On Thanksgiving.

 

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

It turns what we have into enough, and more.

It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order,

confusion to clarity.

It can turn a meal into a feast, 

a house into a home, 

a stranger into a friend.

Gratitude makes sense of our past,

brings peace for today,

and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

—Melody Beattie. I don’t know her or her work, but what she said here is too good not to pass along to you on this day of giving thanks.

The power of “me,” and the power of “we.”

Flattening the curve.

A dear friend, from my time as a Mad Man on Madison Avenue, sent me the image to the right. I responded by saying, “The power of me must first decrease before the power of we can increase,” and suggested the curve is upside down to allow “me” to bottom-out.

The point of those posts is the same as nearly every post I’ve written: Within us all lives the ineffable, indefinable true nature that unites us—The We. If we don’t discover it on our own, the virus will do it on its’ own by removing the “Me’s.” (not a word, nor in truth, a reality).

Nature is having a field-day with COVID-19 since the virus is indiscriminate, affecting everyone without preference for political affiliation, ideology, measures of intellectual acumen (or not), intuitive capacity, or any other criteria that define and keep us opposed from one another. It doesn’t read. It doesn’t calculate, speculate, or articulate. It does one thing only, supremely well—finds and infects a willing host. It is a traveling guest seeking an immovable host and reminds me of several posts I’ve written previously: “Guests and Hosts,” “Perpetual host; Holy ghost,” and  “Perpetual Motion.”

Transitions

Which way to go?

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”—Alexander Graham Bell.

In a lifetime we go thru many transitions, beginning with dependency as a child, progressing into independency, and then returning to dependency again in old age. We thus move from need thru want and back to need again. Moving through these transitions can feel disorienting and filled with crises. I am now in the autumn of my mortal life, and like all mortal beings was born and will die one day. However, during my life-span I’ve picked up some bits of wisdom that allow me to not fear death and to welcome crisis.

The first bit concerns the Chinese language which is composed of two parts. One part deals with surface stuff and the other part is concerned with meaning. A word in English, such as crisis, means something simple like “danger” but in Chinese it means both danger and opportunity, at the same time: One door closing and another opening.

It’s human nature, as we transition from one relationship foundation to another, to experience crisis, interpret it as danger and react in ways that destroys what was, in order to enter into a new foundation, sort of like needing to clean out a closet before hanging up new clothing. It is neither good nor bad but we can see it as only loss unless we are careful and understand what is happening.

Another bit of wisdom I collected during my Zen days, concerns the process of moving through these doors. It feels threatening to leave one known-thing behind (even if it doesn’t serve us) and leap into the unknown. And then we go through a cycle, that begins with understanding our deepest human nature and grasping a principle not well known in the Western world. That principle is called “Dependent Origination.”

It is a foundational principle of everything and says simply that nothing exists independently. Independence Day is a delusion: Something our leaders desperately need to keep in mind as they make international trade deals. Responsive feedbacks can be a killer! When one thing comes into existence, the opposite comes into existence at the same time and place. There are two sides to everything. Nothing lacks perceptible qualities and thus can’t be seen. Why? Because anything that is unconditional, like nothingness (e.g., lacking conditions) has no discriminate properties. Only conditional things have discriminate properties. Our outer, mortal nature is perceptible, but our inner immortal nature is not. 

Immortally we are whole, complete, and perfect already, and is the unseen part of you and me. Immortality is our spiritual core and it is the everything/nothing part of you and me. And furthermore, mortality and immortality are irrevocably joined together. The union can’t be broken just like an up/down union can’t be broken. If we tried to do away with one side, the other side would cease to exist, at least conditionally.

The father of Zen, Bodhidharma, cast this relationship between the seen and the unseen in his Wake Up Sermon as follows:

“What mortals see are delusions. True vision is detached from seeing. The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn’t stir inside, the world doesn’t arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.”

The conditional part of anything is divided between polar opposites and subject to cause and effect (e.g., karma). The unconditional part is unified and not subject to anything. Conditions change. Immortality (e.g., no conditions) doesn’t change.

Why do we suffer, and find it hard to know what is true? The Buddha and ancient yogis boiled it down to what was known as “kleshas”⎯Sanskrit, meaning causes of affliction. And there were five inter-related kleshas, the first of which was ignorance of our true reality, believing that the eternal is temporary, the pure is impure, and pleasure is sure to be painful. This false representation of reality was understood as the root klesha that produced the other four. When our true reality is experienced, we are set free from mental bondage we don’t even know exists. And when our understanding is distorted, the other four kleshas follow, and they are:

“I-am-ness”⎯The identification of ourselves with our ego. We create a self-image of ourselves that we believe is us, but it is not us. And this misidentification results in three mental poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance.
“Attachment”⎯The attraction for things that brings satisfaction to our false sense of ego-self. Our desire for pleasurable experiences creates mindless actions and blind-sighted vision. To a narcissist, this seems perfectly normal. When we can’t obtain what we desire, we suffer. When we do obtain what we desire, our feelings of pleasure soon fade and we begin our search for pleasure again.
“Repulsion”⎯The opposite of attachment; aversion towards things that produce unpleasant experiences. If we can’t avoid the things we dislike, we suffer. Even thinking about unpleasant experiences produces suffering, which lies at the root of PTSD. I recently went through this on the 4th of July when all of the painful memories of my war experiences came rushing back, full force.
“Will to live”⎯The deepest and most universal klesha, remaining with us until our natural, mortal deaths. We know that one day we will indeed die, yet our fear of death is deeply buried in our unconsciousness.

There is no remedy to this cycle of suffering without first dealing with the number one klesha—that of understanding our true, unified reality. When, and if we do, then the other four become unraveled and fall apart.

What I’m trying to say is this: The real part of you is the same real part of me; there is no difference, and it is that part that goes through all transitions, even the one of mortal death. It is our spiritual being, living within our mortal shell. Reality can’t be anything less than whole, complete and perfect—which by the way does not mean without mortal flaw, at least not in the original language. Perfection means “arrived, or the end result” and when anyone arrives at this understanding of our true, unchanging nature, we discover we have never left and there is nowhere to go without being there already.

Closing one door, in transitioning, is not to be feared. It is to be welcomed because without closing that door, we won’t go through the one that is always open to us. I know it is hard to let go of what was (the past) and getting old (which really sucks, mortally) requires that we adapt and change away from want and accept, without complaint, need. I am now fully in my mortal autumn and am very clear about mortal needing.

I keep a poem by Rumi pinned to my refrigerator door to remind me of how to go through the mortal crisis. It is called The Guest house.

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

Lessons from a hurricane—The great paradox.

Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise.

Complacency and apathy are indeed comfortable. These attitudes lull us into the illusion that all is well when the wolf is near our door. Disasters may fall upon others but not us. Just when we think all is well, the storm of change comes upon us. 

We so wanted the security of eternal bliss, but it rushes suddenly away like a hurricane through our fingers, ripping our pleasure apart and leaves us with a devastated spirit. All spiritual traditions address this looming catastrophe, yet we assume it won’t happen to us. In 1 Thessalonians 5, the Apostle Paul wrote,  

“…for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

What is this “day of the Lord?” Many would argue it is the final day of reckoning when we must stand before God and be held accountable for our actions. Judgment seems to be the ultimate form of justice that will at last prevail, or so we’ve been led to believe. However, there is an alternative that is worth considering.

An aspect of being human is to think that our way alone is secure while all others are in jeopardy. There is a psychological term to explain this. It’s called either optimism or normalcy bias and is central to the nature of self-destruction. While in such a state of denial, we justify our choices because of our self-centered sensed need. Destruction is someone else’s problem, but certainly not ours. A viral pandemic will strike others, but not us. Our attitude is governed by a self-understanding that appears to keep us apart from others, secure in our sense of superiority. Today there are many who choose to live in states of denial, and they will discover too late that, contrary to belief, they are not apart. What we choose collectively affects us all, and this is made clear when amid a hurricane that indiscriminately rips everything apart. 

While in such a state of mind, we are sure that, given our sense of self as unique and special, we are above the suffering of others. But all too often, we make choices we are not proud of because we misidentify as someone unworthy, far beneath the unrealistic standards of perfection we set for ourselves. Or we may do the opposite and imagine that we alone are superior. The moment we awaken from our sleep of self-centered ignorance is our personal day of reckoning, our “day of the Lord.” At that very moment, we discover that we are no more special than anyone else, yet they and we are pure of heart. Before that moment, we lived in a state of complacency and delusion, sometimes called normal.

The very first of the Buddha’s Four Nobel Truths explains the nature of suffering, and it has three aspects:

• The obvious suffering of physical and mental illness, growing old, and dying;

• The anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing; and,

• A subtle dissatisfaction pervading all forms of life, because all forms are impermanent and constantly changing.

The second of his truths is that the origin of suffering is craving, conditioned by ignorance of the true nature of things (most particularly ourselves). The third truth is that the complete cessation of suffering is possible when we unveil this true nature, but to do that, we must first let go of what we previously thought. And the final truth is the way to this awakening: the Eight Fold Path. What we discover along this path to a higher level of consciousness is the same driving force of suffering that moves us out of ignorance and towards awakening: the first truth. It is both the cause and the compelling force of change. 

“Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.”—Phaedrus, circa 15 BCE

“May the flawed prevail over the wicked.”

It may very well be that I’m writing this post for nobody but myself. Previously I participated in various social media sites that helped to spread my words until I learned my personal information had been hacked, and I withdrew. 

Undoubtedly this vastly reduced my readership, but the price just became too high. Consequently, here I sit writing concerning a matter that is important to me, and hopefully, others who may never read these words.

So what’s the burning issue that draws me this morning? The headline gives you a clue, and a part of my message came from columnist Kathleen Parker, writing for the Washington Post—a publication I admire, to which I subscribe—most recently about this issue of something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. Obama expressed the idea more eloquently than I in his speech following Katrina. He said, “Nobody gets to hold the American economy hostage over their own ideological demands.” My rendition of that idea is one of balance: We ought not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If that seems obscure, I’ll put it in different terms: Who amongst us meets the criteria of absolute perfection (except, of course, the hypocrite who lies not only to others but most importantly him or her self)?

Far too often in today’s world, we ignore the majority of good a person does and paint them with a brush of minority flaws. Maybe that’s what sells newspapers: The sensational and lurid, but it ought not to be what defines a person. What lies in a person’s heart and soul should count for more than their errors of execution. What leads us down this path to Hell is the flawed ideology of dogmatic inflexibility and self-righteous denial of our own flaws and the eager rush to judge others with a yardstick that measures only the impossible. When we toss aside the major good and dwell on the minor exceptions, we establish a standard that we will one day regret.

“May the flawed prevail over the wicked.”

Reality and perfection.

I am a subscriber to an email newsletter from Windmill, the header of which says: “You do not need to be ashamed of being imperfect. We were all made that way. You do not have to be ashamed that it’s so hard to work with your imperfections: the very tools you have for doing this are imperfect. We are all truly doing a difficult thing in being human.” 

I enjoy Windmill and think it is helpful in many ways. However, I want to address an essential point in this post within their header: “You do not need to be ashamed of being imperfect.” Due to some fortunate education, which others may not have been afforded, I learned to read Koine Greek—the language used to write the New Testament of the Bible and discovered much of value, not the least of which is how perfection was understood and defined way back then and has continued to find it’s way into modern culture.

The word “perfection,” properly defined in Koine Greek is not some abstract notion of being without flaw. The word (and it’s definition) is enlightening. The word for perfection is teleos and means complete or finished. Aristotle apparently said, “‘Nature does nothing in vain.’ So far, there’s no teleology to explain why you haven’t left the couch for several hours.”

Unfortunately, we still cling to the incorrect idea of being without flaw. I do agree it is impossible to be flawless living as a mortal. However, that is a side issue to what I want to convey in this post, which is reality. Until we get that issue right it doesn’t matter how we understanding anything, perfection included. 

So what is real? Those locked into the physics only, perspective, define reality as tangible, measurable phenomena (in other words objects known through the senses rather than through thought or intuition) or alternatively, a temporal or spatiotemporal (e.g., belonging to space-time) object of sensory experience as distinguished from noumenon. 

From this understanding, we can glean two essential points: There are measurable phenomena and noumenon (a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes). Noumenon goes by various names, among them Suchness and/or Thusness. Both terms arise from mystics, such as The Buddha or Meister Eckhart, as well as anyone who has plumbed the depths of consciousness to their ineffable core to find the true nature of reality—the basis, or foundation of all things (phenomena).

To repeat myself, what’s real? The realm of phenomena is physics based, and the realm of noumena is metaphysics based. Therefore there is a world, subject to perception (which we naturally assume as all there is). Does that make one right and the other wrong? Not at all. We humans are a mixed bag of both a physical, tangible, perceptible body (our house) and a metaphysical, intangible, unseen noumenal soul.  

Reality is thus like a coin with two sides (heads and tails) and perfection (completion/perfection) entails moving on a pathway leading to an awakening of that which is undetectable, yet the basis of all things. And when, at last, we awaken, it changes everything and we see with new eyes the two-fold nature of ourselves and others, one part of which is complete and the other part is a work in process— birth, change, growth and ultimately death of the “house” with the soul (which never dies) released to move on along the ultimate pathway to indwell another house.

“When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” and, “My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”—Rumi

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.

The rule of what's real?

Image via Wikipedia

More than anything else, Buddhism is a practice of reality. What is real? Are things exactly as they are, without addition or subtraction? Or perhaps they are incomplete and need further embellishment and refinements, which we call discrimination. 

Do we believe we can refine what is already perfect—that without our ego-centric preoccupations, reality is needful? Within the true mind, all Buddhas, all-everything is complete, pure, whole, perfectly integrated without division and alienation, which we refer to as unity. Nothing within that realm is lacking or needful.

And yet we exist, apparently as separate individuals with no discernable link to other life forms. It is a profound paradox that, on the one hand, seems eminently reasonable and, on the other hand, insane. Dependent origination is supremely flawless. Nothing comes into existence alone, out of nothing. As soon as one thing arises, another arises at the same time. Light and dark arise together. Up and down arise together. Good and evil; strong and weak; man and woman; mother and child; thinking and thinker—everything is originated dependently. Nothing escapes this provision. And yet our rational, thinking mind tells us otherwise.

So what is real: The gilded lily or just the lily? You see, there is the essential dilemma: We are beings who think, reason, and imagine. And these functions are extremely useful in everyday life. But these are just tools we use for abstracting, manipulating, and imagining life. Tools are not life. They are tools.

When we use mundane logic within the framework of the toolset, certain rules apply. One number plus another number equals a particular sum. Two plus two always equals four, and it doesn’t matter if you speak Chinese, Russian, or English. 

Mundane logic is universal. When we operate within this abstraction box, we agree to play by defining the box. But there is another form of logic that transcends abstraction and is called “supra-mundane” logic with a different set of rules that contains (but is not limited to) mundane logic. It is impossible to solve certain problems within the abstraction box because of the fixed rules that define its existence. 

Take the thinker/thinking problem, for example. How can there be thinking without a thinker who thinks? This problem can’t be solved with mundane logic, and the reason is that both thinkers and thoughts are abstractions—imaginary. If both are abstractions, there is no place for reality to alight. At least one of the two must be real to solve the problem, and when that condition applies, the “rules” of abstract limitations are broken. 

And here is the secret: Dependent origination rules, not abstraction. This overriding rule says that abstraction must be balanced with reality. It takes something real to abstract. Abstractions produced by other abstractions are a mirage. A thinker is an abstraction, and a thinker’s product is just an extension of the unreal abstraction. In truth, there is no thinker and, thus, no thinking. Both are the products of the imagination and thus have no permanence. Everything in temporal life is constantly changing.

Reality is understood in different ways. The most popular way depends upon tangible measurability. Physics completely embraces this understanding. A different metaphysical understanding is permanence. From the perspective of mortal life, nothing is permanent and must be seen as unreal. Life as we know it is both temporal and permanent. One aspect is tangibly measurable (form), and the other aspect is permanent yet unmeasurable (emptiness). How can something wholely empty, by itself, be transformed into a form unless it is paired with a form? Abstractions and reality arise together (dependent origination). These are just variations on the theme of form and emptiness. Form is a manifestation of emptiness just as an abstraction is a manifestation of reality. It is reality that is thinking, not an imaginary thinker. This is what Bodhidharma called “Mind essence”—the co-joining of form and emptiness.

“Mind essence” is a challenging notion to wrap our thinking around since thinking is about abstractions, and this “Mind essence” is authentic yet unseen. We lust for forms of reality to put our hands and thoughts around, but the mind doesn’t allow either form of grasping. The odd thing is that we use our minds continuously without defining what, where, or how the mind exists. If we decided, for even an instant, that we wouldn’t think any longer until we grasped the “what, where, and how,” we would be dead in a flash. So we don’t think about the mind. We use the function without knowing how it functions. We don’t need to know how it functions, just that it does.

In the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra the Buddha said we know things two ways: Either through outer signs or through fathoming. To know something through outer signs is like seeing smoke and deducing fire. We don’t see the fire but know it’s there because smoke and fire are linked through dependent origination. It is the same with the mind. We don’t see the mind, but we know it’s there because we use it. This is an example of touching the real through abstraction. To know something through fathoming is to know directly, by-passing abstractions. The first—outer signs—is an example of mundane logic. The second—fathoming—is an example of supra-mundane logic. We don’t know how we know; we know that we know.

So what is real—in the fullest sense? We are here in bodily form. That is an undeniable fact of tangible verification. That’s a part of what’s real. The body is born, grows, becomes attached, suffers, gets old, and dies. That’s a part of what’s real—tangibly verified. What is not tangibly verified is what we can’t see. We can’t see what moves us. We can’t see the mind. We can’t see the spark of life that activates or originates us. We can’t see beyond the grave. 

Yet without these unseen dimensions, which we use every moment throughout life, the body couldn’t function and move. How can we deny these dimensions just because we can’t see them? They, too, must be a part of what’s real. Whatever name or names we use to convey and communicate about this unseen dimension is not relevant. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We can’t see the fragrance, but it smells sweet nevertheless. This is another way of seeing the unseen.