The Zennist

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.

Spirit is beyond mankind's senses

Unfortunately many these days who still adhere to religion mix a lot of modern secular values with it.  Everything they believe has to be verified by the six senses but this is not the path to truth. 

The Tathagata or Buddha is fundamentally about Spirit.  And Spirit is beyond mankind's senses including imagination (the sixth sense in Buddhism). 

To make a direct connection with Spirit is both difficult but doable.  Nor is it something for the imagination (S., manas, the sixth sense) which believes it will eventually discover enlightenment or be saved by some future enlightened being. 

Language is all we have to convey what this spiritual connection is.  And it's not a very good tool.  Spirit, for one thing, is not in us anymore than the music we hear from our radio actually originates from within the radio.

Buddhism’s main focus is on what Siddhartha realized and expounded upon from his realization (buddhatā).  It is the primary context of Buddhism.  His nirvana was not some idea (a mental image) but rather a direct connection with Spirit which is the base reality of the universe.

Fundamentally, Buddhism is meant to transcend the human life form which can never reach fulfillment.

Secularized Buddhism?

Buddhism is in no way rooted in the secular any more than the teaching of Buddhism is intended to appeal to the common person (P., puthujjana).  According to the Buddha the good farmer doesn't sow the bad soil first but only last. 

If these words sound strange it is only because the huge majority of people are only used to thinking in a, worldly, secularized way.  This also means that a great majority of people cannot think outside of their secular box.

Left on their own the huge majority of people will regress to a life of meeting their most basic, raw biological needs than any kind of higher need or calling.  Historically, all established religions are popularized by the world of the aristocracy who then impose the religion on the common people. 

If we were to envision a purely secular religion, in many respects, it might resemble Marxism which sanctifies materialism but also nihilism.  This is really a life of blind servitude and duty to the state which seeks to further a collectivist mentality that can’t see beyond the mundane veil.

The history of Buddhism in the West has been an effort to view it as a secular religion.  Those who have popularized Buddhism have turned it into an external practice through the promotion of sitting meditation and adherence to certain rituals and codes of conduct.

The great simulation game of life

Some scientists have surmised that the DNA molecule is really an antenna (a fractal antenna).  The person is a transcendent broadcaster that resonates with the DNA of the corporeal birth body.  Hence, one feels that they are inside of a human body when in fact they are not. 

If the broadcast part wants to experience another human life after the passing away of their previous body it must tune into a recently fertilized egg.  Gestation then is really about transferring the previous life-impulses into a new emerging life inside the mother's womb becoming another avatar in the great simulation game of life.

It is only a matter of time until scientists figure out the mechanism of transfer, in which one life/avatar transfers into another life.  This discovery will catapult us into a more realistic understanding of what life is really about. 

Now, we are in an endless stream of rebirth (samsara) from which an escape seems impossible.  According to the Buddha:

“A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on.  A being who has not been your mother at one time in the past is not easy to find... A being who has not been your father... your brother... your sister... your son... your daughter at one time in the past is not easy to find” (Mata Sutta [Samyutta Nikāya]).

The maintaining of ignorance and craving (desire for what is external to one's true nature) helps to make certain samsara.  Until the voyager (player) realizes the lodestar (attains nirvana) there is no way to leave samsara.  It is the bad infinite.  Buddhism's real hell is being stuck in samsara again and again.

At times it seems like some evil entity or race of demons set us up to be players in a simulation game in which we never experience ourselves as the player but always as the avatar.  True religion which Buddhism is, is not about praying to some God to help our avatar in the simulation but to realize the player and distinguish ourselves from the samsaric game of life.

Clinging to the false self?

The Buddhist teaching of no-self (anātman) is better stated: overcoming the false self.  If one decides to read Buddhism this way it ceases being so enigmatic. 

At the same time, we can see that Buddhism is a path of transcendence which is about overcoming the powerful attraction of the false self (anātman).  Nowhere in the Buddhist canon did the Buddha teach there is no self (P., natthattā).

Adding to this, the Buddha also teaches that no-self is suffering (yaṃ dukkhaṃ tadanattā).  This is not a good state to be in, in other words.  Logically, the Buddha would not teach no-self as a refuge (saranā) from suffering. 

But if our actual self mistakenly yoked with a false self, yes, there would be suffering.  And we would have to learn how to overcome this suffering by first comprehending just what the false self is.

But the modern Buddhist is not interested in learning anything about the false self.  Sometimes I think that modern Buddhists, who are agnostic or atheistic, imagine that Buddhism is a religion just made for them.  It is not.  Buddhism is perhaps the most profound religion on the face of this planet.  When we follow its path it gets more profound.

Dangerous knowledge

Dhyāna (Zen) like its counterpart gnosis moves in the direction of transcendence, that is, transcendence of all phenomena.  It seeks to go beyond even the human range of perceptions and this includes perceiving and perceiver.  It is like a cup of water poured into a vast ocean.  Nothing fundamentally changes, but there is a decisive shift that takes place from the amount (quantum) of water to a boundless ocean.

Accomplished transcendence in Buddhism is our first connection with unconditioned spirit which is beyond all the six senses and our dualizing consciousness (S., vijñāna).

Spirit has found itself and looking back it understands that it really never left its home.  While others have to take this on faith the one who has experienced spirit by  spirit, directly, knows it absolutely; yes it even transcends faith.

The result of this gnosis is to throw light on the amazingly unreal status of human beings and maybe to help them escape from the seemingly endless cycles of suffering.  Mankind in its present state of ignorance still does not understand how the passing of one life connects with the cells of the next life, only to become another life subject to suffering.

The great wisdom gained from gnosis has been repeatedly under attack throughout history.  Incredibly, it is knowledge that is even considered dangerous for the religious and for the political authorities.  This type of knowledge cannot be allowed to spread.  But it does, especially in Buddhism.

Cannot be allowed to spread

Dhyāna (Zen) like its counterpart gnosis moves in the direction of transcendence, that is, transcendence of all phenomena.  It seeks to go beyond even the human range of perceptions and this includes perceiving and perceiver.  It is like a cup of water poured into a vast ocean.  Nothing fundamentally changes, but there is a decisive shift that takes place. 

Spirit has found its home and looking back it understands that it really never left its home.  While others have to take this on faith the one who has experienced spirit by  spirit knows it absolutely; yes it even transcends faith.

The result of this gnosis is to throw light on the amazingly unreal status of human beings and maybe to help them escape from the seemingly endless cycles of suffering.  Mankind in its present state of ignorance still does not understand how the passing of one life connects with the cells of the next life, only to become another life subject to suffering.

The great wisdom gained from gnosis has been repeatedly under attack throughout history.  Incredibly, it is knowledge that is even considered dangerous for the religious and for the political authorities.  This type of knowledge cannot be allowed to spread.  But it does, especially in Buddhism and Vedanta.

The real global catastrophe

A nefarious group of people believe the best way to unite mankind is by inventing a new enemy such as climate change.  Instead of our star, the Sun, being responsible for climate changes or the changing orbit of the Earth around our star, etc., we will become our own enemy! 

The source of climate change will be blamed exclusively on human agency!

"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill” (The First Global Revolution, 1991).

Does that make any sense?  Hardly.  It is still a divide and conquer political manipulation.  First, get the public to believe in the coming of some great global catastrophe.  Then sell them on the solution.  Cut back on the use of petroleum which causes carbon dioxide to accumulate in the upper atmosphere creating a greenhouse like effect.  This solution of course is all wrong.

In the meantime, humanity has been divided not unified.  There are those who believe the hype and nonsense and those who say, wait a minute none of this is true. 

We are at a very low level of carbon dioxide the way it is.  Carbon dioxide is plant food.  It is not poison  The average for the last 600 million years has been 2600 ppm not 400 ppm.  No wonder it takes a long time for vegetation to grow and our forests to regenerate.

Beware of any Buddhist temples or organizations that tries to sell climate change or some other coming global catastrophe.  The biggest catastrophe is to be caught up in the cycles of rebirth (saṃsāra) never to realize the unconditioned.

“Monks, the bones of a single person, running on and wandering in this journey of rebirths for an eon, would make a heap of bones, a pile of bones as large as this Vepulla Mountain if there were someone to collect them and the collections were not destroyed” (Iti 24).

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).

At the end of the conditioned

War is one of life's reminders of our finitude and eventually our suffering and death.  Peace then is a time not to indulge our sensory pleasures but to successfully escape from life’s coming conflicts.  (By escape I'm alluding to the word transcend.)

To stop this eventual doom we cannot afford live in a utopian fantasyland while the hard evidence shows plainly that we are in deep doo-doo. 

But life is a work (or rather an escape) in progress.  The work is truly complete when we achieve its goal which is nirvana:  a return to life’s very source which is unconditioned. 

Right now, we humans can only imagine what life is about.  Presently, it seems to be about preserving our memories in this particular lifespan.  But they are only conditioned.  But T.S. Elliot said it better with these few lines.

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

Where conditionality began for us is not in anything conditioned or even imaginable.  Certainly not in a conditioned womb.  The senses, including the sixth sense or mentation/manas, which make up our conditioned body, serve to localize spirit into a finite, conditioned system.  A mere representation.

And so it follows that what we perceive from this localized position is not true reality or even our true self.  It is a false self or anātmam which is suffering (S. iii. 22) according to the Buddha.