Going against the stream

Many times an invention comes by way of an accident.  Only later can the inventor really explain it.  We might gather from this that intuition mysteriously leads the way and is prior to analytical reasoning.  This also applies with Buddhism.

Many years ago I was able to intuit pure Mind.  When it first happened it was like an inventor seeing the machine he was working on suddenly lift off the laboratory table defying gravity.  Maybe after months of analysis or even years, he might figure out what actually happened to cause this unexpected event.

In my case, after finding myself suddenly in the presence of Mind, and eventually able to link with it at will, it took me many, many more years of diligent work to find out how this happened searching through the Buddhist canon for clues and using the canon to verify my discovery.

Finally, the only way I was satisfactorily able to describe, analytically, how to reach pure Mind or the luminous Mind was by reading about—of all things—the possible propulsion systems of UFOs in a book written by the British aerospace engineer Leonard G. Cramp entitled, UFOs and Anti-Gravity (1966)!  The book, I must confess, is very heady.  Nevertheless Cramp covers the most recondite theories of gravitation and how it might be overcome.

 For the serious Buddhist who wants to advance to the beyond (param) they must first understand that the autonomous subject is the recipient of all that is phenomenal.  This includes the body, its senses, thoughts, emotions, etc.  Our present human orientation thus begins with phenomena and ends in the subject as sensory awareness.  Said again, we are attracted to a specific direction of flow from phenomena to subject.  This is our human all-too-human polarity or inclination.  It is also suffering.

To overcome it we must go counter to it.  In short, this is what meditation is all about.  We have to find a new orientation, using our mind, which goes in the direction from the autonomous subject towards the abstract limit of phenomena.  In this way, the phenomenal influence is progressively canceled so that one enters into the presence of the luminous Mind which is the true medium of all.  

Naturally, the difficult part is how do we go counter to our deep-rooted inertia which has been flowing from phenomena to the subject?  Generally speaking, it is by “ekakara-samadhi” in which mind singularizes itself; in which it is no longer passive in the form of the subject or sensory awareness.  

During this process of singularizing itself mind is actually, for the first time, going in a counter direction—against the old flow.  No longer is the subject just receiving input in the form of phenomena, allowing the direction of flow from phenomena to subject to continue.   Here the Buddha describes the counter flow in the Catusparisat Sutra [italics mine].

“The way which goes against the stream is a profound one, very difficult to see.  Those who are afflicted with passion will not see it; they are enveloped by a heavy darkness.”

With this, a new human polarity is born which is a going against the stream which has always gone from phenomena to subject, who has a craving for things.  Now the subject wills to a singularity, as it were, piercing through phenomena to their limit so that cancellation occurs.  As cancellation takes place, Mind begins to amplify itself which we sense as our body becoming energized.  Soon it dawns on us that we have always been this pure, absolute Mind which is the transcendent medium of all.  With the progressive cancelation of the phenomenal and the amplification of Mind the way to the beyond is accomplished.

Another way to envision this kind of meditation is by understanding how noise-canceling headphones work.  In brief, the headphones generate a counter or anti-noise with opposite polarity to the distracting or loud noise.  This anti-noise perfectly cancels out the loud noise so that only silence remains.  

To reiterate, when meditation is done with our mind streaming against the flow of phenomena to the subject, Buddha Mind is revealed for the first time.  But also extraordinary things happen as a result of Mind’s amplification.  This is not magic—not by a long shot once you figure out how it is done.  It is just applied physics on the level of mind.

Comments

[Huanshen]

Thank you for this interesting article.

Do you see it as one pointed concentration (ekagatta) leading to absobtion in the Jhanas, purifying and reveiling the citta (mind) when kaya, vedana and citta get pacified in the 4th Jhana, or do you mean placing your attention ahead of thoughts and percpetions to see them arise from, abide in and pass away into radiant awareness?

Or, maybe something else? In which case precise instructions would be very helpful.

Thanks again.