The Acknowledgment of Life: Zen

One of the things remarkable about existence is that life exists. There is no explanation of life. There is some reason that atoms stacked properly should result in what we recognize as life: and we don't know what it is.

This is what Zen is all about.

From the Analects of Zen

From the analects of ancient Zen we have an account of a master passing an adept in the hall.


 (loosely paraphrasing)

The master...
"From your countenance I see that you have found the treasure"

The adept...
"But my happiness is that of one who found a precious gem beneath a pile of shit"


It took hundreds of millions of years to produce a stack of atoms capable of waking up. Because of the parallel explorations of secular science, we no longer have to describe the creature thus made inevitable as shit.

With regard to our humanity
be gentle.




Enigmatic Humor


Two monks passed in the hall


One said to the other
"what's new?"



Both laughed uproariously

Negativity's Falcon

The mind is a matrix saturated with potential. The self-same matrix can arrange its character into an inconceivable array of emotional nuance in the same manner as a cloud. Now it's a dragon. Now it's a lamb. But the nature of the cloud remains the un-configured vapour from which figure is contrived. That vapour is Awareness.

Anyone beginning to become truly aware will find great value in taking notice of negative emotional states. As the practice of meditation enters into our normal waking existence we develop the ability to be aware in the moment of cloud formation inside the mind. It is always some perceived symbolic arrangement of reality that triggers such states, and this instinctual response is one that is coeval with the existence of the dinosaurs. These un-willed prods to behavior have great value in a pure Darwinian world, but they are right up there with vestigial tails when it comes to wagging the primordial dog. When the perceived shape of reality provides a catalyst the shape in the mist assumes its requisite form. If Awareness is the seat of identity this does not, and can not, go un-noticed. One can just say know.

Becoming aware of, and declining the formation of, archetype driven emotional states is the signature characteristic of a real evolution of being. It is as different from successful repression as life is from death. This is how Awareness becomes the falconer of mind.

The reason negative states are of particular value is that they are unpleasant and therefore easier to focus upon.


The difficulty of pleasant states is a subject for another post.

Not To Go On About Sociopaths

Not to go on about sociopaths but .....who are these people?  Is all this murder and mayhem really necessary? Is it inconceivable that humanity at large could just get over it? Do we really think that people hate us because we mind our own business?

Any one who is exhaustively informed on the subject of ideas will be impressed with how completely unnecessary it is for an idea to to account for it's self for it to be taken seriously.

Good luck

The ideas that stem from the Universe awakening to it's self are not ideas at all....they are observations.

Yet they must reinvent themselves as ideas
if Idea is to make a better world.

Nothing Superficial About Surface

So much has been variously professed about the ultimate nature of Reality that another descriptive episode seems simply more tears in the rain. That said...here we go.

Existence is seamless. The coming into being of moments of Awareness result in an individual consciousness. Individual consciousness engenders perception. Perception engenders surface.

Consciousness is the surface of Awareness, and however richly decorated the observations of consciousness may be they remain superficial. Awareness is simply aware.

The high purpose of meditation is the awakening of Awareness.

As to the view that emerges to an awakened Awareness,
I suggest you reveal this to your Self.

Sensing Innocence

Life is known only through sensing. Seeing and hearing are ways of touching. Autonomous faculties of creature-hood are clearly aspects of sensing. But what about thought?

It is only by the practice of meditation that we achieve the silence of mind which makes inevitable an awareness that thought is sensing. In somewhat the same manner as an adept juggles chainsaws, the mind produces thought to consciousness. The pre-conscious awarenesses that become thought are those which are pushed to the front of the line by instinct and habit. They become sensed, and enter the realm of consciousness. If thought were not sensed into being there would be no thought. Thought is a self generated sensation.

If we abide in that Awareness which is the precursor of consciousness our sensing becomes pre-lingual, and our thought flows like a sylvan stream. It is inevitable that watersheds be harnessed for millponds and turbines, and it is inevitable that in the sensing which is thought, consciousness come to dominate awareness. It is a matter of utility.

It is meditation that quickens the native state of Awareness to consciousness, refreshing our senses and awakening innocence in our thought. And it is quite remarkable the expanse of our awareness when sensing is master of consciousness.

Our Humanity and Our Birth: live it up

When I look back on these posts I see that many might seem hostile to human nature. If it seems so it is time to correct the record.

Would a flower defame the soil that made it's existence inevitable?

Is any savor lost in understanding the mechanics of neural transmission?

Enlightenment does not result from successful resistance to nature. Enlightenment is nature awakening to its Self.

Enlightenment is the fruition of the birth of the universe.

And some celebration is in order.
so...
Live it up.
(in an enlightened sort of way of course)

The Inestimable Value of Emptiness

Every animal has needs. The emotionally charged behaviors that accompany these needs predate self awareness and intellect, and usually pass as willed self-directed actions. For an intellect dominated by the shadows of animal needs the mind becomes a torture chamber and a trophy room.

A mind filled with cherished forms can not perceive the shape of the actual, for in such a mind the actual must be deformed if it is not to displace the ornaments of our inner life. This is what Lin-chi (died 866) was getting at with his "If you meet the Buddha slay him".

In meditation we cultivate the spacious realm of Emptiness. An awakened emptiness is the requisite state for any apprehension of the real.

There is no other.

Meditation and Narrative (what if)

All but without exception communities embracing meditation will expound a narrative. Suppose the narratives evaporated in the heat of idological ferment and all that was left was meditation.

What if meditation was the key and the decorations a distraction.

What if.

Real Politic

Real is that which is immediate.

All over the world millions of creatures are enduring lives of empoverisment. The toll exacted upon life by modernity is not merely wreaked upon the disenfranchised of humanity, but is ten-fold visited upon those creatures that are of no apparent value to the masters of world mercantile.

In an odd kind of way this is not an individual flaw. We now have ways of looking into the brain that explain mechanicaly much of what has long been thought of as being mere psychology.

Sociopaths can be now be identified by early childhood screening and recognized as special needs children. Recognizing the vulnerabilities of these individuals would perhaps "perhaps" mitigate their inherent parasitism, and having been diagnosed as genetic sociopath perhaps it might be agreed that these indiviuals should never hold positions of authority of any kind.

an admission

I could flatter my self and say that childhood in no way prefigured the way I have ended up. My child-hood was mostly filled with "what-have-I-done-wrong-now-and-how-can-I stay-out-of-the-way", not to mention genuine misdeeds and misadventures.  At the age of 70 those earliest sensing have not lost their place in the personality made inevitable by those early vagrancies.

That is what the Bird Path is all about.

If the World had not put the question to you, the Universe would not bother speaking to you.

Its OK to be a human being.

Secular Monasticism

In the not so distant past enlightenment was the domain of ascetic religious conservatories.  The age in which we find ourselves is one where the high secrets of traditional monasticism are in paperback books to be bought in dime stores. There is a fabulous array of esoteric technology that is venerable and effective, and precious little practical help with what to make of life if the practice of this magic should have it's way with you.

To awaken to the core of being which is the fire that heats our human appetites and inclinations puts a human creature in an odd position. If this "awakening" were to occur in a monastic environment one would be born into community of those who had made a similar passage by way of a shared tradition and who would welcome the newly born naked-spirit into the community of awakened beings. The austerities peculiar to monastic communities create a haven in which the new born child of the universe can dry it's wings and adjust to the light.  The effectiveness of meditative techniques and the proliferation of these technologies have created a situation where wholly unprepared beings are smacked in the face with enlightenment and have no means of dealing with it.

Let's say you have a job, a family, a functional narrative that suddenly is seen to be significantly other than you supposed it to be. There is no door back to the previous state of naiveté. This point has led to what used to be known as a "nervous breakdown".

The answer is to accept the mantel of creature-hood and to practice a private secular monasticism.

Enlightenment as Loss

Enlightenment tends to be considered in popular thought (in so far as it is thought of at all) as an achievement: as something that adds to our being... as something that somehow make us more of something-or-other. In point of fact it is the exact opposite.

Enlightenment is what's left over when we (for whatever reason) have outgrown our illusions, and native intellegence is left with simple Awareness. It was there all along, but we were distracted.

Our humanity is found to be a costume that can not be abandoned, and so must be reconfigured if it is to fit our new, more slender, form.

This is no small task, but if the spiritual essence of the eternal is to openly exist in everyday life it must be done.

Fact and Narrative

It is almost impossible for any given individual to separate the "narrative" they have embraced from the "fact of existence".

In the first place an individual's "narrative" tends to be invisible to them because they consider themselves to be a repository of truth. In the second place an individual's "narrative" tends to be comfortable like a tailor-made suit. In the third place people generally aren't very bright.

It is not that narrative is an evil that must be at all costs avoided, but rather that narrative is an inevitability that must be recognised and understood. Buddhism is a narrative; Catholicism is a narrative; Communism, Capitalism, Ism-ism. None of these Isms are capable of expressing esoteric fact because they are naturally limited by their attempt to appeal to limited understanding.

The way insanity is recognized is that some mind has succumbed to a distinctly personal narrative. The entire efficacy of propaganda is the human mind's appetite for a self affirming narrative. The efficacy of monastic austerities is the control of narrative. The essence of enlightenment is the abandonment of narrative.

Simply be aware.

And before you know it a narrative will emerge.

Spirit, Soul, Mind, Body

Words matter. The reason words matter is that words are conduits of meaning. Words when properly used have an uncanny ability to describe reality.

At the same time it must be admitted that words are not often used for this purpose.

With this in mind let's look at some over-used words in some limited contexts.

For the purpose of this exercise let us consider "Spirit" as the pure awareness which is the substrate of all life. "Soul" we will declare as the matrix of genetic preprograms that determine the inherent appetites and inclinations which guide and torture the organism in it's passage through existence. "Mind" is the resonant awareness and it's seeming individuality made inevitable by "Spirit" and "Soul" in the physical existence of a "Body".

The seat of "Identity" can reside in any of the above mentioned organs of existence.

Hierachies

In all social systems we find hierarchies. If we took ten perfect strangers and put them in a room for several hours, when we came back we would find a social structure had emerged, and at the core of that structure was a hierarchy. This is not a bad thing. This is the natural emergence of spontaneous recognition of qualities in those around us that have roots in an extremely primitive concern for survival. The world in which we find ourselves has moved so far beyond the survival ethic that we are surrounded by hierarchies which have no basis in the original primitive cooperative realities, and in which ineffectual pedagogues can prosper.

The social structures of the contemporary world are cluttered with hierachic structures in which all that is necessary is conformity and agressive passivity.

Do we suppose this will work out well?

Imagine

Imagine away the universe. The vastness of space, the galaxies, the sun, the moon, the earth, your physical form: imagine them all away. All that is left is your state of being. All that is left is the vibrational character of your spiritual essence blasting out in all dimensions the qualities that are the fabric of your existence, filling a nameless void with the ultimate truth of your being.

Do your like your creation?

Meditate.

Many Mansions

A fellow named Maurice Nicolle (1884-1953) used to go on at some length about the dangers of living in the slums of ones being. He was absolutely right, but his delivery suffered from the antique confusion about Awareness and personality. Many valid and extremely valuable systems are advanced by a modern understanding of the difference between consciousness and Awareness. To suggest to the personality that it should avoid certain unpleasant places in the labyrinth of the mind is not the same thing as pointing out that the personality is as mechanical as a wrist watch, and that Awareness is capable of holding the reins.

It is rather like a missing link in evolution. Systems with extreme sophistication have continued to appeal to the personality rather than making the radical observation that skepticism regarding the personality is an important first step. Awareness must separate, step back, from the personality if the desired metamorphosis is to occur.

The configurations of mind that determine our sense of self and which decide our wellbeing are usually dominated by mechanical forces which are decidedly mechanically-personal. The impersonal Awareness which is the substrate of consciousness is the force of life its self. The practice of meditation makes possible a dramatic shift in perspective: the intellectual map reflects the real landscape. As it is we see attempts to get to a new world using antique maps because they are venerable and because we don't know any better.

The mind is spacious, the personality is limited, Awareness is unfathomable.

When the spacious is infused with the unfathomable the limited rejoices.

Of Two Minds: intuition and memory

The complex world in which we find ourselves will sometimes place us in a situation where we are "of two minds". Chocolate or vanilla, go or stay, buy or sell: ambivalence is not confined to trivial matters, and it is important to understand what's involved in choosing choices.

People's minds are as different as their faces, and as similar. When faced with a difficult decision two things are at work: intuition and memory. Intuition relies on subtle immediate perceptions while memory provides a complex network of preconceptions, experience, and primitive impulse. Intuition and memory always work in conjunction with one having primacy. "Letting one's heart overrule one's head" and "buyers remorse" are examples of the negative sway of the memory side of the equation: consciousness has been seduced by mental artifacts and lost the advise and consent of intuition.

Intuition could be likened to the sense of smell in that is is immediate and non-ideological. Intuition is an awareness not a thought. The utility of thought is unquestionable. But thought is the product of consciousness and consciousness is mechanical. Mechanical things are things of time. Intuition is the product of Awareness, and Awareness is transcendent. Awareness is atemporal.

From that Awareness which is "no mind" emerges the consciousness which is everyday mind. The practice of meditation is the cultivation of intuition, and it is intuition which determines the meanings of memory.






Choosing Choices



Cows choose grass

Dogs choose bones


People make all kinds of choices

Impossible!

The flow of existence is a flux of Inevitability. The fact of the living moment is an unfolding of trajectories (physical and moral inertia) that received all impetus in some mysterious natal urge, and all subsequent occurrence is a nexus of trajectory and resultant Inevitable which in turn has a trajectory. And so the Now ever unfolds as it must. It is by manipulating such trajectories (this and some luck) that we accomplish anything.

There are no degrees of impossible.

Gnomes of the Moor

It has recently come to my attention that people are being damaged, their lives perhaps ruined, by epiphanies occurring at meditation camps. This does not surprise me. There are those teaching meditation for whom enlightenment remains a fairytale. They know and can teach the mechanics of meditation but are ill-equipped to deal with it's fruits. They have a secular understanding of enlightenment and fail to recognize that the sweeping away of one's illusions without preparation must all but inevitably be devastating.

The smashing of illusions can happen in many ways. As a combat veteran it seems to me that what shows up as PTSD is often that one's illusions have been smashed to powder, and no amount therapy could reassemble that powder into a functioning illusion in a million years. All therapeutic attempts at the reconstruction of the former state just lead to further hopelessness and despair because the impossible can not be done: once an illusion has had it's cover blown its over for the little man behind the screen. No amount of encouragement or medication can put things back the way they were, and something radically real must enter into life if life is to ever find meaning again.

Most people leading normal lives are in no danger of enlightenment. They can go to a meditation retreat without fear or hesitation of any kind. They will learn what the teacher has to teach and do as the instructor instructs and they will get something out of it. But there are those (with the right push) who without knowing it are capable of a dramatic transformation. These are human beings in whom, for what ever reason, the necessary elements exist for the dropping of the veil; and once dropped the veil is irretrievably gone. The illusions which sustained them in their day to day lives have been beneficently smashed. What now?

Meditation practices that we have today come to us from ancient religious traditions which had (and have) an intact philosophical matrix. To pluck the practice of cultivation of awareness from it's ancient estuary without drinking the water is like unto courting the curse of the Buddha's ruby. You may get more than you bargained for. Enlightenment is like a loaded gun. It's not for those without some formal knowledge. Truth is not a pathless land, but to be turned out into the land of Truth without guide or map or compass can destroy the personality leaving just a raw nerve.

The Atlantic Ocean blows up mists that ingulf the British moors, and weeks go by where one will see neither sun nor stars. The land is all but featureless and in legends of old we find tales of gnomes offering to guide travelers across the moor, only to leave them to perish in that vast vagueness.

Separating meditation from the dangers of enlightenment can not be done, but the unenlightened will teach meditation.

Unwelcome Guests of the Mind

Our home is a "private residence". It is one place in the world where others may not intrude without express permission. Unwelcome guests can be a problem if we are not firm in our refusal to entertain them. The mind is not different.

Awareness is the ultimate nature of life and Awareness is the stuff of which mind is made. Mind is a construct and is decorated according to our culture, our tastes, and to the latent contents of the unconscious mind. All that considered, one's "mind" is a place where one might expect some degree of autonomy and privacy and (one hopes) some comfort. Unwelcome guests of the mind will make autonomy, privacy, and comfort quite impossible.

As with any unwelcome guest the first thing is: don't entertain them. If you can not "not entertain them" then your mind is not your own. An Awareness in thrall of mind is the world's beach-ball. A mind not lit within by Awareness is like a paper cup to the winds of fate.

If Awareness is not host then one's mind is not one's own, and unwelcome guests can take up residence as they will.

So far as I know, meditation is the only practice by which Awareness awakens as host within the mansion of the mind.

Emptiness and the Inclined Plane of Being: the Zen Doctrine of No Mind

The Zen doctrine of "No Mind" does not imply no awareness. Mind is a configuration of Awareness and when Awareness is un-configured mind does not exist. Awareness un-configured and wholly Aware is the touchstone of being.

It is through meditation that we develop the silence of mind known as "No Mind". This silence is not one of trance but rather one of an Aware stillness in the midst of movement. This is not an end. This is the beginning of life on a different plane of existence. This skill makes possible the understanding of our humanity.

The achievement of "No Mind" is the coming into being of an equilibrium that will sense the sway of creature-hood the same way a ball on an inclined plane will experience the pull of gravity.

In no way does this invalidate the vagaries of creature-hood. But it is the difference between a puppet and a dance master.

Meetings With Remarkable Human Beings

The signature characteristic of remarkable human beings is that they are gifted. No amount of effort or sacrifice will grant to an ordinary human being the august privileges peculiar to the gifted. 

The carrot before the donkey.

The sweetness of the impossible.

Just meditate.

In Search of the Miraculous

Thousands of volumes have gone to press concerning the quest for a penetrating awareness of actuality. To the achievement of this "actuality" has been ascribed miraculous powers of apprehension and the ability to manipulate normal existence.

One of the things that characterizes those who search for the miraculous is blindness. In a universe flooded with light they rage against the dark. In the midst of a seethe of miracles they must have order. Trapped in the confines of their limited consciousness they ask for awareness of the infinite.

One of the difficulties is the inevitability of genius. No one would expect that immersing themselves in abstruse mathematics would make an Albert Einstein of them. No rational being would think that with some guitar lessons they will challenge Andre Segovia's place in the history of classical music. The issue is that there is such a thing as "genius" and that no amount of effort will make of one a genius.

The search for the miraculous is like that of one who went looking for fire with a candle. And there are those spiritual geniuses that, for all their gifts, took some path leading to oblivion.

If one would truly seek the "Miraculous" let them simply meditate.

The obvious will become apparent.




We Who Know Not


we
who no not what we are
and yet in such a rush to be something

as a caterpillar hearing rumors of butterflies
might preen and posture
losing all the joy
of life


come, my friend

let us simply find our selves
surely all else will be added to us

The Illusion of Self Discovery

The ideological self is always vulnerable to a new interpretation of what once was. What once was is the foundation of what is.

The caterpillar does not interpret its self into a butterfly.

By some miracle of internal evolution the caterpillar is digested into the butterfly.




and having been digested is no more.

Intuition and Ideation

It is categorically impossible to over-estimate the difference between intuition and ideation.

Intuition must enter into the mind-field in order to be perceived. Ideation also requires space in the mind-field for it's machinations and as two objects can not occupy the same space, ideation and intuition are in competition for a place within one's limited consciousness. The only way anything is known is intuitively. Secondary knowledge (book learning) is no less than the cultivation of intuition by enriching one's store of fact, and facts are intuitively perceived.

When this simple fact is perceived it becomes obvious: if we are led in life by a head full of ideas our powers of intuition will be correspondingly truncated.

Ideation is a powerful tool, and rightfully idea serves intuition. When idea usurps control of the mind-field there is no room for the exercise of intuition, and we end up with a world such as the one in which we find ourselves.

Meditation is the necessary preparation for a life intuitively lived.

The Problem with Ideologies

A hummingbird might find it's self drawn to a painting of a lovely vase of flowers, and there beat wing 'till exhaustion ends appetite. The painting may be the product of a genius of historical proportions and poetically speak of love....yet the painter's success is the little bird's disaster.

Even the finest ideologies are a desiccated substitute for Enlightenment.

Illusion, Ignorance, and Enlightenment

Looking out at the world-dance of man as we find it, it is staggering how obvious it is that chaos and madness call the tune. It is staggeringly obvious that most people live in a dream that is powered by the dark forces of the collective unconscious, and that world culture is woven of threads of illusion and ignorance the same way silk cloth is woven from the excreted-thread cocoons of silk worms.

The substance of enlightenment is the universe awakening to it's self in the progeny of it's being.

Meditation is the same anywhere in the universe: consciousness must consider awareness. The diligent will one day find the cocoon of creature-hood split open: the darkness which once informed the mind of the animal suddenly flooded with light. And from the womb of animal nature emerges a new kind of creature: awake in the fabric of existence.

Shadow

consciousness is a shadow cast by awareness

in the light of
intelligence