Zen as Compass

There is a real world about which we can speculate but which exists independent of all speculation, and in this unassailable realm of seething existence we have our moment. Curiosity and longing and the human capacity for imagining, inevitably create a haze of surreal projections and practical solutions to the ever-present presentment of the real. So how is this creature with such inexhaustible talents of invention to come into co-incidence with the factual in such a manner as to create a rewarding, peaceful, and productive existence.

To find ones way into this unexplored region of the existential real one must have a compass.

Zen is such a compass.

Observation, Idea, and the Doors of Perception

 

One can observe something, and one can have an idea about something, but clear, clean, observations are not ideas.

Zen is about clarity of observation, and all of Zen's procedural habits are about cleansing the doors of perception.

Natural Inclination and Zen

 

Behavior of any animal is a product of natural inclination interfacing environment, and it is only the accrual of learned experience that introduces agency. Just as a ball rolling down an inclined plane or water running down hill, life generally unfolds in the service of instinct. That Awareness which is the I AM of the living organism is exercised in the service of blind nature. The course of evolution must start from scratch.

The existence of Zen or its equivalent is the inevitable result of Awareness evolving to the state of Self recognition and emerging as agent. Zen is the cultivation of a new existential paradigm in the unfolding of living beings, and Zen is the opening of the eyes of nature.

Civilization

 

Civilization is a state of interaction and not a condition of moral progress.

By the Numbers

 

1. The I AM of all life forms is Pristine Awareness.

2. Pristine Awareness is hypnotized by the sway of nature.

3. The Zen of the patriarchs is a technology contrived to awaken Pristine Awareness.

Baggage

 

As any traveler will attest, in ones peregrinations some baggage is essential. In our passage through this vail of tears (tears of joy, tears of sorrow) we come on board with a massive load of antique baggage.

One of the many benefits of Awareness emerging as the seat of identity is the ability to recognize and discard those bits of instinctual bric-a-brac which clutter up our personal lives and make all but impossible the enjoyment of inner peace.

Not to be Harsh, But . . . . .

 

Think about it.

Becoming a well trained monkey is not a substitute for Enlightenment.

But it's a start

There must be an appreciation of self governance.

Vessel

 

If the vessel is awake it is aware of its contents.

Zen as Technology of Being

 

Zen is not intentionally elitist. What makes it seem so is that Zen makes no bargains with our humanity. Zen insists upon a transformation of being that indulges no intermediate dallying. I have described it as the emergence of a butterfly from its chrysalis. In a time when both animals were beasts of burden Yung-ming (d-975) put it as "from the womb of a cow an elephant is born"

Simply let consciousness contemplate Awareness.

"I have investigated the old Woman"

This morning I was reading an article concerning cognition and the formation of cognitive bias. The article was subject to the normal disregard of Awareness as the precursor of consciousness, and in the process of describing how consciousness is subject to error the phrase "intuitive belief" was used.

"Intuitive belief" The phrase is the very essence of oxymoron. Intuition is the direct product of Awareness: fluid, active, ever in flux, and that is its value. Belief is the spawn of consciousness: formal, confined, ridged. And though belief has a proper place in civil affairs, intuition and belief are as different as liquid water is from ice, and I think what they are attempting to describe could be better termed as "passive belief".

 

It seems to me that all the difficulty in this consciousness probing goes back to a materialistic explanation of existence: does matter precede Awareness, or does Awareness precede matter. 

Of course your garden variety materialist will scoff at the mere suggestion that matter might be an epiphenomenon of Awareness. But the reason solid things appear solid is because of the interaction of unexplained fields in the fabric of unexplained nothingness. If we look for light as a wave (field) we find it as a wave. If we look for it as matter we discover it as a point object. The electron exists as a field, and it is atomic nuclei attracting complimentary electronic balance which leads to the formation of molecules. And it is the sophistication of molecules that leads to the emergence of an awareness capable of consciousness. And when they boil it all down looking for prime movers is seems to be wiggles of nothingness.

Consciousness is a magic wand for good or for ill, and beliefs are the bricks with which cultural edifices are constructed.  Zen is a technology of being based on the fact that consciousness is a configured state of Awareness. Zen is a technology designed awaken this little droplet of Awareness to the marvelous fact of its existence. The success of Zen is when a living creature discovers its true identity.

"I have investigated the old Woman".  (Chao-chou. died 834)

The Material World

 

The material world, depending on how we define it, is simply existence. But in colloquial parlance "The Material World" refers to a world where surface is all: rather like encountering a painted elephant and thereafter considering the painted surface to be all there is to an elephant. Living in the decorative surface of being blinds humanity to the living pulse of the prime mover. Intoxicated with appearances, they live and they die. In the best of times this is harmless, and this is certainly blameless in any simple animal.

But these are not the best of times. And it puts me in mind of a phrase I sometimes toss around having to do with what kind of catastrophe it will take before "the obvious becomes apparent to the hopelessly occluded."

The meaning saturated gestalt is a sea of potential. It is omni-present and it has no surface. Events are catalyzed into existence by behaviors, and these "behaviors" are the vestiges of previous catalyzations in the flux of inevitability. The emission of a beta particle from an unstable atom is an event. Its course on the path to collision is behavior leading to events, etc. . It is endless beginning in a cascade of inevitability where guided trajectories chart the course of humanity. Witchcraft and politics are examples of primitive efforts to nudge manifestation by manipulative behavior (of course the same could be said of getting a spoon to ones mouth).

So what we see before us is a riot of half-wit-to-lunatic-would-be-wizards running around stirring the cauldron of inevitability to achieve some superficial purpose. 

Baring the advent of some degree of Enlightenment. . . .

 this can not end well.  

Intuition and Inspiration

 

Intuition leads us. Intuition is visceral: a scent on the wind. Intuition is the direct product of Awareness. 

Inspiration finds us where we are. Inspiration is a synaptic event of mind. Inspiration is the product of consciousness.

If, in the press of modern life, we have smothered intuition, our inspirations will be correspondingly undernourished.

Intuition is viceral. Inspiration is cerebral.

Technologies of Being

The potential of any human being to fully explore the opportunities presented by existence is limited by access and exposure to technologies of being. Public schools and universities are examples of societies attempt to cultivate a citizen that is productive and reliably civil, but these institutions of domestication stop very short of accessing the more esoteric venues of human potential.

Religions as generally found are emergent technologies of being: prescribing how to be in order to determine what will be. And then there are the myriad, often exotic, mystery schools with varying claims on personal evolution. Again, all of these are technologies of being.

I am now in my eightieth year. From earliest childhood I had wondered "What is the Who", and had searched the lore of self discovery seeking a means: to discover a true ray of light and to follow that ray to its source. That was my purpose.

Everyone was selling something.

The Zen of the patriarchs is not selling anything. The Zen of the patriarchs is a technology of being which enables the relaxation of any second order edifice of identity. The Zen of the patriarchs is a technology of being which makes possible the awakening of Pristine Awareness: the Who of all living creatures.

In meditation simply let consciousness contemplate Awareness.

The obvious will become apparent.

The Purpose of Zen

 

There is a vast and rich treasure by way of understanding humanity to be found in literature. If we read Thucydides' 2,500 year old account of the Peloponnesian War and we change the names of people and places, we could be reading the news of the day. War-ish tribalism is in us like dye in water. The swaggering pronouncements of politicians and public figures are unchanged from 2,500 years ago. And the subsequent descent into chaos and death and social upheaval is likewise unchanged.

But one of the shadows on the wall of human opacity that we also find in every "where" and in all times is an intuited sense of humanity as an expression of something larger than life its self and from which life emerges.

And it is entering into the light by which this shadow is cast that is the purpose of Zen.

Plato in the Country of the Blind

 

That Greek of great renown, Plato, lived about 2,500 years ago in the same historical period as Lao Tzu and the historical Buddha. He gave us the records we have of Socrates' demolishing of the rhetorical constructs of his fellow Athenians, but his most famous essay is that of "Plato's Cave"

Plato postulated a society of cave dwellers chained to their seats. Their only referents were shadows on the wall cast by a flickering flame behind them, and his cave dwellers would discourse at great length concerning the significance, the meaning, and the import of these shadows. He then has one of his cave dwellers somehow slip from his chains and make his way to the mouth of the cave where he sees for the first time the "real" world, and who then rushes back to inform his fellows that there is a visceral world of reality of which they have no knowledge: a visceral world that is "real" as opposed to the shadows with which they are familiar.

Our now "enlightened" chap is of course considered (and dealt with) as a dangerous lunatic.

I have often thought of the view that comes with Enlightenment as seeing in the infrared. And that all attempts to describe the ensuing image of reality is an attempt to explain color to someone who sees only black and white, or to explain vision to a cave fish. This, while all the while swimming in a miraculous sparkling sea of crystalline formations of Pristine Awareness.

For me it remains an open question whether or not the ability of Pristine Awareness to awaken and live frolicking in the sun is a genetic mutation available only to an emergent specie of humanity. But one thing of which I am quite certain is that in the present circumstances the practice of meditation is an absolute necessity.

Fly Paper

 

Systems appealing to the personality are like fly-paper for souls.  

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 all 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.

Zen is not about the monkey waking up to Awareness. Zen is about Awareness waking up to the monkey.

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.

The Majesty of the Inevitable

 

This blog of personal musings is certainly not about events in the world of the unenlightened, but it is so glaringly obvious that the animal faction of humanity is impervious to the majesty of the inevitable that they seem rather like an ant contemplating the toe of an elephant with aspirations and self importance.

I take it as a personal failing that I find this not only astounding, but a touch horrifying.

The Law of the Jungle

While the jungle is morally neutral, the foundational nature of Awareness in all creatures leads to emotional judgements that, while conflicting, are axiomatic: it is wrong to be hurt, it is wrong to be eaten, it is right to wield power, it is right to eat. Several thousand years ago a famous Greek wrote down that "The powerful do as they will. The weak endure what they must."

All animal behavior is an exploitation of its environment in pursuit of satisfaction of an organic need, and in the more complex creatures this includes complex needs that are psychologically driven. There is no behavior without motive whether it is scratching your nose or some act of tribal rapine. 

As we survey the infusion of intelligence into animal existence through the vehicle of evolution we find the emergence of a remarkable property. We find the emergence of an intelligence capable of awakening to the Pristine Awareness which is the substrate of its existence, not to mention the essence of all life. One might say that the spirit of life-itself has awakened.

As long as the mind of humanity at-large enjoys the state of animal innocence, our societies will reflect the laws of the jungle.

The Baby and the Bath Water

 

The maturation of Awarness can set one at odds with the old world brain of which it is the flower. It is never a good idea to set oneself in an adversary position to nature, for the self tires and nature does not. 

The awakening of Pristine Awareness which I refer to as Enlightenment does just this: in the same manner as a light coming on in a previously dark room, the cave lair of the latent contents of the unconscious mind is flooded with awareness. The archaic superstructure of the personality is clearly revealed to be the mechanical prod to behavior which it is, and it is not uncommon that the emerging Self is uncomfortable with what it has found. Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) in his later years regretted the suffering he wreaked upon "Brother Mule" in his early struggles with his own humanity. 

In the same way as a dedicated archaeologist methodically and respectfully proceeds with a dig, one must reverently catalogue and repurpose the discovered energies of the antique genetic imperatives which are the soil of our being.

I suppose one way of looking at is: new growth through cultivation rather than "slash and burn."

The Citadel

 

Within every living creature in the Universe there is a Citadel. And in every living creature this Citadel is surrounded by an ancient and vast city swarming with layers of commerce and political expediency. In most every living creature there is no silence in the Citadel before the insistent cacophony of the city's rhythms.

The Universe has, over a period of millions of years of trial and error, come up with an organism in which the Citadel can come to its senses as it were, and rule the city.  

It is the gift of Silence,

The Lost Powers of Intuition

 

All knowledge is the product of intuition, but intuition is the fruit of Awareness and knowledge is a product of mind.

The intuitive "knowing" proper to any creature subject to awareness is in humanity subject to layers of knowledge. The obvious advantages of culture ask and in fact demand subordination of intuition to the disciplines of knowledge. The intuitive spontaneity found in children and other animals is gradually buried under a progressive burden of cultural norms and expectations to the point that for most specimens of humanity access to intuition is effectively cut off, and in leu of intuitively making one's way through life, one's life proceeds by juggling mental artifacts. These mental artifacts include such niceties as atom bombs and political parties (the benefits of civilization not withstanding).

At any rate the presence of being found in religious figures of historical note is the immediate side effect of a life founded in the cultivation of Awareness, and the restoration of mankind's native powers of intuition is a natural result of the practice of meditation.

The Weight

 

Much of the advice concerning "inner balance" is of the nature of counter-balance: cultivate pleasant memories etc. This must work for most people because this sort of thing gets a lot of ink. However that may be, it seems to me that this is a compensation that adds to the total weight one carries down the path of life.  One is unbalanced due to an unpleasant weight carried in ones right hand, so one puts a counter balancing pleasant weight in ones left hand. Some balance is achieved at the price of burden. 

The mind has formed these burdens in response to the vicissitudes and residues of existence. The ultimate nature of our existence is not the mind. The ultimate nature of our existence is Pristine Awareness. When we achieve that seismic change of identity from mechanically accepting ourselves as the waves to realizing ourselves as the water, we no longer are the tool of the mind.

It is profound relaxation. This "profound relaxation" can not be achieved by effort. Profound relaxation is discovered as the natural state of Pristine Awareness: the essence of all life. The weights that we carry are usually valid, real, visceral (I speak as a combat veteran on the wrong side). It is not about covering up or somehow compensating for the dark side of our humanity. It is about becoming a different kind of creature: a creature truly awake in the fabric of existence.

The waves are the water. When the water is awake the disturbances that are the stuff of the colorful surface of life will come and go. These agitations great and small are the stuff life feeds upon and by them the Universe finds its Self informed. The water of Awareness is enriched thereby.

Simply direct the mind to the contemplation of awareness. There is no effort in awareness for Awareness is simply aware. This practice will lead to unsuspected realms of Self discovery in anyone who will make a sincere commitment.

As the Crow Flies

 

There is a phrase in these once remote Ozark hills used to describe the shortest distance between two points, and that phrase is "as the crow flies." This is what "The Bird Path" is all about.

One encounters so much advice about how to rearrange one's inner furniture, and so much verbiage and effort concerning consciousness this consciousness that. None of this is pertinent to the awakening of the Pristine Awareness which is the core of not only your existence as a human being, but the "I AM" of all living creatures.

The image that comes to my mind is that of someone washing and waxing their car, sweeping out the glove box, vacuuming under the seats, polishing the rearview mirror, rather than simply getting in and driving to their allegedly chosen destination. Tidying up our humanity is like polishing a mud ball: there will be nothing left when we have cleaned it all up. We are children of the soil, and removing the soil from our being will leave an empty shell. Not to mention that the effort put into "raising consciousness" might have been put into the awakening of Pristine Awareness.

A difficult (but not insurmountable) fact is that consciousness is a conditioned state of Awareness, hence the old image of searching for fire with a candle. Another hurdle is the supposition that what we seek is a personal evolution, when the fact of the matter is that the personal has become translucent and therefor no longer a source of fascination.

The use of meditation to permit Pristine Awareness unfettered access to expression in the event which is our person-hood requires some preparation or else the freedom of self will be accessed as self improvement. But then it all depends on where you want to go. And as the crow flies, the bird path is the shortest distance between that place and where you now stand.

Certainty

The colors of experience which become the motive forces behind our lived moment boil down to a very few primary movers. These primary movers transcend our humanity, our mammal-ness, and are coeval with our existence as animals. With regard to our behavior as psychological beings the foundational need is that of "certainty". Emerging from the obvious need for food and shelter is an awareness of the uncharted land of a morrow. And this primal awareness of "future" in a sophisticated brain will naturally lead to the creation of "certainty".

Certainty is the foundation of civilization with its web of benefits and failings. The dysfunctional extensions of certainty include such behavioral grotesqueries as greed, lust for inordinate power, and a host of psychological maladies that when examined reduce to a hysterical need for certainty, and perhaps an intuited awareness of certain catastrophe. With regard to any future for humanity it is extraordinarily important that power possessing beings are not operating under dysfunctional appetites for certainty, but as we look about us the opportunities for catastrophe are little ducklings in a row following their dysfunctional certainties to their unnecessary denouements.

The most subtle and insidious uncertainty is that of the undiscovered self. The ultimate actuality of self is Pristine Awareness. And when Pristine Awareness becomes the seat of personal identity we exist in a discovered universe of certainty.

Meditation is the key

Satori is the door.

Pavlov is the mythical guarantor,

Why it is Called Enlightenment

In the analects of ancient Zen we find recounted the satori of a young monk. Discouraged by lack of progress in his pursuit of Enlightenment he resolved to repair to a secluded mountain hut and there pursue his illusive quarry. In tidying up around his hut a rock tossed off to the side struck a stalk of bamboo and suddenly all became clear to our young monk. 

This move to Enlightenment did not happen in a vacuum. This young man was steeped in in the silence of meditation and saturated with the spirit of inquiry resulting from the koan exercise. He recognized in the sound of the struck bamboo a mirror to the receptive emptiness of Awareness: the true Self behind the noise of mind. He saw his "true face before born of his parents" and awoke to the the fact that his Awareness was "the sound of one hand clapping"

The receptive stillness of the eardrum is the source of sound, and a cacophony of noise breeds incoherence. Just so the effects of consciousness upon that Awareness which is the signal characteristic of all life. Throw some thought into the mix and we find a humanity hypnotized by the noise of existence and therefor living in darkness.

And that's why it's called Enlightenment.

Mass Hypnosis and the Disciplines of Zen Buddhism

"When the people of the world look apon these flowers they see them as if in a dream" these words were spoken to the Emperor of Japan by the national teacher many centuries ago. 

The hold of consciousness over Awareness amounts to a form of hypnosis, and the disciplines of Zen Buddhism are intended to break this tyrannical spell, thus bringing to flower in the garden of animal proliferation the Pristine Awareness which is the essence of all life. 

The emergence of the formal pursuit of Enlightenment resulting from the efforts of the historical Buddha is a landmark event in life on Earth. 

The hypnotic trance which is the normal state of consciousness has been infused with destructive capabilities unimagined by the hostile fascinations of past generations. Hypnosis has once again past into hysteria, but this time we are courting a slap in the face from which the world as we know it may not recover.

Only Enlightenment can save the world.

Cognitive Readiness and the Mysteries of ZEN

 

The compost pile of scientific inquiry has made inevitable the flowering of global cognitive readiness. There are so many nexus, so many data points of mutually supporting facts, that connecting the dots to produce a startlingly clear realization of the true nature of consciousness and its emergence from Pristine Awareness is in many individuals a synaptic inevitably.

The esoteric realities uncovered by centuries of religious geniuses no longer require brilliant exercises of intuitive discipline, and most any reasonably intelligent person can connect the dots that circumscribe the true nature of their existence. 

So humanity has entered the phase of cognitive readiness, and perhaps it's not too late for the mysteries of Zen to save the world.

Here's to those great historic individuals who kept the flame alive.

The Repository and the Fact of Life

 

The mind is an interface, and the senses of the body act as a system of antennae. Exactly like a satellite TV antenna, the eye is sensitive to specific wavelengths of electromagnetic energy, and the eye is not sensitive to the barrage of other wave forms. Hearing, seeing, feeling, etc. are all forms of touching, and what is touch but the outside world acting upon the antenna which is the nervous system.

The nervous system mechanically transmits this "information" to the brain where Awareness assembles these mechanical stimuli into representations. The outside world is really there, and it is really as it appears to be. There's just a lot more of it than we need to access in order to get by.

Meditation is the exercise by which we awaken Pristine Awareness: the repository and the fact of life.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?