The Zennist

No survival after death?

In Buddhism, our consciousness (vijñāna) with the body’s death doesn't die.  It can adapt itself, if fertilization is successful, to a new embryo and with it a new carnal existence.  Science teaches us that DNA is a fractal antenna.  In this regard, it is certainly something for the after-death consciousness “signal” to latch onto and download itself into another embryo.

This process also necessitates an intervening period called antara or in Tibetan bardo by which the adaptation can take place.  This is where karma comes into the picture.  It is a latent tendency to follow the previous life and further its aims.  This entire process is what in Buddhism is called rebirth and samsara.  It is also a kind of intense simulation game from which there is no apparent escape.

With modern Buddhism's leaning towards materialism including the belief that there is no survival after death, the idea that consciousness doesn't die and is the transmigrant from one life to the next is almost heresy to its ears.  Nevertheless, this is a stubborn fact that modern Buddhism cannot erase.  The return to the nescience or avidya of the womb is almost a guarantee.  Furthermore, we are reminded of it every day when we feel the urge to fall asleep. 

Modern Buddhism certainly does not have the big picture of Buddhism nor, for that matter, does modern man understand the world as it should be understood.  Man's exit strategy can only hope for annihilation when death approaches.  But this is just a wish to erase the memory of one's life without removing the drives and impulses to further the previous life's aims.

The great magic trick

The typical human being interfaces with an illusory world through an illusory body.  In other words, the primary has become more or less attached to the secondary (i.e., illusion) so that it never seems fulfilled.  Yet, the mere fact of illusion signals it's very transcendence which in our ignorance we are unaware of.

This unawareness leads to suffering.  The pursuit of life then begins to be a kind of unconscious wish to be free from illusion yet being, at the same time, mesmerized by illusions like children in a toy store.  This is because appearance, i.e., illusions seem real.

This is where the mystic or a muni (मुनि) like Siddhartha steps onto the stage.  Siddhartha awakened to the truth of the transcendent rather than analyzing illusions (what has been transcended) for clues as to ultimate reality.  But there is no truth in the illusory which is completely void, hollow, and insubstantial.

To reach the awakened state (buddhatā) the adept must, however, be freed from that which receives (the perceiver) as much as from that which can be perceived, that is to say, from the subject as well as from the object of perception (both are illusory). 

The most troubling illusion for mankind is consciousness which in Sanskrit is vijñāna meaning, literally, in two parts knowing.  This is evident in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra.

“My Nirvana has nothing to do with Substance (bhāva), nor with Action (kṛiyā), nor with Appearance (lakṣaṇa). With the cessation of the Vijñāna which is caused by discrimination, there is my cessation [i.e., Nirvana].”

Once consciousness has been transcended in which the absolute suddenly reveals itself to the amazement of the adept (yes, it was always there) it becomes apparent to the adept how the magic trick is performed whereas the worlding is continually baffled by the trick due to vijñāna.

To this transcendent place

Buddhism teaches a place where the power of our human imagination (G., Einbildungskraft) can’t go:  a clear light that reveals itself and what it transcends.  This imagination, I hasten to add, includes our intellect with all of its speculations. 

Whatever we say about Buddhism it can only point in the direction of this ‘place’ it cannot reveal it or show it to us.  We must uncover it our self.  At the same time it is always revealing itself to itself which is what the ātman or Buddha nature is about; perhaps more importantly, it also reveals what it transcends.  This is the very world in which we have been immersed since birth.

When we awaken to this transcendent place we will know for the first time that the clear light, in fact, reveals itself to itself and illuminates perfectly what it transcends.

I hasten to add why awareness is so important in the practice of Buddhism.  Without realizing it we are being aware of the already transcended.  Our fullest awareness is the acknowledgment of the transcended.  What we have surpassed.

From this awareness the adept moves towards direct convergence (samādhi) with the transcendent itself by which transcendence of the human being becomes attainable.

This is exemplified in the meditation described in the Ānāpānasati Sutta where awareness is entirely before the in & out breath. The adept is transcending the breath by direct awareness (sati) of it.

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.

Living in an unfiltered world

We carry around many brain filters. They are capable of letting in certain ideas more freely than others.  In the digital world filters can block access to certain online materials. Seeing the world without filters is almost impossible.

This might be the reason why LSD-25 was so popular during the 1960s.  We hoped to see the world without filters maybe to see it with child-like eyes.  But there were still filters left in our brain.  And we could even add more filters later on in life.

In Buddhism and especially Zen, the filter problem is a big deal because when we enter the temple, so to speak, our entire brain is somewhat over-filtered.  Much of it works against the context of Buddhism but includes, nevertheless, our expectations of what Buddhism is about in our filtered world. 

This condition in the long run only helps with our gradual absorption into the world of appearances which, naturally, runs counter to Buddhism.

This all comes down to the question of how do we see true reality minus the filters?  Even using our imagination we are presented with the problem of filtering and it's a deep problem.  It seems to me that in the beginning we have to bring up filters but then see through them. This is not as easy as it looks.

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.

 

Lost in appearances, looking in the wrong direction

We could call the Buddha the conqueror of appearances or the same, illusion.  His triumph was to overcome the human belief that our world is real when in fact it is unreal and painful.  We might even call our world a high definition illusion. 

Maybe the pixels in our illusory world that make it appear are, precisely, the smallest composition or combination possible which is a dyad (a unit = “as if” one).  This in Buddhism is vijñāna.

While the ‘I’ conceit is the first to arise in the mind of the seeker it is already combined into a unit.  There is an implicit dyad-ness in this unit.  When the inquiry “Who am I?” is pursued we can’t get beyond this dyadic condition.  Even being in the moment or in the here and now is this implicit unit but one dyadic, nevertheless.

We have reached, let us say, the minimal unit of appearance or the same a pixel.  In no way have we transcended it.  Here begins the so-called spiritual journey of the seeker.

With regard to all appearances whether outside of this body of flesh or inside of it, according to the Buddha, all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self or ātman.  So we might ask, “Who then am I?”  To find the right answer to this question is the most subtle journey of all.

Whether we call it nirvana, satori, or kenshō it means the same thing, we have arrived at the transcendent or tathatā.  I should add that this arrival cannot be shared with others least of all by language.  Language, we could say, is directional.  It cannot mysteriously produce the object of our search or transport us to the revelation of our Buddha-nature.  Our true nature is always here but we are always looking in the wrong direction.

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.

 

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).

 

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).