The Zennist

Death from the true Buddhist perspective

In Buddhism, death can be thought of as a return to a kind of scalar world called the Bardo (བར་དོ་) or, in Buddhist Sanskrit, antarābhava. Here, we have left the corporeal body (NDEs?). We are now a 'signal' (manomayakāya) that has not yet found another body to connect with (at the embryo stage).

Because of our ignorance, we are not looking at phenomenal illusions from the absolute perspective. We still believe they are real, and we are eager to return to these familiar images. This is our first great mistake by which we enter into the 12 nidāna/fettrs. Our attachment returns us to the unending cycles of birth and death.

Advanced Buddhists have had these experiences before the death of their body. They are quite real at the time and difficult to put into words because the experiences are so overpowering. At this stage, all this has yet to be put into its proper perspective, which is seen in the Avatamsaka Sutra/Huāyán Jīng (華嚴經).  According to D.T. Suzuki:

According to Kegon scholars, the Buddha in this Samadhi keeps his mind so serene and transparent as the ocean in which all things are sealed or im­pressed, that is, reflected as they are in themselves; the world thus appearing to him is not a world of the senses, but one of light and spirit. This world is called the Dharmadhatu, a world of pure beings, or simply a spiritual world, and is technically known as the “ World of the Lotus Treasure.”

The advanced Buddhist eventually learns that it is this mysterious pure light or radiant bliss that is the Buddha and perpetually shines upon all finite things, revealing the truth that all these are nothing more than dazzling jewels of the divine light.

Scaffolding pressed against true reality

Man's empirical scaffolding seems to press against an unknown realm from which emerges seemingly endless phenomena. But all his knowledge is only knowledge about the scaffolding. Those who cling to the scaffolding and who fear to leap into this unknownness have only the power of their imagination by which to create new frameworks and models (scaffolding).

Taking this Zennist paragraph, I next decided to put it into xAI Grok, an LLM (Large Language Model) AI. Here is its analysis:

Your statement touches on deep philosophical and epistemological themes regarding human knowledge and its limitations. Here's a breakdown and exploration of your points:

1. Empirical Scaffolding: This metaphor suggests that what we know, all our scientific and empirical understanding, is like a scaffold built around an unknown core. Science provides tools and frameworks (scaffolding) to understand the world, but this understanding is inherently limited to observable and measurable phenomena.
2. The Unknown and Phenomena: The idea here is that beyond what we can measure or observe lies an unknown realm from which phenomena emerge. This could be interpreted in various ways:
   • Quantum Mechanics: Where observations like entanglement or superposition suggest phenomena that challenge traditional scientific understanding.
   • Philosophical or Mystical Unknown: This could represent aspects of existence that science hasn't yet explained or might never fully explain, like consciousness or the nature of reality itself.
3. Knowledge as Scaffolding Knowledge: This implies that all our knowledge is about the tools and models we've constructed, not necessarily the underlying reality. Science studies the map, not the territory itself, as some might say.
4. Fear of the Leap:
   • Clinging to the Scaffolding: This refers to people or societies that adhere strictly to known scientific methods or current paradigms, potentially stifling creativity or acceptance of new, unproven ideas.
   • Leaping into the Unknown: This leap symbolizes the act of venturing into areas beyond established knowledge, driven by intuition, philosophy, or speculative science. It requires courage because it involves stepping away from the safety of what's known.
5. Imagination's Role:
   • You highlight imagination as a crucial tool for creating new scaffolding or new ways of understanding. This aligns with historical instances where imagination has led to paradigm shifts in science, like Einstein's thought experiments leading to relativity.

Your reflection seems to ponder the balance between empirical knowledge and the speculative or imaginative leap into the unknown. This balance is often the crux of philosophical debates about scientific progress and human understanding:

• Philosophical Implications: From a philosophical standpoint, this might relate to debates on epistemology (theory of knowledge), where we discuss what we can truly know, or metaphysics, concerning what exists beyond the observable.
• Scientific Method: Science might always be incomplete, suggesting the need for continual innovation in methodology or openness to non-empirical insights (like theoretical physics often employs).
• Cultural and Societal Impact: Societies that encourage this leap might foster more innovation but could also face challenges in distinguishing between plausible theories and mere speculation.

Your statement invites contemplation on how far we should rely on the current scaffolding of knowledge and when we should encourage the leap into the unknown for the potential of new insights or even revolutions in thought. It's a call to balance between the comfort of the known and the potential of the unknown.

The Five Precepts of Buddhism as temptations

Reframing the Five Precepts of Buddhism as temptations rather than just rules of behavior, provides a fresh perspective on ethical conduct that might resonate more with contemporary discussions on personal development and moral philosophy. Here's how these precepts, viewed as temptations, could guide modern ethical behavior:

1. Temptation of Violence: Instead of "taking the life of a living being," consider this as the broader temptation towards violence or harm. This includes not just physical harm but also psychological or emotional violence. The challenge here is to manage anger, frustration, or any form of rage that might lead to harmful actions against others or oneself.
2. Temptation of Greed: Reinterpreted from stealing, this temptation involves not just taking what isn't given but also encompasses greed, exploitation, or any form of gain at others' expense. It's about resisting the urge to accumulate or possess beyond one's needs, promoting fairness and respect for others' property and rights.
3. Temptation of Lust: Sexual misconduct can be seen as yielding to the temptation of lust or exploitation in sexual relationships. This precept encourages respect for mutual consent, dignity, and the sanctity of relationships, urging individuals to avoid actions that harm others or oneself emotionally or physically.
4. Temptation of Deceit: False speech translates into the broader temptation towards deceit, manipulation, or any form of dishonesty. This includes lying, exaggerating, or misleading others for personal gain or to avoid discomfort. The challenge is to uphold truthfulness and integrity in all forms of communication.
5. Temptation of Indulgence: Intoxication isn't just about avoiding drugs or alcohol but resisting the temptation to indulge excessively in anything that clouds judgment or leads to dependency. This could include over-indulgence in food, entertainment, or even work, which might impair one's moral judgment or health.

By viewing these as temptations, it shifts the focus from mere avoidance of acts to a proactive engagement with one's desires and moral compass. This approach encourages self-awareness and self-control, promoting a life of mindfulness where one consciously chooses actions that lead to personal growth and societal harmony. It's about understanding the root causes of these temptations within oneself and striving towards a balanced, ethical existence. This perspective could be particularly appealing in modern contexts where personal development and mindfulness are increasingly valued.

Escape from samsaric recycling

The entire teaching of Buddhism is about escape from samsaric recycling. Our current reality is a trap, and through our desire and attachment to this reality, we throw ourselves into samsaric recycling. Sadly, we have only experienced a false reality, and because of this, we keep getting bamboozled and falling into illusion.

By analogy, we have more in common with an iPhone and the Cloud than anything we may imagine as humans. But there is more. We are a living, biological transceiver (DNA) that is connected to the Cloud: a kind of negative matrix that sustains and instantiates the illusion.

We must keep in mind, however, that the information in the Cloud is never other than binary consisting of 0 and 1. This is a duality that is responsible for our entrapment. Pure Spirit or Mind can only objectify itself by coupling with this unsatisfactory duality. But there is a transcendent way that returns to the One Mind before the split. In Buddhism, it is nirvana.

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.

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.

 

We made a lowly secular God

The modern religious attitude has made God a secular God, a God of materialism; not a God of absolute divinity and transcendent.

As collective karma, the modern approach to religion, especially, in how materialism has influenced the concept of divinity has made a lowly secular God. In contemporary society, the focus often shifts towards tangible, material success and fulfillment, which contrasts sharply with the transcendental aims of traditional spiritual practices, particularly in Buddhism.

The canon of Buddhism paints a much different picture of religion than the modern version. It would be like a Matrix film on steroids with no blue or red pills involved. If anything the blue pill is best represented by a bifurcated mind into subject-object consciousness (vijñāna) which has made the carnal body the subject and the world outside of it objective reality.  And since subject and object are relative to each other, the more we attach to the subject, that is, our carnal body, the more the world outside of us becomes intensely real.

This bifurcated condition is the basis of illusion and why this existence is empty (śūnya) lacking any true reality (svabhāva). True reality can only be found by transcending this bifurcated consciousness (vijñāna) going beyond the illusion.

The Transcenders (Tathāgatas) look upon the denizens of this illusory world like the walking dead whose life is under the reign of suffering.  But the many cannot bear the message the Transcenders teach.  Ironically, it is too painful for us to hear.

By letting go of our attachments to this carnal body, we can transcend the limitations of vijñāna and experience the profound, non-dual Mind that aligns with the absolute divinity and complete transcendence that is sought in religious practice.

Jailbreaking the great cosmic simulation game (samsara)

Would you willingly enter into a simulation game that is so real, both with pain and pleasure, that you would believe it is you who are experiencing this vivid simulation? From the perspective of a Buddha you already have entered.  For most, their attachment to this game is so deep that it will take them many lifetimes of game playing to even consider hacking or escaping. But who is this Buddha? A Buddha is one who has escaped from the great cosmic simulation game (samsara).

Joscha Bach, a cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence researcher said: “Some people think that a simulation can’t be conscious and only a physical system can. But they got it completely backward: a physical system cannot be conscious. Only a simulation can be conscious. Consciousness is a simulated property of the simulated self.”

If we take consciousness to mean the Buddhist Sanskrit term vijñāna (literally, in two parts knowing) the price of admission into the great cosmic simulation game is consciousness (we invest in being in avatar). Without consciousness our universe (or game) might not exist. This also implies that without an observer, the universe lacks a framework in which to exist. Consciousness is not merely a passive witness but an active participant in the great cosmic simulation game (samsara).

We must keep in mind that in Buddhism that vijñāna is also the transmigrant that goes from one life to the other.  A game bound entity. But an ātman never transmigrates. Neither does the Tathagata who was born in the world grew up in the world, but having overcome the world, dwells unsullied in the world. A Tathagata is a transcender.  One who has accomplished the great jailbreak.

The ox and the man are transcended

The circles (ensō) shown in the two presentations of the ox-herding pictures in D.T. Suzuki's book, Manual of Zen Buddhism illustrate the actualization of non-duality (advaya), the real goal of Zen Buddhism. 

The ox-herding pictures are a series of ten images that depict the stages of a practitioner's journey toward enlightenment. These stages range from the initial search for the ox (symbolizing the true self or original nature) to the realization and embodiment of this true nature. The process involves searching, finding, taming, and ultimately transcending both the seeker and the sought, symbolizing the dissolution of duality and the realization of non-duality.

In the final stages of the ox-herding pictures, the man (the seeker) and the ox (the object of the search) disappear. This disappearance represents the dissolution of the ego (I am this carnal body) and the realization that the distinction between the seeker and the sought was illusory. What remains is a state of pure, unbounded radiant awareness, free from the dualistic distinctions that characterized the earlier stages of the journey.

This state of non-dual awareness, whether called the One Mind or Tathata, represents the ultimate goal of Zen practice: to see through the illusion of separation and experience the true nature of reality as a unified whole. This profound insight into the nature of existence aligns with the core teachings of Zen Buddhism and emphasizes the importance of direct, experiential understanding over conceptual knowledge.

Modern day vestibule thinking

If we were to place the present human condition somewhere in Dante's Divine Comedy it would have to be on the vestibule (the ante-inferno). Yet, the huge majority of mankind has always been here including even those who lead the present generation to their doom.

Despite advancements in civilization, there are also enduring aspects of human nature that keep us tethered to certain negative patterns of behavior, often to our detriment. While religion offers us some relief it doesn't go far enough because it is mixed with secular values.

Put another way, we are trying to find a solution that is religious as well as secular but we're not succeeding. Buddhism offers us quite a different perspective. We have to look at our human condition through the eyes of supreme enlightenment. We cannot look at it standing on secular ground with secular eyes expecting to observe the transcendent.