O & C

Essentially, an essence is not essential to the essentiality of Bodhidharma’s essence.

When you know the essence of what I am saying, then you will know the true self.

If you know an essence, then you do not know the true self.

Ten for Ben

Thank you, for your interest in my work and wanting to hear more about it. Questions come very easily, but to answer them properly takes time and energy on my part; I will try to help as well as I can with my limited means.

These questions are good because they get right to the heart of the matter:

What am “I” truly; and, when “I” do realize this, will “I” be extinguished in the process, unable to tell one thing from another, or myself? Will there be anything left of “me”? Will there be a “me” of me left who will experience things, know things, have joys? Well the good news is yes! And, the bad news is yes!

If you think of the ecological system of say, a rainforest, you can use this as an analogy to begin to understand the self. In an ecological system each part plays a role in the system as a whole: the plants put out flowers which are pollinated by insects, then bear fruit which feed the small animals, who in their turn feed large animals, etc.

In a natural environment, every species is important to the workings of the system from the specialized bacteria to the types of plants and animals, from the soil content to the macroclimate. They all work together to form a whole living super-organism: a rainforest (for instance). Such systems are dynamic in that they allow for a certain amount of change: species populations might rise of fall; while others step in to fill the role those no longer play.

To begin to identify the self, you can recognize your likes and dislikes, your hopes and fears, your fallacies and achievements, your affiliations, heroes and demons. There is far more to you than the physical organism sitting on your meditation cushion. Your identity combines all of this myriad of details and many more into what you recognize as “myself”.

All of these many opinions, ideas, feelings, and longings work together in the identity of your personhood. Your particular combination is different from mine obviously, so you can’t confuse me as being the same as you. (In fact, taken as a whole, there is and could never be another combination of attributes the same as yours: you are unique!)

But, all of your attributes that I have mentioned do not exist in isolation from other things. You like green, and green is the color of leaves. Everything about you is connected in some way to everything else. And everything is connected together.

In fact because all of this is so connected, it is impossible to say exactly where you end and non-you begins. Perhaps we could say that you dislike purple; purple is definitely not you, it’s the opposite of the spectrum to you. But in reality while you love green, you also sort off like blue, and some blues are very purply in coloration; and they are ok with you too, so maybe you don’t dislike them as much as other purples. So, the line around your dislike of purple has slipped a little.

And, the system is dynamic: You like green and you like green leaves, but one day your treasured green leaves turn brown, and then you begin to like brown too. You have changed a little bit, and now have added an appreciation of brown to your identity. I hope you will forgive me for making this example so simple, but it helps to make this analogy more clear.

It is the path of the Buddha to know the true self, and in that knowing to live one’s life as best as one can. This is the path that you and I are on. In knowing this truth, there are understandings that the workings of the ignorant mind cannot comprehend. It is appropriate to leave these childhood understandings behind.

In the landscape of the Great Mind, previously held views and ideas take on new comprehensions. In this “new terrain”, the understandings that you are gifted with, will not always fit into the human realm of understandings very easily. Self is one of these concepts that both reveals and eludes. The problem is compounded by the propensity in this culture to view self as a thing, when really it is a knowing of the deepest dimensions, eminent and resiliently coalescent, of an individual self-revealing personality.

Able to realize its own eminent modality, gifts that realization with a kind of identity that is at once self sustaining and aware, and further organizing - in the conditions of absolute freedom and expression, and all knowing thusness.

In other words, within the greater and absolute ontology of its highest realizable, resplendently omniscient, ever self-actualizing and self-revealing, forever processional, supra-foundational whole truth.

It is in this knowing then, that our self is both revealed and reinitiated, remembered and awakened to its new reality of effervescent possibility and wondrously developing interest, prescient wisdom, joy and fecundity.

Six of Muluc

I know that I risk sounding stupid and overly romantic with what I have to say to you. But, I hope that you will take it in the spirit that it is one person’s opinion, and at least respect it to that degree.

I too, should mention at the outset that I have taken substances on more that one occasion, though not to the extent that some of my Buddhist brothers have. Mostly, these have included marijuana and LSD, with a bit of hashish and mescaline thrown in for good measure. And to be honest, I got tired of these types of things and stopped doing them quite some time ago.

I am not going to condemn their usage, or you, as some would. No, I am going to do something very sentimental and stupid sounding and tell you that these are, in fact, sacred implements. And I don’t mean just the few that I have named here, but most things of this ilk.

And no, they are certainly not going to bring you enlightenment. But they are of a nature that can shake up your ordinary everyday consciousness and show you, quite vividly, that there is more to life.

Your perceptions and awareness can increase and longstanding assumptions can be reevaluated in the light of a new perspective. In some cases, it can be like clearing your desktop and looking at things afresh, without the presumptions of the past.

Tools such as these need to be used under the guidance of an experienced teacher, and then you are most likely to gain the maximum benefit with the least amount of risk. However, their usefulness is quite limited, and once you have gotten the few benefits that they can offer, you will gain much more through other, perhaps more conventional, methods.

Of course, it is the prerogative of youth to be foolish. And a little experimentation is to be expected in life. However, there is a point where substances no longer help you reevaluate your life, they become your life. I certainly don’t mind when my non Buddhist friends light up (I don’t revile them with lectures about sin and redemption), but when the pipe comes around to me I just say, with complete conviction, “God, I am already so high from doing Zen”, and then pass it on. And they understand completely.

For Manik

I experienced emptiness for the first time a few months after I had turned 19 yo. I actually enjoyed having no-self. It felt unburdened and free. It was really very interesting and joyous. Having no-mind was also very cool.

One evening while in meditation, as my awareness of emptiness increased, I also became aware of something (not a thing, however) almost like energy with sparkling qualities, very active and potent, within my immediate “area” (or, what would have been in my immediate area if there had been a me and an area and a there). I didn’t fear this, although to be honest, I had no idea what was happening to me, and I don’t mean just in the literal sense. (I was just going forward with my practice; I had no ideas about enlightenment in mind or any intentions of trying to attain it.)

I did become concerned though, not because I feared this ever growing experience, in fact it was very intriguing and liberating, but about going further, least I leave the human realm and be unable to return (or, perhaps re-manifest would be a better term).

For sometime after that I was very hesitant to go very far into that Great Emptiness when I was practicing meditation. Not only afraid that I might be unable to return, but also concern that I didn’t know what “lie ahead”.

But, eventually, through continued and repeated practice, I was able to “venture in” slowly and cautiously, so that my concerns were quelled. Thereafter, I was able to experience and explore to my ability, without fear. And I found, dear Osel, that it is far more mysterious than you might think.

Dozen Ik

It’s ok to break these rules. You won’t necessarily have to get rid of your ego, or unlearn your story, or traverse unseen barriers before you can know the Truth.

These were just some of the conventions that were developed to help you to know the Way. Not as requirements that you must fulfill before you can know Enlightenment. You don't have to battle the lion at the foot of the mountain in order to climb it; the important thing is to climb the mountain.

When you learn the Truth, then you will learn the beauty and value of the ego, and your story, and the self. And they will be precious like fresh raindrops on morning grass.

And, in knowing Truth, all these "ego" things will work themselves into their proper place.

In a photograph, it is not the film or the paper that matters most: It is the light. That’s what carries the information. It merely uses the form, the convention, of those mediums to travel on. Taking away the film and the paper will not show you the source of the light. But without the light, the film and paper would be useless.

But, looking for truth is like pointing your camera at a beautiful object. And by focusing on truth, you then transcend the petty explicably knowing. Yet, in the inexplicable knowing of truth, you realize the way in its essential "form". And, ultimately each of us must craft our own way from the great beauty.

This is like driving a car: If you just stare at the speedometer and the mileage gauge all of the time, then you will know that you are going someplace, but you wont know where you are going. But, if you look at the road, then you can see where you are going, and you can glance at the speedometer and mileage when you need to see them.

X Ahau

I can understand how this can be confusing: You look into an empty jar, for instance, and see empty space. Then, perhaps, you think that you understand what emptiness is, and you try to intellectualize this understanding and apply it to the real world around you. Or, you might try to perceive the empty space in the environment the way you perceive it in the jar.

But the perception of true, resplendent emptiness is very different from what you see in that empty jar. The perception of emptiness, on the human scale of things, is much more visceral and tactile.

For instance, you hear the emptiness of the space around your body; you sense the emptiness within the body. You hear these as clearly and dynamically, as you would hear someone speaking, or hear any other sound.

And, when you hear sounds, you hear them traveling through space to reach your ears. You perceive them entering your ears; and, in some cases as with deep base sounds, echoing inside the inner ears within your head.

It is in this visceral experience of space that you hear sounds coming though space with an almost echoic quality as you hear them emitted from the sending object, and then travel through the emptiness of the space between you, and then reach your ears - where you hear your ears hear them (And, this is just in the context of sound, mentioned here as an example of what one of the senses would perceive).

This very vivid experience of space, again on the human scale, can perhaps be perceived a little bit by concentrating on it with your attention. But, if a human were to try to grasp and process all of this information in the rapidly dynamic time frame in which this is happening, it would forever be trying to catch up to the next “frame” of reality, in which the next set of realizations would already exist.

By the way, this human scale of the awareness of emptiness is just barely getting up to the doorway of experiencing the Great Emptiness of true Thusness.

The path to emptiness is through clarity. Trying to know emptiness by concentrating on emptiness is like trying to catch light with your hand. All you see is a reflection. Sure maybe it can be done, I won’t say that it can’t.

Zero Kab'an

You are beginning to experience the emptiness of your beingness. Because it is a breathless "state", your system is just beginning to adjust to the new situation. It is ok to breath intentionally, awakened beings do so anyway.

When you recalibrate your biological, emotional and mental functions to a "higher state", there can be some adjustments needed. Your system is forging new ground in its working relationship with life.

The old well-worn and comfortable methods (of breathing, for instance) no longer suit the new overall unity of self that you are initiating. Breathing forcefully may just be the temporary method that your system is using to sort of clear the decks and start over again with a new (perhaps less unconscious) way of breathing.

The feeling in the chest could just be some minor part of this overall readjustment, however it could also mean that you are now coming into awareness of greater outstanding issues that have been neglected in the past, or will no longer work in your new awareness.

These may need to be just experienced. And perhaps, if more psychological issues, (thoughts and feelings for instance), come into consciousness around these events, then let them flow, watching dispassionately their revelation. Let them work themselves out and they will learn a new place in the new situation you are initiating.

Kaban

Girlfriend, you have got to try luminous clarity. It’s hella awesome.

Once you are emptiness, if you can first check out what is going on in the immediate vicinity of your body (that is, where your body would be if you had a body, only then it is emptiness of course).

Well, I don’t want to spoil all of the fun that you’ll have in realizing all that there is to discover “there”, by telling you too much about it right now. But, I have to mention this really cool stuff:

When you have got the luminous clarity thing going pretty well, then try to check out what else is going on. (I kind of use the approach that what I am “seeing”, luminous clarity, are probably visual artifacts due to the conditioning of the human perception system, and that “something else” is probably truly present.)

Then, you can like open up your awareness to the presentness and try to perceive it as thusness more directly. Anyway like I say, check out what happens when you “see through” the luminous clarity to what’s really there. It’s killer! Perceive.

Etznab

After you’ve ridden the spiritual roller coaster, great enlightenment, understanding the deepest truths, commanding great powers. You may come back to the source of that which we value. A way of life beyond the illusion of achievements, based on the clarity of this very moment. Ourselves, existence, simply revealing itself, discovering itself, in the moment we find our self in.

Letting go of the illusions with which we comfort ourselves can be a frightening prospect. Facing ourselves, facing this moment (and our apparent flaws) and what appears to be our flaws, bewilderments and misgivings can be a daunting undertaking.

The certainty that illusions give us of knowing right and wrong, what to do, what is true can become a sand castle on the beach, crumbling when the greater dimensions of the self wash over our life. Why base your life on such edifices to begin with? The challenge of living in the unfathomable now seems not so chilling in comparison. And besides, the water taste so much sweeter here.

This moment is not something you can strive for – it is “something” you open yourself to. You come upon now as if it were a magical garden – not knowing how you got here – or really even how exactly it got here. But nevertheless comforted with the ever present miraculous – or so it seems – revelation of the existence we call now. This present even with its unpredictability and unknowns seems so peaceful so right.

Lamat

Of course it all began years before I met them. I guess you could say that it was a natural outgrowth of my Zen practice.

I could spend perhaps an hour mixing the color that I was going to paint with, to make it the perfect color. But it was slow meditative work, feeling with intensity the nuances of light, tone, and spirit; not just fussing and fidgeting, trying to make something right. And then, with just the right amount of medium mixed in, so that the paint was to the perfect body and depth, and carefully applied to just the right brush – not to little, nor too much – I would sit myself before the canvas and clear my mind of all thinking.

Sitting like this on the floor, I would remain as long as it was necessary. And, having already practiced meditation for almost 20 years by this time, I was quite accustomed to the process. Letting all verbal thinking, all conceptualizing, all a priori thoughts clear from my mind, my attention. I was crystallinely purely present.

Then, and only when there came, welled up from my pure being, the impetus to paint, would I release a stroke of the paintbrush upon the canvas. It flew like a samurai masters sword to the mark, effortlessly intentional, yet spontaneously determined. It was beautiful.

Only one thing bothered me. Clear my mind as I might, and it was very clear, always before I would release a stroke of the brush, there would come to my mind the hint of a thought. It was the thought of painting a stroke, or perhaps just of moving to make a stroke. It came suddenly, unpremeditated, and left with the activity of the stroke; the two were that infused. However, no matter how calm and composed I was, nor how clear my mind was, always just before the stroke, the merest shadow of an idea would come into my consciousness.

I became determined to paint completely spontaneously, without any concept in mind to influence my painter’s stroke. I began to probe for a way to get behind these impromptu thoughts. To get before the thought of creation, so that I could paint my paintings undeterminedly. Yet, always did these “thoughts” come to me. So I began to probe to where these thoughts were coming from, hoping to learn for to paint without them.

Ahaw

The Buddha’s message is clear, and it is underlying all that He taught:

That we are not separate from the Highest Truth. And, that it is possible and natural to live ones life in such a way as to honor and know this Highest Truth in one’s daily life.

(And while we may fix our attention, while in this sphere, on our pleasures or our horrors. And can, in fact, do so through incalculable eons. These neither can wrest us from our True Being, as they are of this Being in their own way.)

Therefore, we know the Great Beingness in ourselves and all that there is, for in that knowing emanates the Truth in our lives.