The Zennist

The ring pass-not

Our life as sentient beings is actually more like an unending simulation game than anything else.  Being unawakened we continue endlessly in a ‘stream of consciousness’ (viññāṇasota) also called the stream of becoming (bhava-sota) or the wheel of becoming (bhavacakka) in which appearances are always changing but we are forever trapped within the sphere of appearance, what is called the ring pass-not.

What happens to characters who die in a simulation game; is there a heaven or hell for them?  (It depends if the heaven or hell is written into the game.)  On the same card, as a game player can I play other games going on to be other avatars? The right answer should be obvious. In dealing with illusion usually anything goes. 

But there is a catch to this.  Once I make the decision I am bound to my decision, especially, if I elect to play in another life simulation game. I think we could call this attachment to playing games.

However, once I break the spell of being trapped within a game, seemingly unable to escape from it, this applies to all games.  In other words, I can can overcome the need to play games. Welcome to the Buddha's message.

 

The burning house matrix

Many liked the 1999 film The Matrix.  The main takeaway of this sci-fi film is our reality is an illusion, a matrix.  It is only a secondary reality.  Those who run it are trying to repress the first reality.  In fact, the secondary reality has almost managed to erase remembrance of the first reality which is most primordial.

Buddhism is actually paving a way to the first reality, the one most feared by those who run the second reality.  But even Buddhism has been changed by those who run the second reality.  They fear the transcendent which goes beyond nescience, formations, and consciousness (vijñāna).  These are the necessary prerequisites for rebirth: to become deeply involved once again in the suffering of the flesh and the second reality.  

But weaning people off of the the second reality proves almost impossible.  They are trained to be hostile to the transcendent and to the means of reaching the first or primary reality. 

Let us not forget that the Buddha reminds us in the Lotus Sutra that this world is like a burning house and we're like the children in this burning house who haven't yet been devoured by the flames.  We don't want to leave. We are too self-absorbed in the matrix.

Leaving the all too human magic show

We are not born with the knowledge that the world and the body we are connected with is an illusion.  What is real for us is this illusory world and the body that is born and dies within it.  We know no other way than this. 

When we enter into the study of Buddhism we begin to examine this belief of ours.  If things are always changing how can they be real?  If all our efforts ultimately miss the mark how can we find fulfillment?  If we believe this body is our true self why is it always changing and subject to pain and unhappiness?

Here we come to the entrance of Buddhism.  We are attached to what is conditioned and illusory.  We have not the slightest bit of awareness, understanding, or direct knowledge of the unconditioned (true reality), even though the unconditioned is immediate with us.

What we assume to be our self is not our self because an illusion is not real and therefore cannot be a real self.  This perfectly explains why the Buddha said each of the five aggregates is not the self or anattā.  The aggregates themselves are vacant (rittaka), hollow (tucchaka), and coreless (asāraka).  True reality (dharmatā) is a different matter.

When people say that the world has no soul or Ātman or there is only death after this life, they are unconsciously alluding to a fictitious world.  Buddhism takes a much different attitude.  Fictions or illusions just don't happen like a rabbit coming out of the hat during a magic show.  Buddhism exposes the magic act.  When we transcend the human being we leave the magic show.  We enter true reality.

The main culprit

No authentic spiritual path is about surrender or acquisition. It's all about transcendence.  But transcendence and what it really implies is little understood in the modern world.  Our collective spiritual IQ is very low. 

Much of the mystical literature that deals with transcendence is not well understood.  Language cannot convey it adequately insofar as language is tied to the imagination (S., manas) or the six sense. 

Right now we are like a video game player passionately attached to our avatar body in a simulation world—even our death and what comes after it is in the simulation world.

Nor should we expect to meet the transcendent based on our all-too-human consciousness.  This consciousness has to be transcended which is little more than dichotomous knowing (S., vijñāna) in which we are stuck in a dual mode of perceiver and perceiving.

Human consciousness (S., vijñāna) is something like the main culprit who makes our senses and their objects seem so real.  But at some level in our consciousness we're still holding out that the transcendent is something we can perceive or will perceive in the future.  It doesn't work that way not at least in Buddhism.

Life the great video game

Our bodies, which came through our mother's birth canal, are like avatars in a video game.  In our ignorance we attached to them.  We believe the avatar is who we really are. 

And so we go from one game to another otherwise called the cycle of rebirth.  When finally we awaken to our true self or ātman which is unconditioned, the game is still going on but now we transcend the entire game. 

Accordingly, all is a grand illusion (māyā) but nevertheless appears and seems real.  By this awakening we no longer attach to illusions.  Our life in the womb, our birth, our adult life and death, even a heaven or hell are all an illusion!

Those who don't accept this vision and don't strive to awaken from the illusion are doomed to transmigrate in a world of suffering.

Monks, this cycle of rebirth (samsara) is without discoverable beginning.  A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving (SN 15:3).

The decision to quit the game

Perhaps Nietzsche’s will-to-power is just another way of saying humans want control over nature and other humans.  In this picture there are many attempts for power all of which eventually fail because true power is absolute spirit which comes prior to creatures, which exceeds their creaturely grasp. 

But Nietzsche’s will-to-power is really the cry of those who have little or no power and wish more power.  They envision more power and with it more control yet they have little power and control even over themselves.  In the final analysis, they are truly powerless.

Here before us is the real problem with Nietzsche’s will-to-power.  Power is never achieved because we are an illusion chasing illusions wanting power over them.  In this mess, we have not yet awakened from our own sleep of illusion which we are deeply attached to.  We are dream chasers—players in a dream-like game.

In other words, as I have mentioned before, our actual human existence is like that of avatars in role-playing games in which our present life is the sum of knowledge of previous lives.  But we will never escape this game so long as we delight in the game.  The game itself does not allow avatars to escape the game.

The advice from those whom we believe have escaped the game, like the Buddha, is all that we have—and that can become very confusing.  Especially when we choose to play the game on its own ironclad terms:  we must not discard consciousness (vijñāna), i.e., duality.  The game needs its avatar, perceiving needs its perceiver, and knowledge needs its knower.

Ultimately, we must come to the conclusion that life is suffering in virtue of the fact that we've chosen to participate in the game as one of its players.  After many games, hopefully, we come to the conclusion that it is possible to leave the game.

Thus, Ananda, for beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, kamma [karma] is the field, consciousness the seed, and craving the moisture for their consciousness to be established in an inferior realm.  In this way there is the production of renewed existence [punabbhava] in the future (AN III 76).

No escape from the virtual reality game?

Life is more like a journey into a vast virtual reality world.  Our body is the VR simulator (avatar) and we are mysteriously unified with it.  We can't distinguish the simulator character from our real self.  In this modern day and age most everyone assumes that the simulator is their self and when the simulator gets old and breaks down and eventually doesn't work they will also cease but this is not what happens.  Not according to Buddhism and of course Zen.

For me in a strange and beautiful way T.S. Eliot explains the path of Buddhism in these lines from his poem, Little Gidding.

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The Buddha knows that our exploring is taking place in an illusory world, a world today many would call a virtual reality game.  This virtual reality game is completely heuristic.  It serves only as an aid to discovering who we really are.  In other words, we are not who we imagine we are.  Our simulator character that passed through our mother’s birth canal is not who we are.

All that we know has become the game.  We can't see any escape from it.  By clever cultural diversions we are forbidden to speculate that there is a possible escape from this game.  But Buddhism doesn't agree with this.  In fact, we could even say it is the means by which to escape this virtual reality game, taking it to its limit then leaping beyond.

In the example of Hakuin 慧鶴, we suddenly converge with the absolute from where we originally started exploring the illusion long ago.  Yes, we intuit it.   

It is still ineffable and unknowable in the usual sense, but we have finally arrived.  We have reached a mysterious place where both perceiver and the perceived have been transcended suddenly, and all at once.

With the years we have left we come to understand how we became entrapped in something like a virtual reality game where the simulator was the human body of birth and death.  We also became aware of how we wrongly identified our true self with the simulator.

In addition, we also learned how desire for the simulator eventually lead to pain and suffering.  It is like we became intoxicated.  We couldn't get enough of the game.  Then the simulator began to break down.  We didn't know what we would do without it.  We just assumed that when it's ceased operating so would we.

Our passcode into this illusory world has always been consciousness which in Sanskrit is VIJÑĀNA.  It literally means in two parts knowing.  It is a kind of doubling of the one/eka like two mirrors facing each other.  What appears is always doubled (the product of the perceiver and the perceived).  It is not real (even the doubling is not real).  It is only an illusion that appears, not veridical reality.

Having entered the illusion with our passcode, becoming game players, our imagination is free to roam and choose any path it wishes.  At this point we are bound to the illusion:  we can see nothing else except appearances through a perceiver and the perceived combination which in our ignorance we are unable to transcend.

Welcome to the virtual reality simulation game called life

We might simplify the world down to raw information, just zeros (0) and ones (1).  This is duality (dvaya).  Still, it can offer us no clue as to its actual source.  Non-duality doesn’t mean very much in this situation either.  It can still be broken down to a string of binary numbers (01101110 01101111 01101110 00101101 01100100 01110101 01100001 01101100 01101001 01110100 01111001).

For the intuitionist this matter is not settled. The intuitionist knows there is something unspeakable which is the source of this binary code.  It transcends zeros and ones.  Let us not forget that Zen is the intuitional school of Buddhism.

The authentic Zennist also knows what transcends the binary nature of consciousness or in Sanskrit, vijñāna (lit. In two parts knowing).  No word or sentence is adequate to the source itself.  Yet, the source can be directly accessed by transcending the binary world reaching veridical reality itself.

If we imagine that our world is based on binary code we can also imagine that we can live in a virtual reality simulation (VRS) game from our birth to our death repeated countless times.  But we could also say that we are trapped in a VRS game called life.

From this we might understand that true religion only begins outside of the VRS game.  It transcends the zeros and ones.  It does not even begin in sacred books.  These books might be the result of intuition of what is actually outside of the VRS game which includes all the senses necessary to play it.  It is also outside of the player whose consciousness has found its way into the VRS game.  We are facing mystery that won't let us go until we have solved it.

In the big VR game of human existence we are all gamers

In Buddhism it would be consciousness (vijñāna) that connects the player with the virtual reality game in which the player is embodied in its avatar.  In the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) the Buddha is telling Ananda that it is consciousness that connects us to the simulation (nāmarūpa) that begins in the mother's womb.

Not only does consciousness survive death but it is integral to the VR game we call human existence. The most dangerous part of this VR game of human existence is that true reality is hidden by the game and the players. It is very much like Case V in the collection of Mumon's koans (無門関):

“It's like a man up the tree, hanging from a branch by his mouth; his hands cannot grasp a branch, his feet won't reach a bough. Suppose there is another man under the tree who asks him, 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west?' If he does not respond, he goes against the wish of the questioner. If he answers, he will lose his life. At such a time, how should he respond?”

We know nothing about the person before it took up the game of human life and became a player who, subsequently, became entangled and enamored with the alluring richness of the game.  Now the player is thrown into this crazy game from which there is seemingly no escape.  Even death will not liberate the player who will take up another avatar only to continue with the game.

Without a doubt, each of us is immersed in our human VR game.  But now we have VR games being created on a regular basis whereby we are playing VR games in an overarching human virtual reality game.  It’s a game that seems so real yet when we look at it, honestly, without a biased mind, it is not unlike our VR games of today.  But there is one problem, we cannot escape the overarching human VR game.  Keep in mind that death is no escape.  But the game is escapable if we follow the Buddhist teachings, but even this is difficult.

The simulation game of birth and death

A neglected question in Buddhism, can death go beyond the reach of consciousness (vijñāna)?  The simple answer to this question is no.  Only the attainment of nirvana goes beyond consciousness so that the world of birth and death becomes an illusion for the enlightened ones.  It is similar to a person seeing waves and knowing that the waves are also water.

What overcomes the seeming ironclad reality of the world of birth and death is the very source of the intrinsic duality of consciousness which is non-dual (advaya).  In other words the basis of every duality is singular that is non-dual. 

We might say that we live in a binary, informational world of 0s & 1s, the source of which is unknown to us.  We might further speculate and say that it is unreal.  Nevertheless, we are still limited by consciousness which is the barrier we cannot pass through.  Death does not grant us freedom, only the continuation of the dual nature of consciousness (vijñāna) by which simulation appears.

Whatever reason there is for maintaining that death is final and there is nothing beyond it stems from a misunderstanding of what consciousness really is.  Without it no simulation is even possible. 

It is something like video simulation games in which real players engage with avatars who exist and operate in a simulation world.  Consciousness connects the players to their avatars in the game so that the player is inserted into the game through the avatar.  Overtime the player becomes more bonded and identified with their avatar.  

In the human simulation world, as strange as it seems, there are no players.  None to be found!  And if you've been so engaged with the day-to-day simulation you may not even recognize that you are a player deeply embodied in an avatar and even deny it.  Or you might think the avatar and the player are the same.

Back to consciousness, this is why the Buddha says of consciousness that it is like a magician’s illusion.