The Narrative of Enlightenment

All animals are born into the web of their genetic imperatives. They feed, they breed, they die. And with any luck at all they experience the simple joys which are their portion. Humans, in addition to the ancient tides of nature, are born into a narrative. A colorful brocade cloaks every aspect of our naked being. Politics, religion, wars and the peace which wars bring, are examples of the narratives of social anthropology. We subscribe to the narrative because it presses it's self upon us in an avalanche of ways, and because it is the only world we know.



Enlightenment must endure a narrative just as an iron skillet must have a handle.

Thought Forms and the Memes of Consciousness

The normative state of the human creature is one wholly identified with it's process, which is to say that thought forms created and harbored are not recognized as artificial constructs. The life of all humans, such as it is, is the reflection of thought forms created spontaneously in the flux of the mind's passage through the vicissitudes of existence. The mind generally does not recognize that what shows up as "idea" is an actual self created field form in the tissue of the brain, so Awareness becomes shrouded in what were termed by the ancient masters of Zen as "creepers". These "creepers" vine on Awareness as the Strangler Fig vines upon a tree to the point that the tree is lost to life.

Thought forms manifest powerful efficacies for good or for ill, and there is no form of any kind without it's requisite inevitabilities.

When Awareness is awakened as the host of mental processes, thought forms are recognized as guests. Some guests bring gifts, and some bring sorrows. Some guests are to be welcomed and some are to be banished. But none are to be permitted to subsume the authority of the host.

This is precisely the difficulty when one succumbs to the memes of "consciousness". Consciousness is a state of excitation in the field of Awareness, and if our primary identity is that of consciousness the riches of Awareness are correspondingly inaccessible.

Do the Math

Unless we start counting from zero all of our subsequent calculations will be some degree of invalid.

Meditation's greatest fruit is the discovery of the Self beneath and above the worldly animal. Awareness, un-configured and receptive, is the true substrate of all life. Consciousness is Awareness configured through the vehicle it occupies, and is generally fournd wholly identified with it's creature. Meditation properly silences the noise of the animal, making possible the awakening of the Universe in it's progeny as the self discovers Awareness.

Unless we start counting from zero all of our subsequent calculation will be some degree of invalid.

Purity

We find the antique tribalism of human nature vulnerable to an appreciation of what could be called "PURITY". This "purity" expresses it's self as prowess in it's rainbow of manifestation. Prowess in action and prowess in inaction. The purity of religious zealots and the purity of athletic geniuses excite the same kind of fervor in vulnerable individuals. And this is because these achievements require the kind of purposeful self abnegation and purposeful self exploitation that admiring individuals find lacking in themselves.

This is all fine and dandy except that it leads to posturing and self inflation and a well deserved sense of failure.

Enlightenment is not about achievement

Enlightenment is simply recognizing what is.


Purity is a tortured path to oblivion paved with imagination.

The pursuit of excellence is, however, a different matter all together.

Playing the Game

We must play the game or most surely the game will play us. The world into which we are born has been made inevitable by accidents of nature. The rhymes and the reasons of our culture are mechanical as an old fashioned alarm clock, but born into the tick-tock tick-tock we play our part in this shadow world saying "I" to the springs and the gears, and to the time.

It is not surprising that some minds rebel against the stacked deck that is life its self, but rebellion is a tragic waste of precious existence. The path to Enlightenment is unobstructed but by the normal faculties of mind. And should that Awareness, which is everywhere the true substance of life, awaken to become the master of the consciousness it has created, everything is just as it was, is now, and ever shall be.

The Waves are the Water

It is not enough to quiet the mind. The essence of ones being is met when Awareness forbears the creation of mind. Mind is a necessary tool to the processes of life, and basking in the instinctual satisfactions that the mind provides is just fine. But mind is not the true self. Mind is the basket weaver of illusions. The narratives that dominate human existence (for better or worse) are phantasms made flesh. When Awareness wakens to its Self it is as if we had always known.

The waves are the water.

The Importance of Being Ernest

All culture is imagined into being. We are born into the world made inevitable by the imaginations of our forebears, and the starkly arbitrary nature of the forms of daily existence exist as norms to us. The long shadow threatening to extinguish life as we know it, is the direct spawn of the human imagination acting in the sway of unacknowledged, and therefore unperceived, primitive archetypes to which humanity en-mass has said "I".

Enlightenment is no longer a luxury good in the shop of human choices.  Enlightenment is our only hope.

The Finger Pointing at the Moon

A certain kind of Zen has broken away from it's religionist roots, and with all due respect to traditional Buddhism, has established a frontier in universal Enlightenment.

Simply stated most people aren't really interested in the moon. What they want is a confidence inspiring finger pointing at the moon. I was initiated into the Nichiren Sect in 1966, but it was encountering Zen as delineated by D T Suzuki that some ten years later I came to understand the true seismic significance of the historical Buddha. Suzuki has been pilloried as a heretic by some Buddhist religionist. The second patriarch of Zen Buddhism was allegedly executed as a heretic at the insistence of Buddhist dogmatist when in his 90s about 1,400 years ago.

At the time of the extinguishment of the dinosaurs the largest mammals were about the size of rats. To consider the emergence of an awakened life-form from the chemical inevitabilities that lead to life is to consider the fact of one's own awareness. The Awareness which is the substrate of our own consciousness was present in our progenitors, and exists in us through a unbroken chain of sexual transmission. The seed of life sends forth the vine and the flower of that vine is the Universe awakening to its self.

This is what Zen is.

Square One

With out doubt one of the stumbling blocks set before anybody genuinely interested in encountering the core of their own being is that in the literature and in the halls they will face a phalanx of antique terminology. Terms that may at one time had simple referential meanings have become romanticized: have ceased to have colloquial value and now carry a load of romantic baggage.

The facts are quite simple. Awareness is everywhere simply aware. It seems to be a field phenomenon and has no other properties. Mind is a state of excitation of this field and is peculiar to the form producing the field. Consciousness occurs when mind possesses some degree of state recognition.

There are degrees of consciousness. There are as many different minds as there are creature to produce them. Awareness is always and everywhere simply aware.

Awareness is.

Zen and Culture

Culture is in every case a drape over the simple imperatives of the animal that we are. The drape of culture creates a sense of place in the unformed jungle of genetic imperatives and is the inevitable press of knowing. Culture is not inherently good or bad, but the emergence of culture is inherently inevitable as the mind brings order to the perceived world.

The ultimate nature of Zen transcends culture. Where we find what might be called a culture of Zen we see the superficial accoutrements necessary to access, in the manner of signage that directs one to the nearest bathroom. This, and the fact that the immediate experience common to enlightened beings is one where the obvious is simply apparent, gives the appearance of culture where there is simply a direct accord with the obvious.

Those who drape themselves in a culture of Zen have configured Zen into a trap and a stumbling block. They are proudly stuck in costume at the door.


Of course there is another way of looking at this. Enlightenment transcends culture and Zen is a culture conducive to Enlightenment.

Let's Have an Idea: the Zen View

It is ridiculous to assume that Darwinian speciation ever does any thing but what it does. And what it does is select for inherent traits........why do you find them attractive? whom do you love?...some-one "beneath" you?.....some-one above you?  .....not to mention the simple fraud that all opinions tend to be.

It cannot be over stressed that all idea are imaginary. Second to that is the fact that the vast majority of ideas stem from some genetically driven proclivity to which the Awareness innocently subscribes.

Zen is the cosmic limit to which all "versions" are seen as the ideological frauds that they are.

The Urge and the Expression

There is no expression devoid of urge. That mind informed by Awareness, sitting at the wellspring of being, is not moved by the mechanical normalcy of inclination, but finds it's Self informed.