Who am I? Who are you?

Have you ever wondered what it must be like for a person living with Alzheimer’s? Such a person is lost in a never-ending dream with no idea who they are. They look in a mirror and see a stranger looking back at them. Apparently, some have the ability for momentary memory recall and then return to the enduring dream.

The Buddha said this is the way our life is. We are asleep, lost in an enduring dream and the challenge is to wake up and discover who we are truly. For most all of my life, going all the way back into my youth I was haunted by a question, which refused to go away: “Who am I?” I felt like I was trapped in a body and couldn’t touch the nature of my real self.

The question became a thorn of continuous pricking and wouldn’t leave me alone. Over and over it kept repeating until I thought I would go mad. And then one day it stopped all by itself and I knew the answer for myself, and in that instant, I knew the answer for everyone. We are buddhas. We’ve always been buddhas and will never stop being buddhas. And when I say that I don’t mean Gautama Buddha. I mean what the title “buddha” means: awake.

At that moment I woke up and remembered who I was. The fog went away and the question stopped haunting me. At that moment “I” disappeared and my real self (which was no self at all: just pure awareness appeared), but it was very confusing because the true me had no defining characteristics. At that moment I was nothing yet everything because a buddha is all there is. I am buddha. You are buddha. Every sentient being is buddha, and the buddha is mind.

In Zen literature, the question is constantly asked: “Why did Bodhidharma come to China?” And of course, the answer, which he gave, is to show the world the answer to this question that nagged me. We are buddha and the buddha is our awakened mind. There is no buddha except mind; no mind but buddha. We are all united as one indivisible reality, which is mind. When we sleep we are trapped in the dream of samsara. When we wake up we are free and find ourselves in Nirvana. We are different yet the same: sleeping and awake, always and forever. 

First awaken your mind…

The famous Zen Master Bassui Tokushō (circa 1327–1387) was said to have told his students, “First awaken the mind that reads and then you’ll understand what you read.” We think we read with our left-brain because our language centers are located there. We thus imagine that reading is a rational and analytic process, but this is only half true. A parrot can be trained to speak but the bird has no idea what it is saying. We know people like that. The mouth moves but sheer nonsense comes out. More times than not we call such people politicians mouthing nonsense but saying nothing meaningful.

The mind that reads is not our rational mind. The mind that reads is a mind of insight, compassion, and wisdom. This is our true mind that can’t be found. The ego/rational mind can be found because it is full of images, and chatters like a Jaybird barking commands. The master of our rational mind orchestrates all of these commands. Our ego opposes anything and everyone who doesn’t kowtow. So we have both an unseen real self and mind, and an imaginary false self and mind. Only one is real, but can’t be found. The other is unreal but stands in clear view.

Reflections of reality

Look in a mirror, and what do you see? You see your face looking back at you. You don’t delude yourself with the notion that a reflection is really you. It’s just a reflection: an image appearing in a mirror. In your mind’s eye, imagine yourself. That too is just an image appearing before you. Both the image in the mirror and the image in your mind are reflections of you, but it’s the real you that is seeing them both.

Those images—All images are reflections but not what’s real. In every case, it takes an ineffable real you and objective images for perception to occur. Just you or just images won’t do the job. Both are necessary; it takes one who watches and what is watched. Reality joined to a reflection of reality is what it takes to make sense of anything. If we can see a reflection of our self, (otherwise known as a self-image) then the image seen can’t possibly be who we truly are. The true seer is the one doing the seeing. The unreal us is the image being seen. We are not reflections. We are real people seeing thoughts, and what we see are just images. For those curious about the split between what’s real vs. reflections (otherwise known as duality), you might want to read my post “God in a Box ” by clicking here.

Who do you think you are?

By now you see the difference between a thought about things and the reality of things. One is abstract and the other isn’t, and the “isn’t” can’t be described. 

So who do you think you are? Are you an abstraction that can be described or a reality that can’t? And the truth is an abstraction has no power to do anything. An abstraction is unreal and wholly conceptual. Our real personhood is beyond thought because it is real, but it too can’t be found. But we think we can be found. When we look in a mirror, we see our image there. But who is seeing that image there? 

Is an image the same thing as the one doing the seeing? Is your car the same thing as the manufacturing facility? Are you the same thing as your source? And are you 100% sure the mirror is “out there” reflecting an image of you? Or is the mirror “in here” reflecting an image of an image of you? What’s the difference between “out there” and “in here”? Are you a thought image? What’s the difference between thinking and knowing? Give these questions some serious thought, or better yet begin to notice the limitations of rational thought. And then come back tomorrow as we go into the looking glass— the human mind that can’t be found.

What’s the difference —Thinking and Knowing?

Please describe the taste of an orange, the smell of rotting flesh, the feel of a feather brushing your skin, what fear looks like, the experience of giving birth, or the sound of rushing water. And use words for these descriptions. 

Do the words capture each of these experiences? Not even close, yet undoubtedly you know all of these experientially. Nothing in life, as experienced, is the same as how these same experiences are described. Our thoughts and words are always abstractions representing something but not the thing itself. You wouldn’t be satisfied eating an ephemeral thought of an orange, or stuffing a piece of paper into your mouth upon which you wrote the word “orange.” Ideas and expressions about experiences, as good as the words can ever be, are poor and unsatisfying substitutes for something real.

A long time ago a Chinese sage by the name of Lao Tzu said in The Tao Te Ching, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.”

“The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.” What can’t ever be named is beyond language and is itself the source of everything. What might this unnamed Tao be? Think clearly about non-thought. If you can grasp it then it won’t be it. A thought called “non-thought” is conceptual and remains just another thought. Grasping is about intellectual understanding but knowing is experiential. To know the one who detects either thought or the absence is to truly know yourself—The nameless.

Taste It

Frustration is a unique experience. Nobody likes it. Failure drives us nuts, and we can’t wait to be rid of it. And that acknowledgment is a vital awareness of moving forward down a path that leads to freedom. 

We don’t like it, and we are thus motivated to fix it. What few of us realize is that we are not really free so long as we live with a fundamental delusion: the delusion of thinking we know what is our mind, but in truth, we don’t. The simple task I gave you yesterday was the first step in moving you down the road to genuine freedom. So long as anyone believes they have already arrived at a destination, even if it is the wrong destination of misidentifying themselves as an ego, they will not move, and the result is more suffering.

What is ordinarily considered to be your mind are thoughts, images, and emotions but these are what’s produced by your mind. These three are the effect but not the cause. They have to come from someplace and that place is either your perceptible ego mind (not really your mind) or your real not-to-be found mind. If you want to find the source you need to turn this around and go backward instead of forwards. 

Acquisition is always the result of adding. When we subtract we return to the source where nothing is acquired because it’s already there in that space known as Śūnyatā, where we find nothing but is the source of everything. With nothing added or subtracted the source is complete. And that is why in the Heart Sutra, the Buddha said, Form (every-thing) is Emptiness (no-thing). When you find your true mind you find nothing but from that nothingness comes everything. It’s a profound mystery. 

The father of Zen (Bodhidharma) said this, “To say that the real Dharmakāya of the Buddha resembles the Void is another way of saying that the Dharmakāya is the Void and that the Void is the Dharmakāya...they are one and the same thing...When all forms are abandoned, there is the Buddha ... the void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma. This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning...this great Nirvanic nature is Mind; Mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the Dharma.” 

While this may seem a paradox, it is the truth, which means that at the core of every single sentient being there is a buddha awaiting to be awakened. Nobody is an image or a thought (ordinarily considered the mind). Instead, you are the source of everything you wish to create. Every single being can create a heaven or a hell once they awaken their true minds. 

Until that point what we mostly create is an ego-centric hell. The other side of us all is this spiritually enlightened mind. It can’t be seen or understood by our thinking mind, but without that, we (the bodily part of us) couldn’t exist at all.

More than likely, before yesterday, you thought you were already at the destination of freedom because you thought you could find your mind. Now, through your own experience, you know you failed the test. I could have told you but, if I had told you, it wouldn’t be your own experience. And with experience comes motivation. 

Now you’ve tasted the bitterness of frustration, and now you’re motivated to solve the mystery. When you do solve it, you’ll discover that all of the time, you were in bondage and didn’t even know. And you will also know what freedom actually feels like for the first time. No longer will you be the slave of your ego. There is no better teacher than your own experience, either for the good or for the bad. Genuine knowledge isn’t abstract and intellectual. It is a real taste in your mouth that you can’t describe but know nevertheless.

Find It!

When you plunge into Buddhist waters you’ll find yourself in a sea of strange language and foreign concepts. You almost need a codebook to make any sense of it. Some people want to learn about Buddhism but get discouraged due to this challenging situation. 

This is unfortunate since once you find the Rosetta Stone you’ll be amazed to discover a richness of understanding, unique in the collection of human knowledge. I’ve labored long to learn the code since I wanted to find out how to explain the incredible transformation I experienced many years ago. 

So consider me as a code breaker: a resource for you to mine your own treasure. Starting today I’m going to repeat a series I ran some time ago on the central linchpin of Buddhism that will unlock your treasure chest. And the topic will be something with which you have lived your entire life, couldn’t survive a single moment without and yet you can’t even find: Your very own mind and I’m not referring to the product of your mind (thoughts, emotions, and images) but rather, call it, the factory that produces these three. 

It is indeed a profound mystery. The Buddha said that in teaching the dharma it’s important to begin simply and start from a base of familiarity so I’m going to do that; begin simply. You’ll take that first step, we’ll progress in sequential baby-steps, and before long you’ll find that you know how to swim in this foreign sea.

The first step—Find your mind; the source of all thoughts and non-thoughts. That’s not a fanciful command. It’s a simple request. Right now as you’re reading this I want you to find your mind. Do it now. You couldn’t read this without your mind, so just locate it now. 

I have no idea where you may be as you read this. You may be in India (I know some of you live there) or you may be in Israel (others are), The United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Vietnam…many different places, but wherever you live I know for a fact that none of you can do that simple thing I just asked you to do: find your mind. 

And why am I so confident? People around the world are very different yet 100% the same in this regard: We all have the exact same mind—the same mind as a buddha—yet nobody can find it because it can’t be done. Nobody can find their own mind for two reasons. The first reason is because the mind isn’t an objective thing, which can be located, identified or discovered. The mind can only be intuited or inferred. And the second reason for my confidence is that even if it could be found (which it can’t), there is no “you” to find it.

I suppose, even at this simple beginning, you are already confused. It is outrageous for me to say what I just said but the disturbance you are now experiencing in response to my request is a critical part of learning the code. Don’t get frustrated over your inability. Steep yourself in the confusion. Let that experience wash over you because unlike other spiritual traditions, doubt and frustration are to Buddhism as a surfboard is to waves. With no doubt, there is nothing to pursue and solve. And unless you learn to find your mind the game of life gets extraordinarily confusing and difficult. 

So that’s enough for today. Squirm in your frustration for another day and come back tomorrow for the next step: Finding out what isn’t your mind, because the first step and the second step are mirror images. What we think is our mind, isn’t. What we think isn’t our mind, is. If that sounds strange just hang out with it until tomorrow. Come back and we’ll continue. But to give you a nudge in the right direction, take a look at the footnote.[1]

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[1] Master Hsuan Hua writes about this matter in the opening section of The ShurangamaSutra. He points out two aspects of our mind: One aspect superficial but unreal, the other hidden but real. He says that the hidden part is like an internal gold mine, which must be excavated in order to be of value. This gold mine is everywhere but not seen. The superficial part is also everywhere but seen and it is this superficial part that lies at the root of suffering. He says: “Buddha-nature is found within our afflictions. Everyone has afflictions and everyone has Buddha-nature. In an ordinary person, it is the afflictions, rather than Buddha-nature, that are apparent...Genuine wisdom arises out of genuine stupidity. When ice [afflictions] turns to water, there is wisdom; when water [wisdom] freezes into ice, there is stupidity. Afflictions are nothing but stupidity.”—See more here.

Pie In the Sky.

Of the many posts I’ve made over the years, this one may be among the most important.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare’s words for Juliet fit the messages of wisdom. His words could easily be re-framed: genuine wisdom from any other source would remain genuine wisdom.

Some time ago, I wrote about a message of wisdom from within a Christian context. That message was about different forms of life and the call by Jesus to surrender from one way to gain a different kind: Death of the old, life of the new. That exact same message comes from the second chapter of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra in the form of the allegorical story reflecting a dialogue between a common man by the name of Cunda and The Buddha. 

The wisdom expressed from these two sources is the same message of surrender: Releasing from one form of life and receiving a different kind of life. Does it matter from which source this wisdom comes? Genuine wisdom from any other source would remain genuine wisdom.

Various forms of surrender are like Lao Tzu’s ten thousand things that arise from the seed of wisdom. The seed is essential life, and that seed manifests in many ways, one of which I’ll share today. But before I deal with specific forms, I want to examine what it means to surrender, in any kind. Surrender is release. We let go of one thing, and when we do, we receive something else; a sort of trade. Nature abhors the vacuum. The fundamental idea is that we can’t focus on two things at the same time, at least not this side of complete release. 

Here’s my first example of surrender: The one that completely transformed my life—Pie, as in “Pie in the sky.” Suppose you had a gift that you didn’t know you had. Without knowing, the gift would be of no value to you. The only way the gift would be of value would be if you knew that you had it. If you didn’t know (but were intent upon getting it), it would be like not eating pie but instead trying to grasp Pie in the sky. For too many years, that is precisely what I did. 

When I first began Zen practice, my teacher, in his great wisdom, encouraged me to go for broke to gain enlightenment. Authentic Zen masters are like doctors of spiritual diseases who exercise refined judgment when working with ill students. They craft appropriate remedies for each student, known in Sanskrit as upāya: expedient means. No one solution fits all students since each person is spiritually ill with a different sickness. Every illness requires just one tailor-made remedy from an infinite list of ten thousand treatments.

Dayi Daoxin (the fourth Chan patriarch) had this to say regarding crafting specific teachings: 

“Therefore the Sūtra (Nirvana Sūtra) says: Since there are numberless (types of) capacities among sentient beings, the buddhas, preach the Dharma in numberless ways. Since the Dharma is preached in numberless ways, the meanings are also numberless. Numberless meanings are born from the One Reality. The One reality is formless, but there is no form that it does not give form to, it is called the true form. This is total purity.”

My teacher knew what I needed better than I did and prescribed a unique dose of medicine for my illness, which is most common. I was very sick with the disease known as accomplishment—never being good enough and always pressing for greater and greater degrees of worth. The medicine was, therefore, “more pressing.” 

There was no way for me to understand his wisdom at that time. That knowing took more than a quarter of a century for me to fathom, which came about only by completely exhausting myself in the quest for being good enough.

Twenty-five years later, when the time was right—when I was fully ripened—I fell like a perfect plum. By this time, I had moved to a different city and had a new teacher who prescribed a different dose of medicine, which came in the form of the message, there is no enlightenment to attain. To be perfectly honest, I was extraordinarily upset when hearing this message, felt as if I had been manipulated for 25 years, and encouraged to chase a non-existent windmill. 

I had trusted my first teacher entirely and thought he had deceived me. It took me a full year more before I got it, and when I did, I fell kerplunk right down into myself like a ripe plum. And as soon as I did get it, I threw back my head and laughed myself silly until tears rolled down my cheeks. I still laugh every time I think about it.

Without realizing, what I had been doing was trying to grasp air which was already in my hand: the pie in the sky—the payoff for my persistence and diligence— was already in my stomach where it had always been, already digested. There was no way for me to get what I already had, and there was no way to be good enough since I, like everyone, came into this world complete, yet I was persuaded I was incomplete. 

No one will never get more complete since that is an oxymoron. There is no attainment, just like it says in the Heart Sutra, which I had repeated a million times but never understood. That is what surrender is all about. Letting go and getting what we already have. That is enlightenment, not some “pie in the sky.” Trading away illusions (the ideas) and getting real, is an excellent trade!

By the way, this expression “Pie in the sky” came from the book “The Preacher and the Slave,” a composition by legendary labor hero Joe Hill. The song became part of the widely distributed ‘little red songbooks’ around 1910. The complete verse goes like this:

“You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay.
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Well, there are still slaves today: The ones we make of ourselves all by ourselves. This illness of accomplishment is vast. From birth, we are encouraged to get better. The message comes from every dimension of our world to become somebody. But there is no becoming somebody. We already are somebody, just not the somebody we think we are. The real truth is the pie is already in our gut, not in the sky, bye, and bye.

We are like Eskimos with plenty of snowballs but are being duped into believing that we need more. If you want to put that into a spiritual context reflect upon Zen Master Hakuin’s Song of Zazen: 

“How near the truth, yet how far we seek. Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst!’ Like the son of a rich man wandering poor on this earth we endlessly circle the six worlds. The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.” 

And if you prefer the same message from a Christian context, try the parable of the Prodigal Son, who wandered away from his birthright of splendor and ate from the trough of pigs. Only then did he know what he no longer had. Wisdom from any source remains genuine wisdom. It’s the message. Not the messenger that matters.

When enough is enough? And the tragedy of perfection.

The surface and the deep

The idea of life as a journey has merit and deserves thoughtful consideration. A journey begins and proceeds step by step: one step begins, ends, and is followed by the next, which likewise leads to the next until the journey ends. 

Each moment proceeds in the same fashion. With foresight, patience, and endurance achievement is possible. The great tragedy is expecting perfection with each and every step. In a way each step is perfect; it is enough (for that moment).

The Buddha said, “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.”  The starting has much to say about the motivation to go at all. Many have no hope. Others become complacent with their bird in hand. Some expect magic of the divine, and still, others lack confidence and fear the risk of the unknown.

It is indeed somewhat terrifying to leap into the unknown when all seems well; when we have ours and others don’t. It is human nature (unfortunately) to take the unexpected treasure we’ve found and run, leaving others to find their own. However, if we are the one who lives in misery and have not yet found that treasure, the story is different. Then the motivation changes from satisfaction to a desire for the hidden treasure others have found, and we have not. 

For most of human history the masses have lived in misery without ever having leaped into the great sea of the unknown; the sea where “things” morph into “no-things:” the only realm where true satisfaction exists, ultimate wisdom and truth reside. The two realms of things and no-things coexist, one upon the other, yet the misery of conditional life remains the province of the known, where truth is a variable bouncing like a ball on the waves of that great ocean. Beneath; deep beneath the waves of adversity is the calm, the tranquil, the root of all that exists above.

“All mortal things have a beginning, and an ending.” Each step, each moment, every-thing; All things are enough; all things are perfect, and yet all things exist together, resting upon the deep of a nothing, which is no mere nothing; It is everything.

The walking dead.

Zombie Sleepwalkers

“I see dead people. They don’t see each other; walking around like regular people. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”

That’s the secret of Darren (Peter Anthony Tambakis) tells his therapist (Bruce Willis), in the movie “The Sixth Sense.” Bruce is, like the others; dead without realizing he is and sees what he wants to see. Knowing like that becomes linked to what we want to see, hearing what we want to hear and paying no attention to our own ignorance. 

As a result, we are like zombies: the walking dead, without realizing and remaining ignorant of the unknown. We might as well be dead when we refuse to see what is, instead of what we want. Wishful thinking is a road to nowhere since it leaves us all paralyzed to manage the “what is.”