Where’s Waldo—Finding A Buddha

My daughter and I loved reading stories together. She liked it since she was fascinated by the stories. I liked it because I loved being with her. The stories were secondary to me, but to her, they were everything. And one of her favorite stories was Where’s Waldo. 

For those of you who don’t know, the Where’s Waldo series are books show page after page of illustrations of thousands of little people engaged in various activities, and within this mass of little people, there is only one little Waldo. The trick is to pick out Waldo from the masses. She loved this game and would squeal with glee when she found Waldo. 

The most challenging pictures (and thus the most considerable challenge) was when Waldo stood in plain sight. Everyone expects Waldo to be hiding behind a fence post, a tree, or a hundred other people, so to discover him in plain sight proves to be the most difficult.

Have you ever wondered what a buddha would look like if he appeared today among the masses? I have, and wondered if he would be wearing a long, flowing robe, have droopy ear-lobes with a URNA in the middle of his forehead? If so, it wouldn’t be too challenging to pick him out. However, expecting a buddha to appear in physical form would reveal my ignorance since “buddha” is not a name like Donald but is instead symbolic, meaning “to awaken,” in the same way that “Christ” is not the last name of Jesus.

Some years ago, during a sesshin, I saw a buddha among those gathered with me, so I know what he looks like. You’re probably suspicious and wondering, “Did he really see a buddha? Was it a phantasm?” Or perhaps you’re just thinking, “this guy has lost it and is really nuts.” Nevertheless, I did see a buddha. As I looked around the room at all those participating in the sesshin, I saw a buddha in each and every person, completely unaware they were a buddha. I looked out at the gorgeous autumn foliage and saw buddhas everywhere. I looked up and saw a buddha on the wings of geese flying south. Everywhere I looked, I saw a buddha just like Waldo in plain sight.

There are three seeming puzzles here. The first is we are looking but not seeing. I experienced the opposite this morning when David—the wonderful man who brings me coffee every morning—appeared at my door. When he came, I not only looked at his exterior, but I “saw” his heart of generosity, and I felt beautiful! Then I told him how special he was, and then he felt beautiful, even though I was wearing my bathrobe, and he was dressed in chef’s clothing. We get so busy and distracted by things that aren’t important that we don’t find buddhas in the masses who surround us. 

A second challenge is that we expect a buddha to appear in a specific and limited form. It didn’t matter to me that David was dressed in the clothes of a chef. What mattered was his golden heart of generosity. And yet a third is that we don’t take seriously what the dharma tells us—That the nature of a buddha is ubiquitous, unbroken, and infinite, awaiting release as a submarine emerges from the depths into plain sight. 

We hear that teaching and think to ourselves, “That irascible blob next to me can’t be a buddha. Just look how poorly he/she behaves. A buddha would never act like that.” Well, if a buddha were bound up in delusions, focused on, and exclusively concerned with the heartaches that others carry, and expectations beyond their plights, then perhaps he/she would act poorly. But such is not the case because the emergence of our awakened buddha transforms everything

I was sad when I saw a buddha in those next to me in the sesshin because they didn’t know of their hearts of gold, and unless they awaken, what good is that enormous, untapped potential? Our broken and disfigured world desperately needs more awakened buddhas. And when we notice, when we see what lies at their depths (and not just how they appear before us), and tell them how lovely they are, their buddha is released from bondage, even when they think otherwise. Each of us alone is just a single Waldo hiding among the masses, but if all of those non-Waldos suddenly turned into Waldo, it would be amazing.

Years ago, I participated in a global effort to map a particular strand of DNA (as a part of the human genome project). My participation occurred through what is known as meta-computing. The idea is ingenious. Some smart people figured out that millions of computers around the world sit idle with available processing time. If all of those computers could be networked using the Internet, it would expand the number-crunching capacity logarithmically. Even a single supercomputer can’t match the combined processing capacity of millions networked together. But this utilization only works when a significant number of people with computers, that sit idly by, choose to participate.

The same is right with all of us. When everyone is asleep and looking for a buddha somewhere else—most notably when they doubt such a thing as a buddha—no participation happens. Do they have an ideology that causes them to deny awakening? Do they instead imagine they alone are awake (but aren’t) and think others are just dumb? It doesn’t matter what doctrine someone holds. What matters is what is. And that is a matter of the heart, not what appears. 
It is really time for everyone in the human race to wake up, stop looking for a buddha behind a fence post, or a tree, and start contributing to the global network. When we look in the wrong places, a buddha will never be found, and the world will continue to suffer. Seeing the unseen is often a matter of observing what is right in front of our faces.

“Merge together with all things. Everywhere is just right. Accordingly, we are told that from ancient to modern times, all dharmas are not concealed, always apparent, and exposed.”
Simply Drop Off Everything—Zen Teachings of Hongzhi Zhengjue

Happiness

The secret of happiness.

Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief—The limerick, reflecting a child’s wondering: What will I be when I grow up? Every child thinks about that question. Every adult continues to wonder. It seems like a game of chance. 

The more important question, the one that is never asked, is not what but how. The “what” presumes the “how,” but it rarely works out the way we imagine. We really ought to think more about the latter and less about the former, since without understanding how “what”  becomes a game of chance.

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” So wrote Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

Every time I contemplate those words, an image pops into my mind of a mule trying to catch the carrot on the end of a stick attached to his head. The faster he goes, the faster the carrot moves away. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the pursuit takes us further and further away. The carrot is never eaten, and the mule starves in his pursuit.

It seems axiomatic that the fruit of whatever work we choose should result in happiness, if not immediately, then certainly after a time of diligence and perseverance. It’s the bargain we make, yet more times than not, the contract goes adrift. Could it be we are looking in the wrong direction? Forwards? Backward? Which way? How about within? And just maybe we need to first answer a more fundamental question of being because until we know who and what we are, we’re all chasing shadows and thinking all the while that happiness is a reward.

The highest wisdom says otherwise. This is what Krishna tells Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: 

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment, and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by the desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.”

Thich Nhat Hanh ends a talk in The Art of Mindful Living (Sounds True, 1992) with this: “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There is no way to peace; peace is the way. There is no way to enlightenment; enlightenment is the way.”

All right words, yet none of them will take us to happiness until we unveil our essential Selves (Atman). “Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be the unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential. Those who know the essential to be essential and the unessential to be unessential, dwelling in right thoughts, do arrive at the essential…We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”—The Dhammapada. 

Until such time as we awaken to our essence, our thoughts will be wrong, we’ll dwell on the unessential, happiness will remain a figment of our imaginations, and we’ll continue to chase the carrot.

To Have or To Be?

Is having the same as being?

It has now been sixty-three years since I sat in my high school algebra class. I remember very little of that room, except for one thing that has stayed with me and been a guiding light throughout my life. That one thing was a banner; my teacher hung above the blackboard that read, “He who perseveres attains the expansion.” 

I imagine she meant it as an encouragement to stay the course and learn algebra. I understood it in a much broader sense: as a way of living—to stay the course through adversity and never give up, particularly during times of extreme suffering. At the time, I knew nothing about psychology, religion, or spirituality but those words of encouragement took me into the realm of all three.

My childhood was a mixed bag of both suffering and fun. The fun part was an escape from the suffering, but I never really escaped until decades later, when, due to a crisis of major proportions, I entered the realm of self-understanding. And that led me to psychology, religion, and spirituality. I suffered, and I got to the point of readiness when I was desperate to fathom why.

I first became aware of Zen because rumor had it that the practice was all about understanding suffering and finding release. It did both. But I was unclear how and why, and that took me to psychology—Erich Fromm and Carl Jung, and ultimately The Buddha. 

Fromm’s ideas were very similar to those of The Buddha, and I came to realize something essential: people have a tendency to regard spirituality and psychology as two different matters, and I found that was not true. Both spirituality and psychology are concerned with a single matter: the human mind. 

Both Fromm and The Buddha recognized a dichotomy between “having” and “being,” but it was The Buddha who found the link that joined the two together, explained how and why they were linked, and found a solution that put being as the dominating force. I found myself agreeing with both that having (to excess) became a poisoning of the spirit, and there was a watershed moment in my life when what I thought was my spirit became broken, thus my quest to solve the dilemma.

To The Buddha, both “having” and “being” coexisted, but it was the illusion of a misunderstood sense of being (the ego) that overrode and blocked genuine “beingness.” Before dealing with the ego, there seemed to be no genuine “beingness” since this latter remained hidden beneath a perceptible ego, with its multiple dimensions of insatiable greed, simply because our awareness told us that “having” was “being,”—the more we had, the more real our sense of beingness. For me, the problem was, the more I had, the more corrupted I became, and the connection eventually imploded, leaving me with nothing but being, which was impossible to articulate since beingness was naked and without identification.

My life has been regulated by that basic principle of perseverance. I never understood the compelling force until I began my study of the mystics and enlightened psychologists. It is that force of self-determination that struggles to be free of bondage to things so dominating today. It is perseverance through thick and thin, good times and bad, never wavering from the desire to be free (as it did for me) that compels us all who don’t settle for things but demands for themselves self-actualization.

There’s a Youtube video of an interview with Erich Fromm. I encourage you to take the time and watch it, and as you do appreciate, this interview happened more than sixty years ago, yet the social and cultural conditions he described then are as real now than in 1958 (even more so).

Many people are off-put with mystical matters, thinking, “oh, that’s too unorthodox and not for me,” but everyone wants to understand themselves. Note that Fromm’s comments concerning people’s ideas concerning means becoming ends—A haunting premonition of today’s attitudes today. We have created a vacuous society that relies more and more on things and less and less on what matters—genuine beingness.

“As always, Erich Fromm speaks with wisdom, compassion, learning, and insight into the problems of individuals trapped in a social world that is needlessly cruel and hostile.”—Noam Chomsky.

The wisdom for solving our irreconcilable problems.

Meet Nagarjuna

Our world is drowning in a sea of rights vs. wrongs, governments trapped in ideological deadlocks, conflicts and wars, based on the same, religions likewise immersed in egocentric, self-righteousness (that results in an ever-increasing division of sects), news spun as fake, political alienation, and of course, a global pandemic that is decimating both people and economies. And lest we not forget: Global climate changes, that if not addressed soon, will eliminate us all. It is thus time to pull Nagarjuna out of the closet and dust him off.

We begin this dusting off in a familiar fashion; I need to introduce readers to Nagarjuna. He was a wise sage who lived a long time ago, roughly 1,800 years ago (150–250 CE), about 600 years following The Buddha’s death and, according to modern scholars, was thought to have resided in Southern India. In the Zen tradition, he is the 14th Patriarch. He is also recognized as a patriarch in Tantric and Amitabha Buddhism.

While considered a philosopher of incomparable standing, he put no stock in philosophy, claiming his mission was the apologist of the Buddha’s transcendent wisdom—Beyond any rational articulation. In that sense, he was a sort of Apostle Paul of Buddhism. The Buddha attempted to convey, with words, matters beyond words. The Buddha, like The Christ, was consequently recondite and rarely understood. Nagarjuna set out to correct that and, in the process, created what is now known as The Middle Way—of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

The reason he is so critical to today’s world is that he was able to show, in a less mind-boggling way, that we live within a world of seeming contradictions that, when carefully examined, are not contradictory. To most, we live in a relative world, governed by conditional rights vs. conditional wrongs with nothing beyond. Nagarjuna used the logical method of his era to articulate how there is no contradiction. At that point, ancient Indian scholars employed a method of logic called a tetralemma: an algorithm with four dimensions (affirmation, negation, equivalence, and neither). In terms of conditional rights versus conditional wrongs, it would look like this:

1. Explicit absolute right exists: affirmation of absolute right, implicit negation absolute wrong.
2. Explicit absolute right does not exist: affirmation of absolute wrong, implicit negation absolute right.
3. Explicit absolute right both exists and does not exist: both implicit affirmation and negation.
4. Explicit absolute right neither exists nor does not exist: implicit neither affirmation nor negation.

He thus created the Two Truth Doctrine of conditional truth and unconditional truth. That doctrine stated, so long as this tetralemma method of logic is used alone, there is no way to reconcile either a conditional absolute right or a conditional absolute wrong since all conditions are contingent. That is where Nagarjuna began, but it is not where he ended. He then went to the next level—to the unconditional, which has no contingencies (beyond rational understanding) and pointed out there was a fifth dimension: none of the above.

“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.”

Allow me to translate for you. We ordinarily consider truth as conditionally contingent (e.g., one thing contingent upon something else, such as right and wrong). Still, there is an ultimate truth beyond contingencies, and these two (while appearing as two), are actually two sides of the same thing. They arise dependent upon one another, and neither can exist without the other, sort of like the inside and outside of a roof. One of these truths is a truth of discriminate opposition (e.g., this vs. that; right vs. wrong—the core dilemma), but the other is the truth of indiscriminate union. We must use the conventional truth to lead us to the higher truth since the conventional is the coin of standard logic and communications (words), and we use this truth to know how it is different from the higher. But unless we experience the higher truth, we will forever be lost in a conditionally, contingent, rational trap.

Then he stated a subset of this doctrine. That conventional truth was a matter of tangible form, but the higher truth was of imperceptible emptiness (thus, what the Buddha had said in the Heart Sutra/Sutra of Perfect Wisdom: Form is emptiness; Emptiness is form). Nagarjuna reasoned that if this ineffable dimension of emptiness was valid, then it must apply to everything, including emptiness, thus empty emptiness, which creates an inseparable feedback union back to form again. The two are forever fused together.

So how does this affect the problems of today? It “can” revolutionize the dilemma of egotism and self-righteousness. When properly understood and experienced, it means that the obstacle standing in the way of the higher truth is the perceptible illusion of the self (ego: the contingent, conditional image). Once that illusion is eliminated, we experience our true self (unconditional non-image) that is the same for all people. 

There is no discrimination at this higher truth level (e.g., distinction), and consequently, there is no absolute right vs. wrong, but neither is there not an absolute right nor wrong (independent of each other). Everything is unconditionally, indiscriminately united, yet not conditionally. Thus it can neither be said that truth either exists or does not. If all of us could “get that,” the conflicts of the world would vanish in a flash, and we would at long last know peace and unity among all things.

Freedom

The driving force that has compelled all cultures, at all times, is the desire for freedom. How are we to understand this desire that defines us all? Read histories from any culture, and you’ll find this force at work. Wars to subjugate others, for being set free and independent, to the shaping of religions (e.g., The Exodus)—It’s all there and continues to this day.

But one stem on this branch of freedom addresses the motherlode of all bondage: Bondage of the mind—The firm conviction that we are in bondage and slaves to desire. No other compulsion is more endemic and pernicious than this one. And until we awaken to our inherent freedom, we will never be free, regardless of phenomenal conditions (that always change). Beneath the apparent trap lies freedom, and the two— phenomenal and noumenal—can never be pulled apart.

So strong is the desire to escape the tyranny of consciousness and the restrictive boundaries of perception—to unlock the prisons of thought, in which we chain ourselves, lies the hope to reveal a better version of who we are. It is a never-ending desire that when all other forms of phenomenal freedom are achieved, we remain unsatisfied and feel the compulsion to move through a door of awakening to the bedrock nature of who and what we are.

Error, forgiveness and the roots of both.

If it is human to err and divine to forgive, what stands in the way of forgiveness? The knee-jerk answer is clearly the same answer that brings about erring in the first place: human nature. But this answer begs the next question: What is the nature of being genuinely human? And as necessary as it is to understand genuine humanity, it is of equal importance to understand divine nature and how these two relate.

Bodhidharma said: “If you use your mind (your rational mind) to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind (your true mind) or reality. If you study reality without using your mind (your rational mind), you’ll understand both.”

Most religious answers say that divinity can’t err since, by implication, the divine doesn’t err. But if it is divine that forgives (and we do many times), there must be a part of us that is divine, and another part that isn’t. Or is that a contradiction? Perhaps there is no contradiction when viewed from the deepest part of us outward to the skin. Perhaps genuine humanity is divine, and by that, I mean humans are the inexorable aspects of superficial and the deep, with error and forgiveness.

It becomes clear when reading Bodhidharma that he acknowledged both the true mind (where unity prevails) and the “everyday, rational mind” (where discrimination prevails). In Bodhidharma’s writing, the term is used, not in a judgmental way but to mean to differentiate—perceiving one thing as being distinct from another thing. These two are present in us all. 

One is virtual, that differentiates one thing from another thing (and becomes the source of all conflict), and the true mind: The source of everything, where there is no discrimination and thus no conflict. For a conflict to exist, the perception of difference has to exist. If there is no perception of difference, there is no conflict.

So how is this understanding supposed to help us in everyday life when making errors and forgiveness? It helps us recognize that we are all the same (conflicted at one level of consciousness that is actually unreal) and not conflicted or different at the deepest level of consciousness. 

It puts everything into the proper alignment and perspective. When we find ourselves embroiled in conflict and adversity, we need to notice which mind is the cause of the conflict. It can’t be the true mind since for conflict to arise, the perception of differences must exist. In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, it says when referring to the true mind, “In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya (the true mind) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?”

And an insightful way considers the perspective of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit priest, philosopher, and a paleontologist—“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

“Ide-prison-ology”

Rearranging priorities.

It’s time to add a new word to our contemporary vernacular. The addition is a simple adjustment to the word “ideology,” that reflects where our culture has arrived—in a prison of opposition with no legal appeal for release. 

We already have similar words  that approximate this new word, such as “Mexican standoff” or “logjam.” But the essence of this new word is only glancingly similar to those words. What the new word captures, sums up our current state of irreconcilability: a state of cultural and political “my way or the highway” stagnation where nothing gets done. 

The principle of compromise appears to be lost in the ash heap of time, and this state of mind is not limited to any one country. It is a global phenomenon that results in a preoccupation with the insignificant at the expense of the significant.

There is so much confusion occurring at the same time it is nearly impossible to arrange priorities. Even if we could, wait ten minutes and the entire deck gets reshuffled and we simply cease to think of what’s important and what’s not. Instead, we have fallen back into a time when legalism was abhorred by moral giants such as Jesus and The Buddha, both of whom fought to rectify the problem by pointing out what the laws of the time needed as a substratum—the spirit of the law. 

That focus has been lost as well, thus the need to establish this new word by recognizing what ought to be obvious but is not: We have fallen prey to dogmatic, inflexible positions of opposition where nobody but the rich and powerful—who rig the system to their advantage, perhaps by design, to keep us all confused and distracted by what is happening behind the scene with what is happening in front of the scene—too much of insignificance to enable us to notice matters of ultimate importance.

The question is, why is this happening? That’s a hydra-headed challenge but maybe it is simply a matter of too much comfort by the few at the cost of the many. Money and power are two factors not easily shared. Possessiveness is a stickler and the more a person has the more they seem to want. Maybe what we all need to do (and I’d suggest we begin from the top and work our way down) is go and live in places that aren’t so comfortable, where concern for your life is the common coin. There is nothing quite so transforming as your own experience of suffering. When you are starving, a single slice of bread becomes a feast and the ideology of the whole loaf or none at all descends into la-la-land, right where it belongs.

We have become imprisoned into camps of opposing ideas and values with no escape. It is long past time for us to realize such behavior is shooting everyone in the foot. Life always seems to follow the path we noticed in the Marines: Bad stuff flows downstream, never upstream. The tide needs to turn, and soon.

The isness of IS.

Everyone desires certainty, but it doesn’t come about; the ground beneath our feet is different from what it was yesterday, and consequently, only new solutions will work today. We surely know that in today’s world with COVID-19.

We can’t recycle old solutions, we must create new ones to fit today’s terrain. That makes unquestionable sense so why do we not see the shifting sands? Perhaps we don’t see it because we don’t want to. It is easier to shape life as we want it to be, instead of the way it is. “Suchness” or “thusness” is the desirable way of the heart: Accepting what is vs. what we wish. Desiring what is not, is a fool’s journey since what exists in this present moment is all there can ever be. The clock doesn’t run backward. That, however, does not stop us from engaging in fantasy and wishful thinking.

This sage observation is not singularly a matter of psychology or spirituality but is also a reflection of biological necessity and survival. According to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, 

“…it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” 

Numerous examples of failed societies can be found⎯from the Vikings in Greenland to the Jews who were deceived in Nazi Germany, believing Hitler would not follow through with his final solution⎯when refusal to adapt and blindness ruled the day. There is no guilt implied here. Often times circumstances shift suddenly and being creatures of habit, we are lulled into states of denial. When people or other species have not adapted, they have perished. This is as much a psychological matter as it is a spiritual one.

We have some psychological blind spots that can be dangerous. Cognitive dissonance is one of these blind spots. So is “herding,” “crowd mentality,” (a significant problem today in social networks), the “boiling frog syndrome,” “denial” and so too bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism⎯bias against accepting what is and desiring what is egocentric, fear-induced and self-serving. 

Learning to accept the essential goodness in all things requires releasing ourselves from fear, and then embracing the unity in all. When we see ourselves in others then we can say as Shantideva, the 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar, said: “When I act for the sake of others, No amazement or conceit arises. Just like feeding myself, I hope for nothing in return.”

The suffering of silence.

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”—Mark Twain

In a post from another blog I spoke about putting legs under our words and titled the post, Talk without action is cheap (and worthless). Satirist Mark Twain apparently agreed with Mr. Einstein, given his quote above. The essence of his words, and mine, concerns accomplishments, or worse; apathy and complacency—the death knells of accomplishment.

Far too often our tendency is based on the flawed notion of, “It ain’t my problem,” with the corresponding notion of making nice and not rocking the boat. We maintain a conspiracy of silence, motivated by an unspoken consensus to not mention or discuss given subjects in order to maintain group solidarity, or fear of political repercussion and social ostracism. “Nice people” avoid controversy and ignore the plights of those, seemingly not like us. In so doing we exhibit the mantra of the assumed elite: A “CEO of Self.”

When you cut through the pomposity, a conspiracy of silence is cowardly dishonest and delusional to the point of refusing to acknowledge our connectivity with the interrelated fabric of life. The complexity of living in today’s world is straining this practice to the breaking point. When does rampant disease become our problem? When does injustice become our problem? When does poverty, or the growing economic polarization become our problem? Bigotry? Racism? Hatred? Environmental catastrophes?

We are now engaged in a political campaign for electing the next POTUS and the choices we make will have an impact for years to come. There are many who vote in unthinking ways, toeing the party line or choose to not vote at all, based on the flawed idea that choosing between lesser evils is still voting for evil. We might want to bear in mind that we should never hold the possible, hostage to the perfect. There are no choices that are perfect this side of enlightenment so we must make better choices, not perfect ones.

Lest anyone doubt the proclivity of our current leader, they should read for themselves how his comments are designed to divide and conquer; to draw the line between two possible nations. One of these continues the cherished tradition upon which our nation was founded. The other is an insult to the principles that undergird that nation. It is becoming increasingly difficult to remain silent, stand on the sideline and do nothing to stop the tyrant who wishes nothing more than to rip apart a nation that stands for justice and liberty for all, to ensure his prosperity at the expense of those for whom he was elected.

In 1925, following World War I (the War to end all wars: What a farce!) T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called The Hollow Men. The poem of 98 lines ends with “probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English.” 

Eliot captured the spirit of apathy brilliantly and concluded that the silent conspirators rule the world, not by force, but rather by inaction. He said, 

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.”
“Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is…
Life is…
For Thine is the…
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Haunting words to contemplate.

Post Mueller; Continuing manipulation, or not.

Global Interconnectivity.

As I write this post, 91 days remain until the next US presidential election. We are now living in the post-Mueller era, and some key issues need to be addressed between now and November. It is most likely few even read the Mueller Report, fewer still are those who understood, and the tiniest of all are those who adequately grasped the essentials of what was learned. Nevertheless, global policies have been shaped without the slightest understanding of the implications going forward.

I am in a somewhat unique position to lay out the underpinnings of what has been learned (but not applied). Why? Because I had a career in the advertising business, I have a long history with Zen and am a bit of a tech junkie. While those seemingly disparate pieces appear to be unrelated, they are intimately joined at the hip.

First, let’s consider the essentials of “how” our democratic system was, and continues to be, subverted. And to understand this critical “how” we need to wind the clock backward (further back for the other part) to pre-9/11, during that time, the world was waking up to the fact of global terrorism. At that juncture, we were scrambling to develop means to anticipate probable next strikes, by identifying the who, what, where, and when of terrorist activities.

In those days, the NSA was leading the charge under the “management” of Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, CIA, and later national security analyst for CNN. Under his steerage was a low-level NSA operative by the name of Bill Binney, who happened to be a brilliant cryptologist and long-time National Security Agency analyst. Binney developed a sophisticated program named ThinThread for gathering data capable of providing clues, in real-time, of potential terrorist threats. See the documentary about this by going here. His method was based on the same technology later employed by Cambridge Analytica to manipulate voters during the 2016 campaign that led to electing Donald Trump POTUS. 

In simplistic terms, Binney began with an observation that terrorists used Social Media and other electronic devices (e.g., Cell phones…anything connected to the Internet) to garner sympathy for their cause, recruit such people, frighten many, and communicate with associates in planning, organizing and perpetrating terrorist attacks. Then he went the next step and developed precise “psychographic” personality profiles of those so inclined to malevolence. 

Psychographics (vs. demographics) emerged gradually 30+ years previously. It was used by advertising folk (one of whom was me) to identify probable targets (e.g., target marketing) to receive messages to induce potential customers to buy X, Y, or Z, based on the ingrained preconceived idea that unless they did, they were nobody. 

Demographics concerns such matters as age, gender, income, education, etc., whereas psychographics concerns what such people actually do (lifestyle choices: what they buy, where they go and when, what their interests are, etc.). The latter is much better in targeting potential customers and was just beginning to emerge when I was in the advertising industry. Back then, it was very crude and rudimentary compared to today. 

Now nearly every person on earth participates in Social Media of some sort, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or others. And when combined with the capability to do what Binney designed (but was never used by Hayden/NSA): To develop “psychographic” personality profiles, a potent tool for manipulation emerges that can be employed to find weak spots and exploit them to one advantage or another, from sending out instant, tailor-made messages to manipulate the uninformed via email, news feeds, etc. 

The Mueller Report pulled back the curtain to reveal how foreign governments can, and do, manipulate voter attitudes by taking advantage of preconceived biases and stoking them into tribal camps of opposition that destroy our freedoms. Few in Congress seemed to understand how this threat (and theft of private, personal data) is used to undermine democracy. Consequently, the manipulation continues, and as Mueller stated, it is being used to this very day, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Freedom is not freedom when our inherent preconceived attitudes and biases are manipulated in ways of which we are not aware of.

Cambridge Analytica, as a company, has been washed away by the tides of rage, time and change, but the methods continue to flourish and will most likely never end. All of the tech giants continue to use the same techniques. It should surprise nobody to observe that every time you do anything on the Internet (just as I am doing this very moment) “big brother” is listening, forming psychographic profiles and developing messages to steer you to physical and virtual spaces (Dharma Space; that also) to fulfill your interests.

Indra's Net of cosmic consciousness.

So much for today. Now let’s turn the clock back really, really far to the time of The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, which was written in stages, beginning from at least 500 years following the death of The Buddha. He died approximately 483/400 BCE, or in other words, a very long time ago. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra goes by an alternate handle of Indra’s Net (which simplistically explains the teaching). Imagine a net that encompasses and links together, every sentient being (e.g., humans, dogs, cats, elephants—any conscious being, perhaps even plants). All aspects of consciousness are knit together into a cosmic net. 

And why does this make sense? Simply because consciousness is primal, eternal, indiscriminate, unconditional, and is the basis of all life. At that deep and profound level of existence, all is interdependently linked, in a way similar to the technology used today to manipulate us all. The difference here is that, unlike the technology of today, when a person awakens to this level of existence, the tide shifts away from egotistical manipulation for malevolent means to unity, serenity, and the experience of eternal life, right here, right now.

Ah, if only: Politicians and all others would awaken to two truths—one of conditional, intertwined connections of opposition and the other of unconditional unity. What a transformed world it would be to such awakenings!

Dreams of safety and a reality of folly.

Ignorance based fear.

A while ago I came across a greeting card, intended as encouragement, that said, “Don’t let reality get in the way of your dreams.” The implied message was that we should not be discouraged by events that can bring us down. 

There was something that troubled me about the message and started me thinking of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand having dreams that ignore what surrounds them.

In 2018 I reposted a title, The high price of choice: winning battles, losing wars (originally written four years earlier) and in that post, I spoke about our normal way of discerning reality, delusion, and how these relate to dreams. The conclusion of the post was—according to the Buddhist way of understanding reality—the vast majority of humanity imagines a reality in a distorted way that leads us to remain completely unaware of what is the ultimate reality. Consequently, we walk around in a dream state, all the while thinking our perceived world is reality.

Persuading anyone of this view is most difficult. Instead, we prefer fantasy to reality, and this dream state is very often based on fear with a consequence of adopting an attitude of denial, pretense, and unrealistic hopefulness. Our attitudes about COVID-19 is a perfect example. The viral pandemic has gone on far beyond our capacity for tolerance, and consequently many have adopted attitudes of wishful thinking, of the firm persuasion that the risk has passed and we can carry on without concern.

In the Nipata Sutra, there’s a conversation that occurred with the Buddha that said: 

“What is it that smothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it the most? The Buddha replied: It is ignorance which smothers and it is heedlessness and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering.” 

Twenty-five hundred years later there remain clear examples of this dilemma.

• It is far easier to ignore advancing devastation of global warming and our contributions that exacerbate the growing threat. It is fear of suffering and losing one’s livelihood, or alienating those attached to vested interests with whom we align ourselves. It is likewise a hunger of desire that produces the willingness to toss caution to the wind and refuse to do our part to flatten the curve of viral spread. The desire for shortsighted greed in maintaining a destructive status quo traps us all in states of fear. 

• It is easier to ignore many aspects of family discord that corrupt one’s spirit and fills us with fear of suffering the loss of expected love that could come from a family, based on openness and acceptance. 

• It is easier to ignore our civic obligation to vote as an expression of our moral convictions than it is to risk having others discover our true values that conflict with theirs, and thus suffer the loss of facile relationships, which we reason are better than none at all. 

• It is easier to maintain a duplicitous relationship of pretense where we risk standing nakedly exposed than it is to risk being discovered and suffer loss from being ourselves.

Dreams built on the sands of ignorance are doomed and ensure our ultimate suffering in many ways, none of which we hope for. The very first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is that we all suffer—none can escape. And the second of these truths is the cause of suffering is attachment (e.g., craving) to the blowing sands of change. If there were only two noble truths then despair is the only possible result. However, The Buddha didn’t stop at two. The third is there’s a solution and the fourth directs us to the Eight Fold Path that leads to experiencing ultimate reality and the discovery of our always loved, and always loving true nature. When we arrive at that place of enlightenment we find that we were living, not just in a dream, but in a horrible nightmare that was, and is, based purely on an expected fear of suffering.