The Practice of Awareness is Enough

I began experiments in meditation when I was 13. In my mid 20s I moved to a remote shack at the end of a rough dirt road and the silence I enjoyed there resulted in the culmination of my meditative efforts. With fasting and sitting meditation I was eventually able to at will enter a Samadhi, and in this state I was able to at will generate a field around me that gnats, and flies, and mosquitoes would not enter. The field extended about three feet all around me and if some companion sat within that zone the bugs would not come in to get them. This state required the complete dissolution of consciousness into Awareness. With much practice I was able to assemble speech while remaining an artifact of Awareness. All of this was very arduous, but the door had been opened to that Awareness which is the substrate of all life, and I found myself increasingly a creature of Awareness and consciousness became a necessary and useful faculty.

Of course my life at that time was one built on the foundation of identification with Mind, and the complications peculiar to humanity were well articulated in my day to day existence.

But that's not the point. The point is that I have known meditators with years of practice and find they remain firmly entrenched in the clutches of consciousness. Their years of meditation have solidified their personalities, and I have come to the conclusion that sitting meditation is not necessary. It is an extraordinary exercise and will yield benefits to any who enter into practice, but it is not necessary to the awakening of Awareness.

One can quite simply practice Awareness. Be aware of your consciousness. No repression is necessary. If we simply make a habit of being Aware of the weavings of the mind that is enough. It's like a magic trick, or training a dog. The practice of Awareness is enough.

The practice of Awareness is enough.

Pyotr Ouspensky and the Cro-Magnon

It is said that we are the Cro-Magnon. Within the statistical variations of human physiognomy if an infant from those scores of thousands of years ago were dropped down and raised amongst us, we would find before us a human being basically indistinguishable from the rest of us. The Cro-Magnon of 50,000 years ago had the body, the brain, and (ostensibly) the personhood, of ourselves. 

Peter Ouspensky (d.1947), writing in his early Gurdjieff years of around 1915, expressed words to the effect that "one could go mad from contemplating an ashtray". I was in my mid 20s when investigating this material. I was surviving as a sculptor in copper, and I imagined Ouspensky in deep contemplation, settled in comfortable surroundings and smoking a cigarette. As he tapped the ash from his cigarette into the copper ashtray at his side he was flooded with intimations of all involved in its seemingly innocuous existence.

Between a Cro-Magnon fascination with a strange and wonderful substance sweated from the rocks of which he'd made his fire pit to the existence of Ouspensky's ashtray lie thousand of years of inspiration and iteration: thousands of years of innovation and intuition and (quite simply) Genius. And this is true of every aspect of modernity.

All the advances in practical solutions to everyday tasks have led to our ever-so-modern "fifty dollar-answers-to-five cent-questions" and to fabulous answers to questions that don't even exist.

All of this is the product of Cro-Magnon consciousness.

The sleep of Awareness is undisturbed.

Carl Jung and Zen

 50 some-odd years ago I was reading anything I could find by the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung (d.1961). His doctrine of "Individuation" spoke to the need to open up to the latent contents of the Unconscious Mind, and to assimilate what was found there into the realm of the Self. With this accomplished the person involved had become an "In-dividual": no longer driven by psychic forces beneath the horizon of awareness.

It strikes me that this process of "Individuation" is very close to the change of being that is sought in the "Enlightenment" of Zen, with the singular difference that the Zen view incorporates all of life into the fellowship of Awareness, 

A Quote From C. G. Jung

 "Nature is not only aristocratic, she is also esoteric. Yet no man of understanding will thereby be induced to make a secret of what he knows, for he realizes only too well that the secret of psychic development can never be betrayed, simply because that development is a question of individual capacity."

Marvin Huey

My father in Zen died yesterday at the age of 86. Master Craftsman Marvin Huey. At our first encounter I was 25 and Marvin was 31. When he was 84 Marvin bought a Mercedes convertible because "It's a Chick-Magnet".

Planes of Existence

At the human level of life there are two planes of existence: the Electric, and (for lack of a better word) the Ethereal. The Electric is a world of protons, neutrons and electrons: a world of loaves and fishes. The Etherial is a world of field phenomena: a seething world of resonances in the alleged emptiness of space. These aspects are omnipresent; they fully interpenetrate and are in no way antagonistic. But in terms of everyday human existence their relationship to each other is rather like that of a one-way mirror. If our awareness is confined to the Electric the Etherial is invisible: the Electric sees only its reflection. If our awareness is awake in the Etherial the Electric is visible in great subtile detail.

One Way or Another

It seems to me inconceivable that anyone could understand the true nature of the human circumstance without a firm understanding of Emptiness and Suchness (Sunyata and Tathata), and this understanding must be wrought in the forge of Samadhi and tempered in the well of silence.

Unless these conditions are met, existence will inevitably be viewed through the lens of ones humanity. Seen as if in a carnival mirror.

and Life goes on

one way

or another

Ergo Sum

 I have a young acquaintance who suspects that we are living in a simulation. Well, in a way this is most certainly true. All that we know concerning reality are representations assembled by the brain from stimulation of sensory extensions. Our eyes, our ears, our fingertips, are antennae, and the body itself is simply an extremely sophisticated support system for a nodule of Awareness.

However it "is", is the way it has always been, and while knowing how "it is" doesn't change "how it is" our surmises do influence our behavior.

And this behavior in regard to "reality" is rather like a fish in a goldfish bowl. We have liberties of imagination. Imaginings will influence our scurryings but as for the bowl: as "it" was in the beginning, "it"is now and "it"ever shall be.

Sum, Ergo Cogito

Tulku

 For all the the years that I've jotted down these notes to my Self I have intentionally avoided subjects that were (in my view) subject to speculation. But it's been 20 years now and I see a valid reason to address subjects that might be subject to incredulity.

If you are not familiar with the term "Tulku" look it up. Consciousness is electrical and tissue dependent. Awareness is a field phenomenon and is conspicuously unregarded in psychological speculations. Well, the whole issue of transmigration sums up to "is the field phenomenon of Awareness capable of surviving the extinguishment of the tissue it has inhabited". Once Awareness is recognized as a field phenomenon this is not a great stretch, and if we understand what the Tulku club is about then we are in a position to realize that such beings are not confined to doctrinal affiliations and that all about us exists an ecosystem that transcends and infuses the molecular realm.

Once awake the Awareness enters an unexpected realm of subtle realities, which, though heralded in various religious lore, is not without its ecology and its economy.  

Credulity is the enemy of Self discovery.

Decorative Thinking Meets the Innate

All thought is the use of imagination. Even inspiration must use the field of imagination for its exercise, and much of what passes as inspiration is mere decorative thinking.

An extremely valuable venue of thought is to question the innate. Almost all of civilization's accouterments are decorations on the foundation of what is innate in the human animal. And this to the degree that the innate is buried under an avalanche of inspired products of the imagination. An excellent example of this is the automobile. Probably brought to perfection in the mid twentieth century, what is innate in the automobile has become larded with culturally inspired imaginings. What is innate in the automobile is taken for granted and is all but invisible under its weight of accouterments. Just so with civilization in general, as the accouterments come to dominate the innate the innate becomes increasingly encumbered and inaccessible, while at the same time omnipresent.

So I suggest that a valuable use of the imagination is to question the relationship of the innate to the decorative in humanity, in culture, and in ones Self.

Well, today marks 20 years of jotting down these notes from my Self. I had crossed over many years before and attempted in various ways to describe the view to those who seemed that a little nudge might be of some help. Of course my own very real limitations are in evidence, and there are aspects of the view which comes with the awakening of Pristine Awareness that can be damaging if held before a mind yet under the hypnosis of consciousness. 

Humanity at large is very much in an animal stage of disposition. Every advance in understanding the natural world is weaponized. Our entertainments are that of sex and violence. It is quite clever to sort out the workings of the nuclear bonds which hold the atom together, but using that knowledge to build tools of previously unimaginable destruction could hardly be considered wise, and even the medical sciences are weaponized by industrial finance. Clever but not wise, the brightest of these animals are among the most dangerous.

Oddly enough all of this is blameless. None of this is anything that an aware creature would pick out of a catalog. And when some creature shows you its natural leanings, permit yourself the discomfort of becoming informed.

Be all of this as it may, humanity is also the larva stage of a new kind of creature on the face of the Earth.

Precocious Predecessors

It is difficult to speak of these things without sounding pejorative though that is most certainly not the case. All life participates in the pressing of life to Self awareness. Animal existence has been very effective in the refinement of vehicles, and in humanity we have a sufficiently evolved vehicle to finally engage in the paradigm shift from the simple animal to awakened Pristine Awareness. I have described this as "the child of the Earth becomes the child of the Universe"

This paradigm shift was undergone by our precocious predecessors, and they sought to build a path to the transformation which they had experienced. Our Zen forefathers were not the only ones to undergo this transformation, and not the only ones to attempt to build an opening which could stand the erosive winds of time as the animal mind transforms technologies of being into belief systems.

It's not their fault. Of course it is so. The animal mind seeks to make sense of what is beyond its comprehension, and builds a box of rationalizations in which to keep it. It is not an exaggeration to refer to Enlightenment as a paradigm shift, and those who undergo this transformation have genuinely become a different kind of creature. 

Looking around it seems to me that Zen has been more resistant to adulteration than most other systems because of the uncompromising insistence of our precocious predecessors on nothing less than the awakening and entering into the formal identity of Pristine Awareness.

When I consider their work and their yet living achievements I am filled with boundless gratitude.

What Sets Zen Apart

Most systems past and present, are built around modeling behavior apon the iconic representation of an idealized figure: a Chuang Tzu, or the Christ, or whomever. These behavior modification regimens produce a psychological topiary which can be a very satisfactory simulacrum of the iconic goal and produce a fine figure of a human being. 

What sets Zen apart is that Zen is not about behavior modification. Zen uses behavior to build the key which will unlock the door and awaken Pristine Awareness from its intoxication with consciousness.

Zen is about a metamorphosis: a metanoia. 2,500 years ago the pre-Zen Taoist Chuang Tzu spoke of this as "those who have left their humanity behind"

As a butterfly leaves behind the chrysalis.

Possessions

 

If you do not possess your Mind

it is you who are possessed

In Samadhi we find that Mind is a subordinate faculty of Pristine Awareness, and that Mind is the seat of animal identity. A Mind not occupied by Awareness will most certainly become the possession of squatters.

The Brick and the Door

 No-one has to tell an amoeba how to pursue, capture, and consume its prey. No-one has to teach a bird how to fly. No-one has to prompt a caterpillar to become a butterfly. And no lessons are needed to school humanity in the subtle arts of petty irritations, of vanity, and of tribal violence. What Carl Jung (d. 1965) referred to as the Unconscious Mind is no less than a minefield of instinct: stimulus-response patterns that determine the moment to moment behavioral repertoire in every living organism.

Consciousness has created a situation wherein the creature subject to these impulses says "I" do this. "I" feel this way. "I" want that. The "I" of these pronouncements is a chimera devoid of any individuality other than proximal.

There is a Self that is real, that is fundamental and common to every living thing, and which can awaken to become the arbiter of a given life. Pristine Awareness is the stuff of life and Pristine Awareness is the primordial substrate of consciousness. And in some examples of humanity Pristine Awareness is capable of awakening (just the right word) and charting a path through the minefield of animal existence. The mind has become the wish fulfilling gem, and the body the magic carpet.

This awakening is as natural as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and is a natural flowering of the tree of life.

If in meditation we simply let consciousness contemplate Awareness we encounter Pristine Awareness as receptive emptiness. This "receptive emptiness" is the storehouse of all potential and is in fact the Self itself.

Meditation is the brick with which we knock at the door. 

Sugar and Lard

The cake icings of yesteryear were made of sugar and lard and were applied to make the cake more attractive visually and culinarily. And in just such a manner the technologies of being developed by millennia of intuitive individuals come to us larded with mythologies and sweetened with tales of transcendence.

This is what Lin Chi (d 866) was getting at with his:"If in your travels you meet the Buddha, SLAY HIM!"

In meditation simply let consciousness contemplate Awareness.

The Self

 

The Self is a droplet of Awareness with an inside and an outside.

Our humanity is a garment woven by aeons of Self "improvement"

.

The Living World

No aspect of the living world is indifferent.

and

Awareness does not require or imply mind. 

Desire

It is not at all hard to see that desire shapes the world of the animal. All animals. Desire is the crucible with which time has cast its exquisite forms, and desire is the retort in which evolution has distilled the vapors of instinct.

Will and Repose are the coins of this realm. The Yin and the Yan. The Alpha and the Omega.

The Cultivation of Emptiness

It is through the cultivation of emptiness that we discover our selves as Awareness. Everything which exists, exists as presence. The presence of Pristine Awareness is the presence of living emptiness. This receptive emptiness is in every creature the repository of the tools and inclinations which make possible its continued existence, and Pristine Awareness becomes invisible by inflating these sterile tools and inclinations with purpose.

It is not for the inconceivably various forms of creature hood to undergo the transformation of profound awakening. They do not have the capacity. The same could be said of the great masses of humanity. They are, and will remain, held in the colorful iron folds of animistic individuation. 

Is it Fate, or is it Destiny, that compels any certain flower on the tree of life to the liberation of self discovery?

Do We See

 Do we see awareness through the lens of our humanity

or

Do we see our 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.

Should the mind of a lion awaken it will 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 of 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 an awakened moment in the fabric of existence. 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 and 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 awakening of Pristine Awareness while attending to all that is demanded 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.