Mea culpa

Immortality awaits all.

I have a confession, admittedly late, but “better late than never.” My disclosure arises from the convergence of my current senior stage of a decaying body and reading a book by RamDass: Still Here—Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying, in which he emphasizes an essential point (which should be obvious) that all of us will naturally experience aging, changing, and dying. Therefore, the nearer we are to the end of our “mortal house,” the more we need to appropriately shift our focus onto “embracing the immortal soul.”

And the reason for that appropriate shift is because, at the point of leaving our mortal house, whatever unfinished business we have (e.g., unresolved, unforgiving, righting wrongs, etc.) becomes the starting point of our next human incarnation. Karma either works for our mortality or against it. The components of the “karmic seeds” (Vāsanā (Sanskrit; Devanagari: वासना)) with which we die in the previous life determines the starting point (our lessons to be learned) in the next mortal incarnation. Therefore, since no-mortal-body can predict the future, none can, with any accuracy, say when that portal moment will come when the soul leaves and returns to God.

Every thought, every word, every action carries its’ own power. Karmic seeds contain an imprint from all cumulative past, thoughts, words, and actions. They can be positive, negative, or neutral. As mortals, every moment, we are experiencing the karma of the past and are creating karma for the future. That is one of the most fundamental premises of a reincarnation perspective: It is the soul (carrying with it karmic seeds) that migrates, activates, and determines the challenges for our next mortality. 

It is, therefore, imperative that we “put our house in order” each fleeting moment because until we pay our karmic debt during mortal incarnations, we will continue in various Samsaric forms, replete with suffering. Samsara is considered to be mortal, unsatisfactory, and painful, perpetuated through attachment and ignorance. The great paradox is that it is solving the suffering dilemma that leads us all to reach beyond mortality to immortality. No suffering; no motivation to reach beyond. So long as we stay locked in a state of denial, refusing to acknowledge our mortal flaws, the more bad karma we create.

The goal of mortal life is thus “…to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” And yes, I intentionally inserted a passage from the Bible (Philippians 2:12-13) into this karmic pattern because the pattern is transcendent to all religious venues. The wording may change from one religion to another. Still, the karmic message is always there, one way or another—a traveling soul, moving away from greed, anger, and delusion (characteristics of the ego) and toward Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever term you choose to represent the great cosmic sea of spiritual unity.

Why fear and trembling? Because to dissolve ego attachments, we must first confess our errors (most importantly to ourselves), and working through those issues is cobbled together with fear and trembling. We only resolve problems we acknowledge. Addressing our most profound, darkest failings requires that we surface them, face-on, (which the ego detests, choosing instead to deny any weaknesses). A person who claims to have no flaws, for certainty, has many, albeit perhaps unconsciously. However, conscious or not, it is impossible to live a mortal life without error. This acknowledgment comes as the very first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths—Conditional life is suffering. 

As a human race, we have acknowledged this with the expression: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” That’s a long-winded prelude to my confession—putting my house in order. My disclosure is that in contributing to this blog I have (out of ignorance and karma) been excessively preoccupied with my ego by quoting the work of other sages and seers in the pursuit of establishing “myself” as a well-read and thus wise teacher (with no credentials at all—A True Man With no Rank). I have forgotten a primary lesson of dharma attachment. And in my forgetful, ignorant fashion have become attached to the need to persuade you, my readers, with how wise I am. 

I wanted you to know that I knew what I was talking about. I saw it necessary to impress you with the wealth of my experience, reading, knowledge, and assimilation, thus enhancing my ego and, in the process, creating more bad karma—I have been shooting myself in the foot. That’s my mea culpa moment of critical awareness—Thank you RamDass. So now I must continue for the rest of this present incarnation, by freeing myself of the need to impress you and thus become more soul-real, sans impressions.

What I intend to do, from this point on, is to become more acquainted with my soul and begin to let go of attachments to my ego. It is the migration of the soul that reaches forward to freedom from suffering and to the end of this continuing process of almost endless affliction. And to…work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in me, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The nature of God is unconditional, whereas the nature of mortality is conditional. As I age, the more I can see just how provisional and precarious my ego and body are. As my mortality fails, with increasing infirmities, I draw closer to immortality. As “I” become weaker, God manifests greatly. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

“I” am moving closer to the ending than the beginning of this current mortal incarnation. The mortal aspect of us all is the part that ages, changes, suffers, and dies, and it is the house of the soul, which leaves our mortality on a metaphorical ship, sailing into the immortal sea of unity. It is the nature of immortality that lacks aging, changing, suffering, and dying. That is the goal of every soul, whether known or not. All souls are a piece of the fabric of unity (the ground of all being) that we call life, and all souls reach toward freedom. But once we attain freedom, we must let go of ego-attachments and begin relating to other mortal incarnations at the level of their soul instead of the level of our incomplete mutual natures (e.g., “egos”) which are always functioning out of karmic seeds and growing into plants of perceptible insecurity.

On Setting Another Free.

Today is Christmas and traditionally, a gift is in order, from me to you. After reading, and digesting this post, you may come to question this opening introduction. The wisdom contained herein will shake you to the core and that may be the final straw that breaks your back of being imprisoned and never suspecting that you are. 

With that said, unwrap your gift by reading. It ain’t pudding but it may be delightful to the spiritual ear. And like anything sweet, that sensation is only possible by comparing it to sour.

“Subhūti, what do you think? You should not claim that the Tathāgata thinks, ‘I will save sentient beings.’ Subhūti, do not think such a thing. Why? There are in fact no sentient beings for the Tathāgata to save. If there were sentient beings for the Tathāgata to save, it would mean that the Tathāgata holds the notions of self, person, sentient being, and lifespan. Subhūti, when the Tathāgata says ‘I,’ there is actually no ‘ I.’ Yet immature beings take this to be an ‘I’. Subhūti, as far as immature beings are concerned, the Tathāgata says that they are not immature beings.”

“Then Subhūti addressed the Buddha, saying: ‘World-honored One if good sons and good daughters would like to arouse the aspiration for peerless perfect enlightenment, in what should they mentally abide, and how should they gain mastery over their thoughts?’ The Buddha said to Subhūti: ‘Good sons and good daughters who want to arouse the aspiration for peerless perfect enlightenment should think like this: ‘I will save all sentient beings.’ Yet when all sentient beings have been liberated, in fact, not a single sentient being has been liberated. And why not? Subhūti, if a bodhisattva holds the notion of a self, the notion of a person, the notion of sentient being, and the notion of lifespan, then she is not a bodhisattva. Why? Subhūti, there is actually no such a thing as peerless perfect enlightenment.’”—The Diamond Sutra

“In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is 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?”—The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

“When there is no clinging to any of those three periods (e.g., past, present and future) they may be said not to exist. When memory and reverie are cut off, past and future cease to exist. The present does, of course, exist in a firmer sense than either of the others, but it is not present except when thought of in relation to past and future. The state of mind of an illumined person is independent of time-relationships.”—Zen Master Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl:

“Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.”—Bill Hicks

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”—William Shakespeare.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”—As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world’s a stage], William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Jaques to Duke Senior

Comment: If life is just a dream, then ambition is just one Netflix episode of an infinite series of other dreams, all delivered virtually to virtual beings who don’t exist at all, except as what we make of ourselves, given the deck of cards we have been dealt.  We have never been separated from the indefinable wholeness that joins us all together in Moksha—The divine source of infinite unity. When finally attained, and we are free of samsaric misery, then we wonder the purpose of the dream? Why, of course, to awaken. There is no waking up to another previous awakening. True Nirvana comes, only, by traveling the path called, “Saṃsāra”—The seeming, never-ending dream of being enslaved within another dream called “imprisoned by our thoughts and actions.”

By many vantage points, the entirety of life is a dream, which we all see as real. And it isn’t! It’s all an illusion when removed from the matter of comparison, which is not possible—except when we awaken from the dream and understand we (impossible to define apart from the united whole of Moksha) are moving to another dimension of the infinite, “compared to what room.”

So I end my gift with an insight: Life is just a dream. Merry Christmas, from the spiritual ocean.

The Watcher

“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind rest at peace. The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.”—The opening stanza of Chapter 16 of The Tao Te Ching

This post is more than likely going to result in a big yawn since the message should be self-evident, but probably not. Go see a movie (it’s instructive to my point), and you’ll undoubtedly notice two things: (1) You are sitting in your seat and (2) you’re seeing images moving on a screen. No-brainer. Watch TV; Same thing. Neither of those images is real, and you know that. 

So far, so good. Now take it to a not-so-evident level—You see the world, and it moves. There is still you, but is what you see real? That is taken for granted as being real, but as far as your mind is concerned it is no different from a movie or TV. Your true mind doesn’t distinguish. It just notices movement, and you could be asleep and, in principle, it is the same. Dreams come, they go, and there must be you who sees what moves. That you, the true Self, is a constant. Yet it is not yours. It never moves and it can’t be found. It just watches, listens, smells, tastes, and feels. It perceives everything but in itself is nothing.

“Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.”—Chapter 14 of The Tao Te Ching

Separating wheat from chaff.

Throughout recorded history, there is evidence that agriculture began as far back as 20,000 BCE. For that long we have recognized that in harvesting grain, the good and the bad grew together, and it was necessary to separate the two in order to glean the good. Consequently, numerous texts can be found that illustrate the practice of separating the wheat from the chaff for extracting the useful from that which is not.

I mention this as a means to illustrate an important distinction between religion and spirituality. It is commonly accepted that spirituality runs through the core of religious thought, from any and all corners of our human global community. My issue of the day challenges this view. And the reason, for any serious student of history, is that religious dogma has perhaps never been as blatant a bludgeon as it is today. And religion is now being used as a means of political manipulation to appeal to the most base and egregious of human tendencies, all the while employing twisted thinking by using holy texts to justify really bad behavior.

So, the question becomes: Can the purity of spirituality be extracted from the hull of religious trappings that appear on the surface as piety? Is this a matter of a wolf in sheep’s clothing? And to answer that question all we need to do is reflect back to the answers of two of the greatest spiritual leaders of all time: The Christ and The Buddha. 

Without cherry-picking scripture, but instead looking at the big picture, it is unavoidably clear that The Christ came into continuous conflict with the religious institutions of his day and often times was very critical of their hypocritical nature. The Buddha likewise castigated the religious institutions of his time and place by urging his followers to rely on what is good for one and all, instead of relying on religious institutions or holy men.

Ultimately economics, religious thought, and politics run together like wheat and chaff. Can these matters be successfully isolated? Probably not, but it is instructive to do so momentarily and once examined, bring them back together into the blended conglomerate they represent. Can we, as a human society honestly go forward with the attitude that a political/economic system that divides people into camps of haves and have-nots be justified by quoting scripture? To do that requires mind-numbing, mental flip-flops that defy all moral reasons. But yet that is what is taking place today.

The free enterprise system of economics is allegedly based on individual initiatives, but without integrating the element of morality into the mix, it descends downward into a disgusting slugfest of greed and selfishness. The buggy-man of the free enterprise system was Karl Marx who is known for his stance that, “Religion is the opium of the people.” He did not, however, say that spirituality was an opiate. Ultimately this comes down to a much more fundamental issue which is best expressed as a question: Is spirituality something we do, or what we are?

If you are of the mind, as many are, that our core nature is in need of an overhaul or renovation, and can only be cleansed by divine intervention, then perhaps there could be a place for a religious or spiritual practice that is foreign to the nature of man. On the other hand, the alternative view is that we are fundamentally spiritual to the core, and no overhaul is required. Consequently, there is no way of being human as “non-spiritual” beings. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

In this case, the need is not one of renovation but clearing away the impediments that distort our thinking into conclaves of alienation, superiority, and self-righteous obscurity. In other words, clearing the mind of twisted perspectives that seem to justify self-centered behavior but instead move us toward rejoining the human family as indiscriminate vessels of compassion and love.

So then I return to the beginning matter of separating the wheat from the chaff. Is that a worthwhile endeavor? And if it is, then what does it mean to be religious yet not spiritual? Or, said alternatively, how can we best express our fundamental spiritual nature without diluting it with extraneous and dogmatic teachings that stand in the way?

One of the greatest Zen Masters of all time was Rinzai Zen Master Bassui Tokushō (1327–1387), born in modern-day Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. He said to his students (about reading scriptures and trying to glean understanding): 

“One whose dharma eye has truly been opened will know the original great wisdom. Why would he then have a strong desire to study? Delicious food has no value to one who has had his fill.” He went on to say, “First open the mind that reads, and then you’ll know what you are reading.”

Or if you prefer the expression of The Apostle Paul: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”— 1 Corinthians 11-12

It is the darkness of the human heart that impedes genuine knowing; the chaff that encases the kernel. Said differently, remove the plank in your eye before you can see the speck in another.—Matthew 7:5

Then only will we be able to see clearly, without the filter of bias.

The bottom line: Religious texts can be (and often are) used as band-aids to justify bad behavior that stands in direct conflict with the heart of spiritual unity. 

Bassui was correct: the essential task is to cut through the dross that shrouds the purity of the human heart. Once that has become established, there is no need to keep reading, over and over religious texts that, at best are admixtures of wheat within the chaff. Once your eye is clear you’ll be able to see what ought to be evident, but isn’t.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”―Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart

The Power of Deception.

A couple of days ago, The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit was convened at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. The President of the Family Research Council (Tony Perkins) introduced the keynote speaker, Vice President Mike Pence, and said of him: He understands himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican,” in that order.

Yet Pence’s speech was as far away from the essential nature of genuine Christianity as one might be. His chosen venue has been designated as an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and what he said affirmed that assessment. 

If you wanted to sum up the speech into a nutshell it would be, look how great we are under Trump—chest-thumping and ideological superiority (e.g., us, the white-hats against them: the black-hats). 

Nothing about his speech promoted unity and caring for our fellow man but instead promoted the opposite. Following a panel titled “How Gender Ideology Harms Children,” which included Dr. Michelle Cretella from the American College of Pediatricians, (also designated an ultra-right-wing quasi-religious hate group), Pence echoed the panel’s perspective that those who define themselves as LGBT are just sick individuals who are determined to break God’s intentions. They are sinful and need to change their ways. 

According to the Family Research Council’s website, the Values Voter Summit was created in 2006 to “provide a forum to help inform and mobilize citizens across America to preserve the bedrock values of traditional marriage, religious liberty, the sanctity of life and limited government that make our nation strong.” 

Cretella has been excoriated by The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) with a response, titled: “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse,” saying that Cretella pushes a perspective of “political and ideological agendas not based on science and facts.”  I would add further, the ideology is anything but Christian in nature, which if geared to the teachings of Christ, to treat your neighbor as yourself. 

SAHM destroyed Cretella’s position showing how she cherry-picked bad science to reach her conclusion. Nevertheless, Pence continues to endorse Cretella’s conclusion with his own bad theology and in so doing destroys his own view of himself as being “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican.” And why might I say such a thing? To answer that question we must first define some theological terms and say what it means to be a real Christian instead of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

To the second issue (e.g., a real Christian) one must abide by the essential teaching of Christ to “love one another as I have loved you.” It is specious to claim the title without abiding by the essential teaching of the founder. And to the first issue (e.g., Theological terms) when Jesus taught that sort of love he was referring to a term found only in the New Testament. The term, in Koine Greek, is ἀγαπάω (agapē ) and meant “unconditional love”, or if you prefer “love with no strings attached—be they gender, race, ideology or any other means of discrimination”. So the concluding question here is whether or not Pence, and his puppet master Trump, are in fact promoting genuine Christian unity and love amongst all people, or a faux Christian wanna-be agenda that promotes division and one-up-man-ship? 

Chop wood; Carry water.

Before and after.

“Enlightenment, when it comes, will come in a flash. There can be no gradual, no partial, Enlightenment. The highly trained and zealous adept may be said to have prepared himself for Enlightenment, but by no means can he be regarded as partially Enlightened—just as a drop of water may get hotter and hotter and then, suddenly, boil; at no stage is it partly boiling, and, until the very moment of boiling, no qualitative change has occurred. In effect, however, we may go through three stages—two of non-Enlightenment and one of Enlightenment. 

To the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees. The next stage (not really higher than the first) is to perceive that moon and trees are not at all what they seem to be, since ‘all is the One Mind.’ When this stage is achieved, we have the concept of a vast uniformity in which all distinctions are void; and, to some adepts, this concept may come as an actual perception, as ‘real’ to them as were the moon and the trees before. It is said that, when Enlightenment really comes, the moon is again very much the moon and the trees exactly trees; but with a difference, for the Enlightened man is capable of perceiving both unity and multiplicity without the least contradiction between them!”—The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind

Laying down one’s life.

Yesterday the world watched as friends and family eulogized the life of John McCain. It was a testament of sacrifice for fundamental principles that, for him, rose above partisan politics. 

His life and mine were forged in the blast furnace of Vietnam. Forever after, he faced the challenges of living without giving in to fear. In his own words, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.” He knew that in the marrow of his bones. Five and a half years in Hanoi’s main Hỏa Lò Prison (“Hanoi Hilton”), changed McCain from an irreverent, cocky renegade into a man who would dedicate the rest of his life fighting for those fundamental principles by not yielding to the fears of ordinary men and women.

John McCain was a warrior compatriot of mine. The war changed us both but our subsequent vectors were different. He went down one path, and I went down another. You know where his led, but mine led me on a spiritual journey trying to find solace from the demons that entered my mind and soul, causing a never-ending psychological and emotional maelstrom that has continued to plague my entire adult life.

My pilgrimage took me onto the path of Zen because it claimed to be a means for alleviating suffering. It did what it claimed, and then, I continued on to seminary where I learned how to read both ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, the latter of which was the original language of The New Testament. As a result, I became aware of those concepts held by the ancient Greeks about life. They saw life in three aspects: two that comprised our human vessel and one that made us into sentient beings sparked by the breath of our creator. These three aspects have now become known as our biological being (βίος), our psychological being (ψυχὴν), and our spiritual being (ζωή). 

All three were represented in those words from Koine Greek, and yesterday during John McCain’s eulogy, the significance of those different principles came out in a reading by Senator Lindsey Graham.

John was a man who lived a life of high principles so I imagine neither he nor his family would be offended by my rectifying a misunderstanding—a meaningful and significant misunderstanding that is both needed now more than ever within our political sphere and should be embraced by all people throughout all times and all places. The misunderstanding of which I speak concerns those three different words for “life” rendered in Koine Greek

The passage read by Senator Graham was John 15:13 which has been translated into English and reads: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The common way of understanding this passage means to sacrifice one’s bodily being (to die biologically) as an act of supreme love. 

But that is not what the passage meant when written in Koine Greek. And to grasp the true understanding, we need to see it in the original language which reads as follows: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” and came to be understood as stated above. I don’t expect many, if any, to read Koine Greek so a bit of guidance is required. I have highlighted in red the keyword ψυχὴν.

The standard, universally accepted manual for translating from Koine Greek into English is Strong’s Concordance, and when we turn to Strong, we find the true meaning for “ψυχὴν.” It means, among various concepts, that which determines the personality of a person, in this case, the mind, and is the basis for our grasp of the psyche (e.g., psychology).

If that passage of John 15:13 meant what Senator Graham conveyed (e.g., to die biologically), then the passage would have been written this way: “μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν βίος αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ,” yet it was not.

Properly translated this passage means “ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s ideas for one’s friends.” In other words, to set aside one’s ideologies as the supreme act of love. And when you consider what divides us more than anything else, it is clinging to our ideas and rejecting those of others. Thus, the supreme act of love conveyed by The Christ had nothing to do with dying biologically. Instead, Jesus saw the source of hatred as ideas that divide us, and, therefore saw the solution to hatred as love—setting aside dividing ideas. It is hard to imagine a time in human history when that message is more germane than now.

And perhaps the most surprising realization of all is that this true understanding of love is almost identical to that expressed by the father of Zen—Bodhidharma, who defined Zen as “not thinking.” When you don’t think, what remains is a purity of mind. The Japanese form of Zen considers the mind and heart not as two different matters, but as one united entity (heart/mind). “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”

Bandaids and fish.

The hidden root.

We live within an unfortunate protocol as the standard for treating pain and suffering, which is easily articulated by an analogy of a bandaid covering a festering wound. 

Determining causes, by necessity, takes us beneath the surface to find the root. Unexpectedly, the world of medical science is now playing catch up and turning to some surprising spiritual sources that don’t fit within scientific orthodoxy but work nevertheless.

We’re all familiar with the Chinese proverb of, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The proverb seems to imply an either/or. The problem with this either/or sentiment is it assumes the man will stay alive long enough to learn to fish. In the world of today that is not a luxury, we can afford. We must do both or the patient will starve before learning. Many millions around the world die daily waiting for the fish to arrive.

In the Breakthrough Sermon, Bodhidharma said, “The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.”

The Buddha spent his life ferreting out the root cause of suffering and began his diagnosis with the first of Four Nobel Truths: Life (e.g., mortal or conditional) is suffering. That observation took place more than 2,500 years ago but until recently his diagnosis ran under the radar of medical orthodoxy. Pathfinders have always made inroads by bucking the tide of conventional wisdom and this is certainly true for Dr. John E. Sarno, previously Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the prestigious Institute of Rusk Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center.

Sarno’s most notable achievement was the development of his diagnosis, and treatment of tension myoneural syndrome (TMS), which is currently not accepted by mainstream medicine. Nevertheless, according to Sarno, TMS is a psychosomatic illness causing chronic back, neck, and limb pain which is not relieved by standard medical treatments.

Dr. Sarno noted in his practice that back surgery wasn’t working; it was failing to bring effective relief to his patients. He also noted unsatisfactory results from physical therapy, as well as from steroidal injections, and all the other therapeutic techniques commonly administered. He instinctively felt that there had to be something else going on with back pain. So he began to look more deeply into his patients’ charts where he noticed that his back pain patients also had many other things going on with their health. In addition to back pain, many had bouts of the shoulder and hip pain, knee pain, foot and hand pain, skin problems, anxiety, depression, migraines, ulcers, irritable bowel, heartburn, frequent urination, and allergies. Dr. Sarno shrewdly noted that where there’s smoke there’s often fire.

After having lived forty years with the belief that I was unworthy, I stood at the abyss of such despair that I seriously considered suicide. It was at that critical point that I left the world behind and lived in a Zen monastery and discovered, that the cause of my suffering was rooted in my mind. What I had previously believed, was a fabricated idea and the product of cultural myths, judgments, and misinformation. It took me quite a long time to root out the poison that existed in thought only.

Thankfully, while there I ate a few fish, lived, and then learned to fish. And then I came to a surprising realization: If I could pass on both the eating and the learning then just about anyone could as well. After all, the wisdom of The Buddha was not mine to selfishly possess. It belongs to the global community.

Big or small. What’s the size of your house?

What size is your house?

Wisdom is recast continuously. Nevertheless, wisdom is wisdom and adapts to many different situations. It fits rather nicely into the Buddhist framework, which is quite similar to the Christian context, which says, “you are the body of Christ: the spirit of God dwells within.” 

Oh, by the way, the Gospel also teaches that Gods’ love is unconditional, but like the contrast between allegiance to either God or money, we like to mix things up a bit and say that while Gods’ love is unconditional, ours surely is not. 

How this divided kingdom idea plays out from a Buddhist perspective is that we are the house (just like The Christ said), and our house can’t stand divided. There are seemingly two rooms in our home. One of those rooms belongs to a phantom who is wholly dominated by money and possessiveness. That guy is called “ego,” and he thinks the whole house belongs to him. He is just a guest but has delusions of grandeur. 

The other room belongs to the host who owns the house. The guest just comes and goes, bobbing around like a cork on the tides of life. But the host never moves. He is the solid rock upon which the house is built. And here’s the real truth: This house is never divided even though it looks as if it were. Looks are deceiving. You can’t see the host, just the guest. We don’t know what doesn’t move, but only what does move.

And the house? It’s neither big nor small. It’s both large and small because this house is all that there is from smaller than an atom to the vast reaches of space. The house is your mind.

Moving In

The process of moving into a house is similar to the operation of transformed spiritual evolution. The first step is to find your house, then comes a long process of getting rid of stuff leftover from the previous tenant. Slowly you begin to arrange the new furniture and settle in. But this is just the beginning. 

Through living, we track in dirt and create clutter. Then we have a choice—we can either allow the dirt to accumulate or adopt a practice of continuous cleaning, which never ends.

It is the same with the path of Zen. Before we can move in, we have to realize that there is a new house. Before that point, the thought of moving can’t even occur. Once we come to this realization, we have to make a slow transition of moving out the old tenant (our ego) along with all of his/her accumulated baggage, which can be massive. The idea of moving into an immaculate house with our new belongings is not going to happen. We move in and, over time, discover stuff left behind, which we thought was gone. So then we begin once more. As we clean, we find not only the accumulation of new dirt but also remnants of our old tenant.

The analogy is not perfect but close. The goal is to stay as clear as crystal water—To one day eliminate all remnants of prior occupation and become a whole person, living in a house with no divisions or barriers separating our noumenal and phenomenal aspects. One part of us is complete and perfect; the other part is a work in process. 

The job of bringing these two together never ends. Clouds come and they go. Tides swell and subside. There is war and there is peace. There are people we like and those we don’t; events which we find disturbing and ones we cherish. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity...” Enlightenment is complete and it isn’t—Letting go is hard work but that is the way of Zen.