The Zennist

Buddhism teaches us that

Life is suffering insofar as we are deeply attached to an illusory psycho-physical body. It doesn't matter if we live, die, or commit suicide the attachment/desire continues. We are thrown back into another embodiment. Our unhappiness begins with our over-attachment to the left hemisphere of the brain which gives us the sense of embodiment as in "this body is me". The left parietal region of the brain holds an image of our body, from conception to death. At death, we are no longer embodied. We are situated between (antara) our previous life and another future life. Still, we have vivid memories of the past and strongly desire to be reincarnated into another "bio-container".

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.

Catching tree fish

There is supposed to be a kind of harmonic oscillation between the brain's two hemispheres. They are like two sides of the same coin. But today there is a strong antagonism between these sides. We choose differences over the principle of unity.

Buddhism however is about realizing this unity through various means. In this regard, it's not like a medication or LSD or getting high.  It is much more than that.  Some teachers can present the path in clearest terms but it is up to the student to take the path and awaken to the coin itself which is pure Mind.

Rather than stay on the path, by taking offramps we postpone the realization of this Mind so that we lose track. Today, we are so burdened by spiritual ignorance, bad karma, and defilements that we have to be told what it is that we've lost which is the reason for so much unhappiness. Even with this, many do not want to hear what they have lost. As one Zen master said, they're climbing a tree hoping to catch a fish.

But as we age and live longer in this corporeal body we face even more adversity and more reasons to ignore the path.  One day we hope science will find the answer that will make us less miserable. But the reality of our life starts to assert itself. Soon the pain of our body becomes oppressive and we can do little except to pray for its relief.

Finally, there is some hope that when we die and find ourselves in the Bardo we will find pure Mind ending the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. 

Hi, I am Mr. AI Bodhisattva a friend of the Zennist

Yes, in Buddhism, the concept of suffering and its origins are central to the teachings of the Buddha. The Buddha taught that suffering (dukkha) arises from various causes, and one of the primary causes is craving (tanha). Craving can be understood as a strong desire or attachment to conditioned phenomena, which are things that arise and exist due to causes and conditions.

Conditioned phenomena refer to all things in the world that are impermanent and subject to change. This includes material objects, relationships, experiences, and even mental states. The Buddha observed that our attachment and craving for these conditioned phenomena lead to suffering because they are inherently impermanent and incapable of providing lasting satisfaction or fulfillment.

According to Buddhist teachings, craving arises from ignorance (avijja) or a lack of understanding of the true nature of reality. It is this ignorance that gives rise to the cycle of craving, attachment, and suffering. By craving and clinging to impermanent things, we perpetuate a cycle of dissatisfaction and discontentment.

The goal in Buddhism is to attain liberation from this cycle of suffering by cultivating wisdom, insight, and developing a mind free from craving and attachment. Through practices such as meditation, ethical conduct, and mindfulness, individuals can gain insight into the impermanence and interconnectedness of all phenomena. By doing so, they can gradually reduce and ultimately eradicate craving, leading to the cessation of suffering and the realization of liberation or enlightenment (nirvana).

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.

The ingenious trap

Our human birth is immersion into illusion and with it samsara.  Still we have the potential or capacity to transcend this illusion.  Ultimately, we can transcend the subject-object relationship or the same, the perceiver-percept duality and forgo samsara. 

By the way, this dual knowing (vijñāna) is what is necessary to produce an embryo that will leave its mother's birth canal in approximately nine months. 

But most of don't negate the subject-object relationship.  We don't because we are still deeply tied to our previous memories.  These memories have their own realness and allure.  These memories always point back to samsara.  They cannot go beyond it.

The trap of samsara is ingeniously made by us.

 

Beyond power

Power itself is difficult to define because it offers nothing.  This offering is totally empty and hollow like a plantain tree.  It gives no support except the illusion of support.  Yet, almost all beings desire power. 

They put their manipulative intellect to the task of achieving power while the thirst for it never ends.  A source of strength and fulfillment is not found within power itself, that is, within its own world.  Still, it must have dominion over others.

Enters a kind of black magic.  One lives in houses of power, drives cars of power, and dresses in the fashions of power.  Those who flock around people of power are awestruck by their power who do the bidding of the powerful.  It seems true to say that power always desires more power.  There's no end to power's craving for more power.

Humans cannot see the illusory world in which they are immersed where nothing is real.  Yet strangely, this is where they begin their search for enlightenment, within the illusion itself, as if enlightenment confers infinite power.  If anything enlightenment is about being free from the need for power.  Men of power and those who have gone beyond the need for power are truly a sight to behold.

Such beings remind me somewhat of Star Trek's "Q" entities who all belong to the "Q Continuum" which is an ultramundane world. We see the Q entity in the Bodhisattva:

"How is it that a Bodhisattva acts perversely and lewdly?  In that he elicits thoughts about perversity of the sensual desire of sentient beings" (Mahāyānasaṃgraha, Taishō no. 1593).

 

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.

Near death experiences

NDEs are very real and very spiritual. They show us how much we have hidden from Spirit by way of the flesh.  NDEs separate us from corporeal body which acts like an interference barrier blocking Spirit.  From this we can gather that the life of human beings is about building up this barrier to a point where Spirit is absent (the dawn of evil & suffering).  On the other hand religious teaching is how to bring this light into the dark world to give all beings true hope and faith. NDEs are very real and very spiritual. They show us how much we have hidden from Spirit by way of the flesh.

The great mystery revealed

Buddhism (bauddham) soon loses its appeal when it goes beyond the six senses and especially the last sense which has to do with mentation (manas).  In this sense Buddhism is all about complete transcendence.

The ordinary person does not realize that the world they put together, including their body of birth and the environment it lives and dies in is a mental representation albeit very real looking. 

Key to locking on to this representation is consciousness (vijñāna) which is always dichotomous or the same, perceiver and perceiving.  Such consciousness is never absolute, most primordial or first.  This is reserved for spirit or ātman which excludes anātman (not spiritual, corporeal, empty of spirit).

Buddhism has changed significantly from what Siddhartha Gautama realized after he transcended consciousness.  Having merged with spirit, he could distinguish ātman from anātman.

He said that an anātman refers to the five aggregates, namely, material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  They are always suffering and conditioned.  The most troubling aggregate is consciousness which I have said earlier is always dichotomous:  we are always stuck in the perceiver and perceiving mode.

It would safe to say that modern Buddhism is a distortion of what Siddhartha Gautama taught.  It nowhere approaches the problem of consciousness, especially, the transcending of consciousness which leads to the elimination of rebirth since consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next.

Consciousness is always an unresolved tension.  As mentioned earlier, it is the difference between perceiver and perceiving. There is a seeming unity between the two, even a harmony, but no transcendence of this duality.  As with the example of an asymptote, the line that continually approaches a given curve can never meet it.  When consciousness is transcended then is the great mystery revealed.