Poisonous Children

In Buddhist thought, a poisonous monster lives inside each of us and it has three characteristics—greed, anger, and delusion (or ignorance). The name of this monster is our “precious” ego, the mythical surrogate we all create to identify ourselves. I say precious with tongue in cheek because this is the mother of all sorrow. 

It appears precious until we understand it’s phantom nature. It is who we think we are and we defend it to the death. Different religions refer to ego death as the necessary condition for final liberation—being set free to experience fundamental humanity. Christianity calls this experience being “reborn” (sadly misunderstood) and the mystical arm of Christianity refers to this state as “the dark night of the soul,” the darkness everyone must pass through on the way to freedom. 

The soul is a term, which is often used to describe the ego. When Gautama was enlightened he realized his true nature and came to understand that the ego was not real. He saw it for what it is: an idea rather than something real, and along with his enlightenment, he understood the source of suffering—the idea of ego. If you wanted to reduce Buddhism down to a single statement (which would be a gross devaluation) you could call it the solution for overcoming suffering. I’ll explain:

We have a sight challenge: We can’t see our true, immaculate self. The truth is we can’t see each other either. What I see when I look at you is your outer skin—call it a cloak. And since that is what we can see, we think of a person (including ourselves) as a body, only. But none of us is stupid. We know we are more than just a bag of bones. We know that there is someone inside that bag and we call that inside dimension by a name—“our self.” Unfortunately, this our self is just another cloak, an inside cloak that conceals our true identity. So why don’t we see this identity behind the cloak? The answer is simple (but not so obvious). We don’t see the real us because our true identity can’t be seen, but it’s there in spite of our sight challenge. If it weren’t there we couldn’t see anything because our true self is what’s doing the seeing and it’s called consciousness. Consciousness at its simplest is “awareness or sentience of internal or external existence.”

What can we see? We can see objects. What can’t we see? We can’t see the subjects. Anyone who has studied grammar is taught the difference between an object and a subject. If I write the sentence “I see myself,” the “I” would refer to the subject, and “myself” would be the object. But there is a subtle problem with such a sentence (and a clue). Is it possible for a subject to be an object? Isn’t that sentence illogical? Think about it. Either they are different or they are the same thing with an illusion of difference.

Our real nature is not an object, like a stone—which can’t see. When we objectify anything we devalue it, stripping it of fundamental humanity. We are not only objects. We are not an idea. We are real beings, an incarnate spirit with two dimensions, one part of which can be seen and one part that can’t. These two parts can’t be divided. If our spirit is removed we’ll just be a bag of bones. If our body is removed we’ll be a ghost. We may talk as if they can be divided but such thinking is delusional. And there is an inherent awareness in us all that knows this truth, but it is such a vaporous aspect that it goes beyond our detection. 

It is a conundrum, which produces the three, poisons of greed, anger, and delusion. Why? Because “We”—the real us—wants desperately to be set free and it makes us angry that we can’t find the solution! We are in prison—a prison of our own making—and we can’t find our way out, and the keys to that prison are held by Mr. or Mrs. Ego (the gatekeeper of our prison) who is extremely greedy; who wants to possess and defend; who clings to everything desirable and rebuffs everything deemed as undesirable. Our ego judges with a criterion of objectivity—what it can perceive. If I look good, that is desirable. If I look bad, that is undesirable. If you act well, that is desirable. If you act poorly, that is undesirable. We judge based on our capacity to perceive, not what we can’t perceive.

Since it is impossible to see the real us, we all create a surrogate identity that can be seen. And this surrogate is fabricated (clothed) with a vast wardrobe of ideas, judgments, and points of discrimination. We objectify ourselves and in the process strip ourselves of human dignity. Ego is like a hologram—an image in our mind (a self-image), which we watch with our mind’s eye. We can see this hologram twist and turn, to reach out and be reached at. It is amorphous and in constant motion, subject to both assaults, and adoration.

The ego hates to be assaulted (and become easily offended) and loves to be adored. When we are assaulted we naturally take offense and when we are adored, we love it and gravitate to the one who expresses love. We are yo-yos on the string of life. And you know what ticks us off the most? That we see this manipulation happening and seem powerless to stop it! And that makes us really sad or mad! And then we take the next step: we then learn to hate our self for being so powerless and vulnerable. 

The downward spiral—which in the grand scheme is a very good spiral. Why? Because it hurts so badly and we hate pain. Pain is really our friend. It tells us something is wrong that needs fixing and if we humans are nothing more, we are fixers and very inventive. But what is generally missing is motivation. Suffering supplies motivation.

Suffering is our friend. It is something we experience inside. It is not an outside condition. It happens inside—it is a response (an effect) not a cause. And who causes this response? Our suffering is not caused by another nor experienced by them. It is caused by our response, not by outer circumstances, which can never be altered. And who is behind our responses? Why the keeper of the prison keys—Ego (our surrogate self). Ego is the source of our sorrow; our suffering, and since it is the source, it is there we must turn for a solution. 

Our system is an amazingly delicate instrument with all manner of built-in sensors designed to warn us of impending disaster. When we are being affected by a virus we start to feel poorly and we go to the doctor. When we are not feeling well emotionally we also seek out a doctor. But sadly today’s doctors of emotions either drug us to not feel the pain or reinforce our self-image so that we think better of our ego. These approaches only partially help, but unfortunately, they work to remove our motivation to reach beyond the illusion and find our true substance. Consequently, we never remove the cancerous seed but instead just slap on another band-aid.

Ego is a toxic substance, that produces emotional disease, which is why these children of ego are called the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion are toxic children and the only solution to this poisoning is to vanquish the internal creator-mother—the ego and allow our natural goodness to emerge. The answer is not to bolster our self-image or anesthetize suffering but is rather to vaporize the mother—to see it as the phantom that it is.

Meister Eckhart—Christian Mystic and prophet (circa 1260-1329)—said:

“Humanity in the poorest and most despised human being is just as complete as in the Pope or the Emperor.” And we know what sort of clothing the Emperor wears—none.

Fundamental humanity is not flawed in any way. It is complete already. The flaw is what stands in the way of our human birthright that puts one head above another. At the ground level of our humanity, we are equal and good, whether Pope, Emperor, Buddha, or an average person.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

The Impossible Dream

I admire intelligent people and try to profit from their words of wisdom. Shakespeare is one of my favorites, and one of his quotes is a “go-to” for me: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” 

Now for the topic of the day: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Many wise and famous people have said as much…

• Voltaire: “The best is the enemy of the good.”

• Confucius: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”

• Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”

I know; I’m repeating myself and thus beating a dead horse, but I can’t escape my past (e.g., education and experience in the advertising business). While working within that industry, I learned an important and fundamental principle of persuasion: Frequency. 

The more a person hears the same message, the better the odds of breaking through barriers and making a difference. And this issue is important with significant barriers. And yes, I am aware of the psychology of the “Backfire Effect,”—The tendency for us all to dig in and defend an opinion that appears to be at odds with, and contradicts, opinion of our own. 

It is really tough to break through the barrier of tightly held dogmas for a simple reason: Egotism. It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature to resist admitting error since it seems to threaten our egos. That barrier is what keeps us all locked in, hunkered down, and ready to defend to the death (sometimes literally) our ideologies, preconceived notions, and biases. 

Those matters constitute adornments that define our egos: We become our ideas (or so it seems), and one of the most destructive, and instructive, ideas is this business of The perfect is the enemy of the good. That idea, without exception, leads to a lack of progress unless we can be persuaded that our pursuit is a Don Quixote quest of jousting with windmills and singing The Impossible Dream of perfection, or nothing at all.

Thoughts on Self Nature.

Over the years, having read, studied, and experienced the voice of enlightened people and considering my own, I have attempted to capture, with words, the essential nature of humanity and the opposite: Our corrupted nature. 

The latter has produced an eternity of evil and destruction globally, while the former has countered evil with goodness. I have personally experienced the transformation of self-destructive thoughts, words, and deeds into genuine benevolence. I have likewise witnessed the attempt to feign piety that clearly stood as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. People of the world seem to know that transparent evil is undesirable, and consequently, they try to conceal the heart of darkness with a camouflage of pretended allure. 

This effort, like the opposite of transparency, is affirmed by those who, similarly, play the same game. The pretenders flock together, as do those who choose to reveal a purity of heart, having nothing to hide. These two forces oppose one another and speak a different language.

But God would not allow me such relief, but instead brought back to me the more excellent relief of that magnificent young lady in the dawning of adulthood. It was then I found my true nature of completion and realized, contrary to what I had come to believe, that I was the essence of internal love that she alone had seen in me a half-century before. It was unquestionably a miracle and so clearly the act of a loving God that it was unavoidable to not see what had been there all along, but lay hidden beneath that sense of self-hatred. “Then I knew fully, even as I am fully known,” and at last, I came to understand the mature language of the heart that joined my heart with hers around the core of a unified, indwelling presence of God.

It has been my experience that the language of love, compassion, and tenderness is impossible to articulate with words. In contrast, the language of pretense and deception comes in convincing forms more difficult to detect, except to those who, by nature, have passed beyond words and found their true self-nature. To the former, the task is one of mime. To the latter, the charge comes naturally. The communication challenge for humanity is to find a way to bridge that gap to inspire the minds of those still lost, to a higher standard beyond these surrogates of truth, much like a teacher with advanced education and knowledge must employ with children, not yet schooled. 

Having once been an unschooled child, a teacher knows both the language of a child and the language of the heart. The opposite is not valid. It is as the Apostle Paul stated in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, 

“…where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 

Paul’s words, in essence,  are the same as the words of Meister Eckhart, the German theologian and philosopher who lived during the 15th century: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

While still a child having little maturity and life experience, lost to the voice of others, I defined myself as incomplete and worthless according to the opinions of those who appeared to hate me, for reasons I failed to understand. The result was I conformed to unworthiness and attempted the impossible of persuading both myself and those who’s voice I valued, that I was worthy of their affection and love. In essence, I did not love myself because I placed more value or their opinions than on my inherent completeness.

It took many years for this self-deception to fully ripen into the unnatural result of pure self-hatred, so thorough that I found no reason to continue living. The only contradiction to this perceived sense of self-hate was the pure, unselfish love that poured out of a magnificent young lady in the dawning of adult life. And that love, where our hearts beat as one, was lost to my own naïve and innocent error, thus driving the stake of self-hatred and associated guilt even deeper. 

The ensuing suffering I then experienced continued up the birth of my daughter, who seemed to come as a gift from God to show me through experience how to recapture selfless love again. For 20 years she, and I grew together within the realm of unconditional love, and when she was gone, I returned once again to the hell of self-hatred left with the whisper of the lost love of both my first love and my daughter. Again, I found no reason to continue living, sought the ultimate release, and readied myself for bodily death.

At long last, I understand the meaning of selfless love. It does not mean to sacrifice and give up what is of value. It means instead to lose the sense of an artificial and perverted self, shaped by the opinions of others and affirmed by my desire to be loved, to cast off the unreal that hid the real. By losing the artificial, I found the truth. And this true self-nature is united as a single purity of heart, not only with my first love and my daughter but with the breadth of humanity. 

True love needs no interpretation or indirect translation thru the medium of words. It is pure, recognizable, and when my eyes finally opened, I knew what I had previously known only in part. Then, at last, I experienced what Eckhart had said, “The eye with which God sees me is the same eye by which I see God.” Or, as the native Indians have said, “Before we can truly understand another person, we must walk a mile in their moccasins. Before we can walk in another person’s moccasins, we must first take off our own.” 

The old self-hatred had to fall away before I could see the new Self-love, and when it did, I came to know that the ideas I had previously held of myself as a false self, alienated from others, unveiled a true Self that united with God and the world. 

Thus selfless love is a love that loses the artificial and is replaced with the real. Selfless love is Self-full love that echoes, in a circular fashion from one heart to another. What goes forth comes from within. Which in itself is already joined with a passion that indwells the heart of another. And when that happens, there is no separation between your true self and the true self of another. That, to me, is the definition of genuine compassion: to experience the love and agony of your beloved, and they of you. You become echoes of each other, and your hearts beat as one.

Not an idea

It is hard to imagine how it is possible that anyone could not notice the intensity of frantic energy in our world today, directed toward greed and alienation. On the one hand, we seem determined to grab our exclusive share of a shrinking pie, and on the other, we discover a growing gap between ourselves and others. 

These are two sides of a common coin which is rooted in the illusion of an independent self. The base-line presumption, which drives this race of the lemmings, is that we are an idea—a mental image that we have agreed to call a “self-image.” Buddhism, long ago, established this as an illusion. 

Fundamentally none of us is an idea, but so long as we remain so persuaded, we are destined to operate from what comes along for the ride: Fear and alienation. The self we imagine is continuously vulnerable, desirous, and isolated. The presumption, centered in this mirage, is that it is necessary to become possessive to survive. And when we do, we end up taking our lot from the hide of others, which results in progressive alienation. 

A person who exhibits a strong need to possess is a challenge to be with. The implied message in such a relationship is “for me to be complete, I must carve off and possess a piece of you.” The answer to this identity crisis is not to become complete by shoring up a false image but rather to transcend the idea and find our true, always complete, substantial self.

Dressing up

An acknowledged cultural tradition is to dress for the occasion. We might wear our comfy and tattered clothing while lounging about the house, but we dress up to be more presentable when we go out. 

This is a reasonable social convention, and the result of that convention is that we all expect certain conformity for the smooth operation of social cohesiveness.

The norms of what’s acceptable change over time. When I was younger the norms were different. It was expected that when you were going to fly on PanAm you would dress up. Everyone did. Now it’s rare to see anyone traveling in style. The same set of expectations prevailed for going to church. Everyone wore his or her Sunday best. No longer.

When we see a police officer dressed in uniform we expect something. A military uniform likewise carries a certain message. We have many such uniforms that convey messages and that’s helpful. We say that you can’t read a book by its cover but we do so nevertheless. What’s on the outside is more times than not considered more important than what’s on the inside, and if we aren’t willing to go that far we at least assume certain things about the insides based on what we observe on the outside.

Styles change and our expectations change accordingly. Some styles change less frequently and we call such styles “classic.” But are there styles that never change?  Probably not. Even our sense of beauty changes. If we had lived in Europe during the time when Rubens painted, female beauty was considered to be portly, buxom ladies. Now young ladies want to be pencil thin.

Masquerades and pretense are common where duplicity is the standard and our culture is fundamentally duplicitous; divided by oil and water ideologies. We swing around like monkeys on a vine from one preference to another. The question is, why? Perhaps the answer is that we’re dissatisfied and tire of things that eventually stop working. Life becomes boring after wearing the same old clothes day after day. But maybe the answer is a deeper matter of not having a settled mind, constantly searching for, but never finding ourselves. In such a state of mind, churning is inevitable, no lasting stability.

Some people spend their entire life looking for and never finding stability, peace, or a genuine self-knowing. It’s a sad thing to never discover your own solid ground floor. I know. I spent most of my life in such a turbulent state of mind, always questioning and never knowing. And then I found Zen (or maybe it found me; I don’t know), and the constant harangue of questioning lead to the answer of who I am, have always been, and will never stop being. My true identity is no identity, and so, likewise, is yours. Here there is no dressing up or changing styles. This is the place of continuous tranquility, peace, and contentment. So what sort of dress is expected of Zen? Whatever I choose, but now the outside is simply a convenience to facilitate social glue. The inside of me just laughs at the game and goes back to sleep.

Self Esteem

Unfortunately, Zen practice can take on an esoteric quality with practical manifestations remaining unseen and not useful. 

Fathoming essential Buddhist truths can be abstruse, and incorporating these truths into everyday life is even more challenging. Our task is not to meditate endlessly toward no end. Meditation is intended to reveal our internal body of truth/bodhi (e.g., awakening). If it doesn’t accomplish that end, it falls short. 

Today I want to make an attempt to bridge this divide and underscore both a pressing current need and Zen’s answer, and my analogical tool for this attempt will be a tree:

A tree is an amazing plant. It grows from a tiny seed into a giant above-ground structure we can perceive. The “lifeblood” of a tree is the sap, which moves throughout the trunk and limbs, delivering essential nutrients from the soil. If any part were missing—roots, trunk, sap, or ground—the tree would not be a tree. All four parts are needed. From the outside, the roots are neither seen nor the sap; neither is the pathway through which pass the nutrients flow. Another vitally important, unseen-beneath-the surface phenomenon is how each separate tree is joined (through its roots) with other trees forming a symbiotic unity.  All we see is just the outward form—what is expressed.

In a sense, we are like a tree. We, too, have discernible attributes. Our outward form is clearly seen, and we have an inner world with psychic and spiritual attributes. And exactly like a tree, we have a ground (from where the nutrients arise) with undetectable attributes. The analogy works as far as it goes, but what is the application to everyday life?

In our contemporary world, there is an extraordinary attempt to fashion dust into permanence. Core beliefs are often equated with the identity of those who share such beliefs. And to present a perspective that challenges these beliefs is to challenge their sense of identity. When a person is firmly rooted in a tightly-held idea of who they are (good, bad, or unestablished), the psychological response will most likely be to hold tight to preconceived beliefs regardless of spiritual evidence. In such a case, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are at work. The result is reification (psychologically converting their imperceptible subjective being into a perceptible object and believing they are merely a bag of flesh and bones). Reification is often considered a sign that someone is thinking illogically, but irrationality is likewise understood as rational.

Specifically, this complex thrust reinforces and transforms something, which has no substance into something, which does. I’m referring to self-esteem. In so doing, we are functioning like a tree, which grows detached from the ground, suspended in thin air, but with perceptible attributes. This thrust is doomed to failure, but rather than allowing it to die a natural death, we attempt to shore it up with devastating results and consequences. We are rooted in turf, but our ground is spiritual rather than earth, yet this turf is unseen and to deny this link creates genuine problems. How so?

There are two primary sutras, which define Mahayana Buddhism and, therefore, Zen. They are the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. The fundamental message of both sutras addresses the true nature of the Buddha, and us, as both form (with definable attributes) and emptiness (without definable attributes), which sadly is a broadly misunderstood proposition. 

The common-coin understanding of emptiness is vacuity, which is not what emptiness means from a Buddhist perspective. What emptiness does mean is a lack of intrinsic, independent substance. In other words, things arise dependent upon time, conditions, and other things. This definition’s most basic expression is “form is emptiness”—every form; however, they may be defined. That notion is called dependent origination.

The majesty and ultimate power of this arrangement distinguished Mahayana Buddhism from all other spiritual/emotional forms and were the centerpiece of Nagarjuna’s ministry. He reasoned that if the dependent origination proposition had any validity, emptiness must itself be empty: Empty emptiness. This idea takes some digestion before it hits home.

The undeniable conclusion of dependent origination is that everything is relative. To relate to things that are empty of substance (such as a self), as if it had substance, is a doomed proposition. Everything at the conditioned level is subject to this conclusion.

Likewise, the conditional’s opposite is unconditional, not subject to relativity, defining attributes, or impermanence. But doesn’t this arrangement defy dependent origination? Indeed it does (almost), and here is where Nagarjuna shines. 

Empty emptiness means that dependent origination itself is empty (of independent, intrinsic substance), and the opposite which arises with dependent origination, is independent origination: The realm of the true Buddha otherwise know as the Dharmakaya (from the Sanskrit “Dharma” meaning truth and “kaya” meaning body=Body of Truth). 

Such Sanskrit principle seems to have little practical value to 21st Century people, but there is a realm with value, which is timeless and transcends all language. This is the realm of our own mind, which is not subject to artificial reinforcement and is readily accessible to everyone. Everybody has a mind (even though nobody can find it). We get hung up by names and thus lose the significance of the message. Zen Master Huang Po gave us a helping hand in unraveling the language. He said the Dharmakaya is the void, and the void is our mind; not what we ordinarily think of as mind manifestations, but rather the indefinable source (e.g., it is transcendent and thus beyond rational understanding).

What this means has vast implications for practical reality and self-esteem. The nature of a Buddha (Buddha-Nature) has three parts, two of which have definable attributes and are subject to conditions. The conditioned parts are the Nirmanakaya (physical body) and the Sambhogakaya (reward or spiritual body). These parts are born and pass away, and it is at this level where we experience everything—sadness, joy, and everything else; this is the tangible, physical form where transcendent wisdom is expressed. Within the conditioned realm, karma rules, and if that is the whole story, we are without hope because the conditional realm is governed by discrimination—forced to choose between one thing vs. another. 

Fortunately, this is not the whole story. The third part—the Body of truth—is the unconditional source and beyond karma (e.g., cause and effect). This is the true never-born, never-die realm of the Buddha (and us)—the basis of all life.

So if the “self” of the conditioned realm is vulnerable and insubstantial (without hope), what does that suggest regarding self-esteem? It simply means that a tree (and us) rests upon the ground, where unseen spiritual/emotional stability arises, and true life with genuine identity is found. To try to shore up the “dust” of an insubstantial self and convert it into a substantial self is an impossibility! But there is no real division between these two realms. There is only one realm with both discernible attributes and non-attribute attributes. We are one whole thing, not two, just as a tree is only one whole tree with both seen and unseen attributes. Our mind is not divided.

The result of this artificial shoring-up is much like trying to counter disease by destroying the immune system. An artificial self is a foreign body, every bit as toxic as a virus, and our immune systems are designed to rid us of these foreigners. This is a natural process that allows life to continue and flourish. A virus is very, very small, and can’t be seen without the use of a powerful microscope. 

On the other hand, an artificial self is quite discernible, albeit in a delusional way. It is so prominent that it over-rides and masks our true (unseen) nature, leaving us with a firm belief that we perceive ourselves as our true nature. The death process at the conditional level is painful. Since we don’t like pain, we resist or hold on for “dear life,” not realizing that this conditional death is critical to realizing our true, unconditional life. 

What most of us fail to see is that suffering plays a vital role in our own awakening. Bodhidharma told us, “Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and Buddhahood the grain.” We all hate to suffer, so we resist the lesson. This speaking manner sounds strange and esoteric, but regardless, it is a practical reality with vast implications. We fail to notice that our suffering occurs because we refuse to let die what must die and that emancipation can only occur through this death (of what is unreal, yet seen).

The bottom line for self-esteem is to allow nature to progress and let the artificial self die so that we can access our own body of truth—our primordial mind. It is like a snake that sheds its skin as it grows larger. When this “awakening” occurs, we realize that our power for transformation depends on what is our unconditional being/self. This true-body (without definable attributes) fuels and enlightens our conditions and guides our way through to wisdom/prajna. We are thus both conditional and unconditional—neither insubstantial nor substantial, but both. This is the Middle Way of the Mahayana—between linked together psychic substrate of both form and emptiness.