It ain't my job!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being special.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreams of safety and a reality of folly.

Ignorance based fear.

A while ago I came across a greeting card, intended as encouragement, that said, “Don’t let reality get in the way of your dreams.” The implied message was that we should not be discouraged by events that can bring us down. 

There was something that troubled me about the message and started me thinking of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand having dreams that ignore what surrounds them.

In 2018 I reposted a title, The high price of choice: winning battles, losing wars (originally written four years earlier) and in that post, I spoke about our normal way of discerning reality, delusion, and how these relate to dreams. The conclusion of the post was—according to the Buddhist way of understanding reality—the vast majority of humanity imagines a reality in a distorted way that leads us to remain completely unaware of what is the ultimate reality. Consequently, we walk around in a dream state, all the while thinking our perceived world is reality.

Persuading anyone of this view is most difficult. Instead, we prefer fantasy to reality, and this dream state is very often based on fear with a consequence of adopting an attitude of denial, pretense, and unrealistic hopefulness. Our attitudes about COVID-19 is a perfect example. The viral pandemic has gone on far beyond our capacity for tolerance, and consequently many have adopted attitudes of wishful thinking, of the firm persuasion that the risk has passed and we can carry on without concern.

In the Nipata Sutra, there’s a conversation that occurred with the Buddha that said: 

“What is it that smothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it the most? The Buddha replied: It is ignorance which smothers and it is heedlessness and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.” 

Twenty-five hundred years later there remain clear examples of this dilemma.

• It is far easier to ignore advancing devastation of global warming and our contributions that exacerbate the growing threat. It is fear of suffering and losing one’s livelihood, or alienating those attached to vested interests with whom we align ourselves. It is likewise a hunger of desire that produces the willingness to toss caution to the wind and refuse to do our part to flatten the curve of viral spread. The desire for shortsighted greed in maintaining a destructive status quo traps us all in states of fear. 

• It is easier to ignore many aspects of family discord that corrupt one’s spirit and fills us with fear of suffering the loss of expected love that could come from a family, based on openness and acceptance. 

• It is easier to ignore our civic obligation to vote as an expression of our moral convictions than it is to risk having others discover our true values that conflict with theirs, and thus suffer the loss of facile relationships, which we reason are better than none at all. 

• It is easier to maintain a duplicitous relationship of pretense where we risk standing nakedly exposed than it is to risk being discovered and suffer loss from being ourselves.

Dreams built on the sands of ignorance are doomed and ensure our ultimate suffering in many ways, none of which we hope for. The very first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is that we all suffer—none can escape. And the second of these truths is the cause of suffering is attachment (e.g., craving) to the blowing sands of change. If there were only two noble truths then despair is the only possible result. However, The Buddha didn’t stop at two. The third is there’s a solution and the fourth directs us to the Eight Fold Path that leads to experiencing ultimate reality and the discovery of our always loved, and always loving true nature. When we arrive at that place of enlightenment we find that we were living, not just in a dream, but in a horrible nightmare that was, and is, based purely on an expected fear of suffering.

The cost of ignorance.

Some say we come into this world as a blank slate, upon which is

A high cost to pay.

 written the moment-by-moment experiences of mortal life. Nature vs. nature is the handle applied to this view. Accordingly, “nature” is the blank slate (with potential unrealized), and “nurture” is what is written, which leads to realizing (or not) that potential.

In Western philosophy, the concept of tabula rasa can be traced back to the works of Aristotle in his treatise De Anima (Περί Ψυχῆς, “On the Soul”). Consequently, given the Western roots, the philosophy continues to this day as an underpinning of Western psychology. This perspective presumes mortal life is a “one-and-done” proposition. One-shot (either for good or not) determines our destiny and where our soul goes following mortal death. 

On the other side of the world, however, an alternate perspective arose—karmic seeds—the essence of karma. When karma is dormant, it sleeps in this seed form. When it is latent, it exists as samskaras, embedded beliefs deep in the mind's unconscious zone, and as liminal fantasies encountered in dreams, hypnotic states, and meditation. When it is active, it is present in all seven levels, and we are aware of the force of craving or desire.

Whereas the Western view is a “one-and-done” proposition, the Eastern view is one of transmigration and reincarnation. In this sense, “life” isn’t purely mortal (which passes away—dust to dust) but is rather the “dust” plus immortality, with the soul being the vehicle within which the karmic seeds travel that predetermines unconscious vectors. Rather than “one and done,” this perspective is a “do-over” until we get it right. Thus, perfection is not an impossible, abstract, flawless mortal condition but is instead the end of attainment, stretching over eons.

These two perspectives produce very different senses of possibility. On the one hand, we believe that we are all flawed beings (and thus excessively tolerant of egregious behaviors) in need of divine salvation, or we’re in for a quick trip to a scorching place. The other perspective is one of infinite grace—recognizing that true life evolves as a learning experience that never ends until Nirvana is realized. The understanding of Nirvana is greatly distorted in the West. In simple to grasp terms, the word means the extinguishment of the three poisons—greed, anger, and ignorance associated with experiencing oneself as an ego. It is not some mythical place but rather a state of mind, achievable by realizing a person’s genuine nature hidden deep within the unconscious mind. 

By the time I arrived at the seminary and learned about tabula rasa, I had experienced a mind-blowing transformation that was not intellectual but rather intuitive. Then I had the advantage of a comparative frame of reference, and upon further exploration, I came to understand matters of my own mind I would never have come to given my own Western roots.

In seminary, I learned how to read the New Testament in the language originally used, that of Koine Greek: A Greek form no longer used but was used when the Greek Philosophers walked the earth. Obviously, Aristotle knew and used Koine Greek but must not have known the significance of the thorny crux of original sin—that everyone is flawed, in need of divine salvation, going back to the mythical sin of Adam and Eve. His lack of awareness concerning this dogma, of course, makes sense, but only when explored. Aristotle was born in 385 BCE and died 62 years later in 323 BCE. On the other hand, The Christian Bible canons (containing both the Old and New Testaments, wherein the creation myth existed) weren’t completed until the 5th century CE. Consequently, he knew nothing of the original sin's ideology, but he did understand the nature of a completed journey.

And how would I know that? Because of one single word (written in Koine Greek) that had to be one of transmigration instead of “one-and-done.” And the word in question is “perfection,” which, when written in Koine Greek, is teleos meaning “the end result.” Instead of using the word as a foundational principle of salvation, Aristotle saw perfection in a frame of nature, saying: “Nature does nothing in vain.” The philosophy itself suggests that acts are done with a foregone purpose in mind—people do things knowing the result they wish to achieve, and this in turn strongly suggest coming into this world, not as a blank slate but rather with seeds growing to a pre-determined (e.g., karmic seeds) conclusion.

The dogma of genetic flaw—going back to the creation story myth—has created countless tragedies over the vast expanse of time. The hope of ever achieving perfection (as a state of being without flaw in a “one-and-done” lifetime has caused untold billions to reach their end in a state of profound fear), all due to ignorance, the very thing The Buddha pointed out that was the heart of suffering:

“What is that smothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it the most?’ ‘It is ignorance that smothers,’ the Buddha replied, ‘and it heedlessness and greed, making the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.”

Belief and Truth

It is said that faith is more powerful than reality. I believe that it is. If I were to believe that I must have air to breathe and thought there was none, in spite of its ubiquitous presence, I would die from the lack. If I were to believe that I must have water and thought there was none I would die of thirst from that lack as well. When our beliefs (any at all) over-ride reality we suffer the consequences, in spite of what is real and true. If we are free yet believe that were are not, we are in bondage; poverty itself.

Many subscribe to the belief that in order to be spiritual it is necessary to embrace certain traditions, make specific statements of faith, and join with certain like-minded people as rites of passage to spiritual realms. The presumption here is that there is a formula that determines whether or not we are spiritual and acceptable to God. Perhaps the question is not how to be spiritual but rather, is it possible to not be spiritual at all. Believing that you are not spiritual (when you are) over-rides the reality in the same fashion that believing you need air when in the midst of air.

In The Song of Zazen, Hakuin Zenji said... “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.” The story in the Bible about the Prodigal Son spoke the same truth.

Here is something to ponder—What is the spark which animates our being? Is it possible that we need to look no further than the end of our noses to discover what is ever-present? And isn’t it likely that we are crying out for God while in the midst of Spirit?

Probably the greatest Christian mystic to ever live was Meister Eckhart. He said this regarding the chasm between ideas and reality. 

“Man’s last and highest parting occurs when for God’s sake he takes leave of god. St. Paul took leave of god for God’s sake and gave up all that he might get from god as well as all he might give—together with every idea of god. In parting with these he parted with god for God’s sake and God remained in him as God is in his own nature—not as he is conceived by anyone to be—nor yet as something yet to be achieved, but more as an is-ness, as God really is. Then he and God were a unit, that is pure unity. Thus one becomes that real person for whom there can be no suffering, any more than the divine essence can suffer.”

To experience the ubiquitous spiritual presence of God it is always necessary to get rid of the belief that God is absent and we must take action. God is transcendent but god is a distillation: Eckhart’s idea which must be cast aside. Such an idea is a distortion of reality and removes us from that which we seek to find.

Readiness.

The road MOST traveled.

“The teacher appears when the student is ready.” Everyone has heard that metaphor, but what does it mean? It probably means different things to different people, but perhaps the central meaning concerns alternatives and choices.

It’s human nature to select the choice that entails the least effort and delivers the most bang for the buck. Why pay $100 for something if we can find something that works just as well for $1? But if we pay $100, we expect to get that much worth in return. But what if we don’t get the value we hoped for but instead get far less? And what if we keep spending the same $100 and keep getting shortchanged? After a certain point, we might want to try another tack. Then we’re ready.

The time is ready when we reach the ultimate end of a wrong road to a worse place, that keeps on delivering the ultimate lack of value. It can happen individually or culturally, and these two are not different since cultures are nothing more than grouped individuals. We are collectively and individually approaching a readiness of time. We have tried to attain ultimate value, and it isn’t working. The more we spend, the worse it gets and, it’s time to find out why it’s not working. What is preventing us from, what we all say, is so desperately sought? And what might that goal be? It’s love, happiness, fulfillment, joy, harmony, and peace.

These are the goals we have been seeking (acknowledged or not), and we’ve been traveling the wrong road to get there. The teacher is our natural, divine intelligence; our “true” mind—that doesn’t exist conceptually, yet nevertheless leads to a deeper source of wisdom and compassion that contains all that we’ve been seeking but not finding. The ego is a gatekeeper that denies access to what lies beyond and, consequently, the unknown remains unknown. 

The soul knows because the soul is closer to our central, spiritual core than the ego (which serves as the gatekeeper for “acceptable” dogma). However, without an awareness of a difference between experiencing and fantasizing—The context of our lives, out of which grows everything—we remain like a garden growing only weeds with no flowers. The realm of the soul is the storehouse where we experience what we say we are seeking (e.g., love, happiness, fulfillment, joy, harmony, and peace). It is also the source of adaptive wisdom, so needed in the world today, where we find the answers that help us survive. 

The goal is not “out there” on a path to nowhere. It is “in here” on the path to ourselves. And once we find our source, we realize that the idea we held of “ourselves” was wrong and far too limited in scope and character. When we get beyond that gatekeep, it is like coming home to the place we’ve never left, but previous to that very instant never knew existed.

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.

Eat to live, or live to eat?

The title implies a priority, not only for food but work, particularly spiritual work. As a child, I was always asking the question, “Why?” Why does anyone do anything? 

Priorities and choices are important since they reflect motives. “What floats your boat,” is a contemporary expression implying such motives, and more times than not, beneath all else lies the issue of material prosperity, and the more the better.

Sadly in today’s world, words of wisdom and spiritual guidance are very profitable businesses, just as in politics. Both are huge sources of “living to eat, well” and not just eating to live but gluttony. Evidence, regardless of religious affiliation, all began with renunciation of material craving, or if you like “excessive desire.” 

And there was a universal reason for avoiding craving. The reason? Because craving leads to attachment and attachment to anything material eventually leads to suffering. Anything and everything of, a material nature, will come to an end and when it does, if we are attached the loss can be profound suffering. 

In some cases that suffering arises out of addiction—whether to wealth, power, people, drugs, or even fixed ideas. And why is it that we become addicted? Because we love what eases our suffering. Fixed ideas may seem odd, as a source of suffering, but fixed ideas provide us with a false sense of security, and we all love the idea of stability when the world around us is swirling. How, you may ask, can fixed ideas produce suffering? If you think about it, fixed ideas are ideas in opposition to flexible ideas. The former is what we call dogma, whereas the latter is known as an adaptation or adjusting to change. And what changes? Everything! 

Ordinarily, when we refer to dogma it is done within a religious context—“My way or the highway.” But dogma can, and is, what has presently produced a world-wide movement toward the abyss when hardly anyone is even slightly interested in compromise. We are ignoring significant, life-altering changes that will surely kill us all. Instead, we are clinging to a notion of certain invincibility. When anyone is firmly rooted in just one way it is because they have arrived at the juncture of “truth” vs. “fake news.  

I don’t think anyone gets out of bed and says to themselves, “today I will conduct my life following principles of ‘fake news’.” Quite to the contrary, everyone believes they are pursuing truth. The problem is one person’s food is another person’s poison. Science and faith appear to oppose one another, yet there is uncertainty in both directions. One of my favorite perspectives on this comes from Ashley Montagu: “Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.” Proof is the bird in hand. The two in the bush are speculations. None of us have any choice except to take life as it is—the one in hand. Reminiscence is to live in the past that no longer exists and speculation is to dwell in the future that will never come. Serenity is to accept things as they are, right now, in each fleeting moment, regardless of how we got here, or where it may lead.

When enough is enough? And the tragedy of perfection.

The surface and the deep

The idea of life as a journey has merit and deserves thoughtful consideration. A journey begins and proceeds step by step: one step begins, ends, and is followed by the next, which likewise leads to the next until the journey ends. 

Each moment proceeds in the same fashion. With foresight, patience, and endurance achievement is possible. The great tragedy is expecting perfection with each and every step. In a way each step is perfect; it is enough (for that moment).

The Buddha said, “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.”  The starting has much to say about the motivation to go at all. Many have no hope. Others become complacent with their bird in hand. Some expect magic of the divine, and still, others lack confidence and fear the risk of the unknown.

It is indeed somewhat terrifying to leap into the unknown when all seems well; when we have ours and others don’t. It is human nature (unfortunately) to take the unexpected treasure we’ve found and run, leaving others to find their own. However, if we are the one who lives in misery and have not yet found that treasure, the story is different. Then the motivation changes from satisfaction to a desire for the hidden treasure others have found, and we have not. 

For most of human history the masses have lived in misery without ever having leaped into the great sea of the unknown; the sea where “things” morph into “no-things:” the only realm where true satisfaction exists, ultimate wisdom and truth reside. The two realms of things and no-things coexist, one upon the other, yet the misery of conditional life remains the province of the known, where truth is a variable bouncing like a ball on the waves of that great ocean. Beneath; deep beneath the waves of adversity is the calm, the tranquil, the root of all that exists above.

“All mortal things have a beginning, and an ending.” Each step, each moment, every-thing; All things are enough; all things are perfect, and yet all things exist together, resting upon the deep of a nothing, which is no mere nothing; It is everything.

Surrendering from Expectations

Everything except essence is fleeting and will come to an end. That was the message Alan Watts made in his book, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” 

The passing of some things is quicker than others. A Galapagos Land Tortoise lives close to 200 years. Some life forms come and go in a matter of days. The parasitic wasp, for example, lives as an adult for 3 days or less. As far as we know, the universe since the Big Bang has lasted 13.7 billion years, but it too will end at some point.

Life looks long, but by nature, an end there must be.

Whatever flourishes always wanes; met, one must part.

The prime of manhood is not long;

Luxuriance meets with illness.

Life is swallowed by death; nothing exists eternally.”

Holding on to fleeting form invites suffering. The book of Ecclesiastes begins and ends with:

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless”.

Chapter 2 of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra says,

“In all the world, whatever is born must die.

The message is the same. These forms of vapor are easier to see than mental fixations, but the rule still applies. Take, for example, the mental obsession of expectations. We start each day with a set of expectations. We expect clear skies, so we don’t take an umbrella. We hope it will take a particular amount of time to travel from our homes to our destinations. We expect certain acceptable conditions in our environment. Any one of these expectations may or may not come about. If they do, we are pleased. If they don’t, we become upset. Our emotions and repose balance on a razor’s edge of outcomes to expectations. Nobody can predict exactly what will happen in the future, so we walk a fine line and hope for the best.

Often, when things don’t turn out the way we want, we try to force a different outcome. If that fails, we may increase the heat and intensity, believing that we can dominate and prevail. What is not noticed is the interdependent connection to this forcing. From one side, there is shoving. From the other side, there is being pushed, which simply invites a responsive shove. What started with our pressing turns into being shoved back, which then invites more back-and-forth shoving. Some nations and people have been pushing back-and-forth for so long nobody can remember who made the first shove.

It is impossible to function without making predictions, having hopes, and expecting certain conditions. The problem is what happens when our predictions go south. Becoming attached to the outcome is the problem. The secret of emotional stability and release from self-righteousness is to surrender from outcomes. In truth, results are not the product of our isolated actions. Both Krishna and the Buddha said: The greatest effort is not concerned with results. We just do our best and release from success or failure. 

There is, however, a most subtle difference between having no expectations (and possibly no action) of attempting to shape outcomes. I have written concerning this delicate balance in a post In the world: enlightened social responsibility. The story of John Chapman (known as Johnny Appleseed) is instructive in this regard. You can read about what this means in another post: Cleaning house.

It is of vital importance to work for the common good and not withdraw. Ultimately the outcome of any action is not exclusively our own. Our ideas may last an instant or as long as the universe, but they will always be approximate—just reflections on the surface of shimmering water.  

Two Realms—One Reality

A prominent scientist and a girl on the edge of becoming a woman seem to have little in common. I know them both intimately and thus see the common ground even though they may not. 

Both are highly intelligent, both creative, both kind, and a pleasure to be with. One is a senior citizen, the other still a teen. Their worlds and concerns are years apart, yet they seek the same thing: Rules and guidance systems to plot a future path. Their chosen paths are very different, but their approach is the same. 

In our phenomenal world, it’s an expedient matter to measure conduct against adopted standards. It keeps us on track and out of the weeds, at least most of the time. Conditional society couldn’t function very well without agreed-to standards that define acceptable behavior and help us chart the road ahead. The problem is that such standards only work when everyone embraces the same standards, but standards that suit one person don’t suit another, which is why we have conflict—No universal agreement. 

One of the central teachings of Buddhism is “Dependent Origination.” The teaching is not difficult to understand, but it seems difficult to fully embrace. The premise is this: All things exist in balance with the opposite. For example, “down” requires “up;” light requires darkness; phenomena require noumena (infinite other examples). These opposites are dependent and arise and cease together. There would be no such thing as a down without an up, which is why the teaching is called what it is—things depending on opposites to originate and cease together. 

Simple to grasp but not so simple when it comes to adopting needed standards. And why is that? Because a standard used to measure light wouldn’t work so well when there isn’t any light. And this observation becomes even more critical when it comes to the edge separating opposites, which is to say, “How do you establish rules and standards on the edge dividing the opposites?” Where neither is there, yet both are there. 

This sounds like an impractical consideration but stay with me. My scientist friend is a brilliant physicist pushing the limits beyond normally acceptable boundaries (into the metaphysical realm). The young lady is likewise exploring the limits beyond normally acceptable boundaries of ethics. She is searching for some spiritual rules and guidance. Both go into the same realm and try to use proven yardsticks from the phenomenal realm applied in the noumenal realm without realizing that the rules must change when you cross that boundary line. What we become accustomed to—perceptible objectivity, becomes worthless when operating in an imperceptible realm. It is like trying to find a new set of glasses which will allow you to see air. 

We commonly make two errors in conducting our phenomenal affairs, and these two haven’t changed since the time of The Buddha. The errors are that we perceive objects as either fixed and lasting or fluid and decaying. In one sense, we conclude with permanence and in the other nihilism. This conundrum is exactly the same as what confronted people in The Buddha’s time, and what he realized upon his enlightenment is that both are true, and neither is true (as separate matters). 

His enlightened resolution came to be known as The Middle Way. But how does that make sense? How can something (anything) be both true and not true at the same time? For that to work, it is necessary to acknowledge this dilemma, which my two friends are wrestling with—The opposites of phenomena and noumena and being willing to stand with one foot in each of those two camps. The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment (Address by the Bodhisattva of Pure Wisdom) said 

“...the intrinsic nature of Complete Enlightenment is devoid of distinct natures, yet all different natures are endowed with this nature, which can accord and give rise to various natures.” 

Elsewhere, it says that enlightenment is not something that comes and goes; it is ever-present. This, too, seems like an irrational statement. It is a perfectly logical question to ask, “If enlightenment is ever-present, then how is it I don’t experience it?” Perhaps the answer to that question is that we are trying to see air with a new set of glasses. Air can’t be seen with any glasses, and “Complete Enlightenment is devoid of distinct natures...” If enlightenment has no defining nature, then it doesn’t matter how sharp our vision—It can’t be seen. 

Yet the Sutra goes on to say that “all different natures are endowed with this nature, which can accord and give rise to various natures.” So what is the pearl of wisdom here? Perhaps the pearl is to stop expecting the impossible and accept that the task is not to invent another set of tools but rather live by the Spirit’s constant infusion. Buddhists might choose to call Spirit “Buddha-Nature.” Christians might choose to call it “The Holy Spirit,” but a name is just a handle. Some people prefer one handle, others prefer another handle, but noumenal truth has no handle or nature. 

We are not comfortable in “flying blind,” but isn’t that the definition of expedient means—Doing what is needed, one moment at a time, as phenomenal life flows and changes? How useful is it to use fixed standards when all of life is shifting and changing? The rules that worked yesterday are yesterday’s rules, and tomorrow’s rules will only work when unknown conditions arise. Circumstances change, and when they do, we need to measure the moment and act appropriately. This flexible way requires only one leap of faith—That enlightenment is a constant reality, and it has no nature.