What is Madhyamaka (middle way) really about according to Zen? Phenomena, both external and internal, are the result of seeing the absolute or unconditioned through the mantle of our presuppositions, discriminations, including the body, itself, all of which are conditioned. It is somewhat like looking at white light through a prism seeing only rainbow colors—not the white light. In other words, we are facing and looking at the unconditioned (i.e., nirvana) through a prism or through a glass darkly. We never see it directly. Paradoxically, we attach to what is altered and imperfect.
What we are really attached to is a world that is a dependent origination of the non-arisen, unconditioned. A derivation. Furthermore, this means that phenomena, as alterations, are illusory; they do not fundamentally exist in the ultimate sense. This includes our mental formations as well. They only appear to be real because we have never seen the essence from which they are composed. In fine, if one is caught up in conditioned phenomena one will never be able to see their Buddha-nature.
By simile, phenomena are like ice sculptures of animals. We say that this ice sculpture is a lion, this is a dog, this is an eagle, etc., all because of discrimination. But there is only frozen water—that's the truth or dharma. Now, if this frozen water were bliss and the conceptions and shapes that we see and cling to, such as a lion shape, are the absence of bliss, we could say that we are not in a full state of bliss. Since childhood, having identified with the shapes more and more we have become their very emptiness or absence. This is materialism. Such a condition is never blissful and free of pain. Without knowing it, we have become slaves of a terrible master going from one phenomenal existence to another with no end in sight. On this note, one immediately thinks of the Buddha's notion of thirst which is coupled with the need for water but the victim only finds it salty which drives the thirst even more.
The final analysis: we have to put down this mantle or dark glass we keep holding up even for a split second. It will do no good to discuss the matter with those who fear or revolt against the idea of putting away this mantle.
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