Do We See

 Do we see awareness through the lens of humanity

or

Do we see humanity through the lens of Awareness

Like a Snowflake

Consciousness is individual and Awareness is Universal. The Awareness of any organism comes on board with what might be called genetic memory. Built into the fabric of the physical form is a time tested preprogram about which (in the case of human beings) the personality coalesces. In the same way as each unique snowflake spontaneously forms around its impersonal core, the consciousness individuates upon a core of predetermined impersonal inclinations. Should that Awareness which is the substance of consciousness awaken, it becomes obvious that the behavior patterns which are the stuff of the personality are ephemera caught upon a framework of instinctual inclination: impersonal and not discardable. We do not choose these inclinations anymore than water choses to run down hill. In all creatures the I AM says "I" to the impersonal sway of instinct.

If the mind of a lion should awaken it would still be a lion.

An ancient master remarked that "Stubbing your toe in the dark, and stubbing your toe when you can see around, are miles apart."

The general admonitions concerning kindness and consideration extend to the Self.

The Ascent of Awareness

One of the great visionaries of the 20th century postulated what he called the Omega Point. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (d.1955) saw the inevitable product of evolution as the Universe awakening to its Self with mankind as the vehicle realization. He called this awakening the "Omega Point" The Omega Point is a line drawn in the sands of time. On one side of the line we find sleeping humanity as an intelligent animal, and on the other side of the Omega Point we find humanity as Awake. The child of the Earth has become the child of the Universe.

The Omega Point is attained individually. And with this in mind we can see that for thousands of years an individual here or there has crossed over. Pierre Teilhard saw that the cumulative press of knowledge, and in particular the sophistication of language, would inexorably lead life on earth to realization. Zen is an emergent laborer in this work of Awakening.

This is happening all around us as we speak, and the work is increasingly critical, for it must be admitted that by-and-large the spectrum of humanity which thinks it runs the world is populated by unenlightened monkeys (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Zen and Modernity

The womb of Zen was an established Chinese monastic culture that had been in existence for hundreds of years before the unique conjugation of Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism gave rise to the advent of Zen. The adepts and acolytes of these monastic communities lived a cloistered existence intended to insulate the mind from the myriad demands of secular existence. Freed from the demands of family and commercial society the mind was available for excursions into, and exploration of, an esoteric terra incognita. To enter into the Enlightenment decried by the historical Buddha: this was the goal of our Zen progenitors

The complexities of the modern world demand the constant exercise of consciousness to this-or that-or some other thing, so how in the world is one to participate in the discovery of Pristine Awareness while attending to all that is asked of the mind by the tasks of ordinary day to day existence?

The birth of Zen was an institutional recognition of the potential for, and insistence upon, awakening Pristine Awareness. The exercises and mysteries developed in monastic sanctuaries kept Zen alive and well, incubated as it were, giving time for humanity to ripen culturally that the truths of Zen might become accessible to the world at large. Perhaps, perhaps, the richness of modern language and the breadth of contemporary scientific understanding can bridge the chasm between Self-understanding and the gymnastics of consciousness required by everyday existence, so that Zen might take its rightful place in the maturation of human existence and the betterment of all life on Earth.  

Words

When we encounter language, spoken or written, it is not received as a chain of definitions. Language is received as a flow of meaning. Words are representations of categories of experience, and naming is a form of shorthand for easy reference. We find here the inestimable value of education. Our library of experience determines the richness of our understanding.

Metaphor and analogy are tools of meaning with great explanatory power, but that which is beyond the various categories of our experience is beyond the reach of metaphor, and with regard to our humanity there are possibilities of being that amount to the emergence of an entirely new kind of creature on the twining tendrils of the tree of life.

An ancient master once remarked "Why does the enlightened man not step forward and declare himself?"

What Is Zen

What Zen is not? Zen is not some antique asian hocus-pocus mysticism. 

In precocious individuals Awareness has been emerging from the hypnosis of consciousness for thousands of years. Many of those individuals reached out to their fellow beings in an attempt to make possible this metanoia. Some of them became great religious leaders. Some of them became philosophers and sages of great renown. Some of them lived lives of obscurity, and some were executed as heretics. Zen had the good fortune to emerge in a culture where a monastic tradition made possible the cultivation of its emergent technologies of transformation.

And this is what Zen is. Zen is a technology constellated to awaken Awareness from the hypnotic trance of consciousness, and bring about a new creature emerging from the cocoon of biological make-work.