The Wall—Emptiness

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The enlightenment of The Buddha introduced an entirely new vantage-point to the human experience. 

In summary, his grasp of reality addressed two, apparently different views which he said were the same thing looked at from alternate perspectives. Those two dimensions were the conditional and the unconditional realms of form and emptiness, which according to him arose dependent upon each other. 

Today and tomorrow we’ll consider these two, metaphorically through a model of a wall and a ladder that leans against that wall. The metaphor came in a dream following a day of contemplating the various understandings of the word dharma. 

I discovered in my research that dharma was derived from the Sanskrit root dhṛ, which means to support or hold, and often referred to cosmic law. In my dream, I saw a ladder leaning against and supported by a blank wall.

The story is told that Bodhidharma sat in meditation staring at a blank wall for nine years. What did he see? Let’s take a walk into a realm almost too strange to imagine. In fact, it is only possible to enter this realm through the imagination. It is the realm of a transcendent wall, which strips conceptuality down to the ground of all being. Think essence—pure essence, infinite essence, 100% essence, without any otherness. Such a realm is impossible to imagine because to imagine it requires separation and otherness: an imaginer as well as what is being imagined, and such essence is transcendent to all divisions. It is a realm where subjects and objects melt into one another. It is non-dual in any and every way. 

Form requires dimensions of at least the aggregation of time, space, and circumstances. Not the imagination. Essence is the sentient eye seeing itself beyond all time, space, and circumstance. This essence is what Eckhart said was, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” 

Form content needs context within which to exist but essence is both content and context at the same time, which is a contradiction already. Essence is entirely “+” and “-” fusion and such a thing cannot exist except in the imagination, or so it seems to conventional wisdom.

What would such a realm approximate? The closest thing imaginable would be a black hole, which instead of sucking in otherness, sucks in itself (symbolically an Ouroboros—expressing the unity of all things). An infinitely large (or infinitely small: size is a contradiction) sucking machine without motion or any defining characteristics. Why? Because this is the primordial seed essence before mother and child. Form mother and children come next. “Large” is a defining characteristic. “Small” is a defining characteristic. “Motion” is movement from one space/time circumstance to another and this requires otherness which in the case of essence is so profound it cannot exist.

Defined thusly, in a dream, essence is transcendent to both life and death. It is beyond time, space, and circumstances. Such a condition is non-conditional, non-contingent, and non-everything. In fact, it is transcendent even to that prior statement since “non” is otherness and pure essence is non-non and is indefinable. It is wholly beyond; even beyond imagination and logic and every other frame of reference, which requires discernment. This would be 100% potential energy without even a glimmer of kinetic energy. Conceptually it is impossible to imagine. All concepts fail to capture essence. 

I think this way of envisioning essence is a fairly accurate description of something that is 100% ready: neither alive nor dead but ready for either, neither or both, only this is transcendent to all such defining characteristics which imply life or death. Readiness is unborn and never dies. This would be an independent, wholly essential, unconditional non-thing with no other purpose except existence itself. This is a Self with no other. It would be the womb of creation without a child, forever and ever: another with no otherness, yet transcendent to such distinctions. It would be completely empty of everything, yet completely full at the same time. It would be everything and nothing at once. It would be completely meaningless and completely meaningful—The Big Bang before either bang or big—pure singularity of the essential kind.

Is this what Bodhidharma saw? We’ll never know but countless Zen Masters have spoken about this ineffability using names like Mind Essence, Ground of Being, Original Face, and Purity. Some have called it Buddha—the Dharmakaya. Others have used the word, God. The founder of the Rinzai Zen (Lin Chi) used the idiom, “True Man of no rank” because, within this ineffable sphere, there is no discrimination and discrimination is conditional, only possible when otherness is present. 

Bodhidharma simply called it “The Void” or the primordial mind and what he was experiencing for nine years was a view of his own mind. Names are mere handles to represent what can’t be, and never will be, adequate to describe what is utterly transcendent. Exodus 20:4 speaks clearly about the admonition of God: “You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth.” 

And the understanding of this admonition is clear: any and every word or handle harkens a conceptual image engraved in the mind: a shadow—a surrogate, of the energy which inhabits and moves all of life. Essence is things exactly as they are, sans any and all defining characteristics. This is suchness. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. “Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know.” — Stanza 56, The Tao Te Ching.

If it walks like a duck…

The common-coin understanding is that Buddhism is a Godless religion, and the reason for this view is that the Buddha didn’t focus on the concept of God but instead focused on understanding the mind and overcoming suffering. It’s worth the time and energy to thoroughly investigate this matter.

First is the notion that God can be understood conceptually. The Buddha’s perspective was that such a thing was not possible and, when thoughtfully considered, this is, of course, true. God is transcendent to all considerations and can’t be enclosed within any conceptual and rational framework. To even attach a name such as “God” is to be lost in a delusional pretense.

Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki used the name “Great Nature” and “Great Self.” There are many names to point to the nameless creator of heaven and earth but Sokei-an perhaps said it best. He 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.” 

As a result, Gautama addressed only what can be controlled and didn’t participate in fostering further delusion. So the question is whether or not ‘IT’ can be defined, even marginally. What are the characteristics of ‘IT’ and how does ‘IT’ function? Whatever name is chosen, regardless of religious affiliation, the nature of God is understood to inhabit the entirety of creation. 

The creator can’t be severed from what is created, which is the point of the Buddhist understanding that all form is the same thing as emptiness. Rather than using the name “God” (in vain), the name “Buddha” is used, and “Buddha” means awakened to the true essence of oneself. We might use any name but the essence would not change. An awakened person is said to enjoy the mind of enlightenment. 

If you read Buddhist literature extensively, you’ll find a laundry list of sorts, which speaks to this mind of enlightenment. It includes the following qualities: complete, ubiquitous, full of bliss, independent, transcendent, full of wisdom, never changes, the ground of all being, the creative force of everything, devoid of distinctive nature (ineffable) yet all form endowed with this nature.

When we take all of this in and digest it, a duck begins to emerge that walks, talks, and looks like a duck. In the final analysis, a name is fleeting, but the substance remains forever. Here is what Jesus is recorded as having said about where God lives: 

“If your leaders say, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in the Heavens,’ then the birds will be before you. If they say, ‘It is in the ocean,’ then the fish will be before you. But the Kingdom is inside of you, and the Kingdom is outside of you. When you know yourself, then you will know that you are of the flesh of the living Father. But if you know yourself not, then you live in poverty and that poverty is you.”—Gospel of Thomas 3.

We must acknowledge that languages are means of articulating something but the something is never the same as the words we choose. What possible difference does the name make? We have grown excessively protective of our own names of choice and sadly have lost touch with our very own souls.

Discrimination or not? That is the question.

On the outside looking in.

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

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

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

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

Shantideva said this:

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

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

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

The essence of essence.

The essential essence

There is a curious correspondence between essential oil and us. We, too, contain an essence that has been extracted from our source, and, like essential oil, this essence contains the aroma of the source. Neither an essential oil nor our ineffable spirit can be further distilled, and neither is subject to changing conditions. Once we arrive at the essence the aroma can be infused in various media and the aroma persists. The difference between essential oil and us is that our source is needed, never goes away, and remains an unchanging aspect, forever.

What is the essence of the essence? Of all essences? Bodhidharma called the essential nature “our mind”—The Buddha, not the “quotidian” mind. This mind is our spiritual essence. Nothing, he said, is more essential than that. It is the void void: The critical spirit. Out of this apparent nothingness comes everything. Nothingness is the realm of the unconditional absolute, beyond the conditions of this or that.

That may or may not sound esoteric, lacking usefulness. Still, I’ll offer you two frames of reference that illustrate extreme value, albeit unseen: One from Lao Tzu and the other from physicist Lawrence Krauss. Lao Tzu said this about usefulness:

“We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being,

but non-being is what we use.” 

And this from Lawrence Krauss. Our perceptual capacities are mesmerized by what moves, captured as a moth to a flame, but we never consider what moves them. And nothing is more useful than understanding that essence. 

Complete Release— Number 2

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Yesterday this identity issue appeared to be unresolved with us trapped in a logical box. So now let’s shift gears and come at this from a different tack by turning, of all places, to the Bible and look at an insightful passage:

“For our light and momentary troubles (causes and effects at the conditional level) are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” —2 Corinthians 4:17-18

“How does the Bodhisattva-mahasattva meditate on the Void-Void? This Void-Void is where the sravakas (see ending note) and the pratyekabuddhas (see ending note) get lost. O good man! This is ‘is’ and this is ‘not-is’. This is the Void-Void.” Chapter 22—Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

When we are finally done with hope in temporal life; when we see completely that there is nothing to hold on to that doesn’t result in suffering; when we finally get it that attachment is a dead-end, rooted in a deluded sense of separate and independent identity, then we can emancipate ourselves by releasing from attachment to attachment. 

Is relinquishing opinions.

Believers in emptiness

Are incurable.”—Nagarjuna

And this from Buddhist scripture:

An is, in this context, means form as when we refer to something: We say it is a ladder. The is has defined characteristics. The not-is has no defining characteristic, which makes it emptiness or in other words the Void. 

The Void is the Wall—Essence: the unconditional nature of us all. One side of reality against which the ladder, (e.g., the other side) rests. Emptiness and form are the divine partnership, which frames reality. The Void is, as the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians, unseen. So what does that make the Void-Void? The answer to this question is what makes Zen, Zen and to answer the question we turn to the 14th Patriarch of Buddhism—Nagarjuna.

He really knit this together as well as anyone ever has. His expositions on emptiness are sublime. What he leads us all to see is that if emptiness has any validity then it must measure up to emptiness itself. Empty-Emptiness; the Void-Void. Let’s examine this carefully and see where it goes. First, appreciate Nagarjuna’s interest and focus. He was not interested in meaningless philosophy and speculation. He wanted to rip apart speculation and arrive at the residue of truth. He wasn’t trying to create a new dimension of faith. He was working with the raw material spoken by the Buddha, and his focus was the dimensions of reality, which sat on a three-legged stool. The legs were:

1. Emptiness/essence/The Void (sometimes referred to as  Śūnyatā)—our unconditional Self

2. Form/matter/temporal life (in Sanskrit “Rupa”)—Our apparent self

3. Dependent origination

These three integrated measures of reality define what is known in Buddhism as the Middle Way. Here’s how these three fit together. Form must emerge from somewhere. That somewhere is the ‘is’ of ‘is.’ ‘Is’ equals otherness with defined characteristics, which makes it limited in time, space, and causality. ‘Is’ therefore is not the somewhere, otherwise, it would define itself, like a car with no driver. 

The somewhere must not be limited. It must have no properties yet all properties at the same time, therefore the somewhere is the indefinable, transcendent essence, which, as Paul states, is unseen—the Tathagatagarbha (Buddha-womb). These two—form and emptiness—come into existence simultaneously. One can’t precede the other for the same reason that a thinker can’t precede thinking. 

Creation by definition implies a creator just like a thinker implies thinking. This simultaneous arising is what is known as dependent origination. But that dependent origination as stated earlier seems to occur in the imaginary box, which looks like an unsolvable problem.

So let’s take the next step and see how we can resolve it. What is the pinnacle of surrendering? Surrendering from surrendering. What does that mean? It means the logical ground of faith. Surrendering is an action; a motion and form is the instrument of motion, but not the prime mover of the motion. Something must propel the motion of surrendering. It doesn’t occur by itself just as a car requires a driver. Mind essence is the indefinable, unseen Void-Void which propels motion. 

But this mind essence is not mind as we normally think of, as a product of our limited and independent brain. This is the primal mover of all motion. This mind moves flags, the wind, and us. It is the is of “is”.  When Nagarjuna postulates empty-emptiness, the Void is transformed back into form in a never-ending feedback loop, which can’t be separated.

This inseparable feedback loop of form/emptiness is this very special mind essence (our true nature) not emptiness or form but both. If it were one or the other we would still be non-integrated and dual, regardless of logic. 

The Buddha created a completely new paradigm, which brought speculation about self/SELF (anatman/atman) to an end, thus resolving the identity issue. If only emptiness/essence (atman) this would be like a ghost. If only form/flesh (self) this would be the non-walking dead—“Just like a plant or stone”. 

The combined union of emptiness-form provides all that is needed for the existence of life. It has the driver (essence) and the car (form) and the combination—not one or the other—makes the motion of surrendering possible. Neither alone would suffice. The two become one, but the One is two interdependent aspects of the same thing—the Ladder with a Wall. That being the case, dependent origination remains intact but no longer in a box constrained by mundane logic. This union has a name called mind essence. The technical term is the sambhogakaya—one of three aspects of a Buddha.

Attaching to anything, including attachment, creates misery. It is quite possible to become dogmatically undogmatic and cling to a fixed position of being uniquely undogmatic, but that would still leave us attached, resulting in the sort of dilemma we see today with people getting locked into unswerving ideologies and unable to compromise. 

Letting go of everything creates emancipation thus enabling us to conform to actions demanded by evolving circumstances.  When we see that, then we no longer fix our eyes on what is seen but rather fix our eyes what is unseen. What Paul asked of Christian believers to do as an act of blind faith, The Buddha and Nagarjuna reasoned as a logically discerned premise. 

There is a logical foundation for faith, which arose 500 years before Jesus walked the earth, and it came from Gautama Buddha, later to be refined by Nagarjuna sometime during the 2nd century CE, about a hundred years after the apostle Paul died during the 1st century CE. 

The problem is fairly simple to solve once we let go of the fixed limitations of conceptual, mundane logic, by escaping from this box of rational logic and accessing intuitive, supra-mundane logic. When the Heart Sutra says that emptiness is form and form is emptiness we need to look carefully at these words as an equation: as mirror images. The union can’t be broken.

Complete release means surrendering from faith in this material existence and placing our faith completely in the unseen union of mind essence: the Void-Void. From that point on, wisdom shifts from the mundane to spiritual origins and becomes Prajnaparamita—Perfect Wisdom—we enter the realm of Nirvana: “The ‘Dharmata’ (True Essence) of all Buddhas” and then see reality, as it is without discrimination. That is the ultimate wisdom. Complete release means the total absence of delusions, which thus allows the shining jewel of prajna to burst forth.

“Buddhas say emptiness

The problem with the conventional understanding of Paul’s statement is that it keeps God at bay; as a separate reality—in the bye-and-bye, not accessible in the here and now. What the Buddha brought to this discussion is integration. God/Buddha-Nature is both in the bye-and-bye and in the here and now. 

Buddha-Nature can’t be divided and neither can we since we are fundamentally Buddhas. The curious thing about Paul’s statement is not what he said but how it is usually understood. The conventional wisdom of his day—that God lived in heaven in the sky (where the Pie resides)—was used to interpret what he said. If you read his statement carefully you will not find a separate God.

And contrary to the Christian notion that we are separated from God, The Buddha saw this separation as impossible! We could quibble about the difference between God and mind essence and miss the point, which is that every moment within every sphere of existence, our beingness is the inseparable union of the seen (which dies) and the unseen (which lives forever). The true you and the true me is indiscriminate and exactly the same. It has no definable properties yet infuses all properties. Unless this is true then we are all like immovable stones.

This post concludes this series on surrender but more needs to be said about this matter of essence—the true you and me. Without a solid grasp of essence this entire matter floats about in the air with very little practical understanding and nothing is more practical than grasping our true nature.

Note: A sravakas is a disciple and a pratyekabuddhas is a lone Buddha; said to achieve enlightenment on their own, without the use of teachers or guides, by contemplating the principle of dependent arising.

Mindfull—Mindless

“Too much mind”—The advice given to Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) in the movie The Last Samurai. Algren fled to Japan, thinking he could leave his distress behind. In the early days of his stay, he is trying to drown his misery in booze. His despair resulted from his participation in the mass slaughter in the American Indian wars. And during this time of anguish, he becomes captured by a band of Samurai warriors where he has no choice but to come to terms with his demons. In the process, he learns the Samurai way and gets beaten repeatedly before he can let go. Slowly he begins to understand: “Too much mind.”

The way of the Samurai arose in direct response to the rise of Zen in Japan. And the practice of Japanese Zen arose from the teachings of Bodhidharma in China. There’s a famous story of a conversation that occurred between Bodhidharma and his student Huike. One day Huike came to Bodhidharma and said: “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.” Bodhidharma replied, “There, I have pacified your mind.” On hearing this, Huike became enlightened.

When we hear that story, our rational mind becomes confused. How, we think, can we have too much mind yet somehow pacification happens by not finding it? That requires some non-thought to comprehend, yet when we really understand, we also might become enlightened.

The problem is we think. The solution is not thinking. I know that sounds puzzling, but here is the Rosetta Stone answer: Our real mind is always at peace and enlightened, and our thinking mind is perpetually restless and unenlightened. What we believe is our mind is not our mind because our real mind is the source of thinking and not thinking but is itself neither. Our true mind is transcendent and can’t possibly be one or the other since it is the source of both. There is no discrimination in our true mind, so it can’t be one thing vs. another. And our true mind contains nothing, yet everything comes from there. It is an “everything nothing mind.” On the one hand, empty yet full at the same time.

When Captain Algren finally gets it, he is no longer roped in by his thinking, but instead, he is just there, at which point he stops losing and becomes a true warrior. In the Japanese form of Zen, there is a saying: Mushin, Shin. “Mu” means nothing (emptiness), and “shin” means thinking mind, so putting this together means that when we lose our thinking (rational) mind we find our true (transcendent) mind (Shin). Of course, the mind that is being lost is not really our mind but rather is our thoughts and emotions, which obscure and hide our true mind: The source of all thought. It is neither thought nor non-thought. Do you get it? If you really do understand, then you too might be enlightened, unless you start thinking about it. Then you must lose that as well. So just go crazy and lose your mind.

The illusion of you and me.

The shadow of self or the reality casting the shadow?

The tenet of “no self” has been a fundamental, defining loadstone of Buddhism since the very beginning. The term originally used for self/ego was “anatman” and the contention surrounding this matter was divided between those who argued for self vs. those who argued the opposite anatman (self vs. no-self). It boiled down to the issue of any phenomenal thing possessing an independent nature. Closely aligned with this argument was the understanding that all things were empty (of independent essence). In other words, everything could only exist dependently, thus the principle of dependent origination.

This argument stood for a long time until Nagarjuna came along with his Two Truth Doctrine in which he laid out his understanding of what the Buddha had taught, culminating with the Middle Way which expressed the Buddha’s conclusion of, “Not this (atman). Not that (anatman). Neither not (atman). Neither not (anatman).” 

The importance of this conclusion is significant and profound but unfortunately seems to be a broadly unresolved matter. What Nagarjuna said in his Two Truth Doctrine was that there is a difference between the conventional, discriminate view (the common-sense view) and the sublime, indiscriminate view (ultimate truth) and that no one could be set free unless they experienced the sublime.

In the 8th-century an Indian Buddhist philosopher by the name of Śāntideva said that in order to be able to deny something, we first have to know what it is we’re denying. The logic of that is peerless. He went on to say: 

“Without contacting the entity that is imputed. You will not apprehend the absence of that entity.” In a similar manner the Lankavatara Sutra (a Mahayana favorite of Bodhidharma) addressed the issue of one vs. another with this: 

“In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakāya (our true transcendent mind of wisdom) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?”

The wisdom of emptiness and dependent origination ultimately reduces down to there being no difference between form and emptiness. They are one and the same thing: two sides of the same coin. One side perceptible (phenomena); the other side beyond perception (noumena). There have been numerous terms used as alternates for noumena ranging from Buddha-Nature, Dharmakāya, the Void, Ground of being and the preference by Zen and Yogācāra was Mind—primordial mind (not the illusion of mind nor the illusion of self vs. no self). In this state of mind there is no discrimination—all is unified, whole and complete, so there can be no difference between one thing and another thing.

Huang Po (Japanese—Obaku; 9th century China) was particularly lucid in his teaching about these terms. In the Chün Chou Record he said this:

“To say that the real Dharmakāya (the Absolute) of the Buddha resembles the Void is another way of saying that the Dharmakāya is the Void and that the Void is the Dharmakāya...they are one and the same thing...When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha...the void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma. This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning...this great Nirvanic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.”

The Yogācārians took this to the logical conclusion and stated that everything was mind. You are mind. I am mind. The entire universe is nothing but mind. This, however, did not resolve the matter, and 2,500 years later the issue of atman vs. anatman remains unresolved. The Middle Way remains a matter of contention. Consequently there exist today three kinds of Buddhist practice: The kind that dogmatically clings to self, a second that dogmatically clings to no self and a third that says, “Not atman. Not anatman. Neither not atman. Neither not anatman.” 

In the end you will only know when you experience the sublime. Then the argument will come to an end and you’ll never be able to convey your answer. That is the ultimate test, “…far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise (or blame)?”

The Matrix—Illusory Mind

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In his commentary on the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Ch’an Master Sheng-yen said what might seem like a startling thing. He said, “The self (imagined self/ego) creates vexation, and the vexation, in turn, reinforces the sense of self...When there is no vexation, and therefore no self, the mind of discrimination is replaced by the mind of wisdom.”

What’s going on here is a psychic feedback loop. It’s the chicken/egg thing. Vexations and self arise together. Not one and then the next. Both arise together, instantly. Thinkers think thoughts. In this case, the “thinker” is the imagined self who is thinking the thought of a self, which then thinks more thoughts. Feedback loop—one illusion creating another illusion, which creates the next, like one mirror reflecting another. There is no substantial and real “self” inside this holographic illusion. It is a mirage or as stated in the Diamond Sutra: 

“This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”

All of those notions about our identity obscure any sense of our substantial real self; the union and the integrated aspect of our existence. The Ladder-Wall is the Union. It is not a Ladder or a Wall. It’s a Ladder-Wall: one inseparable thing. Form and Emptiness. Essence and non-essence. 

For thousands of years, people have been attempting and failing to rid themselves of the flesh believing that the flesh was opposed to spirit. Even today certain religious sects engage in practices of flagellation. And within certain schools of Zen, there are advocates, who press to rid themselves of all thoughts, which is a psychic version of flagellation. I’ll be saying more about this thrust in a later blog but for now, I’ll just make a quick comment: nonsense! Essence is indivisible from both flesh and our minds.

As long as we are imprisoned within this holographic feedback loop we are unaware of what is real. We are like Keanu Reeves in the classic 1999 science fiction movie “The Matrix.” The film describes a future in which the world we know is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines. Only our Matrix is self-created and it has been here forever. We are the sentient machines creating our own simulated reality. When we say to “Think outside the box,” the “box” is illusory mind: the Matrix; the realm of the self creating the self.

Like Keanu Reeves, we need to be de-programmed in order to break the grip of simulation. In Zen that is done by pursuing The Middle Way. Much of the harm done by not following this path is unintentional, but real nevertheless. How could we know inside the feedback loop? 

Unlike Keanu Reeves, we follow this way both with a support group (known as a sangha) and by our self. We don’t have to go to a confessional with a priest. We know (deep down in our moments of quiet honesty, when we can get beyond denial and blame) what we’ve done and whom we’ve infected. We know what judgments we’ve made, both of others and ourselves. It isn’t necessary for us to stand before others and announce, “I’m an alcoholic and I’m always going to be one.” 

This is a prison from which we can escape with commitment, patience, diligence, and perseverance. If we wish to escape we can. It just depends on whether or not we enjoy being “In the Matrix.” Some people don’t seem to care one way or another. The entire process is sort of like taking an inventory of the mess in our houses, collecting the trash, dumping it out, and doing the best we can to not continue creating a mess. Rather than garbage in/garbage out it becomes a virtue in/virtue out: VIVO, which in Latin curiously means living that takes place inside an organism.

That is an extremely foreshortened overview of the process. In point of fact it is a process that never ends. Because we live in a conditioned world, dust accumulates. We wash our clothes and clean our houses because cleanliness is more desirable than filth. The same thing applies to our inner house. Dust accumulates (emotional and psychic dust) and we need to keep it clean. If we bring in trash, due to bad karma, we suffer. If we become attached to fleeting stuff we suffer. If we live in the illusions of life we suffer. And all of that suffering makes us cranky and then we just make more bad karma. It is an inverted way of living, which must be turned upside down and shaken about.

And the truth is, none of this deep honesty is possible so long as we remain trapped in ego la-la land—The Matrix. Mr. or Mrs. or Ms ego is extraordinarily greedy and self-centered. From the perspective of our egos, everyone else is right to be blamed for our misery. Ego is very self-righteous. None of it is our fault. It has nothing to do with our own self-generated karma. Inside this hologram of blame and self-delusion, we experience life in competition and defensiveness. The world is either/or. It is either right or it’s wrong (and always my right and your wrong). This world runs according to hard and fast rules and inflexible boundaries and to deviate from the rigor entails fear, perceived threat, and loss. 

There is never enough insulation in this realm, and to share with others is to diminish our share and thus increase our risk exposure. We build fences of all kinds to keep the bad guys out without realizing that the fences also keep us in. The threat is everywhere and there is a good reason for the concern: Everything is changing. The storms will come and we better make sure our life raft is watertight.

Sound familiar? Who can question the exposures to risk and an unknown future? No one. Risk is a part of life but there is a huge difference between living hunkered down and walking tall. The ego, because it is an illusion, is rightly concerned with risk. It should know better than anyone. The ego is fragile and so too is our fleeting world. The alternative is to accept our wholeness—our integrated beingness, and to practice it moment by moment—a sacred act, not as a concept but as a reality. 

How is that done? This is a realm without multitasking. When we eat, we eat. When we talk, we talk. Whatever we do, we do wholly, in each and every moment, whether we like it or not. We just do it and let the illusions subside. It is a practice of being present with all of the grief, anguish, pain, sorrow and joy. We cry when we cry and laugh when we laugh and we do it with gusto. No illusions or expectations or wishes or overlays. We accept life as an un-gilded lily, without embellishment nor judgments nor any other forms of distortion or fabrication. Life just is. The Buddha called this “thusness”—things as they truly are.

This might all sound like accepting everything as unavoidable, but it is not. When we accept our ego-less interdependence—beyond the Matrix, truly, we must see that we are united with all of life. There is no way to disconnect from the ubiquitous dimension of essence. We are glued to our collective world, like it or not, so unless we like living in a mess then we must do what we can to clean it up and join the living. We are not isolated and independent beings, severed from life. We are life and there is no way to have a life without death. They arise as an undivided partnership. When the world suffers we pay the price because we are members of a common family. When the world rejoices, we rejoice with it. We are not just our brother’s keeper. We are our brothers and our sisters. There is no way to sever the link of essence.

This is not an airy-fairy thing. This is reality, inseparable, indivisible, and integrated and the only way to divide it is in the illusions of our imagination. That is where the danger lies. No, this is not resignation, cynicism, defeatism, or victimization. This is the polar opposite. This is a stance of engagement and responsibility, of doing what can be done but remaining hopeful without attachment to results.

The over-riding message contained in the Diamond Sutra regards the nature of enlightenment and compassion. The Buddha was teaching Subhuti (one of his disciples) that the distinguishing mark of a true Bodhisattva is deep compassion that can only come about without any sense of ego or gain. There is no calculation or contrivance since a true Bodhisattva realizes that there is no difference between himself and others. Jesus said something very similar: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” When we accept our ground-of-being relationship with life, the unavoidable conclusion is that we share common ground. We are in this together.

Making sense of it all.

Which side are we on?

I spent most of my career as a professional communicator in the advertising business and thus employed certain principles to guide advertising practices. 

Central to that business is to know your current and potential customers. And the more precisely you understand that the more successful you are. It is impossible to conduct this awareness without wrestling with the issue of how people understand their identities. For that reason, advertisers spend a lot of time and resources carving up their market in various ways. One of those ways concerns demographics. Another is psychographics.

Demography defines people by surface structures such as age, race, education, income, occupations, geographic clusters, and so forth to zero in on where, when, and through which media to reach their audience. Psychographics goes a step further and says, okay within that demographic framework, what can be determined about lifestyle issues—how people actually conduct their lives. After all of this carving up, it then becomes a matter of designing messages that best appeal to the demographic and psychographic nature of people, and all of that has one thing in mind: Try to persuade you that you need something.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the issue of “group-think,” and I did so within a political context, saying that sadly we seem to gravitate toward this tendency to jump on board bandwagons characterized by what is at heart, herd-mentality. It has more than likely been something we’ve been doing for eons, perhaps all the way back to the cave days when it became clear that two of us together could do what a single person couldn’t by themselves.

Nevertheless, this tendency is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it is true that when birds flock together, there is strength in numbers. On the other hand, no two birds are exactly the same, so inevitably conflict arises within flocks, not to mention beyond the flock boundaries with other communities. As we advance as a human culture, it is becoming clear that something new is occurring that hasn’t been prominent before.  And perhaps this new thing is due to the Internet. 

Before now, it wasn’t possible to know that significant dissenters even existed, and the old assumptions are starting to crumble. I’ll give you an example: Every day of every week, I, and I imagine millions of others, receive solicitations for contributing to one worthy cause or another. If I were independently wealthy, I still couldn’t contribute to them all. Consequently, I have to be selective, as I’m sure it is right for everyone. The ones I send quickest to the circular file make guesses about my views and conduct. I don’t like any label because no label perfectly defines me and I resent being pigeonholed. 

This past week I received a solicitation to make a contribution to several democratic candidates, and the organizing theme of these candidates was that they all professed to align themselves around the pro-choice issue. That one sailed into the trash quickly because I don’t endorse giving people the license to kill their own progeny. Yes, I know this is a hot button and far from clear. I happen to think that whatever law we create, exceptions need to be allowed. For that reason, I neither endorse nor repudiate abortion, knowing full well that we don’t make sensible laws. Instead, once created, the rules become iron-clad, and I think it is a bad policy to lump everyone together under a single inflexible roof.

You might think that I’m drifting here and wonder where this is going. The answer is identity and little allegiance to group dogma. In a certain sense, it doesn’t matter whether abortion, immigration, the economy, or any other conceivable issue is at stake. The point is how we identify ourselves and the assumed limitations of any and all defining characteristics. 

In my book The Non-Identity Crisis, I suggest that our problems today are made significantly more challenging to address and solve because of these “me-against-the-world” boundaries and the assumptions that arise because of them. This is squarely a matter of how we understand ourselves, either as naturally alienated individuals of antagonized differences or as a united human family. The vast majority seem inclined to choose the former, which inevitably leads to violence against non-flock members. Few indeed select the latter.

Most of my writing occurs under the rubric of spiritual matters, and this is further defined as Buddhist or Gnostic Christian, but it isn’t essential to me how you identify me. What is critical, however, is whether or not what I have to say makes sense and how (if at all) it contributes to fostering peace, harmony, and a better world. If I can accomplish that, it’s been a good day. 

Mixing it up.

We’re a curious species. Being human puts us at the top of the food chain. It also puts us at the top of other chains, such as the chain of creativity. No other life form (at least none that we know of) can imagine and solve problems as we do. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be a two-edged sword. One way cuts in the way of creation, and the other way cuts in the form of destruction. We are masters of both.

Awhile back, I wrote an article called a “Bird in hand” and spoke about compounds that result from mixing different things together. The point of that article was that once mixed, an entirely new compound results. The separate ingredients can then no longer be detected, but something new has been created.

I’m an old man now and have been kicking around spiritual conclaves for quite some time, and I’ve noticed a meaningful thing about compounds. People show up in a wide variety of such places for various reasons, but the alleged reason is they go there seeking God. After a time, many remain for other reasons, and they forget about why they came in the first place. A rare few figure out an essential truth: God doesn’t live in churches, synagogues, or temples. God lives in people.

Many people pay lip service to what their own scriptures tell them. For example, Christian scripture says that “You are the body of Christ.” If you happen to be a Buddhist you’re taught that everyone contains the enlivening essence of The Buddha. But too few seem able to accept the resulting compound and just go ahead and act like God is absent from the true temple of themselves.

Have you ever wondered what our world would be like if everyone conducted themselves by embracing this fundamental principle? If we really want to make the world a better place, begin to see yourself and others as a compound container of divinity. I am aware that most of us exhibit some less than ideal nastiness, but it’s also mixed together with genuine love and compassion. Adversity seems to bring out the goodness that is always there. And even if you don’t accept the idea that we are the resulting compound mixture of spirit and matter, it never hurts to pretend that we are.

Ideas and what ideas are about

Ideas about ideas

We think in image forms. Thoughts are not real. They are abstractions, coded messages that represent something but are not what’s being represented. In our minds-eye, we see a constant flow of images and ordinarily, imagine these images are real and, in such a state of mind, go unaware that there is a watcher of this flow. That’s what being conscious of our thoughts means. There is a watcher, and there is what’s being watched. Neither of these (the watcher or the watched) can exist by itself. It takes both for thinking to occur.

On the left side of our brain is the image factory, creating thought images, and on the right side of our brain is the watcher of the images. It’s a marvelous system, and both sides must function together. But since we have two sides, responsible for different functions, each side does things differently. The left side thinks in language (coded images). The right side “thinks” in pictures (interpreting the images). The left side talks but doesn’t understand, and the right side understands but doesn’t talk. Together the two sides make a great team, but individually they make for bad company.

The problem with our world today is that we are predominately left brain analyzers and have not been trained to make sense of what’s being analyzed. Education (in a normal sense) trains our language and analytics capacities but ignores our capacities that enhance compassion, creativity, and insight. Consequently, we are out of balance aggressors, dominated by our egos, and unaware that we are creating an abstract and unreal world that is progressively more violent and hostile.

The problem with identity is that we assume that an objective and independent watcher is doing the watching. We label that watcher as “me”—a self-image (otherwise called an ego). But here is where this must lead. So long as we see an image of ourselves, that image (ego) can’t possibly be the watcher because the watcher can’t see itself. So long as we see any images (self-image included), there is a difference between what is being watched and the watcher.

Some time ago, I read Paul Brok’s book “Into the Silent Land,” and wrote about what he had to say. Broks is an English neuropsychologist and science writer. The astonishing thing about our mind was laid out in these terms:

“That, which is basically inanimate ‘meat,’ can and routinely does animate with consciousness, cognition, imagination, feelings and every other aspect of our mental condition seems to float by as a given.” Due to FMRI imaging, it is possible to see certain parts of our brain light up when various thoughts and emotions are being processed. He observes that nothing remotely resembling any of these functions is found when a brain of a cadaver is dissected. It is indeed a mystery, yet we know neural activity occurs as abstractions of reality, but nobody can actually “touch” what is real.

The true person has no image dimension because all images are objective, whereas the true person is subjective. Subject/Object—Two halves joined together into a single real thing. One part can be seen (an image), and the other part can’t be seen (the watcher of the image). An image isn’t real. It just looks that way. The part that is real is the part that can’t be seen.

Crisis—Danger and Opportunity

Who am and who are you? To answer those questions, let’s go try a virtual experience. In your mind’s eye, I want you to see yourself in a movie theater.  You are there sitting next to your favorite movie-going buddy, and the main attraction begins. Make it your favorite of all time. Wow! This is a great movie. You are really engrossed, almost like you are in the film, except for one thing: You aren’t (in the movie). As much as you might be enjoying the experience of watching, you always know you’re not “in the movie.” The film is on the big screen across the room, and you are there in your seat. Two separate things: you (the watcher of the film) and the movie (projected onto the big screen).

If you were to describe that experience to your therapist you’d probably be prudent to avoid saying that you were in the movie. If you did say such a thing your therapist might give you a new name, like nuts and start making out some papers with labels of “delusional.” Please avoid such a report.

Now prepare yourself because I’m going to tell you something too incredible for it to register and you’ll probably want to start making those papers out for me. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a Buddhist—at least as far as I know. Maybe he was. But he did say something very Buddhist. He said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” which paraphrases a statement by The Christ in The New Testament. Many very intelligent people say smart things regardless of affiliation and labels. The occasion was the Republican State Convention on June 16, 1858. The place was the statehouse in the Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln had just been chosen as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to run against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. The details of what, where, and when are not particularly germane to my point but I throw them out for you to get the picture. What is germane is what he said during his acceptance speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln was of course referring to the Union and the looming cessation by the Southern states. And his point is applicable to who we all are as people.

Many Buddhist sages have said pretty much the same thing but meant it as a definition of reality—all of reality, but in our case, applied to people. Our house—our beingness—also can’t stand when divided against itself. There is no division separating our nameless essence from our physical and psychic being. They are a single, indivisible thing. We are not some name or a nameless essence. We are not a function or a nameless essence. The division is a phantom. It doesn’t exist, except in our illusionary minds, but never in fact. 

The very moment (down to an unmeasurable dimension of time) there is a watcher and there is what is watched. The instant there is something watched, there is a watcher. Watched and watcher arise together. Instantly. Not one first and then the next. They are flip sides of the same coin. And the opposite is true. When one vanishes, so does the other.

Ladders and Walls come into being and cease from being in a flash. They are bonded eternally together as partners and can’t be separated. So what’s this got to do with movies and who we are? Simple—but actually not so simple to put our heads around. What we normally do is imagine our identities, as separate and independent things (rather than linked, interdependent things). We are thinkers thinking thoughts—illusions lost in illusions. We have all kinds of ideas about ourselves. We imagine and label ourselves with Lao Tzu’s “ten thousand things.” And all of these ideas come to be who we think we are. 

When we meet someone we may be asked to introduce ourselves and how do we respond? “I am so-and-so”—we provide a name. What we don’t say is “Oh I am Ms. Nameless.” Either named or a name we call “nameless” is not who we are. We are both—an indivisible house. We are ladders with walls and it can’t be otherwise. You are real. You are not a fleeting and vaporous thought. Vaporous thoughts are just that: thoughts that vaporize. But you are the indivisible Union (Lincoln’s term) of essence and non-essence, otherwise known (in Buddhist terminology) as emptiness and form. They arise and cease together instantly.

One of the central Sutras in Buddhist practice is the Heart Sutra which says “Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness.” Essence and form are glued together. Maybe you prefer to name essence as God. That’s okay so long as you don’t try to conceptualize God as an imaginary being. God is transcendent—beyond defining characteristics (meaning nameless), so whatever handle you use is irrelevant. What is transcendent is bonded together, not two but One. God doesn’t come and go. Coming and going implies movement from one place to another. If you are essence—God is essence—there is no place that you are not, so how can you come and go? 

You’re already here. It is an illusion to imagine these as separate matters like sitting in the movie theater with our movie-buddy, watching a movie. There is no watcher without what is being observed. Nor is there something watched without a watcher. And to watch at all is not possible without the animating spirit of essence. Otherwise, we’re just talking about flesh, bones, blood, and everything that comes along for the ride.

But what happens in normal “everyday life?” We get caught up in our home movies (buzzing brains) and stop being. We replace being with thinking about being. We don’t eat cake. We think about eating cake and eat the illusion. We don’t just sit. We think about sitting and sit on an illusion. We love to multitask and think we are efficient and productive. 

Actually, we are being distracted with no focus. We don’t work at our jobs (which we may hate), so we think about hating the job and think about where we wish we were. We don’t work with our spouses to manage difficulties; we think about everything that is wrong with them and why they don’t do what we want them to. 

Nothing is scared that way. While we are thinkers, we are not be-ers, and there is nobody at home. And because we do that, we experience fear and anxiety. At the deepest part of our essence, we experience separation and lack of intimacy. There is no way we can be intimate with someone we don’t even know, and I am speaking about our own identity—our real SELF, not the illusionary one.

What we need is integration and what we get is self-created division. We have a primordial knowing about our unity (and lack thereof). When our sense of being is based purely on a fabricated self (otherwise known as ego—home movies), we are rightly fearful because that is shifting sand with no stability, just like one-legged ladders without a wall.

When our identities are tied purely to the shifting sands of life, we know we are vulnerable; nobody has to tell us. We know, and it fills us with anxiety and fear. It can, and often does, paralyze us into inaction, like a deer fixated on the headlights of an oncoming car, frozen with fear, desiring to know the next moment and not able to be in the only moment we’ll ever have: The present one. When identity crises arise, there is both danger and opportunity. We can stay in trouble, like the deer, or we can come to our senses and grasp the opportunity. So how do we get out of this trap that has dominated all of humankind since we first arrived as a species? That’s a matter for my next post.