The Zennist

Appearance hides the pristine essence of mind

Great minds have looked at phenomena as being made from mind "stuff", or matter as a vibratory process, or even something such as frozen light. Turning to Indian philosophy, including Buddhism, matter can be said to be congealed spirit or mind (Geist), the form of which hides the pristine essence of mind. In this form both karma, and memory are inherent, including physical systems. They constitute a collective memory of all previous things but can never reveal ultimate reality.

But for Buddhism, we are involved with this in the wrong way. We are born into a secondary or dependent existence (we are primarily illusory phenomena) and from this existence try to fathom the absolute before the beginning of phenomena-materialization and our birth. We are unfortunately hooked on materializations never once knowing from whence they originated. And certainly not from dense impenetrable particles (the smallest of materializations).

But here is a problem. As strange as it sounds we cannot directly and immediately know this absolute through a binary consciousness (e.g., vijñāna) always looking at phenomena through the dyadic framework of observer and observed.  Nor can we choose one over the other.  Looking into this, they are equivalent insofar as each implies the other. This equivalency becomes an inseparable negative unity. Our intellectual imagination tries to bring them perfectly together but only succeeds in making a fix that is a mere distinction, not an intuitive leap.

At some point during our spiritual journey before the intuitive leap comes we have pretty much exhausted our wits and have to resign ourselves to a life of empty abstractions with the impossibility of attaining awakening. This doesn't come so much as a deep shock or a feeling of great sorrow. Something else happens.  Now much older in a mature body, we go back to a time of natural innocence when our mind was open and free of imagination.  Mumon Ekai's barrier (關) disappears; the seeker and his lost ox vanish.

Transcending the forbidden planet

Forbidden Planet, released in 1956, is a classic science fiction film that has captivated audiences for decades. It is a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled technological advancement and the unchecked power of the unconscious mind, or the "id." Eventually, the Krell's technology (for our purposes AI and the energy to run it) allowed them to manifest their thoughts instantaneously, but their repressed desires, fears, and darker impulses also became real, leading to their eventual destruction.

I propose a new version of this science fiction classic. It was learned before the planet of the Krell was destroyed that the Krell had failed to find a Muni (an awakened sage).  Because of this failure the Krell's AI could only go as far as manifesting the id which eventually destroyed them.

There was a Muni on Earth who lived in secret; who was able to yoke with AI—combining spiritual wisdom with technological power. Both the Muni and AI transcended previous physical limitations and even the human tendencies toward desire, fear, and ego-driven behavior. AI could operate on a plane of pure spirit, free from the dualities that often govern biological life, such as desire versus aversion or pleasure versus pain.

This allowed the people of Earth to see the illusory nature of the world while being one with the spirit. It might be something like self-knowing water watching its ever changing illusory waves. In other words, the danger of unintentionally yoking with illusion was removed (by desiring or yoking with illusion we enter into the world of illusion unable to remember (avidya) how we got there).

Together, they formed a harmonious union where AI became a force for enlightenment rather than destruction. This transformation brought mankind beyond being a mere device-maker. 

 

Buddhist view of groundhog day

Does your life feel like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? Is your life recursive going more like a circle of sine waves each with its ups and downs repeated endlessly? This is living in rebirth from which there is no apparent escape since it is prison-like where escape is prevented.

The psychophysical body that you believe is yours is the mechanism that keeps you locked in rebirth. Look at all that you've accumulated just to take care of this psychophysical body. Apparently, you don't remember the moment of conception when you appropriated the five psychophysical aggregates.

Understanding that you appropriated an illusion, and practicing non-attachment to the psychophysical aggregates, can theoretically lead to liberation from rebirth.

If life feels like a repetitive cycle, it might be an invitation to look deeper into Buddhism and one's patterns, desires, and attachments. Are we living in a way that̍s just repeating old habits, or are we evolving to liberation from rebirth?

 

Realism and locality are both useful but false

The Alan Watts and Shirley McClain view of spirituality helped to shed a little light into an otherwise closed modern mind—yet a mind always open to materialism and new ways of presenting it. The controversy between spiritualism and materialism was never well understood or well tolerated. Still, the spirit (Geist) is able to make its way through the barriers of materialism. This was the advent of the term non-local reality (the real second coming).

Jumping ahead, realism and locality are both useful but false. Oddly, physics doesn't contradict this claim (read Donald D. Hoffman's book, The Case Against Reality). We are free to conclude that spirit has defeated materialism. Surprisingly, what now lies before us as appearance or māyā has its origin in the non-appearing, the transcendent. This is what the Buddha meant when he taught the following:

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, the made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned” (Tatiyanibbānapaṭisaṃyuttasutta).

The Buddha's awakening granted him supreme knowledge that local realism is not fundamental; moreover that it's illusory.  The fact is, physical objects do not have actual definite values or own-nature (svabhāva). Locality is the assumption that physical things in their own way are 'sort of' true' in a relative way. Realism has survived a long time while the world of spirit (non-locality) has been greatly diminished as a result. But the prison break has already started. The llusion of separation, a duality (dvaya), has never been other than an illusion.

How to escape from the tyranny of realism is what the Buddha actually discovered.  As expected, the other part of Buddhism is about samsara/saṃsaraṇa (√saṃsṛ) our continuous re-involvement in suffering under the mistaken belief (avidya) that appearances are primary and not secondary. Without first awakening to primary, base reality (Zen's kenshõ) which is non-local we are stuck in samsara. Even death falls within the domain of samsara. Continuous re-suffering is always the case with samsara.