The Zennist

A battle between emotion and reason

In recent times the world has been taken over by a search for cosmic justice and the Higgs Boson particle, the so-called God particle.  Both groups have found neither cosmic justice nor the Higgs Boson particle but seem to have managed to gain the world's attention at the possibility of finding both.

At this time, the depth of Buddhism is too much for the bulk of humanity.  They prefer a Quixotic quest for some artifact of their imagination; at least to reify it enough so they can publish academic papers about it.

While it is true that mankind has not set foot in reality for a long time or wishes to cross the waters of samsara to reach the Isle of Nirvana, he has managed to eke out a living making mechanical and electrical devices but still suffers from the inability to control his emotions which eventually leads to a life of great suffering.

Making this matter worse is when we put emotional dynamite into ideas so that people will feel compelled to get very physical if not violent to get their ideas across.  The emotions themselves become the justification for doing all kinds of evil things in the name of the search for cosmic justice.  And despite all the evidence against modern science that the physical universe is not physical but electrical they continue to push their insane projects spending vast sums of taxpayers money on making high-energy particle colliders.

It could be that emotions have triumphed over reason to a point where we are in a place where emotionality and reason are facing off for a fight to the death.  Agree or disagree, nevertheless, our daily life consists of watching this battle between emotion and reason play out in our everyday life.

Transcendence not resurrection

In the long run, human life given to fleshy existence, is never other than unfulfilling and painful.  Human birth, death, and resurrection (Gk., anastasis) for Buddhism is nothing more than samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth (S., punarbhava). 

For a Buddhist escape from samsara involves transcendence not resurrection.  It is superseding of all that is subject to rebirth in the external or outward form that is called “flesh”.  More precisely it is transcendence of conditioned reality.

Death of the flesh only means eventual resurrection/rebirth into flesh again.  Ultimately, Spirit as Theos (πνεῦμα ὁ θεός) is never resurrected.  Nor in Buddhism are those who have attained tathatā reborn.

When spirit comes in to the world of flesh it does not come in the flesh but comes in Spirit only.  Those who resonate with it sense its presence.

"In its very origin, tathatā (sheer spirit) is of itself endowed with sublime attributes.  It manifests the highest wisdom which shines throughout the world, it has true knowledge and a mind resting simply in its own being.  It is eternal, blissful, its own self-being and the purest simplicity; it is invigorating, immutable, free… Because it possesses all these attributes and is deprived of nothing" (Mahayanasraddhotpadasastra).

The spiritual broadcast continues

Most religions escape religion.  They are quick to turn religion into some kind of orthodoxy that resists a fuller spiritual understanding of mankind, more precisely, resists the truth that human beings are spiritual creatures living entrapped in a biological structure that is limited, being subject to death (and rebirth).

This is the main problem facing mankind which eventually forms itself into materialism which creates an impenetrable curtain around mankind's spiritual inheritance.  This materialism takes on new forms such as Mao’s Four Olds or postmodernism which is essentially the same thing, getting rid of the old to make way for the new.  Whatever that is.

With Christianity, eventually came orthodoxy which tried to get rid of any mystical approach to early Christianity especially a gnostic or intuitive approach.  Buddhism tried its hand at orthodoxy and went so far as to erect a kind of there is no self doctrine thus hiding the more mystical side of Buddhism which understands there is a self that transcends biological being.

But the fog is beginning to clear.  Maybe a new Buddhism is coming. Already we know that the DNA molecule is optimized to be a fractal antenna.  We are more like some kind of electric device that receives and sends a signal like our cell phone.  And when finally the old heart flatlines it may be that the broadcast continues.  Shall we reside in Svarga (P., sagga) or come back to this planet?

The three modes

Just like our universe we humans have three modes of being, namely, the dark mode, the glow mode, and the arc (luminous) mode. 

The first mode is chiefly animal existence, being enveloped by a dark covering which puts us into a hostile world.  The second mode is when we can put a little light on the subject as if seeing through a glass darkly, establishing a kind of order out of chaos.  The last mode, the arc mode, is transcendence, an awakening to true reality.  In such illumination there is no darkness or even a glow.

Very few get to the arc mode while the many creatures live and die in the dark mode with a few advancing and taking shelter in the glow mode.

The great sages of history, like the Buddhas, have told us of the arc mode.  By their own effort and struggle they transcended darkness and glow.  And were it not for the illumination of these sages there would not even be man's civilization, his community, and safety. 

From this we can see that man's greatest enemy is his own darkness and glowing thoughts which he mistakes for illumination.

We are absolute spirit having a human life

Can we see or at least intuit true reality when we seem to be lost in illusory existence, including this body that came through our mother's birth canal?  Materialist say no but the Buddhas say yes.

According to the materialists we only have sensory knowledge to rely on.  But according to the Buddhists sensory knowledge, which includes mentation which is the 6th sense, can be transcended.

However mankind's science also falls within mentation, this includes his imagination, his fantasies, even his dreams.  From the six sense arise all kinds of fictions many of which are useful for staying alive in an illusory world in an illusory body.  Still, all sensory knowledge is relative knowledge not absolute.

Said differently, as we participate more and more in the illusory world through our illusory body we acquire relative knowledge.  But what lies beyond illusion and the relative knowledge that we depend upon?  We do not know because we have rejected absolute knowledge or the same, transcendent knowledge.

Man (S., manu) is a thinking creature who is immersed in a relativistic or illusory existence.  For man to transcend man requires that he go beyond himself:  beyond subject and object, beyond perceiver and perceiving, beyond thinker and thought, etc.  Transcendence itself cannot be imagined, to do so is to fall into the barrier of Mumon.

祖關不透心路不絶、盡是依草附木精靈。

If you do not pass the barrier, and do not cut off the way of thinking [all ways of knowing], then you will be like a ghost clinging to the bushes and weeds. (Brackets are mine.)

Foremost, Zen is about transcending this temporal life, intuiting at once the absolute before it is transformed into this illusory existence.  Echoing the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are absolute spirit having a human life. 

But to go back to spirit we must transcend all that is human.  As the reader may have noticed there is a subtle difference between letting go and transcendence.  Knowing this difference is crucial.

Thou shall not have any all too human Gods before me

The mental concept of ‘God’ is inevitably limited to anthropomorphism in which the highest reality is more human than transcendent.  But the great minds throughout human history did not conceive of a God that was anthropomorphic.

We ourselves occasionally get glimpses of this reality but these glimpses are far and few between because we are located in a world of illusion in which our self is not itself but other than itself (anātman).  We have the sense of wanting to move to a higher reality, but never seem to arrive.  And if we imagine we have arrived it often turns out to be a delusion if not delusions of grandeur.

In light of these problems, which seem intractable at times, we have an odd hunch that we're going in a kind of bad circle, around and around, and getting no place.  Maybe this is the pattern of samsara.

With such a pattern, the atheistic mindset of denial can only pertain to mankind’s habit of inventing all too human Gods who cater to mankind's daily needs but only serve the purpose of keeping mankind in a circle.  This is what precisely atheism really intends: thou shall not have any all too human Gods before me.  However, the atheist cannot deny a base reality which is beyond man.  To do so it's going too far.  One, however, can say the base reality (superposition?) is transcendent after fully merging with this reality.

Each human being's secret dream is to go beyond the merely human. We are kind of like a ladder which is intended to take us beyond ourselves.  Still the great majority of us still fear to go too high.

The critical difference between Christianity and Buddhism

Perhaps the most significant difference between Buddhism and Christianity is that the former asks its followers to see what Siddhartha the Buddha saw, whereas in Christianity it asks its followers to believe so as to have faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

If Jesus Christ, on the other hand had said, “I have realized God and so can you,” the religion would've taken a different turn.  Instead, what we have is a religion strictly based on the firmness of one's belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. That one may treat him as God’s equal.

Jesus Christ then becomes the intercession between man and God such that one need only faith.  He will take care of the rest, even forgives us of all of our sins so that in a way we don't really have to know God as Christ did. 

The critical difference between Christianity and Buddhism is that with Buddhism there is no salvation except that one attains Nirvana and becomes a Buddha.  Christianity essentially believes that Christ will take care of our problems since we have so much faith in him.

The immaturity of Christianity is evident in its teachings.  It's really looking for followers and will say just about anything to get the attention of the masses.

Who you are

True reality is already here, in fact, it has never left.  However, as we approach it with our ideas of what we expect it to be like, we become more confused.  The first road eventually branches off many, many times.  At this point, we are more lost and confused than ever.

Then the Buddha’s teaching comes along.  It talks about awakening to something that even Māra, the Buddhist devil, couldn’t recognize.  Little did Māra know that the Buddha gave up perceiver and perceiving (dual knowing).  He entered a transcendent state in which there was no division or constructs.

Māra, was in a way, a god of the six senses which required a perceiver and perceiving whether it was visual, auditory or even mental (manas) which includes the imagination and intellect.

Even if we take a voyage into our own mind we are more like the people in Plato's Cave facing an artificially constructed world, while the true light is always behind them, in such a way that they are unable turn around and see it. 

Our inner thoughts and emotions arise as do our mental images and what our various senses perceive.  We are facing an illusion not true reality.  Even our fleshy body we inhabit is an illusion.  Transcending illusion is extremely difficult.  Most will be unable to transcend illusion.  Nevertheless, it is important to start the journey of transcendence, of going beyond all illusion where you realize, finally, who you are.

Same teaching just a different way of explaining it

God is SPIRIT or in Lakota "Wakan Tanka". Composite phenomena blindly arise from Spirit and return to Spirit, leaving their desire-seeds for a future composite life filled with pleasure, anxiety and suffering.  And still they have no true vision or even a vague understanding of Spirit.  It is mixed with their strong worldly imagination. 

Those spiritual warriors who abide with Wakan Tanka always in their hearts will enter heaven (S., svarga) when they leave their earthly vessels.  Long ago did they behold the incomposite seed of eternal life (S., tathāgatagarbha).  It was their lodestar; to it they gave their life energy.

When still in the flesh it is a wonderful event when Spirit meets you. It saw your incomposite seed and knew that you were its scion.

Entering the light of heaven

Interestingly, what separates our direct access to the Buddha-nature are the layers and layers of āsrava: a lust for the flesh, a passion for existence, and the defilement of ignorance.  This could be all summed up with one word which is materialism.  This constitutes a drive within each person for what is not their self (anātam) rather than what is their true self or Buddha-nature (which by the way is immaterial). 

As a result of this drive sentient creatures are bound down to samsara having to experience one rebirth after another.  In fact, they don't have the slightest knowledge about rebirth and least of all how to break the terrible cycle of rebirths.

For several years I have been following what are called near death experiences or NDEs.  What I have noticed with each one is that seems universally clear that the various people are in a state almost without āsrava after having left their body.  They experience a kind of radiant embracing love that is all around them, almost like they are fish swimming in spiritual waters.  Without the interference of āsrava the light of spirit shines through.

When they return to their human bodies, let us call them āsrava bodies, they seem to be affected by the NDE experience to work tirelessly to return to that state of utter bliss and well-being.

What we can gather, thus far from NDEs, is that the corporeal body acts like an interference barrier blocking spirit.  From this we can gather that the life of human beings is about progressively building up this barrier to a point where spirit is absent (the dawn of evil).  On the other hand religious teaching is how to bring this light into the world to give sentient creatures true hope and faith that beyond the temporal body there is truly a heaven (S., svarga).