One last barrier remains: the point of no return

On my youthful journey to see what Siddhartha saw and gain the necessary intuition of Zen masters I came to a place that you could call the point of no return in which reversal is not possible.  I came to realize that I was in Zen too far to give it up but I had also failed to uncover Zen’s secret having exhausted my all-too-human means for discovering Zen’s secret.

I had inadvertently put myself between a rock and a hard place.  I was stuck in a real life and death koan that I couldn't see the way out of.  Even an answer was not forthcoming of what a person should do in a situation like this. 

Looking back to that time I can see that this is the path of intuition that inevitably leads to a kind of cul-de-sac.  Human consciousness (vijñāna) can go no further.  Still, one last barrier remains which bars the way home.  But nothing can be done.

Finally this barrier unexpectedly disappears.  In that moment of disappearance, consciousness is not there anymore—still something is there, though not of an empirical nature which consciousness demands.  You have just merged with something that your six senses cannot perceive much less your consciousness frame.

Few practitioners get this far .  Instead, they substitute the experiences found in their imagination for enlightenment.  This is a process of reification where the imaginary becomes seemingly real.  It seems to work for a while but then fades away.  One has still not escaped avidya, that is, non-knowledge.

As strange as it sounds what we can measure or observe with the senses including the last sense which is the intellect/imagination is all an illusion—the seemingly real.  It is like turning a piece of lit incense in the dark so fast it appears to be a circle.  Yes, we humans are very good at creating virtual realities and deceiving ourselves.  But our consciousness demands subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experience.  But take away this consciousness one lonely night—there is much more that is beyond the grasp of human consciousness. 

Comments

[Eidolon]

Your remarks are very interesting here, Zennist. Lately I have found myself viewing everything differently, almost like I'm "looking through" a "movie" (life itself), at something unidentifiable and indefinable in words. At the same time, life itself seems to be surprisingly Zesty somehow; I keep being astonished by how good food tastes, for example, and I find chores that I once would have hated to do, or would have previously rushed through, to be kind of hilariously enjoyable, a source of pleasure; and even my residual impatience I see now as a "flavor" to be enjoyed or laughed at. Intuitively, I KNOW that I am situated on the border of something very big, and I HAVE to press on, to get inside more deeply and completely. Thanks for what you say here. I hope your health is improved and stable.

[Jung]

The human consciousness and its physical vessel are outsourced by evil (They are proof of Mara´s realities multiplying by any given action through the illusion of spatiotemporality).

This is the praying nature of said evil - If IT does come at you while your mind dwells in self-ignorance, then you simply don´t have a chance.

The first proof of this attack, and painful clothing of said consciousness, is your physical conception in the womb of your mother and unless aborted, the inevitable birth. The following proofs that follow, in the measured life-span ahead, are too many to count.

Genuine Zen strives to cure this problem of continued self-ignorance by enabling a swift unreachability [from evil] through the awakening [clear realization] of your true Body and Mind on the other shore of the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas.

From that ascended vantage point, what resides permanently as thus gone, thus come, is impervious to any and all illusions of evil.