The Direction of One's Course

In my humble opinion, the ego does not need to be eliminated.

Buddha’s Path is a way of living within the “context” of what is happening, it is not intended to be an escape from what is going on.

To live in the context of a human life does not require the elimination of the ego. However, what is actualized, when living the Buddha Way, is the “transformation” of the ego so that it is incorporated into one’s daily life in a balanced role.

In this balanced role, the ego is like a tool that the self uses to realize the currents and eddies of life as a reasonable whole. It has its appropriate and necessary place in functioning within the whole of the self that is living its human life.

Just as on a ship, it is the navigator that informs where the ship is and where it is going, but it is the captain that chooses the course. So it is that in living the Buddha Way, it is the ego that aids us in the process of living, but it must be balanced with the awareness of the “whole” true self. The ego is like the book that you are reading, but it is you that chooses which book to open.

An ego in balance, I have found, is silent in its work. When the self-view of one’s identity does not depend upon the ego (but instead “identifies” with that which it is aware of the true self), the ego is seen as the facilitator of the realization of the fabric of life that one is enmeshed in, rather than the leash around the neck that leads you from one sensory experience to another.

Rainforest

Right now you are having trouble understanding this material because perhaps, all your life you have been taught only one possible explanation of what the self is. I want to applaud your efforts now to try to learn a new understanding. I realize that this is not easy and you have come up with some good questions.

Let me use this analogy to try to paint an alternative picture for you: you probably know what a rainforest is. You can look on a map and see the location of a rainforest in some tropical local if you wish to. But what is a rain forest? Yes, for literary convenience we have a definition of what a rain forest is, but this doesn’t truly explain it.

If you look into the rain forest you will find an almost infinite amount of life there. Not just an incredible number of plants and animals each contributing their parts to the “creation” and maintenance of the rainforest, but also microscopic life and climatic elements each playing their specialized role that makes that forest a living thing.

The snake in the forest can choose to chase the mouse or the hair when it is confronted with the possibility of having either one for its dinner. And the parrot can choose to build its nest in one tree instead of another. So we know that freedom for choice exists in this forest.

If we try to actually define what this forest is, however, the task would impossible. To try to generate an inventory and categorization of all the different species within that forest that make it up; to quantify their populations; to identify all the different microorganisms; to understand how changes in birth and death and evolution would affect this vast catalog of data; all this would be an impossibility. Our definition would have to be reworked moment to moment. It could not be static, but an ever-changing system.

And yet the rainforest does exist. Generally speaking, its borders can be identified and an approximation of its size estimated fairly well. And if you were to go into this tropical rainforest, you would find that it has a personality different from a forest of redwoods in northern California or from the Black Forest in Germany.

With this analogy I have been trying to show you an example of a system, a living system, which is a conglomeration of many constantly changing elements, which exhibits freedom to choose when the opportunity for choice arises. A system whose very existence depends on the reality that it is ever-changing, for it is the activity within it (and outside it) that keeps it going.

Nevertheless, if we were to look at what is deep inside the plants and rocks and living creatures we would find the same game going on within each of them. They are all composed of matter, atoms made up of charges of energy rotating around other charges of energy. And incidentally these bits of energy are not solid objects either. In other words, each atom has a lot of emptiness within it.

A Sacred Forest

The moment that you quit your Zen practice was the moment when you truly began your Zen practice. It took quite a while for you to get around to it, I know it must seem. But then, all things come into fruition in their own time. And yours is now. You cannot accept or reject the truth, for you are already in its center of actualization.

Now that you have realized that there is nothing to gain, as well as nothing to lose, the inner truth that consumes your presence has, at last, found the awareness of its thusness that you have so long sought.

If you choose now to call it Bobo (or Frankenstein for that matter), it really makes no difference to anyone else. With your awareness, this knowing remains present. Just as it already dwells in the now of which it is becoming.

The truth is that since you never left the “primal state”, you had to learn to let go of searching for it to notice its presence in your life.

Pointing to the Heart

Only you can fill that hole in your heart. And that is what you’ve come here to do: to learn how to fill that hole. And you can only do it through love. Not love from another, but from the love that you attend to in your living.

If you live within the way that seems like the path of your heart, then the revelations that come with living that path bring to one’s heart the fullness of its own presence, and its deepest meaning and joy.

That is why there is a hole there, to show you that you still need to attend to your heart’s life as the most vital thing in your current situation. And in that message, you can grow into the heart’s fullness and its fulfillment.

Vacation

The Bodhimind Institute blog will be on vacation for approximately 2 weeks.

Thank you to all of our readers for your continuing support of our blog.

A Draught of Home

To me, it seems as though you have some stereotypes about what Buddhists are suppose to act like: calm and serene. But to me, Buddhism is more about awareness and equanimity than it is about maintaining some plastic immobile front.

Awareness and equanimity are really some of the most valuable practices that a writer could have, I should think. You are engaged in hearing the stories of others. Whether we are engaged in the awareness of our own stories, as they play through our heads, or the awareness of the stories of others as they relate them to us, it is still awareness, it is still presence that we must bring to the moment.

And when hearing the stories of others, it is a writer who must hear them clearly, without judgment, honestly as they are told, caringly as we would listen to our own doubts and fears, and openly without turning away.

This is revelation, and to abide in its midst is transformative. If it seems that you are listening to someone else, try listening deeper. You might find it’s really your own self talking. Because, when you listen in that place that knows, you will realize that we are all wise and fools alike.

A Flight Upward

I understand, however pointing the finger of blame around doesn’t help the person who is suffering. If anything, it only increases their sense of quilt and throws up more defenses.

In Zen parlance, the way to deal with a situation would be to sit with it. Aware of it, feeling it, breathing, while the situation unfolds before the presence of one’s mind. Not analyzing it, or blaming oneself or others.

And yet, seeing where responsibilities lie reveals itself: Seeing responsibility and everything else involved unfold before one’s mind, breathing, and feeling all the anguish, reasons, fears, and doubts that weave through any life situation, and which have brought one to this point that one is at.

And doing this, silently, as a witness to one’s life path – inner and outer. This may seem to be a rather useless practice if one has already spent decades doing various Buddhist disciplines, but the situation of facing the reality of the moment never changes.

Again in Zen practice, this situation would rightly be a Koan. Unlike the “twinkies” that are suppose to be Koans, which are given out to Zen students nowadays, this situation would truly be what a great Koan is suppose to do: light a fire in you that will not die till you fully plumbs its truth; and puts a question in your throat that you can not spit out or swallow. This kind of practice is very difficult to do, takes a lot of dedication and years of gut wrenching self-facing.