Thinking a little more about the last blog, Bobby the snowflake's big lesson about rebirth, it took me many years to understand why the Buddhist absolute and rebirth, i.e., punarbhava were inextricably linked. For one thing, rebirth is the condition whereby the absolute or the one doesn’t recognize itself in its mode of diversity.
Taking it for granted that Buddhism is a monistic religion in which incredible diversity springs from the one, there is no way for such diversity to realize the one. It can’t be done.
On the other hand, it is much easier for the one—let’s call it our Buddha-nature—to penetrate through such diversity and by doing so return to itself since the diversity which confronts it is its own composition. Permit me to back up a little and point out that the one has no way of recognizing itself, one on one. It first requires the illusion of difference from itself that will be overcome with a return to itself which is enlightenment.
Furthermore, this non-knowledge of itself (avidya) is such that the one only knows and sees diversity in the beginning. This is not bad but only if the one penetrates through this field of infinite diversity so as to return and awaken to itself. Short of this, it will self-trap itself in endless diversity which always brings with it suffering/disharmony, more or less. Not even death is an answer.
In truth, death is no end but is really a radical change into some other form. No matter what new existence befalls the one, this is punarbhava, that is, the turning of the one again into something other than itself. We can even say that non-enlightenment is rebirth. Why is this so? Because if the one doesn’t realize it itself, by default, only diversity remains which is also constant change. In this condition, diversity overshadows the one to such a extent that it makes the one seem non-existent. By contrast, when the one comes into self-identity (samâdhi), more and more, diversity becomes an illusion like Fa-tsang’s gold lion which is nothing apart from the gold.
There is no one without the many...
There is no many without the one...
Wherein does Oneness reside?
Posted by: MStrinado | July 26, 2012 at 09:48 AM
I couldn´t have said it better myself!
Like the old master of the painting Guernica, you can take a simple sheet of paper, draw some simple lines on it and produce another masterpiece of genuine Zen.
Posted by: azanshi | July 26, 2012 at 05:58 AM