COVID—Life/Death, and alleviation of fear.

Life, death, and fear.

Nowadays, there is not only a spike in the incidence of COIVD infections (and resulting mortal death), but there is a corresponding spike in emotional distress and fear. According to extensive research of this correspondent relationship—on a global basis—as the pandemic increases, so too does fear. 

Everyone knows that mortal death is inevitable. Sooner or later, the “Grim Reaper” will visit us all. Nobody gets out of here alive, so the saying goes. This latter is the primary source of ultimate fear. Why? Because (1) We all think that our existence is equal to our body, (2) We thus believe that when the body dies, we will die, (3) The same holds true for our loved ones, and (4) We have attached our sense of stability and well-being to the mortal existence of something or someone. Nobody (and no-thing) gets out of here alive. The ground upon which our perceived sense of self exists is quick-sand—it is in a state of continuous change, and we know it (but choose to ignore it).

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Some dispute the source of that observation, but regardless, it is on target. And one of those (e.g., truth) is at the core of understanding this correspondence. There are two aspects of the truth: What is, in fact, true, and the opposite; what is factually false. If we think falsely about this correspondence, our sense of stability and well-being will be false. And the opposite is likewise correct—If we think truthfully about this correspondence, our sense of stability and well-being will follow suit.

We have failed to understand this fundamental truth, this ground-level basis of well-being: We are either just a mortal body or something different. If just a mortal body, then it follows there is a solid justification for fear. However, if we are something different, then that something-different is not mortal and can’t die. The former position results in fear, while the latter results in the sense of tranquility, peace, and a lack of fear.

Therefore we are all faced (increasingly so during this pandemic) with an unavoidable dilemma between a choice for fear or a choice for peace. Both (e.g., fear and a sense of lasting peace) are subject to thoughts and emotions. “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” 

If we think we are just a mortal shell (which will die), there is no joy. But if we think we are the spirit that resides within that shell, then fear goes away. The mortal shell is like a born-guest, moves from place to place, changes all of the time, and one day dies. But the spirit living within that mortal shell is like a host, which is never born, never moves (or changes), and can’t die. 

How we understand true life and false life determines everything. And there is no better kick in the behind—the prodding stick that compels us to seek a solution than being in a state of fear and misery, both of which are spiking sharply right now, regardless of affiliations politically, religiously, ideologically, nationally…any and every other defining method…And there is no longer the ordinary excuse (e.g., I don’t have time) for not thoroughly examining who and what we are. We have an abundant amount of time on our hands, and many of us are confined to quarters—socially distant, in solitary confinement. If there were ever an ideal set of time, place, and circumstances, this time, this place, and this set of circumstances, must be “prime-time.” 

How to save the world.

It's up to us.

In the Western world, the term “sentient being” is not your every-day word. We think in terms of human beings or other kinds. But sentience is more descriptive since it denotes the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively, not to overlook thinking. Any conscious being is a sentient being, including all creatures capable of sensing and responding to its world.

Unfortunately, being human has caused us to evolve into being human-centric and set aside our connections to other creatures and the environment that enables our existence. We forget (or if you prefer, went unmindful) of the food chain that begins with the tiniest of creatures and goes all the way to the top—us humans. Cutting that chain and destroying the environment within which all sentient beings live is an unfailing prescription for our ultimate disaster. We are well down the road toward that end for a simple reason—unmindfulness of our aggregate interconnectivity with the rest of life. Our priorities are going south fast. While we are distracted with lesser matters, our support systems are not. They are progressing toward ultimate demise due to our negligence. And if we wish to continue as a species, we need to quickly get back to basics.

What is the most basic of all? It is the matter that connects us to all other creatures—THE MIND, the human-mind being one part of that larger whole. If we can get a handle on that, everything else will fall into proper alignment, and we will survive.

If you haven’t yet watched the Netflix documentary (The Social Dilemma), it is high time you did. There is no other informative communication I am aware of that emphasizes the critical importance of finding your anchor within. We are now living in a sea of turbulent manipulation, waging a losing battle with AI machines designed to draw us into a spider web, from which there is no escape. And with no anchor, we will all be swept into a collective nightmare. Our progress as a human society has risen to the point leading to anarchy and ultimate destruction. This excellent film tells you the truth when few others will about just how lost we are and paints a terminal annihilation portrait. It is a must-watch!

Western civilization has taken us a long way toward the “good life,” but it has, at the same time, brought with it our lack of being mindful of the most important of all: THE MIND, that has given us those good things. To make needed corrections takes us to the other side of the earth and the wisdom that has evolved there (and largely ignored here). 

A towering giant of Eastern Wisdom was Bodhidharma—the man credited with starting the movement of understanding THE MIND. This credit (given the long view) has been misplaced since what he “started” goes back many thousands of years preceding his life. The name of that movement has, like everything else, changed, but the codified essence has remained the same. What began as dhyāna (going back in recorded history, and probably earlier) changed into Chan (Chinese Buddhism), eventually into Zen when the movement traveled to Japan and then to the rest of the world.

Zen is not, nor has it ever been, a religion (even though it is known as Zen Buddhism). Instead, it is the most thorough-going exploration of THE MIND ever conceived. Properly named, it should be called “Buddhist Zen” because this was the method employed by The Buddha to realize his Enlightenment (which Westerners mistake for the European form—The Enlightenment that occurred in Europe during the intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and continues to this day. That form of enlightenment was centered on rational thought. Enlightenment in the East was the opposite: Not thinking—that aspect, common to all sentient beings—intuition, which goes to the core of THE MIND, what we all need to grasp if we wish to survive.

In the West (going back to the Greek philosophers), we consider the mind as thoughts and emotions, never considering that these aspects must originate from somewhere. And that, “somewhere,” is THE MIND, not my mind nor yours. THE MIND is not up for ownership. It can’t be possessed or even found through rational thought since it is the source of what follows—thoughts and emotions. All sentient beings share this mind, along with us humans, and once understood, brings about a radical transformation needed to save us all.

Bodhidharma said this about understanding THE MIND: “If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both. Those who don’t understand, don’t understand understanding. And those who understand, understand not understanding. People capable of true vision know that the mind is empty. They transcend both understanding and not understanding. The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding.”

For Westerners, a translation is needed. Trying to grasp THE MIND with the rational mind is like a fish trying to grasp water, forgetting how to swim, and not even aware of water. Both reality and THE MIND are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp. What does Bodhidharma mean about “understanding understanding?” He means just that: “Both reality and The Mind are beyond our limited rational faculties to grasp.” True vision must arise from the more fundamental aspect: where the rational faculties originate (where the anchor within resides). And from that aspect, we all have the same untapped potential to realize that nothing—absolutely nothing, can exist apart from the opposite, in this case, “not understanding.” Neither understanding nor not understanding must come from a MIND that is neither.

When we understand that, then only will we have the true vision—a vision that links all sentient beings together as a single unified being—THE MIND that is empty of all either/or. True vision is unified, and it isn’t. It is ultimately unified (realized through intuition) in an empty MIND, and it is divided rationally. Humans are so excessively left-brain, rationally oriented that we are quickly becoming so smart it is killing us to our discredit. Think about that. Better yet, don’t think about it. 

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”—Bodhidharma

Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death.

Everyone has days when they think to themself, “This really sucks. How did I get myself into this mess?” For no apparent reason, life just seems to take a sharp turn, and we find ourselves in the off-ramp. 

Actually, there is a reason but not one that is readily apparent. The reason is contained in the dharma teaching of the Wheel of Life and Death leading to suffering, which we surely do when such a day hits us. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this wheel has another side called the Wheel of Dharma. One side explains how we got ourselves into this mess. The other side tells us how we can find relief (emancipation). The teaching says that both sides are reflections of karma—bad karma on one side, good karma on the other. Today we’ll look at the bad news, and tomorrow we’ll end on a positive note. 

So how does karma work? Karma spreads much like an indiscriminate virus. It affects everyone, spreads like wildfire, and has nothing to do with hopes, prayers, or anything of a religious nature.  It’s like this: Picture yourself on a dusty road on a sweltering and sweaty day. Every step you take, you’re kicking up dust, which goes airborne where it sticks like mud to your sweaty body and enters your mouth and lungs. In a nutshell, that’s karma: Cause and effect. You kicked up the dust, and you suck it in. No dust, no sucking. Of course, there are other people on that same road, and all of your dust kickings migrates to them as well. So not only do we have an impact on our self, but we impact them also. They don’t like it, and neither do we, but the responsibility lies firmly with us. We did the kicking.

Now the best thing is to not kick up the dust in the first place, or spread a virus. The second best thing is to own up to what we’ve done and make a wrong, right. Avoidance is always the preferred route, but sometimes kicking dust (or catching a virus) is unavoidable, and we make wrong without the intention to do so. There are, of course, some who seem to take sadistic pleasure in doing wrong, but as the saying goes, “What goes around, comes around.” So that’s karma, but now let’s see how we get on this dusty road in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to walk along a dustless path? That’s tomorrow’s story. Today is about viruses, dust, and grit, and mud in the mouth.

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha taught about many causal links. The most critical causal link pertains to the dust (my metaphor). Here is how this link plays out. It starts out with branches high up on a tree of misery. It is called The miserly mind, greed, and jealousy, which comes from a trunk of ignorance, which in turn arises from indolence, which comes from inversions of truth (four inversions), which comes from a taproot called doubting mind. These causal links are like a tree. At the bottom is a root that grows upward into branches of bad karma.

So let’s start at the bottom (the taproot), which the Buddha says is doubting mind. This root is easy to understand, given our nature as sensory beings. We trust what we can lay our hands on and question what we can’t. Form is tangible stuff. Emptiness is not. We see a form and think, “that’s it—nothing else.” It takes a leap of faith to go beyond form and accept emptiness. Most of us are remiss in taking that leap since a leap into the unknown is fraught with fear. That’s doubting mind.

Doubting mind morphs into the four truth inversions. What are the four? They are Bliss/Suffering, Eternal/impermanent, Self/non-self, and Pure/impure. These are like four two-sided coins with truth on one side and inversions on the other. Without the leap out of doubting mind, we find our self distorting truth (inverting it). We imagine that everything is impure, egotistical, impermanent, and full of suffering. After all, isn’t that one of the Buddha’s premiere teachings—life is suffering? Yes, it is, but that is just the first of four noble truths, and if we stop there, we miss the pay-off: there is a way off this dusty path. Doubting leaves us stuck with these four inversions. Acting on faith leads us to a better path with no dust (tomorrow).

Okay, let’s move along to the next link in the chain: indolence. There are a couple of definitions of indolence, (1) avoidance, and (2) fear stemming from a lack of confidence. The first definition could apply for a host of reasons. Avoidance is what we might do when we are persuaded of a particular point of view. We know this condition as denial or clinging or close-mindedness. It occurs when we are attached to something and are not open to other possibilities, even when those other possibilities could positively restructure our lives. The second way of considering indolence is fear, with a similar outcome. A lack of confidence can be like an excuse for doing nothing when something needs to be done. Knowledge is not an issue. Doubt-based fear is. Which leads to hesitation and inaction. In either case, indolence keeps us stuck because of doubt. Because of indolence, we stay on that dusty path absolutely convinced that it is the only path, and we are just going to get used to it.

Now we’re moving up the tree and starting to branch out. Next comes ignorance. When we cling to a particular perspective, come Hell or high water, we are subject to ignorance (close-minded). What started with doubt, transformed into avoidance, and that leaves us ignorant. On the other hand, when we leap out in faith, we discover what would otherwise not be possible, but that is tomorrow’s story.

Being close-minded and ignorant makes us cranky and produces a nasty attitude which the Buddha calls a miserly mind, replete with greed and jealousy. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? When we are persuaded that all is suffering with no way off the dusty path with endless mouths full of mud, we get possessive, greedy, and jealous. Those other folks seem to be getting ahead of us, the storms are coming and we better batten down the hatch. Nobody wants to be around a greedy miser who is defensive, possessive, jealous, and hostile. And guess what? We just defined bad karma and a lot of people we know of.

All of this from that evil tap root spewing up poison and growing a bad tree, which is called the Wheel of Life and Death. And the reason it is called that is because such behavior keeps producing suffering, which causes us to just keep on repeating until we get tired of the misery we create for ourselves and adopt a better way. But that better way violates everything we think we know but might be worth a shot. Who needs dust in the mouth? Tomorrow, a better path—The Wheel of Dharma. Now that we understand the Wheel of Life and Death, the opposite should be easy to explain (but hard to do).

Mea culpa

Immortality awaits all.

I have a confession, admittedly late, but “better late than never.” My disclosure arises from the convergence of my current senior stage of a decaying body and reading a book by RamDass: Still Here—Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying, in which he emphasizes an essential point (which should be obvious) that all of us will naturally experience aging, changing, and dying. Therefore, the nearer we are to the end of our “mortal house,” the more we need to appropriately shift our focus onto “embracing the immortal soul.”

And the reason for that appropriate shift is because, at the point of leaving our mortal house, whatever unfinished business we have (e.g., unresolved, unforgiving, righting wrongs, etc.) becomes the starting point of our next human incarnation. Karma either works for our mortality or against it. The components of the “karmic seeds” (Vāsanā (Sanskrit; Devanagari: वासना)) with which we die in the previous life determines the starting point (our lessons to be learned) in the next mortal incarnation. Therefore, since no-mortal-body can predict the future, none can, with any accuracy, say when that portal moment will come when the soul leaves and returns to God.

Every thought, every word, every action carries its’ own power. Karmic seeds contain an imprint from all cumulative past, thoughts, words, and actions. They can be positive, negative, or neutral. As mortals, every moment, we are experiencing the karma of the past and are creating karma for the future. That is one of the most fundamental premises of a reincarnation perspective: It is the soul (carrying with it karmic seeds) that migrates, activates, and determines the challenges for our next mortality. 

It is, therefore, imperative that we “put our house in order” each fleeting moment because until we pay our karmic debt during mortal incarnations, we will continue in various Samsaric forms, replete with suffering. Samsara is considered to be mortal, unsatisfactory, and painful, perpetuated through attachment and ignorance. The great paradox is that it is solving the suffering dilemma that leads us all to reach beyond mortality to immortality. No suffering; no motivation to reach beyond. So long as we stay locked in a state of denial, refusing to acknowledge our mortal flaws, the more bad karma we create.

The goal of mortal life is thus “…to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” And yes, I intentionally inserted a passage from the Bible (Philippians 2:12-13) into this karmic pattern because the pattern is transcendent to all religious venues. The wording may change from one religion to another. Still, the karmic message is always there, one way or another—a traveling soul, moving away from greed, anger, and delusion (characteristics of the ego) and toward Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever term you choose to represent the great cosmic sea of spiritual unity.

Why fear and trembling? Because to dissolve ego attachments, we must first confess our errors (most importantly to ourselves), and working through those issues is cobbled together with fear and trembling. We only resolve problems we acknowledge. Addressing our most profound, darkest failings requires that we surface them, face-on, (which the ego detests, choosing instead to deny any weaknesses). A person who claims to have no flaws, for certainty, has many, albeit perhaps unconsciously. However, conscious or not, it is impossible to live a mortal life without error. This acknowledgment comes as the very first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths—Conditional life is suffering. 

As a human race, we have acknowledged this with the expression: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” That’s a long-winded prelude to my confession—putting my house in order. My disclosure is that in contributing to this blog I have (out of ignorance and karma) been excessively preoccupied with my ego by quoting the work of other sages and seers in the pursuit of establishing “myself” as a well-read and thus wise teacher (with no credentials at all—A True Man With no Rank). I have forgotten a primary lesson of dharma attachment. And in my forgetful, ignorant fashion have become attached to the need to persuade you, my readers, with how wise I am. 

I wanted you to know that I knew what I was talking about. I saw it necessary to impress you with the wealth of my experience, reading, knowledge, and assimilation, thus enhancing my ego and, in the process, creating more bad karma—I have been shooting myself in the foot. That’s my mea culpa moment of critical awareness—Thank you RamDass. So now I must continue for the rest of this present incarnation, by freeing myself of the need to impress you and thus become more soul-real, sans impressions.

What I intend to do, from this point on, is to become more acquainted with my soul and begin to let go of attachments to my ego. It is the migration of the soul that reaches forward to freedom from suffering and to the end of this continuing process of almost endless affliction. And to…work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in me, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The nature of God is unconditional, whereas the nature of mortality is conditional. As I age, the more I can see just how provisional and precarious my ego and body are. As my mortality fails, with increasing infirmities, I draw closer to immortality. As “I” become weaker, God manifests greatly. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

“I” am moving closer to the ending than the beginning of this current mortal incarnation. The mortal aspect of us all is the part that ages, changes, suffers, and dies, and it is the house of the soul, which leaves our mortality on a metaphorical ship, sailing into the immortal sea of unity. It is the nature of immortality that lacks aging, changing, suffering, and dying. That is the goal of every soul, whether known or not. All souls are a piece of the fabric of unity (the ground of all being) that we call life, and all souls reach toward freedom. But once we attain freedom, we must let go of ego-attachments and begin relating to other mortal incarnations at the level of their soul instead of the level of our incomplete mutual natures (e.g., “egos”) which are always functioning out of karmic seeds and growing into plants of perceptible insecurity.

Mind

“He’s lost his mind.” “She changed her mind.” “I can’t make up

my mind.” We use the term “mind” in such an off-handed way that it’s rare to look at the concept closely, but it is impossible to be a serious student of Zen without considering how it is understood. So today I want to devote some attention to a thorough look at the “mind” from a Zen perspective.

We fail to consider that this conclusion results from a collaboration between the object and a process in our brain. In Buddhism, this collaboration has a designation called the Five Skāndhas—“Skāndhas” is a Sanskrit word which means aggregate or heap, and the five are (1) form, (2) sensation, (3) perceptions, (4) mental formations and (5) consciousness. None of these singularly is adequate to produce the conclusion of “rock.” And this is true for all objects, whether internal or external. This collaboration amongst these Skāndhas fabricates the illusion of solidity, and this illusion is the basis of “mind.” Consequently, Buddhism says that forms (objects) are “empty,” meaning that a form has no substantial existence, and if there are no forms to see, then a mind is not produced since “mind” is the result of this collaboration.

Because of the incredible advances made in neurological detection, it is now possible to validate what Buddhism has been saying for centuries. When we examine the brain with today's neurological tools, we can see that this Skāndhas view of fabrication is correct. Given this, it now makes sense that there is no substantial, independent objective anything, including the mental formation of a self (otherwise known as a “self-image”). Since everything is impermanent and in flux, when any one of these Skāndhas changes (which is all of the time), our “mind” reflects these changes. Thus the expressions above: (“He’s lost his mind.” “She changed her mind.” “I can’t make up my mind.” ) take on an entirely different meaning. In fact, the notion of a “mind” sitting between our ears is simply a convenient way of referring to our thoughts, which are in constant motion.

So the next step along this exploration is how this understanding affects the practice of Zen meditation. When we sit, we “see” mental formations and sense feelings wafting across our consciousness. When these formations cease, our mind goes away as well, and this cessation reveals MIND (which has no dimension or distinguishing characteristics)—the ground from which everything arises. 

The capacity of seeing must entail separation and life. An object, such as a mental image, may have separation but not life. Only a subject has life, but it too must have separation for seeing to occur (or hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking).

If it were possible for one person to completely merge with another person, there would be no sense of self and other—Only unity. At the manifestation level, there is what appears as duality—me vs. other, this vs. that, a thought vs. a thinker, etc. This level of reality (the level of manifestation) is the ordinary level where we notice ourselves versus our world. But this level is only possible if there is a separate level of unity, the ground from which manifestations arise. 

Because we only notice forms/objects, our subjective nature (Buddha-Nature) is never seen, yet this source ground is who we truly are. Through the process of Zen meditation, we couple this understanding together with our practice to experience both the illusions (e.g., images) and the ground from which they arise. This noticing, separated from what is noticed, allows the emergence of our true nature.

Nagarjuna—the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, referred to these two levels as “two truths” (Partial/conventional truths and sublime truths) and said that we learn about the sublime truths (which set us free) by way of the conventional/partial truths. In other words, we are forced to use the mental formations (which admittedly are empty) produced by the Skāndhas to fathom sublime reality. And until that happens, we are trapped in the illusion that what we experience is the totality of our existence.

The Basement

Many of my initial posts are building on a fundamental premise inherent in both Taoism and Buddhism—the premise of dependent origination. Simply stated, this is the simultaneous arising of apparent opposites. Death and life; Light and dark; Mother and child...Every dimension, observable or not. Nothing exists in isolation, and it is incorrect to think that one thing precedes another.

That premise is portrayed in Lao Tzu’s metaphorical relating to the primordial nameless and ten thousand things and is picked up and reflected as a Ladder and Wall in my posts. Since postings are sequential, with viewers entering various times, the reader may wonder what this “Wall” and “Ladder” are all about. Toward the objective of clarification, it would be helpful to the reader, to begin with, my initial post: “Digestion,” where the initial basement is laid.

This will be a common theme as I progress through the labyrinth of mystery and manifestations. It will be more useful to grasp the foundation before proceeding with interior decoration.