When the world suddenly drops, and emptiness stretches out before a you that isn’t there. And all that you are, somehow, aware of is a coursing, incredibly omnipresent, charged and sparkling tumult. Then any previously held certainties about “permanence” quickly become irrelevant.
“Unless you realize substratum, one can't see oneself in everything and everything in oneself.”
To see oneself in everything is not the path of Buddha. To see everything in oneself is not the path of Buddha. To do such things might be an interesting adventure, but in Buddhism we practice the middle way; (not the integrate everything into one-grand-unity way).
This way is about seeing “that which is”, not as the self, but as “that which is”; about seeing all, not as self, but as all; about knowing self, not as a thing, no-thing, all, beyond all, other, personality great or small; nor about seeing self as none of those. And, instead about knowing self as just what it is itself, free from those measures and devices, ways and methods, extremes of this, that, or all-encompassment, or beyond.
Because if one sees self as other, they have lost it; if one sees self as no self, they have lost it, if one sees self as all, they have lost it; if one sees self as beyond, one has lost it.
“There is no self sustaining individual self, there is only the one immutable Self of all which is only apparently manifest as the inter-relations of causes and effects, and then again, there is no immutable essential Self of all, because there is no all. However, without a Self of the all, how can one see the union between I and other.”
This is not the Buddha path. Because Buddha does not teach that self is merely a manifestation of inter-relations of causes and effects. Nor does Buddha teach that self is “only the one immutable Self of all”. The Buddha path is not about seeing a union between I and other.
"The idea indeed is to refute oneself as a self at all. Then one truly knows the Self as the no-self."
This may be a common misunderstanding about Buddhism. But, to refute the self would be denial of self, not realization of self.
Bodhimind Institute has begun a new blog, a video blog at http://yangtaijiquan.blogspot.com
A demonstration of Yang Family Hidden Tradition Tai Chi Chuan.
These are the forms of Tai Chi Chuan as developed by Yang Luchan (1799-1872). This style is referred to as the Hidden Tradition because it is the version of Tai Chi Chuan that was taught only to family members. Thanks to Wang Yen-nien this form is finally available to the public. The form demonstrated is the style as taught by Tsuei Wei.
We will continue to add posts to our blog here as time permits.
Thanks to everyone for their support.
Bodhimind Institute blog will be on vacation until mid January. Thank you for your support.
It is important to remember that this phenomenal world is the appearance of a reality that we can never quite grasp. As humans we need to live with distinctions to bring order to otherwise chaotic lives. So we personalize the concept of “mind” and attempt to frame it within our conceptual boundaries/notions. In other fields of participation in this cosmic game we call life, quite foreign modes of activity might be the order of the day. Activity that we would call mental. In the case of plant life, what might be appearing in the phenomenal world may just be the surface appearance, like seaweed appearing on the top of the ocean. While a deeper reality of the host may hold the greater part of its wisdom and knowledge.
I remember a story I heard once about highly evolved spiritual beings who were well past the need of human manifestation. But occasionally they wished to take a vacation from their exalted realms and so they would take on a life as a tree. This wasn’t your garden-variety street tree, but perhaps a hundred year plus type of tree. No wonder that some ancient trees were thought to be sacred. The columns in temples of ancient Greece and Egypt were stylized trees, and the first places where rites were carried out were in groves of scared trees.
I think that the human mind is a good development of the intellectual thinking mind. But beyond this one type of mind manifestation it would not surprise me to find many more possible verities.
On a more personal note, I find the common philosophical approach to the reality of the physical world to be at variance with what my own experience has indicated to me. In other words the philosophy that there is this one great solid physical world that is the reality our self is experiencing is rather simplistic and stifled.
My own experience has shown “me” that this so-called physical world is more like a projection that each person is making for themselves (a cooperative endeavor undertaken by all the participants “here”). Each of us projects for ourselves our own world, along with a body of senses to perceive this data, which we then earnestly take to be a solid physical world. And the relevant data is shared by all (“intuitively”) so that each of our versions of the projection agrees with another. The projections have no more actuality than a movie projected at the cinema.
The personality projecting this environment is far greater than the ego, which it develops within the projection as a “version” of itself in the physical embodiment. Ergo: since I do not believe that it is the physical body which “has the mind”, but the greater “mind” which has the physical body; then it is not quite correct to say that plants have a mind, because it is the greater reality manifesting itself as a plant.
However, the plant lacks the physical envelop which focuses the functions of the mind into an easily recognized form. And, as to whether this greater reality has what we could call mind, it is in this greater reality that that, which we would call the mind of the plant, has its abode.
All this should be taken in the context that I am not implying that these so called greater personalities are of the nature of permanent eternal souls. And please bear in mind that this is just a brief thumbnail sketch of what is taking place.
I would not be surprised if most of this sketch does not agree with accepted Buddhist philosophy. And it is not my purpose to convince anyone that my findings are the truth since I am far more interested in seeing others discover the truth for themselves.
How to do Kinhin:
1. watch the breath.
2. put out one foot, let the heal lightly touch the ground.
3. exhale, shift the body’s weight gently onto the forward foot.
4. eyes gaze softly downward. Not looking at the floor, just relaxed and down.
5. relax, feel the weight of the body as you move, feel the floor beneath your feet, your torso held erect, shoulders relaxed: these are just momentary sensations, don’t linger with the mind upon them.
6. aware of breath, inhale. Breath gently, from the lower belly.
7. feel the trailing foot lift off the floor behind you. The toes giving a last goodbye to the floor, and then it is momentarily free.
8. the trailing leg naturally comes forward, as balance surrenders onto itself.
9. let the heal gently touch the floor a little ahead of you. A half a step ahead is not too little.
10. exhale.
11. hear the creaking of the floorboards, the shift of garments, the roar of a passing car on the street, the bark of a dog.
12. momentary sensations, , shift the weight of the body forward onto the lead foot gently.
13. repeat as necessary.
"Conditioned by attachment to duality as reality, action takes place. This is mind. A contracted form of Consciousness. So, though mind seems to be contracted, and locatable to an individual, it is still nothing but the omnipresent consciousness, it's true nature infinite to multiple finites appearing within the infinite… … Like water drops in the ocean."
Apparently in this system of beliefs, , one is unable to ever free themselves from bondage to this “omnipresent consciousness”. This is in contradiction to the Buddha’s teaching that liberation from such attachments is possible.
These ideas, from several thousand years ago, were not for realizing liberation, but were for union with a divine source of life, from which all was thought to have sprung. Obviously Buddhism pulled the rug out from under that conceptual framework then, and it continues to do so today. 
"What is abrasive is that my posts challenge comfort zones, that is all. They challenge conditioning and attachment to limitation. So yes, there is apparent conflict. There are many who see what I write and understand it, and in fact are inspired."
Oh dear, obviously some have no problem giving themselves a high-five for an achievement which is entirely in their own imagination.
The truth is this: Yes, some people do have the views that others profess. However, the reason there are responses to the brandishment of these views is to help people learn what Buddhism is and is not about.
Buddhism is not one of these “make it up as you go along” religions. If people want to follow the practices that others preach, as far as I’m concerned, they are welcome to. Go for it. But it won’t be Buddhism, at least not as it is found in so many of the Buddhist traditions.
To credit oneself with pushing people’s buttons seems quite a conceit, but it goes well with an attitude of superiority, if that is what those are trying to cultivate.
Back in the early 90’s, I was on a rather tight budget. I kept my weekly expenses for dinners to $15.00 a week with the following recipe.
$15./week soup:
Go to the produce section of the local grocery store. Buy as many different vegetables as you can. My typical grocery bag would include all of the following:
1 lb dried lintels
1+ lb dried beans (black or red work well)
6-8 medium sized potatoes
1 medium sized acorn squash
3 good-sized rutabagas
1-2 turnips
1 med diakon radish
10 medium sized onions
1 large bunch celery
1 large bunch broccoli
1 small head cauliflower (if reasonably priced)
2 ears corn
1 medium eggplant
1 red/green pepper
1 large hand-full green beans
1 hand-full snap peas
4 large zucchini
2 crock neck squash
2 lbs white mushrooms
1 bunch kale (Red Kale if available)
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch chard or mustard greens
3 lbs tomatoes
Bring water to a boil in a very large soup pot/ stockpot
Add lintels and beans.
While those cook, chop and add to the pot the vegetables in the order they appear on this list.
Stir frequently.
By the time you finish chopping and adding the last of the vegetables, the beans will be tender.
After everything is added, let the pot come to a boil, then let it cool a bit.
Refrigerate the whole pot, or place the soup into smaller containers and refrigerate them.
As the week goes by, you can take a bit of this soup, put it into a small pot with some water and a bit of crumbled tofu and some crumbled noodles. Reheat, salt and pepper to taste and serve.
Now that it’s a few years later, the cost of these ingredients may have gone up somewhat. But it’s still an inexpensive wholesome meal.
Obviously leisure is boring, however I think it is that people are trying to find meaning in their lives.
Since they have been “sold” on the idea that importance comes with having fashion, celebrity, and possessions, they use those means to try to fill the gaping hole that the seeming worthlessness of their lives holds.
Thus we have that mantra: more, more, more.
Conversely, when one looks into the heart of one’s life, we find that real fulfillment comes with honoring, nurturing, and witnessing.
And so we have moments of peace, release, and knowing.
The difference that is contemplated amongst the different religions on the time/space dimension is without the pain that uniformity brings. Within these differences are honored not one truth but many. When they do not point to the same ending then there is truth. If they all say the same thing, then there is lost the abundance of the truth.
If all is the same, then where does truth lie?
There is no truth when all truths are the same.
There is that which reveals.
And, to be not as one,
There are those ways which bring open the beauty of nothing.
This is the path of many truths,
Not the path of one highest knowledge or experience.
Then, in those many differences, which are illuminating,
There is the known.
When all is asunder, all is then known unencumbered in this the spacious.
The differences in religions are fundamental and profound
And so there is emptiness. 
I would like to try to elucidate the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism, which I very briefly touched upon earlier. First off, I should say that I am very happy for those of you who have had such deep meditations into ultimate Thusness. However, you have not been the only ones who has realized Thusness with deep and penetrating insight. It is from my own insight of Thusness, through my own realizations that I come to write this.
My insight into thusness has shown me that it is unknowable, empty, that which is beyond definition. And while I do not care for the term “consciousness”, I do acknowledge that “awareness” (or that which we would take to be such) is present.
And I have found, that if one looks deep into the constitution of personality (specifically one’s own personality), one does find “awareness” present at its most basic level. I have seen this: awarenesses aware of awarenesses, and that which is beyond awarenesses. And, this is at the very depths of ones personality.
And, free from predetermined conceptualizations, in deepest insight of this most basic “level” of personality, I have realized that as awarenesses are aware of awarenesses, some awarenesses harmonize with other awarenesses. And, in a manner, that harmonizing gives rise to a sort of association amongst them.
However, since all is interconnected to everything, awarenesses are “continuously” aware of further awarenesses. They are in a dynamic process, always connecting with more awarenesses, as awareness leads to more awareness. (Their “connections” are also unlimited, because there is no end to awareness being further and further aware.)
This association, which has emerged as the harmony developing amongst awarenesses, is also dynamic and unlimited. Here again, since all is interconnected to everything, and awareness is “continuously” aware of further awarenesses, the association is always changing as awareness leads to more awareness. (And, it too is unlimited, because there is no end to awareness being further and further aware.)
This association is not the same as the awarenesses from which it springs. And, it is not independent from those awarenesses, because it relies on those awarenesses as its innermost beingness. And, this association is not separate from the awarenesses, for the same reasons.
This association, or harmony, can grow and develop into more complex associations. And with the appropriate complexity, this association can become what we would call a human being. And yet, at its bases it is still the interacting awarenesses from which the harmony of association has emerged. And so, personality is also dynamic and unlimited.
In some ways, I would say that the association that springs from these awarenesses interacting is like a pattern. It can then be recognized. And, because this association is made of awareness, it can be aware of the association, itself.
So, present are both the underlying awarenesses (that are aware of awarenesses), and the association that arose (amongst these awarenesses). So then, where does the true self of the human personality lie?
The true self is not the underlying awarenesses. While the personality has arisen as an association of them, it is not the same as them. However, the true self is not that (arisen) association either.
The true self is actually the realization that occurs when the association, which is aware, realizes its own self. That realization is the true self, recognized in the harmonies of the association from which it has arisen. That realization continues as its own self-recognition. And, it is that self realization, self recognition, that is the true self.
That realization transcends the association itself, and yet it is not independent of it. And, while it is well beyond the underlying awarenesses, it is not disconnected from those same awarenesses. Still, because it is self-realized, it is not dependent upon the association either.
This true self is not established in any way, as it is beyond that which makes up the reality of either side of the one great truth. And yet this same self is not without the participation in either of these two realities, as it realizes itself in the context of the reality that it finds itself within.
It is easy to see that it is the underlying reality that gives rise to the associations that grow to make up that which we call samsara. And, while I have emphasized the awareness of the underlying truth, this is not to say that it is not empty. As for those who would like to call this underlying truth Brahman, or Big Kahuna, or great consciousness, etc, I have no problem with that.
But, I hope it is obvious from my exposition that Buddha nature, the middle way, is neither this underlying thusness, or that which arises from it, nor is it separate from the two. When the true self is realized, then it is realized as neither dependent upon either of these two “extremes”, nor separate from them. Thus self-identity is neither established as existent, as all is empty, nor as non-self, as it is evident.
And, this is where I find that the Buddha Way distinguishes itself from Hinduism. As some have pointed out, Hinduism is concerned with a path that leads to the realization of the one side, Brahman. While Buddhism, as I elaborate it here, is the middle way, where the truth of self-realization leads to refuge in neither one side nor the other; that which we call liberation.
"I was wondering. When you sit to go meditate...do you meditate on the idea of "I am a Buddhist meditating"? Or do you go and meditate...experience some selfless freedom...then come out and pick up the idea, "I was just meditating as a Buddhist experiencing a selfless niceness.?"
The way of Buddhism is not about finding a refuge in selflessness. The path of the Buddha’s truth is not about knowing selflessness, or selfness for that matter. If you are enjoying a selfless freedom and are happy there, that is fine with me. I don’t have a problem with that.
However in my own experience of the Buddha way, the truth is that to look for this or that is merely another refuge to fall into, rather than realize the truth of reality that is behind such misconceptions.
"But one must integrate totally that which is beyond form with form and go beyond both form and formless...seeing them as non-dual. In Hinduism...or the path of the Siddha's, liberation is not a formless realization. It's free from both form and formlessness but end's just like it does with Buddha's. Having a perfected realm to hang out in."
In Zen, we have a saying: Not two, not one, not zero.
Nirvana is not a perfected realm to hang out in. It is not a realm at all.
In the midst of your ramblings do you ever consider that the highest truth is not “Oneness” or “a mass of consciousness”, or that an understanding of Buddhism may not be what Buddhism is about? That Buddhism may in fact be quite different from Hinduism?
Yes, we can see some similarities between the two schools of thought, but in being blinded by one’s own projections one does not see that their distinctions are miles apart in both their fundamental pathways and destinations.
The practice of Buddhism is not the same as the practices of Hinduism, though some may care to think so. The practices of Hinduism are to know the highest truth and in that knowing the devotee then realizes his oneness with the highest truth.
While in the practice of Buddhism the practitioner does not realize his oneness with some “super truth”, but rather lives the highest truth in the life one is engaged in. One is a spiritual destination and the other is a spiritual life.
And while the great Hindu teachers may encourage their disciples to live their physical lives, the truth is that their focus of salvation is upon realizing union with highest truth. These differences make the two systems irrevocably dissimilar in both content and function.
The truth of Buddhism is, in practice, not about ending in some “cosmic oneness”, as you call it. Without knowing this truth you will forever be lost in the depths of trying to join with what you think of as absolute truth, without the advantage of the knowledge of life.
Lost in this absolute oneness, you will never gain your freedom from its depths, as you will not be able to know the way it is without its timelessness. This is why the two paths are fundamentally different and why their goals will never overlap, but be forever dissimilar. Why one is about liberation, while the other is about union.
Likewise, the supreme Reality, which is One,
Appears to be two.
Through Her,
The absolute Void became the primal Person;
And She derived Her existence from Her Lord.
Shiva formed His beloved Himself;
And without Her presence,
No person exists.
There is something missing in this poem. The thing that Buddhism emphasizes is not the no self, nor the self. This poem has nothing of this transcendence: First there is the supreme being, and now we have the no person.
When we look at the implications of these statements, then we see the nature of the two systems. This poem is about “knowing”, this is true, but it does not bring the fullness of the implications of what this means to beinghood.
First we have formless, and no person, then absolute void. But again, there is the shifting to one side and then the other. But, neither side will contain the truth. This is what is lacking.
I suppose that we could pretend, that the truth does not require this examination of selfhood from the implications of dependent origination. Or, that somehow these implications are visible within the words of this poem. But, that would be a fair amount of pretending, which I find unwarranted as this poem stands.
When you begin to see beyond the limitations of an experience of the absolute truth, into what its meaning and implications are toward daily living, then perhaps you will begin to understand the inner depth of the meaning to which to Buddha address himself.
