The Ghost in the Machine

Those souls which have awakened, have from the dawn of time sought ways to clear the path for those yet gestating in the womb of biological necessity. Our creaturely needs are a running scale of binomial satisfaction presided over by "The Ghost in the Machine".

What we find in religion is at its best a soup of metaphor and legend charged with clues to the irreducible mystery of being. "I am that which I am", "All sins forgiven but to sin against the Holy Ghost", "The Buddha's Pure Land": on and on these simple truths posses a facticity that belies their place in the folk narratives of religion. All of these cultural relics can be thought of as koans, and to solve one is to enter into the garden from which they all spontaneously spring forth.

One of my personal favorites is "The Ten Bulls". "The Ten Bulls" is an inspired allegory that when unwrapped reveals the "I am", the "Holy Ghost",  "The Buddha's Pure Land", and onward 'till dawn. Another personal favorite is "The Chocolate Buddha Box". There is no shortage of koan-like artifacts of religious lore. The path to Enlightenment is strewn with them. This is the breadcrumb path of "Handsel and Gretel" strewn with diamonds to guide one through the darkness of the forest: homeward.

Enlightenment is the inevitable denouement of the yearning of the first life that is everywhere all life: where all births are virgin births.

The Spiritual and the Secular

There is no "spiritual realm". There is no "secular". Providing words and definitions does not alter the fact that there exists one seamless reality. The materialist identification with surface makes these mental bifurcations inevitable, but they remain intellectual artifacts of a superficial nature. The degradation of our island planet is made to seem reasonable and inevitable only by the confused "secular" excuses of materialists.

When the blind will lead the blind, is not disaster to be expected?

What Zen Is and what Zen Is Not

Meditation and study are necessary requisites, but the great difficulty in conversing about Zen is that Zen is not a mere reconfiguration of the way we think. Zen is not an acquired set of behavioral patterns. Zen is not a mind set or an accumulation of knowledge. Zen is not an emotional or intellectual posture. Zen is not a discipline and can not be learned.

The great difficulty in conversing about Zen is that the realization of Zen is a transformation of being that leaves one a different kind of creature than one which was born of woman.

It is like a line explaining its self to a point. It is like the sublimation of ice into vapor. It is the spiritual equivalent of the metamorphosis we see in the lives of insects and amphibians.

It is like one without arms reaching out.




The truth of Zen is invisible because it is everywhere, and the Enlightenment of Zen is simply the obvious becoming apparent.

Politics

Some form of political activity is made inevitable by our existence as communal animals.

At its best politics is: serious minded individuals coming together in a collegial manner to address the guidance of communal wellbeing.

At its worst politics devolves to: intelligent sociopaths manipulating a naive polity for fun and profit.



Chuang Tzu remarked that in troubled times the enlightened being retires to private virtue.

"The Ten Bulls" Revisited: the Suchness of Awareness is Emptiness

Just as creatures living in the deepest ocean trenches have no sense of pressure because that pressure is ubiquitous, the mind has no recognition of Awareness. In the same manner as coffee or tea or lemonade are flavored water the mind is flavored Awareness. If the mind is some funny shaped balloon creation Awareness is the air inside, and the balloon's rubber skin the voice of animal nature. On the other hand, if Awareness was an empty box, mind would be its contents. If Awareness were clay, mind would be form. The waves are the water.

When Awareness awakens to its Self and becomes the seat of individual identity it is called Enlightenment. The word "enlightenment" suggests itself: for the creature involved, the experience is exactly the same as a light coming on in a previously dark room. The obvious becomes apparent: for this particular creature the chrysalis of creature-hood has split open to reveal a child of the Universe.


This is the transformation described in "The Ten Bulls" of Zen Buddhist lore.

The Suchness of Awareness is Emptiness.

The Mind Box

We exist in a sea of light

The mind makes boxes



Inside the box it is dark

Meaning and Zen

Life is the crucible in which material events achieve meaning.

Devoid of life, the Universe (while seething with events and eventualities) is devoid of meaning.

The central purpose of the exercises which comprise the mind set known as Buddhism is to uncover and to cultivate that prehuman core of immediate experience which is the foundation of life anywhere in the universe.

And then to live from that place fully aware.


This is the meaning of Zen.

Mindfulness and Enlightenment and Zen

An ancient master once remarked "Meditation is the brick with which we knock at the door"


It is encouraging to find "mindfulness" catching on, and the practice of "mindfulness" will have immediate benefits in the life of anyone who takes it up. That said it must be remarked that in Zen, meditation is the exercise that prepares the mind for the transformation of being that is known as Enlightenment.



The signature characteristic of the unenlightened is that their primary identity is still as Human.

The Wonder of Being

It is universally unrecognized that our existence has no explanation. All of the philosophies of tangled humanity try to explain the unexplainable: we exist.

The fact of our moment is lost in the normalcy of our consciousness and the normalcy of existence subsumes Awareness of its incongruity it a material world.

Like children at the carnival we are hypnotized by the bright lights and festivities of creature-hood.


Zen (or its equivalent) would occur anywhere that the Universe that had evolved to Self Awareness.

Buddhism and Zen

Buddhism and Zen are an accident to the Universe waking up to its Self in its progeny.

And should be seen as such.

The Significance of Fasting

The general condition of the human mind is a matrix of appetites with an address.

The human mind is driven by appetite just as any other animal. Appetites include social behaviors as well as those appetites generally recognized. The simple act of occasional fasting will have benefits in all aspects of restoring ones natural energy to the Awareness by awakening the consciousness to appetite's relentless sway, and by encouraging an awareness that consciousness is an insufficient tool to plumb the depths of self-hood: consciousness spends most of its time in various attempts to satisfy one appetite or another. Only Awareness is adequate, and fasting is a useful prod to Awareness when practiced as a tool of personal discovery.

The general condition of the human mind is a matrix of appetites with an address.


Meditation begins as a form of fasting and results in the birth of a new kind of creature.

The Lay of the Land

A thousand years before the advent of Zen Buddhism in China the Taoist were speaking eloquently of the signature difference between "human mind" and "Tao Mind". The terms they used to describe the differences between Tao Mind and human mind are every bit as expressive and articulate as those we would use today. If clearly explaining the facts of the matter were enough to enlighten the ordinary human being we would find ourselves in a very different world.

We live in a world populated for the most part by the cave fish people. It is not their fault that they are blind, and no one would choose to be blind; but the fact remains that they are a plague upon the earth.



Billions of little sorcerer's apprentices are busy setting brooms to carry water. Much will be swept away.

The Ultimate Aspect of Zen

An ancient master is reported to have said words to this effect,

"If I were to manifest Zen in its ultimate aspect, the weeds in my yard would be chest high."

A Private Word

It seems to me important that just as Christianity separated its self from Judaism, Zen must separate its self from Buddhism. All living things are born from another, and the emergence of Transcendental Awareness from the exquisite Hindu traditions is just as dramatic as the emergence of Christianity from its historical culture. The lives of those that gave all to the reception of the ultimate reality of being can not be trivialized, but the achievement of that reality must inevitably be trivialized, for it is seldom found that creature which can venture into the realm of the the high truth of its own existence.

The Zen of the Patriarchs is the lore of an awakening unprecedented, but not unheralded. The quest for the impersonal recognition of the course and the core of individual mind had been pressing into the terra incognito of existence from the dawn of consciousness when that particular individual, after many strivings and privations, sat down with a will and woke up.

Looking at philosophy from a respectful distant, and looking at even the finest fruits of belief in its multifarious forms, there is nothing that speaks to Transcendental Awareness in other than the terms of belief.


The Buddha was not a believer.

Zen

One of the many difficulties with Zen is that it can not be popularized. Even a thousand years ago poseurs and want-to-be chaps were turned away from the gates of Zen sanctuaries. As with all things mediocrity worms it's way and so even into Zen. The Enlightenment of the Buddha was the awakening of the universe to its Self, not some human realizing something-or-other about something-or-other. The trivialization of Enlightenment by considering enlightenment as a "human" phenomenon is a tragedy, and an opening for mediocrity that all life on earth must suffer for.

The Enlightenment of the Buddha is the foundation for the birth of Transcendental Awareness as a criteria of judgment on a level that would be recognized anywhere in the Universe as Just, but instead of Enlightenment we have "enlightenment" and creatures remain trapped, but with a new complacency, within their humanity.

Zen this, Zen that.........it may make for a catchy title, but as concerning the Zen of the patriarchs.......Pshaw!

What Sets Zen Apart: the tyranny of concepts

Think of a basket. And then think of what a basket might hold.

Mind is the basket. Conceptualizations are its contents.


The true essence of Zen is the basket evaporating into the fabric of existence.



Where are concepts to take hold?

Narrative and Zen: a conundrum

The ultimate nature of Zen harbors no narrative.

If we boil away the narratives of any ideology that ideology no longer exists.

Idle Fascinations, Petty Irritations, and Satori

To those who have not experienced the Transformation, and to those who have been caught by surprise, it may seem that satori will solve their personal problems. This is not the case.

Satori does not banish the animal mind. Satori floods the animal mind with light. The ancient parable of the "Ten Bulls" gives us an historical recognition of the shock of the new, and the Hindu tales of the "Magic Carpet" and the "Wish Fulfilling Gem" are all about the fruition of self discovery.

Meditation is not about discipline. Meditation is a discipline necessary to the cultivation of a silent mind, and a silent mind is necessary to the awakening of Awareness.

Idle fascinations and petty irritations have their roots in the archetype laden labyrinth of the unconscious mind. They are elements of a preconscious animal existence that cloaks its self in a personality, and suspects no "self" higher than its immediate personal experience.  This is utterly natural and it is not for the "Enlightened" to criticize the behavior of the unenlightened.

The difficulty of those who have by hook or by crook entered the startling realm of light to accept that this realm of light to which they have entered finds them still in the sway of the primitive impulse can be discouraging, and at worst this leads to an affectation of elitism that dissolves into retrograde

Do not resent your humanity. Befriend your humanity. It is the magic carpet. It is the magic gem. The urge to elitism is in fact the sway of your humanity, and a dodge back into the shade.



Meditate.

God Help Us

From the dawn of time the occasional enlightened being has pointed out that the ordinary individual lives in a dream. This dream world of illusion is the natural state of any animal. In this state Transcendental Awareness is wholly absorbed in the animal mind and suspects no potential state of existence other than the one in which it finds its self. The mind of this creature exists in a state of innocence, but its innocence is that of a lunatic. In pastoral times this is relatively harmless.

Enlightenment emerges naturally from the cocoon of animal mind by a spontaneous process of evolution: it always has, and it always will. The problem is that the proliferation of human progeny and the exponential advances of technology have created situation where the freewheeling animal mind of man will be the end of us all. By the time the obvious becomes apparent to the hopelessly occluded those left of us will be looking out on a planet ravaged beyond repair. Spiritual infants are soiling the nest without restraint, and are rather pleased with themselves.

The answers are simple, but the animal mind is complex.


God help us.

Exceptional Individuals

The world of humanity is one created by exceptional individuals and inhabited by ordinary individuals. Unfortunately a significant number of power possessing exceptional individuals are sociopaths, and the ordinary individual just wants relative peace and comfort. The cumulative predatory instincts of exceptional sociopaths eventually culminate in the collapse of civilizations.

There is, however, a class of exceptional beings that tends to jealously guard its anonymity: the Enlightened. 

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man must speak with caution.

Zen and the Sea of Is-ness

There is much philosophical conjecture about the realness of reality these days. Rene Descartes' dog forever chasing its tail. Regardless of what we think about it, existence it just as it it. And if it amuses some individuals to dissect it like the frogs in some 101 Biology class: far out.

The western atomistic inquiry into the subtleties of existence will always disappear into the fog of an ephemeral Absolute. There is no right answer to the wrong question. All the blather about "mind" and  "matter" is an inquiry into the nature of a stone. This has a certain utility: this stone will make an arrowhead.....that one can be squeezed for oil. Industriousness depends upon fragmentation. And as to whether the stone has an abject existence independent of an observer, well it's pistols at dawn.

It is grotesquely unrealistic to imagine that an understanding of Suchness and Emtiness would satisfy the atomist's need for certainty, but the simple fact of the matter is: once Suchness and Emtiness are encountered there is nothing more to say.

Enlightenment

Those who see Enlightenment as a human phenomenon are the blind who will lead others into the ditch.


The knowledge of the butterfly is different than that of the caterpillar, but it is not knowledge that has made them different.

The World of Illusion

The world of illusion is not vaporous and ephemeral.

The world of illusion is viscous: thick, sticky, intoxicatingly opaque.

Zen Asks a Simple Question

Does entity precede awareness, or does Awareness precede entity.

And what is the nature of Enlightenment?

Zen and Birth

A caterpillar knows nothing of butterflies, yet in spite of lack of aspiration its transformation is assured. It is much the same with those for whom enlightenment is destined.

Zen does not have the market cornered on enlightenment. Zen is a wonderful technology for modern candidates, but there exist many other valid, well appointed, technologies of being. The central point is that animal intelligence is the soil from which a further leap in the evolution of being springs forth. Humanity is yet in the process of speciation, and those individuals genetically predisposed to Awakening will find it imposed upon them just as the butterfly to the caterpillar and the frog to the tadpole.

Zen is midwife. Birth is inevitable.

The Efficacy of Desire

If the energy of desire were a mist we would see it swirling around all creatures.The more psychic energy involved the more dense the display. Whether one wants a pony and a bicycle or something considerably more dense, the energy of desire sends its wavelength into the fabric of existence creating a sympathetic counter wave tracking back to its source.

Prayer would be seen as focus of such energy, but the normal situation is one where whims and animal needs of the dragon become the arbiter of desire.  Like water under the influence of gravity, the energy of attraction flows to mindless rivulets and ravines leading to the "normal" lives we see all around us.

With the awakening of Awareness that accompanies meditation we are able to recognize and husband the energy of desire in such a way that we no longer permit desire to flow in unnecessary and trivial ways. Instead of indulging a thousand "normal" attractions, we can bring desire to a focus that will affect the change we seek, as a broad mist might coalesce and gather its self into a forceful stream.

This can not happen as long as Transcendental Awareness is wholly identified with the dragon. The world in which we find ourselves is the one mankind has mindlessly desired into being. Meditation and the insueing enlightenment change everything.

Facts, Implications, and Conjecture: the meaning of life

What holds molecules together is shared electrons in the outer electron shield of individual atoms. The one thing that all life on Earth has in common is a complex double helix molecule: the DNA. Of course we have the RNA and the mitochondria and other cell organelles, but what I am looking for is the mechanical source of awareness (why should "life" emerge from matter) and I think it resides in field phenomenon generated by the behavior of electrons holding the DNA molecule together. We can imagine the complex patterns described by these electrons as they weave amongst the atoms that make up the molecule, and we can imagine field resonances established by these behaviors. It does not require a great leap of imagination to ask if awareness might be an awakening of space defined in such a field. Space wakes up.


Flatworms are the most primitive brain possessing creatures. They have eyes, and they have a central nervous system, and they hunt. Some years ago scientist trained these ganglia possessing flatworms to avoid an electrical shock. They then chopped up these trained planaria  and fed them to untrained worms. The untrained planaria exhibited the trained behavior. Slime molds are single cell organisms that travel to feed. In a recent experiment slime molds were similarly trained and chopped and fed back to slime molds. The fed slime molds exhibited the trained behavior.

The fact that these simple creatures are capable of learning is a clear demonstration of awareness. The fact that the training can be transferred by a simple feeding of tissue, indicates that the awarenesses that represent the training exist at some molecular level. It would seem that awareness is a field phenomenon peculiar to certain molecular configurations. This would imply awareness (not consciousness, but awareness) on the part of plants.


So from the simple ganglia of the planaria to the brain of the walking talking human being may take hundreds of millions of years of research and development, but the Universe has an eternity to play with.......what's a hundred million years more or less. What has changed in this evolution is the facility of Awareness to feed and reproduce by virtue of the consciousness made inevitable by increasingly sophisticated nervous systems, and by the corresponding refinement of a biological vehicle.

This implies that any consciousness delving to the core of its existence would find an awareness that was infinitely pure and receptive: a "Transcendental Awareness". And that this Transcendental Awareness exists beyond the ream of the physical restraints responsible for its existence, and that perhaps with sufficient integration could survive the dissolution of vehicle.

What is known as Buddha Nature is Transcendental Awareness, and awakening to its self, it will find the same view anywhere in the universe.

Outside of the existence of life, the universe is a giant pool table with things bouncing and combining in mathematically definable courses. The only new thing in the universe is the experience of Awareness, and I suspect that the experiences of Awareness throughout the universe is the Universe's way of accruing mass: of feeding.