Echoes of truth

I, and I’m sure many others, have heard the expression that’s just an opinion. At the risk of being flippant, let me suggest that every word ever communicated is precisely that: an opinion. 

Someone must gather information (hopefully reliable), interpret, digest the significance (if any), and only then offer an opinion. But some may argue, yes but their opinion is truth. This may or may not be the case. Ordinarily, such expressions mean what is heard resonates with something within the hearer. If there is coherence between the communicated opinion, and the belief or standard held by the hearer, the conclusion is that is truth.

We all want to believe that what we hear is the truth but far too often it gets rejected before it ever reaches the ear of the hearer. Instead, it is blocked by preconceived beliefs or cherished and conflicting opinions of the hearer. In non-politically correct terms, that’s what we know as being closed-minded. Nobody wants to think of him or herself (or labeled by others) as being close-minded. Instead the offered opinion (perhaps even truthful) is DOA (dead on arrival) due to firmly held obstructions and inflexible filters. 

Often times a voiced perspective is never considered at all, since the hearer is so protective of their cherished opinion they rarely pause long enough to actually listen. Instead they are planning their rejoinder before even knowing what they are responding to. That is precisely the nature of an ego: fearful their perspectives will become punctured so much so they can’t tolerate opposing views. Their hearts are instead inflamed with choosing one view in opposition to their own.

The Lankavatara was allegedly the sutra most revered by Bodhidharma: the father of Zen. The sutra says the result of such ignorance are minds which “burn with the fires of greed, anger, and folly, finding delight in a world of multitudinous forms, their thoughts obsessed with ideas of birth, growth and destruction, not well understanding what is meant by existence and non-existence, and being impressed by erroneous discriminations and speculations since beginningless time, fall into the habit of grasping this and that and thereby becoming attached to them”

The Abhidharma-kośa (a Buddhist text widely respected, and used by schools of Mahayana Buddhism in India, Tibet, and the Far East) lists 51 states of mind most important to spiritual practice. Although not intended as inflexible rules, the included factors are seen as supportive of spiritual pursuit. Several of these guides are relevant to the issue of discerning truth. They are:

• Common-sense intelligence, consisting of finely tuned discrimination
• Giving up attachment to fixed views
• Ignorance of (among other matters) karma and lack of the wisdom of emptiness
• An inflated sense of superiority (pride)
• Wrong views based on emotional afflictions
• Closed-mindedness: my view is wrong yet is seen as best
• Pretense and/or hypocrisy

Taken together these perspectives advance the dispersion of delusion and promote discernment of truth. But most important of all is the recognition that when the truth is spoken there must be an echo from within a heart cleansed of tightly held vested interests. The truth will set us free but only when recognized as such. To make them accessible is the task of zazen: clearing away the underbrush to reveal eternal truth.

If it walks like a duck…

The common-coin understanding is that Buddhism is a Godless religion, and the reason for this view is that the Buddha didn’t focus on the concept of God but instead focused on understanding the mind and overcoming suffering. It’s worth the time and energy to thoroughly investigate this matter.

First is the notion that God can be understood conceptually. The Buddha’s perspective was that such a thing was not possible and, when thoughtfully considered, this is, of course, true. God is transcendent to all considerations and can’t be enclosed within any conceptual and rational framework. To even attach a name such as “God” is to be lost in a delusional pretense.

Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki used the name “Great Nature” and “Great Self.” There are many names to point to the nameless creator of heaven and earth but Sokei-an perhaps said it best. He said, “If you really experience ‘IT’ with your positive shining soul, you really find freedom. No one will be able to control you with names or memory of words—Socrates, Christ, Buddha. Those teachers were talking about consciousness. Consciousness is common to everyone. When you find your true consciousness, you will not need the names or words of any teacher.” 

As a result, Gautama addressed only what can be controlled and didn’t participate in fostering further delusion. So the question is whether or not ‘IT’ can be defined, even marginally. What are the characteristics of ‘IT’ and how does ‘IT’ function? Whatever name is chosen, regardless of religious affiliation, the nature of God is understood to inhabit the entirety of creation. 

The creator can’t be severed from what is created, which is the point of the Buddhist understanding that all form is the same thing as emptiness. Rather than using the name “God” (in vain), the name “Buddha” is used, and “Buddha” means awakened to the true essence of oneself. We might use any name but the essence would not change. An awakened person is said to enjoy the mind of enlightenment. 

If you read Buddhist literature extensively, you’ll find a laundry list of sorts, which speaks to this mind of enlightenment. It includes the following qualities: complete, ubiquitous, full of bliss, independent, transcendent, full of wisdom, never changes, the ground of all being, the creative force of everything, devoid of distinctive nature (ineffable) yet all form endowed with this nature.

When we take all of this in and digest it, a duck begins to emerge that walks, talks, and looks like a duck. In the final analysis, a name is fleeting, but the substance remains forever. Here is what Jesus is recorded as having said about where God lives: 

“If your leaders say, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in the Heavens,’ then the birds will be before you. If they say, ‘It is in the ocean,’ then the fish will be before you. But the Kingdom is inside of you, and the Kingdom is outside of you. When you know yourself, then you will know that you are of the flesh of the living Father. But if you know yourself not, then you live in poverty and that poverty is you.”—Gospel of Thomas 3.

We must acknowledge that languages are means of articulating something but the something is never the same as the words we choose. What possible difference does the name make? We have grown excessively protective of our own names of choice and sadly have lost touch with our very own souls.

The scholastic trap.

Most people regard themselves as smart and have consequently fallen in love with the rational model for dealing with and solving our challenges and problems. We want to understand our world and the issues relevant to us. If we can’t fathom the reasons, we seem powerless to move. This is both a distinguishing aspect of being human and a threat to our existence. When someone is holding a gun to your head, you need to set aside the desire to rationally resolve the dilemma and come to terms, not with the conceptual reasons and understanding, but instead to first deal with the reality of the threat.

Scholasticism was developed as a method of critical thought, which dominated teaching by the academics (scholastics, or schoolmen) of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500 CE. This model was employed to articulate and defend orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context. 

It originated as an outgrowth of, and a departure from, Christian monastic schools (the forerunners of current universities). Not so much a philosophy or a theology as a method of learning, scholasticism put a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. 

Scholastic thought is also known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom, and in writing, it often takes the form of explicit apologetic disputation. A topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the way of a dialogue with a question, opponent’s responses are given, a counterproposal is argued, and opponent’s arguments rebutted. Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other fields of study. 

John Calvin stands out as the prime example of the logic of proof-texting, so convoluted that you need a step-by-step scientific roadmap from the beginning of time to endless eternity to fathom his disputations. His seminal work “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” published in 1536 CE, is his most significant contribution to hyperbole: the standard by which most Protestant (meaning “to protest”) theology continues today. I know this personally since I studied Calvin and reformed thought extensively while attending seminary.

Scholasticism began as an attempt to unify various contradictions on the part of medieval Christian thinkers: to harmonize the various authorities of their own tradition and to reconcile Christian theology with classical and late antiquity philosophy, especially that of Aristotle but also of Neoplatonism.

The main figures of scholasticism were Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s masterwork, the Summa Theologica, is often seen as the highest fruit of Scholasticism. Important work in the scholastic tradition has been carried on; however, well past Thomas’s time, for instance, by Francisco Suárez, Molina, and among Lutheran and Reformed thinkers.

This entire approach, by design, is based on conceptual, abstract thought, assuming that a transcendent God could be converted into an object for theological study. The Age of the Enlightenment was a response to the scholastic movement and continued the tradition which it initiated. This movement is a manifestation of the Western attempt to rationally grasp reality but is by no means the only movement. 

In the East, a completely different model arose based on trans-rational vision and was best exemplified by the man who has been acknowledged as the father of Zen and known as Bodhidharma. This was the name given to him by his spiritual teacher (Hannyatara Sonja). His real name was Bodai Tara (surname Chadili), and he lived during the 5th century CE. This places him 1,000 years after the time of The Buddha and roughly 500 years before the scholastic emergence in the West. As nearly as anyone can prove, Bodhidharma transmitted Zen from India and into China and was a towering giant in the long history of Zen Masters. Reading what he had to say can be somewhat daunting.

One of his most profound teachings comes to us from what is now known as the Wake-up Sermon. In this sermon, Bodhidharma addresses the matter of “understanding.” In light of our ordinary grasp of this matter, what he has to say seems startling. Consider this—“People capable of true vision know that the mind is empty. They transcend both understanding and not understanding. The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding...That which exists, exists in relationship to that which doesn’t exist.” 

What does “...the mind is empty” mean? Emptiness (in a Buddhist sense) has two meanings which are: (1) nothing is self-existing but rather depends upon something else, and (2) form is fundamentally lacking substantial existence. While similar, these two ways of grasping emptiness are subtly yet notably distinct.

Our mind has two aspects. One aspect is our “conditional mind”—our ordinary mind of thoughts and emotions, which we employ to manage and negotiate our conditional/relative world. This is the aspect of mind used by scholastics and the model standard in our world that is leading us into a quagmire of grief. 

The other aspect is our “unconditional mind”—fundamental consciousness atop which sits our ordinary mind of rational thought. In Buddhist vernacular, “unconditional mind” goes by many different handles, one of which is Buddha-mind (bodhi)—awakened mind. These two aspects are interdependent, and as Bodhidharma says, “That which exists, exists in relationship to that which doesn’t exist.” 

It would not be inaccurate to say that an “unconditional mind” doesn’t exist since the only way it could be perceived is by objectifying it (which renders it unreal). In its unmodified state, bodhi is real (yet imperceptible), but when objectified it becomes an abstraction (a delusion/unreal) in the same way that God becomes unreal when objectified. So, on the one hand, we can say that one aspect (it doesn’t matter which aspect we refer to) exists together with the other aspect (the first way of understanding emptiness) and that our unconditional mind is truly lacking substance—there is nothing there objectively (yet everything) except when manifested: the second way of understanding emptiness. It is important to understand this latter point.

Something (anything at all), which is unconditional, can’t possibly be defined or rationally understood since understanding is itself a set of conditions. If we objectify something real (make it perceptible), we strip it of life and make it abstract. The opposite is to reify something unreal (an object), which is to engage in delusion, believing something to contain life, which doesn’t. Our imaginary ego is a case in point of this latter, and our ego is fundamentally corrupt. The illusion of ego blocks access to bodhi since, in a delusive state, we make two errors— (1) We mistake our self-image for who we are, and in so doing (2), we remain blinded by ignorance and don’t have access to who we are genuinely.

Any object, by definition, is limited by conditions of time/space and circumstances, whereas bodhi (since it is unconditional) is transcendent—without limits. When we say “I understand,” what we are really saying is that we have a set of ideas under consideration, which we then accept as “understanding.” That is our conditional mind at work, and our conditional mind is incapable of real understanding since it is constrained by conditions perceived by our rational thought processes (left brain stuff). This is a conditional mind looking at unconditional mind and falling prey to delusion—believing its own PR. 

Contrast this with what Bodhidharma says: “The absence of both understanding and not understanding is true understanding.” If I said “I don’t understand,” this would be no better than saying that I do understand. Both of these expressions are manifestations of rational thought processes (different only by alternative conditions). What we ordinarily grasp as understanding is not understanding at all. It is a rational surrogate—an abstraction, which is rooted in the idea of “self”—a delusion.

When we say “I understand,” we are making reference to something which, in fact, doesn’t exist. There is no “I” except what we conjure up in our imaginations (a product of our conditional mind) which we consider as our identity, and this is grasped as separate, distinct, uniquely defined, and set apart from every other set of ideas belonging to other “not me’s.” 

The practical, everyday impact of this way of seeing is that proper understanding is beyond isolation and belonging to any individual, however intelligent. We are all, in truth, united and bound together at the level of unconditional mind (how could it be otherwise?). Individually we are a piece of this whole but just a piece, and while we may think it is possible to see the whole picture all by ourselves, this is a delusion of ego which is always joined with arrogance and defensiveness. True understanding is beyond the limitations of a conditional perspective.

Mahayana Buddhist thought (Zen belongs to this branch) stresses that bodhi is always present and perfect, and simply needs to be “uncovered” or disclosed to purified vision. We find in the “Sutra of Perfect Awakening” The Buddha teaches that, like gold within its ore, bodhi is always there within our mind, but requires obscuring mundane ore (the surrounding defilements of samsara and of impaired, unawakened perception) to be removed. Thus The Buddha declares:

“Good sons, it is like smelting gold ore. The gold does not come into being because of smelting...Even though it passes through endless time, the nature of the gold is never corrupted. It is wrong to say that it is not originally perfect. The Perfect Enlightenment of the Tathagata (A Buddha: our true mind) is also like this.”

The task, therefore, is not to create—enlightenment but rather to allow the afflictions of suffering to burn away the dross. To do otherwise is to reify reinventing an already existing wheel, leaving the go intact.

 Our desire to contain understanding within a scholastic framework only is a trap that threatens our existence. True understanding is not limited to conditions, which come and go. True understanding is beyond all limitations. Many will say that until we rationally understand a situation, our analysis is incomplete. It is only complete (the definition of τέλος) when we move beyond the conditional mind, reach the end, and embrace the unconditional mind.

Such a critique is like asking to have a conversation with a murderer holding a gun to our head and inquiring about his motives. The first step is to disarm him (or her). Then we can explore his or her reasons. This one-sided rational approach is what got us into the out of control entanglement we find ourselves in today. To continue down this road of conditional limitation and ideological opposition is a surefire prescription for disaster.

Discrimination or not? That is the question.

On the outside looking in.

To discriminate means what it says: to divide one thing from another. It begins with perception. We can see one thing only against a backdrop of difference. Orange and blue appear to the eye as two different things. What’s the opposite? No discrimination, where everything is the same.

The fundamental teaching of the entire New Testament can be summed up in one statement: non-discrimination, otherwise known as agape love (unconditional love). And the same thing is right for Buddhism. The names are different, but the principle is the same. Here the term used is compassion (ancient Indians didn’t know Greek), which actually means merging with another to the point where there is no longer you and me. There is just us.

Sadly many regard themselves as solid Judeo-Christians who have deluded themselves with the notion that they can practice hatred, discrimination, and bigotry as substitutes for love. But in fairness, many in every religion forget about the essence of their faith-expressions yet can quote chapter and verse to justify their disdain for their fellow humans.

Think about how magnificent life would be if we actually practiced love instead of hate. Then instead of attacking each other, we would exist in harmony. Now that would be revolutionary. 

Shantideva said this:

“All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself.  All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.”

That is only possible when there is no difference between oneself and others, which is, of course, what Jesus meant when he said,

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Easy to say and so hard to do.

The essence of essence.

The essential essence

There is a curious correspondence between essential oil and us. We, too, contain an essence that has been extracted from our source, and, like essential oil, this essence contains the aroma of the source. Neither an essential oil nor our ineffable spirit can be further distilled, and neither is subject to changing conditions. Once we arrive at the essence the aroma can be infused in various media and the aroma persists. The difference between essential oil and us is that our source is needed, never goes away, and remains an unchanging aspect, forever.

What is the essence of the essence? Of all essences? Bodhidharma called the essential nature “our mind”—The Buddha, not the “quotidian” mind. This mind is our spiritual essence. Nothing, he said, is more essential than that. It is the void void: The critical spirit. Out of this apparent nothingness comes everything. Nothingness is the realm of the unconditional absolute, beyond the conditions of this or that.

That may or may not sound esoteric, lacking usefulness. Still, I’ll offer you two frames of reference that illustrate extreme value, albeit unseen: One from Lao Tzu and the other from physicist Lawrence Krauss. Lao Tzu said this about usefulness:

“We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside

that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable.

We work with being,

but non-being is what we use.” 

And this from Lawrence Krauss. Our perceptual capacities are mesmerized by what moves, captured as a moth to a flame, but we never consider what moves them. And nothing is more useful than understanding that essence. 

Complete Release— Number 2

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday this identity issue appeared to be unresolved with us trapped in a logical box. So now let’s shift gears and come at this from a different tack by turning, of all places, to the Bible and look at an insightful passage:

“For our light and momentary troubles (causes and effects at the conditional level) are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” —2 Corinthians 4:17-18

“How does the Bodhisattva-mahasattva meditate on the Void-Void? This Void-Void is where the sravakas (see ending note) and the pratyekabuddhas (see ending note) get lost. O good man! This is ‘is’ and this is ‘not-is’. This is the Void-Void.” Chapter 22—Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

When we are finally done with hope in temporal life; when we see completely that there is nothing to hold on to that doesn’t result in suffering; when we finally get it that attachment is a dead-end, rooted in a deluded sense of separate and independent identity, then we can emancipate ourselves by releasing from attachment to attachment. 

Is relinquishing opinions.

Believers in emptiness

Are incurable.”—Nagarjuna

And this from Buddhist scripture:

An is, in this context, means form as when we refer to something: We say it is a ladder. The is has defined characteristics. The not-is has no defining characteristic, which makes it emptiness or in other words the Void. 

The Void is the Wall—Essence: the unconditional nature of us all. One side of reality against which the ladder, (e.g., the other side) rests. Emptiness and form are the divine partnership, which frames reality. The Void is, as the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians, unseen. So what does that make the Void-Void? The answer to this question is what makes Zen, Zen and to answer the question we turn to the 14th Patriarch of Buddhism—Nagarjuna.

He really knit this together as well as anyone ever has. His expositions on emptiness are sublime. What he leads us all to see is that if emptiness has any validity then it must measure up to emptiness itself. Empty-Emptiness; the Void-Void. Let’s examine this carefully and see where it goes. First, appreciate Nagarjuna’s interest and focus. He was not interested in meaningless philosophy and speculation. He wanted to rip apart speculation and arrive at the residue of truth. He wasn’t trying to create a new dimension of faith. He was working with the raw material spoken by the Buddha, and his focus was the dimensions of reality, which sat on a three-legged stool. The legs were:

1. Emptiness/essence/The Void (sometimes referred to as  Śūnyatā)—our unconditional Self

2. Form/matter/temporal life (in Sanskrit “Rupa”)—Our apparent self

3. Dependent origination

These three integrated measures of reality define what is known in Buddhism as the Middle Way. Here’s how these three fit together. Form must emerge from somewhere. That somewhere is the ‘is’ of ‘is.’ ‘Is’ equals otherness with defined characteristics, which makes it limited in time, space, and causality. ‘Is’ therefore is not the somewhere, otherwise, it would define itself, like a car with no driver. 

The somewhere must not be limited. It must have no properties yet all properties at the same time, therefore the somewhere is the indefinable, transcendent essence, which, as Paul states, is unseen—the Tathagatagarbha (Buddha-womb). These two—form and emptiness—come into existence simultaneously. One can’t precede the other for the same reason that a thinker can’t precede thinking. 

Creation by definition implies a creator just like a thinker implies thinking. This simultaneous arising is what is known as dependent origination. But that dependent origination as stated earlier seems to occur in the imaginary box, which looks like an unsolvable problem.

So let’s take the next step and see how we can resolve it. What is the pinnacle of surrendering? Surrendering from surrendering. What does that mean? It means the logical ground of faith. Surrendering is an action; a motion and form is the instrument of motion, but not the prime mover of the motion. Something must propel the motion of surrendering. It doesn’t occur by itself just as a car requires a driver. Mind essence is the indefinable, unseen Void-Void which propels motion. 

But this mind essence is not mind as we normally think of, as a product of our limited and independent brain. This is the primal mover of all motion. This mind moves flags, the wind, and us. It is the is of “is”.  When Nagarjuna postulates empty-emptiness, the Void is transformed back into form in a never-ending feedback loop, which can’t be separated.

This inseparable feedback loop of form/emptiness is this very special mind essence (our true nature) not emptiness or form but both. If it were one or the other we would still be non-integrated and dual, regardless of logic. 

The Buddha created a completely new paradigm, which brought speculation about self/SELF (anatman/atman) to an end, thus resolving the identity issue. If only emptiness/essence (atman) this would be like a ghost. If only form/flesh (self) this would be the non-walking dead—“Just like a plant or stone”. 

The combined union of emptiness-form provides all that is needed for the existence of life. It has the driver (essence) and the car (form) and the combination—not one or the other—makes the motion of surrendering possible. Neither alone would suffice. The two become one, but the One is two interdependent aspects of the same thing—the Ladder with a Wall. That being the case, dependent origination remains intact but no longer in a box constrained by mundane logic. This union has a name called mind essence. The technical term is the sambhogakaya—one of three aspects of a Buddha.

Attaching to anything, including attachment, creates misery. It is quite possible to become dogmatically undogmatic and cling to a fixed position of being uniquely undogmatic, but that would still leave us attached, resulting in the sort of dilemma we see today with people getting locked into unswerving ideologies and unable to compromise. 

Letting go of everything creates emancipation thus enabling us to conform to actions demanded by evolving circumstances.  When we see that, then we no longer fix our eyes on what is seen but rather fix our eyes what is unseen. What Paul asked of Christian believers to do as an act of blind faith, The Buddha and Nagarjuna reasoned as a logically discerned premise. 

There is a logical foundation for faith, which arose 500 years before Jesus walked the earth, and it came from Gautama Buddha, later to be refined by Nagarjuna sometime during the 2nd century CE, about a hundred years after the apostle Paul died during the 1st century CE. 

The problem is fairly simple to solve once we let go of the fixed limitations of conceptual, mundane logic, by escaping from this box of rational logic and accessing intuitive, supra-mundane logic. When the Heart Sutra says that emptiness is form and form is emptiness we need to look carefully at these words as an equation: as mirror images. The union can’t be broken.

Complete release means surrendering from faith in this material existence and placing our faith completely in the unseen union of mind essence: the Void-Void. From that point on, wisdom shifts from the mundane to spiritual origins and becomes Prajnaparamita—Perfect Wisdom—we enter the realm of Nirvana: “The ‘Dharmata’ (True Essence) of all Buddhas” and then see reality, as it is without discrimination. That is the ultimate wisdom. Complete release means the total absence of delusions, which thus allows the shining jewel of prajna to burst forth.

“Buddhas say emptiness

The problem with the conventional understanding of Paul’s statement is that it keeps God at bay; as a separate reality—in the bye-and-bye, not accessible in the here and now. What the Buddha brought to this discussion is integration. God/Buddha-Nature is both in the bye-and-bye and in the here and now. 

Buddha-Nature can’t be divided and neither can we since we are fundamentally Buddhas. The curious thing about Paul’s statement is not what he said but how it is usually understood. The conventional wisdom of his day—that God lived in heaven in the sky (where the Pie resides)—was used to interpret what he said. If you read his statement carefully you will not find a separate God.

And contrary to the Christian notion that we are separated from God, The Buddha saw this separation as impossible! We could quibble about the difference between God and mind essence and miss the point, which is that every moment within every sphere of existence, our beingness is the inseparable union of the seen (which dies) and the unseen (which lives forever). The true you and the true me is indiscriminate and exactly the same. It has no definable properties yet infuses all properties. Unless this is true then we are all like immovable stones.

This post concludes this series on surrender but more needs to be said about this matter of essence—the true you and me. Without a solid grasp of essence this entire matter floats about in the air with very little practical understanding and nothing is more practical than grasping our true nature.

Note: A sravakas is a disciple and a pratyekabuddhas is a lone Buddha; said to achieve enlightenment on their own, without the use of teachers or guides, by contemplating the principle of dependent arising.

Complete Release— Number 1

The first of the Four Noble Truths acknowledges that during every person’s life, they will experience suffering. While this may seem like a negative assessment, it is honest and realistic, neither negative nor positive. By studying the dharma, we come to understand that there is a causal link between suffering and attaching to mortal life. We also learn that by breaking this attachment, suffering is undone, and life is transformed.

The problem is that attachment, of all forms, has another causal link to identity. By misunderstanding who we are, we set off a cascading chain reaction involving ignorance, greed, and anger. When we see ourselves as independent and separate beings, we create further delusions, which reinforces even more. 

The ego is imaginary and fabricated through our thoughts. These thoughts further imagine an imaginer, which only has value and worth by attaching to fleeting life, like a leach sucking blood to survive. Whatever we choose to identify with becomes our basis of joy and sorrow. 

We may imagine that our worth depends upon other temporal entities: another person, a job, status, wealth, or anything conceivable, but nothing of a phenomena nature lasts or conforms to how we wish it to be. We may have once loved a person deeply, but they, and we, temporally change into someone we no longer love, and nobody lives forever. 

When change or death comes, we experience sorrow. But this base delusion (and the presumption of attachment which flows from it) produces greed and possessiveness. Since mortal life is ever-changing, loss inevitably occurs, which then activates anger, creating lousy karma and endless cycles of samsara—greed, anger, and ignorance—all cascading from misidentifying.

This dilemma is nothing new. People have forever wrestled with the same issue before the Buddha and ever since. This is and has been, the battle of two opposing Titans—one the ego (the illusion of identity) vs. the seeming champion, the true SELF. 

Until The Buddha, the SELF appeared to be winning the contest. But this victory turned out to be possible only by the ego committing suicide, which it is extraordinarily reluctant to do. Additionally, any sort of identity (e.g., self or SELF) must have defining properties. So, where is the transforming power to be found?

I began this series on surrender concerning complete release, which I said would be reserved for a later discussion. The time has come, and I want to start the ball rolling with a reflection on thinking. When we think, by definition (defined by dependent origination), we are the thinker. Thinking and a thinker are directly linked. It would be nonsensical to say that thinking comes from nowhere. Thinking and thinkers arise as a single entity, just like a mother is only a mother with a child. These are interdependent entities. One can’t exist without the other.

When there is no thinking, no thinker exists. But when we don’t think we don’t just disappear. Therefore we are not the thinker; otherwise, we would disappear when thinking ceases. It is clear that we/what are independent of both thought and the thinker, which seems to defy the premise of dependent origination. 

Interdependent existence, you’ll recall from an earlier post, are the two legs of a Ladder—the two discriminate aspects of form, one part defining the other (good/bad, in/out, etc.). When we imagine ourselves, there is an image of a self (or SELF), which, when we see clearly, is just a thought. This thought (or idea) is linked to an imaginary self, which we refer to as the thinker who thinks thoughts, but this can’t be true. 

If it were true, then we would disappear when we stop thinking. Logic cancels this connection. So if this imaginary self is the product of thinking, who (or what) is the independent being who jump-starts (originates) the thinking process? A car doesn’t move without a driver (at least not yet). Who’s the driver? 

The answer, as strange as it may seem, takes us to the Wall— Essence. The Heart Sutra says that form is emptiness; emptiness is form. These are the two legs of life that are irrevocably joined together. Two-legged ladders must lean against a wall or fall down. The metaphor works perfectly. It would logically follow that if we are not the imaginary self, then we must be the opposite: the non-imaginary self, which has been known since before the time of The Buddha as the independent who that we indeed are. The independent who thus seems to be essence—the true SELF (with no identifying properties). But don’t jump there quite yet.

Read the following quote carefully from Bodhidharma, the acknowledged father of Zen. He said this about motion: 

“The Buddha is your real body, your original mind. This mind is not outside the material body of four elements. Without this mind we can’t move. The body (by itself) has no awareness. Like a plant or stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It’s the mind that moves.” 

Huineng, the sixth patriarch of Ch’an, reached the exact same conclusion upon hearing the Diamond Sutra recited and realized enlightenment. I encourage you to take the time to read, carefully, this text. And when you do, please observe this: “...when a bodhisattva gives rise to the unequaled mind of awakening, he has to give up all ideas.”  

There is an extremely subtle twist to Huineng’s enlightenment that may not register unless we slam on the brakes and reflect. One day Huineng heard two monks arguing about the movement of a flag. One said the wind moved the flag. The other said that the flag moved independently of the wind. Huineng said to the monks that neither the wind nor the flag was moving. Instead, it was the mind that moved. Was Huineng saying that the flag was being controlled by some extraterrestrial force, or that he projected his mind psychically to wave the flag? Hold the question.

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra — Chapter Five, the Buddha says (when referring to his Adamantine Body, which means having the hardness of a diamond—unchanging), “It is neither action nor fruition (e.g., cause and effect). It is not one made, not one that dies. It is ‘no-mind;’ It is one not countable; It is the All-Wonderful, the One Eternal, and the one not presumable. It is not consciousness and is apart from the mind (e.g., transcendent to both). And yet it does not depart from the mind. It is a mind that is all-equal. It is not an ‘is,’ yet it is what is ‘is.’ There is no going and no coming, and yet it goes and comes.”

Elsewhere in this Sutra, the Buddha spoke of the non-self as the imaginary self, otherwise known as an ego. This non-self is interdependent and is linked to thought, which is vaporous: a mirage, which seems very real. That part fits perfectly within the box of dependent origination. Within this box, the non-self imagines itself using the tool of imagination, which further reinforces the artificial sense of reality. It is the Matrix, which I spoke about earlier. However, this does not explain Bodhidharma’s mind or our question, who’s driving the car? 

What animates our being? Does our being animate itself, like a flag waving in the wind? Bodhidharma says no. Our being, without mind essence, is just like a plant or stone. That would be like a car, which drives itself without a driver.

So with that pregnant issue hanging in mid-air, we’ll take a break here and pick up tomorrow with concluding remarks.

In the readiness of time.

Nobody wins.

Throughout life, I’ve been bothered when someone would tell me to go here or do that without giving me any clue of how. 

I was sometimes amazed by their advice but disturbed when left to figure out how by myself. “Just say no” didn’t cut it for me. I’m a pragmatist and not afraid to say when I need help. Perhaps it’s expecting too much to suggest that others might benefit as well if only they also would lose the macho attitude of I can do this by myself without help from anyone else and ask for assistance concerning the how-to. But alas, having your ego deflated is not a popular activity!

For some days now, I have continued down a path of saying that while suffering is what everyone wishes to avoid, there is much of value about suffering that results in transforming our attitudes, how we experience our true self, and the probable impact on the world. But until now, I have left out the how-to. The time for completing this journey is now, and today I want to pave the way with a few preliminary comments.

First is what Winston Churchill (among many others) said: “People will only change when they have suffered enough.” Until then, as previously pointed out, we are not encouraged to go through the necessary rigors to change positively. Often times during one of my classes, a student would say, “I don’t suffer, so why would I choose to alter my satisfying lifestyle to go through these rigors.” In essence, they echoed the observation expressed by Chan Master Sheng Yen: “...nobody having good dreams wants to wake up. Only when they have nightmares are we eager to do so.” 

Motivation is fundamental, and rare are those who can look down the road and see where it leads. One day our body will die. One day we will all experience illness. One day we will lose a loved one or a career that sustains our families and us. All of us suffer. One day the unavoidable comes to our door.  

Over a year ago, I wrote a post called The Four Horses of Zen that reflected on this problem, as expressed by the Buddha in the Samyutta Agama Sutra. He told a parable of four horses to illustrate different sorts of people. There is an excellent one, a couple of lesser horses, and a bad one. He said the best horse runs before it sees the shadow of the whip.  The second best will run just before the whip reaches his skin. The third one will run when it feels pain on his body, and the bad one will run after the pain penetrates into the marrow of his bones. Unfortunately, I was a bad one and endured much pain before changing.

For some curious reason, the words of Winston Churchill seem to be popping up recently. He commented on our stubbornness and said of us, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” That was me. After everything else failed, I was ready to become a student, and only then did the teacher appear. When our methods of self-service continue to lead us to suffer over and over again, it becomes clear that egotism fails. Then our moment of truth finally invites us into the realm of unity.

So much for preliminary comments. Tomorrow I’ll suggest the how-to prescribed by many enlightened beings that worked for me and more than likely will work for you too.

Every suffering, a seed of awareness.

We have a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That everyday wisdom governs most of life. We pursue our paths to what we believe will produce fulfillment and pleasure, and often times this plan works until it stops working. And then we adopt a variation on this pursuit. 

What fulfills us: money, prestige, political power, fame, or other human relationships? There are different strokes for different folks. The problem is that there are no strokes that last forever. Every phenomenal thing is in motion and when the source of our pleasure turns South, so too does our sense of self-worth and happiness. That is an unarguable outcome of this pursuit.

Today I will begin a series to thoroughly explore this pattern to despair. What drives this rush to oblivion? Why does the plan not work? And what value, if any does the inevitable outcome serve? Suffering is something everyone wants to avoid and nobody can prevent, until…

But today I’ll drop a clue with the thought of where this series will lead. Not only is suffering unavoidable but it is essential in the process of awakening.