Our contemporary world silently demands of us that we not ask if there is a substance or essence from which the shadows that dance before our sensory consciousness are composed (samskrita).
Even though, at bottom, we are the very substance of shadows, which is shadowless, we have been taught from birth to respect, fear, adore—and yes—chase after shadows. Moreover, we are programmed never to doubt this play of shadows—there is even a supreme God who created shadows. If we doubt such a world (we believe) we shall be cast into the abyss of nihilism, the great undifferentiated shadow.
For those with a pioneering spirit, the last frontier is to discover the shadowless. Such pioneers dare to leave this world. They instinctively know that shadows have their limit. To discover this limit means that we must be incapable, at some point, of being deceived and bewitched by shadows. I hasten to add, that this is not skepticism. Skepticism is just a euphemism for closed-mindedness. Every skeptic greatly fears to wake up in bright light.
When Buddhism came to the West, the West was beginning to grow tired of its shadows—thus itself. It welcomed Buddhism for some strange reason although it did not realize that Buddhism showed the way to the absolute substance, ending forever the reign of shadows.
Many Westerners who took up Buddhism believed that it was compassionate nihilism which denies a transcendent substance (one certainly shadowless). But they were wrong in this. In truth, Buddhism holds that all is shadow except our self, i.e., the Buddha-nature. This is not nihilism, in other words. What Buddhism brings is more like sunlight streaming into Plato’s cave owing to the fact that someone just blew half of the cave away with high explosives. Everyone is terrified as the light overpowers the shadows revealing even the apparatuses of illusion and deception which hide the light.
"Manifesting spiritual power while among the masses, he radiates light to make them wake up, revealing the realm of the enlightened" (Avatamsaka Sutra).
Comments