Karma and justice?

Our ordinary system of justice involves a vast legal system ranging from people wishing to regulate civil life, congress passing laws to reflect those wishes, policing governed by such laws, trials to determine guilt or innocence, lawyers employed to prosecute and defend, jurors reaching a verdict, judges judging, incarceration, and remediation. 

From beginning to end, that system can be (and often is) seriously flawed and enormously costly. Unjust laws can be passed, lawyers can be either silver-tongued orators who earn big bucks or incompetents who are overburdened and underpaid, judges can be bought, jails and prisons are vastly inadequate to the task of remediation, and in the final analysis, few of those convicted, sentenced and locked away are ever returned to society as reformed and productive citizens. In an ordinary way, justice is often unjust.

Karma, on the other hand, is cheap, flawless, always just, and operates independently of other created systems. But many people consider karma as some form of fatalism or judgment of the “gods.” Such people have been misinformed. Karma has nothing to do with such myths. It is instead simply cause and effect. The choices we make have both benefits and consequences. If I consistently make poor choices I consistently get poor results. Good choices=good results and this has nothing to do with “spirits” (either good or bad).

A simple example illustrates the point. However, before the example, I need to say something about this idea of justice, which is more times than not a legal issue. Karma is deeper than what is legal. Perhaps a better way of articulating karma is “appropriateness.”  If I poke you in the nose, more than likely you’ll poke me back. That’s appropriate justice. If I come to your aid in times of need, more than likely you’ll think kindly of me in my time of need. That’s also appropriate justice. 

If I am experiencing adversity today, more than likely I can look at my past and find the beginning seed that grew into adversity. That’s insight. If I want to experience better times tomorrow I can plant good seeds today. That’s wisdom. On the other hand, if I think I can enjoy a good tomorrow by planting bad seeds today, that’s ignorance. If I imagine that I can reach an enlightened state of mind while at the same time conducting my life in an unsavory manner that too is ignorant.

Adversity is appropriate justice in action. So too is the lack of adversity. In either case, we get what we have initiated, whether as individuals or as societies. If we are experiencing adversity—individually or socially—it is best to accept the natural outcome of karma and stop resisting it. Resistance is a futile activity that is motivated by a desire to escape justice and simply exacerbates suffering. We need to learn from our mistakes to create a better tomorrow.

Simple justice. It always works. That’s karma and it is the system that never stops. To listen to an excellent talk on karma click here.

Proactive, reactive and the rule of karma.

Storms could be coming.

Once a traveling salesman came upon an old man standing next to his house with a hole in the roof. The salesman asked the man, “why don’t you fix that hole?” The man replied, “Well it’s like this: when it’s raining, it’s too late and when it ain’t raining, there’s no need.”

There’s a parallel between this story and a misunderstanding of karma. The misunderstanding emanates from the notion of “being here now:” the idea that there is no real past (it’s gone) and there is no future (it hasn’t yet come). There is only an eternal now. This perspective, while true, at times produces an attitude of inaction and waiting for storms to come.

The rule of karma says that we create our own tomorrow by thoughts and actions taken today, and today is nothing more than the collective actions of us all we chose yesterday. This rule is too often ignored and we become like that old man: doing nothing to prepare for the rain to fall and then realizing that it’s too late.

There is no contradiction between being thoughtful and proactive and the rule of karma. In fact, that rule clearly observes that if we want a better tomorrow we must act in ways beneficial to all today. What is contradicted is the idea of being reactive. Unfortunately far too many have gotten this backward and we have become a people doing nothing, and then being forced to contend with the effect of storms coming through our roofs. The storms can only be prevented with some wisdom and timely action today for the betterment of all.

The ubiquitous gift.

Some time ago, I wrote a post titled The destination. Far away?. And considered the thought that the ultimate place of peace may be far beyond where we presently stand. For sure, it appears that way. All we have to do is look around to see a growing wasteland of moral degeneration and hostile, polarized alienation.

The Dalai Lama wrote recently, “The paradox of our age is we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences but less time; more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts but more problems; more medicines but less healthfulness; we’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble walking across the street to meet new neighbors; we’ve built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies, but communicate less; we have become long on quantity and short of quality. These are times of fast food but slow digestion; tall men but short character; steep profits but shallow relationships. It’s a time with much in the window but nothing in the room.” 

Step by step, we seem to be drifting further apart and losing our way. We live in a magnificent world with great abundance yet remain insatiable, with perpetual violence. The question is, why? Perhaps the answer is that we lust for a faraway Heaven or fear a Hell too close for comfort. It has been said that religion is for those who fear going to Hell, but spirituality is for those who have already been there.

For most of human history, people of the Western world have understood our ultimate destination as either a Heaven in the sky or a Hell in the bowels at the pit of the earth. Nobody in that long history has ever gone and returned with any convincing evidence to either, so the matter remains a concern of religious belief. However, at least two of the greatest and wisest men to ever exist—Jesus and The Buddha, maintained that Heaven and Hell were the eternal room within which we continuously exist. All of the necessary ingredients for making one or the other are forever in our midst. If this unorthodox yet profound, view is accurate, then it is beyond dispute that our greatest challenge is to make our collective lives into one or the other by what we think and do.

Just for the sake of consideration, imagine that Heaven or Hell is the result of what we think and do, and both are what we create within the eternal presence of our Mind. The Sūraṅgama Sūtra is a fantastic portrait of the already present, omnipresent Mind. And here is what the Buddha wrote about the conundrum of an imagination gone wrong: “...All things in all worlds are the wondrous, fundamental, enlightened, luminous mind that understands, and that this mind, pure, all-pervading, and perfect, contains the entire universe...it is everlasting and does not perish.”

In the commentary on the Diamond Sūtra, Huang-Po said, “Buddhas and beings share the same identical mind. It’s like space: it doesn’t contain anything and isn’t affected by anything. When the great wheel of the sun rises and light fills the whole world, space doesn’t become brighter. When the sun sets, and darkness fills the whole world, space doesn’t become darker. The states of light and darkness alternate and succeed one another, while the nature of space is vast and changeless. The mind of buddhas and beings is like this. Here, The Buddha says to save all beings in order to get rid of the delusion of liberation so that we can see our true nature.” 

If you look at the top of my blog, you’ll read the essence of this thought: Birds and thoughts fly through the sky of mind. When they are gone, we’re left with the sky of wisdom and compassion. The cause of suffering is, quite simply, that we don’t realize that we are already at our destination and will never be anywhere else. We lust for what a never-arriving tomorrow might bring and dwell on a past that lives on only in our imagination. The path forward or backward takes us to exactly where we are, each and every moment. We will never be anywhere else. Everywhere we go, there we are within the universal mind, and it can never be otherwise. The “how-to” answer is not so hard. The hard part is accepting what is and realizing that if we want a Heaven, we need to make one, right where we stand by what we think and do. And the same holds true for Hell.

There are many prescriptions for a methodology of “how-to” (and I could redundantly add my own), but you could follow any and all and still come to the same place. When you awaken, you understand this simple truth: You are already home. All we need to do is open our eyes and accept the greatest gift of all—life, with everything needed to make either Heaven or Hell. If we don’t feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happier with more of the same?

The razors edge.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14

Everyone learns about the easy and the hard way. It is easy to follow in the footsteps of friends, associates, and even family members who take shortcuts and chart a course into lives of luxury that seem to assure minimal risk and maximum comfort. It is likewise hard to choose a path less traveled that is awash with adversity, rejection, and leads through that narrow gate to the fullness of life. While blinded by clouds of uncertainty it is common to rush back through the broad gate to familiar but thin relationships. Charting a path through the unknown is what trailblazers have always accepted; it goes with the territory.

That overview easy to say and difficult to sustain. Max Cleland wrote his now-famous Strong at the Broken Places: The story of extraordinary overcoming that emerged from his tragedy. Cleland served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War and attained the rank of Captain. He was awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for valorous action in combat, including during the Battle of Khe Sanh. 

On April 8, 1968, with a month left in his tour, Cleland was ordered to set up a radio relay station on a nearby hill. A helicopter flew him and two soldiers to the treeless top of Hill 471, east of Khe Sanh. When the helicopter landed, Cleland jumped out, followed by the two soldiers. They ducked beneath the rotors and turned to watch the liftoff. Cleland reached down to pick up a grenade he believed had popped off his flak jacket. It exploded and the blast slammed him backward, shredding both legs and one arm. Due to the severity of his injuries, doctors amputated both of Cleland’s legs above the knee and his right forearm. He was 25 years old. That was 48 years ago and I, along with thousands of others who served, have lived with emotional scars that run deep resulting from terrors of war.

What we seem to not understand is that we don’t always choose the narrow path. Often times it is thrust upon us and we have little choice but to struggle to overcome or succumb to the crush of adversity. Dying quickly can be much more attractive than dying inch by inch until there is no more energy or desire left to live. 

The latter may not seem desirable but in truth, the struggle to reach through and beyond the crush is what builds character, empathy, and compassion. No one can pretend to wear another’s clothing of horror and struggle to endure. Each of us must travel this lonely path, whether thrust upon us or not.

It is paradoxical that every parent wants to spare their children hardship and many succeed, yet this often turns out to be a shallow and fruitless accomplishment that leaves young people with a thin illusion of superiority and little compassion or understanding for the plights of the less fortunate. 

How often it seems that people become empathetic only when adversity strikes one of their family members. Then the tables turn suddenly and the plight of others struck in similar fashion registers as a matter that affects them personally. What we have yet to learn is that every human being is someone’s child and they are our child as well. This may not seem evident but no one is an island. We are on earth to learn this vital lesson and more times than not, the path to knowledge runs along the razor’s edge.

Bitterness and Betterness

A friend sent me the meme to the right. I thought about the message and then, in honest reflection, realized something of worth: To move to Betterness without going through Bitterness is not only disingenuous but more than likely impossible. 

We are, after all, humans and rarely react to adversity gladly. That reaction takes some pretty advanced transformation and few indeed are able to get to that place without having first experienced disappointment, anguish, and suffering. Nobody I have ever known (including myself) has ever leaped over these preliminary emotions of sadness as though moving from “A” to “Z” by jumping over “B” through “Y.”

In point of fact, it is precisely the process of anguish that compels transformation. This is a point we often overlook because we think suffering is something we can avoid if we stand on the sidelines while the suffering train leaves the station. No, there is great wisdom inherent in suffering because of this:

“Every suffering is a seed because suffering impels us to seek wisdom.”⎯Bodhidharma

Betterness is the residue of bitterness and we can’t get to betterness by avoiding the bitter pill of suffering. And even once we arrive at a better way, the memory of what led to bitterness remains a compelling force, unless of course, we enjoy suffering.

What the heck is Zen?

Zen?

Tolerance and empathy are two admirable qualities, ignorance is a vast and endemic characteristic of the human condition. It is difficult to remain empathetic and tolerant with people who live in states of denial and ignorance, persuaded they know intimately what they clearly don’t, yet bulwark themselves against becoming educated. 

It’s a test of patience and compassion to relate to such people. Still, it’s probably unrealistic to expect the uneducated and ignorant to suddenly overcome these failings without having an open mind, in all fairness. After all (as pointed out in a recent post), “…people are far less concerned with truth than they were with finding evidence to support their beliefs, true or not.”

Having studied and practiced Zen for more than forty years now, plus having a formal education from one of the foremost theological seminaries in the world, I imagine I know (perhaps mistakenly) what Zen is and is not. 

Recently I decided to pursue a new educational process entailing social media to broaden the reach of Dharma Space. It’s tough sailing for an old dog to learn new tricks, and I’m still in the process. One of the associated tangents of this new quest took me into Reddit: a social networking site that prides itself as “the front page of the internet” yet culls out posting with thought police guarding the front door.

The obvious glitch here is that the Internet (if nothing else) is supposed to be an open medium that promotes communications across the globe, thus stimulating the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in content by using the Internet as the people's voice. Freedom of global communications is not consistent with thought police who know nothing about Zen but nevertheless barred Dharma Space entrance into their club, claiming as justification that Zen is a religion.

The relevant question is thus: Is Zen a religion? So we must return to basics with a definition of religion, which is, “A communal structure for enabling coherent beliefs focusing on a system of thought which defines the supernatural, the sacred, the divine or of the highest truth.” 

Since Zen’s father (e.g., Bodhidharma) defined Zen as “not thinking,” there is no fit between these two definitions. Many remain ignorant of this misfit but cling to their dogma nevertheless. One of the confusing points is the ordinary way of labeling Zen as “Zen Buddhism.” Since Buddhism is a religion, the supposition is that Zen is a branch of Buddhism’s religious tree. Protestants are a branch of the religious tree of Christianity. 

So what’s the truth of the matter? Now we come to the language problem (as always). The word Zen is a Japanese word. Before Zen moved to Japan, there was China, where it was first known as Chán, which was derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna (translated as “absorption” or “meditative state.”) The Pāli word was/is Jhāna, the Vietnamese word is Thiền, and Seon in Korean.

Zen encourages everyone to look within for happiness and attainment of the enlightenment of Buddha-Nature. Many renowned and well respected Zen masters did not know how to read or write, yet they gained and taught enlightenment effortlessly. Zen teaches, or rather prods, the mind to look beyond the realm of perception and comprehend universal truth, beginning with the question, “who am I?” And it has two goals: to achieve enlightenment and become a Bodhisattva, or compassionate being, one in mind and spirit so you can become one with the Universe. A Bodhisattva has only this one purpose: To teach universal unity.

The practice of Zen/dhyāna was established as one of the steps on the Eight-Fold Path of the Buddha, but here is the kicker: the term dhyāna is found in recorded history around 7,000 years ago, whereas the Buddha lived approximately 2,500 years ago. I already wrote about this in a post, “The real deal” so, I realize that I’m repeating myself. However, some review is good. 

The Eight-Fold Path’s last three steps are grouped together (package deal) to achieve Samadhi: a spiritual state of consciousness. The last three are Right effort, Right mindfulness (the practice that is now very popular and goes by the handle of MBSR—Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), and Right concentration (dhyāna), used to suppress the five hindrances to enter into Samadhi. Right concentration (from a Vietnamese perspective) is considered as the fourth jhāna: a stage of “pure equanimity and mindfulness” (upekkhāsatipārisuddhi), without any pleasure or pain, happiness or sadness, and appears in the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta. This Sutta has been dated no later than 350-320 BCE, which would allow for a “true historical memory” of the events approximately 60 years before the short chronology for the Buddha’s lifetime (understood more like hagiography than as an exact historical record of events).

Zen is an instrument employed (the same one used by The Buddha) for developing wisdom by cultivating insight to examine the true nature of phenomena with direct cognition. This leads to cutting off delusions, realizing the Dharma, and, finally, self-awakening. The five hindrances/obstacles are (1) Sensory desire, (2) all kinds of thoughts related to wanting to reject feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred, and bitterness, (3) heaviness of body and dullness of mind which drag one down into disabling inertia and thick depression, (4) worry (the inability to calm the mind) and (5) a lack of conviction or trust whereby self-awakening is possible.

I am aware that I am repeating myself and probably boring those who already know this, but ignorance reigns supreme. Besides, I enjoy the improbable task of trying to break through close-mindedness. According to the moderators at Reddit, “Nobody cares.” I would like to believe that humanity still does care about a transformation that could reshape our world into something less than the Hell it’s growing into without this awareness.

Whack-a mole: A fundamental look at life.

The doctor whacking the moles of illness.

“Do easy things before they become too hard.
Difficult problems are best solved while they are easy.
Great projects are best started while they are small.

The Master never takes on more than she can handle,
which means that she leaves nothing undone.
When an affirmation is given too lightly,
keep your eyes open for trouble ahead.
When something seems too easy,
difficulty is hiding in the details.

The master expects great difficulty,
so the task is always easier than planned.”

These words, from Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching were written, by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu during the late 4th century BCE. The Tao Te Ching is overflowing with wisdom; some deep and profound and some every-day practical. There are many renditions of this essential notion (e.g., addressing life’s work with efficiency⎯doing what is easy, and recognizing the task will eventually become difficult). 

Others have expressed the same thought in slightly different ways, such as “Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”⎯Benjamin Franklin; or this from the Bible, “Don’t put it off; do it now! Don’t rest until you do.”⎯Proverbs 6:4. True wisdom doesn’t change but ways of expression do, making it more applicable to contemporary challenges. To illustrate this evolving notion I’ve chosen to cast Lao Tzu’s wisdom into the modern game of Whack-a mole.

So let’s layout the game and the adaptation. The game involves whacking a make-believe mole with a hammer so that he is knocked underground. But when he is whacked he just pops up again out of another hole. The challenge is to keep the mole underground as much as possible in a given period of time. That’s the game.

Now the adaptation: Pretend the mole represents health. So long as the mole is underground, health is maintained. Coming up through a hole means problems are emerging which require doctor visits. When we are young our physical nature is more vibrant and becomes less so as we age. In the adapted game, the number of holes through which the mole can emerge increases as we age thus requiring more visits to different doctors, who then “whack” the problem, driving the mole beneath the surface, where “health” exists. But doctors not only solve problems they create them, which necessitates visits to other doctors who do the same thing. I think you may see the analogy between the game and life.

While we’re young, health can be maintained much easier, by taking care of ourselves. But alas, when we are young we think we’ll live forever and besides health is more vibrant. If we do exercise wisdom, then we will have complied with the wisdom of Lao Tzu. If not then problems begin to multiply and cascade as we age, which then requires more doctor visits (more holes from which the mole can emerge), and, oh by the way, as we age we have less energy to fight off the problems of aging, which in many cases becomes the challenge of life. Eventually, the lack of energy results from not doing the easy while we are young and consequently, as aging advances we become consumed with the difficult⎯too many holes, moles, and trips with our heads exposed above ground for doctors to whack.

Of course we could adhere to the Mark Twain version and “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well,” in which case we won’t need to be concerned about difficult tomorrows since tomorrow will come anyway with more moles, more holes and a lot more whacking doctors!

A call to arms!

The world wants you.

With what’s happening now in the U.S. I think it’s time to repost a message I wrote a while back. This post is not going to be one of cozy satisfaction or insular “I’ve got mine, get your own.” No, instead it is going to be one of those, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” posts. 

If you haven’t yet noticed, the world in which we live is quite literally going to Hell in a handbasket, and fast. 

• The entire Middle East is a blazing inferno, causing immigrations so massive as to resemble rats fleeing a burning ship; 

• Our nation has gone from the most admired in the world to a miserable excuse of squawking catfights, immobilized by the dogmas of inflexible, political ideologues who’ve been sold to the highest bidder. And we routinely cast aside allies that took years of blood, sweat, and tears to create; 

• Religious bigotry and blame continue to sprout their self-righteous ugliness; 

• Wars have now become routine, perpetuated by the same people who whine about a balanced budget, and unthinkingly slash support for the very people who risked all to defend our way of life, yet give no consideration for the fact that waging war is the most costly human endeavor there is. At the same time Congress is establishing economic policies of slashing and burning institutions that took decades to build; 

• Violence everywhere is sky-rocketing and causing massive tides of immigrants to flee to temporary havens (one of which used to be us, but we are now rounding up and caging them, with no foresight given to their value); 

• Diseases (long considered to be eradicated) are returning and joining pandemic plagues with the potential to kill us all; 

• The gap between the super-wealthy and the burgeoning poor is becoming ever wider (worldwide); 

• Those who could or would care for the less fortunate have stopped; 

• We incarcerate more people in the U.S. than any other nation on earth, and there are more guns in the hands of “ordinary citizens” here who slaughter more ordinary citizens each week than all those killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars put together, yet mouth banalities that guns don’t kill people; 

• And worst of all the climate is getting hotter, whole regions of our country are experiencing environmental meltdown and becoming more unstable and threatening every moment of every day…on and on.

I’ve been writing this blog for eight years now with messages that are admittedly inadequate but are intended to accomplish one single thing: promote peace, unity and brotherhood. I have done so under the rubric of Zen because that is what saved my life, changed my perspectives from greed to gratitude and implanted genuine compassion in my heart. And do you want to know what I’ve experienced over those eight years? Two things of significance: an audience that grew from nothing to nearly 100,000 readers worldwide and the continuation of small-minded, self-righteous nitpicking by esoteric experts who express their platitudes yet do nothing themselves to foster unity and peace. Nevertheless they seem to have an abundance of time to criticize me for doing what I can, albeit insufficiently. My patience with, and tolerance of such “head-in-the-sand-do-nothing” people has grown paper thin, and yes, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” 

Legalists are everywhere: Buddhists castigate me for not being a purist (never mind there is no such thing as a Buddhism but rather different sects who argue amongst themselves just as much as any other religion), Christians demean me for not being in their exclusive flock, atheists reject anything spiritual and Zen folk elevate themselves to the status of being superior to everyone else not like them. 

Nobody seems to embrace the essential spirit, but instead can quote chapter and verse of their own sacred texts. Famous Zen Master Bassui said, “If you truly want to read the sutras, you first have to awaken the mind that does the reading. All formal readings from the sutras can be destructive. The wonderful dharma of one’s mind does not change through successive eons; it is the essence of all the sutras.” 

Perhaps if people who think to themselves, as I used to, (“Oh I know so little or can not do very much”) would just support and encourage those who are trying to make a difference (instead of sniping) we would live in a much better world. If only a small number of those 100,000 would merely forward on messages of hope and peace it would make a huge difference. The world is burning, act now, or be prepared to roast along with everyone else (me included). 

Undoubtedly I’ll lose a few readers with this post but that’s okay. Obviously, my critique doesn’t apply to everyone. There are many dedicated, people striving to be selfless servants and attempting to make our world a better place. You know who you are and I greatly admire you. I would suggest you watch this and then do some serious reflection.

Finger pointing at the moon

Anyone even slightly familiar with Zen knows this metaphor of a finger pointing at the moon. And of course, the meaning of the metaphor is there’s a difference between a teaching and the meaning of what’s being taught. 

So what’s the teaching? To answer that question leads us to Nagarjuna and his “Two Truth Doctrine.” What he taught is the difference between two truths—the conventional and the ultimate. He said that we must, by necessity, use the finger of conventional truth to fathom the moon of ultimate truth. Conventional means are words and other communication methods and the ultimate can’t be framed because it is beyond the form of any kind. Nevertheless, without words (which are admittedly abstract reflections), there is no way of communicating about sublime truths beyond words.

The second part of his teaching (the most important part) is that while we must discern these two truths conventionally unless we experience the ultimate, we will never be free. Instead, we will remain lost in the sea of conventional abstraction yet firmly persuaded the reflection is the moon. In The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Ch’an Master Sheng-yen says that we must use illusion to destroy the illusion, which is just a different way of speaking about Nagarjuna’s two truths. The enlightenment of the moon is ever-present and we become aware through reflections.

The entirety of all of my posts is a mere finger pointing to a moon beyond words. They are reflections shimmering on the surface of a rippling pool of water.

Duplicity?

Our two aspects of good and evil.

All of us are, unintentionally, duplicitous. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested there is good and evil in everyone, and proposed the only way to separate the two was by drawing a line—on one side would be all the good people and on the other, all of the evil. He said, in that case, the line would go down the center of us all. His specific quote was, “The battle-line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” 

This wisdom is without question true. There is both good and evil in everyone. The Lankavatara Sutra (a Mahayana favorite of Bodhidharma) addressed the issue of one vs. another with this: 

“In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is a place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakāya (our true primordial mind of wisdom) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?” 

The Dharmakāya goes by various names, all of which are meager attempts at defining our ineffable nature. An alternate handle (perhaps more familiar) is indiscriminate, unconditional non-applied consciousness: The realm of ultimate reality, and the womb of The Buddha. That is the core of us all that “…is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind.” Here there is neither good nor evil since that realm is unconditional.

“Buddhas say emptiness is relinquishing opinions. Believers in emptiness are incurable.”—Nagarjuna

We live, however,  in a conditional world where there is plenty of judgment of good vs. evil. The root may be hidden but the branches are not, and praise and blame flourish. It is only when we awaken to this truth that we understand the difference between the two. The notion of dependent origination/relativity is the natural manifestation of emptiness (Śūnyatā: emptiness, another name for the Dharmakāya), which states that nothing contains intrinsic substance. 

Instead, reality exists in two, inseparable aspects at once. Nagarjuna labeled these aspects “conventional” and the “ultimate.” His understanding was laid out in his “Two Truth Doctrine,” where he taught the difference between the two. He said that we must, by necessity, use the conditional/conventional truth to fathom ultimate truth. 

Conventional means are words and other communication methods and the ultimate can’t be framed because it is beyond form of any kind. Nevertheless, without words (which are admittedly abstract reflections), there is no way of communicating about ultimate truths beyond words. That is what takes place every time I make a post: I speak about matters beyond words and form

The second and most important part of his teaching is that while we must discern these two truths conventionally unless we experience the ultimate, we will never be set free. Instead, we will remain lost in the sea of conventional abstraction yet firmly persuaded that there is nothing beyond “the senses and the discriminating mind.”

Having defined these two aspects there is a danger of dogmatism, which the Buddha warned against with his teaching on expedient means—upaya-Kausalya: Actions measured and dictated by unfolding and unanticipated circumstances. Here Voltaire and Nagarjuna are in agreement: 

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”—Voltaire

The key to a meaningful life is to hold these two aspects of reality in balance and most importantly to act “as if” your neighbor were your Self, with kindness and empathy, most particularly when it seems difficult.