BLACK SUN RISING

Making the darkness conscious

By James Portocarrero
** Please take your time to read through each line of this book
deliberately, allow yourself to drift away into meditation when the
urge arises, and only read when you are calm and focused.. **
I pray to you, whom Majughosha with his sword empowered
And said, "Cut off the tongues of evil speech
That flicker like the jags of lightning in the gloom of false belief-
With reason's blade more keen than weapons of the gods!
Introduction/ Ch. 1
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do
anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their
own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures
of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
- Carl Jung

One day that distant childhood haze which caused you so much
pleasure, or pain, and all of the antecedent events which fill your
memory with meaning about you and your life will be
completely and utterly annihilated. Gone. Finished. Kaput. All of
your fears and hopes, dreams and nightmares, all of your great
accomplishments and colossal failures, all of them will be brought
to ruin, as you slip into the obscure blackness from whence you
came, all alone, with no one to accompany you on the journey of
your life.
Who are we? Where are we going? What are we doing?
What is life? What is reality? If we dont spend any time inquiring
about these fundamental questions of existence all we will end up
doing is burning out the candle of that existence and having it
utterly annihilated. Nothing will be left of us. We are nothing but
prisoners to our bodily desires for food, sex, sleep, et cetera, and
mostly live a life of obscurity spent cultivating these desires and
accumulating money to support the cultivation of these desires.
Even our higher yearning for achievement; family life, liberal arts,
fame and status; these are also phantasmal desires which are
fleeting and exist only in our minds and achieve no real merit or
lasting benefit for anybody except our own selves, nor do they
provide any stable or trustworthy fulfillment. For in the drop of a
hat, spouses may turn on one another and rip apart that family
life, fads in art could change, and fame and status could turn into
infamy and ostracization.
We live in a world which walks on a razors edge between
paradise and hell, white and black, and either one could turn into
the other at any given moment. At almost any time we could fall
into ruin when we least expect it; get bitten by a snake on
vacation or while hiking, done, over with. Why are we running
around every day acting as if our making it alive through the day is
something that is so sure? We are so hardwired and cemented
into our cultural and biological zeitgeist, that we dont even
notice these things. We walk about smelling the flowers, not
realizing that this flower, the smell, and my experience of myself
is all within, reflected in my own mind, and cant be experienced
outside of it in any way, it is an utter illusion performed very
cleverly by means of electrical signals transmitting information
into our brain. We just look at the flower, accept that that is the
flower, it exists really outside there as a set determinate thing,
and in no ways is my mind involved in the equation of what that
experience is like to me. As I begin to accept my own
presumptions as being the same as the actual thing which I
presume to be witnessing, we are not experiencing the actual
thing, but actually a simulacrum or a copy of the actual thing.
As time goes by, our simulacrum causes us to become blind to the
great majority of what is actually happening in reality within us
and around us. Some of us even begin to lose track of what is real
or what isnt, and become schizophrenic, or in lighter cases
egotistical maniacs, like politicians, for example, and these type of
people have the potential to seriously screw up the world for
those of us who are actually in tune with what is and isnt real and
a priority.
Instead of accepting these things as being inherently real and
existing forever, we need to be shaken awake to see that they are
NOT! Humanity are nothing but characters in a dream-like play,
but these actors are not aware that they are playing characters.
When this show is over, the person will not know his true self,
except that very temporary self which existed, and then perished
on the earth. It is a great tragedy, so many human beings are
living this dream-like actor existence, relishing in their role like a
fool who mistook their character for their self after the play is
over. They lust for more, and more, and then some more, never
tiring from accumulating materialistic toys which act only as an
extension of its egoic confusion and provide no real happiness or
bliss which is lasting. Even the ones who make it to the very top of
the pyramid of material success will come crashing down one day.
When a President of the United States is put into a box and
lowered into the ground, he leaves all of his acclaim and status
behind him with him. He can take any of his Presidential powers
or Secret Service with him into the afterlife. Likewise Joe Shmoe is
laid bare and not able to take with him any of the stuff that he
doesnt have in this life and certainly wont be having in the
hereafter. All of it is gone, you are removed of your corporeal
form, and, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, reduced to
the very subtle form which you experience in dreams. But even
that is not permanent, and if you have not cultivated your soul
above the body and mental reflection of the body there will be
nothing left for you, as you slowly start to slip into a very perilous,
and hellish indeed, psychological reality. The only option at that
time will be to give that form up and accept rebirth in a new form
based upon your karma (reincarnation is accepted in both Eastern
and Western traditions). Whether you end up as an animal, as a
god, as a netherworld creature, or another human being, you will
still be trapped in the cycle of the finite material existence, which
is born, lives, and dies. (The life of a god is even more depressing
when it ends as one could imagine!) Trapped in matter you will
wander on endlessly until you attain the means by which to snap
yourself out of your self-imposed dreamlike state.
Sadly, this is the state of every being which is born into this realm
of continuous flowing of birth and death, with the extremely rare
exception of those ones such as Jesus, Buddha, who come to us
from the abode of what Ibn al-Arabi calls The Real. Nearly 100%
of the life forms that we observe in this material world are
trapped in this self-imposed simulacrum existence of creation,
preservation, and destruction. From the lowest worm in the dung
pile to the highest king with all his pomp, all are nothing but
deluded souls wandering from dream to dream, completely
unaware of the fact that they are wandering or that they are
dreaming, but utterly lost to the wandering and the dreaming.
(Interestingly enough, from this angle, actual dreams can be seen
to give more insight into the real nature and meaning behind such
a persons existence then their real life!) All of them meet their
fate just like everyone else, none is spared from the gaping maw
of death, which swallows up gods and devours universes; so why
do we think that we are going to be any different?
By our logical deduction weve seen that inquiring about these
questions is more important and priceless than all of the trappings
of all the royalty on all the worlds in all the universes combined.
All of the priceless gems in the entire universe combined could
not equal the value of simply inquiring about the nature of reality,
and if we die without inquiring thusly, on a planet in which great
Masters of the Truth have appeared and made the path blazingly
obvious, we would have given up a tremendous opportunity for
gaining the most wonderful treasure that ever could be gained;
that which is transcendent to death, being unborn, which is not
limited by any object of the senses or encapsulated by any object
of the senses; existing outside of the capacity of any created thing
to totally encapsulate it of its own limited volition.


Ch. 2

The Roots of Suffering

Life in this world means to endure suffering. This neednt
be interpreted in a traditionally nihilistic sense, but there is no
escaping it; your body and therefore your comfort is not made to
last forever, your friends are not made to last forever, your wife
or husband is not made to last forever, all of the external effects
that you would label as your LIFE are not made to last forever,
up to and including the very planet that you are currently
occupying. None of it is made to last forever, so at some point you
will suffer the loss of that which you were attached to for your
well-being and sense of identity. There is no escaping this, no
matter which way that you look at it.
But this is not how we like to think of ourselves, we like to
think of our lives as existing forever. So we get really upset with
people when they betray our attachment to them and interrupt
our static image of how they should be behaving, and we lash out
violently at them to try to get them back in line. Likewise with
money, when farmers in India are unable to pay their debts, they
simply commit suicide. People cant handle the up and downs of
life when they are utterly attached to the ups and utterly averse
to the downs, and therefore all of the things in our life which
seem so stable and seem to comprise the everything of our
existence are actually only those things which cause our
continued delusion and wandering in the endless cycle of birth
and death.
Our transient life is comprised of nothing but that which
will one day be taken away, swallowed up by the great gaping
jaws of time. Death is closing in on all sides, circling us all like a
vulture, and yet we go on like a big dumb animal just trying to
make the best of things. Is it any wonder why our world is the
way it is? Full of people who care about nothing except satisfying
their every urge, about pillaging the planet until she is completely
drained of resources, about getting yours over the next guy?
That this way of behaving is destroying our environment alone
should be enough to shake us from our slumber to realize that we
are living an utterly self-destructive existence, both inside and
outside.
These effects of our ego have locked us into a death march
to hell, and the whole world is being destroyed because of it. If
you say that isnt the case, then youre happy to be one of the
lucky few who werent born into the third world. Even our
apparent advancement in the West is built on the backs of
exploiting others and is completely unsustainable as we are now
finding out. That is because no civilization is sustainable which is
based around the egos every whim; a complete attachment to
that which is impermanent. As long as we go on demanding to be
provided cheap consumer crap and endless streams of novel
garbage to fill our otherwise void-like existence, there will always
be equally endless streams of predatory merchants to feast like
sharks upon the bleeding carcasses of the consumers, and of the
planets resources. It will never end. Round and round she goes,
where she stops, nobody knows.
This life was not made to last forever, and as such we
should not act on the basis that we will be here forever. We
should live with how much we need, not more, not less, and stop
exploiting people and resources in the futile attachment to what
can never last. As long as we live in such a way that we believe
that our sense of self-identity and existence is permanent, we will
go on being a slave to the necessary involvement of that self-
identity in all of those apparently permanent activities which
mean so much to it. Again, please dont mistake this message for
being nihilistic, the point is that if you believe that this self-image
and life is permanent you are bound by the apparent realness of
that illusory mirage, which has practically already dissolved back
into the black abyss from whence it came. You lose completely
the connection with the true state of reality and become instead
absorbed into a false state of dreams. In this state your life
becomes more and more of a cramped and stuffy room, and you
try more and more novel ways of letting in air, only to become
disappointed when it seems like the more you try to let in the air,
the more stuffy that it gets inside the room. It seems at this state
that a lot of people develop mental diseases, addictions
psychological and physical, and a general discontentment with
their life and the way things are. They try to mask it in various
ways, and put on all sorts of various masks, but really inside they
are a stuffy room which just gets more and more cramped until
they become a dry cantankerous old man or woman, lashing out
at the drop of a hat and full of wrath.
Even though they invent all kinds of novel ways to bring joy
into their lives, or may occupy themselves with apparently
attractive types of lifestyles, all they are doing is chasing a carrot
on a stick which they can never catch up with. They accumulate
more and more karma, and through that karma arises more
karma, and continuously it goes on and on and on endlessly. They
can never reach the peaceful repose where the karma is dried up
called Nirvana. The attachment that we have to ourselves and our
image of reality (simulacrum), combined with the endless
reactions of karma arising from previous actions in this life and
before that, are like the man with a carrot on a stick attached to
his head. He tries more and more to get that carrot, but finds that
with every push the carrot pulls away from him, and with every
pull the carrot pushes away further. Hes chasing his own tail but
cant see it.
Attachment to our pleasures and aversion to what
displeases us is like the carrot on the stick which is hanging in
front of our heads. Its through these that poisons seep into our
mind and contaminate the purity of our innate nature with the
stain of that which is death and falsity. It is this which causes us to
fall into the trap of duality, caught in the net of delusion, the real
reality is covered by the dust of our own conceptual thinking. We
follow these conceptual patterns like well-beaten trails in a forest,
and so the only parts of the forest which we see are those parts
which we always see, and on and on this goes. Sometimes we get
the urge to go off onto an offshoot of the trail and explore some
new territory, but we always return to our well-beaten path. Over
time, it sucks us in, draws us in further and further into it with
magnetic draw, rendering us unconscious and under the firm
grasp of this dream-like film being played through our minds.
We completely lose the ability to actually be a real self; because
we have fully identified with that self which is completely
impermanent and cannot go on existing. The sooner that we let
that dead non-self be the dead non-self that it eternally is, the
sooner we can escape the limitations of being attached to our
conceptions of that self, and the sooner we can transcend those
conceptions and touch the true nature of what that self is made
of. This non-self certainly has came into existence at a certain
point, and will certainly go out of existence at a certain point.
Because we find that it is comprised of things which are only
finite, as such it must have come into existence at some point
from a previous series of causes and conditions. This is the only
explanation for something which comes into existence, because if
it comes into existence it cant come into existence from itself, as
it cant exist before it existed. Even if we consider previous lives,
still it makes no sense to say that we could have existed before we
existed; there is no end to the previous lives required to give birth
to more lives and more lives up until the life we are presently
living. Therefore, each and every one of these lives are
impermanent, phasing in and out like the cycles of the moon.
So what are we? If nothing about these lives lasts to identify
ourselves with them, this simply means that our self is not
identified by any one thing that we observe in our life. We are not
the eye, or the objects of the eye, not the ear or the objects of
sound, and so on with all of our senses, we are not thoughts, we
are not white or black or brown or purple, not the body, nor any
other apparition of the clear light of mind. We will cease chasing
our attachments to the pleasures and fleeing from that which we
are averse when we cease identifying with the non-existent
existent things which arise from that clear light of mind and start
identifying with that Source. We will find the deathless nature
which is being reflected in the various lives, but not touching any
particular life at all, just like the Sun shines on what is seen but is
not touched by it. This doesnt mean that we should ignore our
lives, just the opposite; we will cease limiting their potential when
we cease believing that they exist as things outside of that clear
mind, as substantially real in and of themselves, and defined by
our very limited conceptual thinking. Then we abide in the great
Nirvana, free from our limitations, experiencing reality in its
purity, navigating life and self with wisdom, reason, and
detachment instead of prejudice and ignorance which arise from
attachment to that unreal conceptual truth. Then when we see
something in ourselves or in the environment, we dont just
accept that it is what it appears to be at face value, but gain the
ability to discern illusion from the real, and perceive the true, real,
unborn nature within all things. Thus we see behind the
fragmented, illusion-like external nature of things into the
cohesive unity of conditions and causes which binds them
together at their core. We no longer experience ourselves and
one another as concretely separate and different things bumping
up against one another and making conflict, but rather everything
becomes part of a divine synthesis.
In this state we can abide within this clear light at the very center
of all things, the unborn nature, the Nirvana, and cut off delusions
from their very source, before they give rise to further karma
being generated. Thus we cut off the tie to the realm of
continuous flowing of birth and death at the root, and gain the
ability to use our mind as an extremely powerful friend, rather
than as the deadly foe that it had previously been. No more does
the mind generate attachments and aversions automatically and
unchecked, and become covered by previous attachments and
aversions, and then deluded by its own conceptualizing; after
Nirvana, ones mind no longer gives rise to such kind of
conceptual thinking unchecked. That is not to say that you
become some kind of lifeless zombie, exactly the opposite, the
lifeless zombie is one who cant see past what cannot and does
not exist, namely the idea of the self and the simulacrum. The
one whose mind has gone to Nirvana has been freed from seeing
things in the way that they are not, and therefore has found the
root of the way that things actually are. This is the beginning of
inquiring and finding the Way, and also finding your true Self,
deathless and free from delusion.
The Tao (The Way) is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
The Master stays behind;
that is why he is ahead.
He is detached from all things;
that is why he is one with them.
Because he has let go of himself,
he is perfectly fulfilled.

Chapter 3
At every turn of the road, we are confronted with an array of
dualistic choices. Whether we choose to indulge in copious
amounts of food five times a day, or whether we choose to fast
during the day, whether we choose to mock our friend when they
fall down, or whether we choose to help them get up, whether we
get lost in the simulacrum of the apparent reality of objects of our
senses, or whether we absorb ourselves in meditation and
overcome attachment to these objects; constantly we are
presented with this situation, this double-edged sword which cuts
through our bare nature and divides it into righteousness and
unrighteousness. The choice is ours whether we would respond
to the call of the soul to righteousness or the call of the ego to
unrighteousness. The wise are not troubled by this life which is
like walking on a razors edge, because by abiding in the pure
clear mind, and not in the conceptual simulacrum of our personal
pleasure and prejudice, we are free to act and respond
intelligently in a way which is not simply reacting unconsciously.
In this state we can carefully navigate the various dualities of life
in the way which is most helpful to us, and start to develop a
sense of of the drawbacks of existing as an unconscious vegetable.
That sense will guide us from the dying, transient, suffering,
nature of the dark polarity within us into the deathless, eternal,
blissful nature of the light polarity, and everything around us will
follow suit. Every experience and interaction will be changed from
a dull and dark affair to a magical touchstone which transmutes
dull and dark affairs into radiant enlightenment. Even people
around you who have no idea who you are will feel this
transmutation happening inside of them just from standing near
you, this is the actual power that we are dealing with, which is
infinitely within and around us all at all times.
In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
All of us have the experience of drawing this infinite power for
suffering from within us. Whenever we are deluded by our own
unreal prejudices and ignorance, we enter into a realm of unreal
emotions and feelings, which in turn tend to fuel and feed further
prejudices and ignorance. Where is all of this power coming from?
Certainly these conditions on our minds generated thusly stem
from a power which is dark, turbid, black, focused on death,
greed, envy, and all of those things which are the scourges of
human nature. These dark demons torment our souls with various
types of tortures, both in this life and the next, and seek to
completely overwhelm or mind and senses and deplete our
existence until it is completely drained of all life force; this is the
nature of death, the jungian anima.
But death is also liberation, and when our mind is grounded in its
own clear light rather than in conceptual dogmas of thought,
these effects of death can actually produce great transformative
changes to the positive, but only when we are unwaveringly
grounded in the truth and not the lie. The dark demons will be
seen and feared due to memories of previous suffering and death
inflicted by them; therefore these dark demons of the egoic non-
self become great allies on the path of transcending them. With
this in mind, there is nothing to fear from these dark demons,
because they only will serve to further your determination to stay
on the path when you remember firmly through experience the
suffering that they cause.
Not only do these poisons of the dark nature within us produce
meaningless suffering, which causes us endless torment for no
reason at all, other than ignorance, they strengthen the ignorant
reactions of the mindless simulacrum programming, and we
become further entrenched in self-delusion which veils the true
reality, and our own selves, from us. More and more we partake
of the nature of the world, and veil ourselves from ourselves with
the corruption of sin and excess. Our self-respect and self-worth
takes a back burner as we prostitute out our souls to the whore of
worldliness. From this angle, we are under control of the dark,
with brief moments of the light popping up as a kind of inverse
reactionary process whereby the overwhelming pointlessness of
our existence causes us to question it periodically. However even
though we might question this darkness from time to time (or we
may not!), we are so overcome by it that we very rarely make any
progress towards the actual goodness in ourselves and in reality.
We think that we are so in control of our lives, that we are living
such a personal existence which is of our own making, but this is
just our utter absorption into illusion and lies. In reality we are
being controlled by powerful forces of inversion and darkness,
forces which we are completely helpless to and which govern our
lives and ourselves with an iron fist and take no prisoners. We are
thinking that we exercise so much autonomy and independence,
when in actuality we cant bear the thought of being away from
the TV or our cell phones for half a second. We cant even sit in a
room by ourselves quietly for more than 10 minutes without
having a complete anxiety attack. We are utterly dependent on
satisfying the urges of our body and ego, addicted to chasing the
carrot that can never satiate the cravings we constantly feel to
reach out and touch life, to touch the Real. Only when we stop
reaching out for the real and realize the one doing the reaching is
actually being reached to by the Real itself from the other
direction, we will experience the inverse of the inverse,
everlasting life out of neverending death.
When we turn the tables on the apparent reality that we have
heretofore accepted as being an eternally existing static matrix, it
will become what it truly is, impermanent, dead, unreal. Once it
becomes like this, then it becomes permanent, alive, and real,
because these truths are unchanging. We experience reality then
as it is, impermanent, as well as the unchanging truth which
underlies it, deathless and unstained by the delusion of believing
our conceptual thinking to be ultimate. Rather than passing from
one conceptual fragmented dualistic mode to another, searching
for fulfillment, experiencing our life as a choppy series of messy
strewn together endeavors, we will experience life, reality, and
self as the perfect harmonious motion between all extremes. The
impermanent will be obvious to us, and we will not choose to
indulge in needless wastes of the peace and serene energy of our
innate clear mind and being. Dwelling yet not dwelling in the
deathless, we can perceive the impermanent and beyond the
impermanent, and therefore, perceiving both impermanent and
permanent side by side, we perceive that our nature is a middling
between all dualistic extremes which transcends and unifies them
all into itself.
With this universal skeleton key in hand, this universal unifying
harmony which underlies all of reality will be at your fingertips,
and not separate from your own nature. Freed from the trappings
of pleasure and pain, from fame and infamy, one abides within
and beyond them all and therefore neither within or beyond or
both or neither. We are free to express our individual qualities
which are good and blissful, and yet not be bound by
conceptualizing them in an objectified way; they exist as a
continuum, a motion, a process, a state, not an object. For weve
seen that objects cannot exist by creating itself from nothing, but
is generated through a process of interdependent conditions.
They cant exist before they exist, so therefore that which gives
rise to them is not other objects but a process which is deathless
and bornless and dwells within the unity of polarities.
Experiencing the deathless amidst the impermanent, one is
beyond the range of either of these, utterly transcendent. The
deathless nectar of the absolute reality is experienced in a non-
conceptual state which both unifies extremes and transcends
them. We are qualified by those unspeakable qualities which
dwell within the soul of man, in a way which is alive, not
conceptual or dead but fully living and synthesizing the whole of
the blissful enlightened nature into itself. This is experienced as
an expansion to wholeness, to totality, which becomes like a
blazing, superconscious light filling all of space. This light is alive
and flickering with luminous wisdom which stems from the pure
experience of reality as it actually is, rather than as the
fragmented conceptual thing that we had experienced before.
From this state we begin to discard our bad qualities which are
connected to desire for what is impermanent and unreal.
Gradually becoming aware of things as they are, one by one our
attachments to the side of nature which is affiliated with that
which is death and suffering begin to fade away, and yield to that
inverse of the inverse, that which is full of life and bliss, without
being attached to or conceptualizing that bliss in a dualistic way.
Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?
Pride gives way to humility, anger gives way to compassion, greed
to generosity, as we gain the clear light minds perspective of
duality and observe vividly the suffering that is caused from the
egos narrow conceptual reality, which was forged around objects
of death and which will resolve into objects of death. The clear
light of wisdom perceives the futility of such a narrow and
dogmatically conceptualized way of existence, sees how it merely
causes one to choke on ones own poisons, as it ruts around like a
wild hog or like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Utterly
pointless, nobody cares about the concerns of this childish ego
except its own self, and so it inflates itself to an apt level of
illusory self-importance to compensate for the fact that it has
absolutely no justification for going on like it does. Slowly, being
detached from the tantrum through knowledge of its unreality,
we take the energy away from this temper tantrum process and
make it go away completely, resolve it into the blissful clear peace
of the pure primordial mind beyond all dualities.
Gradually we gain a foothold on the soul from the ego, and slowly
the scales are tilted from the side of the dark over the light to the
side of the light over the dark. The dark side of our self and reality
becomes not a source of suffering but a source of bliss, by
illustrating to us the principles of conditional existence and
causing us to see the innate deathless nature which is their
opposite. Our resolve is only strengthened by our delusions at this
point, rather than the opposite. Each time we see darkness within
ourselves it tells us of another knot in our psyche which remains
to be untied, to leave the affinity with the eternal non-conceptual
deathless process-like totality as it is, and not bound to
conceptual perception. Gradually the dark qualities of our ego are
lessened, and the bright qualities of our soul are strengthened. At
this point one doesnt need to be told the difference between
right and wrong, one doesnt need to understand morality as a
conceptual thing, but one BECOMES morality itself, the pure
nature of the conscience as a living and breathing experience, not
just as a dead set of rules that nobody follows rotting away in a
book somewhere. You dont need to have anybody tell you what
is and isnt moral, but your moral compass will be of the very
nature of Wisdom and Justice as living realities.
Vision of inner primordial wisdom, which knows correctly and
knows completely, is pure.
Unbound by any conceptual morality whether dark or light, one
experiences naturally the pure essence of truth as morality, as a
living, flickering flame. This flame synthesizes all qualities of
brightness into itself, as these qualities are really expressions of
the nature of the flame of the luminous enlightened mind.
Grasping at these qualities conceptually right now will do nothing
for you except create delusion and arrogance, because, again, the
absolute reality is not conceptual, but living breathing Primordial
Wisdom-Awareness which must be gained through experience of
realization and not simply imitated. It cant be faked, fake it till
you make it, only works in the world of illusion and fakery, not in
our lucid luminous world of the Real. This can only be gained
when the grasping at what is not real is dried up, and one gathers
ones energy and consciousness into ones self to be used
creatively rather than expelling it externally on pursuits of the ego
to be used destructively.
Those are the two options on the table, to expend this life force
you were given destructively and pointlessly, or to use this life
constructively to conquer death and expand that life force
endlessly and infinitely. Both potentials for infinite decay and
infinite nourishment lie within us, like two streams veering apart
from one another around a common origin; the stream of mind.
Nowhere is not interpenetrated by these endless streams, and
they course through everywhere within and around us. When one
stream is rushing, the other is drying up, and while one is drying
up, the other is rushing. You cant have darkness and brightness
as equals occupying the same body. Where there is one, the other
is absent, and where there is the other, the one is absent. We are
really helpless in the matter of where we want to go, one of the
streams or the other is going to carry us away, our only real
choice is which of the streams we want to carry us away with it,
endless life or endless death. Gradually as we take energy away
from the stream of darkness it will naturally raise itself within the
stream of brightness, opening up a world of the clarity of the
perfection of wisdom.
Chapter 4
One who holds a concrete image of themselves based on
fragmented, finite, linear forms becomes themselves fragmented,
linear, finite, and engrossed in form. We become stubbornly set
in our ways, in order to deal with a shifting, fearful, and
impermanent world. Habits of dealing with this shifting reality
form which then also become a seemingly permanent part of a
fragmented, objectified identity, but which are really built on very
shaky foundations. Due to never having found the stable ground
of perceiving emptiness, this identity forged in a chaotic shifting
existence becomes a matrix for ourselves and we become
trapped in a twilight land of chasing mental ghosts, emotional
phantoms, and physical demons of desire, caught between yet
another balancing act of duality between the depths of utter ruin
and despair and the heights of temporary pleasure and synthetic
ego-joy. This Seal of Solomon of dark and light is itself exactly the
nature of the earth and the realm of continuous flowing of birth
and death. Underneath us (the dark pole of any spectrum) are
arrayed the armies of darkness, ripping and raving like the goat
Pan, smiting who they may, and sowing chaos all around. Above
us (the light pole of any spectrum) are the angels of light, each
endowed with a power of the Real, able to defeat the dark
demons, and grant blessings to the devout. Everywhere on all
sides, throughout every facet of our existence we can experience
these forces at play. This is why that the ancients conceived of the
absolute reality as a battle between forces of order and
righteousness, angels, gods, or devas, and forces of darkness and
disorder, demons, asuras, jinn.
This means that within the garden, on the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, is a poisoned apple, an apple called sin, which
taints the pristine purity of the natural garden, namely, our
luminous enlightened mind. By cultivating the dark stream of our
existence, namely those actions and thoughts which are tied to
matter and selfish desire, we get drawn into the death nature of
the dark and become consumed, by the only cause to suffering
that ever has or will exist, the ultimate force of decay, ignorance.
Under the sway of this force, our very life force is warped and
distorted and misshapen beyond recognition until it depletes
itself and reverts to a panic button of seeking a new body to be
born into. Even the good things which we seek out in life are
more often than not simply a lighter shade of this darkness, owing
to the fact that our dualistic conception of good always entails the
opposite of evil and bad. Seeking after pleasure, being averse to
pain, all the while dwelling in our false conception of ourselves,
we are bounced back and forth on the waves of hope and fear.
Filled with the hope of expectation for selfish pleasure gained
through the various idle trappings of this life, which are either
pursued in the name of necessity or amusement, we cast a
prejudiced gaze over the world and its peoples and behave just
like a tyrannical king or a warring barbarian. Or just like a young
child in a temper tantrum, our minds throw fits and cry and
complain in various sorts of ways when things are out of step with
our prejudiced dualistic desires, and become confounded by
further nescience and ignorance. Stomping our feet and lashing
out at whomever happens to be near us; we cant handle it when
our internal objectified prejudiced image of reality, or
simulacrum, is out of step with our expectations. Whether its
something that someone says about us that defies our egoic self-
image and elicits an arrogant and ridiculous response by us,
someone cutting in front of us and stealing our parking space, or
any number of effects which result from the cause of the
simulacrum, we will continue to exist in a persistent state of
dualistic tension between dark and light until the simulacrum is
transcended, and pure primordial awareness realized.
The problem with such a mind full of hope and fear, is, like that of
a toddler or adolescents mind, ignorance. As a child mistakes
every shadow in his room at night to be a monster lurking in the
corner somewhere about to get him; the nescient mind which
swivels powerfully on its axis of hope and fear mistakes what it
cant understand for a monster which is about to devour it. No
matter at which spectrum or situation we apply this truth, our
hopes and fears behave like scales obscuring our eyes with the
swinging weights of dualistic judgment. Instead of seeing things as
they are, things become divided into absolute good and
absolute evil. Fenced in with a mind losing itself in conceptual
thinking, we provoke reactions in ourselves and in the reality
around us from the pure poison of ignorance, and all of space
becomes infected with darkness from our discordant vibrations.
Both good and bad provoke negative reactions, whichever side
of the poisonous polarity of strictly dualistic thinking that our
mind swings to, it only finds suffering. The hope to hold on to
fame or high status automatically entails the creation of the fear
of losing said fame or said status, for example, and so on with all
of the myriad impermanent things and situations and people
which we hope to enjoy permanently. Nowhere is our mind safe
when it is caught in the grasp of dualistic conceptual thought, and
nowhere can we hide from the reactions of the karma we
generate from acting upon these thoughts. Always we will be
swung to and fro in the dizzying play of opposites as our life is
depleted in chasing fleeting desires of the senses and fruitless
material work. This is the nature of the beings who live in the
realm of the ceaseless flowing of birth and death; birth entails the
death, and death entails the re-birth.
Beginning with the manifestations of Spirit of THE ALL it will
be noticed that there is ever the Outpouring and the Indrawing;
the "Outbreathing and Inbreathing of Brahm," as the Brahmans
word it. Universes are created; reach their extreme low point of
materiality; and then begin their upward swing. Suns spring into
being, and then their height of power being reached, the process
of retrogression begins, and after aeons they become dead
masses of matter, awaiting another impulse which starts again
their inner energies into activity and a new solar life cycle is
begun. And thus it is with all the worlds; they are born, grow and
die; only to be reborn. And thus it is with all the things of shape
and form; they swing from action to reaction; from birth to death;
from activity to inactivity and then back again. Thus it is with all
living things; they are born, grow, and die and then are reborn.
So it is with all great movements, philosophies, creeds, fashions,
governments, nations, and all else birth, growth, maturity,
decadence, death and then new-birth. The swing of the
pendulum is ever in evidence.
The one who holds these extreme dualistic views of absolute
good and absolute evil, as set-in-stone pre-defined dogmas,
such as in the case with fundamentalist religious sects, (although
secularism too often can itself be a type of fundamentalism) sends
the mind on a rollercoaster ride of expectation and guilt. The
person tosses and turns on the dualistic axis of the relative,
conceptual right and wrong, constantly manifesting their
aversiveness to the perceived wrong, and their fear of losing
what is right. However, right, and, wrong, are imputed by the
mind upon reality, which is impartial, and so long as the mind is
wrapped up in conceptual absolutes of its own creation, it plunges
itself into dark and light shades of emotional and psychical
energy. This energetic reaction further substantiates the minds
deluded judgment, and re-enforces our mental judgement, which
in turn generates more karma in its direction, which in turn
propels us on to further situations of its kind. However dark and
menacing a situation may be, and however much we try to justify
our emotional reaction to it, the simple fact is that all of these
reactions, both good and bad, are temporary. Even the most
horrible heinous crime that you can imagine that would seem to
necessitate a dark reaction, or the most wonderful earthly
pleasures that seem so real to us, exist only for a very finite time,
and then fade away. All of the people who are involved in said
actions, they all also fade away as the wheel of time grinds them
to smithereens. In the karma-bound world of continuous birth
and death, all is lost, and nothing lasts. Bhumaiva sukham, nalpe
sukhamasti;
Whatever verily is vast is delight, whatever is limited does not
give everlasting happiness.
Therefore, its utterly nonsensical to attach ourselves to that which
is lost, that which can not last, that which does not truly exist.
Doing so we absorb ourselves more and more into the illusory
energy of maya, and maya absorbs herself more and more into us.
Our judgments become clouded, our reactions and lifestyles
become more extreme, everything we experience passes through
the darkened prism of ego and dogma, sapping it of its natural
light. This darkened prism of our subtle bodies draws us like a
magnet to further darkened situations in the world around us.
This cycle may cause us to cling even more to the things which
give us hope, causing us to become neurotic and anxious, or we
may lose ourselves in the darkness manifesting around us and be
drawn into a snowball effect of black energy which destroys
everything good in our lives completely and renders us into a
miserable wretch. Even the narrow boundaries in which we define
the good in life, and attempt to live up to that good, cause us to
experience suffering and bad. These conceptual good
judgments about life are held up to be the ineffable unalterable
truth, again as in the case of fundamentalism, and anything which
arises from within or without which contradicts the definition of
the good causes us to have a reaction which then is
automatically bad. Whatever responses that we have, again,
cause us to become either more neurotically holding on to the
good, while displaying increasingly violent outlashes against the
bad, or more corrupted by the bad itself. The mind is like a
television camera pointed into the TV screen, it gives an infinitely
recursive feedback loop of reaction, when you focus it on a
heavily dualistic judgment of good vs. bad.
We generally get the sense of good vs. evil from our parents,
from our society, from our religion, and this extreme absolute
sense of bad and good, does serve a very important function in
the time and place which we currently find ourselves. It allows the
nascent mind of the human being to develop, re-enforce its sense
of individuality, and begin to fine tune itself to the nature of
natures design. It causes the nescient intelligence to spin and
twirl two and fro along the polarities, and ultimately within the
neutral core of its being to find equipoise between all extremes.
The idea of good and bad on their own are not necessarily wrong
in and of themselves; the problem lies in our not being grounded
in the clear light of the neutrality of mind, and being sucked into a
mental and emotional tailspin of grasping for the good, and
running from the bad, and the styling of our lives around this
dichotomy. This relative idea of good and bad for the most part,
(besides some phony instructions in morality we receive as a child
from our parents or society or religion, that cause even further
dualistic tension), essentially boils down to pleasure vs. pain. That
which causes us pain generally we define as bad, and try to
avoid, and that which gives us pleasure generally we define as
good, and seek out. Although we may not see any harm in
seeking our own pleasure, this is all that our life ends up
becoming. The seeking for pleasure becomes a consistent karma
which repeats over and over, and each time it repeats we become
entrenched further into the seeking, and further away from the
pleasure, which only becomes more and more fleeting due to its
illusory nature. This is when something which formerly was fun
and pleasurable becomes a vice or addiction. Family life becomes
a burden, relationships strain, habits turn into addictions, etc. We
are all familiar with the cycle.
Chapter 5
While appearing to turn on a polar axis, to swing constantly back
and forth, up and down, left and right, in and out, the mind itself
remains neutral and unattached, just like a gyroscope. Remaining
in itself neutral, the swiveling mind sends us into dualistic states
derived of our attachment to what we like, and aversion to what
we dont. When in this weakened state, not able to rest within its
foundation, namely, neutrality, the mind is easily sent into a
tailspin by the slightest headwind. If a little breeze hits the
weakened mind, in a spot which is sensitive to the kinetic energy,
it begins to spin, and spin, and spin itself into various
impermanent and shifting negative and positive mental and
emotional states. As previously noted, these mental and
emotional states then serve to reinforce our habits, and an
onslaught of sticky karmic attachment is the result. Clogged up by
these impressions which are scratched on to the mind, like
writing on chalkboard by the oscillations of our thoughts, all of
our mental processes are tinged with the poisons of ignorance.
Our entire reality is projected out from the state of ignorance and
dis-ease in our minds; whether it be a mental, emotional, or
physical state.
Our mental habits become tinged by attachment and aversion,
causing some to assert their egoic pride, others to back off and
become antisocial. Thought becomes filtered through the cracked
lens of polarity-mind, and we find ourselves naturally gravitating
towards people to whom we are like-minded, around whom our
polarized mental condition is able to interact more smoothly, as
energy tends to naturally follow the line of least resistance. If this
polarized cracked lens were to implant itself into a situation which
is foreign to it, physically, emotionally, or mentally, the mind will
swing itself to the polarity of aversion, and while doing so would
also be indicating the counter-swing to the pole of attachment,
and create a corresponding effect in the fields of emotion and
action. Emotion reinforces our ignorant judgment, and action is
carried out to remove us from the situation, adjust it in a way
which we deem appropriate, or react negatively from our
discomfort. This also in turn reinforces our mental and emotional
conditions. In this way our self and our life becomes extremely
limited, narrowly confined in small boundaries which only repeat
previous patterns. Attachment to the pleasurable turns into
attachment for the familiar, and aversion to the displeasurable
becomes aversion to the unfamiliar. At this point, the phantoms
that we are chasing turn into phantoms which chase us! Illusions
which we absorb ourselves into begin to absorb themselves into
us! Identity is lost, and following the line of least resistance, is
seen to be the same thing as following the brainwashing of pop
culture. Ego holds a carrot dangling over our own heads, but the
carrot is never really reached. Even if someone does manage to
get everything one wants, one is never satisfied, and there is the
persistent aversion of losing grip of what we are attached to.
What we think of as pleasure contains within it the opposite,
always. Being enticed on, to party and go to clubs or bars, to use
an example appropriate to our generation, may seem like only a
pleasurable experience, and that nothing bad can come from it.
However, we will find that we crave for more and more
outlandish parties and alcohol and drug taking in order to satisfy
the craving for a pleasure which can never be kept for long. After
a night of pleasure partying, one appropriately experiences a
morning of displeasure being hungover and sick. Additionally, the
next party will need to be even more exciting, otherwise we get
bored with it and are unable to exact the pleasure to which we
are so neurotically and unhealthily attached. We try to repeat the
process over and over again, but every time our experience of it is
more and more dulled, unless we crank up the intensity each
time. If that we do crank up the intensity each time, we will find
that our hangovers are more intense also, and we begin to run the
risk of getting into some dangerous karmic territory and
experiencing something violent such as a car crash, or a bad injury
during a drunken brawl. These type of violent events which
happen are cent-percent related to previous karmic cycles;
because nowhere in this universe is there an action without a
reaction. So we will find our normal non-partying life also
adversely affected, as slowly we become an old washed up
burnout who has wasted their lives in pointless drunken revelry.
Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.
The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.
Worse than pointless, chasing after such pleasure-attachments
causes a significant worsening of our position karmically, which
can either serve as a catalyst for transmutation into the good, or
an anchor which sinks us even further into the bad. Usually, even
the most dense of people begin to learn from the constant swing
back and forth that the process of chasing after these phantoms is
destructive. They start to develop some detachment with regard
to their former attachments, and lessening of aversiveness to
their former aversions. This is the resolution of poles into their
neutral core, into a depth corresponding to the depth of the poles
themselves.
The gyroscope of our being is constantly being re-calibrated,
depending on hard-headedness, in such a way that we are thrown
further into our delusions through ignorance, or freed from
delusions into the perfect harmony of neutrality through wisdom.
The being thrown into ignorance is divided into aversion and
attachment, which in turn feeds back into the clear light of our
mind and produce further reactions and dualistic divisions based
on further aversion and attachment. The gyroscope spins and
spins to and fro upon its axis, becoming further subdivided and
further complicated, in such a way that it carries the potential for
delusion or insight. Depending on the frequency and modality of
the way in which we engage the reality within and without
(whether making many connections, or few, and whether we are
acting and thinking consciously or unconsciously), we will
experience currents of ascension or descension (ascending within
descending, descending within ascending, etc.). Choosing to be
close-minded, and lacking curiosity, our internal processes suffer
from stagnation. Ignorance breeds all of the attachment and
aversion that become the snares which bind our mind in Samsara.
Without keeping an open-mind, and flowing within the current of
curiosity and mental exploration, we tread on the static path of
that which is material and dense. That which is born and dies, is
created, and is destroyed, hopes, and fears, is not that unborn
clear light of mind which resides in equipoise in the middle of and
beyond all opposites. This clear light which is your true being, the
absolute reality, full of infinite potential of the resolution of all
extremes, is that awareness which is the basis of the two poles.
The awareness becomes lost in the knots created by that illusory
tapestry displaying the story of the wrong view of the self. Woven
with the needle and thread of attachment and aversion, by the
hand of ignorance, this static and seldom-changing scene of our
self and life perpetuates its own story and drags the pure
awareness along with it into its tangled fabric. Seldom does
anything become manifest other than a continuation of what has
come before. Even the novel things which people do are more
often than not nothing but things which they have seen others of
like polarized-mind do and are replicating unconsciously.
Unconscious is really the key word to describe this condition. The
part of the awareness which is underneath, bound up with
attachment and aversion, becomes the strongest motivating
factor within the mind, emotions, speech, and actions. The whole
pattern of life is submerged into the unconscious of
unconsciousness, no different than an apparition appearing in a
dream. Yet awareness does not disappear, it is merely bound up
within the dream.
If there is complete and utter static mind, than we have reached
the state of animal consciousness, and we abide in our animal
desires and not much else. Only a fluid and dynamic mind, which
is observant, and curious to discover and learn, will not victimize
itself with self-imposed limitations. Then we will be able to use
the mind, and not be used by it, and attain that shining primordial
tranquility which neutralizes all opposite extremes.
For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of
friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain
the greatest enemy. For one who has conquered the mind, the
Supersoul is already reached, for he has attained tranquillity. To
such a man happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and
dishonor are all the same.
By being covered with the static forms and unable to
properly perceive higher interconnected dynamic truths,
ignorance, attachment, and aversion ensue. But by being
detached from the transient static forms one can perceive the
higher truths at play, and not being caught in any one side or the
other, resolve any situation, and enjoy living consciously and
riding a natural harmonic flow. Everything naturally resolves itself
and one sees the order and finely tuned balance inherent in all
reality. By distancing ones self from the dualistic conceptual
framework of seeing things, true and primordial wisdom naturally
develops. Things are seen as they are, void of any ignorant
distortion on our part, and one need only maintain the balance
within this neutrality to flow with all of the swings of the
gyroscope and resolve them before they become uncontrolled
and carry us away into creating further karma and samskaras
(engraven images in the mind). The latent psychic and emotional
energy that was frozen up being misused in keeping alive the
phantasmagorical illusionary tapestry of our self, is freed and
transforms into the bliss of our natural mental state.
Detachment from that which is perceived clearly to be
impermanent naturally arises, as thread by thread the tapestry of
attachment to the unreal is unwoven. The unrealness begins to
cease fogging the mind, and pristine wisdom of perceiving all
interconnected truths united together within emptiness arises.
Gradually the strength of the swing of polarity is taken away from
these uncontrollable mental oscillations, freeing us from the
bondage of attachment to impermanent pleasure and pain based
on the objects of our mind and senses. For, if all objects of the
mind and senses, are perceived, with wisdom, as they are truly,
not existing independently and permanently as objects with own-
being of their own, as the conditioned mind perceives, then the
mind will cease to depend on and obsess over these mental
objects and senses as if they were substantial things which lasted
forever. Indeed, for who would there be to crave, and what to be
craved? One cannot expect to extract pleasure from the same
husband or wife forever, someday they will depart their bodies,
and all of that pleasure will turn into unbearable pain. This
attachment will be brought to naught sooner or later, no matter
how hard we kick and scream. Drugs, alcohol, food, or other
addictions only hide and cover our malaise with a temporary
pleasure that requires a higher dose of substance each time
round. Chasing after the rush of these substances only causes one
to become further entrenched in the swamp of karmic action and
reaction, staining our pure mind and polarizing it into increasingly
extreme oscillations, which in turn lead to more and more
divisions of dualistic extremes. Violence and struggle to attain the
addiction, shame and guilt of becoming pathetically
disempowered, these effects of the dark polarity are clearly
undesirable whether you have faith in transcendence or not.
Work and social life provide a temporary distraction from our
hollow meaningless existence, but excess attachment to or
indulgence in these things also leads to their own plethora of
dualistic extremes and prevents them from being enjoyable.
Likewise any of the multifarious novelties that people occupy
their lives with in order to escape from the uneasiness they feel
with their existences.
You can spend as much time as you like playing the polarity game
of attachment and aversion, but in the end you will have realized
that you have really only been going around and around and
around in circles all your life. Afterwards, when that life is over, all
of the pleasure and pain, attachment and aversion, love and hate,
etc. is dissolved by death, the great equalizer, death. All of these
impermanent things which previously appeared to be the all-in-
all of our self, reality, our total existence, are revealed to be the
non-existent voidness that they truly are. Where then has gone all
of those weighty, heavy burdens which we thought of as being so
objectively real? Where is our wife or husband? Our job? Our
kids? Where is our country? Our world? Where has it gone? If it is
seen that all of these things which we previously thought of as
being so objectively real and permanent are reduced to non-
existence upon death, then it must be concluded that these things
were always void-like from the very beginning, existing like
phantoms within the mind. Something which is truly objectively
real and permanent cannot cease to exist, but we find that all
things in the material world including our very selves are
constantly ceasing to exist. Therefore, while in existence, the
forms and feelings and thoughts were nothing more than the
voidness of the pure mind. Voidness being a complete lack of
objective self-existence in the way that we typically think of it.
Just as clouds float through the sky, but do not stain the sky, so
forms, feelings, and thoughts float through the void of the mind,
but do not stain the mind itself. The mind projects the illusion of
dualistic extremes, and is caught up in the oscillations back and
forth, identifying with them and forming concrete identities from
them, but the whole time, the forms and feelings and thoughts of
our material life were no different than those experienced while
in a dream. Believing that the phantasms thus experienced form
part of an eternal, objectively existing self-nature, the pure mind
exacts dogmatic rules and overbearing limitations upon its own
infinite nature, and is lost in the tides of the world of continuous
birth and death that it asserts itself into with this process. That
same mind, when released from the entanglements of duality,
swings itself from the oscillations of aversion and attachment, and
resides in the pure equanimous bliss of the sameness of all
phenomena.
Think of neither existence nor nonexistence, neither progress nor
regress.
Think of neither front nor back, neither left nor right.
Think of neither nonexistence nor existence, neither far nor near.
Think of neither pain nor itch, neither hunger nor thirst.
Think of neither cold nor hot, neither pain nor pleasure.
Think of neither birth nor old age, neither illness nor death.
Think of neither body nor life, nor longevity.
Think of neither wealth nor poverty, neither nobility nor lowliness.
Think of neither sense objects nor desires.
Think of neither large nor small, neither long nor short.
Think of neither beauty nor ugliness.
Think of neither evil nor good, neither anger nor delight.
Think of neither rising nor sitting, neither proceeding nor stopping.
Think of neither the stras nor the Dharma.
Think of neither right nor wrong, neither grasping nor abandoning.
Think of neither perception nor consciousness.
Think of neither cessation nor continuation.
Think of neither emptiness nor true reality.
Think of neither heavy nor light, neither hard nor easy.
Think of neither deep nor shallow, neither broad nor narrow.
Think of neither father nor mother, neither wife nor children.
Think of neither friends nor acquaintances, neither love nor
hatred.
Think of neither gain nor loss, neither success nor failure.
Think of neither clarity nor turbidity.
Everything is recognized as not existing on its own, but existing
through the one stream of mind which flows through all space,
the same stream of mind which is realized as the neutral clear
light of your own awareness. The temporary manifestations of
form, feeling, thought, which were previously imputed to be
objective, and permanently existing of their own-being,
recognized as voidness in the end and voidness at the beginning,
are seen clearly to be non-different from the empty clarity of our
own minds. Emptiness does not differ from form, form does not
differ from emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form. The
same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and
consciousness.
Recognizing all things as having the mark of non-being, the restful
equipoise in which we dwell is able to relate to all things, people,
and effects of this life as belonging to ourselves, belonging to non-
being. The walls of separation and isolation which were imputed
upon the infinite and clear nature of mind transform into sort of
instantaneous and shifting guidelines for our thought and
expression, rather than a strict, real and permanent self-nature,
that we feel obligated to maintain. Shifting and twisting and
changing shape, the gyroscope-like wheel of our mind tears
down old structures where they are not needed, and refines and
sharpens the ones which are needed. In reality, there never was a
concrete set in stone identity, but what there was was a pattern
of mental oscillations, samskaras, which were repeated over and
over and over again and embedded onto the memory. Mistaking
this pattern which has arisen like a light over empty space for
something which is substantial and real, all sorts of suffering
derived from attachment and aversion arose. The patterns
flickering in the mind and memory however are nothing but a
streaming movement of minds energies, in the same way that a
current of electricity powers the light of a light bulb, or like the
little devices which are made with a LED light which moves back
and forth repeatedly to give the illusion of a picture or a phrase.
In that same way, our mind is flashing like lightning moment to
moment, re-creating and building upon what has came before it.
When things are seen as they really are, and our minds become
free of attachment and aversion, all of the rough parts of our
minds and emotions become smoothed over with the peace of
equipoised neutrality. Wisdom, compassion, and all good qualities
are allowed to be drawn out naturally, in equanimity as opposed
to related to perceived dualistic absolutes. This forms into a
healthy and flexible stream of identity-non-identity, which is an
entirely different process, free and unlimited instead of trapped
and bounded. Freed from grasping at the flickering instantaneous
image, that which is impermanent is entirely transcended, and
with it ignorance. With this sword of perfect wisdom, all of the
roots of delusion and suffering are severed from the mind, leaving
the crystal clarity of itself, shining like a well-sharpened blade
made of the hardest diamond. This diamond-bladed mind of
perfect wisdom and clarity cuts through all illusory dream-like
perceptions. It is called diamond-like because it overcomes all
weaker substances like diamond penetrating glass with its
hardness, and yet at the same time there is nothing which can
overcome it. This is the neutral state of mind, returned to its
primordial, primeval, original spotlessly pure condition, tempered
with the wisdom of the opposites and their resolution in
harmonious neutrality.
Chapter 6 - middle way/emptiness
Perceived through the cracked lens of ignorance, forms, feelings,
and thoughts appear to exist from their own side as real,
substantial, objectifiable entities, in and of themselves. But if this
objectified substantial form, feeling, or thought, is imputed to
exist as such, than this it must arise at some point, from previous
causes and conditions which give rise to it, for a thing which exists
cannot give rise to itself, because it would have had to exist
before it existed, which is impossible, and we do not experience
that forms, feelings, thoughts etc. remain forever unchanging. If
this is the case, judging from the purview of our cracked lens
which objectifies impermanently existing phenomena in a way
which makes them appear to be existing in and of themselves, we
would presume that there would be a previous thinker, feeler,
and seer, etc. to give rise to and experience the thoughts,
feelings, and forms. But, then, how can an impermanent
phenomena such as thought, or feeling, or form arise from an
objectified, permanent, and unchanging thinker, feeler, or seer? If
the objective seer, thinker etc. is unchanging, described as such,
then it follows that its impossible for something that is changing
such as an impermanent sensory phenomenon to penetrate its
unchanging sphere. No independent thing can exist, in an
objectifiable sense, that is unchanging. The two objects, seer,
and seen, cannot penetrate one another, or interact with one
another, seeing as they are unchanging, static, and independent.
If it were changing, then it would follow that this seer thinker etc.
couldnt exist as a permanent and objectified independent
phenomena capable of being called a seer, thinker, feeler, etc.
It makes no sense to say that this objectifiable independent, it, is
both changing and unchanging, because the one cancels out the
other.
"The nature of the mind is absent from nonmental things.
How then could self-cognizing consciousness
Know other things? For you have said
That known and knower are two different entities
********
Therefore these objects of mind and senses, the things, we
objectify, are seen to be empty of any sort of objective essence
or, own-being which can be appropriately described as such.
Things cannot possibly arise from more things, because you could
never reach the beginning of things arising out of other things.
Yet, things appear to arise, and we cant say that nothing exists
either.
Neither from itself, nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.
The things which arise are not things, and when perceptions of
things as things cease, in place of perceiving things as arising,
we will, with perfect wisdom, perceive the non-arising nature of
that which is erroneously perceived to arise when viewed as an
objectified phenomena from the purview of the relative dualistic
extremes.
When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that
arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With
the cessation of this, that ceases.
If a thing which arises were to have objective existence, then it
must have arisen certainly from another thing which gave rise to
it, for as mentioned earlier, a thing which arises cannot give rise
to itself. So it certainly must be established that things which
arise must arise from other things, because something cannot
arise from nothing. But if this is the case, what gave rise to the
thing which gave rise to the thing which arose? It must be
imputed that the thing which produced the thing which arose has
to exist eternally, externally, and independent of those things
which arise, in and of itself, because otherwise it must be that
things arise from other things in an infinite regress, and nothing
could ever arise to give rise to the thing which arose. However,
logically, a thing which exists and gives rise to another thing
cannot exist eternally and unchanged as an independent thing,
because then, being unchangeable, it would have to be
independent of the experience of that thing which has arisen in
the sphere of the changeable and transient. Either it is co-
dependent upon the arising thing, affects it, and is affected by it,
or it is independent of it, and is incapable of changing to
accommodate the shifting experience necessary to give rise to a
thing which exists in the world of the changeable and transient. If
it were possible to change that which is unchanged, then why
refer to it as an objective self-existing and independent thing?
********
From the angle of perception of the things which are seen to arise
from other things do we perceive a limited experience of arising
things. But from the angle of that non-perception-perception,
they are seen as having the nature of non-arising. Seeing as it is
not possible for things to arise from other things, nor to arise
from themselves, nor to arise from a non-thing, it must be
concluded that there can be no independently objectifiable entity
which arises and then ceases to arise.
"Contemplate empty space, attain to non-perception, non-
distinction, the elusive, beyond being and not-being: reach non-
space."
All phenomena are like flashes of lightning, possessing no
objectifiable essence in and of themselves. Like the illusions of a
magician, or light reflected onto a mirror, they are essenceless,
empty, illusory phenomena. The light is not within the mirror, nor
is it not not within the mirror. The mirror and the light are empty
of objectness; they are none.
If things did not exist
Without essence,
The phrase, When this exists, so this will be,
Would not be acceptable.
Likewise, the phenomena exist, but not at all in the way in which
they initially appear.
********
When the idea of a self and independent and permanent own-
being arise, it does so in relation to the conditional dualistic
subject-object, reaction to the objects of the mind and senses,
perceiving them as independent and substantially existing from
their own side, rather than merely as imputations in the mind.
Therefore With the arising of this, that arises. When this does
not exist, that does not come to be. With the arising of an object
of dualistic objectification, arises the whole gammut of
interdependent conditions which appear to exist as dualistic
objects, with the cessation of the dualistic objectification, the
whole gammut of interdependent conditions ceases to exist as
anything more than an illusory conceptual imputation of the
truth, and are seen to be empty of real own-being.
When we see that the dualistic self has no true essence, the
perceived independently existing phenomena will also be seen as
essenceless. All of the conditions which arise from the object-
based perception cease to be perceived solely as separated
objectified events, choppy like a boat tossed back and forth on
the ocean, but appear as they are, mutually interdependent,
smooth like a wave, essenceless like a dream in their own
independent natures. With the perception of the phenomena as
lacking essence, of the nature of the void, no longer does the
illusory dualistic subject-object perception arise as it had
previously, but the underlying sameness of all things is
experienced. Our attachments and aversions to the senses and
their objects, and the experience of things as separate
phenomena which condition and appear to give rise to one
another, are cut off from the pristine, primordial mind at their
root, ignorant attachment to falsely perceived self-natures.
All objectifiable things are seen without essence, being perceived
co-dependently in relation to one another, having a nature empty
of self-being. The label which was imputed onto the apparent
mental or sensory object is nothing more than an illusion of our
mind, as the way in which we presume objects and things to exist
has been proven to be impossible.
With the cessation of ignorance, comes the cessation of the view
of things as arising, and therefore the cessation of falling prey to
the illusory web of conditions which covers our perception with
dualism of subject and object. With the cessation of that which is
created, comes the cessation of that which is destroyed. With the
cessation of that which can be created or destroyed, is the
cessation of fear, and hope, arising from clinging to attachment
and aversion. With the cessation of clinging to attachment and
aversion, is Nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Nor can things
ever cease.
********
Here, O Sariputra,
Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form ;
emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from
emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form,
the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and
consciousness.
Here, O Sariputra,
all dharmas are marked with emptiness ;
they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not
deficient or complete.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor
impulse, nor consciousness ;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms, sounds, smells,
tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ element,
and so forth, until we come to :
No mind-consciousness element ; There is no ignorance, no
extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to : There is
no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no
suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path.
There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva,
through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without
thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not
been made to tremble,
he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to
Nirvana.
All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully
awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because
they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.
Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell,
the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled
spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth -- for what could go wrong ?
By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like
this :
gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
( Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an
awakening, all-hail ! -- )
This completes the Heart of Perfect Wisdom."
Chapter 7
Perceiving with perfect wisdom, the whole chain of
conceptualizations arising out of the notion of the impermanent
self as being permanent seems to evaporate, to fade away like a
shadow before the rising sun. The strangest thing happens, the
fog of our self-imposed ignorance disperses, or is absorbed, and
as such the numerous things to which our false ego was attached
or averse to, no longer seem to move us in the same way as they
did before. Indeed, who would they move?
The one who is capable of being born, is not the one that is
capable of overcoming death, while the one who resides in the
extinction of the view of themselves as the body, or objectified as
an image based on the body has already conquered all that is
connected to the polarized phenomena of birth and death. The
one who can become angry and averse cannot truly exist, only
being perceived in relation to the interdependent connections of
attachment and aversion between the falsely seen external
objects and the imputation of a separate internal subjective ego.
When awareness absorbed within only the impermanent ceases
due to perfect wisdom, the attachments and aversions are cut
from their root of ignorance which has perceived them as
objectively real and existing from their own side. Only in relation
to the perception of the externalities and internalities existing in
and of themselves is the realm of continuous birth and death
encountered at all.
***
Besides that, what is perceived and experienced is the deathless
Nirvana. However, one in perfect wisdom does not only abide in
Nirvana, nor does one only abide in the realm of continuous birth
and death, existing free of essential being or non-being.
The real sky is (knowing) that samsara and nirvana are merely an
illusory display
********
If the wrong view in regards to the essence of the stuff,
perceived in the mind in relation to its objects, is transcended,
then the interdependent inner and outer conditions which affect
and give rise a concretely objective self will not arise. The stuff
is seen to be without objectifiable existence, and the self is seen
to be without objectifiable existence, and so what, per se, will
affect what, and how? If the things perceived through the purview
of dualistic extremes truly existed as objective permanent
entities, then why would they not squelch out their opposites
entirely? If one opposite were to be substantially and
permanently real, it would follow that the other opposite could
not exist whatsoever! Therefore opposites can never exist in the
way in which the dualistic mind perceives them, canceling each
other out before they could come into being.
********
In the same way, all of the ignorant views of dualistic extremes
self vs. other, here, vs. there, etc. are held in a tenuous
balance when perceived from the perspective of the relative, but
completely cease to exist as such, when the absolute truth of the
matter is perceived. The momentary phenomena of the dualistic
extremes may then seem to arise along with the relative finite
perspectives, but in actuality they never existed from the
beginning in and of themselves, and were an all imputed by the
mind. These phenomena are empty of being in and of themselves,
flashing instantaneously like lightning in relation to the other
imputed interdependent conditions. Pure awareness naturally
gives rise to these magical displays. This is why that the mind
rushes to and fro between the dualistic extremes; when they
appear to be substantial, they are actually empty, and therefore,
it becomes possible for the substantial polarity to shift and
change to the implied opposite substantially existing polarity. All
along these polarities were created only by our conscious
awareness and had no existence in and of themselves, as has
been deducted. Being checked against the gyroscopic swivel of
memories of previous polarized perceptions, the mind then, using
the memories as a background, makes a choice to enact an
illusory attachment to one of the imagined extremes, while at the
same time becoming averse to its opposite. Thus is an identity
formed out of nothing more than our conscious awareness
perceiving that which cannot exist as actually existing, and
becoming lost in dreams and fantasies of our own creation. All
along nothing existed substantially, but all appears to exist in that
way to our mind due to the perceived interdependent
relationships of things. That mind, swiveling to and fro, to and fro,
checks itself, is drawn upward or downward from ignorance to
wisdom, and in the end transcends all or falls back into further
cycles of birth and death. The apparent substantial existence of
the dualistic things provides our mind with the food it needs in
order to expand to perceive the essence of its own nature. This
empty mind, though pure from the beginning, had become
covered by the illusory thought-coverings. Expanding beyond
objectification, it transcends the illusory limitations which were
imputed on it in ignorance; or, lost in the objects, it becomes
weighed down and falls. Either way, one is required to pass
through a labyrinth of attachment and aversion which has formed
out of our beginningless karma, from this life and previous ones.
When one fails to recognize the nature of things, and instead
clings to its erroneous attachment to objectifying essenceless
phenomena as permanently existing, falls into all of the
associated fears and hopes of the dualistic existence. The more
that the apparent self, or ego, asserts its own attachments and
aversions in the field of experience, the more it becomes an
automatic unconscious behavior. The more this unconscious
behavior goes on, the more strongly we react, along the lines of
our dualistic extremes, to what enters our awareness from the
environment. This can cause even more entanglement in the
world of continuous birth and death, as the reactions to our
actions gather more and more weight, for with the arising of a
polarized judgment or perception of phenomena, always arises its
opposite. The person who thus exists in their own little illusory
bubble of permanently objectified phenomena is unable to
recognize their errors and change. Like attracts like and they may
be trapped in an ever-increasing downward spiral. Those who are
willing and able to see beyond themselves, however may use the
swinging polarities to recognize flaws in ones self, and make
adjustments. To this person, the one who exposes a negative
reaction in themselves is a great teacher, worthy of veneration!
As long as one is not, quite literally, wrapped up, in the tangled
web of ones own extreme absolutist prejudices based on
attachment and aversion, one can be free of the exhausting cycle
of wheels spinning back and forth between aversiveness and
attachment. This does not necessarily entail that by perceiving in
a way is free from the ignorance of believing the finite and unreal
to be real that we will no longer care to interact with the world,
and perceive all of our relationships as being meaningless
nothingness. This is a common nihilistic mistake for those who
attempt to understand what is called the Perfection of Wisdom.
Its not such that the apparently internal or external objects that
we perceive are necessarily not real and dont exist in any sense
at all; but being that they are perceived in relation to the other
finite phenomena that we objectify as having an own-being,
when the perception based on those finite impermanent
phenomena ceases, the internal and external objects defined as
such are seen to cease to exist as objective phenomena. They are
seen as a self-created, self-liberating magical display, and as such
one is free from being tyrannized by the creation of ones own
mind.
********
Freed from the self-created maze of polarity connections which
governed ones perceptions, feelings, reactions, etc. of/to the
internal and external, spontaneous wisdom is seen to naturally
arise that perceives from a total field of awareness. Not
perceiving any essential difference between ones self and others,
or the environment, one sees all beings and ones self as space-
like, free, appearing as self-begotten mirages of mental forces.
Thus, seeing things as they actually are, one is never a victim to
ignorance. Never being a victim to ignorance, one does not
generate the further actions and reactions that accumulate within
the attachment to name and form. For one who has no essence,
how is it possible for them to remain attached to karma? Whom
would the karma attach to? Being freed from karma, one is
liberated from ones sins entirely and attains causeless non-dual
peace and equanimity. Perceiving the nature of the essenceless
self to be thus, one comprehends the Buddha-nature within all
things. Any thing, or self, which could be described as such
must not be the fully enlightened one, and yet, the fully
enlightened one contains the things and selves. Thus it is only
ignorance that veils all beings from their true nature. This wisdom
is the nature without a nature, the completeness, the Logos, the
Buddha.
Whatever is dependent on another entity,
Its selfhood is not appropriate.
It is not tenable that what lacks a self,
Could be a Tathagata.
(Tathagata means one gone to
or come from the realm of suchness)
********
Through the realization of the emptiness of forms, feelings,
perceptions, etc. the attachments and aversions which have
formed the web of your conditional ego, that which has been the
ignorant noxious fog clouding your pristine awareness will fade
away, as if a clear cool breeze has blown through and purified the
air entirely. Its not that the forms, or feelings disappear, but the
separated, choppy sort of dualistic experience of them will cease,
as the swing of endless action and reaction is seen to lose its grip
along with its essence. Arising without essence, the forms and
feelings are then seen as they are, and gradually one is able to
shift from the ignorant view to the wise.
The wise who know that in phenomena there is no self,
Become accustomed to this absence of intrinsic nature.
And thus they effortlessly spurn
Defilement arising from mistaken thought.
Rather than walking with ones head down, staring at the ground,
or staring into the space ahead of you blankly, being lost in
thought or lost in your music or your cell phone, one perceives all
that is happening in the field of the senses in the highest and
clearest way possible, free from any distraction or illusion. Free
from the dirtiness of conceptual thought, the mind perceives in a
way that touches the very suchness of essenceless reality as the
instantaneous and miraculous play of all-creating, beautiful,
luminous wisdom.
Freedom is the basic condition for you to touch life, to touch the
blue sky, the trees, the birds, the tea, and the other person."
As expressed in the quote above, when freed from the chains of
purely conceptual thought, the naked mind absorbs the pure
essenceless sense and mental objects as spontaneous expressions
of highest joy.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when
they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never
leaves them.
Free from attachment and aversion, the primordial blissful nature
of reality shines through unhindered.
There is something which as long as left unknown
Results in lifes three planes of vicious circle.
Beyond all doubt, it dwells in every being.
To the Dharmadhatu [Truth-Element] I devoutly bow.
When that which forms the cause for all samsara
Is purified along the stages of the path,
This purity itself is nirvana;
Precisely this, the Dharmakaya [Truth-Body], too.
As butter, though inherent in the milk,
Is mixed with it and hence does not appear,
Just so the Dharmadhatu is not seen
As long as it is mixed together with afflictions.
And just as the inherent butter essence
When the milk is purified is no more disguised,
When afflictions have been completely purified,
The Dharmadhatu will be without any stain at all.
But as we are born into this polarized state by our karma, and
grow and form matrices of judgment, attachment, and aversion,
the pure element of reality (Dharmadhatu) is covered by our
internal and external habitual tendencies, and its light is obscured
from shining.
Chapter 8
Whether one born into this world is raised in a nurturing
environment in which one is not overindulged, or over-disciplined,
but kept in a middle way between extremes, raised in a nurturing
environment that still provokes extreme patterns, or in an abusive
environment, etc. will determine how the field of polarization is
structured within ones psyche. As has been discovered by
psychology, its at the crucial time of childhood when the core
structures of personality are put into place. Structures which,
although manifesting in this life, are only the continued
momentum of beginningless karma. Beginningless because it is
ignorance. The insecurities we feel, the judgments we make of
others, all of our attachments and aversions formed from past
lives and carried over into the beginning formative experiences of
this life, tangle themselves into a deep psychological framework
which acts as the screen for our experience; a noxious cloud of
ugliness when darkened by ignorance, and a luminous field of
essenceless wisdom when enlightened by right knowing.
One who feels punctured must have been a bubble.
The one who feels as though they have gone through this abuse
and neglect, or lack of love as a child themselves, or other
traumas have nourished this illusion of the self being a punctured
one, a victim of extraneous conditions which left it in its present
dissatisfied condition. However, were that one have been truly
existing from its own side as a permanent phenomena, how could
it have been punctured? Only if the phenomena itself were an
illusion would it be possible to feel as though it were punctured
by the lack of love or abuse it experienced, and thereby develop
personality faults and hard, entrenched psychological disorders
based on it; all of which exist as phantoms or illusions inside of
the mind, reinforced by the ping-ponging polarizing. If the one
had been real, permanent, objectively existing it would not have
been capable of being made to change its state of being by
something which has arisen from outside of it. Believing it to be
real, the dualistic reactions of desire to be loved, or to have been
treated other than we had been, whatever plethora of mental
formations it may have been, have worn in dualistic attachments
and aversions into our psyche. These evolve into insecurities,
personality disorders, psychological dysfunctions, etc. This is
especially so in the relatively extreme cases of abuse, neglect, or
other trauma which most of us at present currently experience so
often we become numb to it and forget we are even experiencing
trauma. The patterns in which those relatively rare people who
did not experience such unnerving unstable shifting extremes and
had a stable upbringing, in most cases, still form over time into
constrictive limitations and prejudices of aversion and
attachment, from the other side of the pole. However the
aversion and attachment is positively formed, and therefore
based on slightly more stable foundations, but still the
attachments and aversions always tend to entail the opposites of
themselves within them, and they are full of desires, making for
an unsatisfied kind of unbalanced existence. For those who are
not observant, and do not seek to struggle towards the righteous
and truthful expansion in all spheres, the idle limitations and
curiosities may degenerate into stiff and unchanging habits which
cause us to become cantankerous old fogeys who will react
negatively and hostile to those who dont support our narrow
ways of doing and seeing things. Because, the gyroscopic mind
behaves like a vitalizing current, it doesnt rest but continues to
animate and create its magical creations. So whether the stream
is flowing down, towards that which is impermanent and dualistic,
or up, to that which is real and non-dual, will determine whether
it moves within the real and true wisdom, or illusory
impermanent dualistic extremes, and experiencing all of the
resulting effects of either path. However, its going to keep
moving, restructuring itself, because it is an instantaneous
phenomena with no real essence, like a reflection, dependent
upon its objects and senses.
This movement of mind has gone on from the beginning, has
never ceased, and will never cease. Without it nothing would
exist. Its swinging and polarizing and giving life to what is unreal
grounds the ignorant cloud of karmic knots formed into a
temporarily existing thing we call a person within a self-imposed
dream-like but necessary fantasy, without which it could know
nothing. Its forced into this reflexive action due to a grasping at
that which is not real in ignorance. None who are born into this
world are free of its power, nor should they be, as its this process
which yields the potential for a karma-bound being to overcome
that very same bad karma by dint of seeing first hand how bad it
is, and eventually to realize the voidness in the material side of
things. But until this process is transcended, it remains the one
driving force in our lives, consuming us whole, and defining who
we are for us into narrow limited constraints. This has gone on
endlessly, the term in sanskrit is anadi karma meaning
beginningless karma, implying that because it is dependent on our
ignorance, and not on a set beginning time, it has no temporal
beginning. As long as our ignorance is in place, this karma will
continue reverberating throughout the aeons, as this is from
where the aeons themselves arise. This causal web of action and
reaction is linked interdependently with ignorance, and the more
we can overcome that dimness and cease acting and thinking
based on that ignorance, which takes the unreal to be real and
loses itself in a net of mental formations, the more that we can
overcome that web of karma. Overcoming this web of
connections, that which is not real no longer automatically guides
and directs our actions and thoughts and forces them into the
repeated patterns which caused us to arrive in the suffering state
of continuous birth and death in the first place. Believing the
sense and mental objects to be fundamentally real, ones pure
nature becomes covered by webs of illusion based on dualistic
clinging. This is what we call the psyche, the self, our life. This
house, in which we think that we dwell cannot live forever.
Forever is an awfully long time, and so it doesnt exist in any way
at all forever, outside of our illusory attachment to believing that
it does exist and causing it to rise into being instantaneously along
with ignorance. If the house which we identified as our self and
life were to go on forever, unchanging, it would follow that we
ourselves would go on unchanging forever. But if we were
unchanging forever, how is it that we could become old, get sick,
and die? How would it be that we experience new things and
grow and change and learn in response to what we see in the
changing environment? If our house were a totally independent
and objectified phenomena, it would be impossible to change and
interact with other changeables. Therefore, our house does not
exist as an object, but is an interdependent web of parts which
arises and ceases to be perceived as such along with our
ignorance rising and ceasing. In actuality all of these things are
without essence and are phantasmagorical displays, as in a
dream. The obsessing with forms and objects and having things
our way is nothing less than the pointless asserting of an illusory
fiction by a blind character of some random dream with an
inverted truth. The character, the dream, the whole fiction is a
self-created manifestation of mind in every way.
So we really have nobody to blame for our good or bad
upbringings, which have given rise to this particular house, in
which we are struggling to live, and having a perfectly normal
childhood is not necessarily a perfect thing in terms of realizing
the truth and overcoming illusion. Sometimes, those rough swings
of the pendulum through the dark turbulent areas of life serve to
unnerve our sense of comfort and cause us to question our
existence in a productive way, sometimes they push us further to
down the pole towards doing so eventually. Seeing the lows of
the low, one has much more appreciation for the suffering of this
world, whereas one who has sat comfortable all their life not
seeing the suffering is certainly in a worse position, paradoxically.
For example, the foremost disciple of the Buddha was not found
amongst the ranks of his elite Brahmin Sakya family converts, who
had been dulled by their privileged existences, but in Upali, the
slave-boy who insisted to become a disciple of the Buddha in spite
of his societys prejudices against those of his lower caste.
Because Upali had been a slave, he was more humble than the
Shakyas, because he hadnt any wealth, he was more eager for
the treasure of the Buddhas teaching, because he had been
abused and mistreated himself, he knew the pain of abusing and
mistreating others. Likewise those of us who come from very
humble beginnings, or even moderately abusive beginnings, in all
likelihood have an advantage over those who didnt, at least when
it comes to abandoning that which is worldly, and seeing the
darker sides of the realm of continuous birth and death. If one has
come from impoverished beginnings however, conversely, one
might feel bitter and commit crimes and violence in order to
achieve their desires for stability and wealth. Anything at any time
can become switched in the realm of the dualistic and relative.
That is important to understand; one thing always entails the
opposite, which is again, only possible if the opposites are
essence-less, as seen with perfect wisdom. One who is raised in a
nice household with a lot of money and material comforts might
have had the good karma to be also blessed with an aptitude for
the truth and take to it easily, never having to have experienced
many violent swings of the pendulum, but when goodness ends
and the good karma is used up and if that one has not attained
complete Nirvana, the ending of that satisfying life will result in us
to be born into a much lower one. Thus is the predicament of
those higher godly beings who are born into dimensions above
this one which have much more material comfort and sense
pleasures than this one. Losing everything we are attached to and
having to leave it all behind forever does not sit well with that
person who is comfortable with the worldly.
Either path that is trodden, rich or poor, prince or pauper, or
either way that both are trodden together in the same life, the
actions and reactions that arise carry with them our ignorance
and attachments from countless aeons. How much that we can
balance ignorance with wisdom will be determined by the
development of a certain introspectiveness, a sensitivity, a
curiosity, humility, and eagerness towards the truth at all cost. No
matter how firmly our egoic attachments and aversions may
appear to push back, and no matter how long it takes, if we can
develop this sincerity, with regards to the truth both within and
without, we will be making byways into overcoming ignorance
and attaining to perfect wisdom.
Chapter 9
The perfect system of polar balance, that magnetic, swinging
mind, tends to auto-correct by checking itself against its
memories and ideals of truth that it has retained from observing
the surround and reflecting. At any point it may swivel between
dark or light reflections of pain/pleasure, attachment/aversion,
love/hate etc., and reflections within reflections, and connections
within connections. A mind which is unaware of the power of its
own volition and going about its existence unconsciously is
potentially very dangerous, because there are no limits to the
knots and unfolding webs of karma which one can find oneself
entangled in, or the highs and lows which can toss one about. It
will go on fumbling and bumbling in ignorance, attachment
feeding action, and action in turn feeding into attachment and
aversion all over again. Each time which we allow our materialistic
habits of thought and action, based in the ignorant objectification
of the inner and outer reality as a substantial, static, and
independent objects, to take over our consciousness, a chain of
causality is nourished which has caused us to be bound in this
world from time immemorial, and which will cause us to continue
to be bound in this world forever. Therefore to accept ignorance
and cultivate it is the same as cultivating death and rebirth in the
world of suffering from taking illusions to be real.
As previously explained, our ignorance and tendencies of behavior
good or bad are all inherited from previous lives, and so there is
an ocean of former action which is to be overcome. The people,
situations, lifestyles which we attract and cultivate are little more
than carry-overs from previous people, lifestyles, and situations
which we have attracted and cultivated. These karmic seeds are
carried from previous lives and embed themselves into the
present, and, being watered by our attention, begin to sprout into
great trees of attachment.
Qi follows Yi, where attention goes, energy flows.
As attention goes towards our attachments, energy flows towards
the crystallization of their essence into patterns and habits. The
thought being cultivated having to do with desire, that idea which
we are desiring carries a lot of energetic weight in our
consciousness and lives. Being of the nature of desire the idea or
pattern always creates a yearning which is observed to steadily
increase. Being of the nature of duality, the attachment is always
connected to its opposite of aversion. For example, the desire for
prestige, wealth, and sex seem to be universal amongst the dim,
pitiable people in our fallen age. When one cultivates the thought
pattern, I desire for prestige, wealth, sex, one is cultivating the
notion that one does not have these things, and so a type of
stress or tension then ensues between the wanting and the
having and the fear and aversion of not having. If one, having
attained the prestige, wealth, or sex, cultivates the thought I
have attained such and such, begins to develop a steady
crassness and pride in the attainment, which may be viewed
positively or negatively by others, and which inflates our illusory
ego to try to hang on and identify itself with the holding on to that
which we are attached. This leads to an even further shell-game
of self-inflation and grasping at these attachments both mentally
and physically. Grasping at that which is capable of being taken
away leads to more fear of losing, and gives rise to avariciousness
which wants to hang on to that which is needed to sustain the
inflation of the ego amongst the swell of the rising dualistic tide;
hence the situation of the world today. When that person loses
what they were so greedily attached to forcefully due to death,
disease, or disaster, it will not be a pretty scene to say the least.
There is no way to sustain the rising tide of our ambitions in a
shaky unpredictable world, like there is no way empty water from
a boat with a hole in the bottom.
Wealth, prestige, having sex with many different partners etc.
appear attractive to the ignorant who have no experiential
knowledge of what these dreams are like when lived practically.
Wealth generates more attachment to this world, if it is not
purified by charity. With it, one knows no restraint in the world of
continuous birth and death. One is able to indulge every idle
desire of ones ego without any restraint, and living an
extravagant and flamboyant existence, forgets the simple and
basic things about life. That ones life becomes some kind of
fantasy which is far away from the hard truths which can free one
from such delusion and attachment. The wealthy one has no need
to rely on anything or anyone to live their life, because of course
money can always solve every problem, and so comes to take
everything for granted and live in a sheltered cloistered existence
that is far off from the lives of those poor people on whom the
wealth was built. Far away from seeing the dependence on others
for ones being, ones ego becomes that much more hard and
resilient, and ones discipline and sharpness becomes dulled. That
egoic bubble becomes bloated and static, and desires ever more
extravagance in order to amuse itself. This is a self-generated
cycle which creates more and more desires, which are less and
less satisfying, and generate more and more tension.
When I was a kid, I loved seeing how rich people lived. Now
that Im older, I know a lot of high net worth individuals. I know
guys worth over $500 million that wear t-shirts everyday and drink
beer from a can. I also know a lot of entrepreneurs who have sold
companies, some for over $100 million.
Guess how they feel when they retire? Bored, restless and
unfulfilled. Their early days of scrapping it up with little money
and long hours are some of their best memories. Sitting on a
beach and checking your bank balance gets old quickly.
All the while that wealthy one is corrupted by indulgence in sense
pleasures and the arrogance of his perceived position in relation
to the common people. The swiveling mind is raised into octaves
of haughtiness and disingenuous pride. This goes to show the
hollow nature of this kind of lifestyle; its perpetuated by a
constant sense of lack, and disenchantment that paradoxically is
another reverse symptom of its apparent utter abundance and
enchantment. If one has all this wealth with which one is
enchanted, that implies a limitless array of desires which one will
then feel compelled to act out, and a limitless uneasiness of
desiring new things and being averse to losing them. This is due to
the fact that we are the ones all along creating the illusion of
requiring wealth, being wealthy, desiring extravagance, living
extravagantly, being averse to poverty, etc.
Suppose we are now sitting in the shade for too long. We feel
cold, so we move out into the sun. We seem to feel happy for a
while, but this is not happiness. If it were, it would be like
suffering: the more we encounter, the more it would increase. If
going out into the sun were happiness, no matter how long we sat
there, our happiness must grow the more, not become
unhappiness. This is not what happens, we suffer again a little
later and have to go back into the shade. Our suffering has
gradually risen above its threshold, although this is not in fact
obvious.
Seeking to alleviate suffering momentarily with a pleasure which
never lasts long because its not really pleasure but just a
momentary alleviation of our suffering. Like a dog chasing ones
own tail, the low comes into being along with the high, and one
can never escape that cycle, because the desire for the highs and
aversion for the lows, never objectively exist independently and
were formed originally in duality, and were maintained in duality,
and duality never entails the possibility for true peace without its
opposite.
King Mabhavata ruled over the four continents and the celestial
regions, yet he was still dissatisfied. Eventually his merit ran out;
he fell to the continent of Jambudvipa and breathed his last.
Desires do not satisfy, and there can be no greater fault than this.
If you ruled one land you would think, If only I ruled over two!
You would not be satisfied, no matter how many you ruled. No
matter how much wealth you get you still wonder if you can get
more, and you are prepared to wear yourself out to achieve this. If
you lack contentment, no matter how much wealth or how many
possessions you have acquired, you will be no different from a
beggar.
Once in India, Surata the beggar found a priceless jewel and said
he must give it to another beggar. He gave it to King Prasenajit,
saying, Oh king, you lack contentment, and so are the poorest!
In the end, it all comes crashing down anyway, in the rare case
that one is even able to hold on to ones wealth without it being
taken or lost. Eventually the good fortune is going to run out
sooner or later, and we are going to experience the reverse, and
therefore all living beings experience suffering. All along that we
thought we were the richest man, we were actually the greatest
beggar. Our riches were all in our dreams, and, placing them
externally outside of ourselves, we became the most needy
indeed of those phantasms which have no real true existence.
Craving after that which is not real, Your attachment to the
objects of the senses increased, leaving you discontented; you
then accumulated sins for the sake of those things, and went from
lower realm to lower realm.
With more wealth one acquires more problems and people trying
to take advantage of ones situation. With more problems and
people trying to take advantage of one, comes more fears and
anxieties of being taken advantage of, and more paranoia and
sinful greed concerning ones assets. A proposition which initially
was supposed to free us and give us an easy and happy life has
rapidly degenerated into the sticky desire quicksand of
attachment and aversion; its like the story of the fisherman on
the beach in Mexico.
A rich businessman was on holiday by the beach in Mexico when a
small fishing boat docked nearby with just one man on board.
Inside the boat were several large tasty-looking fish.
"That's quite a fine catch," noted the businessman. "How long did
it take you to pull those in?"
"Only a little while," said the fisherman.
"So why don't you stay out fishing longer and catch more fish?"
said the rich man.
"This is enough to take care of the needs of my family," replied the
fisherman.
"But what do you do with all the rest of your time?" asked the
businessman.
The fisherman said, "I sleep late, I fish a little, I spend time with my
wife and play with my children. Then I rest in the afternoon. In the
evening, I visit the rest of my family or stroll into the village where
I have a drink with my friends. I have a full and busy life."
The rich man scoffed. "I have a business degree from one of the
best universities in the world. I can help you. If you spent more
time fishing, you could buy a bigger boat with the profits you
make. With the profits from the bigger boat you could buy several
more boats until eventually you would own a whole fleet of fishing
boats. Then instead of selling the fish to a middleman you could
sell the fish directly to the processor and increase your profit
margin. Eventually, you could open up your own canning factory
and become a wealthy business owner. Of course, you would have
to leave this village by the sea where you live and move to the
capital and maybe even later to another country to manage your
business."
"How long would all of that take?" the fisherman wanted to know.
"Oh, at least 15 years," replied the businessman.
"But what then?" asked the humble fisherman.
The businessman laughed and said, "That's the best part. When
the time is right, you can sell your company. You would become
rich. You could make millions."
"Millions!" exclaimed the fisherman. "Then what?"
"Then you could retire to a little village by the sea," said the
businessman, "where you could sleep late, you could fish a little,
spend time with your wife, play with your kids, then rest in the
afternoon. In the evening, you could stroll into the village and
have a drink with your friends. You see how wonderful things
would be!"
Prestige is as much a curse as a blessing, especially in the present
era. Many celebrities say that they wish they never would have
become famous because they have become sacrificial lambs to
the raving zombified masses who obsess over them. Being well-
known also invites ridicule from all sides so if you and your life is
not perfectly in order, fame can become infamy very quickly, as
we see happening over and over again. Likewise sex or any other
indulgence or trapping of this material world is full of associated
problems, and only leads to a snowball effect of more desire
evolving out of more desire, our satisfaction being reliant on
increasingly hard to maintain circumstances, sinful qualities such
as overly indulged lust, avarice, spite, and pride being conditioned
into us, and the exhaustion of our good karma from previous lives
until we sink back into a pit of darkness in some hellish place
whether in this life or in the next or both.
"In the high rebirths you spent much time in pleasure,
Caressing the breasts and waists of women;
Then in hell, you felt instruments of torture
That crushed, cut and tore you -
What constant and intolerable pain!"
As long as ignorance goes on unchecked, as it does in all four
corners of this world, there can be no ending to our hard work,
our burning unfulfilled desires, our frustration and our
dissatisfaction.
Desires do not satisfy, and there can be no greater fault than
this
We project our own state onto the world around us, and so give
rise to cravings and attachments that are based often on nothing
more than our own sense of lack and dissatisfaction, and which
augment our state further along those lines of desire, and infect
the world with our disease. None of this provides any lasting
happiness or real pleasure, but is just a temporary reprieve from
our suffering. There is no ending of the constant cat and mouse
game of chasing these non-pleasures in a land without any
meaning in sight. This is the state of everyone in the world of
contintuous birth and death. Struggling in quicksand pools of
action and reaction, chasing after phantoms and never finding
real happiness, losing themselves in activity towards the light and
the dark and being tossed around on waves of their own
attachments and aversions. This will go on forever, and ever, and
ever, as those karma bound entities are causing these worlds to
come into being over, and over, and over again. As long as the
illusory desires which are based in lack and ignorance are
cultivated there will be infinite amounts of worlds filled with life
which is trapped in self-imposed dreams and nightmares. Like a
character in a dream, it will be impossible to wake that person,
until they begin to suspect that they are dreaming, by noticing
something is not quite right. This world being like a great field of
experience which goes both up and down, down-down, down-up,
up-up, up-down, and everything in between, and there are plenty
of opportunities for our lives to be shaken up and our minds to be
shaken awake; but unless wisdom is given to the person to
understand what is what, all that shaking will only cause us to feel
shaken up.
Always there is the opportunity for transcendence, were never
far cut off from it and all of the effects of our life are carefully
arranged in such a way that one by one they can cause us to
realize our ignorance as we overcome the attachments which
have given rise to them. The only way to do this though is to
exercise detachment and have the right insight to discern the real
from the illusory. As has been previously explained, that which is
co-dependent upon something else can not accurately be
described to be a truly real and independently existing entity, and
so thoughts, forms, feelings, and perceptions all partake of the
nature of a magical illusion. Instantaneously arising with
perception, these manifestations such as thoughts and feelings
appear to be hard and substantial, but they arise just as quickly as
they cease, like flashes. Therefor being void of own-being, their
power as real and objective things ruling our lives is taken away
once it is seen that it is impossible for them to be really existing
with their own essences. With this diamond sword of perfect
wisdom, the sticky tentacles of attachment are cut one by one,
and a sort of alchemizing effect naturally occurs to purify one of
their influence and establish one in a peaceful equipoise beyond
duality which is not an illusion at all. Not bound by the constantly
shifting poles of the attachments anymore, true peace is
established in the mind that one has never before dreamed
possible. Desires fade away, and actions become expressions of
spontaneous joy rather than need, lack, and suffering, and
therefore one begins to have compassion for those people who
are stuck in the cycle that one has become freed from. Not
suffering automatic feedback in the mind due to the previous
basing of ones existence on shaky dualistic foundations, ones
decisions, actions, reactions, and the like all descend from the
pure plane of primordial wisdom-compassion-mind. If the things
of this world, riches etc. matter not to one, than there is no pride
or arrogance which can manifest, and one is freed from the
delusions which arise from the viewing of ones self and others
through the lens of material value, no hankering, no craving, no
insecurity or anxiety. Nothing and nobody can stir one from ones
equipoise, and everything which one encounters is transmuted, as
if one where the very philosophers stone. In such a state can one
move about in the world external and internal and not suffer from
becoming lost in it, and even go on to do a true and real great
good for ones self and others. There is no way to sustain the
rising bubble of affliction of greedy desire, so why not abandon it
from the get go and instead seek to transcend all suffering for the
sake of ones self and for all living beings? These mundane desires
we have for this life are not so meaningful that they should be
thought of as the be all and end all of our existences. No, you
dont only live once, and no, you dont have to act like a fool in
this life. Those pursuits which are so important to everyone in this
world dont weigh out to even one tiny grain of sand amongst the
dusts of infinite time, and those pursuits which are not important
to the world actually outweigh millions of such achievements
which this world believes are so valuable and worthwhile.
Chapter 10
With a sense being developed for what is real and right and what
is not, its possible to adjust the wheel of our minds in the proper
way and calibrate it to the truth and away from the lies. This
sense, conscience, insight, what-have-you, can open the door to
the immaculate wisdom of seeing things as they actually are. Re-
adjusting bit by bit, attachments based in ignorance become
experiential knowledge gained through wisdom. Like a meal, the
resolution of ignorance is digested and processed as essenceless
nutrients which feed our insight and consciousness.
"I consume concepts of duality as my diet."
Our karma arising internally and externally reflects back to us
exactly those mental states within ourselves which are in turn
reflecting that particular ignorance which remains to be
transmuted. Whether from within or without, negative states and
events magically transform into positive ones, with the
touchstone of perfect wisdom. Guiding us away from negative
tendencies, displaying to us our own false beliefs and actions, all
of the apparent negatives which manifest themselves to us
contain within them them each a seed knowledge which we need
to overcome our ignorance. Like a snake eating its own tail, the
way in which this interdependent and interconnected reality
works is a repeating cycle of its own feedback; as has been
explained. Nothing that we experience is not the feedback of
previous actions in this life and others. Therefore, whatever it is
that comes to us in this life are like reflexive reactions to
movements and patterns of our mind and body which are
expressing simultaneously that which has trapped us in death and
rebirth, and that which has the possibility to liberate us from
death and rebirth. For each person, place, or event which comes
our way there is the potential for a push or a pull of force, away
or towards the view arising out of ignorance. Either way, we have
nobody to blame for the status of our life and our being but
ourselves. Reality is going to keep reflecting us back to ourselves
until we either find the resolution to our suffering and attain to
nirvana, or that we succumb to our suffering and ignorance.
Were not capable of changing this process, however we are
capable of changing our reaction to it, and using it instead of
being used by it.
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who
despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the
children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun
to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust."
This is the same injunction that Matthew records Jesus as giving;
when we perceive enemies, we are really perceiving our own
prejudices. Even those who perpetrate the most vile and
grotesque evils imaginable are worthy of our compassion. They
are bound to experience the dark karmic reactions to their evil
deeds, and this is why Jesus has said pray for them who
despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the
children of your Father which is in heaven, because if you instead
allow those who are a really only a test to you in this illusionary
world of karma to embroil you in malice you will be dragged down
and not born as a child of the Father, Immaculate Wisdom and of
the Mother, the Ultimate Sphere of Reality. Knowing the truth
about the fate that awaits one who is a persecutor, that that one
will experience his karma, or the retribution for his sins, whether
in this life or the next, we should have compassion on everyone
who we hate; especially the ones that we really hate. The more
hate, or aversion, (and we should really look at it as a byproduct
of the opposite side of attachment) that we have towards people,
events, etc. the more that we should examine what we it is that
we are attached to which is producing this effect. For instance,
someone insults us and we think, how dare them, how dare they
insult ME!, puffing ourselves up into the atmosphere, following
the dualistic reaction to whatever heights that we are willing to
take it, based on the vertical axis of ignorance and wisdom.
Instead, we should bypass this redundant counterproductive
madness and use the circumstance to train ourselves in
overcoming this tendency in ourselves, by humility, sincerity, that
is to say, good old fashioned strength of character. One will find
that they are untying all sorts of knots in the ignorant areas of
their ego, and opening up blissful wisdom which transcends all
subject/object differentiation and reaches into the very heart of
immaculate non-dual truth; the sun which rises on the good and
the bad. In doing so, we will transcend our bad karma bit by bit,
digesting and growing from the nutrients of this psychic food,
into a larger person with stronger bones of character! The idea
of the other person and your own self are completely
essencelesss anyway, the whole going back and forth between
comparing them vs. others, or self, is complete ignorance and
superstition. Our image of our self is superstition, and our image
of the other is superstition, and usually in the heat of the moment
of a vitriolic exchange, whether extreme or subtle, we lose site
even more of the nature of people and see only in small narrow
ways. People are much more than what we are even capable of
thinking about them, anything that we can impute conceptually is
not the thing which touches the true essence of the heart and
mind of any living being. There is a beautiful saying which seems
to echo a similar sentiment, its said that Ananta Shesha, who is
depicted as a serpent with thousands of heads, with all of his
thousands of mouths, cannot finish speaking the glories of the
Supreme Soul even if he were to speak for thousands of aeons.
This is the nature of those small labels which we apply to others,
there is no way to fully describe everyone, in a satisfactory
manner, which encompasses their entire essence. So when we
break ourselves and others down into small blocky bits and then
fling them around at each other it ends up making a mess, and
then we have to search and pick the pieces back up and put them
together. None of this strikes at the real truth of the matter, but
merely is the reflex of karma working nearly automatically like
clockwork.
In the times we live in, its important to keep remembering this,
because people are becoming more and more shallow and fickle
and prone to arrogance and avarice and all the rest of the so-
called deadly sins. The dark side of the moon is shining intensely
on the Earth now, which means that not only is it a dangerous
environment, its also a very potentially rich environment for
transformation; as they say, fortune favors the bold, and if it is
that noble souls who are predisposed to hearing the message of
this text do indeed choose to come here during this time, they are
quite bold indeed. The influence of this dark moon is coloring all
aspects of the world with a darkly-aspected shade; and at the
same time is giving rise to an interesting contrast in the other side
of the spectrum, when it is that the wisdom-light is allowed to
penetrate the thick veil of ignorance and poke its head out. The
darker that it gets, however, the more powerful that a light
appears. Just by radiating this light and choosing not to succumb
to the darkness, you will be healing yourself, inspiring others, and
resolving the issues which must be resolved if you, and the world,
are to attain true and lasting peace. This doesnt mean to try to
impose artificially some image of morality or righteousness, but to
try to make the darkness conscious, by realizing it exactly as it is.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
Realizations will lead to expansions of our nature past the
limitations which bound us in ignorance and attachment, fear and
aversion. Our desire and aversion for objects of the mind and
senses decreases, and we will find ourselves becoming less
reactive to situations that we formerly would have reacted to in a
harmful manner. The poison is removed from the river of our
mindstream, and what is left is pure clear refreshing water. Each
poison being purified, leaves a nectar in its wake, each nectar
which flows forth is capable of remedying another poison, both in
ourselves and others. Our actions, becoming less reactive,
generate less karmas, and the karmas that we have from before
also influence us less. That is why that the masters of the past
have spoken of instantaneous realization, happening all in a
flash. The more that we can persist in this instantaneous
realization, of the non-dual, within the sphere of the relative, in a
constructive way which tends towards experiential wisdom and
not merely dryly refuting everything as being unreal, the more
that this instantaneous realization can manifest fully and
completely. Situations, places, people, events will all come in turn,
and through this intuitive wisdom, one is guided along the straight
path from the crooked one. Negative karmic situations which we
formerly found ourselves in will be transforming, empowering
situations, causing us to ascend from the ashes of our former self
like the phoenix, the ancient symbol of immortality. When we get
a degree of this reflexive action of non-reflexive action, the
ignorance which has bound us in the land of continuous birth and
death is cut off from its root, by the ever-sharpened sword of
intrinsically pure wisdom.
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
he is present, and can welcome all things.
Peace is tasted at last, a pure peace which is deathless and
birthless and knows no bounds, a peace which is then spread to
every living being that it encounters because it touches to the
very core of every living being. Abiding in this peace, the
possibility of the destruction of the false bubble-ego is
transcended, and pure equanimity beyond all conceptual
boundaries is attained. Nor is the peace abided in, because it is
essenceless and pure, and we still accept the reality of the world
as existing but also without essence. In this way we begin to
exhibit qualities which are not formed in relation to anything in
the mundane world of illusion and impermanent things, seen
through the improperly objectifying mind, but in relation to a
deathless eternal blissful reality that transcends all description.
The world of continuous birth and death, and the world of the
eternal, merge as one phenomena which is beyond both,
somehow even while still in this body. This is called the Buddha-
nature. Ones whole array of motivations, sense of responsibility,
perceptions of what is and isnt important, changes drastically.
Instead of thinking and acting and having allegiances only to the
illusory idols of our own devices, namely our ego, our allegiance
changes to the universal truth, the real ego or self, and that
spirit of truth manifests through us in every sphere. Free of
desire, what could draw my mindstream towards the dark
material world? Free of aversion, what in the material world could
block the progress of my path to full enlightenment? Clear on the
straight path to Nirvana, no ignorance can stop the force of your
wisdom and action. Seeing the suffering of your fellow living
beings, and containing within yourself the medicines to allay their
suffering, you feel like a mother cat nursing its poor injured kitten.
The remedies to allay their suffering jump out of the soul
surrendered to the Spirit of Truth. That Spirit is a balance and a
scale to harmonize every aspect of the mind, speech, and actions.
This is the intuitive wisdom that is referred to as The Perfection
of Wisdom in Buddhism, which is also the name of the key sutra
associated with the doctrine of emptiness, the Perfection of
Wisdom of the Heart Sutra. Because it exists outside of the
confines of the grasping at that which is impermanent, it is a
spontaneous wisdom formed in the transcendental unborn
reality, and because it is not not confined by grasping at
impermanent things, it transcends even the unborn, to seeing the
whole diversity of creation exactly as it is. It in itself is like a great
reflexive upward moving momentum, which consumes concepts
of duality for rocket fuel, and spreading out into an expansive
matrix of harmonized truths, reflecting the truth of the universe
back to itself. While wielding this perfect thunderbolt of truth,
illusion is overcome in the end, and a reality of infinite blissful
quality pours out through you into the world. Nobody can perfect
this thunderbolt which comes to be held in your hand for you, but
only by holding yourself to the truth, listening to the conscience,
the voice of intuitive wisdom, the inner guru, can you perfect it.
Seek after the truth always for the highest good of your self and
others, and nothing will be able to stop you on the path.
Chapter 11
Societies soar into the sky, and crumble and fall, what matters is
not the affairs of this world, but how you conducted them. This
world is nothing but an illusion in our collective minds, its forged
of nothing but dreams, somewhere along the line though, the
dreamers began dreaming dualistically and falling under the
influence of their own illusions. Trapped in endless cycles of birth
and death, travelling through millions of species of life, self-
propelled ignorance can last for trillions and trillions of years.
Almost everything in our material world has this kind of history,
and yet paradoxically this history has no own-being whatsoever,
yet we believe it into existence with our minds, when apparently
reified objects appear to form composite phenomena. Only by
cutting off the power of these self-propelled illusions at their
source, by the proper realization of the emptiness of their
apparent own being due to the way in which all things are
posited to originate dependently upon one another, will we be
able to find the deathless unborn peace. It will become reflexive
to abide in this peace, and yet one will continuously enter into the
sphere of duality, working to overcome the karma that has
accumulated over time both in ones self and in the world. One is
not fettered, either by nirvana or by the illusions of the material
world, one walks perfectly in the middle of the path, acting for the
greatest benefit of self and others, while at the same time
recognizing them to be without essence in a relative sense. Their
essence is recognized as the same non-essential Buddha-Nature,
that one has recognized in ones own self.
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.
As such, everything arranges itself naturally without much input
from our former controlling ego. One feels more in tune with the
natural earthly and celestial cycles as they occur, and becomes
like a wish-fulfilling tree to serve the best needs of all humanity,
with compassion for their suffering and identification with them
as being intrinsically the same as yourself. Instead of a dull and
grey, flatlined existence, one perceives the beautiful shades of
dark and light cascading through our society, and in ourselves,
and is able to make more powerful transmutations from one into
the other for the benefit of all.
The things that formerly captured your attention no longer
interest you in the same way as they did, when formerly your life
was a game of hot potato between various escapes from our
suffering. We feel more simple and satisfied with little rather than
complicated and never satisfied with anything. Nevertheless, you
act in whichever way is the best for the benefit of all, because one
perceives naught but the primordially pure enlightened nature all
around one, covered for no good reason at all by pointless
ignorance and needless suffering. To see living beings trapped in
illusions of their own device, and suffering greatly, to the extent
of even wanting to take their own lives, creates a frustration in
you that can only be quelled by taking action to help others. Nor
does one perceive any living beings.
O Subhti, no one is to be called a Bodhisattva, for whom there
should exist the idea of a being, the idea of a living being, or the
idea of a person.
Yet one perceives the intrinsic enlightened nature covered by
ignorance, and merely makes the connections between our own
state and the person suffering in ignorance, hoping to bring the
person into closer proximity to the one truth nature. There are
many ways to do this, and for various situations they will become
apparent naturally and spontaneously to one who is surrendered
to this truth nature. That is why that its said that such a person is
compared to a wish-fulfilling tree, a tree which grows fruit based
on the desire of the person who plucks it. The truth nature is not
different from the universe and all things, as has been
demonstrated, and so the universe and all things flow along with
the truth nature like leaves down a stream, only they are oblivious
to the fact that there even is a stream, and some try to flow up
the stream with their own will instead of allowing the stream to
carry them naturally.
The only reason you will have to hate or be averse to situations or
people will be that they are flowing against their own nature, and
even then that hate or aversion is a positive force for self and
others, and will be seen to have no substantial basis. People who
are trapped in believing in the permanent objectification of
impermanent things make statements such as He is so awful, I
dont like this person, etc. and proceed to impute illusory
permanent natures on illusory permanent natures, and so
become even more lost in confusion and separated from one
another and from reality. This is exactly the current which feeds
into the cycle of continuing birth and death in the material world.
Subject and object are perceived to be objectified entities,
separate from one another, and so the pristine experience of
reality as it is is lost in a mental maze of increasingly complicated
polar opposites, which make us distanced from external reality
and the other. The material world is an external reflection of this
mental maze, full of confused creatures living the destiny of their
dualistic karma. We will find that these objectifications that we
make exist merely as transient phenomena in our mind and have
no static own being of their own. Moment to moment our mind
is reformed and reshaped and moment to moment everything
returns to nothing. The minds eye twitches, and a faint twinkle
issues forth from it, summoning into being concrete memories
and abstract ideas which whirl around the aura like a dust storm.
Whatever arises in the present does so in relation to the gaze of
this eye. Prejudices or praises, hate and love exist merely as
thoughts, when we recognize them for what they are, we can
have no ground for hating or loving people based on what we
judge of their apparent objective identity. Instead our hatred or
love for them arises in relation to the higher noble experience
which lies beyond the veil of words, and is never a hatred or love
that intrudes on the intrinsic experience of ones unity with all
life, but is seen as the ephemeral temporary phenomena that it is,
subservient to that which is permanent. The false duality of
objective, apparently permanent aversion and attachment is
made subservient to the experience of things as they are, non-
dual and devoid of subject and object essence; some have called
this God, some Buddha-nature, or Brahman. This is merely reality
as it actually is, and duality as it actually is, as seen from the
perspective of the Real beyond the relative, rather than just the
perspective of the relative. The Third Eye opens, weaving
subjective experience itself into an intrinsic absolute unity with
each moment. This is what it means to cease worshiping idols,
and submit ones self to the One Reality. Peoples idols are their
separate attachments and aversions which cause them to seek
out an existence apart from the True Reality. Endless is the
ignorance of such idol-worshipers, until they come to recognize
the intrinsic truth of all things. At that point all idols are put to use
to describe the face of the Lord, the one primordial eternal truth
and reality.
"My goal in the idol-temple is the image and beauty of Your face.
The idols of our former dualistic experience are put to use to
embellish the beauty and truth of our intuitive wisdom, the face
of God. With the overcoming of each poison a nectar flows forth,
until one is a garden of various nectarine remedies that cure ones
body and heart-mind of disease. Like the churning of Mount
Mandara by the Hindu Gods and Anti-Gods, the amrit nectar of
immortality is produced along with the halahala poison. The
higher forces of enlightenment win out over the lower forces of
decay, and one is established in the Heaven of those Gods.
Overcoming suffering with the peace and security of the
realization, one has sympathy for those who suffer, likewise for
overcoming ignorance, and all other poisons of the material
world. So contradistinctively with being established in a higher
blissful reality, one is inspired deeply by ones own transformative
process to compassion towards the infinite sea of suffering people
in the realm of continuous birth and death, while at the same
time knowing that the people and the suffering are like the misty
phantasms of a dream. Transcending both being and non-being,
one can always find the middle way in life, never being trapped in
destructive dead ends along the path, but always navigating
perfectly with the blessed intuitive wisdom of self-revelation. Not
only does this help one to avoid the chaos of ignorant thoughts
and actions, but by this process our core experience of reality, the
mind, is broken up and expanded over and over again, opening up
our inner and outer lives to more evolved and comprehensive
potentials. Who we are can grow and change in this way, leading
us to discovering the hidden transcendental essence within
ourselves and all things.
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
This experiential wisdom must be gained through practice and
application, it cant just be imputed conceptually and then copied.
Take the knowledge in hand, and put it to use; you will light up
the world with the warm glow of your black sun rising.