Validation

I believe it was Lin Chi who said to his followers "If in your travels you meet the Buddha, slay him." What he was pointing out is; if you require validation your identity is second hand. The fact of existence is first person singular. And though knowing things like "the world is round" can and must be accepted as valid second-hand information, it is only the unnecessary complexity of the modern world (for all it's charm) that gives such information value.

Being a living breathing thinking creature has no explanation.

Know thy self.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

In the on going search for metaphors that will succinctly express the relationship of Awareness to Consciousness the "mirror" comes up. The eye can not see its self without benefit of a reflective surface. Consciousness is the mirror enabling the awakening of Awareness. It is to be expected that a naive creature would think its self to be its reflection.

Self realization is the water's utility. The death of Narcissus is the water's revenge.

Ten Bulls Eat Chocolate Buddhas

Metaphor, analogy, and parable are the poetic tools necessary to descriptions of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that happens to the personality. Enlightenment is rather like the electricity in a TV set waking up. Suddenly the personality doesn't matter much anymore. Its not about the picture.

Pure awareness of it's self does not have color or flavor. It is the very bland emptiness of awareness that is it's supreme value. It is emptiness that makes sound and color possible. Awareness is that emptiness necessary as the womb of form. Form is knowable. Awareness has no form, and yet awareness is the ultimate truth of individual being. So long as we are hypnotized by form we are barred from any approach to the identity of the universe. The Buddhist parable of "The Ten Bulls" is an allegory elucidating an Awareness awakening within it's creature and the subsequent domestication of animal nature by an awakened Awareness.

I suppose it happens that there are cases of spontaneous enlightenment. Some limit is breached and awareness transcends consciousness. If the individual has no experience in and practice of meditation it is inevitable that the personality seize the moment and define the event to it's own satisfaction; thereby thwarting (probably forever) the opportunity of a lifetime. The parable of "The Chocolate Buddha Box" is the appropriate allegory in this tragic case. This kind of case often results in a sincere religious fanatic.

Meditation is the touchstone. Meditation is way. Meditation is the key, and meditation is the door. Simply let consciousness contemplate awareness; nature will take it's course. It is no more necessary to stop one's thoughts than it is to remove the butterflies from a meadow; let them go their way. Awareness is all.

The obvious will become apparent.

The children of the earth will be reborn as the children of the Universe

The Savor of Enlightened Being

If you are properly aware you will notice that every moment has a flavor. Every moment without exception has a flavor. Some are like water, and it must be admitted that some water taste better than others. Some are like high cheese; one must develop a taste for them. Some are sweet and some are bitter. Some are retched. Some sweet moments are poisonous, and some bitter moments are nourishing. Through meditation we develop the ability to become truly aware. It is obvious to those who are truly aware that we taste our way through life the same way a salmon finds it's way to the stream in which it was born.

The ordinary state of being is one in which the creature is wholly identified with it's affective states. An awareness wholly identified with the nature of the animal has no separation from instinct or impulse or the flavor of inner state. The ancients referred to this as Maya: illusion: awareness believes its self to be its states. Enlightenment is the spiritual equivalent to awakening from a hypnotic trance.

Many years ago discussing such matters with a friend he said "Well, enlightenment won't help you pick out a head of lettuce." This is not true. The awakened awareness is acutely conscious of the flavor of its state. It is by induced states that we know anything, and the very flow of thought is a self induce state.

Thoughts About Intuition

One extremely valuable side benefit of meditation is that meditation enables one to taste the difference between intuition and thought.

Thought requires the exercise of imagination. Intuition is perception.

It is not difficult to see that the difference between tailoring our thoughts to support our perceptions and tailoring our perceptions to support our thoughts is the difference between day and night.

Genghis Kahn's Horses

Genghis Kahn's horses 

the steeds escorting death across the steppes

fire

arrow

sword 

war axe 

gift to all the living

restoring to an earth

the silent restless plain

did not outlive their riders

Xerxes' horses at Thermopylae

those of the Crusaders and Conquistadors

survive blood shed 

as blood flows through progeny

wives and children weep 

the riders

ride on

Labyrinth

We are the Labyrinth. We are the savage beast confined within the Labyrinth. We are the tender virgin abandoned to be devoured within the Labyrinth. The hero capable of dismembering the beast, redeeming the virgin, and finding a place in light of the real world is our Self.

The daughter of the King is indeed Wisdom. It is Wisdom that knows the way and will lead Self to the light.

Meditation is the womb of wisdom.

Material Questions: this and that

For a very long time it has interested me that no one is particularly interested in the relationship of awareness to matter. The awareness that results in what we refer to as our "self" is made inevitable by certain arrangements of atoms. These arrangements of atoms are constellated according to cookie cutter preprograms that have refined themselves over a period of hundreds of millions of years. The expression of these preprograms has led to a creature whose awareness is capable of transcending its animal existence, and awakening to the fact of existence its self. This is a remarkable occurrence in the fabric of the universe. This is the universe awakening to its self.

And this all has to do with merely stacking atoms properly.


Why should that be?

Powers

One of the things that is mentioned quite a bit from India sources and not so much from China and Japan is "powers". As one's meditation matures and awareness can actually control the mind one has the ability to form artifacts of consciousness and project them. This has a certain appeal especially if the personality is still in control, but there is the element of unintended consequences to be concerned with. Personally I think that it is valid and even important to experiment with transference of will because it is undeniable evidence of awareness as a field phenomenon, but these techniques should be treated with the same respect as a loaded gun.

Its OK

It's OK to be a human being. It's OK to have idiosyncrasies and imperfections. It's OK to simply be what you are. We are not our personalities. Most folks are wholly identified with their personality and that's OK.

The personality is a behavioral tool kit. The human is a social animal born into a cultural matrix, and it will spontaneously create a persona chipped from the flint of cultural norms and shaped by native powers of invention. There is no other way to be, but it can be noticed that the personality is a necessary creation of and not the core of our being.

Meditation is a tool. One ancient master described it as "the brick with which one knocks at the door". The door at which one knocks is opacity concerning the human condition. The human condition is a manifestation of the awareness which is the universe. With the practice of meditation it is possible that the human condition become translucent to the awareness which is its progenitor. The door opens. This is called enlightenment.

It's OK to be a human being, but it is preferred to be an enlightened human being for enlightenment enables the abandonment of all pretense. The abandonment of pretense results in a remarkably quickened faculty of intuition. Intuition is the inner voice of clairvoyance, and could be likened to seeing in the infra-red: the things seen are made obvious by their presence.

There is no sense in making distinctions of red and green to the color blind. There are no black-and-white answers to questions that come in colors. A lot of people are color blind and that's OK.

It's All Very Nice

It's all very nice to know something. Every one knows something about something or other. One of the things that I find very interesting is that the modern versions of psychology and neurology and brain slicing have not yet found the who. If we describe the "who" as an epiphenomenon of the existence of tissue of course that is true so far as it goes. But an epiphenomenon does not explain the experience which is the fact of our existence.

Off the Leash

The leash is the inner monitor that keeps us in check. Why do we need to be kept in check....because we are animals. What is the leash...consciousness. What is the one tool of consciousness....awareness. So why not just be aware and let it off the leash.

The Contemplation of Awareness

The difficulty that I have with most systems of meditation is that they work through and appeal to the consciousness. All religious systems work through the personality and seek to engage mind in a scenario that includes a world view. None of this is necessary and all of it to a greater or lesser degree entangles awareness in the fabrications of the mind.

If you want to cross the Atlantic Ocean you can board a sailing ship or take a jet liner. There is nothing wrong with the scenic route so long as you make it. If you want to meet the substrate of your being and know your actual place in the universe I suggest "The Contemplation of Awareness". No window dressing is needed, no system, no ideas: only the will to awaken.

All systems that deal with consciousness have the cart squarely before the horse. Awareness is the horse that pulls the cart of consciousness down the road of time. Awareness is the ultimate truth of our being, and consciousness and the personality are crystallizations of awareness. Most meditations train the consciousness to be silent by tying it to some mental pole and telling it to be quiet. Like most dogs, consciousness does not like this: it takes a lot of discipline and quite a bit of practice. "The Contemplation of Awareness" requires about the same discipline as watching a movie, because consciousness finds "The Contemplation of Awareness" relaxing and spontaneously engaging.

Consciousness finds and holds: consciousness is limited, and this is its purpose and its value. Awareness is ever one with the living changing moment; the limit of awareness is the fact of our being. If we set our consciousness to find and hold our awareness we are suddenly alive to everything around us. If the mind seizes upon some thing the spell is broken and once again we are trapped in our limited consciousness. There is a knack to this, but once one has tasted the simple magic of pure awareness it is not difficult to go back and forth from a focus of consciousness to expanded awareness.

Anyone who will try this will find the door open to them. And I would be very surprised if something very interesting did not happen to their mind before long.






One With God



it is a fish

and the water in which it swims

The Dance of the Butterflies

I at 68 have been a meditator for 55 years. Self Realization Fellowship found me when I was 13 years old, I was initiated into the Nichiren Shoshu sect while in Japan at age 24, and I discovered Zen as described by D T Suzuki at age 30. The eye of my spirit opened in my 32nd year. Though I find myself not able to be a joiner, and though I have known other meditators and found their practice subtly misguided; the benefits of meditation cannot be overstated, and any meditation for any reason and under any system will bear fruit.

The fragmentation of Buddhism into a prism of views is an example of a lapse of rigor in the pursuit of enlightenment. Ultimately no systems are necessary. A system is a key that one person puts in the hand of another. This is not a bad thing, but the door is not locked.

If the individual consciousness will simply contemplate the awareness which is it's essence, nature will take its course. It is time to take the ribbons and bows and the pretty wrapping paper off of the treasure of unity of awareness. Let the chrysalis of civilization split open. Let the dance of the butterflies begin.

A Drive Through the Animal Farm

Private college graduation ceremony: the students and parents and staff all doing what they do. The institution is venerable, the degree is esteemed. And pretty much everyone present could not be more asleep.

It is not a crime that there is no appreciation of awareness within the halls of academia. Humanity for all its intelligence is stuck in the consciousness of the animal. It is not a crime but it is tragic, for each individual consciousness will go its way unaware of it's true place in the universe and therefore full of a self that is unrealized.

Many of those graduates will go on to do good and important things. Most will be successful, and have good and productive lives. But my sincerest hope is that they might become aware, and therefore have a part in awakening the world, for in this world even the best and brightest are asleep at the wheel.

Archetype and Psyche

Archetypes are by definition not mutable. The psyche (being psychological) is not only mutable...it is evolving. Psyche vines on the stakes of archetype and usually claims volition. This made the invention of the gods inevitable because obviously there exist tides of being beyond the limits of intellectual and emotional volition and these somehow had to be accounted for.

Oddly enough awareness existing of it's self seems just too "out there" for your garden-variety paramecium. There must be something more personal to it.

Old Wine....New Casks

It seems to me that the legends of Zen should shed the shell of Buddhism and begin a new life as liberated truth. The historical Buddha would not have come into being were it not for the culture that made his existence inevitable. The extremely advanced technologies of being of 500 BC India should embarrass any modern fast-track psych-track guru. It is only the vast emptiness of modernity that stands between us and the people of those times.

Mind Like a Mirror

Let us imagine a pond. The pond is in a quiet hollow and the water is still. The surrounding trees and the flight of the birds are perfectly reflected on the mirror-like surface. The sixth patriarch of Zen had trouble with the mirror metaphor, but that doesn't mean he didn't understand what was meant.

It seems that he objected to any intellectual moment between subject and object. He was a true student of meditation and in a monastic environment: there was no reason to resort to the intellect.....only the fact of existence will suffice.

There is no mirror. There is only awareness: aware in a fabric of existence...and that existence is aware.

The Waves are the Water

Awareness is substance. Consciousness is motion.

The Culture of Enlightenment

The person who became the historical Buddha spent his life preaching in an attempt to give others access to the clarity he had achieved. The Sutras are a record of these efforts. Although Zen claims a direct transmission of enlightenment going back to Sakyamuni, and existing outside of the Sutras, the "Lankavatara Sutra" is considered to contain the core principles of Zen. In the "Lankavatara" we find:

"O Mahamati, it is because the Sutras are preached to all beings in accordance with their modes of thinking, and do not hit the mark as far as the true sense is concerned; words cannot reinstate the truth as it is. It is like a mirage. deceived by which the animals make an erroneous judgment as to the presence of water where there is really none, even so, all the doctrines in the Sutras are intended to satisfy the imagination of the masses. They do not reveal the truth which is the object of the noble understanding. Therefore O Mahamati, conform yourself to the sense, and do not be engrossed in words and doctrines."

The problem facing the Buddha was that the culture of language had not evolved to the point that what needed to be expressed could be said in words. The Koan exercise and the occasional bizarre treatment of Zen acolytes are attempts to overcome this difficulty.

The brilliance of Shakespeare is his ability to convey with words things that can not be said with words. Looking for an evolution in the power of language one need look no further than the extraordinary difference between the English of Shakespeare and modern English. Many years ago a social anthropologist noted that some primitive peoples could not express their feelings because the necessary words did not exist in their native tongue.

Of all the advances of modernity one of the most remarkable is the emergence of modern English. As a nuts-and-bolts language that will take shades of meaning where it finds them, modern English is the language of enlightenment par excellence.


All ideas are imaginary.

Simple awareness is the ultimate truth of personhood.

Saving the World

Serious people often think that if others just had the right ideas things would be different. If this is true the right kind of propaganda will save the world. Consciousness will find more pleasing forms. Consciousness will expand.

Consciousness is malleable, and all appeals to consciousness are a treating of symptom. Consciousness has qualities beyond number and limitless potential form.
Consciousness tends to subvert awareness.

Awareness has only one quality: awareness. Awareness has no form.

Only awareness can save the world.

Orwell and Huxley and Enlightenment

"Oh brave new world that has such people in it" Huxley borrowed a phrase from Shakespeare to title his image of a world shaped by genetic engineering. Orwell's "1984" envisions a world equally constrained, but constrained by coercion rather than co-option. The forces necessary to the fruition of either outcome are fully at work. The future is not "either-or": it is "both-and". It is not necessary or recommended to resist the inertia of these social forces, for ultimately they will come under the sway of enlightenment.

It is not that enlightenment will become fashionable, but rather that enlightenment is humanities only hope: and therefore its last resort. Eventually the obvious will become apparent even to the hopelessly occluded, and it can not happen a moment too soon.

The center will hold. And that center is the awakening of the universe in it's individuated droplets.

Politics and Ethics

                                                                     ?

Awareness and the Real

The wish to escape from creature-hood pretty much defines what we think of as saints. Those to whom we ascribe the saint-hood thing tend to be those who in our estimation are more evolved than ourselves. There is no evolution of awareness. Consciousness is formal. Consciousness is informal. Consciousness is complex. Consciousness is evolving. Awareness is not evolving. Awareness is simply aware.

Awareness is the limit of our being. All ideas are created shapes of self and have utility for better or for worse. Ideas are the product of consciousness. Consciousness is the product of awareness.

If our awareness is a mystery to us we have not seen our selves.

Notes on Change: interior decorating

The boulevard of broken dreams is paved with broken hearts. The hungry ghosts of ancient metaphor are simply the shadow cast by un-met yearnings as the light of pure awareness streams through us. In much the same way as bones and tumors stop an Xray, cysts of longing absorb the light of being.

Each creature is born with it's requisite appetites. In the best of circumstances nature seamlessly answers appetite and hunger does not pass into longing.

We do not seek that which we possess: seekers seek a change. Some seek social prominence, some seek isolation, some seek simple pleasure, some seek the pleasure of enlightenment; if there were no hunger there would be no seeking. This is problematical because in our seeking we want to change something that we do not understand: a sapient alarm clock might find annoying the alignment of its gears.

Many of us who hunger for a translucent perception of existence try to get there by rearranging the furniture. Just find a reasonably comfortable place to sit, and explore if there might exist an awareness that is uncolored by expression. If you haven't found that, then its probably best not to mess with the furniture just yet.

Savage Luxuries

There is no nation whose soil is not soaked in blood. There are those individuals who have lived pacific lives, and there have been local periods of peace and prosperity, but such history as we have concerning social evolution is a mixed bag of horror and hagiography combined with steady progress in manipulating nature. There is, however, a small golden thread running through all this that we could perhaps call the "pursuit of enlightenment". Quite naturally this thread has been caught up in, and spun out of, religious forms. In just the same way as myth charged descriptions of the cosmos have given way to the observations of astronomy, the pursuit of enlightenment must shed its shell of historical decoration. Pragmatic fact based descriptions of reality may have distanced the gods, but they have brought us closer to that reality of which the gods are a legitimate symbol. The mystery of being is immediate when we have no symbols to hide behind.

There are many technologies of meditation: technologies of posture, breathing, imaging, and so forth. It seems to me that these aids can be a hinderance to that opening of awareness which is the fact of enlightenment. If we simply set our consciousness to the contemplation of awareness nothing more is necessary. Enlightenment comes of its self with the maturation of awareness.

Ideologies, secular and religious, are savage luxuries that the world can ill afford considering our woefully advanced technologies of destruction. Enlightenment is the universal solvent that can dissolve historical incrustations and free once and for all the spirit which has invigorated seekers since the dawn of time.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Imagination is the magic wand of being: something comes into being where nothing existed before: a configuration is wafted out of the latent potential of non-existence: an idea. The power of idea to reconfigure reality has made the world as we know it.  Unlike human beings; of themselves ideas are inanimate and amoral.

Imagination is perfectly described as a mythic wish-fullfilling demon. Mythic demons are not inherently good or evil, they are merely an extension of their master's ch'i. In Goethe's charming little tale an unenlightened being dons the sorcerer's cap and takes up the sorcerer's wand and sets in motion forces he can not control and that (barring intervention) will ultimately destroy him. This perfectly describes the situation of contemporary humanity.

The apprentice (identified with his limited consciousness) celebrates power and is unaware of his limitations. If his identity were in the awareness he would be conscious of his un-evolved state, and perhaps have some defense against the seductive sway of idea.

The guiding principle in meditation is for the apprentice to consult the master: for consciousness to consult awareness. Do not paper over awareness with ideas, rather let awareness be master of all. Imagination will then find it's proper place in making a better world as consciousness bends knee to awareness.

Phase Shift

Consciousness is properly the facilitator of awareness: awareness is what we are, and consciousness is what we do with it. We are simultaneously aware of being conscious and conscious of being aware; but it matters hugely if the seat of the identity is in one or the other. Since consciousness is peripheral to awareness, the cultivation of consciousness leads to decorating the surface of our being. It is consciousness grooming consciousness.....the cosmic comb-over. When consciousness grooms awareness something beautiful emerges: a consciousness infused with awareness, and an awareness infused with consciousness. Consciousness is most valuable as it serves awareness. When awareness is bond-slave of consciousness chaos is inevitable, and some grotesque crystalline quasi-religious form will inevitably take shape. It seems to me that most systems promising freedom dangle "raising consciousness" as a carrot in front of the awareness donkey. The donkey ends up walking in a circle harnessed to some grinding wheel.

Awareness has no structure. Awareness is simply aware. Awareness is supple by nature and cannot be crystallized: awareness draws no conclusions. Consciousness is structure. A consciousness not infused with awareness will draw conclusions all over the place, because consciousness simply can not abide ambiguity and will readily embrace rigidity. When consciousness accepts the primacy of awareness it is freed from the need to pin the imaginary tail on the inconceivable donkey. The ambiguity problem is solved because the natural state of awareness is radical pragmatism. It is the difference between ice and limpid water.

Meditation

Awareness is the precursor of consciousness. Awareness is the field in which consciousness operates. In meditation we cultivate that pure awareness which is the core of life its self: the most rudimentary fact our our being. In cultivating pure awareness we expand the opportunities of consciousness, and our everyday consciousness is increasingly infused with awareness.

Secrets in Plain Sight: Awareness and Consciousness

A distinction can be made between awareness and consciousness. Awareness is the fact of existence, and consciousness is the movement of existence. If we are identified with our consciousness we can never be properly aware.