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.

Perpetual host; Holy ghost.

The Spirit arises

This is going to be a risky post since adherents to different faiths get disturbed by connecting dots of similarity. Nevertheless, I willingly choose to go where “angels fear to tread” since my topic is of utmost importance. The best way to begin is with a quote from Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” His point, and mine, is while the name may change, the essence stays the same.

I’ve danced around this burning bush numerous times trying to convey the essential point that our human nature is like a continually eroding house within which lives a permanent resident (with no name or status). Such posts as “Back to grammar school: the ghost of you and me,” “Guests and Hosts,” “The Watcher,” “Transcendence and the Middle Way,” “Nature of mind and the desire for liberation,” “Already, not yet,” “Separating wheat from chaff,” “East meets West meets East,” “If it walks like a duck…” and others, all address the point of this post but not all reached across the aisle. Now I will. What may or may not be known is that while all religious traditions are different in their dogma, the mystical traditions of each are nearly identical.

But before that reaching, my springboard will be a quote from a towering giant in the long line of Zen Masters: Huang Po…

“The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word ‘Mind’ to symbolize the inexpressible reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not Mind at all. But he had to use some term or other, and his predecessors had often used ‘Mind.’ As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all, but familiar to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, ‘hsin’ means not only ‘mind,’ but ‘heart’ and, in some senses, at least, ‘spirit,’ or ‘soul,’—in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word Absolute, which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course, ‘the One Mind’ is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.”—Commentary by John Blofeld (Chu Ch’an): The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind.

That’s a safe segue onto the other side of the aisle that addresses the Christian principle of The Holy Ghost, who/which resides in “born again Christians.” The rose smells as sweet, but the name changes, as do the presuppositions. In the case of Zen, the host (True man of no rank), according to Master Lin Chin/Rinzai; Huang-Po’s student) was the eternal “REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.” 

The apparent difference between the teachings of orthodox Christianity and Zen, concerning the indwelling Spirit, is that Christian dogma says only those who confess Christ as Lord will be “born again” and receive the Holy Spirit. However, this dogma contradicts another fundamental aspect of Christian teaching, which says that God is eternal and omnipresent. Consequently, there is a fly in this ointment that was addressed by Meister Eckhart (Christian mystic)—“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”
Mystics (all) have plunged the depths to the essence of their natural being, whereas those who remain unenlightened see the surface and not the wisdom. For these, “…the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees.”

Question: Does suffering have a positive side?

Someone close to me asked this question, and to give a proper answer, I found it necessary to first define some terms. 

Suffering is a mental/emotional response to not getting what we want. Next, I had to define who is experiencing this suffering and how this entity perceives a positive outcome. And by positive, I mean the perception of satisfaction.  Our ordinary way of answering this entity question is with the answer of me. Yet who is this me? And how is this me perceived or experienced?

By understanding the mechanics of perception, we can better understand how “I” becomes the core of corruption and sadness. Perception requires several dimensions. First, there must be a sensory system. We have five interdependent components of our system: sight, smell, auditory, touch, taste, and a thinking processor. Signals from each element are transmitted from objects to particular registry locations in our brain where they are identified, merged with other sensory dimensions into a gestalt, and coded into words and thoughts. For example, the object of a rose is fabricated into a mental image constructed from the merged registry’s of sight, smell, and touch, which is then labeled Rose.

The second aspect of perception entails observation of objects. For objects to be sensed, they must be distinguished from other objects, and to be understood, they must be differentiated (e.g., discriminated) into two opposite dimensions. An object is defined as an observable thing. Observation can be either physical or mental. An idea is a mental image (or object), whereas a rose is a physical object that becomes a mental image. The idea of a rose is different than an actual rose, and the word rose is different yet. Both the word and an idea are abstractions, or codes, to represent a real rose and both enable imagination and communication. To be perceived and understood, an object requires contrast (discriminate properties). For example, the idea of up only makes sense given the opposite of down; in opposed to out, a rose opposed to a non-rose.

The third and most important dimension of perception regards one who perceives (an observer) and the understanding that a true perceiver can’t perceive itself, since this perceiver has no observable properties or limiting identity yet can perceive anything objectively configured. This perceiver is our spiritual nature (versus our objective nature) and is understood as the true, unconditional mind. The mind is the locus of all perceptions, whereas the ordinary way of understanding the mind is a manifestation of the true mind (mental images, thoughts, and emotions).

Now we return to this idea of me. The same process of perception is involved with this me; only in the case of self-identification, there is no object to perceive except a physical body and a mental image of who we think we are: an ego or soul. In various traditions (religious, philosophical, etc.), the term “soul” was considered to be the psyche, from which the word “psychology” arises. The ancient Greeks expressed this as ψυχή, (e.g., Soul) and within the Buddhist tradition, it was known as Atman or Moksha. And it was understood in a similar fashion: The origin within human nature that produces mental images, thoughts, and emotions. Alternatively, the soul was understood as ego—the universal word for “I.” 

This mental image is now mostly understood as a totally fabricated, imaginary entity. Nevertheless, the image satisfies the requirement of being a conditional, discriminate object, which can be perceived by the one doing the perceiving. Thus there is an object of perception (self-image) and our spiritual being that is perceiving. It is essential to not confuse two terms: self and mind. Both the true Self and the true Mind are used synonymously. Neither has any identifiable properties since neither are objects. However, we have ideas about both. We imagine that the mind is the manifestation rather than the source. The distinction between a manifestation and the source is preeminent. 

The source of creation is vastly different from what is fabricated or created, just as a manufacturing plant is different from what is manufactured in the plant. The ideas we possess about ourselves are simply the product of imagination. Whether we label these ideas as ego/self-image or soul, they remain imaginary. We imagine a self that is an objective fabrication rather than who we truly are: The unconditional spiritual source. And as with anything else, there must be the two opposite parts that allow perception to occur. Importantly these two (self-image and the Self, represented by the image) are opposite in nature, just as up is opposite from down. The ego/soul is perceived, and we conclude, “that’s me.” But the ego is not the true self. It is a fabricated image to represent the self, and this ego is entirely unaware of the one creating and perceiving the image because the perceiver can’t be seen. The true Self is not conditionally objective; instead, it is unconditional without a limiting identity, which means that the true Self is identical in every sentient being, and is known as Buddha-nature. But to realize this within yourself is the antithesis of who we think we are. Meister Eckhart, perhaps the greatest of all Christian mystics—very close in his understanding to the most esteemed Zen Masters said: 

“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell.” 

Of course, he was speaking of cracking the ego to discover our true nature within. We, humans, are superior problem solvers, but we only solve obvious ones, and we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we are continuously satisfied, there is no perceived problem and, thus, nothing to solve. People live their entire lives, denying their own suffering. Still, suffering is unavoidable so long as we misunderstand our true, unconditional nature but instead see ourselves as a vulnerable and conditional soul or ego. Suffering then is the seed of motivation to learn both who we are not and who we are truly. 

The ego is continuously vulnerable to suffering and wrongly concludes that possessing one object (which, when lost) can be solved by possessing another object to replace the one lost. Thus, the ego is possessive and greedy. This never works since all things change. After experiencing this failing process over and over, the ego is overwhelmed, suffers continuously, and becomes angry, hostile, blameful, and often violent. This strategy ultimately implodes, and the ego tries a very different approach but is not quick to commit suicide and eradicate itself.

The problem all along is this process of perception and conclusion of judgmental discrimination, me vs. not me, good vs. evil, all of which are concerned with objects and judgment. At long last, after endless suffering, the ego/soul begins to die, and we pursue a path of true Self-emergence and unity with our source, which has no identifying properties. This death of what is fabricated reveals what has been there all along, as a clear sky is revealed when clouds move away and are characterized within different spiritual disciplines in different ways.

The Buddhist manner of addressing this process is nearly the same as the Christian manner. When The Christ was quoted as saying in John 12:24-25 (“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”) he wasn’t saying anything significantly different than The Buddha when he distinguished between the Dharmakāya (body of truth as the source of all manifestations) and the misidentification of ourselves. Immortality encloses mortality. 

The question becomes, how to get rid of the conditional illusions or images we hold of ourselves and merge with our unconditional selves? How is this pragmatically accomplished? And the answer is to stop the process of abstract thinking (imagining) at least long enough to realize our true nature. The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) defined Zen as not thinking. Thinking, in simple terms, is the perception of virtual ideas and images. When we don’t think, what we are left with is the true Self-perceiver (The spiritual Mind) that is unified and unconditional (no discriminate properties). This true Self-perceiver is who all of us are, unconditionally and without limited identity. This is the essential conscious energy that permeates all life and is the place of constant peace and tranquility. This part of us never changes. It was never born, doesn’t die, and is without judgment. There is nothing to discriminate or judge since it is unconditional, unified, and whole.

In The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, he taught: 

“Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain.”

If there were no suffering, we would never search for the truth. It is anguish and suffering that goes on impelling us to reach beyond. This entire dawning of genuine, unified, Self-awareness (soul-awareness) could not happen without solving the problem of perceived suffering. Suffering alone provides the engine of motivation, and that is the value of suffering.

We are now deeply involved in a time when suffering is vast. Not only are we trying to survive a global pandemic, but we are also facing a warming climate that will ultimately mean our destruction, we are perhaps, at long last, coming to terms with racism, millions are now unemployed, losing their means of living and facing starvation. Hatred and violence are running rampid and the outlook, from a mortal perspective is grim. And yet, there is a rising tide of motivation to solve these issues. It may be the dawn of a time of significant transformation.

Identity?

The dissolving ego.

The last two posts (Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death and Karma and The Wheel of Dharma) were critical in understanding how we get into on-going trouble and how to get emancipated. Both messages may have seemed arcane and esoteric. I am aware of the difficulty, particularly among Western audiences, when coming to terms with the essential aspects of these messages. For that reason, I employed metaphors of dust and viruses. 

However, the wisdom contained in these two is so important that I want to go to the heart of the teaching, pull out the core, and do a summation, in layman’s terms. What lies at the core of them both is how we understand our human nature. Everyone, in all times and places, develops a sense of who they are, who others are, how we regard our self-understanding, and what this means to our place in the world. The admonition of the Golden Rule:  “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets,” is not incorrect. However, essential to that teaching takes us to the core of not only that teaching, but also to the core of the last two posts. Do we hate ourselves? Love ourselves? Think we are God’s gift to the world? Or perhaps a piece of crap. Whatever self-view we possess determines how we treat others and what we expect from them. Any and all, unenlightened view of ourselves, boils down to one simple principle, and how we understand that principle: Ego.

I could readily quote innumerable passages from exalted Zen Masters that speak to this matter of ego and self-understanding, but not now. If you are interested in that sort of presentation, you can click on the “SEO keyword” ego, located at the bottom of this post, and it will take you to numerous other posts about this matter of a deluded idea of who we are. Today, however, I want to speak in common terms that anyone can understand if they are so inclined. I will take you to the waters, but I can’t make you drink.

So what exactly is an “ego” and how does it make a difference, to ourselves, to others, and to the world. The word, in all languages and traditions, means “I,” not any “I” but the honest, in-the-dark-of-night “I,” when it is still, and nobody is watching. In that darkness, nobody is observing us, there is nobody to impress or be persuaded, and there is just you, in the dark, alone with your own thoughts—which could keep you awake at night. Our egos are a corrupted notion that we all create to identify ourselves. It is formed, shaped, refined, and comes to be essential to everything we say and do. Importantly, the ego is an idea, an image of self (self-image) that depends on many inputs. Those inputs come from family, friends, teachers, significant others—many, many sources, over a long period of time.

In the simplest of terms, it boils down to building an identity out of bricks of clay. And perhaps the most important of those bricks come early in life—how we were treated as children by those in whom we were most vested: those that mattered most—our family and/or the people we trusted and considered significant to our wellbeing. If those treated us kindly, we developed a good sense of ourselves. If they treated us badly, we developed a poor sense of ourselves. And those initial building blocks served as the foundation of what followed, which may, or may not, have reinforced those initial ideas. But even at a young age, what we came to think of ourselves, determined how we behaved and the feed-back we received resulting from that behavior. “As you think, so shall you become.”  That principle is universal, and you can find it presented from many sources.

Let’s take the next step in this progression. Suppose our significant, trusted people, critical to shaping those initial building blocks, treated us kindly. In such a case, our ego-sense becomes attached to those people, and then something terrible happens: They die or go away. What then happens is devastating to our mental/emotional wellbeing: We suffer. On the other hand, consider the opposite—We are treated poorly (and we come to regard ourselves poorly), nevertheless becoming attached to our own, now-ingested opinion, set in motion by those people. Both of these are forms of attachment, and they are both just ideas (images if you prefer). In the first case, we have attached to what we like, and in the other case, we are attached to what we don’t like.

Life is a moving ship on a body of water, that changes with the tides of life. Up and down, the waves move, and our egos bounce like a cork on the surface. There is no stability with that arrangement—only turbulence. What we fail to consider is what lies beneath those changing waves; at the sea bottom where nothing changes. That analogy is not about turbulent water or the bottom of the sea. It concerns identity, changing, or not. At the base depths of our thinking mind is the subconscious mind; way down there where our thoughts are “out of sight/out of mind.” Only they are never out of mind. They have just moved from our conscious/thinking mind into our subconscious mind, but they never leave. In that universal way, we are all trapped; some thinking poorly of themselves and others thinking they are superior to others.

What the quests for our true (not imagined) self entails is plunging, through whatever came before: the entire, cumulative formation of the ego, to the depths of our souls, and experiencing—not thinking—our genuine Self. This pathway is not one of rational thinking but is instead a transforming, intimately personal Spiritual experience. And when I say, “Spiritual,” I do not mean a religious one. I do mean the genuine experience of your very own spirit, that has no clothing, no identity, no “ego,” no anything. You then wake up (e.g., the term “Buddha” means awaken) to an indiscriminate, universal unity with all, that is not an isolated “you” but is the same as everyone else. In that spiritual realm, there is not an iota of difference between you and anyone, regardless of whatever bodily differences, or idea you may hold of yourself. Then you are a true man (or woman) with rank. 

The ego, at that moment, evaporates like the disappearance of mist upon the rising of the sun, and you realize the one doing the quest is one and the same as the one being sought after. And at that moment, that comes like a flash of lightning, your entire understanding changes radically—the self is transformed into Self as a worm is transformed into a butterfly. And then you have returned to a non-identity that never left.

Karma and the Wheel of Life and Death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karma and the Wheel of Dharma

Wheel of The Dharma

Yesterday we looked at the causal links that produce bad karma. Today we’ll look at the other side—the wheel of Dharma, leading to good karma and emancipation. 

One of the essential points discussed yesterday was, “Acting on faith…” The question is, faith in what? And the answer is faith in the other side of form. Faith that there really is this thing called emptiness (otherwise known as pure consciousness): The dimension that contains truth, rather than inversions of truth.

To remind you, the inversions of truth were suffering, impermanence, non-self, and life of impurity. The reason that faith is required is that emptiness is not accessible through our ordinary sensory faculties, and to get to that place of truth we must let go of what we can sense only, and are so sure of what we think we know—the ordinary manner of discernment. The path to truth is spiritual rather than perceptual. 

When we follow that path, then we experience the opposite of truth inversions. The dimensions of manifested truth are bliss, permanence, our true self, and a life of indiscriminate purity: the realm of consciousness without conditions and the joint actions of the right choices and judgments. This is the realm where everything is unified before or after consciousness takes shape or form (which is a myth we use for the sake of convenience; time is a fabrication—there is no actual time). Albert Einstein made a similar observation: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” That being the case, there is no such thing as this or that: No self-absorbed choices, or judgments, and thus no error.

When we make choices, we believe those choices are right, in an unexamined way, we attach these choices to our unenlightened sense of self and become self-righteousness, defensive, and often hostile in our defense. And this belief, along with wrong concomitant actions, can at times lead us to be close-minded and violently defensive. There are numerous problems with this approach, and all of these put dust in our mouths, infects us (and others) with bad karma, and forces us to see who is to blame: Our deluded sense of self.

When most people think about “compassion,” they think of Buddhism. And in fact, this is accurate portraiture. Unfortunately, our idea of compassion, without transformation of our idea of self, is usually a way of gaining the accolades of others and fueling our egos. We may do the right thing but with a desire for applause. Unlike today, The Buddha didn’t recommend fueling our self-image or anesthetizing ourselves through drugs or make-nice-ego-building therapy. That’s the approach of today, but more than likely, that is not what The Buddha had in mind. He did not seem to be in favor of sustaining long term suffering through indolence. Quite the contrary, he may have been the original tough-love advocate. What he seemed to have recommended was to take off the rose-colored glasses and look deeply into how we create our own suffering. He prescribed harsh medicine, which was designed to make it crystal clear who was doing what to whom and recommended 12 chains of interdependent causal links that pointed the finger at us. As Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”

Tough-love for sure, but his wisdom was flawless. None of us will take the necessary leap into the void of pure, unconditional consciousness until we see beyond a shadow of a doubt that the dusty road is intolerable, and we’re not going to take it anymore. More than likely, he wanted us to see beyond any doubt that we alone create our own path to destruction. When we follow the conditional, dualistic path, leading to choices and judgments of one thing versus another thing (in this case, life versus death), we get clear about the futility of our presumptions and beliefs. And what exactly did he want us to see?

What do most of us believe? We believe in what we perceive: The four inversions of truth—that life is impermanent, dominated by a false self (which we call ego), completely impure and over the top with suffering. Why is that? Quite simply, the perception-based means of discernment is designed for choosing between one thing and another thing, and when we couple this to a false self, we become self-righteous, defensively so. 

Now pause here and think about a serious question. Does anyone reading this really believe that Buddhism could last for 2,500 years as a significant force for emancipation if it was based on those four inversions? Even the village idiot could come up with that list, and the whole proposition would evaporate before it reached anyone’s perceptual capacities. So why did he want us to see the futility of those patently obvious facts? Because combined, they define how to keep eating dust and infecting others. He wanted us to be very clear about that. He wanted to teach us all about Nirvana vs. Saṃsāra, how they are related, how to get off of the path to perdition, and what to do to solve this universal problem that destroys everything. Only when we stand at the precipice of the mortal abyss will any of us choose a new path.

So if that combination doesn’t work—and it never has and never will—what will get us off the dusty path? Well, how about the opposite: Faith in the unseen realm of indiscriminate unity. This prescription is the ultimate form of dependent origination and is also what came to be known as The Two Truth Doctrine. This is the Wall that the Ladder of form rests against. Form is empty consciousness applied; Empty consciousness is form without application. The eternal, pure, blissful self is what has gone by the name of Buddha-Nature: our true nature—pure consciousness, which flows across the mythical bridge into form. 

In fact, there is no bridge since Buddha-nature/consciousness is undivided. Separation is just an idea that we choose to believe for many reasons. We imagine separation because we can’t perceive the void and thus assume that it doesn’t exist. And furthermore, our ideas concerning a void, are flawed. Emptiness is not actually empty. It is instead the wellspring of unadulterated wisdom and right vision—Unconditional truth. Or expressed alternately, The Dharmakaya: Body of truth, or The Womb of The Buddha that exists in us all. We, too, can awaken, and The Buddha gave us a road-map. 

We have too much dust in our eyes (a plank, if you prefer) and clouding our minds and don’t realize that without consciousness (The Dharmakaya), no detection of any form would be possible. The entire universe is a function of consciousness, or said another way: The universe is nothing other than the primordial mind in manifestation: The residual karma we previously created and the result, that The Buddha taught us about in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, “Seeing the actions of body and mouth, we say that we see the mind. The mind is not seen, but this is not false. This is seeing by outer signs.”  Of course, the actual mind is the source (consciousness) and, as such, can’t see itself. We can only perceive fabricated (imaginary form) manifestations. The ego-mind of duality is self-creating, self-destructive, and pleasure-seeking at the expense of others. That is not the real mind. It is the fabricated mind with ego at the core.

So how exactly do we awaken to this awareness? How does it function? The same way that the other tree functioned from the taproot upward into branches of good karma. At the bottom is a tap root without doubt, which we call faith—in the unseen source (emptiness). Faith grows upward into four truths, instead of inversions. These truths then move up to the opposite of indolence, which is openness, receptivity, and confidence, which in turn destroys ignorance and turns a mind that is miserly, greedy, and jealous into a joyous mind that is giving, and sharing.

When this turn-about takes place, we meet our true self for the very first time. The Buddha said this about this transformation: “If impermanence is killed, what there is, is eternal Nirvana. If suffering is killed, one must gain bliss; if the void is killed, one must gain the real. If the non-self is killed, one must gain the True Self. Oh, great King! If impermanence, suffering, the Void, and the non-self are killed, you must be equal to me.” He was speaking to King Ajatasatru in the 25th chapter of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. 

Now comes two big questions: If we understand this message correctly, isn’t The Buddha saying that when this transformation occurs, doesn’t that eliminate the duality of discrimination, which makes us equal with one another and with the Buddha? And which of those two types would you rather hang out with? A loaded question for sure, but the answer should be crystal clear. Bad karma flows from one path (the dusty, infectious one), and good karma flows from the other path (one lined with gold). 

Never let it be said that our presumptions and beliefs don’t dominate us. What we believe will radically transform our lives.
I’ll end for today with a parable of two sons from The Dharma:

There once lived two sons of a king. Each of the sons became gravely ill, and the royal doctor was summoned. Upon a thorough examination, the royal doctor prescribed an unusual medication. Not being familiar with the medication, the sons were apprehensive. The first son clung tightly to conventional medications normally prescribed, became worse, and died. The surviving son saw clearly what had occurred with his brother because of doubt. Upon witnessing his brother’s death, he became desperate. Despite his preconceived beliefs and the unconventional nature of the doctor’s prescription, he overcame his doubt and decided to follow the advice of the royal doctor. To his amazement, his leap of faith resulted in an unexpected outcome: What began as apprehension and fear of the unknown, developed into a trusting relationship with the doctor, and he soon became well. In time the relationship between the wise son and the doctor blossomed, and the son was rewarded: The doctor shared his cherished remedies, not known to conventional doctors. And thus, his knowledge survived through the wise son who passes such knowledge on to all who are receptive and can likewise overcome their seeds of doubt.

The son who doubted and died is everyman. The royal doctor is the Tathagata, and the wise son represents all who hear of the unconventional remedy, overcome their doubt, and live. These will continue on and pass to others the good and certain medications of the doctor—they are the Bodhisattvas of the dharma.

In this mortal incarnation, I’ve been both sons. I spent a lot of time on that dusty path, in my egotistically, blinded state of mind, followed the path most taken, suffered a great amount, and refused to take the unorthodox medicine. The truth is that I was ignorant and not even aware there was any medicine, orthodox or otherwise. I nearly died, mortally, but while standing at the abyss, I happened upon the good doctor who had always been there, (unseen) and figured I had nothing to lose by switching to the road less traveled, ingesting unorthodox medicine and that saved me. Now I pass it on to you. 

And BTW: My present incarnation (as I appear to others) is that of a Gemini with two aspects, cemented together in a state of dependent origination (as we all are). Not only am I aware of both sides, the nature of them both, and just how they are needed to exist, but also able to see how my own karma is being created, as it unfolds. It is sort of like watching my own created movies and knowing I am the creator, the director, all of the actors, and the one sitting in a seat, located in a theater of the mind, but knowing simultaneously that the actual Mind is The Watcher, observing, but without judgment. So the ending question here is this: How do you like infecting those you supposedly love? And how does dust taste? And are you ready to take a leap of faith into emptiness and start living well?

Lessons gleaned from a thermostat.

Spiritual homeostasis

Homeostasis defined: “Homeostasis is a characteristic of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant, condition of properties.”

It occurred to me when contemplating my Nest thermostat (which regulates temperature within my living space) that there is a spiritual form of homeostasis. First: How my thermostat works in regulating my living space temperature:

There are three modes from which I can choose: Off, either heat or cool, or heat and cool. 

The Off setting requires little explanation. It means there is no sensing of ambient temperature in my space and, therefore, no regulation of my “HVAC” system (e.g., heating, ventilation, and air conditioning). 

The heat or cool setting regulates my HVAC system to either heat or cool my space, but it won’t do both at the same time. If I set my thermostat to heat only—but not cool—then if the ambient temperature falls in my space below the setting I select (e.g., 68º for example), my HVAC system will maintain my space to maintain above 68º (+or-) a given selected range. And the opposite is true. Selection of cool only means if my ambient space rises above 75º (+or-) a given selected range, my HVAC system keeps the temperature in my space at the desired range by cooling when the ambient temperature reaches 75º.

The third option, heat and cool, will switch as required. For example: When my thermostat detects that the temperature in my space falls below 68º, the thermostat sends a message to my HVAC to turn on the heat. And if the temperature in my space rises above 75º, the thermostat sends a message to my HVAC to turn on the cooling. I find this last mode to be the most desirable. Also, I can select a schedule for different parts of the day/night. I like to sleep when the temperature is around 68º, which, as it turns out, is the ideal sleep temperature, but I prefer 75º during the day. 

We, too, have an internal system that regulates many aspects of our biology to maintain homeostasis, ranging from temperature (just like my living space) to blood sugar levels, blood pressure, sleep, and more. 

Now the spiritual equivalent to homeostasis and my thermostat. The Off position favors neither hot nor cold. It could be called “potential spiritual energy.” The hot or cool position is an either/or position, such as what routinely occurs in ordinary life when we make judgments (e.g., It’s either right or wrong, but not both at the same time). That position is equivalent to ego-driven life. And lastly comes the both/and position of heat and cool, or in other words, circumstantially appropriate regulation such as set forth by “upaya”—expedient means, rather than hardened rights or wrongs rules. What is particularly curious is this: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one IN Christ Jesus.”—Galatians 3:28. 

Not to be diverted, but clarification is needed here. It may seem insignificant to some, but exegetical scholars have noted this passage originally lacked the name “Jesus,” but instead read “...you are all one IN Christ.” Christ (Χριστός), in Koine Greek—The language used to write the New Testament—meant the Messiah; a title (anointed one), believed to be the personhood of God on earth. The significance is meaningful. “Jesus” was the given name, whereas Christ was a designated title, in the same fashion that “Gautama” was the given name of The Buddha (the title, that meant “awakened.”) 

And this: 

“Body is nothing more than emptiness; emptiness is nothing more than body.  The body is exactly empty, and emptiness is exactly body. The other four aspects of human existence—feeling, thought, will, and consciousness— are likewise nothing more than emptiness, and emptiness nothing more than they. All things are empty: Nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is pure, nothing is stained, nothing increases and nothing decreases. So, IN emptiness, there is no body, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining. There is nothing seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor tasted, nor touched, nor imagined. There is no ignorance and no end to ignorance.  There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to follow. There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain…”—The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra.

If you don’t see the connection, allow me to help, and notice, in particular, the word IN; emphasized to mean “in the presence of, exclusively.”  In the Off spiritual position, there is no discrimination between one thing or another. There is just potential spiritual energy. Only when there is a choice between the either/or vs. the both/and is there kinetic spiritual energy (e.g., in action/movement). One of those settings (e.g., the both/and) is what we could call “open-minded,” or circumstantially driven motion, rooted IN the source of all things. Three modes: Off—The source of all; Either/or—The cause of all suffering (ego); and Both/and—The resolution of all suffering (e.g., elimination of ego). It is a homeostatic spiritual system, nearly identical to every other system of balanced homeostatic necessity.

When IN the Off position (where conceptual thinking ceases—How Bodhidharma defined Zen) that all potential resides, where indiscriminate essence exists. And that potential can go in one of two directions: Ego-driven either/or (e.g., win/lose) vs. Essence driven both/and (e.g., win/win). It all depends on The Mind of No-Mind.

Ignorant armies of the night.

In 2002, authors Wayne Gray and Christian Schunn published an article in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, titled “Does Positivity Bias Explain Patterns of Performance on Wason’s 2-4-6 task?” 

The Wason being referenced was Peter Cathcart Wason, an English cognitive psychologist at University College in London. Wason was interested in the psychology of reason and was particularly concerned with why people make certain consistent mistakes in logical reasoning. 

One of his research projects was the 2-4-6 task referred to in the article written by Gray and Schuun. That project addressed preconceived notions, personal beliefs, and hypotheses affecting rational thinking. Out of this work, the term “confirmation bias” was formed, which in essence, proved that people tend to filter reality through lenses that reinforce tightly held convictions. Wason concluded that people are far less concerned with truth than they were with finding evidence to support their beliefs, true or not.

On the psychological flip side lies the “backfire effect;” the tendency to defend those tightly held convictions. In many cases (if not most) people will fight to the end to defend those convictions (even when their views are self-destructive). I have never met a single person who believed their actions were based on wrong views. Yet the state of world affairs proves there are actions (based on wrong views) that are destructive to themselves and others. Swaying hearts and minds is a tough task for a simple reason: Close mindedness—the defense of the ego.

In essence, Wason proved the human tendency for choosing ignorance and, in particular the desire for being right, at all costs—the expected outcome of an out of control ego (the misidentification of the self). In a short-handed, everyday way of understanding, the perception of we humans is distorted. Most everyone is looking through “Rose-colored glasses,” only in some cases, the glasses are not so rosy. A term that further explains this psychological inclination is vested interests. We don’t see the world as it is but instead view life in ways that ensure the protection of selfish concerns, in other words, “Greed.”

The picture above (and accompanying words) is the ending stanza of the short lyric poem Dover Beach by the English poet Matthew Arnold. It was first published in 1867 in the collection of New Poems. The metaphor contained within this last stanza is an allusion to a passage in Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides describes the ancient battle that occurred at night, and in the darkness, the attacking army became disoriented, and many of their soldiers inadvertently killed each other. Critics, interpreting the poem, have suggested the metaphor expressed Arnold’s central understanding of the plight of the human condition.

Considering the state of current world affairs, it’s easy to agree with the research of Wason, the poetic conclusions of Arnold and wisdom of The Buddha: We see what we want to see. What we don’t see is the world as Suchness: a heaven on earth that is being turned into a Hell on earth by ignorant armies of the night. It is the fear of suffering that clouds our eyes.

Ajita asked: “What is it that smothers the world and makes it so hard to see? What is it that pollutes the world and seems to threaten it?” The Buddha answered: “It is ignorance that smothers, and it is carelessness and greed that makes it invisible. The hunger of craving pollutes the world, and the pain of suffering causes the greatest fear.”
—Sutta Nipata