Question: Does suffering have a positive side?

Someone close to me asked this question, and to give a proper answer, I found it necessary to first define some terms. 

Suffering is a mental/emotional response to not getting what we want. Next, I had to define who is experiencing this suffering and how this entity perceives a positive outcome. And by positive, I mean the perception of satisfaction.  Our ordinary way of answering this entity question is with the answer of me. Yet who is this me? And how is this me perceived or experienced?

By understanding the mechanics of perception, we can better understand how “I” becomes the core of corruption and sadness. Perception requires several dimensions. First, there must be a sensory system. We have five interdependent components of our system: sight, smell, auditory, touch, taste, and a thinking processor. Signals from each element are transmitted from objects to particular registry locations in our brain where they are identified, merged with other sensory dimensions into a gestalt, and coded into words and thoughts. For example, the object of a rose is fabricated into a mental image constructed from the merged registry’s of sight, smell, and touch, which is then labeled Rose.

The second aspect of perception entails observation of objects. For objects to be sensed, they must be distinguished from other objects, and to be understood, they must be differentiated (e.g., discriminated) into two opposite dimensions. An object is defined as an observable thing. Observation can be either physical or mental. An idea is a mental image (or object), whereas a rose is a physical object that becomes a mental image. The idea of a rose is different than an actual rose, and the word rose is different yet. Both the word and an idea are abstractions, or codes, to represent a real rose and both enable imagination and communication. To be perceived and understood, an object requires contrast (discriminate properties). For example, the idea of up only makes sense given the opposite of down; in opposed to out, a rose opposed to a non-rose.

The third and most important dimension of perception regards one who perceives (an observer) and the understanding that a true perceiver can’t perceive itself, since this perceiver has no observable properties or limiting identity yet can perceive anything objectively configured. This perceiver is our spiritual nature (versus our objective nature) and is understood as the true, unconditional mind. The mind is the locus of all perceptions, whereas the ordinary way of understanding the mind is a manifestation of the true mind (mental images, thoughts, and emotions).

Now we return to this idea of me. The same process of perception is involved with this me; only in the case of self-identification, there is no object to perceive except a physical body and a mental image of who we think we are: an ego or soul. In various traditions (religious, philosophical, etc.), the term “soul” was considered to be the psyche, from which the word “psychology” arises. The ancient Greeks expressed this as ψυχή, (e.g., Soul) and within the Buddhist tradition, it was known as Atman or Moksha. And it was understood in a similar fashion: The origin within human nature that produces mental images, thoughts, and emotions. Alternatively, the soul was understood as ego—the universal word for “I.” 

This mental image is now mostly understood as a totally fabricated, imaginary entity. Nevertheless, the image satisfies the requirement of being a conditional, discriminate object, which can be perceived by the one doing the perceiving. Thus there is an object of perception (self-image) and our spiritual being that is perceiving. It is essential to not confuse two terms: self and mind. Both the true Self and the true Mind are used synonymously. Neither has any identifiable properties since neither are objects. However, we have ideas about both. We imagine that the mind is the manifestation rather than the source. The distinction between a manifestation and the source is preeminent. 

The source of creation is vastly different from what is fabricated or created, just as a manufacturing plant is different from what is manufactured in the plant. The ideas we possess about ourselves are simply the product of imagination. Whether we label these ideas as ego/self-image or soul, they remain imaginary. We imagine a self that is an objective fabrication rather than who we truly are: The unconditional spiritual source. And as with anything else, there must be the two opposite parts that allow perception to occur. Importantly these two (self-image and the Self, represented by the image) are opposite in nature, just as up is opposite from down. The ego/soul is perceived, and we conclude, “that’s me.” But the ego is not the true self. It is a fabricated image to represent the self, and this ego is entirely unaware of the one creating and perceiving the image because the perceiver can’t be seen. The true Self is not conditionally objective; instead, it is unconditional without a limiting identity, which means that the true Self is identical in every sentient being, and is known as Buddha-nature. But to realize this within yourself is the antithesis of who we think we are. Meister Eckhart, perhaps the greatest of all Christian mystics—very close in his understanding to the most esteemed Zen Masters said: 

“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell.” 

Of course, he was speaking of cracking the ego to discover our true nature within. We, humans, are superior problem solvers, but we only solve obvious ones, and we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we are continuously satisfied, there is no perceived problem and, thus, nothing to solve. People live their entire lives, denying their own suffering. Still, suffering is unavoidable so long as we misunderstand our true, unconditional nature but instead see ourselves as a vulnerable and conditional soul or ego. Suffering then is the seed of motivation to learn both who we are not and who we are truly. 

The ego is continuously vulnerable to suffering and wrongly concludes that possessing one object (which, when lost) can be solved by possessing another object to replace the one lost. Thus, the ego is possessive and greedy. This never works since all things change. After experiencing this failing process over and over, the ego is overwhelmed, suffers continuously, and becomes angry, hostile, blameful, and often violent. This strategy ultimately implodes, and the ego tries a very different approach but is not quick to commit suicide and eradicate itself.

The problem all along is this process of perception and conclusion of judgmental discrimination, me vs. not me, good vs. evil, all of which are concerned with objects and judgment. At long last, after endless suffering, the ego/soul begins to die, and we pursue a path of true Self-emergence and unity with our source, which has no identifying properties. This death of what is fabricated reveals what has been there all along, as a clear sky is revealed when clouds move away and are characterized within different spiritual disciplines in different ways.

The Buddhist manner of addressing this process is nearly the same as the Christian manner. When The Christ was quoted as saying in John 12:24-25 (“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”) he wasn’t saying anything significantly different than The Buddha when he distinguished between the Dharmakāya (body of truth as the source of all manifestations) and the misidentification of ourselves. Immortality encloses mortality. 

The question becomes, how to get rid of the conditional illusions or images we hold of ourselves and merge with our unconditional selves? How is this pragmatically accomplished? And the answer is to stop the process of abstract thinking (imagining) at least long enough to realize our true nature. The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as not thinking. Thinking, in simple terms, is the perception of virtual ideas and images. When we don’t think, what we are left with is the true Self-perceiver (The spiritual Mind) that is unified and unconditional (no discriminate properties). This true Self-perceiver is who all of us are, unconditionally and without limited identity. This is the essential conscious energy that permeates all life and is the place of constant peace and tranquility. This part of us never changes. It was never born, doesn’t die, and is without judgment. There is nothing to discriminate or judge since it is unconditional, unified, and whole.

In The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, he taught: 

“Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain.”

If there were no suffering, we would never search for the truth. It is anguish and suffering that goes on impelling us to reach beyond. This entire dawning of genuine, unified, Self-awareness (soul-awareness) could not happen without solving the problem of perceived suffering. Suffering alone provides the engine of motivation, and that is the value of suffering.

We are now deeply involved in a time when suffering is vast. Not only are we trying to survive a global pandemic, but we are also facing a warming climate that will ultimately mean our destruction, we are perhaps, at long last, coming to terms with racism, millions are now unemployed, losing their means of living and facing starvation. Hatred and violence are running rampid and the outlook, from a mortal perspective is grim. And yet, there is a rising tide of motivation to solve these issues. It may be the dawn of a time of significant transformation.

Dreams and delusions.

Chuang Tzu's Dream of reality.

The expression, “You are living in a dream world” is understood to mean you are out of touch with reality. I know, as a result of conversations with my friends, that during this pandemic, dreams are becoming more frequent and seemingly real. I, too, have experienced the same thing. This could be the result of being forced into isolation and the resulting anxiety we are all experiencing. What dwells in our subconscious is coming out of the closet, perhaps as the result of limited input.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, “Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?”

Many people don’t know what the term “Buddha” means. It means “awake,” and within the context of  The Buddha, it meant “awakened one, or enlightened one,” which is not limited to The Buddha, Buddhists, or any other restrictively defined persons. The path The Buddha traveled toward awakening was intimately linked to the practice of Zen—the pathway that encompasses long periods of draining the swamp of the delusions living in our subconscious. Hardly anyone is aware of such delusions for a simple reason: They reside in consciousness at the unconscious level which naturally comes out at night, sometimes in very strange ways that seem very real, like being a butterfly. Only when we come out of a sleep state are we able to realize what we experienced were dreams. And sometimes even then we are not quite sure if they were real or not.

Modern-day psychologist and psychiatrists, for the most part, agree that whatever is rooted in our subconsciousness can, and often does, disrupt our waking lives since we have been programmed by prior experiences and learning (some of which produce biases, preconceived beliefs, and dogma) which then become dominating forces that filter our sense of “what’s real.” All of us are affected by what we can perceive and nobody (ordinarily) can perceive the source of perception that bypasses these powerful, embedded delusions that shape our lives.

Zen provides that avenue, the means, to plunge into the depths of consciousness, through and down to that source. And when you arrive at the source you “wake up” to suchness—things as they are without the delusions that control our lives, most importantly who we are and who we are not (an ego). Only then do we experience, and realize, that pure consciousness is identical in every sentient being. That is the place of ultimate union with everything—a place of unconditional connectivity, liberated from the controlling force of delusions. It doesn’t mean you have necessarily completely drained the swamp. Some obstacles are too deeply rooted and can come out to “play” in destructive ways.

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said: “The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.”

Understanding that prescription is one thing, experiencing it is another. The prior is an intellectual fabrication—a road map, while the latter is real, no speculation required. The experience of waking up is the ultimate form of clarity, serenity, and hope. Without that, we are all in a prison of the mind and have no clue.

The road to nowhere and everywhere.

There are some essential differences between spirituality (particularly Zen) and religions, one of which is Buddhism. To ensure we are beginning on the same page, since we are coming from such a broad spectrum of backgrounds and experiential differences, I need to start off with a few pedantic definitions, the first of which is abstraction. 

The definition of abstraction that seems most germane to my purposes is “considered apart from concrete existence,” or “difficult to understand, such as an abstruse concept.” Abstraction is thus an image or idea about something but not the something itself. It’s a representation that may be interpreted in a variety of ways by anyone who considers the image or idea. When we consider any idea we all bring with us our own biases, preconceived notions, beliefs, experiences, and points of view, which serve as potent filters that govern our understandings and alter our sense of reality. All of these factors shape our thinking that may shut or open the door of our minds and you can notice these filters functioning when you have a conversation with anyone. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this sense of beauty (or ugliness) is determined mostly by these tightly held preconceived ideas. Birds of a kind find birds like themselves and reject birds not like them, based on such filters.

Some time ago I wrote a post called The Man in the moon: a whimsical expression about the discriminatory impact of labels, which causes us to make inappropriate judgments about others. Those labels serve the purpose of forming filters that quite effectively close that door of our minds and keep us trapped within dogmatic thought processes where we convince ourselves that such and such is true, simply because we have been conditioned by those biases, preconceived notions, beliefs, experiences, points of view and reinforced by agreements from our bird friends.

Contrast this process of filtering against a fundamental aspect of human nature of which we remain mostly unaware: suchness—things as they are cleansed of these filters. This term, suchness is not your everyday term, but mystics have used it across the ages to articulate a state of seeing that bypassed, or transcended bias. The Buddha used this term, and he considered it to be essential to awakening to the true nature of reality as being non-dual. To mystics, all things have a foundation in pure, uncontaminated awareness: a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness, which came to be known as Buddha-nature (sentience). And sentience means reflexive, mirror-like awareness, a state of consciousness prior to perception or thought. In essence, sentience=emptiness; there is nothing present in elementary or undifferentiated consciousness, just as there is nothing in a mirror until an image appears before it. 

The mirror doesn’t move, but what appears in the mirror comes and goes. The reflected images are transient. Perception plus bias produces abstraction, clouding things as they are.  At that very instant, the universe appears as dualistic: there is what is perceived and one perceiving—a false self that is imagined as the seer seeing objective things. This state of sentience is thus an indefinable subject: who we are truly, prior to any cognitive processes. Thoughts are abstractions: illusions. The Buddha called these illusions “dreams,” and said that he had awakened from the dreams and experienced sentience. He thus referred to himself as the Tathāgata: the Sanskrit name that means beyond all coming and going–beyond all transitory phenomena/objective forms. 

Consequently, he recognized that every conceivable perceptible form or subsequent idea was grounded in sentience, which has no beginning, ending, or limitation of any kind. Sentience has no definable properties and, as such, is without conditions (thus unconditional)—exactly the same among all sentient beings. Therefore it is the ground-of-all-being, which is the place of non-discriminate unity.

What is transitory, however, are the perceptions and ideas that appear before our empty faculty, and consequently, The Buddha said there is no difference between form and emptiness; they are one and the same. Without sentience there could be no perception at all and consequently these two: perceptible forms and empty sentience dependently originate each other. All things emanate from that empty source. The images look real, but they are just transitory phenomenal images. Since we remain unaware of our true source, the only reality we can grasp is transitory images, to which we cling, and by which we define ourselves. Since the images are here one moment and gone the next, our sense of self/ego rides the waves of suffering and bliss.

The bird in your hand is the true doctor.

The true doctor.

It is our nature to esteem credentials, accolades, and titles. More times than not you’ll rely on the opinion of a doctor over that of an uneducated man, because the assumption is that a man of letters has earned his stripes and is better educated (e.g., he knows more). 

Mark Twain once said: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  There’s a lot of subtle wisdom inherent in that statement. Once I had a friend who was studying for her Ph.D., and she asked me, “What do you call a person in the doctorate program who graduates last in the class?” I thought about what that might be and then she told me the answer: Doctor.

Unfortunately, our system of education is lacking. The emphasis is on rational analysis and communications (e.g., reading, writing, number-crunching, critical thinking, and rationality). All of that is fine, but it doesn’t train our trans-rational capacities: the wellspring of all thought and non-thought. Consequently, we have become a very rational, stressed out, fear oriented violent species. We can, and do, justify the most egregious behavior possible and then feel righteous about our words and actions, never realizing we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Has that disparity ever crossed your mind? It is a puzzle, but shouldn’t be. The problem is simple (yet profound). The problem is, as expressed in the contemporary vernacular: We are not cooking on all cylinders. Translation⎯We’re out of balance and living in a dream world. We are rational, but lacking wisdom. Being educated does not necessarily make us wise, and without wisdom, rational thought, only, leads us all astray and into the conflict between the opposite quagmires of right vs. wrong.

One of the foremost examples of a wise yet uneducated man was the sixth patriarch of Chan (Chinese Zen). Huineng was born into the Lu family in 638 C.E. in Xinzhou (present-day Xinxing County) in Guangdong province, and since his father died when he was young, his family was poor. As a consequence, Huineng had no opportunity to learn to read or write and is said to have remained illiterate his entire life. Nevertheless, Huineng is recognized as one of the wisest Rinzai Zen masters of all time.

That’s the first point. The second is misleading labels. If The Buddha were born into today’s world, he would undoubtedly be called “doctor” (appropriately so). He was, and remains, the most profound doctor of the mind of any time or place. The sort of doctor he would most closely approximate today would be “psychiatrist.” However, modern psychiatrists function within a presumed sphere of science, meaning measurable matter, despite the truth that the true mind can’t be found, much less be measured.

Some years ago, I read a book by neuropsychologist/philosopher Paul Broks. The book was titled, Into the Silent Land. In probing the layers of human physiology and psychology, Broks leads us through a haunting journey. It is hard not to be stunned by reading his dissecting view of what it means to be human. We take so many things for granted. That, which is inanimate “meat,” animates with consciousness, cognition, imagination, feelings, and every other aspect of our condition, and seems to float by as a given. This fundamental mystery is so ingrained into our being that it goes unnoticed, but not by Broks.

He asks alarming and provocative questions such as “Am I out there, or in here?” when he portrays an imaginary man with a transparent skull, watching in a mirror his own brain functioning. He notices, for us all, that the world exists inside the tissue residing between our ears. And when the tissue is carefully examined, no world, no mind, no ego, no self, no soul, no perceptual capacities, nor consciousness—nothing but inanimate meat is found. Unable to locate, what we all take for granted, he suggests that we are neither “in here” nor “out there;” maybe somewhere in the space between the in and the out, and maybe nowhere at all.

Indeed, as so many mystics and seers have noted: The true mind can’t be found, and none of us can study what is beyond measuring and defining. Nevertheless, it is the true mind (which can’t be found) that is the foundation upon which everything is based⎯the source of wisdom, harmony, and the lack of stress. Speaking from intimate personal experience, I can state without equivocation that once you experience your true Self-nature your world will turn over.  And why would that be? Because stress is the result of craving what you have already. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to obtain what lies ever within your hand. So long as we believe we don’t have what we need, we will forever remain anxious, frustrated, disappointed, ill, and full of stress. And that makes us all sick, not to mention very, very tired.

Guests and Hosts

The road to nowhere.

Imagine the relationship between a guest (who checks in and out) and a host who accommodates the guest. These two are essential to one another. Without a host, the guest would have nowhere to stay. And without guests, a host would go broke due to a lack of revenue. Thus they are two aspects of a quest that are intended to lead to the desired destination.

Now about the quest: Why does anyone go on a quest? The obvious answer is to move towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Thus the precondition that motivates such a journey is to find what is presumed to be somewhere else, but for sure not here. Clearly, there is no justification or purpose to journey far and wide if the treasure is already in hand. What if the desired treasure IS already in hand but the traveler remains unaware? In that case, the treasure will never be found, because it is not located “far and wide.”

Now about the host: Unlike a guest, the host never moves anywhere, any time. If the host did move, how would the guest find a place of rest and nurture? In that case, the host would be a moving target. Thus the host is fixed and permanent, and the guest is always on the move and impermanent. In fact, the guest can, and does, have a beginning and an ending; is born and dies. Not so for the host; no birth, no death—permanent and eternal. And one more thing: The desired treasure is a “bird in hand,” not in the bush, only that bird seems to likewise fly in and fly away. Try to catch the bird by closing your hand and the bird flies away before the hand is closed.

Now consider this: “All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water; apart from the water there is no ice, apart from beings no Buddha. How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar, like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.”—Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku

The treasure we all seek is already within, and in Zen literature, the treasure (the host) is called “Buddha-Nature:” our essential nature—who we all are at the core. The problem is the traveler is unaware. The presumption is a quest will lead to a distant goal that is already present, and thus we are “…like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor.” We, the travelers are the water: fluid and forever moving. The host is ice, solid, and unmoving. 

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”—Rabindranath Tagore. Wherever the traveler goes, the host comes along, like a shadow that never leaves.

Emptiness ain’t empty. Fullness ain’t full.

Anything in here?

We, Westerners, are severely short-changed. In the past, we were ignorant of Eastern wisdom due to distances that took weeks, if not years, to traverse. That is no longer an excuse since, in less than the time of this writing, communications can zip around the world several times. Or, if you like, put the dilemma in the words of Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

So what’s our excuse? Arrogance? Close-mindedness? Your guess, but for whatever reason, we do need to do a better job. Our lives depend on doing better. With just a few realignments, we could improve upon the situation. Notions such as emptiness and interdependence could make things vastly better.

And a good place to start is by bridging the gap with a fundamental grasp of some words and concepts—for example, the word Sūtra. We have no problem in grasping the word scripture, since, by and large, our culture has been shaped by Western civilization, the Bible, and either Christianity or Judaism. But a Sūtra comes from the East, and we get a bit hung up with foreign words, but it isn’t that hard if we cared.

A Sūtra is a rule or aphorism, mostly in the Sanskrit literature (from India), and Sanskrit is an ancient language, no longer used, just as Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament) is no longer used. There are hundreds of Sūtras, without an accepted grouping such as a canon. Some are short (as short as 300 lines) while others are composite collections of Sūtras, under a shared roof. Examples are the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, or the Mahāratnakūṭa, which contains 49 sūtras of various lengths. Maybe the longest (and my favorite) is The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra.

Short, or long, they are all crammed full of wisdom. And the one claimed as the standard-bearer for the perfection of wisdom is the Heart Sūtra (short for Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya—The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom). So why is that one considered sublime? Because it boils down the essence of Eastern wisdom into a short package on emptiness. In Sanskrit, Śūnyatā refers to the tenet that all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature, but may also refer to the reality that all sentient beings share a common, indiscriminate nature called “Buddha-nature” or primordial awareness. 

In essence, at the core of us all is a primordial, un-awakened nature (a sleeping giant if you will). And right off the bat, we have a vast cultural disconnect. This, at first anyway, is a mind-blower (literally). The teaching means that there is absolutely nothing that has an intrinsic, independent, stand-alone nature. All things are thus empty. They are instead interdependent—one thing dependent upon the opposite. That is one half. The other half is that emptiness is itself empty. It, too, is interdependent. But the question is, with what is it dependent? 

Before I address the last half, let’s look at the first half and the profound implication. An example is up and down. Neither up nor down can be understood (much less exist) without the other. In an indivisible flash of time, when up comes into existence, so does the opposite of down, and just as fast, they disappear as pairs. So what? You might say. Why is that such a big deal? Simple, (yet not self-evident). It is profound when we realize this example pertains to all things. There is no “absolute right” without an “absolute wrong.” No “goodness” without “evil.” All things have an opposite dimension that defines it. And the implication? Self-righteousness stops being an absolute, and so does bigotry or any other matter of maleficence. And that alone is wise understanding.

Now the second half: Emptiness is not empty. The absence of things (e.g., “nothing” or “no-thing”) is just as glued to the opposite as anything else. “Everything” is interdependent with “Nothing.” In truth, you, I, and every one of us is (internally and externally) empty of an intrinsic self-nature that is uniquely and distinctly “me.” The “me” we think we are is not “me.” It is “us.” You and I are identical at the core. At that level of consciousness, we are unconditional (even though the outside is conditional). Externally, we are, of course, distinct, unique, and different, but not at the core. The external can be perceived. The internal cannot. Our inner core is “un-awakened” until we come to our senses, but our outside cloak is asleep (but thinks it is awake). At that level of primordial existence we are self-aware, but not in a perceptible way. Our awareness, at the core, is invisible—like Harry Potter’s cloak. The thing of it is, the unseen part of us all is the part that is doing the seeing. And what that aspect of us sees, is incapable of being seen. That internal eye cannot see nothing. It can only see something. And the something we see is, of course, different from what we see in others.

That is both a problem and an opportunity, at the same time. Why? Because of the unreal (yet perceptible “I”—ego) is proud, arrogant, and self-absorbed. It must play to a loving audience, all of the time, to feel worthwhile. That part hates with a passion (just as strongly as it adores a loving audience) criticism and questioning. That is the problem. The opportunity is to “awaken” to what lies beneath the image-of-self (ego) to the part that can’t be seen. The outside, perceptible, the non-full ego, is interdependent with an opposite imperceptible, full, true self—the sleeping giant, which is otherwise called “Buddha-nature.” 

We are, in the most real and profound way, sleeping Buddhas. And we will remain asleep until the false self (ego) steps aside. But that is a near-impossible scenario. It is like asking a blind man to tell you what he sees. The ego firmly believes there are no eyes, except his own, and believe me, beauty is in the eye of the beholder with the ego looking through rose-colored glasses. Or looking into a mirror and asking, “who’s the fairest one of all?” The mirror doesn’t want to get smashed, so the mirror lies and thereby strokes the deluded ego. So what’s the answer? 

Time and indisputable evidence that being a monster is a failed proposition. Eventually, an egomaniac screws up (and gets terrible press) so many times that it becomes obvious even to a doormat. The truth will out; eventually. But there may be lots of damage done along the way, to others and finally one’s self. Remember Adolf?

The bottom line here is simple (yet requires some solid thinking, employing a few fundamental principles that can’t be refuted). We are perfect, united, joined at the hip indiscriminate, at the core, yet living inside a shell with opposite characteristics—imperfect, disconnected, and very, very discriminating: Needing to put others down so we can feel up. 

Sound like anyone you know? Emptiness ain’t empty. Fullness ain’t full.

Primal ignorance and primal enlightenment.

When all of the pieces fit together

In a previous post: Our overturned world, I shared Patañjali’s view of the five kleshas as being the causes of suffering. His perspective that the very first klesha: ignorance of the true nature of reality, was the foundational cause of suffering. When this primal ignorance is overturned, the other four fall into place. That being the case, the question becomes, what is the opposite of primal ignorance? When ignorance falls away, what is our natural (primal) state of mind, and what is it that results and produces a state of transformation?

Some time ago, I wrote about two opposing states of karma: Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death, and Karma and the Wheel of Dharma. The Buddha compared two paths: one leading to the discriminate states of life versus death and the other, leading to our true nature—pure consciousness without any discriminate properties, known as Buddha-nature: the realm of unity or natural enlightenment. Can that realm be perceived? And if so what does it look like? The point was made that the entire universe is a function of consciousness, or said another way: the universe is nothing other than the primordial mind in manifestation. 

The Buddha taught in the Mahaparinirvana Sūtra, “Seeing the actions of body and mouth, we say that we see the mind. The mind is not seen, but this is not false. This is seeing by outer signs.”  Of course, the mind is the source (consciousness) and as such, can’t see itself. We only see manifestations.

In that same Sūtra, he taught that “If impermanence is killed, what there is, is eternal Nirvana. If suffering is killed, one must gain bliss; if the void is killed, one must gain the real. If the non-self is killed, one must gain the True Self. O, great King! If impermanence, suffering, the Void, and the non-self are killed, you must be equal to me.”

Now we come to the critical point: unapplied consciousness has no properties. It is pure and indiscriminate. Only when consciousness is applied can discrimination occur. Until then, everything is unified and whole. 

A favorite sūtra of Bodhidharma was the Lankavatara. Here it says, “In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakāya (our true primordial mind of wisdom/consciousness) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?” 

Elsewhere Bodhidharma taught that the Dharmakāya was just another name for the Buddha and said, “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.”

All of the above harmonizes with Nagarjuna’s Two Truth Doctrine and the teachings of many other Zen Masters that we have two minds (one a mind of manifestation with discriminate properties and the other the great Nirvanic Mind without discrimination of any kind). In truth, these are not two but rather the unified integration of ignorance and bliss. Rationally, it appears as if there are two but think of these two dimensions as you would a roof with an outside and an inside. 

There is only one roof. From the outside, there is light, and everything appears as discriminate, but from the darkness, in the attic (where no light exists), nothing can be seen, thus no discrimination. A roof is, however, a feeble example since the mind that can’t be seen contains nothing and everything at the same time. Everything comes from there, but until the moment of applied consciousness, there’s nothing perceptible. It’s an everything/nothing mind.  

The great Nirvanic Mind is not perceptible since it’s the ground out of which all perception emanates. It can only be experienced but in itself is “…far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind.” Here there is no life or death, no self or other, no birth or death, no misidentification (asmita), no attachment (raga), no anger following a loss (dvesha), no misunderstanding life, and death (abhinivesha), no versus of any kind. THIS is what a transformed mind is, and when you awaken to this realm, you discover nothing other than what has always been: your true self—the Mind of the Buddha, full to overflowing in wisdom (the opposite of primal ignorance). This is when all of the pieces fall into place—this is the true nature of reality.

Hitting the bullseye.

Going to the root cause.

In light of the recent explosion of potentially catastrophic events around the world, it’s tempting to be diverted from what is foundationally important, speak reactively and directly to these matters and avoid, what may seem obscure to many. When immediate, critical matters become in-your-face, it is natural to focus purely on such matters and forget about what was that way minutes ago.  

I attempt to remain focused on the foundationally issues 

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said, “The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included.” Such a thing seems apparent, but what is ordinarily considered the mind, turns out not to be, It is indeed worth the investment to plunge to that root and if we did (collectively) we wouldn’t be chasing our tails. So I carry on, trying, again and again, to identify and communicate, with as many as I can reach, concerning

I’ve led an eclectic life and been exposed to many different cultures and perspectives. One of my stops along the way was a career in the advertising business. A lot has changed since those days but some of the vital principles have remained guiding forces. There are fundamentally three that count the most: (1) reaching the people with whom you want to communicate, (2) with messages that are considered relevant and compelling by those people, and (3) do it time and time again with a variety of connected messages. Two of those are matters of media (reach and frequency) and the third concerns message.

Back before, and during, the 80s, the advertising business was influenced by the guru of the moment,

Now, due to multiple points of global contact (blogs, podcasts, ebooks, social media in various forms, email, and multi-media such as YouTube), we have entered a new era that enshrines, more than anything else, generating a demonstrable “Like” response. It ain’t what it used to be. 

Presently, more times than not, the message is sometimes bizarre (such as Alex Jones) and other air-headed forms, drives the process and those who are interested can find you through search engines. I know this personally since over the fifteen years I’ve been posting to Dharma Space, the vast majority of my readers have found me, rather than me finding them. After all of these years, roughly 89,000 spiritual seekers have become followers of Dharma Space (a mere pittance compared to hundreds of thousands of “Likes” on a single day from superficial, frivolous material, which is disturbing to me). 

However, I guess I shouldn’t despair but rather follow the wisdom of Mark Twain: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Even though, I’m troubled by having no clue who these seekers are. They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks but just maybe if I learn a few, I can generate “Likes” for something more profound than bathroom popularity.

Thanks to Google Analytics, I know where Dharma Space readers reside (continent, country, province, and city), how often they visit, how long they stay, their gender, and even the genre of postings to which they are most attracted. However, I also know that only a tiny few ever respond or comment (and I don’t think I’ve ever received a “Like”) so consequently, I am left to guess about many important matters: backgrounds and levels of spiritual maturity; why they are attracted to Dharma Space and to whom they refer Dharma Space posts; how frequently they prefer to receive my messages (some have told me they look forward to them every day while others say they are annoyed when they do) and are my readers' intellectual dilettantes or serious folk? These and many other important bits of knowledge, if I knew about them, could make my communications better and enable me to find and hit hearts of arising empathy and compassion. However, short of such information, I must use my judgments to deliver what I do and hope that a positive force results.

Honestly, I wish I didn’t attract dilettantes for entertainment's sake. If that is the motivation in mulling through Dharma Space articles, people could do a lot better spending their time watching “The Bold and the Beautiful ” or some idiot sharing YouTube videos of their daily hygienic habits.

At times I’ve thought of myself as a sort of Johnny Appleseed planting spiritual seeds, most of which may grow (hopefully) into maturity, unbeknownst to me, long after I’m gone. I write as the spirit moves me or about unfolding life, problems we encounter, and how to deal with them. Lots and lots of different seeds but with one common denominator of the unity of an unconditional, indiscriminate spiritual consciousness, designed to separate us all from the destructive force of an alienated ego and awaken us to our unseen, true nature. But unlike Johnny, I plant not only apple seeds but a variety of seeds with that common spiritual denominator. Sometimes I write short ones like “The Deep,” “Finger pointing at the moon,” or “Today you are you!” Some are whimsical such as “Rushing backward,” “Birds do it,” “Monkey see, monkey do,” and “You.” I share personal matters of my own growth process: “Little Bear and Lily Pads,” “Who the heck am I?” and “Tick, tick, tick.” 

Why am I writing this blog? Because I want my readers to know that regardless of how different we are on the superficial, perceptible level, at heart (where it matters; in the real mind spoken of by 

The eye-glasses upon our nose.

Seeing only clouds of delusion.

Zen Master Huang Po (Huángbò Xīyùn) was one of the most important and revered teachers of all time. Among other contributions he was the teacher of Lin-chi (the founder of Rinzai Zen) and the promulgator of the inherent nature of the One Mind, being everything. His teaching on this reflected the Indian concept of the tathāgatagarbha—the idea that within all beings is the nature of the Buddha. Therefore, Huang Po taught that seeking the Buddha was futile as the Buddha already resided within:

This principle is one of the most difficult for aspirants to comprehend since the vast majority of the human race firmly believes Enlightenment IS to be attained and may spend their entire phenomenal lives seeking what they already possess. This idea of no attainment was eloquently articulated by the following:

“If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see the five elements of consciousness as void; the four physical elements as not constituting an ‘I’; the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one–if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash. He would no longer be entangled by the Triple World; he would be a World-Transcender. He would be without even the faintest tendency towards rebirth. If he should behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to welcome him, surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he would feel no desire to approach them. If he should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding him, he would experience no terror. He would just be himself, oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the Absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being. This, then, is the fundamental principle.”

His expositions reflected the same principle expressed roughly 1,600 years prior in the Bhagavad-Gita, which spoke of the eternal, yet obscured nature of the Self:

“Once identified with the Self, we know that although the body will die, we will not die; our awareness of this identity is not ruptured by the death of the physical body. Thus we have realized the essential immortality which is the birthright of every human being. To such a person, the Gita says, death is no more traumatic than taking off an old coat.”

If we could grasp and experience our essential nature, all fear for our destiny would disappear, we would awaken to our truth and realize Enlightenment in a flash. Yet we are lost in a cloud of delusion as one would be when looking through the lenses of eyeglasses positioned upon our noses.

Eternal frame of mind.

We are facing an unprecedented era of crisis, never seen before.

Not only is there the evident crisis of fighting a global war with an unseen enemy we have labeled COVID-19, but there are other crisis’ roaring along in the background (such as global climate change) while our attention is diverted fighting the virus, with all of its permutations—impact on global economies with the two-edged sword of dying from exposure to the virus or dying from starvation, impact on food supplies, a growing divide among all people, based on placing blame, and the impact on mental/emotional health, et.al.

Conspiracy theories are flaring through social media, dwelling on finding the culprit, punishing them, or those who would simply rather put their heads in the sand and hope it will all just go away. While China may, or may not, be the source of the viral spread, intentionally (which would be total madness) or accidentally, we in the US (with a history going back 243 years, to the signing of the Declaration of Independence) would do well to recognize our comparative national youth. Within recorded history, China dates back 4,000 years, is recognized as one of the four great ancient civilizations of the world, together with ancient Egypt, Babylon, and India. And moreover, it is the only ancient civilization that has continued to this very day. China was one of the cradles of the human race and has gone through countless times of catastrophe. Any group of people that have survived that long probably has something of value to say about “crisis,” and it does.

The Chinese word (written as “危机”) means “crisis” and is made up of two characters: “危” and “机.” 危 means danger, and 机 means chance and opportunity. However, 机 can also mean pivot (a term we hear much today)—a crucial or a watershed moment. Logically, this makes much more sense than looking at a moment of crisis simply as though it were stuck in time. Whether 243, 4,000 years or 200,000 years—the time homo sapiens have been on earth, each and every moment evolves into new, never seen before moments, through good times and bad.

Of course, while in the midst of the “危” (danger) we tend to forget that nature abhors a vacuum, and “机” (opportunities) will follow, as surely as the sun follows the darkness. The question is thus, how to maintain equanimity in the midst of apparent, tangible catastrophes? And this comes down to how we view ourselves, others, and the world around us. If we remain persuaded that life=physical/mortal life, then it follows there most likely won’t be any following opportunities without reverting to the survival of the fittest—dog-eat-dog, kill, or be killed behavior. However, if life is not just tangible, measurable, flesh, bones, or anything else that can be perceived through our senses, but is instead immortal and eternal, then equanimity is much more possible. 

Both Jesus and The Buddha taught that true life is eternal and does not end with bodily death. People put words in the mouth of Jesus (as they did with The Buddha) and texts have been written to support both views. For example, there is the Sutra of Infinite Life and various Christian texts, ranging from Canonical approved ones to others from the Gnostic Gospels (which conflict with each other). The unabashed truth is nobody has ever been able to prove the nature of an afterlife (either for the good or the bad) and I would argue that what we do mortally ought to be the focus, not as a gamble to insure what may or may not happen following our mortal end, but rather because doing good is better than doing bad. So long as we pin our hope on divine justice it undermines our motives to take responsibility in the here-and-now.