointed out, the prisoners lash out and excoriate those who wish to free them, claiming that they, instead of their intended deliverers, are right while their liberators are wrong. They would instead rather choose to remain chained and protect their convictions than to be set free. Such people surround us to this day, denying what is crystal clear.

Given this conundrum, Glaucon asks Socrates why the liberators need to endure the slings and arrows of the prisoners but instead just enjoy the truth and let those in bondage remain pleased and in bondage. And it is here that Socrates states his case for a just man and his duty to society. According to Socrates/Plato, a just man is one who has found the truth and rather than “taking the money and running” returns to honor his duty to assist those trapped in their ignorance, which just happens to be the same definition The Buddha offered for a Bodhisattva: a suffering servant (also the name given to Jesus).

The Cave conjures up the antithesis of just men in the contemporary characters of congressional members who do “take the money and run” and of Paul Ryan, who reflects the teachings of Ayn Rand, who saw little need for government. In his eyes, they are “takers,” dependent on the entitlements of government. This view continues to govern the sense of obligation by members of Congress to carry out their responsibility. The view of a just man and his duty to a society held by these gentlemen (and a host of others) was the opposite of the view held by Plato. Just let them eat cake (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, in French) is their mantra.

So back to the questions: “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? To many, the answer moves along the path of self (ego) preservation and the easy way: the safe way where avoidance of challenges to their tightly held dogmas of destruction reign supreme. To them, there is a clear right and a corresponding clear wrong: “makers” and “takers.”  But there is another way: the way of the Bodhisattva who fights for the rights of those still in bondage, trapped by the shadows of the mind, despite the slights and arrows cast at them. They have seen the light of truth and know it is not theirs to possess. They gladly become suffering servants because they have been in bondage themselves and know in their marrow how ignorance is not bliss. When they see injustice, evil and self-destructive actions taking place, they do intercede and fight for those unable to fight against the tyranny of the mind and covered with the slime imposed on them by those who care only for their profit regardless of harm inflicted on others.

There seems to be a subtle and fine line between liberating people in physical bondage and bondage of the mind. We must fight for those who are physically imprisoned in one way or another, be it oppression of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion, finances, or any other form of unjust discrimination, yet recognize that until people are freed from the bondage of the mind, there will never be ultimate freedom and liberty for all. The mind is everything! We must be in the world but not of the world.  If we, who have endured suffering and found release, don’t help those in need, we too will continue as doomed to a hell we deserve.

What we don’t know can hurt us.

The realm of reality.

Many, if not most, of the problems we encounter as humans are due to what we either don’t know or refuse to know. Such a lack has a way of catching us off guard at the worst possible moments, usually late in the game when there is little we can do to stop, or at least slow the progression toward disaster. 

The coronavirus pandemic is a case in point. So long as we can be aware of the sign-posts, we can prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. Hope, however, must be realistic and in line with those sign-posts, or it remains pie in the sky. What we don’t know can, and many times does, hurt us.

Without knowing, we live in two realms at once: The realm of rational conditions (the mortal one) and a realm beyond conditions, where immortality lives. Think of the realm of immortality as the ground from which our mortal lives grow. It is very much like growing a garden. If the immortal soil is full of nutrients, then the odds are better, the mortal produce will be nutritious.

The realm of mortal conditions is our ordinary realm, where one thing stands in opposition to another. Mortally, we have a beginning and an ending. In this realm, differentiation is the criteria and is based on the senses that tell us how we are all different. Our sense of sight says to us, light is different from darkness. Our auditory sense tells us that sound is different from silence, and so on—each of our senses discriminates one thing from another different sensory thing.

The immortal realm is the realm of unity, where everything is the same. And unlike what grows, the immortal ground has no beginning nor end. That’s the good soil and is the unconditional realm of the spirit: The ground of all being—the well-spring of all. And these two realms are irrevocably joined together in perfect harmony. Should one realm disappear, the other would disappear. When one appears, the other appears. They define one another, and without an opposite, neither can be understood, just as without light, darkness would have no meaning. One is an abstraction—an illusion that appears to our senses as real, whereas the other, while invisible to the senses, is reality itself.

To our collective misfortune, the ordinary realm (e.g., the conditional) is what governs our world and is the root of all woe. It is because we imagine our life will end that we fear death, never realizing that genuine life never ends. Mortality segues into immortality, and life goes on. However, when we think we get only one shot, we see ourselves as distinct, separate, and different only. Then the mortal realm becomes a place where tribal wars of opposition rule the day, where nobody genuinely “reaches across the aisle,” and compromise becomes impossible, except as disingenuous lip-service.

It is within the silence of the mind where we discover our true, immortal worth. When all thinking ceases, it is there we find our true nature. Yet, as The Buddha taught, in emptiness, there is no mind and no self, so we call them both by abstract names to become aware. Without abstraction, only silence prevails, but it is within silence where we become enlightened to that which is the source of all awareness.

To most of the western world, Zen is a strange and confusing matter, most often utterly misunderstood. The founder of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as “not thinking.” And the great master Huang Po taught: “Whatever the senses apprehend resembles an illusion, including everything ranging from mental concepts to living beings. Our Founder—The Buddha, preached to his disciple's naught (e.g., nothing) but total abstraction leading to the elimination of sense-perception. In this total abstraction does the Way of the Buddhas flourish; while from discrimination between this and that a host of demons blazes forth!” — The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, (The teacher of Zen Master Rinzai).

If westerners had lived in the eastern world, Zen would not seem strange. Instead, the odds are favorable that Zen would be understood as the means The Buddha employed to experience enlightenment. Many in the western world have become aware of the practice of mindfulness meditation in helping to quiet the mind, leading to less stress and improved health. However, what has not yet become well established is the next stage beyond mindfulness. 

Quieting the mortal mind is a sign-post on the way to what follows. First, the chatter must be regulated and brought under control. Then, and only then, is it possible to move on to the deeper stage of Samādhi attained by the practice of dhyāna (e.g., the ancient name given to the practice of Zen—the last step in the Eight Fold Path, otherwise known as Right Concentration). The preceding step (the seventh) was known as Right mindfulness, the level that is now so popular. There is nothing wrong with mindfulness. But there is more beyond that sign-post on the way, but following that, the going gets tougher.

The great Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa said, “My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish.” The beginning would be more aligned with Right mindfulness, whereas Right Concentration is more aligned with finishing up the journey.

Uncertainty and instability.

The winds of change.

At the current time, conditional uncertainty and instability are running rampant throughout the world, and this is causing big problems for business maintenance and expansion. Few companies know which end is up—where to locate their facilities; to close a factory (or not) to quarantine workers due to rampantly spreading viruses (never seen before); how many employees to hire (at what price) or fire; when, if ever, trade wars will end and bring stability back to a manageable level; to invest (or not) in productivity measures—which reduces their short-term P/E ratio if they do invest, and thus reduces demand by investors to purchase their public offerings. 

All of that has no geographic restrictions since the entire world is going through the same turbulent conditions at the same time, increasing the odds of a global recession (or worse yet, a sustained depression). Not only is “no man an island,” but “no company is an island.”  While we may wish to Make America Great Again, we might as well wish for Santa Claus, so long as we believe such a thing is possible, at the expense of other nations. The notion of making a nation great (at the expense of other nations) has about as much chance of success as making yourself great at the expense of your partner. Being self-centered, whether with a partner or other nations, is doomed from the outset.

There has never been a time like this in history where trade is more interconnected than now. And this interconnection has become common-coin with people around the world, due to the Internet. Conditional interdependence is now perfectly obvious (to those who care to see the handwriting on the wall—some don’t—which is amazingly puzzling). We are creatures of habit, holding onto “the way things used to be” and paying mightily for our ignorance. Now we are fighting for survival against a coronavirus, never encountered before, and discovering the conditional differences between those who have chosen to throw caution to the wind and those who are willing to do the necessary (but undoubtedly not the convenient) to minimize the damage. For reasons not universally obvious, there are those who choose to attempt to bulwark the ever-changing tides of life and prefer to see life through the lens of “never change” instead of “ever change.”

Many years ago, when I first began my Zen practice and inquiry, my entree primer was a book written by Alan Watts—The Wisdom of Insecurity (catchy title) that did indeed captured my attention, and I thought, how is insecurity “wise?”. After having read that book I began to see how wise insecurity actually is since Watts spelled out what was, and is, perfectly obvious (every conditional thing is changing all of the time, whether we notice it or not). The wisdom is to not hold onto stuff that changes because it creates suffering, in two different ways: Either because we hold onto what we like and love (assuming it will remain static, but it doesn’t) or we resist what we don’t like and love, but it comes upon our shores anyway. Now we have invented a slogan that captures the essential idea: “What goes around, comes around.” And some people refer to this pattern as karma—an essential aspect of understanding the dharma of the Buddha.

However, as said previously: We are creatures of habit and learn slowly, most vividly through suffering. Nobody enjoys suffering yet nobody can avoid it. The very first truth of the Four Noble Truths is “life is dukkha”—translated into English as suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, etc.. When first I read this truth, I had not yet understood (or even been exposed to) the difference between conditional life and unconditional life. Consequently, I digested this first truth as an inescapable death sentence, which of course it is so long as we see life as purely conditional—everything is changing and dukkha is unavoidable. What a bitter pill to swallow! As the saying whimsically goes, “Nobody gets out of here alive.” 

But then an amazing and unexpected thing occurred: I experienced the unconditional realm, didn’t grasp the profound significance and subsequently spent the next 30+ years attempting to understand the ineffable mystery. I could not pretend the experience never happened, try as I may, but instead was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (Note: There is no bottom; no top; no East nor West; no anything in the realm of unconditionality). Yet how does anyone pretend an experience, that never ends, did not happen? I suppose Galileo found himself in the same dilemma when he observed that the earth was not the center of the universe, at a time when The Church maintained it was. It is impossible, and when it happens, you have a simple yet profoundly tricky decision to make: To either find the truth and share it (thus ensuring slings and arrows) or keep quiet and stay in comfort.

The truth I discovered to explain the experience is the other truth, beyond the first, that Nagarjuna expressed roughly 400-500 years following the death of The Buddha. What Nagarjuna said filled in the blank of my understanding. He said:

“The teaching by the Buddhas of the dharma has recourse to two truths: The world-ensconced truth and the truth which is the highest sense. Those who do not know the distribution of the two kinds of truth, do not know the profound ‘point’ in the teaching of the Buddha. The highest sense of the truth is not taught apart from practical behavior, and without having understood the highest sense one cannot understand nirvana.”

This came to be known as The Two Truth Doctrine and can be simply stated like this: The pathway to the highest (unconditional) truth must go forward along the path of conditional truth, the latter of which is provisional (e.g., temporary and changes). And these two are interdependent, neither of which can exist without the other. This relationship is known in Buddhist vernacular as “dependent origination,” and when properly understood informs three important matters that help us all to understand every dimension of the world in which we live. The three matters are (1) absolutely nothing has independent existence (e.g, self-contained, separate or existing as an island), (2) everything is inexorably linked together, and (3) The poles of these two truths are utterly opposite in nature—One side is conditional, always changing, and full to overflowing with suffering, leads to saṃsāra and the other pole is unconditional, never changes and is Nirvana itself (śūnyatā—emptiness/utter bliss).

Uncertainty and instability are the never-ending dimensions of the contingent world in which we live, perhaps best illustrated by the consequences of the world’s largest bridge collapsing (e.g., The Three Gorges Dam), leaving in the deluge the devastation of 400 million lives. Such unplanned, collateral damage will continue to disrupt planning for the future, be that from an industrial perspective or any other conditional perspective. 

We have codified this dilemma with sayings such as, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” On one level, we all know this is true. But on a higher level, the opposite is true, and that latter truth remains unknown. Too bad, because this other truth is where solace from the winds of change resides. There is no solace within a conditional and crumbling world. It is there that suffering prevails. And the only way out of misery is to awaken to both truths.