Chance Favors the Prepared

Recently there was an article in the health section of one of the news services concerning psychological problems resulting from the practice of "mindfulness". Some issues were the emergence of unpleasant memories, and an emotional leveling in which the individual no longer experienced strong emotions negatively or positively.

These "problems" come from using the method without a requisite intellectual preparation, and it is unfortunate because these "problems" indicate that this or that particular person was actually achieving something: actually getting somewhere. Silencing the mind enables repressed content to bubble to the surface, and if the practitioner is alert and prepared, that which has been repressed like leaves pressed in the pages of a book, can be digested, composted: the repressed element can be reintegrated and become a source of growth. Those reporting diminished emotional intensity, well duh, emotional intensity is seldom a sign of maturity of soul. Awareness is sufficient.

So in an odd way this is a demonstration of the efficacy of meditation. It works even if you don't know what you are doing or why. And it is a shame that these individuals came so close to change of being only to walk away, not recognizing a valuable opportunity: mistaking gold for brass.

Chance favors the prepared.

Ten Bulls: the Obvious Becomes Apparent

 

There is nothing the least poetic about "The Ten Bulls". "The Ten Bulls" is an utterly prosaic description of the state of an Awareness wholly identified with animal-mind discovering the Self.

The fact that this reality was noted and codified well over one thousand years ago says something about humanities marginal powers of observation.

Enlightenment is simply a matter of the obvious becoming apparent.

Labyrinth

 

The mind is not a labyrinth. The mind is a system of hallways designed to lead an enchanted Awareness into the ways of the world. Seen from above our humanity is warren of ancient pathways leading to various rewards that most generally serve the needs and appreciations of the creature that we inhabit. The Universe is thus served by the production and emanation of vibrations completely foreign to the material world.

The only new thing in the Universe is the experience of living organisms. The paramecium, the earthworm, the elephant, all generate what we might call "life", and the creation of new vibrations common only to life is the Universes way of feeding.

Enlightenment is an entirely personal matter, but I rather suspect that the Universe may find the vibrations delicious. 

Knowledge

 

Knowledge does not distance the mystery. It is not uncommon that physicists are properly in awe of the unknown for they are amongst the few who experience the limits of the known. Knowledge brings us closer to the Mystery by obliterating opportunities for mythologizing and donkey-tail pinning. The greater our penetration into the perceptible, the more obvious it becomes that the perceptible is the surface of a sublime Mystery the center of which is the substance of ourselves.

Many are those who continue to pin an imaginary tail on the inconceivable donkey,

The Spacious Mind

 

A mind has limited space, and like a a closet, or a garage, or a barn we can jam it 'till the doors won't shut. When we are in the habit of keeping things and making them ours, what then.

Meditation is the exercise by which we clear the mind of the detritus of our human existence, and create spacious living quarters for the Pristine Awareness which is the essence of all life.

Expectations

What do we expect to come from our study of Zen? Supposing we should domesticate the animal that was born to the earth and become the child of the Universe, do we suppose we will be the same person on some higher level of awareness? In overcoming sorrow we have overcome joy. Do we suppose the same things will move us, call to us, motivate us? Please us?

What then?

Tests of Being

 A great difficulty with Enlightenment is that the unenlightened imagine something that happens to a person. Enlightenment happens when the "person" dissolves into the sea of awareness while retaining the discipline that enables self purpose.

Without the familiarity with silence and emptiness that comes with the exercise of meditation the sudden breakthrough by accident might leave an otherwise newborn child of the Universe in a straightjacket.

About Becoming

 

We will never be what we can become 

until we see what we are.

The Gift of the World

 

The "Gift of the World" is that we will never know any peace except through self discovery.

Enlightened

There is a tendency to think of Enlightenment as an amendment to our being, not so. Enlightenment is when our being shakes off amendments.

Rain Drop

Let us give a drop of rain an intellect and an imagination.  What is this raindrop to think concerning rejoining the ocean?

The Qualities of Force

People are qualities


The dissipation of entropy concentrates force

Unintended Consequences

When I began my exploration in Zen I was 25. I had discovered Buddhism while in Japan some 5 years earlier, but the sect in which I had enlisted did not reveal to me the core of my Self. My search continued and I looked into every system I could find, looking for the essence of my Being.

It was the Koan exercise and the insistence of Enlightenment in Zen that finally struck a chord.

I am now 75. In my early survey of Taoist and Zen literature, for all its charm, there were anecdotes that mystified me. Lao Tsu: why did he leave the kingdom to live out the rest of his life in obscurity amongst the barbarians? Would not his enlightenment have been of great value in his homeland? He knocked out the "Tao Te Ching" at the request of the gate keeper on his way out, never to be heard from again. And the Zen masters who came to live under bridges or to dwell in some rustic hideout. Would not their presence in community have been of great value?

Well, now I understand the why of all that just plain as day.

Chocolate Buddha Box

The mind is the "Chocolate Buddha Box"

Imagine That

In great measure it all comes down to the use of the imagination. The imagination must be brought to heel like a well trained dog. The "freedom" of the wild animal is all very nice in a pre-civilized romantic sort of way, and there exists a culture to celebrate this sort of lack of self awareness and civil restraint. But this freedom is actually that of a soul enslaved to an animal.

The freedom that accompanies Enlightenment is one in which the animal, and therefore the imagination, serves awakened Awareness.




This is the difference between a ball-and-chain and a magic carpet.

What Buddhism is All About

Awareness is the stuff of which we are made. Intelligence is the ordering principle that by its exercise determines efficacy of Awareness.

There is an inherent blind spot in the existence of creatures which makes instinct the base-line of consciousness, this shifts intelligence toward the natural opacity of the animal. 

The maturation of Intelligence will awaken the same un-carved Pristine Awareness anywhere that it arises in the fabric of Existence. And this is what Buddhism is all about.

Existence

Existence has three elements: Emptiness (sunyata), Lucency, and Being. Though colloquially identifiable these are not individuated, and Existence is the essence and the fact of Eternity.

Being does not displace Emptiness. Being is woven of Emptiness and charged with Lucency.

By discovering the colors of Being, Lucency emerges as the fount of all colors, and Emptiness is revealed as the meaning saturated gestalt.  

About Being Understood

It is not necessary to be understood. What is necessary is to come to understand oneself. And if you come to understand your Self you will come to know how ludicrous it is to expect to be understood in a world where one who knows the Self is seldom encountered.


What is possible is to be kind and considerate.

Under the Streetlight

Perhaps you are familiar with the joke concerning the fellow who searched for his keys under a streetlight after losing them in the dark "because there is more light here". Well that is the perfect analogy for those who seek Enlightenment in the domains of the personality.

The Field of Enlightenment

The field form which is the substance of our individual awareness exists between "things". The thing we are born into has a library of forms that is ancient and sufficient to its natural needs. In the process of maturation this library of forms is enriched through the vehicle of experience, and experience exists as field shape in the tissue of the brain. Memory is an assuming by the field of awareness, previously known shapes using the architecture of the brain as a frame to stretch upon. Intuition is the action of forms suggesting themselves by association and by force of subtle external emanations.

The Enlightenment sought in Buddhism is no less than this field awakening and becoming the seat of Identity. The field of Awareness is not a material thing and exists in the space between things.

Be Careful What You Wish For

The highest fruits of Zen Buddhism transcend the human surface of our existence, and if you wish to preserve  your "humanity" don't mess with it.

Self Improvement

Self improvement. Just what are we improving? The self that excites the imagination of the sleeping creature that is the normal human being has limited claim to self at all.

What is the Who?



Self discovery will absolve the truth of our being from the burden of improvement.

Internal Affairs

Our inner state is not monolithic. There exist two distinct psychic entities the marriage of which results in what we call consciousness. One aspect of our inner life is ancient and one aspect is relatively young. The ancient aspect of what we imagine ourselves to be is Awareness free of all dispositions. The new aspect of our inner life is our humanity. Our humanity is a haze of dispositions.

That moment of existence which is experience, which says "I", is in fact simple Awareness. Awareness is usually found wholly identified with it's host: in this case, with it's humanity.

When Awareness begins to realize that it is being played, it spontaneously begins the arduous but enormously rewarding task of Self discovery.

The Ten Bulls and C. G. Jung

For those serious about Self discovery a survey of the work of Carl Jung is indispensable. His explications of the nature of the Collective Unconscious is a Grey's Anatomy of the process described in "The Ten Bulls" of Zen.

If we had a psychotropic transparency of the transformation described in "The Ten Bulls" and overlaid this with the awakening of Awareness accompanying realization of the Collective Unconscious as detailed by Jung, we would find total congruence. The bull is no less than the archaic structure upon which the personality is draped. The normal state of Awareness in any creature is total identification with the animal. The Awareness which is the essence of all life is totally hypnotized by instinct and says "I" to the impersonal antique prods of the form it inhabits. Physically. Emotionally. Intellectually. Awareness is possessed by the archaic tropisms of the animal.

All this would be just fine were we not so dangerously effective in all that we do.

Enlightenment is the second birth.


Enlightenment is that creature born of earth becoming a child of the Universe.

Signal to Noise

 


The vast majority of what passes through the human mind is instinct driven noise. The unaware individual innocently says "I" to the noise in their head leading to the world as we find it.


Oh well.



Having surrendered autonomy to instinct, Awareness is seduced by consciousness.




We find almost no other configuration.

The Animal and Zen

The animal is the ride, and it's a good ride, if you are born in the right place at the right time. But the animal is a provisional truth. How is one to call to those born into this barnyard to realize themselves at more fundamental level of existence.

Hans Christian Anderson in his simple parable "The Ugly Duckling" relates the evolution of those for whom realization is inevitable in wonderfully succinct terms, but I don't know of a nuts-and-bolts how-to guide for the mystified beginner.

Those who "see" are freaks from earliest childhood and will suffer the abysmal self doubt made inevitable because they are surrounded by the bizarrely self-confident blind.

Zen (the Zen of the patriarchs, not the Zen of religionists) is the only system I have found that leads to the wellspring of being.


Meditate

Enchantment and "The Ten Bulls"

The chrysalis of creature hood is spun in forms of enchantment. Enchantment is necessary to the perpetuation of form. Form is the womb of all becoming.


When that Awareness which is the essence of all life matures to the state of self recognition it is called Enlightenment.

The Tyranny of Ideas

There is no way to express the tyranny of ideas, for we are left with ideas as a mode of expression. Even Buddhism becomes a matrix of ideas. So we prostrate ourselves before wrenches and screwdrivers.


Hence the exotic ways of the ancient masters.

Creations of the Mind

When at last the obvious becomes apparent it will not be a creation of the mind.

Samadhi's Revelation

We return from that Samadhi where in our humanity has been successfully sublimated. Having been naked before the Universe we understand our humanity and our existence by having been to the wellspring of being.

If there were words to describe colors to the blind this could be aptly described.

Consciousness on the part of creatures large and small is inevitable, natural, and dis-associative. The very nature of creature-hood requires of Awareness a focus making inevitable the sense of individuation. The emergence of "I" from the field of Awareness is necessary to the survival of any living organism. And it is wholly to be expected that this dis-associative natural fabrication should dominate the sense of being.

Those who wish to live from the un-carved block of their being have only to slip the leash of consciousness in awakened full Awareness.


Meditate.