Perception

 

Perception is an excitation in the field of Awareness. As we discover in our meditation, the field of Awareness exists in a state of active passivity. Awareness resists nothing and requires nothing. Perception provides an itch and behavior provides the scratching. 

Every creature comes into being with a library of instinctual potentials ingrained in the physical patterns expressed in their existence. These potentials exist to excite the field of Awareness and spur behavior. The exegeses of existence further enrich this library, and the capacity of this library is what is known as "intelligence".

What we see here is that behind all this experiential busyness is the primacy of Pristine Awareness. And that all the activities of living organisms are constellated to ensure the wellbeing of the residence of said nodal of Awareness. We find here that Pristine Awareness is what we are and that all else is window dressing. 

Consciousness emerges with the advent of nervous systems. Nerve systems enable the creation of rich libraries of experienced exegeses, and with the enrichment of this library comes into being the librarian: the Ego. And this Ego, blind to its origins, believes itself to be the author of its tale when it is actually the stepchild of Cosmic Necessity.

Zen is the slap designed to awaken Pristine Awareness to the true state of things.

The Ascent of Awareness

 

In the time-scale of the Universe the ascent of Awareness has progressed smoothly and quickly. Our single-cell ancestors, in a Darwinian progression, gave rise to Homo Erectus. Homo Erectus paved the way for the emergence of Homo Sapiens, and Homo Sapiens is but a wide-spot in the road for the flowering of Homo Sophians. 

The soup of creature-hood is the agar plate for the emergence of Self-Recognition in the fabric of the Universe, and the emergence of what has become known as "Enlightenment" is the denouement of the Universe's aspiration for this "Self-Recognition."

All living creatures are the expression of Pristine Awareness, and Pristine Awareness over millions of years has, like a tree root in rocky ground, leveraged its way through the darkness of material existence in the process of refinement of said Pristine Awareness (which is the substrate of the Universe) that it might awaken to its Self.

The intuitive recognition of the oneness of existence in precocious individuals made religious mysteries inevitable, and filling in the blanks of knowledge in a pre-science world necessitates well constellated mythologies. And in all of this we find the thread of the Universe's appetite for Self-Recognition.

Just as there are mathematical geniuses, amongst the geniuses of all stripes we find religious geniuses. Religious geniuses do not invent anything: they see. And in the historical survey of religious genius we detect the budding fruition of self-recognition in Pristine Awareness. And just as one Einstein tills the field for ensuing mathematicians, a parrot can pronounce great truths.

On the Dogwood tree, every bud that will flower in the Spring is present when its leaves are dropped in the Fall. Those buds winter over and when the time is right they burst into flower in a matter of days. 

Homo Sapiens is the rootstock for the emergence of Homo Sophians.