Charting Life.

In school, we all learned how to conduct research and chart the results. Nobody answers questions exactly the same, so some answers chart high, some chart low, and when we plot all of the answers, we can see a picture emerge that tells a story. We can even apply certain formulas to get a more accurate picture by “smoothing” the data and making projections based on what we learn. A good piece of research combined with properly done analysis helps us evaluate conditions and understand our world.

But look at how a chart is arranged. On one axis lies the range of variables being measured, and on the other axis lies a fixed frame of references, such as time or space. If our chart is really sophisticated, it might be a three-dimensional chart to get a more sophisticated picture. But whether two-dimensional or more, there is always a baseline that doesn’t move, so there is a constant by which we can map our work. If the baseline moved, as the data moved, there would be nothing learned.

When you think about it, this is a metaphor for how our mind works, and it must be this way. Otherwise, what we would see would just be a mish-mash of confused data: No picture. So how does this metaphor apply? Our true mind is the unmoving baseline, and moving data is our perceptible world. The variables data move. Our mind remains constant. If either of these were different (e.g., moving mind or constant data), the result would be inconceivable.

Now overlay the Buddha’s teaching on this map, and see what you get. Our unconditional, unmoving mind is joined irrevocably to our conditional and moving world. It is simple yet profound. It’s right there staring us in the face, but what can’t be seen is what doesn’t move. Rabbits learned that lesson eons ago, but we are still trying to figure that out.

Taste It

Frustration is a unique experience. Nobody likes it. Failure drives us nuts, and we can’t wait to be rid of it. And that acknowledgment is a vital awareness of moving forward down a path that leads to freedom. 

We don’t like it, and we are thus motivated to fix it. What few of us realize is that we are not really free so long as we live with a fundamental delusion: the delusion of thinking we know what is our mind, but in truth, we don’t. The simple task I gave you yesterday was the first step in moving you down the road to genuine freedom. So long as anyone believes they have already arrived at a destination, even if it is the wrong destination of misidentifying themselves as an ego, they will not move, and the result is more suffering.

What is ordinarily considered to be your mind are thoughts, images, and emotions but these are what’s produced by your mind. These three are the effect but not the cause. They have to come from someplace and that place is either your perceptible ego mind (not really your mind) or your real not-to-be found mind. If you want to find the source you need to turn this around and go backward instead of forwards. 

Acquisition is always the result of adding. When we subtract we return to the source where nothing is acquired because it’s already there in that space known as Śūnyatā, where we find nothing but is the source of everything. With nothing added or subtracted the source is complete. And that is why in the Heart Sutra, the Buddha said, Form (every-thing) is Emptiness (no-thing). When you find your true mind you find nothing but from that nothingness comes everything. It’s a profound mystery. 

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

While this may seem a paradox, it is the truth, which means that at the core of every single sentient being there is a buddha awaiting to be awakened. Nobody is an image or a thought (ordinarily considered the mind). Instead, you are the source of everything you wish to create. Every single being can create a heaven or a hell once they awaken their true minds. 

Until that point what we mostly create is an ego-centric hell. The other side of us all is this spiritually enlightened mind. It can’t be seen or understood by our thinking mind, but without that, we (the bodily part of us) couldn’t exist at all.

More than likely, before yesterday, you thought you were already at the destination of freedom because you thought you could find your mind. Now, through your own experience, you know you failed the test. I could have told you but, if I had told you, it wouldn’t be your own experience. And with experience comes motivation. 

Now you’ve tasted the bitterness of frustration, and now you’re motivated to solve the mystery. When you do solve it, you’ll discover that all of the time, you were in bondage and didn’t even know. And you will also know what freedom actually feels like for the first time. No longer will you be the slave of your ego. There is no better teacher than your own experience, either for the good or for the bad. Genuine knowledge isn’t abstract and intellectual. It is a real taste in your mouth that you can’t describe but know nevertheless.

Perpetual Motion

Our daughter tried for a long time to build a perpetual motion machine from her Legos. She wasn’t the first to give this a shot, but as attractive as the idea seems, no one has succeeded. The physical law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can’t be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form into another. In that conversion, the generated energy must never fall below the energy used to keep the motion going.

I’ve often wondered about the fit between a perpetual energy machine and the way our minds function. The parallels are insightful and instructive in understanding the meditative process. We have a machine within us that manufactures products that are then converted into energy used to fuel the machine, which produces more products in a never-ending feedback loop. The machine in question is the self, which for illustration purposes, let’s call a “thinker.” This thinker manufactures the products of thought, and these thoughts are used/converted by the thinker-machine into energy, which sustains the self-thinker. In a pure sense, this process is a perpetual motion machine. The critical question is whether or not the energy used is equal to the power generated?

Taking this process apart can be quite educational in guiding the meditation practice. What happens on the cushion? It goes like this: We sit down and turn on the machine. It begins to think. 

Actually, the machine is already on (it’s always running), but we just become aware when we sit down. Because we are mindful, we notice the object/thoughts. Because we have given our self, the instructions: (1) when we notice these object/thoughts, we neither cling to nor resist (forms of attachment), but (2) will instead concentrate on the breath. This works for a while, and then (3) the machine starts up once again. We repeat steps 1 thru 3, and then the cycle continues over and over. 

Some times we have a hard time even getting to the first step but instead are caught up in the pre-step #1 conversation because we are not sufficiently mindful to even notice the conversation. Other times we are mindful but not sufficiently concentrated. Yet other times, we can stay within the boundaries of steps 1 and 2 and rarer, yet the machine just stops with no more object/thoughts being manufactured. When that happens, the thinker goes on vacation, and we enter samadhi.

This machine operates according to a set of dynamic “instructions” within the five skandhas framework, which is worth considering. The first of the five is “form”: The physical/psychic/emotional capacities which constitute what sits on the cushion. The second is “feeling.” This includes sensations that our form feels with its functions. Accordingly, these feelings can be physical, mental, or emotional sensations. The third skandhas are “perceptions.” 

Ordinarily, we think of perception as being equivalent to sensing. It is hard to imagine sensing something which we don’t perceive (or vice versa). However, from a Skandhas point of view, perception includes a post-sensing aspect, which entails discrimination and judging; in other words, how we react to what we sense. We sense (become aware of) a particular object/thought, we vote on whether or not we like/don’t like the object/thought, and we move on to the fourth skandhas “will or volition,” where we choose how to react (cling or resist). 

And lastly, there is consciousness, what we could call mental state or mood. These dynamic instructions are operating continuously and are a critical aspect of what moves the “machine.”

It is not a given that these causal links must continue automatically in an unbroken fashion. In fact, the Heart Sutra tells us that these five are empty, which means that they don’t have a life of their own. They are causally linked, and they can be interdicted through mindfulness and redirected concentration. 

For example, a sensation in the knee is not pain. “Pain” is the result of the post-sensing aspect of discrimination, judging, and labeling. The feeling is just a sensation that we perceive, judge, label, choose how to respond, which then generates a mood. This entire chain of causal links occurs at lightning speed—so fast that it seems like a single thing, but it is not. 

When we sit and observe, we can see the separate links happening and realize that we don’t have to go along for the automatic trip. Try it the next time you sit. Observe the process and see if you can make a different choice. For example, if your knee is hurting, try to just stay with the sensation without turning it into a vote of “pain.” Just focus on the pure sensation and choose to not move. If you can cut the chain at this juncture, the remaining links will not materialize because they depend upon what occurs before their turn. For example, without the judgment of “pain,” there won’t be the next step of volition and without volition, no ensuing “mood.”

What this mindful/awareness/choice teaches us is that we can choose to alter our karma. We don’t have to accept our automatic instructions and the resulting karma that flows from our perpetual motion machines. Either we will run the engine, or it will ruin us.