Going and Coming

Growing up, life was simpler and didn’t require thinking too much about my place, or my country’s place in the world. 

That was a long time ago and much has changed. Now life is not so simple and requires much thinking about both matters. Nothing should be assumed anymore, not even the nature of our existence.

I tend to see things through a philosophical lens and want to understand how disparate pieces fit together. What I’m about to write now follows that tendency and starts very, very small and simple but gets quite big, and important (at least to me). I’ll wax on, seemingly to nowhere important, and then state some obvious and important matters to consider.

When I look out upon the universe (very big) I, and everyone else, can perceive and understand things due to a simple construction, which we call discrimination—the ability to discern differences. We can only know and understand anything because of this. Up and down define one another. Same thing for In and Out, Light and Dark, one person compared to another person; a piece of steak vs. a hamburger. If there were no differences (say just a void and endless space) nobody could discern or understand anything at all, first of all, because we wouldn’t exist and secondly because we must have contrast and difference to make sense of anything and everything.

If you wanted to sum up this matter you could do so with two very simple concepts: context and contents and then this principle called dependent origination. The first of these demands that everything (contents) exists within a context. Both can, and do, change all the time. As you travel in your car from point A to point B you are moving through space/time. Mr. Einstein helped us to see that space and time are locked together as a single thing, rather than two separate things: space/time. 

As we move toward point A the scenery is changing and so is the car. Maybe you don’t notice the car changing at the moment but I assure you if you compared your now car to your same, yet future car 20 years from now, you’d see the changes clearly. All of us experience the same thing. If you have any doubts about that, try going to your 50^th High School Reunion. Everything (all contents) is changing constantly but we presume that nothing is different. So that spells out the matters of contents and context.

The second of these: dependent origination, points out how things relate to one another and this happens in two distinct ways. The first is not so obvious but nevertheless important because it underscores connections. The very moment that we introduce the notion of “up”, “down” automatically comes into existence. Same thing for chickens/eggs, good/evil, or anything else. These, apparent opposites come and go as pairs. The second dimension of dependent origination concerns sequential feedback loops, which are everywhere without limit. For example consider the water cycle. Heat from the sun warms bodies of water, which vaporize and rise, becoming clouds, containing water vapor. When the water vapor is sufficiently cooled it condenses and falls back to earth as rain or snow, which then melts and the cycles keeps on repeating endlessly. 

Apply more heat and the situation changes, radically. Then water is baked out of every material thing, rises into the atmosphere (leaving dry stuff below, prone to burn readily) and redistributed to other places where floods devastate wherever it comes down. 

This principle is everywhere in our world, from an interior level to interpersonal relationships to international ones and we talk about this as “What goes around comes around.” Doing good, comes back good (And the opposite).

So much for the waxing. Now let’s get practical. The implication of combining of these two, has profound meaning for how we live together. So far we’ve chosen to pit ourselves against our fellow human beings apparently persuaded that we are superior to others and they are incidental to our prosperity. But wait: how is it possible to logically claim self-sufficient independence? 

We may indeed work harder, be more intelligent, manage our money better, but how could we have done that without the support of others? Did we build our own bridges? Construct our own roads? Establish necessary infrastructures? Teach our own children? Create our own healthcare systems? Mine our own raw materials? Establish and maintain a viable political system (which is looking less viable daily) that supports stability and economic prosperity? Such things are not possible. And to pretend that we can deny these contributions without appropriate compensation is just plain ignorant, and ultimately the same as shooting ourselves in the foot.

How about the bubble we all live in together (otherwise called The Environment)—The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat? What kind of insanity leads us to believe that we can pollute it all with GMOs, pesticides, herbicides (and whatever other kind of “cides” imaginable, which of course means to kill something, us included), airborne toxins that poison our environment and assume that our children and we will not only survive but also prosper? All in the name of earning more financial profit? This is madness and if not changed will surely kill us all regardless of socio-economic conditions. What goes around comes around. Small beginnings lead to big, yet quiet endings. 

Many years ago T.S. Elliot, in his poem The Hollow Men suggested that: “...This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” And it ends that way because of apathy. It takes work and continuous vigilance to keep abreast of changes in our world that affect our collective wellbeing. No longer can we go about our business as I did as a child. Our human culture has passed the age of innocence, never to return. And when we become aware of changes that are detrimental it won’t do to remain silent for fear we might upset someone’s bliss of ignorance. “...That is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” 

The dream of me and you.

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”[i]

Buddha is not a personal name. Instead it is a designation that means Awakened. Before awakening we all live in a deluded state of mind seeing ourselves in a very restricted way, separate and apart, not only from one another but from our source as well. We are imprisoned in a nightmare, thinking all the while that the dream is real. Only the nightmare doesn’t seem bad at times. So long as we possess what we desire, and believe in bright tomorrows, the dream seems acceptable and becomes normal.

But life has a way of disrupting our status quo of acceptable norms. One moment we are sailing along under an azure sky, the wind in our sails and warmed by the sun of happiness. In a heartbeat the sky darkens, clouds of despair cover the sun, darkness turns the seas into waves of chaos and our happiness is lost. Thus our normal becomes vacillations between highs and lows as what we desire comes and goes. This pattern repeats time and again and we react with the seemingly realistic expectation that this is life and it could be worse. The sun will come out tomorrow and behind every dark cloud there is a silver lining. After all, there are many in our world who have it much worse and if we are wise (so we reason) we will save during the good times for the bad times that will surely come. But life is tough and we find it difficult to store away needed reserves AND look to the needs of others. We have our hands full of taking care of ourselves and loved ones. There simply isn’t enough to do both and we rationalize that the lives of others would be better if only they would be more industrious. And without even noticing, justified greed and alienation set in and our heart becomes hard. Denial and defensiveness emerge, only to be followed by anger and hostility. There is me and mine versus others and theirs. This is our normal world, governed and dominated by an image we hold of extended family and ourselves.

For most, this is an acceptable norm, but for others the pattern leads to a quest to find a better way and this compels us to journey far and wide, to the bookstore and beyond. Perhaps we can read how others discovered the better way. Perhaps we can find that better way in exotic lands among the gurus who possess secrets. So we leave home and travel to wellsprings of expected wisdom.

I say all of this without judgment but rather with a deep sense of compassion. I’ve been to all of these places and gone through the same losing dreams, not knowing I was in a dream. I know of the frustration, the heartache, the disappointment and despair. I’ve tried, and failed, to hold the changing sea of happiness in my tight, possessive fist. So I know. That journey failed me and it will fail all who travel that pathway. And the reason why it fails is because the solutions are nowhere other than within our own hearts and minds. The solution is to awaken from that dream and discover the truth of our unity with others and our source. Wherever we go, there we are. It is as Tagore says, we go far and wide only to discover the answers within.

We are, as Hakuin Zenji[ii] said, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor, or, as Jesus taught in his parable of the prodigal son, eating from the trough of pigs while a banquet awaits us,[iii]or worried for our survival even though God cares for the lilies of the field.[iv] The log in our eye that clouds our vision is our own dream of egotism. Remove the log and we’ll be able to see what is always present, has always been present, and will never stop being present. Then we will see suchness—things as they are. Then we will see that, in spite of the nightmare of poverty, there is abundance. It is everywhere evident, because everything conceivable resides within our own mind. There is no separation between the outside and the inside. The gate is wide open, and there is no gatekeeper other than the one we imagine within our dream of untruth.

---

[i] Rabindranath Tagore
[ii] From The Song of Zazen by Hakuin Zenji, one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism. Born in 1686 in the small village of Hara, at the foot of Mount Fuji.
[iii] Matthew 6:27-30
[iv] Matthew 7:25-27

Truth, half-truths and the power of delusion.

“You can’t handle the truth.”

Over the years, due to personal experience, I have learned quite a bit about truth-telling and delusion. I knew it first hand, beginning as a child, and in adult life working as an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. The lessons I learned have been an essential education about the motive of driving these matters. It’s a good thing that people employed in the advertising business are not required to answer in the positive the oath required in every court of law in our nation: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” If advertising people were so required, we’d need to build many more prisons to house those who knowingly perjure themselves daily.

The reason I say this with certainty is that the advertising business is designed to deceive others by telling half-truths. The positive is singled out, and the downside is always left out. After working for many years in the business, I reached the point when I could no longer persuade myself that it was okay to deceive people, all for earning a very good living. By then, I had learned that for reasons justified by my parents, I had been lied to as a child. The result was holding some very bad beliefs about myself.

Since that moment of truth (pun intended), I have noticed that people tell lies and half-truths routinely, justified on several flawed notions. One of these notions concerns a lack of confidence in those hearing the truth. The inherent belief is that if they hear the truth, somehow, they will be destroyed or think harshly of the person choosing to withhold the truth. In the movie A Few Good Men, the commanding officer of the Marine Corps base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (Colonel Jessep) is being questioned in court by Navy lawyer Lieutenant Kaffee, concerning the death of one of the men under the Colonel’s charge. Jessep is lying because he doesn’t think anyone can handle the truth. The dialogue goes:

“Col. Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I think I’m entitled to them.

Col. Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I want the truth!

Col. Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!”

In the end, Jessep is arrested and charged with perjury. This movie is, of course, a fictional portrait of behavior that happens, with seeming justification, on a vast basis, but this is not a limited fiction. 

I am personally aware of a situation where an entire family participated in a fraud, feeding the family head with half-truths. All concerned knew that the head chose to live with the fantasy that the family was perfect and without flaw. None of the family members ever told the truth to the head but instead affirmed the fantasy in order to preserve the desires of the matriarch, and thus receive her blessing. Consequently, the family head refused to listen to anything that undermined her wishes, and other family members chose to endure lives of shame, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy to support her desires.

Often times the motive of feeding another half-truths or lies appears to be well intentioned: to either preserve a belief that isn’t considered to be beneficial (to either the teller or the hearer), but what is the result? The one being protected or lied to is not made stronger but instead made weaker by not being challenged to deal with adversity. And the one telling distortions is forced to try to remember the details of the lie, to tell other supporting lies (or be exposed) and thus endure self-condemnation and shame. 

Knowing whom to trust has always been a dilemma. As far back in recorded history as the time of the Buddha, people have been perplexed by this conundrum. In one particular sutra the people of Kesariya, India asked the Buddha how to ascertain the truth. His famous answer was:

“Now, Kalamas (a clan in Kesariya), don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness’—then you should enter and remain in them.”

That’s a tall order in a world dominated by deceit and misdirection. We find ourselves in a predicament of degrading confidence, falling trust and loss of regard for just about everyone, from those close to us as well as public officials of all sorts. However, perhaps this loss might be a good thing since for far too long we have placed our trust in others and lost trust in ourselves.

Monkey see, monkey do.

For a long time, the message that loving our neighbors and turning the other cheek has caused some to digest that message and put it into action while others have responded with disbelief and rejection. 

It turns out that we do indeed have a profound effect amongst our fellow humans both by what we say, either through words, body language, or action. We’ve captured this admonishment with a catchphrase: “What goes around comes around.”

When my daughter was a child, I read a story called “Pig will and Pig won’t.” The story is what you’d imagine: One little piggy had a positive attitude, and the other didn’t. She loved having that story read to her, and I loved reading it. It wasn’t a Pollyanna story but a practical one. As she grew, she retained that message and became a first-class doer of good deeds affecting many with her “we can do it together” spirit.

She is now an adult and has continued with her positive attitude and affected the attitudes and perspectives of thousands with her Can Do spirit. You can taste a sample of what she puts out by going to her blog, The Intensional Life. 

The way we rear our children—either for the bad or good—is carried throughout life, and our legacy is passed on. Not only is there a meaningful social, political, and spiritual impact of this Can Do attitude, there is also a scientific basis for the ability to affect others. 

There is a part of our brain that perceives and reflects the mood, words, and deeds. That ability is based on a unique set of neurons called “mirror neurons” With such a prevailing state of fear and despair, it is good to know that even one smile in the dark can light your world and mine. Monkey see monkey do.

Gun Control

For the past several months, I’ve been engaged in significant research for a book I’m writing with the simple title of “Trauma.” 

My reason for this project is to inform potential readers of the scope and magnitude of this serious condition. Because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the public, like never before, has begun to become aware of the acronym called PTSD with little genuine grasp of what this matter means. The common understanding is that it is a mental disorder caused by engaging in wars and the traumatic result. Fleshed out, the acronym, in simple terms, means “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” 

While descriptive, most people still equate PTSD only with wars. The restriction to wars is a vastly simplistic distortion. The distortion is undergirding a severe social issue that is presently a hot topic: Mental health-related to gun control.

Because of ongoing horrific slaughters that seems to be unstoppable, such as what occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Newtown, Connecticut, there has been an appropriate public outcry for gun control and a related discussion regarding the mental health system. There is little dissent that these two social issues are interconnected and will ultimately be governed by politics.

It should come as no surprise that economic hard times are also traumatic. Due to a global pandemic, millions of ordinary citizens have lost all means of supporting themselves, their families and are losing their dwellings. It is also evident that such times have not been experienced since the Great Depression. 

The difference now is that gun sales are at record levels (and increasing daily) when we are facing an economic Armageddon. The result is vast cuts to programs that could detect and be of service to millions of traumatized citizens. Public funding for both mental health and the justice system (e.g., police, facilities of incarceration, courts, etc.) is being slashed to reign in Federal and State debts.

One significant problem is the lack of an adequate understanding of the scope and depth of trauma that has not been digested, combined with shrinking resources to address and treat it. Presently mental health statistics result from measuring how companies provide insurance for their workers and/or information coming from health care facilities (hospitals, psych wards, health care workers). What is not being measured is the mental health of the millions off the chart because they are no longer employed (and are thus not measured).

Unaddressed trauma creates an interconnected matrix that is ugly and devastating. Some of the classic symptoms are flashbacks or reliving the traumatic event for minutes or even years at a time; upsetting dreams about the traumatic event; feeling emotionally numb; avoiding activities you once enjoyed; hopelessness about the future; memory problems; trouble concentrating; difficulty maintaining close relationships; irritability or anger; overwhelming guilt or shame; self-destructive behavior, such as drinking too much or abusing drugs; difficulty sleeping, being easily startled or frightened, and hearing or seeing things that aren’t there. 

Also are hyperarousal symptoms that are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic events. They can make the person feel stressed and/or angry. These symptoms may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating and manifest as anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. 

And nearly every one of these conditions can result in catastrophe, including lashing out in unpredictable ways to harm those traumatized and others who a traumatized person deems responsible for their situation. An accurate prescription for disaster is a mixture of these conditions, together with unrestricted gun availability.

Trauma is trauma regardless of source. It can result from domestic abuse, rape, witnessing horrifying situations, and many other factors that are currently increasing. Trauma is not just the result of war. It is that and much more. In the discussions, which will indeed occur concerning gun control, the related issue of mental health must be factored in. It makes very little sense to regulate an instrument of violence (guns) without considering the conditions leading to violence. 

The common mantra voiced by those who resist tampering with The Second Amendment is, “Guns don’t kill people; People do” is a dangerously overly simplified glossing that must be recognized for what it is. Until we as a nation, address the health care system that treats people at risk, this problem will just go on, and we will continue to wring our hands and remain perplexed.  

For the love or money.

Choosing money or love has been a perpetual theme throughout human history. The presumption of the former choice is that if you have money, love will follow. 

A rare few ever realize the fallacy of that presumption. I’m thankful that I am one of those. I can say that only because I have lived through both times of abundant wealth and grinding poverty, and have been fortunate enough to also experience true love.

In 1964 Paul McCartney captured that truth when he wrote, and the Beatles recorded, “Can’tBuy Me Love.”  That year the recording hit #1 on the top 100, and stayed there for five consecutive weeks. It was exceeded only by “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (at seven weeks) and “Hey Jude” at nine weeks. To date, according to Rolling Stone Magazine “Can’t Buy Me Love” ranks #289 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. When interviewed McCartney said: “The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well, but they won’t buy me what I really want.”

The significance of that popularity is a reflection of what I and everyone else wants: To truly love and be truly loved—the rarest of all treasures that no amount of money can ever buy. Before you go to sleep at night when you lie in bed next to someone you love deeply, and who feels the same toward you, then only do you know what counts and it isn’t money.

In our world today that truth seems to get lost beneath the rush to make and hold onto money. Might that choice be due to the thought that nobody really believes that true love is within their realm of possibility? I don’t know but I do know that when true love comes your way you’ll do virtually anything to cherish it and hold on. Money will come and go, as everything else does but when love comes your way, if it is true, it will last forever and warm your soul in ways that nothing else does. And then you’ll learn something else extraordinarily important: Love coming your way is the result of love going out of you to another.

It’s the greatest of all feedback loops—What goes out comes around: a truth of the Buddha as well as Jesus. If you want to boil the essence of the New Testament down to a single statement, it would be this: Agape love—an unconditional love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance. To the ancient Greeks, this form of love could only come from God since it is pure, eternal and the secret to all happiness. “Agape Love” occurs only in the New Testament and in essence means love beyond conditions, of any kind—No strings attached and the proof of this kind of love is that it lasts. Money blows away with the wind but true love is eternal.

You

Thinkers think thoughts.

Thoughts produce thinkers.

Thoughts are about things.

Things are not thoughts.

Thoughts are not things.

Both thoughts and thinkers are unreal.

Things are not unreal.

Abstractions are thoughts about what’s real.

You are not an abstraction.

You are a real thing.

Thoughts about you are not real.

What is real is not a thought.

You are real and not a thought.

When you think, abstractions appear.

When you stop thinking, you appear.

Think about this and you’ll be lost in thought.

Don’t think about this and you’re ready, 

for the next thought.

One size fits all.

Fat issue into skinny package

High profile people have a way of finding their opinions published in the news media, and this morning is a good example. Brad Pitt’s mom apparently felt inclined to express her perspective on the presidential competition with the following:  

“Any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian convictions concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon.”

So let me grasp this combo: Christian=family man=high morals=business experience=anti abortion=homophobia. According to Mama Pitt (Brad’s mom), that pretty much sums it up, thus “Vote for Mr. Romney.” I don’t know how Brad feels about his mom’s perspective, but if she were my mom, I think I’d want to hide her under the bed.

First of all, the implication here is that anyone labeling themselves Christian should be held in high esteem. There are ample reasons to question that premise. By way of example, consider the following, from another Christian:

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” And “Each one of us today may regret the fact that the advent of Christianity was the first occasion on which spiritual terror was introduced into the much freer ancient world.” 

Lest we forget, that was a quote from Mein Kampf by author Adolph Hitler. And granted his xenophobia in this quote concerned those ‘evil’ Jews, but he wasn’t fond of homosexuals either, never mind that scholars today think he probably was one. 

Between 1933–1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and somewhere between 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in extermination camps due to the orchestration of this fine Christian. So much for high Christian morals and homosexuals. But how about this other: “anti-abortion” wedded to Christians? Is the implication here that these two equate? Can a Christian, or any person of conscience, be against abortion (as an unswerving standard)? The problem with the law either for or against abortion is the expectation of justice. There are occasions when it is just to allow abortion and occurrences when it is just to not allow it. The law rarely acknowledges such wise discernment, and we end up fostering “anti-justice” in our desire to create a one-size-fits-all world.

I am not a high profile person, so my opinions don’t find their way into the published news media. But Dharma Space is my forum, and I can say what I want to my small audience, which might be a wee bit more intelligent than the average bear. What I wish is that all of us would stop such insane lumping together of complex issues and use the brains God gave us all. But perhaps that is expecting too much. 

The Matrix—Illusory Mind

Image via Wikipedia

In his commentary on the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Ch’an Master Sheng-yen said what might seem like a startling thing. He said, “The self (imagined self/ego) creates vexation, and the vexation, in turn, reinforces the sense of self...When there is no vexation, and therefore no self, the mind of discrimination is replaced by the mind of wisdom.”

What’s going on here is a psychic feedback loop. It’s the chicken/egg thing. Vexations and self arise together. Not one and then the next. Both arise together, instantly. Thinkers think thoughts. In this case, the “thinker” is the imagined self who is thinking the thought of a self, which then thinks more thoughts. Feedback loop—one illusion creating another illusion, which creates the next, like one mirror reflecting another. There is no substantial and real “self” inside this holographic illusion. It is a mirage or as stated in the Diamond Sutra: 

“This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”

All of those notions about our identity obscure any sense of our substantial real self; the union and the integrated aspect of our existence. The Ladder-Wall is the Union. It is not a Ladder or a Wall. It’s a Ladder-Wall: one inseparable thing. Form and Emptiness. Essence and non-essence. 

For thousands of years, people have been attempting and failing to rid themselves of the flesh believing that the flesh was opposed to spirit. Even today certain religious sects engage in practices of flagellation. And within certain schools of Zen, there are advocates, who press to rid themselves of all thoughts, which is a psychic version of flagellation. I’ll be saying more about this thrust in a later blog but for now, I’ll just make a quick comment: nonsense! Essence is indivisible from both flesh and our minds.

As long as we are imprisoned within this holographic feedback loop we are unaware of what is real. We are like Keanu Reeves in the classic 1999 science fiction movie “The Matrix.” The film describes a future in which the world we know is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines. Only our Matrix is self-created and it has been here forever. We are the sentient machines creating our own simulated reality. When we say to “Think outside the box,” the “box” is illusory mind: the Matrix; the realm of the self creating the self.

Like Keanu Reeves, we need to be de-programmed in order to break the grip of simulation. In Zen that is done by pursuing The Middle Way. Much of the harm done by not following this path is unintentional, but real nevertheless. How could we know inside the feedback loop? 

Unlike Keanu Reeves, we follow this way both with a support group (known as a sangha) and by our self. We don’t have to go to a confessional with a priest. We know (deep down in our moments of quiet honesty, when we can get beyond denial and blame) what we’ve done and whom we’ve infected. We know what judgments we’ve made, both of others and ourselves. It isn’t necessary for us to stand before others and announce, “I’m an alcoholic and I’m always going to be one.” 

This is a prison from which we can escape with commitment, patience, diligence, and perseverance. If we wish to escape we can. It just depends on whether or not we enjoy being “In the Matrix.” Some people don’t seem to care one way or another. The entire process is sort of like taking an inventory of the mess in our houses, collecting the trash, dumping it out, and doing the best we can to not continue creating a mess. Rather than garbage in/garbage out it becomes a virtue in/virtue out: VIVO, which in Latin curiously means living that takes place inside an organism.

That is an extremely foreshortened overview of the process. In point of fact it is a process that never ends. Because we live in a conditioned world, dust accumulates. We wash our clothes and clean our houses because cleanliness is more desirable than filth. The same thing applies to our inner house. Dust accumulates (emotional and psychic dust) and we need to keep it clean. If we bring in trash, due to bad karma, we suffer. If we become attached to fleeting stuff we suffer. If we live in the illusions of life we suffer. And all of that suffering makes us cranky and then we just make more bad karma. It is an inverted way of living, which must be turned upside down and shaken about.

And the truth is, none of this deep honesty is possible so long as we remain trapped in ego la-la land—The Matrix. Mr. or Mrs. or Ms ego is extraordinarily greedy and self-centered. From the perspective of our egos, everyone else is right to be blamed for our misery. Ego is very self-righteous. None of it is our fault. It has nothing to do with our own self-generated karma. Inside this hologram of blame and self-delusion, we experience life in competition and defensiveness. The world is either/or. It is either right or it’s wrong (and always my right and your wrong). This world runs according to hard and fast rules and inflexible boundaries and to deviate from the rigor entails fear, perceived threat, and loss. 

There is never enough insulation in this realm, and to share with others is to diminish our share and thus increase our risk exposure. We build fences of all kinds to keep the bad guys out without realizing that the fences also keep us in. The threat is everywhere and there is a good reason for the concern: Everything is changing. The storms will come and we better make sure our life raft is watertight.

Sound familiar? Who can question the exposures to risk and an unknown future? No one. Risk is a part of life but there is a huge difference between living hunkered down and walking tall. The ego, because it is an illusion, is rightly concerned with risk. It should know better than anyone. The ego is fragile and so too is our fleeting world. The alternative is to accept our wholeness—our integrated beingness, and to practice it moment by moment—a sacred act, not as a concept but as a reality. 

How is that done? This is a realm without multitasking. When we eat, we eat. When we talk, we talk. Whatever we do, we do wholly, in each and every moment, whether we like it or not. We just do it and let the illusions subside. It is a practice of being present with all of the grief, anguish, pain, sorrow and joy. We cry when we cry and laugh when we laugh and we do it with gusto. No illusions or expectations or wishes or overlays. We accept life as an un-gilded lily, without embellishment nor judgments nor any other forms of distortion or fabrication. Life just is. The Buddha called this “thusness”—things as they truly are.

This might all sound like accepting everything as unavoidable, but it is not. When we accept our ego-less interdependence—beyond the Matrix, truly, we must see that we are united with all of life. There is no way to disconnect from the ubiquitous dimension of essence. We are glued to our collective world, like it or not, so unless we like living in a mess then we must do what we can to clean it up and join the living. We are not isolated and independent beings, severed from life. We are life and there is no way to have a life without death. They arise as an undivided partnership. When the world suffers we pay the price because we are members of a common family. When the world rejoices, we rejoice with it. We are not just our brother’s keeper. We are our brothers and our sisters. There is no way to sever the link of essence.

This is not an airy-fairy thing. This is reality, inseparable, indivisible, and integrated and the only way to divide it is in the illusions of our imagination. That is where the danger lies. No, this is not resignation, cynicism, defeatism, or victimization. This is the polar opposite. This is a stance of engagement and responsibility, of doing what can be done but remaining hopeful without attachment to results.

The over-riding message contained in the Diamond Sutra regards the nature of enlightenment and compassion. The Buddha was teaching Subhuti (one of his disciples) that the distinguishing mark of a true Bodhisattva is deep compassion that can only come about without any sense of ego or gain. There is no calculation or contrivance since a true Bodhisattva realizes that there is no difference between himself and others. Jesus said something very similar: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” When we accept our ground-of-being relationship with life, the unavoidable conclusion is that we share common ground. We are in this together.

Bipolar

Manic depression; Bipolar affective disorder is a certifiable mental illness that can mimic something akin to phases of awakening. 

The principle of dependent origination says that everything in life is a reflection of this fundamental principle, and this is illustrated with the broadly known relationship between suffering and enlightenment. 

Bodhidharma said that without afflictions, there could be no enlightenment. The two are linked by the principle of dependent origination. A famous Zen saying is, “No suffering. No enlightenment. Little suffering. Little enlightenment. Great suffering. Great enlightenment.”

In his commentary on the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Chan Master Sheng Yen said that nobody having good dreams wants to wake up. Only when they have nightmares are they eager to do so. The point is that there is a correspondence between the magnitude of both suffering and awakening. The entirety of Buddhism concerns the alleviation of suffering. There is no other purpose for this quest than that. So some reading this may think to themselves, “I don’t suffer so Zen isn’t right for me.”

I have two rejoinders to this observation: (1) not yet, (2) and denial. The “not yet” part realizes that it is impossible to live and not suffer because the fundamental nature of conditional life is suffering. The “denial” part concerns resistance (a form of attachment which creates more suffering). And I am not throwing stones of blame. I too remained in denial too long and paid the price. I wrote about this in another post: The Four Horses of Zen.

Nobody wants to suffer and unfortunately this motivates many to stay in states of denial. The pain is too sharp to bear so we stuff it down and try to go on with life and this can eventually be a large problem because it isn’t possible to keep suffering locked away forever. Sooner or later it seeps out and corrodes our sense of wellbeing.

When you learn to mediate (and practice it) all of that suppressed mental poison gets released, you clean out the pipes and move on toward wholeness. It isn’t fun to lance that boil but it beats living with the compacted aftermath of suppressed suffering. Along the way toward restored mental health there can be wide swings from one depth to the opposite, but this is the necessary result of mental house cleaning. Zen is not a practice for the faint of heart. It’s only for the most desperate and those who exhibit the necessary courage to go through the anguish required to have a life worth living.