Old Wine....New Casks

It seems to me that the legends of Zen should shed the shell of Buddhism and begin a new life as liberated truth. The historical Buddha would not have come into being were it not for the culture that made his existence inevitable. The extremely advanced technologies of being of 500 BC India should embarrass any modern fast-track psych-track guru. It is only the vast emptiness of modernity that stands between us and the people of those times.

Mind Like a Mirror

Let us imagine a pond. The pond is in a quiet hollow and the water is still. The surrounding trees and the flight of the birds are perfectly reflected on the mirror-like surface. The sixth patriarch of Zen had trouble with the mirror metaphor, but that doesn't mean he didn't understand what was meant.

It seems that he objected to any intellectual moment between subject and object. He was a true student of meditation and in a monastic environment: there was no reason to resort to the intellect.....only the fact of existence will suffice.

There is no mirror. There is only awareness: aware in a fabric of existence...and that existence is aware.

The Waves are the Water

Awareness is substance. Consciousness is motion.

The Culture of Enlightenment

The person who became the historical Buddha spent his life preaching in an attempt to give others access to the clarity he had achieved. The Sutras are a record of these efforts. Although Zen claims a direct transmission of enlightenment going back to Sakyamuni, and existing outside of the Sutras, the "Lankavatara Sutra" is considered to contain the core principles of Zen. In the "Lankavatara" we find:

"O Mahamati, it is because the Sutras are preached to all beings in accordance with their modes of thinking, and do not hit the mark as far as the true sense is concerned; words cannot reinstate the truth as it is. It is like a mirage. deceived by which the animals make an erroneous judgment as to the presence of water where there is really none, even so, all the doctrines in the Sutras are intended to satisfy the imagination of the masses. They do not reveal the truth which is the object of the noble understanding. Therefore O Mahamati, conform yourself to the sense, and do not be engrossed in words and doctrines."

The problem facing the Buddha was that the culture of language had not evolved to the point that what needed to be expressed could be said in words. The Koan exercise and the occasional bizarre treatment of Zen acolytes are attempts to overcome this difficulty.

The brilliance of Shakespeare is his ability to convey with words things that can not be said with words. Looking for an evolution in the power of language one need look no further than the extraordinary difference between the English of Shakespeare and modern English. Many years ago a social anthropologist noted that some primitive peoples could not express their feelings because the necessary words did not exist in their native tongue.

Of all the advances of modernity one of the most remarkable is the emergence of modern English. As a nuts-and-bolts language that will take shades of meaning where it finds them, modern English is the language of enlightenment par excellence.


All ideas are imaginary.

Simple awareness is the ultimate truth of personhood.

Saving the World

Serious people often think that if others just had the right ideas things would be different. If this is true the right kind of propaganda will save the world. Consciousness will find more pleasing forms. Consciousness will expand.

Consciousness is malleable, and all appeals to consciousness are a treating of symptom. Consciousness has qualities beyond number and limitless potential form.
Consciousness tends to subvert awareness.

Awareness has only one quality: awareness. Awareness has no form.

Only awareness can save the world.