A reader contacted me with a question, and I decided a good column could come from answering it. Here’s the question: “Could you write about something that came up in a recent discussion? Someone said to me recently, ‘perception is reality.’ I said that it’s not and they were stunned. To me, perception depends on a person’s happiness or unhappiness; their optimism or pessimism. I’d like to hear what you think. Thanks.”

In answer to the question “is perception reality?” – I have to say, no and yes. Is perception reality in an absolute sense? From the standpoint of human senses and the intellect’s capacity to symbolize and understand experience, no, it cannot be. Absolute reality is the Universe-as-it-really-is, far beyond the capacities of human senses and intellect. The Universe is, as modern science is discovering, a single quantum field of energy manifesting matter/consciousness, but that is not what our sensory perception tells us. We can create only a representation of a very limited portion of reality and then create images and ideas about this incomplete information, and this information tells us we are separate and alone in the universe. Is this perception experienced and acted upon as reality? Most certainly, yes. And there lies the problem. We tend to act as if our subjective experience of separateness is reality, when it is only a perspective on reality.

From this perspective, it must first be recognized that human beings experience reality very differently from other species who have very different sense organs and brains. Then, amongst humans, perception will be strongly influenced by psychological and cultural factors. At this personal level, every individual lives in their own reality to a greater or lesser degree. Within a given cultural grouping, a person’s conformity to reality as a cultural norm is the basis of our measurement of mental health and illness at the most basic level. This variance of the subjective experience of reality is also the source of most human conflict. One person’s reality can be so different from another’s they will want to kill each other. Think of the current conflict between Islamic Jihadists and European-culture-based societies.

Then, at subtler levels, we come to just how one individual sees things versus another, right down to small tastes and preferences. So here, as the questioner noted, a person with a psychological predilection to happiness will experience a more positive “reality” than a person with a pessimistic and negative predilection. This is why we can predict how a predisposed anxious or angry or depressed person will perceive and react to the same event in very different ways, and how persons with differing styles of being-in-the-world will differ from each other in how they express themselves. We experience “reality” in vividly personal ways, so it is very important to realize that our perception is literally only a point of view.

An important question, however, remains: can humans intuit actual reality? In other words, beyond the limitations of senses and brain and culture and individual psychological bias, can a human have a sense of the Universe-as-it-is through its levels of organizations, from the microscopic to the macroscopic? From the perspective of Buddhist teaching, we have to say, “yes.”

We in this culture too often fail to acknowledge a deeper level of knowing than the intellect. This knowing arises from the silent intelligence of intuition and has no words for it transcends the realm of language. It is just a knowing, and is the source of both mystical and scientific insight into the true nature of the Universe. Intuition is capable of this because intuition is the consciousness that is both individual and universal. This non-duality is expressed within Oriental cosmologies when Buddhist masters instruct us to realize ourselves and the universe as one.

A very non-Buddhist source, astro-physicist and cosmologist, Mark Whittle, Ph.D., states a similar intuitive insight that is an example of what leads the cutting edge of science: “The Universe has, in a sense, made us in its own image… We’re descended from stars… and evolving within Nature has shaped our intuition in such a way that we can comprehend the cosmological story. In a sense, we’re children of Nature, at home in the Universe.”

The great challenge to those of us raised in a psychologically dualistic society, accustomed to mistaking technology for science and thinking for intelligence, is to grasp that the true scientists, such as Whittle, Einstein, or Tesla, are reaching into their intuitive knowing in order to understand what lies beyond the limits of accepted technology. They then use and shape technology to further the reach of our scientific understanding. Thinking comes after the intuitive insight, to organize and communicate their insights

In the psychological/mystical/spiritual dimension, this same opening of intuitive insight is necessary, and just as the theoretical scientist learns to trust their intuitional insights into the mystery of the Universe, we can, through training, examine the moments of our lives with the silent intelligence of awareness. We begin to experience, as the Japanese Zen tradition would say, the “Thusness” or “as-it-is-ness” of existence on the multiple levels of our existence. We can engage in what is known as the Zen practice of Shikantaza – a form of meditation that is the direct seeing and experiencing of the moment without preconceived judgment, not intellectualizing, but rather, being the truth of the moment realized in awareness.

Training in meditation, mindfulness and awareness is meant to expand our ability to experience more of the everything of existence, utilizing more of our perceptive and mental capacities in a non-judgmental manner to create a more accurate experience of reality-as-it-is. This is, of course, a continuum, and each of us is somewhere on this continuum between what Buddhism calls “egoic delusion,” living almost entirely out of the projected conditioning of our ego, and awakened awareness, experiencing Life-as-it-is, in both the conditioned world of form and the energetic absolute Universe where form and consciousness are like the particle and wave of quantum physics. Through our training and practice, we move on this continuum closer and closer to absolute reality

“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.” – Yasutani Roshi

Through both scientific and mystical intuitive inquiry, we can come closer to the realization that we and the Universe are both matter-energy and consciousness-energy, all One. We can experience how any small movement of our sense of self-in-the-world (perception) from egoic delusion toward awakened awareness brings us closer to the living reality of existence, and with it, significant expansion of our capacity for well-being and security as the gap between perception and reality grows smaller. We begin by narrowing the compassion gap that separates us from understanding ourselves and our fellow humans. This reduces the conflicts we have within ourselves and with other people. We then have to narrow the gap that separates us from identification with our fellow creatures, with Nature and the Earth that is our home. Eventually, we awaken into the realization, what Zen calls the “felt sense,” that we and the Universe are one. This is what Zen calls realizing our original nature, where perception resonates much closer to actual reality.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, mystic philosopher, and paleontologist, a principle figure in one of the great discoveries in the evolutionary chain of human history, the discovery of Peking Man, a homo erectus predecessor to modern homo sapiens that lived approximately 750,000 years ago in China.

While being an important figure in the world of field paleontology, Teilhard’s great mission in life was to resolve the gulf between religion and science that centered on the issue of evolution, for he was a man of both worlds, unique in so many ways, and absolutely brilliant. His perspective on evolution was radically visionary in a manner that put him not in conflict with his faith, but rather in confirmation of it. For him, the issue wasn’t that human beings evolved from a common ancestor as that of apes; this was only the most recent evolutionary event and only a superficial analysis of the much greater truth. For Teilhard de Chardin, what was evident was that human beings were the natural result of the evolution of the Universe. The only point of beginning for the human species, as with all life, could be the birth of the Universe, the Big Bang. From that moment, an inexorable process of increasing complexification of matter led to the inevitable emergence of consciousness, for, he speculated, as science is now confirming, consciousness is an inherent property of matter.

As is being discovered in the field of quantum physics, sub-atomic particles behave in ways that can only be explained by attributing consciousness into the equation. This is supportive of Teilhard’s hypothesis that the Universe is a unified field of both matter-energy and consciousness-energy, what he called spirit, and that the Universe was a unified field of spirit-matter, manifesting as objects within the field of universal energy which complexified in consciousness as it complexified in physical organization. In the known Universe, the most complex organization of matter is the human brain which then manifests the most complex consciousness. Teilhard wrote: “There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.”

This perspective on existence is in keeping with many cultural traditions in which that which is called “God” is not the creator of the Universe in any kind of mechanistic and dualistic sense, as in God is in Heaven and the World is made “out there” but rather, God is the world, Divine consciousness infusing all Creation. In this mystical equation one plus one equals One and the many. There are infinite manifestations of one – stars, planets, comets, rocks, and at least on this planet Earth, many, many manifestations of life-forms, all making up the One that is the Universe, with consciousness permeating the One and manifesting as individual consciousness in the higher levels of organization called sentient beings. This is the Natural World. It is a system of unified energy manifesting infinite individual systems of energy, all still within the One.

“When the energy simply flows through us, just as it flows through the grass and the trees and the ravens and the bears and the moose and the ocean and the rocks, we discover that we are not solid at all. If we sit still like the mountain Gampo Lhatse in a hurricane… then we are not this separate being.” – Pema Chodrin

This intuitive realization of our individuality existing within a Great Oneness is the essential mystical spiritual realization. It is not adequate to hold this as an intellectual realization, it has to be intuitively experienced, a combining of subtle physical and mental perception of our Beingness, our essence as energy connected energetically with the multiplicity and singularity of Life. To hold the idea of oneness brings no peace, no sense of completeness and perfect belonging in the World; the conflict of competing individual forms and human egos (psychological separate forms) is too overwhelming. To experience and live this peace requires what Buddhists call the “felt sense,” and since what we are addressing here is the reality of our existence as “spirit-matter” energy, it can of course be felt. It is our hypnotic belief in separate solid bodies and individual minds that prevents the feeling being realized, numbing us to this experience of living within the Sacred One. This belief constitutes what Buddhists refer to as a “barrier” or “gate” of egoic delusion that blocks our opening to the felt sense. The realization certainly can be addressed at an intellectual level, as I am attempting here, and as mystical teachers throughout history (including Jesus) have attempted with their words. It is, however, with their presence, which embodies this unified connected energy much vaster than a single individual, that the true communication, or what is sometimes referred to as “direct transmission,” can occur, opening and unlocking the “gate.”

“We can feel peaceful because our presence and the presence of the universe are exactly in the same place. This is what we call wholeheartedness or “with your whole mind.” – Dainin Katagiri

“God” is everything and no-thing since all things are only appearances of spirit-matter, all of which is The One that is Life. Only humans can create an artificial reality with their highly complex self-aware consciousness in which we experience as our primary reality our separateness. This is what led Carl Jung to say, “‘God’ is “a word for the non-ego.” For mystically awakened Buddhists, or the American or Australian indigenous peoples, there is no anthropomorphic “God,” Life itself is the source of all and experienced as sacred. They live in the reality of Teilhard’s spirit-matter.

“For the Zen Buddhist, everything that exists, apart from man – animals and plants, stones, earth, air, fire, water – lives undemandingly from the center of being, without having left it or being able to leave it. If man, having strayed from this center, is to know security and innocence of existence… he must go back… and return home to the “house of truth”… He must become… like forest and rock, like flower and fruit, like wind and storm.” – Eugen Herrigel (The Method of Zen)

Born to have a human experience,
not a squirrel’s, a daffodil’s or a bird’s,
The Flowing River of Universal Energy
contracts to a one,
humbly, awkwardly, vulnerably emerging
with the first breath inhaled.
Air and earth combine,
animated with the spark of The One,
a story begins, the story of one.
A human being begins,
lost in the teeming, bumping, yearning, struggling,
loving, hating, striving, hoping, despairing
sea of humanity, all looking for their place.
Insecure, often afraid, sometimes
full and triumphant, then again,
beset by incompleteness, frustration, fear.
Growing, learning, striving, asking:
“Is this my place?” “Is this my place?”
So many to challenge for “the place.”
So many to sow confusion about
what is “the place?”
The one who struggles,
the one who seeks,
has never been taught
of the One who already,
always is the place –
This watcher, this experiencer
that is the experience,
not the one chasing after experience,
chasing after place. –
We must come to know
the One who is more than one,

who is the One watching
this human experience.
And if from birth the watcher is an ancient one,
they carry the knowing of I Am,
and they live their human experience
struggling to remember what they already know.
And if they seek the quiet, the still voice within,
the remembering occurs,
and the human experience carries
less and less angst, less and less suffering,
more and more knowing the place
is here, right where I always am .
There is an awakening into I AM
who was not born,
who does not die.
The KNOWING grows,
the place is HERE,
the HERE that is the
flowing energy of the Universe – everywhere.
And when their story of one comes to its last breath,
in the last exhalation there is a sigh – “Home.”
And The River takes them back to
The One they had never left.
And when time and space
and soul are ready,
from The One,
again the soul sets out
to experience being one –
A squirrel, a daffodil, a bird,
a human being,
swirling, dancing in The One
that looks like many.

To realize our wholeness, we must, as the mythic mystic master, Yoda, said, “unlearn what you have learned.” And as Obi Wan said to Luke, “You must reach out with your feelings.” Then and only then, can we experience “The Force” that is us all, one experiencing One.

“The (Chinese) term ‘hsin’… is used in a way… synonymous with the Tao. Hsin means the totality of our psychic functioning…. To both Taoism and Zen, the center of the mind’s activity is not in the conscious thinking process, not in the ego.” – Alan Watts – The Way of Zen

In Buddhism, the concept of bringing your whole mind to life-experience is very important. As Watts indicated, in Zen, the point is to transcend finding the center of mind and our sense of self in thinking and emotions (the ego), and find them in the integrated totality of our Being-in-the-world. When Buddhism speaks of “little mind” it is indicating that what we usually associate as “mind” is really only the dimension of mind built around the egoic experience of “me” with “my” thoughts and emotions, while we ignore that which is called “big-mind” that transcends separateness, form and conditioning, which this “little mind” arises within. The purpose of Buddhism with its emphasis on meditation and Koanic riddles is to point the student toward and open them into the realization of “big mind,” the consciousness of non-dualistic intuitive experience that is aware awareness.

The typical person, identifying mind with the thought and emotive structures of the ego, approaches life in a manner that is superficial and programmed. We exist largely within conditioned sets of observation and response, paying just enough attention to notice a situation falling into some recognizable mental set and scenario and go into a stimulus-response, thought-emotion-behavior pattern. We bring only enough of our mind to the situation to engage our thoughts which then activate our emotions and behavior. We play out these pre-set patterns over and over again as we go through our lives with very little awareness of their limitation, or of the many alternative and probably better, wiser, more skillful possibilities available.

These patterns constitute our personality, our habitual interactive manner. They might be effective and they might not be. We mistakenly confuse these patterns for who we are, and they are often significantly neurotic, that is, not optimally appropriate, healthy or helpful. They cause our perceptions and responses to be significantly distorted regarding the what-is of the moment, and they most certainly cannot access genuine spiritual experience. From a Buddhist perspective, we are asleep and to awaken within us a deeper, totally sane and truly spiritual mind is the entire purpose of meditation and Buddhist teaching.

Upon occasion, we are caused, by the context, novelty, intensity or importance of a situation, to bring full attention to what we are experiencing and to engage and respond with the full spectrum of our faculties. In such moments, we become insightful, nuanced, artful, creative, appropriate and skillful in ways that are exceptional. Such moments would be our most psychologically and spiritually healthy, in which we flow effortlessly with the moment, when there is, in fact, no separation between us and the moment. These are moments in which we fulfill the requirements for “hsin.”

Importantly, Buddhism teaches that such moments are reflective of our true, enlightened Self, our true and “big” mind and do not have to be accidents, but rather can be cultivated. Meditation, and its life-interactive correlate, mindfulness, are exercises in the development of this capacity leading to an integrated, skillful, wise and spontaneous sense of Self-in-the-world. Likewise, koanic challenge, those riddles that force a person out of habitual dualistic thought-response patterns into fresh non-dualistic insight, are meant to open the underdeveloped intuitive dimension of mind that serves to create experiences of “felt” understanding and integration. Such insights, skill, nuance and originality are precisely the goals of Zen training.

For a Westerner, it can be helpful in understanding what is meant by whole-mind to look at a concept borrowed from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (d. 1961) who noted that the mind has four “functions”: thinking, feeling (emotions), sensation and intuition. He noted that thinking and feeling are egoic functions, creating the sense of the personal separate self, the “me” that has thoughts and emotions, while sensation and intuition are trans-egoic functions, direct realizations of connection with the physical and consciousness dimensions in which the sense of a separate self can be transcended into a flowing unity with existence.

Dr. Jung further noted that a psychologically balanced and healthy person operates with relatively equal distribution and facility in all four functions. He also noted two directions of mental energy: introversion – the taking into and consideration of experience, and extraversion – the projection of personal consciousness into the world. Here too he described a healthy person as equally and fully capable in both directions. He finally noted that it is with applied awareness that these psychic functions integrate and harmonize. Finally, in a nod to the Eastern philosophical systems that affected the development of his reasoning, he used the image of the Hindu/Buddhist mandala, the perfect circle made of harmonized individual parts, to symbolize this process he termed “individuation.” This term begins to approach what Buddhism means by enlightenment, the integration and awakening of a fully natural person into profound insight and presence with no tension between personal duality and the non-dualistic true nature of existence. Such a person in day-to-day life is notable by their stability, non-reactiveness, non-defensiveness, peacefulness and kindness while being well-boundaried, holding themselves and others responsible for their actions without judgmentalism.

To bring the whole-mind into the world begins with the senses, with a heightened, focused and subtle experience of the physical world we experience as outside brought to our internal world through introversion. We, of course, have, through conditioning, egoic thoughts and emotions concerning our experience, but the person trained in Buddhist mindfulness, rather than letting this egoic conditioning automatically interpret our understanding and determine our actions, notes and suspends them so as to hold the experience in spacious awareness, without thought. This allows intuition, the wisdom-bearing ego-transcendent connection to the unconscious, both personal and collective, that is Life itself, to guide us in then bringing the experience into its own unique mental form and expression through thought and resonant emotion. In this transcendent state, outside and inside dissolve. There is only the moment in awareness. This is “big mind” employing “little mind” to give form and communication of pure Life-experience, which is in truth ineffable, into the world of form and society. As is written in the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be named is not the Tao,” while at the same time, as the great Zen master, Dainin Katagiri reminds us: “You have to say something.”

This process trains the unruly and opinionated human mind into the wisdom and discretion of whole mind in the world. With all four mental capacities and both mental energy directions present and interacting, we can bring our experience of the moment into wiser, intelligent, feeling, skillful understanding and action. We can extravert this whole-mind into the world as applied mindfulness, and likewise, the whole-mind’s individual functions can be held in the field of awareness for purposes of deep clarity, integration and understanding of mind itself in meditation.

So, we arrive at the Chinese concept of “Hsin,” the harmonization that leads to the experience in which the sense of self, of “me,” becomes the experience of self and the moment integrated. The sense of an absolute separate self dissolves into the totality of direct experience. Whole-mind is the “totality of our psychic functioning” non-dualistically experiencing and expressing the moment. It could be said that rather than being a person having experience, experience is happening, within which a person occurs. (This last sentence has the quality of koan – so sit quietly with it allowing intuitive insight to arise.) This points to the Zen instruction to “be nobody,” or to “emptiness,” for it is only when we are empty of the sense of a separate self that we can be filled completely by the direct experience of the moment.

This cultivation of “hsin” is “The Way” that Taoism and Zen refer to that brings liberation from the clumsiness and craziness of ego, restoring our natural true self-in-the-world with whole mind. We enter “the gateless gate” of Zen previously barred by ego. We can “Break through the impassable barrier and get to know the opening beyond.” (Fo-hsing T’ai)

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”  –  Kris Kristofferson, Janis Joplin

Central to Buddhist teaching, and the teaching of all true non-duality spiritual masters, is the concept of liberation.  Generally this is referring to liberation from suffering.  However, the path to the liberation from suffering is in liberation from attachment to the forms of the world for our sense of self, our identity.  So, in a sense, it is about having no absolute dependence on anything for our well-being.  There’s nothing to lose – because the stability of our existence is not based on any thing.  If the stability of our existence, our sense of well-being, is not dependent on any circumstance external to our Being, this then is most certainly freedom.  Here, spiritual becomes psychological, because this freedom liberates us from the anxieties based in finding worth and identity in anything outside our core experience of existence within and as an expression of the Universe.

With Buddhism and all non-duality spiritual systems, we’re always peeling the onion.  This freedom, this liberation, is not only based on freedom from finding identity in material objects and worldly status.  It is based in freedom from the need for any identity that is given by or dependent upon society and social approval at all, and this is a deeper and subtler thing (or no-thing) than we could conventionally imagine.  Just how subtle can be captured in the contemporary spiritual master Eckhart Tolle’s teaching that enlightenment (which can be seen as a synonym for spiritual and psychological freedom) is in “renunciation of the need to get to the next moment.”  Brilliant!  Just consider how the underlying cause of our anxiety is in our sense of the need to control and be in the next moment.  Our very sense of identity is wrapped up in a story of self in time.  We live leaning into the next moment.  We’re on our way to….. something –with some measure of unease about what lies there.  This anticipation, this leaning forward in our lives, is very much a source of the neurotic tensions of mind and body that are experienced as anxiety, and act as distraction from the richness of the present moment..

Occasionally, we are not on our way to the next moment.  Occasionally, we actually want to linger in the present moment because the present moment seems so perfect, so beautiful.  It is meeting our sense of perfection just as it is.  Pop culture borrowed the term Nirvana from Buddhism to describe this perfection where self and the moment are completely, harmoniously one.  We have no need to get to the next moment.  We don’t want the next moment unless it is more of this moment.  There comes with this experience a sense of wholeness and vastness, free of all anxiety, all discontent.  Then, anxiety about the perfect moment ending will creep in, we are back in time, and Nirvana, once again is lost.

This is where the Zen Master asks, “Whose sense of perfection is the criteria?”  And the answer is: the ego’s sense of perfection, and here’s a good place to introduce another central Buddhist concept called “Egoic Delusion.”  What we think we want or fear, in fact, what we think the world is about, is, to a very great extent based in a delusion of the mind.  We have ideas about what is good and bad provided for us by our cultural contexts and psychological experiences, and we live reactively to the unfolding of Life from within those ideas.  We are prisoners of those ideas.

As Tolle is telling us, one of those very powerful ideas is what he calls “psychological time.”  Now, in casual reading, one might think that Tolle is saying that time is one of those delusions, that it doesn’t exist.  Well, not so simple.  We are in the paradoxical universe of human-beingness where things can be simultaneously true and not true.  In the realm of Being, Tolle’s word for Nature, the Moon circles the Earth and the Earth circles the Sun.  Morning comes with the rising of the Sun, and evening with the Sun’s setting.  Days and years pass.  Yes.  This is natural time.  All of Nature lives within this time, which is always experienced as “Now.”  The bird doesn’t anticipate the sun’s setting, it doesn’t regret that it missed the worm yesterday.  Only humans can suffer in this way, and we suffer because we live trapped within the delusion of “psychological time.”

Humans, with our capacity for abstracting our experience out of the immediacy of Nature, create an idea of time, and we actually live mentally more in the past and the future than in the present where our life actually occurs.  This anachronistic orientation to Life creates a kind of fear that likewise is psychological.  In Nature, the rabbit experiences fear as the fox chases it, but when it eludes the fox, it doesn’t live in fearful memory of that brush with death, nor is the quality of its existence marred by fearful anticipation of the reappearance of the fox.  It lives in the Now, and in the Now there is no suffering of this abstract type that humans suffer.  So, we can begin to see how freedom ultimately has to do with freedom from psychological time and fear – fear that future moments will be unsatisfactory to our projected fantasies about what we need to be peaceful and OK.

For humans, there are also the moments of real fear, real danger – when the earthquake happens, in war, in battle – these experiences are not abstractions and they happen in real time, not psychological time, and it is important to note that in such catastrophic moments, moments of possible or inevitable mortality, for many there is no anxiety, no psychological fear.  It is what makes the Zen Koan, “This moment, what is lacking?” a pointer to the truth of our capacity in real presence to be free of psychological fear and anxiety even in the face of real threat to our person and circumstance.

 “Fear is the mind-killer… I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain. ”  

                                                                             – Frank Herbert in the Sci-Fi novel, Dune

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” – Franklin Roosevelt

So to be free of imprisonment within false ideas, even ideas about freedom – which can perversely even  include ideas that freedom is being free to take away others’ freedom – we must again come back to that Zen question, “Who is it that is afraid?”  The Dalai Lama tells us, we must “investigate who is becoming afraid. Examine the nature of your self. Where is this I? Who is I? What is the nature of I? Is there an I besides my physical body and my consciousness?” For when we discover that our most basic fear is concerning who this “I” is, and whether this “I” is sufficient for the trials of life, real and imagined, we begin to get to the core of the issue of freedom.  Freedom is about realizing the “I” that does not live in ideas – that sees the “I” that is constructed of ideas filled with insecurities – and realizes there are two “I’s.”  There is the “I” of the ego, constructed in psychological time, bound by conventions, insecurities and expectations.  And there is the “I” of Being, that which sees, that which is awareness, and has no boundary of time, no insecurities, reactivity or conventions.

Freedom is in a relationship to existence that is direct and true, in living the “I” of Beingness that experiences the vast interconnectedness that is the truth of existence.  And so, ideas and experience based in the “I” of egoic separateness that engender fear about the significance, the safety, the security of this egoic “I,” whose reference point is in the instability of human society and culture, are irrelevant.  This is the living as “nobody” with “no idea” that Zen inspires us to.  Freedom is in showing up fresh in each moment, with no idea about the moment, no idea about our self – ready to experience what is – to run if the fox chases us, to sit in the warmth of the sun if this is what the moment offers; to manage our personal and  financial affairs if this is what the moment calls for.  Planning and memory are included.  Fretting and worrying are not.

Among the Eightfold Path of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, very relevant  to this topic is the Path of Right Thinking.  For a teacher of Mindfulness, this is an interesting and somewhat ironic oversight.  It, synchronistically, is also a relevant topic to include in this month’s column.  Right Thinking is about thought that does not bind us in fearful ways to anxieties about past, future, and the importance of ourselves. Contrary to what many newcomers to meditation may believe, thinking has a very important role – it’s not the devil.  It is a product of the egoic dimension of mind, and ego is not the devil, although most certainly, it can be.

The issue is to understand what role ego and thinking play in our total experience.  When ego and thinking are the centerpiece of our experience, and are serving as our identity, that’s trouble.  That’s suffering.  So it is very important to have a “Right” relationship with thinking and ego, and that role is as a tool for engagement with the world on the level of conceptual mind.  Rather than experiencing that we are our thoughts, with Right Thinking, thinking has its proper role and dimension as a tool.  We “have” thoughts, much like we have hands – for the purpose of engaging the world and working with it.  Suffering is the result of identifying with mind, thoughts and emotions as who we are, and then they run our lives, filled with ghosts and goblins.  To have, to own, to manage, mind, thoughts and emotions is to be a player in the game of Life, skillfully using understanding and logic to analyze and communicate our discoveries of the miracle of Life made into forms – both physical and mental forms – free of unnecessary fear.

*

“Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it.  If we don’t, it isn’t holy at all.  We just drown in the ocean of our suffering.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh – The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching

In northern India, over twenty-six-hundred years ago, a young nobleman, Siddhartha Gautama, determined to understand the nature, cause and remedy to the unique suffering he saw as the plight of human beings, took up the life of an ascetic, one who devotes their life entirely to meditation, ritual, yoga and complete denial of material and bodily comfort.  He hoped, as many ascetics have, and has been quite common in Indian culture even to this day, that if he could completely conquer human desire for comfort and social standing, he would overcome suffering and find enlightenment.

After fully exploring and mastering the ascetic’s art, Siddhartha realized that the extremity of this path could not bring him the understanding he sought.  He realized that asceticism was its own form of egoic lifestyle, one that was in rejection of what was balanced and natural, and therefore could not lead to the perfect understanding and equanimity that he sought.  It is told that he then sat in meditation beneath a bodhi tree and vowed not to rise until he realized enlightenment.  He sat all day and all night, and as the morning star arose, it is said that he experienced full enlightenment and saw with clarity the answers he sought.  Then after meditating for another forty-nine days he walked to the Deer Park nearby and gave his first teaching.  There, to a small group of his fellow ascetics, he related his vision of Life as infinitely connected and therefore “empty” of separateness, of the necessity of a manner of life he called “the Middle Way,” neither ascetic nor indulgent, but rather balanced in the manner that Nature always expresses balance, and that within each human exists the ability to realize full enlightenment, just as he had.

He then presented what is known as “The Four Noble Truths,” a teaching on the nature of human suffering.  He said that in all of Nature there is a kind of suffering unique to humans that is of a subjective quality, a product of the mind.  He said that there exists a possibility of release from this suffering, and that he understood the path that frees us from this suffering.  This is said to have set the “Dharma Wheel” of Buddhism in motion – the path of understanding that eventually will lead to the liberation of all sentient life from affliction caused by humanity’s delusional perception of a Universe of separateness, in hierarchy, with humanity as the foremost species, and self-concern as the highest motivation.  From the root word, “buddh” that translates in the Pali language of ancient India as “to awaken,” Siddhartha became known from that day as “The Buddha,” the one who “awakened,” and the path that he taught, “Buddhism,” the path of “awakening.”

The Four Noble Truths are: 

The First Noble Truth – Suffering exists.  There is pain and sickness and death for humans as for all creatures, and impermanence is a fact of existence.  To be human, however, is to experience a unique kind of suffering in all the Universe, a subjective suffering of the mind (dukkha), also translated as “bitter or unsatisfactory experience.”  Our sense of place in existence feels uncertain.  Our experience of being a separate self in a vast world brings insecurity and our mind creates many strategies to compensate for this insecurity, but all these strategies are doomed to create more insecurity and unhappiness for ourselves and others.  Human existence is marred by this cycle of suffering.  No other creature suffers in this way.

The Second Noble Truth – There is a reason for this suffering, and it is because of the unique characteristic of the human mind to abstract its experience out of the natural unfolding of Life, to create a kind of virtual reality with the principle experience being of a separate self in a Universe of separate objects with our lives experienced as a struggle for safety and significance.  This is called ego, and it creates a delusional sense of self that wants stability, safety, reliable circumstances, and happiness – without end.  This is not what happens, and we experience much emotional suffering because of it.

We cling to this idea of a separate self we call “me” with its creative mind capable of endless scheming in its quest for happiness through material possessions, social standing, relationships, even philosophies and religions that promise the specialness and security we crave.  We lose touch with our natural self and mind that is an expression of the infinite and harmonious Universe.  Rather, we look to what we are instructed to believe, to our psychological conditioning from family, society and culture, all of whom are as lost in the “wrong view” of egoic thinking as we are.  We become more or less crazy trying to figure it all out, but there is no figuring it out because this egoic view of self and the world is delusional.  Yet we cling to it because we know of no other way.  This is the “clinging” and “grasping” commonly associated with this teaching.

Because our minds have the unique ability to imagine, we want Life to be the way we imagine would make it better for us, and we want these better conditions to be permanent.  Our understanding of this “better,” however, is deeply flawed and ultimately unattainable, and this creates emotional suffering.  In our struggle to make a perfect life as we imagine it and our unhappiness with the way it is, we create much suffering in the world and in ourselves.

We want what we want and are afraid of what we think threatens our ambitions.  We cannot see beyond our preoccupation with this “self” in past and future time, and are filled with insecurity.  We are blind to the interconnectedness, intelligence, and vast beauty that transcends impermanence and is the principle quality of Life.  As characterized by Eckhart Tolle, we are in “resistance to what is.”  We are lost in the delusion of our separateness and the feeling of insignificance that comes with it.  Our lives become dominated by craving and grasping after what we think will make our lives more satisfactory and less scary and by attachment to what we think will give us security.  But this only makes our lives ultimately more unsatisfactory, insecure and scary since it is unachievable. Everything we cling to, everything we attach to, is either unattainable in an absolute way, or impermanent.  That which gives comfort will become a source of discomfort, of suffering, when it goes away, as everything in the world of form must.  Our lives are spent chasing after security in possessions, ideas, affiliations, and relationships that cannot give the security and happiness we seek.

The Third Noble Truth –  is a declaration of healing.  It says that there is a path, a way that takes us to liberation from the false ideas of security in control, manipulation and possessions.  This Truth also tells us that any interpretation of the Buddha’s Doctrine as “Life is suffering” is in error.  The teaching is that Life contains suffering and joy, and that with the mastering of the conditions that lead to suffering, we discover boundless reasons for joy and happiness as our true Nature.  We must touch and feel and be honest about the fact that we resist Life-as-it-is.  We must see how some suffering is a natural fact of Life, a consequence of karma and impermanence, and we must realize how unnecessary is the subjective suffering we create for ourselves and others that can then turn into more suffering, both in real and imagined circumstances.  We must realize that if we look deeply into and truly understand our experiences of suffering, the deep looking will transform the suffering and open us into an expanded experience of Life, and ultimately, into enlightenment.

The Fourth Noble Truth –  is the path, the practices, insights and states of consciousness that lead to the liberation from suffering and to a life that is peaceful, joyful, wonder-full.  In its simplest form, it tells us to examine our attachments, and ultimately, to release our clinging to this idea of a separate self with all its attachments and grasping, its attempts at controlling Life. Through releasing attachment to this artificial reality and idea of self, we can “awaken” into the Way that Life really is, and when we realize and live within this Way, we will be free of this unnecessary suffering.

It instructs us into a life of fearless inquiry through meditation and mindfulness that is capable of experiencing the true infinite connectedness of everything, of realizing that we and all phenomenon are “empty” of a separate existence, and therefore the foundational existential insecurity that leads to our suffering is delusional.  It then offers suggestions about the manner in which Life can be lived so as to bring about this realization – known as “The Eightfold Path,” They are:  Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.  It teaches that by living these “right” paths, we will discover the illusion of clinging to this insecure self-centered identity and discover the limitless beauty and boundless interconnectedness of Life, and the compassion that naturally arises from this Right View.

It is very important to understand that the “right” connotation used here is very different than what we are accustomed to in the West as commandments from religious authority.  Harkening back to the word, “Dharma” that means the Way or Path that is a natural expression of the harmony of the Universe, what is “right” in this context then is that which leads to harmony, balance and release from suffering, and our faculty for realizing this harmony is not the intellect but rather intuition.  We “know” when something is right or wrong because of how it feels, not whether it aligns with some rule.  This ability to “know” requires what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “looking deeply into,” more deeply than we are accustomed to.  Without it, we are self-centered and can only see the way we are conditioned by society to see, applying only our faculty for thought – the voice of conditioned ego.  It has no universality or wisdom.  It is always self-referencing and self-centered, and will accumulate and cause suffering.  We will have a tendency to make a story out of our suffering, live inside that story, and, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, then be vulnerable to “drown in the ocean of our suffering,” and we will pull others under with us.

If something is right, it will naturally be an expression of the harmony that is the Universe, and since we are an expression, a creation within the Universe, this knowledge is within us.  How could it not be?  Just as The Buddha went within the quiet of his own awareness to discover the truth of suffering, he taught with his Eightfold Path that we have within us the truth of what is right.  The Buddha’s teaching is a finger pointing the way, and we must discover our own intuitive authority that will reveal a Self deeper than our personal self, a concept that is central to Buddhist teaching.

We must get beyond believing in ideas of right and wrong that originate in the artificiality of the human ego, what Buddhism calls egoic delusion, taught to us by the macro-ego of culture and society.  Most fundamentally, we must realize that violence, as defined as the imposition of egoic will over the right of all Life to be honored in peace and respect, is not-right.  Non-violence, insight, mindfulness, compassion, connectedness and respect are the basis for what is being defined in this context as “right.”  With this “looking deeply” we begin to truly see the Universe-as-it-is and we begin to intuit the beautiful necessity of everything, including that which we had previously rejected and was a source of suffering – even our suffering.  As Thich Nhat Hanh has said:  “Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it.” 

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  –  Matthew 6:25

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH

Right View – Of course it all begins with Right View, that is, the view that sees things-as-they-are with clarity, which sees the interconnectedness and interdependence of all phenomena. Right View sees the source of unnecessary suffering as self-centeredness, which gives rise to the insecurity of an isolated self that manifests greed, callousness, conflict, exploitation, envy, disrespect, and abusiveness.  In the experience of separateness, only the small self and that which is believed to enhance the self is valued.  All that is not within the circle of self is irrelevant or threatening, opening the way to harmful, disharmonious action without conscience.  Right View also sees that Life exists as both form and energy in perfect balance.  To fail to experience Life in its energetic dimension, the energy that gives rise to form, and the energy that gives rise to mind, is to fail to experience the unifying principle of existence.  Without the experience of energy as ever-present and necessary for form to hold itself together and relate, there is no understanding of harmony and balance.  Ultimately, without a living relationship and experience of the underlying energy of existence we are unable to experience the Source of Everything that is often assigned the word “God.”  This “Right View” takes us to a transcendent experience of Life, to a bigger picture where what is experienced as suffering can be understood, and in understanding, managed, even transcended.

Right Thinking:  Right Thinking is about thought that does not bind us in fearful ways to anxieties about past, future, and the importance of ourselves. Contrary to what many newcomers to meditation may believe, thinking has a very important role – it’s not the devil.  It is a product of the egoic dimension of mind, and ego is not the devil, although most certainly, it can be.

We must understand what role ego and thinking play in our total experience.  When ego and thinking are the centerpiece of our experience, and are serving as our identity, that’s trouble.  That’s suffering.  So it is very important to have a “Right” relationship with thinking and ego, and that role is as a tool for engagement with the world on the level of conceptual mind.  Rather than experiencing that we are our thoughts, with Right Thinking, thinking has its proper role and dimension as a tool.  We “have” thoughts, much like we have hands – for the purpose of engaging the world and working with it.  Suffering is the result of identifying with mind, thoughts and emotions as who we are, and then they run our lives, filled with ghosts and goblins.  To have, to own, to manage, mind, thoughts and emotions is to be a player in the game of Life, skillfully using understanding and logic to analyze and communicate our discoveries of the miracle of Life made into forms – both physical and mental forms – free of unnecessary fear.

Right Speech – Speech is the intermediary between thought-form and physical-form.  It has the power to shape reality for those who speak and those who hear.  It can be a conveyor of compassion and understanding, or of contempt and violence.  It can be a conveyor of indifference.  We can soothe and make peace with a word or we can violate, disrespect and create conflict with a word, with an angry or contemptuous inflection of speech.  Right Speech is using the power of the word as an instrument of connection, harmony, compassion and peace.  This kind of speech is an antidote to suffering.

Right Action – Right Action, like Right Speech, is being mindful that our actions shape Karma.  Everything that happens is the result of preceding conditions and actions.  Every choice we make sets in motion results we often cannot imagine.  Mindfulness of action helps us consciously to be instruments of peace and well-being.  We are at a choice-point with every action to be in service of self – which will be divisive and disharmonious – or to be in service of the moment as an instrument of harmony, skill, peace, creative expression, and celebration of Life and its wonder, what can be called the realm of Being.  Honoring the right of others, through our actions, to exist, express themselves, and be in dignity and freedom is essential if we are to be a presence in the world that alleviates rather than causes suffering.

Right Livelihood – Is the work we do, the means of support of ourselves and our family, an expression of service and honoring the community of Life, or is it exploitive, a source of harm, diminishment, fraying at the bonds of community and dignity for all?  Ultimately, much of what society assigns us as livelihood, in the big picture, is in the service of someone’s selfishness at the expense of others.  A society is an aggregate of occupations that define whether the society is compassionate or exploitive in its expression and purpose.  Exploitation is violence.  Occupations that exploit human weakness or vulnerability or defile Nature are not expressions of Natural order and harmony and are therefore sources of suffering.  The redirection of human society into mutual service and honoring of all Life will require a redirection of human occupation toward the elimination of suffering of all life on the planet.

Right Diligence (or Effort) – This has to do with intention.  In everything we do, including our spiritual practice, we must be diligent that our effort is guided by an intention to express selfless wisdom, to not do harm.  This is closely linked to Right View, brought into the world of action.  Do we truly understand why we do what we do, and is it motivated by noble and compassionate rather than self-aggrandizing motives?  Diligence in these choices will determine whether our lives are sources of well-being or suffering for ourselves and others.

Right Mindfulness – The Eight-fold Path to the cessation of suffering cannot be actualized without Right Mindfulness, for Right Mindfulness is the awareness of the moment-as-it-is and allows our intuitive knowing to inform us, that is, to “in-form” us, to bring into form the energy of a wise mind, of Buddha-mind.  Only with Right Mindfulness can we see the-moment-as-it-is and let it be our guide to actualize harmony, skill, compassion, action and view.  It is to see this moment, to feel this moment, to hear this moment, to know this moment as who we are.  It is to realize awareness as who we are and that all that co-arises with us in this moment are our sacred brothers and sisters, and to live in this realization is the key to living the Buddha’s teaching as an agent of well-being rather than of suffering.

Right Concentration –  If we cannot tame the wild swirling mind of ego; if we cannot stop the momentum of our conditioned mind through concentration into the moment, then we cannot break free of  the fog of egoic delusion.  The swirling activity of the mind has one primary purpose, and it is to hold together the conditioned false view of reality built around the primacy of self-interest.  To stop this swirling virtual reality of mind-activity is of absolute necessity.  This is realized through Shamatha – “Peaceful Abiding” meditation, without which, our progression into Vipassana – Wisdom and Insight –  and Vastness – Right View of the truth of the nature of existence – is impossible.

We must learn to stop, to look deeply, non-judgmentally yet with discernment, into the what-is of the moments of our existence and into the unboundaried vast interconnectedness of our existence to be freed from suffering.  This is why our first step in realizing The truth of the nature of suffering and its transcendence is to learn to concentrate clearly through our meditation practice – first into the immediacy of the present moment with awareness of our senses and the physical world they connect us to, and then into the interconnections and infinity of the energetic present moment with our silent intuitive awareness.  In the stillness we will discover that awareness is who we are, and therefore, Buddha is who we are.  We will have come full circle to naturally discover Right View where the nature and cause of  suffering and the path to liberation from suffering is as clear to us as it was to Siddhartha Gotama twenty-six hundred years ago.  Suffering happens again and again, but by looking deeply into suffering so as to understand its cause, and constructing our lives based on the Eightfold Path, we have the opportunity to transmute it into enlightened understanding and action – again and again.

“A meditative practice is not some “airy-fairy” process, but a way of getting in touch with our own life… it will have its effect on every phase of our life, on our relationships, our work, everything.” – Charlotte Joko Beck, from Everyday Zen.

What do we want from life? Universally, people want happiness. The problem is that all too often what people think will make them happy fails to do so; it may even end up making them miserable. We are looking for happiness in things and circumstances and relationships when this is a short-sighted understanding of the true nature of happiness. When the thing, circumstance, relationship that we want comes along, we are then, for a while, happy, and of course if what we want doesn’t come along, or what we do not want comes along, well then, the result is unhappiness. It is the most elemental teaching of Buddhism that all things, circumstances and relationships are inherently unstable, and when they change or wear out or go away, so does our happiness. Because of this, our lives are dominated by continuous movement of action and mind pursuing circumstances that will bring happiness, and this is an invariably failing strategy.

Now, if asked, most of us would generally describe our lives as more or less happy; we’re doing OK. But it is important to ask: what does this really mean? Is there not a great deal of tension, anxiety, anger, frustration, self-doubt, boredom and restlessness in most people’s lives, even if it is not of the crippling variety we would call upon a therapist or medication to help us with? What does real happiness look like? Are we not, in truth, in constant motion looking for happiness. And, in truth, aren’t persons with unshakeable happiness and well-being, that is, happiness and well-being that cannot be taken away by a change of circumstance, very rare? Perhaps we don’t even believe such a state of unshakeable well-being is possible.

Because of this, Buddhism describes the human condition as marked by “suffering.” But to describe our lives as “suffering” may seem a bit harsh – not really descriptive of the way we would evaluate our experience. Is Buddhism, then, a philosophy of gloom and doom, a philosophy that teaches detachment in the face of inescapable suffering, as many people mistakenly believe it to be, and therefore find it not speaking to their needs and experience? Quite the contrary.

What is the truth of the human condition? Isn’t it generally OK but changeable – like the weather – “partly sunny with periods of overcast with a possibility of rain and a slight chance of severe and possibly dangerous storms?” Certainly, we can all agree that a fair amount of suffering happens in any lifetime, some, more than others, but it is not the lives or the times that are marked by indisputable suffering that I wish to address. Rather, I’d like to address the average life and times that are like a typical weather forecast – generally pleasant to OK, not anything big to complain about. I want to address what it means to be OK and to examine whether it represents real happiness, or just a facade of the available happiness and well-being that an ordinary human being, living an ordinary life, is capable of and that Buddhism points us toward.

“If I were to scratch the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television. We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety.” – Beck

It seems we end up settling for the bouts of anxiety, anger, apathy, boredom, depression, and dissatisfaction, along with our addictions, great or small, as normal. It is what happens because we don’t know any other way, and so, we deal with this dissatisfaction by distracting ourselves with compulsive activity, but this is no cure, no path to a more satisfying, even joyful life.

There is an alternate translation for the word that is usually translated as “suffering” attributed to Buddhism, and it is, “unsatisfactory.” This is much closer to what Buddhism is getting at than the overtly terrible experiences we usually attribute to the word suffering. It’s the itch we cannot scratch, the general feeling that our lives are not as balanced, peaceful, wise, happy as they might be. It’s just OK – with some sense of an unsatisfactoriness that we are always running from while we run toward what we think will bring us more happiness, or at least, hold unhappiness at bay. Our lives are marked by endless movement and distraction, beginning with endless movement and distraction in our minds, reviewing and planning our strategies in the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of unhappiness.

“What we really want is a natural life… life can be more open and joyful than we ever thought possible… We enter a discipline like Zen practice so that we can learn to live in a sane way… As we sit, we find that the primary thing we have to work with is our busy, chaotic mind… when the mind becomes clear and balanced… there can be an opening – and for a second we can realize who we really are.” – Beck

So what is this “sitting?” In a way, it can be looked at as a way to work with, understand, and master the restless movement and distraction in our lives, to really get in touch with this “unsatisfactoriness.” We will come face-to-face with this unsatisfactoriness when we sit in meditation as boredom, restlessness, and aversion to just letting things be naturally what they are as we encounter what it feels like to be still, to stop our habitual movement and searching for stimulation. We will experience the sitting as uncomfortable, challenging, in a way, unsatisfactory, and this is why Joko Beck, and all teachers emphasize the need for discipline. It is a very challenging practice.

We experience that while, for a short time, anyway, it isn’t a problem to make the body still, what we soon realize, in a manner we only dimly understood previously, is how resistant our minds are to being still. And so, we sit there, attempting to follow the instructions for meditation – focusing awareness on breathing, noticing the activity of the mind and how it distracts us from focusing on our breathing, and returning awareness to the breathing. Simple instruction, but – it is unbelievably challenging. Along the way, since we are focusing awareness, and experiencing the breathing and the activity of the mind, we begin to notice the content and themes of the mind. We notice how judgmental our minds are. We notice how it has difficulty staying in the present moment, how it careens between past and future. We notice how when judgmentalism and past and future come together we experience distressing and uncomfortable emotions. We want to stop this. We want to be distracted from this. We want to stop sitting and go “do something.”

And then…. As we stay with the sitting, as we stay with the breathing, as we stay with awareness, for a moment, the mind becomes quiet. There is an experience of balance. There is a feeling of what it is to just be. It is spacious and comfortable. It has the feel of absolute sanity. Then, the compulsion of the mind to go back into movement, into judgment, out of time, returns, and we’re back to our anxieties, our tensions, our unsatisfied mind. A great discovery is made. We have touched Heaven while doing nothing – not even thinking, – and we have gotten a glimpse of the source of Hell. When the thinking starts up again, so does the restlessness, the unsatisfactoriness.

“What we really want is a natural life… life can be more open and joyful than we ever thought possible.” In our sitting, we have glimpsed that natural life. We have glimpsed the experience of openness and joy – more than we ever thought possible. So we sit some more. We discover that sitting isn’t “airy, fairy.” We discover that it is work, and it takes discipline, and we discover that we are capable of happiness and well-being, not as the result of something we do, but by stopping all the doing to discover who we really are when not caught up in trying to make our lives happy. We discover that in just sitting, doing nothing – not even thinking – Life happens all by itself, and it is good – a good beyond circumstances.

So we continue to sit and learn more and more about how we make ourselves crazy and we learn how to quiet the spinning mind that is the source of the craziness while we learn to open into this miracle of discovering our natural self in a quiet mind. And with enough practice, we can stand our bodies up from the sitting, and walk into our lives and still be “sitting” in the quality of our presence with the moment. We discover the remarkable teaching that Zen (which actually is just the Japanese word for “sitting”) is everyday life. Happiness is everyday life, experienced with a mind that knows how to be still, that knows how to sit quietly when the activity of thinking is not needed for its appropriate and helpful function of working through something for a specific purpose. We discover the true intelligence of a quiet mind, and the true beauty of senses that are open, subtle and receptive. We begin to live our lives, just “sitting” and “it will have its effect on every phase of our life, on our relationships, our work, everything.” So, just sit. If you have the courage and discipline to really settle your unruly mind, you will find a life that is never unsatisfactory, and that is what real happiness is about.

“Evolution occurs in a cosmic context, on a planet under a star, so terrestrially evolved brains are well equipped to construct a rich and accurate cosmological story… the Universe has, in a sense, made us in its own image – meaning we’ve evolved with a natural ability to understand Nature… We’re descended from stars… and evolving within Nature has shaped our intuition in such a way that we can comprehend the cosmological story. In a sense, we’re children of Nature, at home in the Universe.”
– Mark Whittle, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Virginia

To bring up the topics of spirituality and religion in any cross-section gathering of contemporary society is the proverbial can of worms. To intersect science and religion in the conversation spills the can on to the floor. And to throw politics into the mix can set off a riot. We have a very difficult time talking with each other concerning these topics; we rather have the tendency to talk at each other – vigorously, and at times, violently.

A big part of why these topics invoke such energy and argument is because they are conversations into suppositions about truth; they are even stabs at absolute Truth, and what can be more important? Religion is the discussion of the origin, meaning and destiny of existence, and the manner in which these beliefs are institutionalized, with a related conversation concerning ethics thrown in, all in mythic, subjective language. Science also addresses the origin, meaning and destiny of existence, but the emphasis is on the observable, measurable, and quantifiable, in objective language. The social sciences – philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology and political science – attempt the same, but since the topics are so subjective, objectivity is very difficult. The ethics conversation is also of great importance in these scientific discussions, although often not as vigorously applied as it ought to be.

A big part of the problem lies in the failure of religion and science to recognize that they really need to be converging rather than splintering the conversation. We’re caught in our typically human dualistic conundrum of “either-or.” Somehow the simple observation that the discussion concerning the truth of the way things are has to be a single conversation eludes us. The truth has to be the truth, applicable universally. As a saying that has emerged in recent political conversation goes: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts,” yet that seems to be what happens as contradictory opinions are presented as if they are facts.

The history of humanity’s conversation about truth has been plagued by a recurring theme where belief, that is, a story about the way things are as we imagine it, keeps getting substituted for the way things actually are. Dogma gets foisted as fact. Metaphor is arguing with metaphor. Trouble is sure to ensue.

Buddhism has taken a very constructive approach to this problem for thousands of years. Certainly debates amongst Buddhists occur, but Buddhism, from its very origins has been able to keep these debates rather civil by noticing that dogma is the bane of truth and cautions against confusing the way we think things are from the way they really are. The very important Buddhist concept of “emptiness” actually allows that all things are empty of absolute nature because we only have a picture of reality as our minds create it. It allows that everyone is free to have their own opinion, but these opinions ought not be foisted off on anyone else. Rather, every opinion, every point of view must be examined very carefully over and over again with the fullest application of all human faculties of observation and understanding to ever-improve our approximation of what any phenomenon actually is. It also states that no phenomenon stands alone, rather always in infinite interconnectedness and interdependence with all phenomena, that there is no single phenomenon other than the Universe itself, beyond actual comprehension.

For years, Westerners attempting to understand Buddhism have surrendered to allowing it seems to be more a philosophy of life, a psychology, a study of mind, than a religion. The area of Buddhism that does clearly fall into the realms of religion are in its teachings concerning the non-material aspects of existence and about ethics. Here too, however, whereas the major world religions seem to teach perspectives of exclusion and judgment, Buddhism teaches inclusion, insight, investigation and tolerance. The Dalai Lama has even made a very great point of saying that where scientific and modern understanding demonstrate error in Buddhist teaching, it is the religious teaching that ought to bow and give way. With this open, searching, non-dogmatic, even non-dualistic perspective as central to Buddhism, I find it best to consider Buddhism, rather than a religion, a cosmology, the field of exploration that seems to me to be open and integrative, to contain the domains that have been compartmentalized into spirituality, religion, philosophy, science and even politics as basically one gestalt.

As we are at a critical historical moment in Humanity’s evolution where divisive dogmas and interests are threatening to tear apart not only the social fabric, but the ecologic fabric of life on the planet Earth, we very much need to bring a new conversation into our exploration of the truth of the way things are that is open, integrative and universal. We need to move humanity forward into a future that is clearly and necessarily marked by expanding integration and unity as humanity understands more of its origins and place in the vastness of the stars, and that conversation, both religious and scientific, might be best served under the nomenclature of cosmology.

Cosmology is a particularly useful paradigm because it has always comfortably contained both myth and science, that is the intuitive-symbolic and the empirical-observational understanding, and that our best approximations of truth combine both of these human mental faculties. It is the explanation and exploration of the origin and nature of existence spanning everything from ancient creation myths to modern-day astrophysics and quantum physics. What is exceptionally exciting is that the world of physics, in both its intuitive theoretical dimension and its hard experimental science capacities for observation and measurement, are dovetailing into a new creation story. This new story can supersede the cosmological stories of the world’s religions, allowing them to bow, as the Dalai Lama suggests, to a new perspective that seems to integrate a great Universal intelligence, symbolically nomenclatured as the myriad names of “God,” with a story of consciousness as the evolutionary trait of humanity, of all the Universe for that matter, linking the material universe with the immaterial dimension of consciousness. Consciousness energy becoming and infusing material energy is a cosmological story thousands of years old. Only now, science is tremblingly close to proving it.

Interestingly, humanity is seemingly coming full circle. From Creation myths in antiquity explaining the immaterial dimension of the Godhead manifesting into the material world with humans as the God-head’s special and necessary link between the realms of symbolic consciousness and physical manifestation, to modern science realizing consciousness as an inherent property in all matter, only requiring a sufficiently complex coalescing of the great diversity of matter through evolutionary processes into a unified organism for consciousness-in-matter to be self-realizing. Human beings realizing consciousness as a product of the totality and the particular of the Universe is the completion of that circle.

Dark matter web (3 billion sq. light year area)There is no contradiction between Creationism and evolutionary science. There is intelligent design, and the intelligence is inherent in the Universe itself. Modern science may be about to make the connection through discoveries in quantum physics, dark-matter, dark-energy and the Higgs-Boson field that the very complexity and connectedness that allows the immensely intricate organism that is a human brain to manifest consciousness just may be a micro-version of the true nature of the vastness of the Universe. It may be that we are created in God’s image, and the projection of that image, rather than being the physical appearance of a human being, is the vast web of neural connection that is the cerebral cortex of a human brain that is tantalizingly similar to Human brain tissue neural network.what we understand of the web created by dark matter and dark energy, and gives rise to self-aware consciousness.

“Evolving within Nature has shaped our intuition in such a way that we can comprehend the cosmological story. In a sense, we’re children of Nature, at home in the Universe.” And so, it is time for us to stop arguing, to realize, as visionary Buckminster Fuller described, that we are the citizens of “space ship Earth.” That the Earth itself is an organism with a field of mind organized by the billions of individual minds in a single field of consciousness that is humanity, linked with all the consciousness of the trillions of fellow organisms sharing our journey through the Universe, to fulfill a destiny of Unity in individual diversity at home in the Universe. This is the new Cosmological story and conversation that I hope is only beginning.

“The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged?” – Eckhart Tolle

In 1966, Alan Watts, the great British-born American-transplant, San Francisco-beat-guru, imp-genius Orientalist philosopher wrote a book entitled simply, The Book. It carried a sub-title: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Its Preface begins with the words: “This book explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo – our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East… This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.”

Watts went on to say: “We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the Universe.”

As Watts outlined his thesis as based in both Western science and the philosophy-religions of the East, he was pointing to another taboo which is the realization that true spirituality must be a confirmation of experienced reality. He was saying that there is a taboo against individuals and the institutions of society holding as their highest motivation the search for the truth and the nature of reality. He was saying that society conditions into us a delusional preference for dogmas of separateness and specialness, of ego as the prime reality, with, as he pointed out, devastating consequences that create a kind of spiritual insanity, that lead to the full plethora of insanities that infect our society on the personal and collective levels.

More than a decade prior to Watts’ assertion, Albert Einstein stated a similarly prophetic insight into the notion of humanity as caught in a delusional state and offered a vision of how humanity can evolve so as to escape Watts’ apocalyptic warning of “eventual destruction.”

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Einstein also said, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels,” and, “Problems cannot be solved on the same level of consciousness that created the problems,” while being quite clear that the necessary consciousness must be of widening circles of compassion into the undeniable realization of, not only all peoples, but of all life as connected, interdependent and worthy of caring relationship.

As Watts is being diagnostic, Einstein is being prescriptive in his statement. They are also opening a conversation that is taboo – meaning none of the major institutions of our society – not government, not education, not economics, not religion, not medicine, not psychology, nor journalism – are willing to address this issue with any of the urgency that both Watts and Einstein clearly believed is warranted. As a scientist, Einstein knew that Western civilization’s enamorment with technological fixes was symptomatic of the consciousness leading us deeper and deeper into what Watts called “the misuse of technology.” He understood completely how dualistic consciousness that experiences human-beings, individually and collectively, as separate from the wholeness and interconnectedness of the natural Universe, from each other and the ecosystem of this planet Earth, was at the root of what both he and Watts were describing as an inevitable catastrophe of inestimable proportions for humanity and Nature.

Over half a century later, any reasonable assessment of the condition of humanity and Nature can only conclude these warnings remain unaddressed on any meaningful level. There is an inescapable sense that the situation is crazier than ever, and the need for a path out of the morass isn’t even being seriously considered. The predictions are plainly proving true. In reminiscence of the old wisdom that insanity is marked by obliviousness to being insane, modern humanity seemingly hasn’t a clue. As Watts and Einstein, along with so many others in the scientific, consciousness, and progressive political communities, are offering a true description of the dire state of human civilization and what needs to be done, and nothing of any great significance is being done to address this undeniable failure of consciousness, this delusional state, we have to be left with the conclusion that humanity, in its current collective expression, is insane.

While in recent years a growing number of people certainly have significantly evolved their consciousness of the problems created by the existing socio-cultural and psycho-spiritual paradigms, most of our population, and all of our institutions, remain mired in variations of regressive egocentric, materialistic, competitive, dualistic consciousness based in irrational dogmas incapable of seeing clearly and responding appropriately. We are locked into belief systems quite divorced from reality. Little if anything has changed in the approach to solutions that, as Einstein articulated, represents a prison of consciousness completely inadequate to address these problems. We remain mired in what Watts called the taboo against knowing who we are, that is, in knowing what a human-being on the planet Earth needs to know so as to shape our institutions and society towards the establishment of a truly flowering world that can take humanity and its fellow life-forms into a worthy and inspiring future.

Importantly, it is not as if we have to invent the consciousness necessary to answer the questions of who we are and what is needed. The necessary consciousness has existed since the beginning of the human journey. Out of the ancient past, meditative, contemplative traditions have fully understood the interdependence and interconnectedness of all life and the destructive delusional aspect of human ego. Buddhism, in particular, has managed to hold coherently into the modern age a message of infinite interconnection that when applied and examined through meditation, contemplation, and action gives rise to the natural experience of interconnection and its principle effect of compassion in the world, just as Einstein called for. It is incredibly exciting and hopeful that from Einstein forward, those at the cutting edge of science are realizing these truths. The question remains, why is general science, and why is society, ignoring what the leaders in science are telling us? Here is where we are confronted with the taboo.

In the contemporary world, many in the science, consciousness and progressive political realms all have in common their intention to awaken the evolutionary consciousness necessary for humanity to enter a new era of sanity marked by the application of consciousness and technology to harmony, peace, justice and sustainable civilization. What is needed that is new, that is evolutionary, is the application of these ancient philosophies of unity melded with modern quantum science as the guiding inspiration that can turn modern technology from “the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment” to the support, protection and preservation of that environment in the realization that the environment is who we are. What is needed is a psychology, a spirituality, an application of science, and new vision of human society that can guide us into expanded sanity that rescinds the taboo against knowing who we are in the vastness and balance of the Universe.

We must break free of the taboos. We must be willing to break free of lazy dogmatic thinking, to follow the lead of modern quantum science and ancient philosophies such as Buddhism, constructed around asking questions you may or may not have thought, but should have, to ask utopian questions, to ask how humanity can evolve into undreamed of peace, harmony, wisdom, and yes, sanity into a future at least as far reaching as humanity’s past. Why isn’t science and religion, hand-in-hand forging such a vision that is as natural for every young person to be considering as what career path they should follow? And it must be realized that these ancient teachings are not entirely sufficient, for they come out of cultures radically different from modern human culture. We must look at these old ways with new eyes, to find a new old way – one that remembers ancient wisdoms and brings them into modern context and vocabulary. Watts did that. Eckhart Tolle has more recently done it, as are many authors, speakers and teachers, but more people, all people, need to pay attention. This is not esoteric philosophy. It is an issue of the quality of life, even survival, for generations to come.

We must break the taboo against asking such questions so that a new era of human expression and sanity can flourish. Delusion will no longer do. We need to be awake, honest and courageous. We must find and actualize the truth of humanity’s place in the Universe or the future for the generations to come will only be even more desperately insane.

“Forgive them; they know not what they do.” – Jesus

There is a story about the Dalai Lama in which he is asked whether he hates the Chinese. His answer was, to paraphrase, that since the Chinese had taken his homeland and his people from him, “should I let them take my mind as well? No, I don’t hate the Chinese.” He goes on to say the Chinese responsible for the crimes against Tibet are people just like you and me who only want to not suffer, but they are mistaken in believing they will find happiness by taking what does not belong to them and disregarding the rights and needs of people they see not like themselves.

In other words, the Dalai Lama forgives the Chinese “for they know not what they do,” and in the paradoxical turn typical of the Buddhist perspective, to forgive, to not hold resentment and hatred, is compassionate not only of the person who has harmed you, it is compassionate toward yourself. WE are the principle benefactor of our forgiveness and compassion because we do not give our minds over to that which vexes and harms us by polluting our experience with toxic thoughts and emotions toward those people and toward Life. Our freedom to be peaceful and happy in our lives requires forgiveness.

In the course of my work, people tell me of life-experiences that are meant to give context and explanation, to give justification, as to why they suffer with significant anger and resentment. They tell stories of abuse, betrayal, loss, trauma, injury, exploitation, debilitating illness, all the ways a person can come to feel that others and life are handing them a raw deal. With genuine caring and sympathy, I will typically respond in a manner as to say, “Yes, that must be very hard. You are indeed justified in your feelings. I want to know though, justified as those feelings may be – how is that working for you?”

After the person opens and acknowledges that it really isn’t working very well for them, which is why they are seeking my counsel, I will share that there is another way, and though it is truly very challenging, it is the only way for a person to really get their life back. We must forgive the injury, whether the source is another person, group of persons, agencies, institutions, or the seemingly cruel finger of Nature bestowing sickness, pain and death. We must let go of the stories of our injuries, of our pain, of our grievances and our victimization, and we do this not for the benefit of those who injured us, or to make peace with God, but first and foremost, for peace with ourselves. We must let go of personalizing injury and loss. It is not about us, no matter how personal it seems and feels. It is Life and the human condition, and it is our argument with Life and the human condition that is the culprit.

There is a Zen story of a man who, on a fine and beautiful day, having rowed his boat to the middle of a calm and serene lake, decided to take a nap. He slept peacefully and deeply for a time when Whap! Another rowboat bumped into him, jolting him awake. He arose, angrily, shouting: “What’s the matter with you!? Look where you’re going!” In a moment, as full orientation came to him, he realized the other rowboat was empty. It had become unmoored and had been steered, just as had the sleeping man’s rowboat, only by the wind and the currents. There was no one steering either boat. He, of course, felt foolish at his outburst, and his anger evaporated.

This story is a parable that is teaching “they know not what they do,” for the teaching continues in Zen koanic fashion: “And the rowboat is always empty.” As long as we live our lives unawakened to the truth of who we are, and the nature of conditioning as the source of our suffering, we are the rowboats, unmoored, drifting through life, the currents and winds of our conditioning causing us to collide with each other, not by true conscious choice, but rather through unconscious drives to assert our egoic self. It is our ego that wants to shout: “What’s the matter with you!?” We have been taught, conditioned, to be aggressive, thoughtless, selfish, manipulative, complaining, negative, dishonest, lazy, irresponsible, all the panoply of sins. As Buddhism teaches, this is not who we are. Steering our boats are conditions and conditioning, like the waves and the wind, and we will collide because there is no real conscious person steering our lives. We are unmoored from the truth of who we and others are. For our tendency to anger and blame, that which serves as cover for our egoic excesses, to evaporate, we must realize this. What is the purpose of screaming at the wind and currents? It does not really make us feel any better, nor give steerage of our lives back to us.

The essence of Buddhist compassion is the recognition that as human-beings we all share in this enslavement, this prison of conditioning and identity in ego. We are taught through Buddhist instruction and meditation to ask of our own and others’ harmful or thoughtless behavior, what is its source? Is a person the source of their own behavior, or do we need to look to conditioning factors – their parents, their communities, culture, their experiences? Are they, and we, really steering our boats, or are a whole matrix of conditioning factors streaming back into the unfathomable past actually at the helm?

Compassion also teaches us that as human-beings we all share in common our essential beingness, our “original mind,” as Buddhism calls it. “Show me your face before you were conceived by your mother and father,” instructs a famous koan. We are pure and perfect beings, and we are human persons who are defiled and betrayed by the conditioning of our egoic identity. You and I are exactly the same in this way. Our conditioning is different, but the fact of being imprisoned, of being asleep inside of conditioning, is the same. We know not what we do – until we awake and become conscious of this human-being dilemma and tragedy, and through contemplative, meditative examination take true responsibility for who we are, and realize that who we are is Life, the full Yin-Yang of birth and death, happiness and sorrow, triumph and tragedy, and there is no one or anything to blame, nor should we want to blame, for blame only distracts us from effective living and the celebration of the full mystery.

With this wise and natural mind at the helm, forgiveness then, comes naturally. And it is a great liberation. To release false judgment of ourselves and others allows us to own our mind, to not be owned by our conditioning with its prejudices, resentments, fears, judgments, anger and hatreds, as well as our biases for what and who we like and favor only because they are familiar. Yes, of course, we and others are responsible for the harm we do, and are to be held accountable, and like a fair legal arbiter, we can, when awake and honest, pronounce the needed amends-making appropriate to the transgression. Now, however, we know it is not personal. It is not about me, nor, in truth, others. We are getting closer to living in conscious discernment and acceptance of what is.

Yes, even for the most heinous of acts, we can create boundary, take action to stop the harm, hold the person (including ourselves, if it be the case) responsible, all without anger and hatred, because we compassionately understand the truth of the multiplicity of conditioning factors that are the true culprit. Then, even, as with Jesus on the cross or the Dalai Lama in exile, when there is no boundary that can be enforced, no stopping the injury, no amends received, we can remain the owners of our own minds, free of anger and resentment, possessors of a “peace that surpasseth understanding,” through the very radical act of forgiveness that goes beyond the personal into forgiveness based in clear understanding of the human condition.

Importantly, compassion for others, with its commensurate ability to forgive, is only truly possible when it is first applied to ourselves. We must realize our original face. We must be “nobody” who neither gives nor takes offense, for giving and taking offense is the domain of ego. To have the ability to genuinely extend compassion and forgiveness to others and to Life, without it being just another egoic one-up, a way of indulging in moral superiority, we must fully forgive ourselves our conditioning. We must humbly and courageously own our own minds and know what we are doing, and then naturally, we will be able to follow the spiritual instructions ubiquitous to all religious traditions to forgive who and whatever challenges and harms us, to forgive those who would be our enemies, most particularly when the enemy turns out to be ourselves. As Jesus and Buddha both taught: through this radical wise and compassionate forgiveness we can learn peace within ourselves, in our relationships and eventually with Life and all the world.

“The way to practice true Zen is… just open yourself and give up everything… This is what it means to surrender… Without losing yourself by sticking to a particular rule or understanding, keep finding yourself, moment after moment… to have complete experience or full feeling in each moment.
– Shunryu Suzuki

If you notice, in the above quote, the great Zen Master, Shunryu Suzuki is saying that in giving up everything – in surrender – we find ourselves. This may seem like a nonsensical contradiction, but it is just another instance of intuitive truth revealing itself in typical Zen fashion through paradox, and as Zen emphasizes, Life is paradox because it is everything, so the ultimate contradiction is contradiction itself. Nothing can be separate from and in opposition to anything because it’s all Life, that which is inherently inclusive, connected and whole. Yet, somehow, human beings find themselves experiencing just this contradiction, dividing the whole of Life into this thing and that thing, drawing lines of separation that just don’t exist, an experience that Buddhism calls egoic delusion. That this delusion is so powerful and so much the common view is why it takes a considerable amount of willingness, and even courage, to open, to surrender yourself into the great everything that is Life. To experience “full feeling in each moment,” however, requires it.

“Open yourself and give up everything.” The “everything” here is everything-as-you-think-it. It is not everything-as-it-is. So you must be willing to give up the everything-that-you-think to realize “complete experience.” What we think comes from culture and society and family and all the sources of psychological conditioning that have created the everything-you-think, and it is not everything; it is very limited. The everything-you-think is full of what you like and don’t like. It is full of your prejudices and opinions. It is full of what you are afraid of and what makes you angry and uncomfortable. It is full of your culture’s prejudices and opinions, fears and dictates. It is full of denial, rationalization, and projection, and everything Western psychology calls ego defense mechanisms, protecting the ego from the discomfort of the full what-is of Life that doesn’t fit into its idea of itself. You must “open yourself” to the true infinite everything that is Life to “have complete experience… full feeling in each moment.”

We cannot have “full feeling” without surrendering our dualistic sense of conditioned self into the full thickness and totality of Life-as-it-is that is everything and our true self, what Zen calls “Buddha nature.” This means letting go of the ideas we carry of what the ego would call good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant, acceptable, unacceptable, beautiful, ugly, right and wrong, to realize the everything that makes up the necessary seeming polarities within the unity that is Life. To have a whole life, we must surrender into the whole world, into the whole universe. This is Zen, and this is mysticism as is expressed by every culture. If you look deep, you will find it at the heart of Jesus’ teachings, in mystical Judaism and Islam, and it is the very core of Native American spirituality.

It is also profound psychology, but since our conventional culture and our conventional psychology has little room or understanding for the mystical, we find such concepts alien, and so our culture and our lives are dualistic, materialistic and filled with strife. Our psychology has to settle for being a psychology of mental illness without the slightest understanding of the possibilities for true mental health. To “experience full feeling in each moment” is true mental health. And it is true spirituality.

Gerald G. May (1940-2005) was a unique Western psychologist who realized this deficit, and in his book Will and Spirit (1982) he explored the possibility for a Western contemplative psychology that could embrace mysticism, and he created a very useful vocabulary for deepening our understanding of the human experience. He explained how psychological health requires a vibrant experience of mystical spirituality, and he explored the dimensions of human experience he referred to as “will” (that which can be equated to the term ego as used by Eckhart Tolle), and “spirit,” which can be equated to Being in Tolle’s vocabulary, and how they interrelate.

May examined how Life is always a blend of these dimensions, with immense qualitative difference occurring by which dimension dominates our sense of self. When will (ego) dominates our experience, May described this as “willfulness.” From this perspective, true spirituality is quite impossible, even though we are capable of deluding ourselves into believing we are living a spiritual life by mistaking emotional or intellectual experiences labeled as spiritual or religious as the real thing, though they are not. On the other hand, when spirit leads will, May describes this as “willingness,” leading to true spirituality and a truly meaningful existence. To live in willingness, there must be a surrender, a release from searching for happiness and meaning in ego and the material world. Rather, ego must be the servant of Being, of spirit, and then ego is in its proper function as the tool for realizing, coping, managing, and creating in our limited existence that which originates in That-which-is-without-limit. Our true meaningful self is, and has to be, a continuation and expression of That, the everything that is Life. This is the mystical perspective, and, as Suzuki told us, true Zen.

Willingness implies a surrendering of one’s self-separateness, an entering-into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It’s a realization that one already is a part of some ultimate cosmic process. In contrast, willfulness is the setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control or otherwise manipulate existence. More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment. Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, “yes, but…” – Gerald May

We must stop pretending and bluffing that we have the answers to Life. They are not to be found in our religions, in our philosophies, in our politics, in our economics, or in our psychologies; not as they exist today. Life is mystery. Say “Yes!” Not “no” or “yes, but.” Unequivocally, we must say “Yes!” to That-which-is. We need mystery, and when we surrender into mystery something quite paradoxical occurs: in “complete experience or full feeling in each moment,” the answers needed for that moment present themselves through the medium of intuition. You cannot think your way there. Out of the silence of contemplative mind arises “knowing,” the realization of oneness within the moment, and what the moment needs. Do not however, be lulled into believing you now have the answer, for the next moment is always completely new.

May encourages the evolution of a new paradigm that merges spirituality and psychology he calls “Contemplative Psychology.” He tells us that we cannot think our way to the experience of mystery, to truth, to oneness with all that is. Thinking fractures the world. Contemplation is the holding of the moment in mental silence that allows the infinite wholeness and connectedness of Life to be realized in intuition. Intuition, “willingness,” the intelligent silence beneath and before thought, is where the voice of the Infinite can be heard. Suzuki, Gerald May, Jesus are all saying, just show up in the vast infinite moment that is the truth of Life, and as you are within and an expression of Life, you will know what is needed. This is surrender, and it is what Zen refers to as “emptiness.” In being empty of all preconceptions, sense of control, even sense of a solid self, we know not only what to do, we know who we are. When empty of egoic self, we are now available to be filled by Life, and we know we are It.

Gerald May tells us: “Mystery can indeed be known without being solved. Mystery can be experienced, sensed, felt, appreciated, even loved, without being understood. This may not be easy; it requires a surrender of all willfulness, a risking of self-image, and a nurturing of intuition. Mystery, says the contemplatives, can be ‘known’ without being known.”

And Shunryu Suzuki enlightened us: “Buddha nature is when you say ‘Yes!’ … When you forget all about yourself and say ‘Yes!’ That is Buddha nature.” And it is what is meant by surrender.

Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional. – Eckhart Tolle

The most important thing to say about relationship is that all there is is relationship. And with that, in line with what Eckhart Tolle tells us, the requirement for healthy relationship is presence, not just physical presence, no, there must be conscious presence, presence with the characteristic of connected consciousness energy, and for there to be connected consciousness energy, there must be interest, concern, the experience of connection, even love.

First, let’s examine the statement, “all there is is relationship.” From the moment we wake in the morning till we go to sleep at night, and even in our sleep in the form of dreams, we are relating to ourselves, are we not? We are experiencing the multidimensionality that marks the reality of every person. Always, arising in the awareness that is our essence is the content and experience of our mind, our body and our circumstances. Then, with every object we encounter, every person, every phenomenon of Life, there is the relationship of “me” with what we are encountering and experiencing, while simultaneously we experience the mind deciding what it thinks and feels about what we are relating to.

With what and who we focus upon and relate to, our relationships tend to be utilitarian. We are concerned whether we like or dislike “this,” will we benefit or be harmed by “this?” This is generally called a subject (me) – object (it or you) relationship, and is hardly conducive to high quality relationship. By focusing only on the utility or threat of the contents of our experience, we fail to experience the true and deep connections that are possible.

And then there is all that we do not focus on, that with which we appear not to be in relationship – but of course, not relating is relating and it is the poorest quality of relating. If typically, we live in a rather narrow focus, say 10% of what is present in any given moment (and that is generous), then 90% of what is available to us goes generally unnoticed. If we call what we focus upon our life-interest or circumstance, and it is in the foreground of our consciousness, then this background that goes unnoticed is Life itself. That these poor-quality relationships dominate our lives is diagnostic of why we struggle as individuals, as families, as groups, even as a species, to make sense of Life and to manifest peace and well-being.

As for our relationship with ourselves, we are seldom in true conscious presence with the experience of ourselves. Our thoughts, emotions, sensations, perceptions, the phenomenon of awareness in which all experience occurs, mostly go unnoticed. They are the water we fish swim in. Only when the experience is troubling, do we pay attention and then usually only with thought, which is the poorest medium to process and understand our experience. We think about what troubles us, but this does us little good, weaving ever more complicated and tangling webs of confusion. We may pay a counselor or therapist to help us think about our experience, and if the counselor or therapist is any good, they will direct us to our feelings, and ultimately to our intuition, which means really connecting with the experience in our totality, and perhaps we will have an insight, and we will thank the therapist without really noticing that the feeling and intuition is ours. The presence, insights and actions of the therapist simply led us to that which is already within us.

Sometimes, on our own, we will tune into our feelings, and into the silent presence behind our swirling thoughts and emotions, into the realm of intuition, and an insight will lead us to some clarity. We take a walk, a bath, listen to some music, chop some wood, go for a drive, pet our dog or cat, maybe we meditate. Out of this no-activity of the mind can arise knowing, called insight or intuition, an intelligence far deeper and wiser than thinking, and perhaps, insight will lead even to peace in the midst of turmoil. This accessing insight is never new. We knew about it all along, we’ve done and experienced the arising of insight, of peace, before, but we had forgotten.

So it is with personal relationships. We all know what is happening when relationships are clear, fulfilling, and flowing. We are in “the vibrational frequency of presence.” We also all know what is happening when a relationship is in conflict and difficulty. We are in our defensive separateness. Again, we may go to a relationship counselor, and the counselor, if any good, will bring us into shared presence, – and we will think the therapist is a genius when what they did was bring us into what we always had and knew as the secret to a fulfilling life and relationship – into shared presence – but we had forgotten.

Our culture tells us we are our thoughts and emotions, never that we are intuition, the mind’s “vibrational frequency of presence.” Never in our schooling is this dimension, the source of true intelligence, pointed out and cultivated. This lack of recognition and development of intuition, of silent presence, as the source of wisdom, of true intelligence, of knowing and of love, is a great tragedy.

We all know that when a close relationship descends into argument and conflict that resolution and healing occur when either through insight or exhaustion, we drop whatever has separated us and we re-approach each other in genuine presence. But we forget that relationship exists and thrives only in shared presence. Everything about our culture emphasizes our individuality and our right to competitive assertion, so, over and over again, we fall back into self-absorption, separateness, and argument. Most relationships have us existing on parallel planes of shared activity and interest where the communication and contact is superficial, the conscious presence that is the life-blood of true and healthy relationship mostly neglected and forgotten. Only occasionally and usually accidentally do we come into full presence, and it is these moments that sustain any relationship.

“True communication is communion – the realization of oneness, which is love.” – Tolle

With ourselves and with our loved ones, moments of communion, of true presence, are rare. So much more so with those we have casual, little or no personal association with. Humanity suffers because we labor under the delusion that there is a me and you, us and other, with mutually exclusive interests and needs. We never consider the anonymous people who flow by our person every day, much less those outside the sphere of our physical presence and circle of interest. We communicate at people, seldom truly with people, let alone rise to the level of “communion.” Why not?

No one ever teaches us to bring to the level of consciousness the realization that all that is beautiful happens through presence and communion, through the dissolving of separateness to experience oneness, love. Oh, our religions suggest it, but we generally prefer the religious instructions that are moralistic and sectarian to the teachings of brotherhood, forgiveness, union, love, and mystical presence. We think the real world is competition and self-absorption. And, sadly then, this is the world we create. But this way lays madness, what Buddhism calls “egoic delusion.”

Our relationship with Nature, with Life, and even with Spirit, is likewise impoverished by our forgetting that it is in the moments of deep presence, possibly, of awe and wonder, where the sense of self dissolves into “the vibrational frequency of presence” that all that is meaningful happens, and where true religious experience can occur. Many times in life we have experienced this. It is why we seek out experiences in Nature that are so vast and overwhelming that we forget ourselves – at the sea, on a mountain, in the desert. It is why we go to a great cathedral, or attend spiritual rituals. But it is not the sea, the mountain, or the desert, the cathedral or the ritual that is spiritual. It is our own deepest self in pure presence that is spiritual, for it is indeed Spirit, but we forget this.

It can happen in our own front yard with our dog, with a bird, a flower, a cloud in the sky. It can happen with family members and friends, with total strangers, if we remember it is who we are at our deepest level. It is in the “vibrational frequency of presence,” with ourselves, with our family, with our friends and acquaintances, with our dog or cat, with the strangers whose path we cross, even with the unknown peoples of the world, and with Nature, both small and vast, that knows “the peace that surpasseth understanding.” It is called communion. It is called love. It is true Presence. Practiced at levels of subtlety and ubiquity, it is what heals us, our relationships, and it can heal the world.

Ask me if I’m happy, and my answer is ‘yes.’ Ask me if I’m sad, and my answer is ‘yes.’ Life is so thick with all possibilities that when you enter into the moment in awareness, the reasons for happiness and sadness are all present, and you realize the moment just as it is, is enough, and when enough is enough, that’s enlightenment. (Paraphrased from Ram Das in a video entitled “Ecstatic States”)

In the course of reading my articles, you may notice I often use the word “and” in places where more typically we would be accustomed to seeing the words “or” and “but.” It seems like a small thing, but I want to suggest that it is really a very big thing. When teaching, I refer to “and” as the most important little word in the English language, and, of course, as I do in my writing, I will quite deliberately use “and” and suggest that others use it where more typically the words “or” and “but” are employed.

Buddhism makes a point of noting that human beings, in all of Nature, are the single species that has a brain that creates a consciousness of abstraction; separating experience out into “this or that,” and “yes, but.” Birds live within Nature and the flow of Life without questioning, complaining, and trying to change and control it, and for the birds, it’s enough. So, a typical response to this statement might be: “Yes, but, that’s what separates humans from beasts.” And, I would have to answer, with a twinkle in my eye, “Yes, exactly.”

We question, complain, try to change and control, thinking we are improving our lives; and in the wondering, complaining, and changing, while we do improve our chances for physical comfort and survival, we create a world of psychological suffering the bird never experiences. Significantly, human-beings existing within primitive nature-based cultures likewise live with far less strife and stress and are happier than those in modern civilization. We are constantly caught imagining some situation, some circumstance other than the one we are within as better, so we want the alternative we imagine, the “or,” the “yes, but” that will make things better. The moment is very, very seldom “enough,” so complete and “thick” that we experience absolute well-being. And when there is not “enough,” this is the “unsatisfactoriness” that Buddhism refers to as the source of suffering in one of the more useful translations of “The Four Noble Truths.”

We have difficulty realizing that whatever we are within is it, and it is rich. There are other circumstances possible, yes, and we may be able to find some increase in benefit of a particular kind in another choice. To hastily make that choice, however, may prevent us from truly knowing and exploring the full potential and connectedness of the circumstance we are in. We don’t give consideration that this situation we are in is the one we are in for some reason, so this thing is the thing we need to deal with, to explore, to understand, perhaps even find the hidden riches within. It’s the big “and.”

“Remember that the obstacles do not block the path, they are the path.” – Zen proverb –

The big “and” is the moment arising in awareness, containing everything. It is seeing the thickness that brings us both happiness and sadness, in other words, the complete experience of Life. To want “or” is to want something other than what-is, and this creates a very thin experience of Life, skipping about, never fully understanding and mastering anything. To even desire for something other than what-is diminishes our experience of what-is, and certainly diminishes our full understanding of what-is and perhaps why this the-way- it-is might be exactly the way it has to be. As a result, Life, psychologically, is a struggle for us in a way that it is not for a bird or an aboriginal human, and our relationship to Life-as-Nature continues to be increasingly problematic.

It is really quite remarkable how by entering fully into a situation and seeing its components as the aggregate and infinite sum rather than limited separate parts to be picked and chosen from, our view and experience expands. We begin to realize that we are actually circles within circles of energy and interest that eventually encompass the entire Universe. We begin to realize that “this” is vast, and that the “here and now” are without limit and boundary. The entire experience of Life expands radically and unpredictably. We experience both linear and non-linear possibilities, discovering the true and paradoxical nature of the Cosmos.

This is not to say we are to be passive and not use our capacities for discernment, choice, creativity and inventiveness to change our circumstance and the human and planetary condition in the immediate here and now and into the future for the better. It’s just that a richer life requires that we learn to be patient, to be curious, to be open to dimensions and possibilities not readily apparent. It means to question our assumptions about what “better” means. Better in the short-run may well be catastrophic in a larger frame. There is an immense qualitative difference to our experience if we see our situation as the inescapable “what-is” within the infinite “what-is.” No complaint. No fantasy. Just what-is – arising in awareness.

Now, we can create a new what-is. It may look like we have chosen “or,” but that’s only from a limited perspective. We don’t need “or.” Sitting right alongside what-is, is more of what-is. “Or” is fantasy. “And” is reality. That’s non-duality using duality, and it can only truly and skillfully be employed when we realize that we are the moment arising in awareness, wherein the full thickness, the everything, is arising in that which is not a thing – awareness. Even if significant elements of the what-is are difficult, challenging, threatening to the form of us, we will, as we always do, handle it. Perhaps now, with a touch of magic, understanding interconnections and interdependencies better. We have entered the magic of yes and no, my perspective and your perspective, form and space, sound and silence, movement and stillness, thought and awareness, manifested and unmanifested, particle and wave. We have discovered the consciousness that connects the manifested and the unmanifested, this and that, and that, and that, and, and, and………… to infinity, where there are no “that’s,” only “This.”

“And-ness” is the key, the link between non-duality and duality. To live in the moment arising in awareness, just as it is, in the full thickness, is enlightenment. For awareness does not suffer, awareness does not react, awareness does not complain or wish for the “or,” the alternative to what is. Awareness is, and awareness is who we are. When you get that, and I don’t mean intellectually, I mean really know and are able to live it, this is what the journey of enlightenment is about. This is the “waking up” of Buddhism. This is how we begin to resolve the Gordian Knot of human dualistic thinking at every level of experience – from our individual lives to our relationships, to our societies, to our planet. Living in and as awareness that holds the moment just as it is, and that knows what is needed next in the big “and” that is Life and Nature and the Universe, is the secret of Zen, and the end of suffering.

“Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness.
This is the ‘I Am’ that is deeper than name and form.” – Eckhart Tolle

One of the first insights gained in meditation is that we live inside a cacophony of distracting mental noise. We may have some awareness of this runaway train of thinking, but with the beginnings of meditation, the full extent begins to be realized. Buddhism notes, and modern consciousness teacher, Eckhart Tolle, brilliantly explores, how we mistake this mental activity for who we are, investing it with a sense of self, our self, that it does not have.

The real truth of who we are lies hidden, or more accurately, distracted from us, by this wall of mental noise. These thoughts that we give our identity to are actually conditioned into us by society, family and culture, and are a complex system that is the personalized egoic mind telling us over and over a story of who we are, what society is, and what is true and what is important. This compulsive mental activity is certainly not who we are, nor can we lay claim to being its source, let alone it being our source. It is an opaque screen of concepts separating us from understanding our true identity, the world, our place in the world, and even the nature of God. And it is this opaque screen of concepts that we cling to desperately for it seems we have no choice.

But we do. Buddhism calls this blindness “egoic delusion” and points to it as the source of our suffering. It is a story of aloneness and fear of insufficiency in the face of the vastness of Life, and we spend our lives fighting off the subtle terror it brings called anxiety, looking everywhere within its story of separateness and materialism for meaning, clinging to it like a life-raft, while it is actually more like the water pouring over the edges, sinking us.

But beneath the mental noise, emanating from within and from the Universe that we occur within, beneath this story with all its conflicts and drama, is a profound stillness, as quiet as the vastness of space, and there resides a dimension of our existence that is free, wise and at one with all Life. To a Hindu, this is Atman, God within. To a Zen Buddhist, it is your original and true self, the place of Buddha-mind. Contemporary consciousness teacher Eckhart Tolle calls this dimension, Being. It is That which Is, and as some spiritual teachers say, Thou art That.

This can seem all extremely esoteric, interesting to contemplate, but of very little value to this identity, me, in the world, maneuvering for my place in the world. Or perhaps, it can seem this special knowledge can be adopted into a story of spiritual specialness. Either perspective would be error. Among the great mistakes of the personalized egoic identity is its insistence on “either-or” thinking, and looking for its edge, how to make itself special. We live as if the spiritual and the secular are really very separate. Not so. The secular and spiritual must be one, but in a manner we are not accustomed to in this culture. We don’t do well with the idea of the mystical in this culture, but that’s because we don’t do well with paradox. We keep insisting paradox is contradiction and impractical, when in truth, there can be no practicality without paradox, and the true realm of paradox is mysticism, and in actuality, mysticism is very practical. It puts us in touch with the big truths.

If we are to know true peace in our lives, the spiritual has to be the well from which our secular self draws its fundamental psychological well-being. In an interesting coincidence of phrasing, it must come from the well-of-Being. This spiritual source cannot be, however, anything other than the “peace that surpasseth understanding.” It is not contained in any complicated special teachings. The most important secret of Life is simplicity itself. It’s just this, but it is a “this” that is the infinity contained in each and every simple thing.

A commonality of spiritual masters of all traditions is that they tell us that the only true teachings are those that help us see beyond the teaching to what the teaching is pointing toward, and what any true teaching points toward is the dynamic stillness of the Universe happening through a human consciousness. It must point us toward our Source, and to find that Source, the noise of the egoic mind and its stories of secular and/or spiritual specialness must be quieted. The secular and the spiritual must be realized as the same, for the Source is That, and every person, every bird, every tree, stone, and every moment must be realized as That.

Without an ongoing connection to our fundamental Source, our secular lives are like a small boat on the ocean, completely dependent on external forces, the weather (and whether) of our lives for its well-being. We can pray and chant all we want, do ritual after ritual, but only if after the prayer, after the ritual, we enter into the immense silence of the Mystery and listen into the silence will we be able to walk our everyday lives in the Presence that brings peace. Buddhism directs us to not mistake the waves for the ocean, our life-circumstances for Life, or the prayer and ritual for the Source. Beneath the surface of the ocean, our lives, and true religious experience, there is a deep stillness that is constant and calm, deep and vast, connecting all that is.

This is the true realm of Spirit, not stories of God in Heaven, separated from us, judging us. For too long, humans have mistaken God to be a projected egoistic figure. This story leaves humans in an unrelentingly hostile world of their own making. It is the reason that societies with religions of God in Heaven (and reactive no-God societies) are responsible for most of the war and devastation on this planet, and the psychological ills and pathology that plague humanity.

This moment. Can you touch the deep stillness that abides within and all about you? Can you even recognize what I am referring to? If you stop the stories and realize the truth of your own experience, you will know, you will remember, all your moments of wisdom, calm and clarity have occurred when, by circumstance, you experienced the stillness, the silence out of which truth could whisper. It may have been on a mountaintop. It may have been in a cathedral. It may have been walking through a forest. It may have been just a moment in the midst of everyday life when, for some reason, there was a stopping of mind-chatter and time, and what arose was a powerful sense of being present that can only be described as mystical or spiritual. We may have given the mountaintop or the cathedral or the forest or the circumstance the credit, but they were only the stimulus. The stillness was you. It was, as Eckhart Tolle in another teaching tells us, we are the moment arising in awareness. All story about who we are stops, and there we are. Awareness becomes palpable. The deep, vast stillness that is awareness holds the moment, and in that moment, you are That, and nothing that can be said can exactly describe It.

Seek the vast and deep stillness. Look to teachings that point you away from your small and chaotic egoic self – and away from themselves – to the stillness – on the mountaintop, in the oceans depths, in the vast night sky – to the vast quiet that is your own awareness in which all thought, feeling and experience occurs, yet never is, cannot be, disturbed. Rediscover your true individualized Self, Atman, Buddha-mind. Find it and bring it into your everyday life. Be one spark of sanity, joining with other sparks, what Buddhism calls “the Sangha,” the community of awakened beings, to create a fire of consciousness on the planet so that, Phoenix-like, our true humanity can rise. Walk in Presence and know, Thou art That, vast and deep and still. Presence. Presence. Presence in awareness. Awareness as Presence, just this, and big as all Creation. You need know nothing more than this. This is the practical, mystical Truth.

Creating art can be a very healing experience.  It can be quite therapeutic to take what is inside and bring it forward into some representation or manifestation in the world, and psychotherapeutic theory holds that when we make conscious that which is unconscious, we can begin to free ourselves from whatever demons lurk there. Usually this is done in a verbal exploration, but sometimes, art is used as the medium of the therapy.  To paint, sculpt, write, make musical or role-play the conflicts lurking in our minds can often bring about some resolution of painful confusion, while also releasing creative and healthy archetypal energy.  When we engage in artistic expression of our demons, there is, in many cases, some relief from their hold and control over us, and new paths for healthier living can open up.

While this relief and growth is usually believed to be the result of getting repressed contents of the mind into the light of consciousness, it might be speculated there is also another powerfully healing factor occurring that most psychotherapy hardly pays any attention to at all.  It is also possible that if brought to the level of consciousness and integrated, this event, which has nothing to do with the contents of the mind, may be an even more effective and lasting path to healthy and integrated living than the realization of insights into a person’s life story revealed under analysis.  This event is an aspect of the act of art itself.

As important as the calling forth and claiming of personal experience may be, both in analytical psychology and the making of art, it can be speculated that these experiences have a bit of a backfire to them, in that the person’s sense of identity with the contents of the mind, personal history and perspective may be strengthened, and those contents, while now reinterpreted, remain a kind of prison for the person. There is a perspective, however, that believes that true healing comes about when the person no longer looks for identity in mental activity, past events or personal affiliations, but rather in that which is in contact with the present moment with absolute clarity and authenticity.  It is about being in touch, in the literal sense.

Buddhist psychology, unlike most Western psychologies, recognizes there is a dimension of intelligence deeper than the mind of thoughts and emotions.  We can apply words to this dimension such as Being, Self, or even Soul, but this dimension is vitally deeper than the realm of words, it is pure experience and it is direct contact with the world through the senses and intuition.  This is the dimension that witnesses in awareness the mental and physical activity of our lives that is shaped by conditioned experience, which is the very source of the neuroses, while this witnessing dimension is completely unconditioned, and therefore, free of neuroses.  When Zen Buddhism asks, “As you are aware of your thoughts and emotions, who is it that is aware?” it is this dimension of awareness, of Being, that Buddhism is pointing to as your true or original self.  This koan is guiding us to what is the healthiest, wisest and most creative in us and the purpose of Zen teaching and practice is to awaken this dimension, best named, simply, awareness.

Psychotherapy can summon this dimension, and in its best moments, does, but usually by pure accident.  A skilled and sincere therapist, using whatever technique, can create an experience of heightened awareness, authenticity and presence for a client when summoning forward their story that can result in an experience that brings healing.  While summoning the story and giving new insight into it is very helpful, it is not, however, the summoning of the story that does the greatest healing.  Rather, it is in the person’s opening to the possibility for real authenticity in the moment, and the connection with this deeper dimension of awareness in a profoundly shared moment with the therapist in heightened presence, that brings the greatest healing.  It creates, in a sense, a trust in Being, which is what is lacking in the neurotic mind.  If this experience of authenticity, presence and heightened awareness can be recognized for what it is and how it comes about, an entirely healthy dimension of the person can begin to grow and be integrated.

Similarly, artistic expression, and to a lesser degree, being an audience to art, is about letting go of the realm of the ego as the centerpiece of the mind and coming into direct and authentic contact in heightened awareness with the present moment as art is created or experienced.  Small-self-consciousness is lost in the purity, the bigness of the experience.  True art comes from the deeper self-in-presence, perhaps using thoughts and emotions as subjects of creative expression, but now blended and guided by the deeper intelligence that is whole and one with the moment.  This phenomenon of oneness is sometimes referred to as “flow,” and in this flow, the contents of the mind are balanced and mastered, a quite different kind of consciousness than when, as in day-to-day experience,  the mind-contents are master of us, and there is no flow, when we are separated from the oneness of the moment, lost, caught in the matrix of ideas about the world and our place in it.

This experience of artistic flow is always clear and unconflicted, and it is happening in an integration of the senses and intuition with our thoughts and emotions, in the present moment.  This in-the-moment expression that connects intuitive and archetypal experience with whatever medium is being engaged creates a temporary clarity and sanity for the artist or the witness to art, and as any artist will tell you, it is when in the action of their art-form that they feel the sanest.

Years ago, when I was first learning the craft of psychotherapy, I studied under a brilliant Gestalt therapist, who was also a professional improvisational actor.  He would ask, “Is your life good theater or bad melodrama?”  He taught his students how to access the focused expressed contact with the present moment that makes for good theater into everyday life.  He taught how to express oneself creatively, trusting intuition and increased sensory subtlety, gaining insight along the way about how old habits hold us stuck in ineffective ways of being in the world.  Through a blending of Gestalt and acting techniques, he gave his students the tools to change old habits to healthier ways of expression in the world.  This is great therapy, and, of course, it is good theater.

I often find that artists can make excellent subjects for healing work because when I tell them to consider living their life in the way they create their art, that is, in subtle, skillful direct contact with the physical world, in the present moment, trusting their intuitive sense, there is often a kind of “Ah-ha” experience.  To a painter, I say, “be in touch with the world the way you are in touch with the canvas and the paints.”  To a musician, I say, “be in touch with the world the way you are with your instrument.”  This instruction works because it’s not hard to understand that living with that kind of immediacy, focus and presence would be far less neurotic, self-absorbed, anxious or depressed than the way they had been living, caught-up in thoughts and reactive emotions that have very little to do with the vibrancy of the real here-and-now.

This kind of therapy teaches people to, in the words of the great originator of Gestalt Therapy, Fritz Perls, “get out of your head, and come to your senses,” and he meant that literally.  The senses exist in the present moment in clarity, but clarity is lost when the realm of thoughts and emotions distract us from real presence.  Our usual relationship with the senses is superficial and distorted by projecting our ideas about what is going on rather than opening us to what really is going on.  However, when we train ourselves in subtle, undistracted presence so that the senses can fully drink in the moment as-it-is, an amazing dimension of intuitive insight opens, full of creativity and wisdom, just as happens for an artist in a moment of genius.  Awareness flourishes.

The challenge is that it’s just not so easy to access this flowing awareness outside the specific context of creativity, since the habit patterns of egoic mind are so persistent and subtly insidious.  It therefore makes sense to turn life into creative context, applying the insight that just as to learn an art form takes a great deal of practice and instruction, to learn life-as-an-art-form takes just as much work, that is, application of deliberately directed awareness into the moment, technique and medium.

Overcoming the resistance of years of conditioned habit and neurotic identity is a truly great challenge, but for those who will do the “practice,” the pay-off is even greater and more fulfilling than a perfect arpeggio or brush stroke.   Life can be the canvas, the instrument, the stage, the page where a dull, chaotic or overblown story becomes impeccable poetry, and the result will be an expanding experience of flowing sanity, clarity and creativity as presence in the world becomes your home, and art your way of life.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
– Buddha

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
– Dogen Zenji 13^th Century

A fundamental Zen question concerning enlightenment is, “If not now, when? If not here, where?” As far as Buddhism is concerned, the here and now is the only gateway to spiritual realization, and that realization is nothing more than the realization of the truth of who you are at the deepest level. In Buddhism, the concept that roughly equals the concept of Heaven is called Nirvana, which translates as “extinguishing ignorance;” put another way, it is the truth of the way things are. It is not another metaphysical realm for after-life, it is the quality of realization one has of this life. Hell is called Samsara, which translates as “ignorance” or “illusion.” Its literal meaning is: “wandering about in the cycle of ignorance.” These are states of mind, ways of experiencing our existence. It is about this life, here and now, not some future state beyond this life, and it is about this moment, just as it is. The Heaven of spiritual realization is not meant to be in some great ritualistic catharsis or idyllic retreat quite separate from everyday life. It is everyday life, or not at all.

Yet, I speak with so many people, including those who consider themselves Buddhist or inspired by Buddhism who tell me stories of their spiritual journeying, of beautiful retreats they have experienced and of mesmerizing teachers they sought out who took them to deeply moving experiences, and as they tell their stories, I sense the same anxious, distracted person I knew them to be before the marvelous spiritual experience they are now recalling. There is nothing wrong, and much that is wonderful and valuable about such experiences, but what value do they actually have if, as seems so often the case, there seems to be very little residual effect of this seeking that translates and continues into the here and now of these people’s lives? They still seem to be “wandering.”

“In wholeheartedness of presence the Buddha is realized.” – Dainin Katagiri – 20^th century

“There is one person we must meet… it is the true self.” – Sekkei Harada – 20^th century

Over and over Buddhist masters and teachers point to the realization of true Self in the rising of the present moment in awareness, in the rising of the present moment as awareness, yet it seems to be a barred gate for most people, no matter how many times they hear it. Our cultural training into seeking and looking for the “peak experience” as the path to fulfillment and meaning in life is so strong that it seems very difficult for many to get beyond collecting words and experiences of wisdom as the sum of their spiritual path. It is very difficult to realize that the masters are talking about experiencing any moment, no matter how mundane, perhaps the more mundane the better, as the gateway to Self-realization, as the moment arising in awareness, as awareness.

“This moment, what is lacking?” – Rinzai – 9^th C.

Yet, our ongoing consciousness continues to be scanning the moment with a low-level dissatisfaction, as if something is lacking, leaning forward, so-to-speak, into the next moment and beyond, attempting to get to somewhere other than where we already are. It’s not that our consciousness tells us that the next moment will be better; it’s just that we are caught in a conditioning that tells us that this moment can’t be it. We must be going somewhere with our lives, otherwise, like a shark that must keep swimming to breathe, we will lose all meaning and importance. Onward! Like a donkey chasing a carrot tied to a stick in front of them, we keep looking to the future for our realization – in the next accomplishment, relationship, personal enhancement or security, in a retreat, experience, or from the next teacher.

The contemporary master, Eckhart Tolle, has a most provocative teaching that instructs us that enlightenment is in “renunciation of our need to get to the next moment.” The choice of the word “renunciation” is most subtle and helpful. Renunciation means to release allegiance, to no longer find or be searching for our identity in something, as in renouncing a religious or political affiliation, and so it is with our relationship with time and the future, in anticipation of experiences that will fulfill us. We look to find ourselves, to complete ourselves, in time, in the future. The very core of Zen instruction is to renounce this attempt to be “somebody” through some activity, accomplishment or experience yet to be achieved. Renounce this compulsion, and discover – I am here.

“An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all an oak tree needs to do. If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, we will all be in trouble… We can learn a lot from an oak tree.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

The problem with human beings is that we don’t know how to relax into our human beingness, emphasis on “beingness.” The species designation “human being” is a most perfect capture of the dilemma, the paradox of our species. “Human” designates the uniqueness of the species with its capacity for abstracting itself out of Nature into artificial structures of society and into ideas about life. This creates the barrier to grasping that we are life, every bit as much as any plant or animal. Being, however, is the sharing of essential nature with all of Nature. To be human is certainly quite complicated. To be, on the other hand, simply is. And we are both.

The genius of Buddhism is in its recommendation to balance our humanity and our beingness as the “right” way to live. After all, Buddhism is also known as “The Middle Way.” Without real grounding in our beingness – which is this moment, just as it is, infinite and perfect – our human doing will always be inadequate to fulfill our need for an unshakeable sense of place in the world, and after all, isn’t that the itch we cannot scratch? Where do I belong? What is the significance of my life, of me?

When we place ourselves at the center of the experience, as the center of the experience, separate from what we believe to be all else, we are caught in our human side, and as Buddhism teaches, we are then prone to much suffering. This is samsara, the wandering in circles of ignorance. We cannot see and experience the connectedness of life that we are within, the infinite connected circles of Being.

Rather, Buddhism suggests, allow the experience to be the center of you, see the moment arising as what it is – a field of consciousness, this moment, no separation. Realize – the space of the moment does not separate – it connects. The phenomenon of the moment is what we are. Nothing more is needed. No other time holds the secret. This is it! Our place in the Universe is right where we are, just as we are. Ignorance is extinguished. Nirvana opens. Look about you. See the moment arising. Where does it arise? It arises in consciousness, in awareness as the absolute Here. When does it arise? Now! Know this as your irreducible Self.

With this as our foundational sense of self, we can be a human being as effortlessly as an oak tree is an oak tree. For we, and the oak tree, and the bird on the wing, and the oceans, and the mountains, and the atoms and the galaxies are all the Universe. Right here and now. Nothing more is needed. This is what it means to be awake in the truth. You, “in wholehearted presence” is all that is needed to discover the truth of who you are – both the vastness of existence itself, and this human being manifesting in this moment in space and time that is your life and circumstances.

Breathe, smile, relax. Now go do something – something wise, skillful and compassionate, something simple or genius, serious or silly. Sit on your porch, go for a walk, go to work, go to the grocery store, say hello to the next person you pass. Look into the infinite sky. Commune with a bird in a tree. Dance a jig. Go to a retreat, a workshop, a pilgrimage, find a teacher. Enjoy, learn, be inspired. Just know, what you search for you already have and are. Maybe this next experience will open that realization, will open the gate of Now.

Peace is every step,
The shining red sun is my heart,
Each flower smiles with me.
How green, how fresh all that grows.
How cool the wind blows.
Peace is every step.
It turns the endless path to joy.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
As with so many virtuous concepts, peace is really not very well understood by most of us. We mostly think of peace through its opposite – as the absence of conflict – rather than as a profound state of its own, possible even in the midst of conflict. We have very little understanding of the nature and depth of peace itself. If we think of it at all, we think it belongs to the world of the spiritual, not our everyday existence.

This is where Buddhism is particularly unique amongst world religions; it emphasizes inner peace for the everyday lay-person, as Thich Nhat Hanh poetically expresses, in “every step,” turning “the endless path to joy.” But how? Buddhism, also unique among world religions, does not preach virtues without showing us the path to their realization. So it is with peace. Buddhism practices what it preaches – quite literally. It has a practice that it teaches, in a sense, complete with a how-to manual.

What then really is peace? And what is the practice that leads to the realization of peace? Thich Nhat Hanh is telling us. It is in the shining sun, in the beauty of a flower, in the green, freshness of all that grows, and the cool of the breeze. But wait, we say, these things are there every day, and we see them, but we still don’t know what this mystical state of peace is. Ah, but do we really see them? Another of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings is that we must learn to look deeply. Now, we are coming to the practice. Without looking deeply we do not have the eyes to see. Looking deeply is what Buddhism calls “mindfulness,” and mindfulness is the every-day fruit of Buddhist meditation.

We must not just casually look at the flower or the green of the world, not just casually feel the radiance of the sun and the wind blowing coolly as we go about our everyday business, we must experience them in full presence. We must experience the space of the moment in which they and we occur, realizing we are connected with the flower, the trees, the sun, the breeze, and with each other, in that space.

In that space, we encounter the moment shimmering in dynamic stillness. It is the fabric of life itself. Buddhism tells us to realize that what we are is life, and life-as-who-we-are can be experienced in the movement of our breathing, in the sensation of life-energy that pervades our bodies, in the awareness that is the essence of mind before thought and emotion. We are that awareness, that shimmering dynamic stillness that has a body and a mind. This is very important.

From a Buddhist perspective, we are not a person who has awareness. We are awareness that has a person, with a mind, body and circumstances. First, we are awareness. To realize true peace is to realize that the dynamic stillness that connects the entire world, and that we experience as awareness, is peace. It is within us and all around us – even if there is conflict going on around us. We must realize and see it is who we are in order to not be carried away by the turmoil of the world, and this realization happens in the deeper levels of Buddhist meditation.

Without the ability to experience the stillness that is the underlying fabric of the world, we cannot know peace. Within us is constant anxious movement of mind that leads to nervousness and tension of the body, and this is what psychology calls neurosis. It is being caught in the thoughts and emotions of a mind that mistakenly believes it is separate in the world, and therefore in an endless competitive relationship with the world. And neurosis requires constant mental movement to hold together this idea of itself in separateness. It could be said that constant mental movement is the very definition of neurosis; it just takes on different flavors, such as anxiety, depression, anger, compulsivity and impulsivity, but it always robs us of peace within, and leads to conflict without.

We are all some combination of all these neurotic traits, and because of them swirling through our mental-scape, we are unable to experience the underlying stillness of the world. We are unable to tolerate the underlying stillness. We have to keep moving, and so our every step is blind and conflicted. We cannot see the fabric of life that we are within, along with the flowers, the trees, the sun and the wind. Nor can we truly see our fellow humans and creatures of the world.

Having seen deeply our interconnectedness with the world around us, a natural morality emerges, a morality that sustains our peace. In Buddhist teaching it is noted that to obtain the peace that eliminates suffering, we must realize eight practices known as The Eightfold Path. These practices are: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.

While I won’t go into a discussion of the details of this instruction, it is important to realize that the “Right” in these practices is not some morality in the conventional sense, meaning instruction that is imposed. There is a reason why the teaching begins with “Right View” for here we return to Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching of “looking deeply.” The purpose of Buddhist teaching is always to lead a person to see things as they truly are, not to tell you how things ought to be. In the case of our discussion on peace, to have peace, the right view is to not see yourself as separate and opposed to anyone or anything, but rather, connected in the human condition and connected in the natural world.

To have peace, to put it simply, you must not be trying to get away with anything that is harmful to anyone or anything, but rather practice a simple ethics stated best in what is called “The Golden Rule.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you meditate on this, it will become clear: To experience what in Biblical terms is referred to as “The peace that surpasseth all understanding,” your view, intention, action, livelihood, effort, mind and concentration must be peaceful, that is, you must treat others and the world with the same respect, honesty, and care that you would want for yourself, for in truth, others and the world are yourself. In Buddhism, this is not moral instruction, but rather smart living, with yourself as the principle beneficiary – experiencing a profound peace in every step of your life. “It turns the endless path to joy.”

As for the seasonal wish: “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all,” it would be good to realize this can only begin at home, with ourselves. As the Dalai Lama has expressed it, “Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way.” Peace. Shalom. Namaste.

“Our world and our lives have become increasingly interdependent, so when our neighbor is harmed, it affects us too. Therefore we have to abandon outdated notions of ‘them’ and ‘us’ and think of our world much more in terms of a great ‘US’, a greater human family.”  – Dalai Lama

“We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

From a Buddhist perspective, humanity suffers from a mass delusion, in a sense, a kind of mental illness, and it is called dualism. We don’t recognize it as a kind of insanity because to us it is normal, but normal is always relative. Most people today would call the idea of one race making slaves of another race an insane idea, but of course, 250 years ago, the concept was considered quite sane and normal by many leading persons in American society.

Dualism is a state of mind, a way of looking at the world based on the experience of separateness in a world made up of separate objects, in which these objects have only a utilitarian relationship to each other. This means that I (the primary and most important object) look at the world and see objects (including other people) as having beneficial use to me, as detracting or harmful to me, or as irrelevant to me. We then organize these objects into a hierarchy of relevance ranging from what we believe to be the most detracting and dangerous, to the most enhancing and beneficial. We make a grave error in believing these assignments of relevance reflect true and accurate assessments of the way things really are. This is why dualistic thinking often leads to delusions, both small and great.

The institution of slavery was the product of dualistic thinking that made people of the African race into objects of utility in the most debased way to people of the white race. Today we recognize this as crazy, as delusional. The point is that slavery is only an extreme example of dualistic thinking. What is important is that dualistic thinking is as alive and well today as it was two hundred years ago, only operating at subtler levels of discrimination. Dualistic thinking was extremely destructive two hundred years ago, and it is perhaps even more dangerous today because the stakes for the future and quality of survival for the human species are now much higher. “We must be aware of the real problems of the world.” Successful human progress requires overcoming the dualistic thinking that separates individuals, genders, races, classes, sexual preferences, regions, political parties, religions, and nationalities from the truth of our mutual value, interdependence and common needs and problems. It also requires the realization of humanity’s interconnectedness and interdependence with the non-human natural world, a non-dualistic realization that has barely scratched the surface of human consciousness.

When the world is perceived as divided into the very highly valued “me” and “us, with “you” and “them” having lesser or even negative value, and “it” as having no value other than how I and we can use it, we have set in motion the consciousness at the root of much of the harm and suffering caused by humanity. While it is true that dualism is essential for the particularly human characteristic of material productivity, inventiveness and creativity, it is remarkably short-sighted. It tends to look for immediate solutions to problems in isolation as they arise, and is largely incapable of seeing problems within their larger context. It also looks for solutions within parameters of possibility limited to already accepted ideas, sometimes the very ideas that have created the problems. It is typically blind to the insight that ultimately humanity’s problems arise from the inability to see that we are one species sharing a planet with each other, regardless of surface differences, as well as with many other species, all interdependent and necessary for the quality existence of each.

Without a counterbalancing non-dualistic perspective that recognizes all humanity as sharing common problems, that recognizes that we are all together on this great “Space-ship Earth,” a term coined by the ecological visionary Buckminster Fuller in 1967, along with all the animal and plant life in a codependent state of what the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing,” we are unable to “be aware of the real problems of the world.” The “mindfulness” that Thich Nhat Hanh references is seeing the non-dualistic context of existence as the larger frame in which the small frame of dualistic interest must operate in order to truly and skillfully “know what to do and what not to do.”

An inherent limitation of dualistic thinking is that it organizes our perception and choices as “either – or.” We almost can’t help approaching life with its challenges and problems from the limited perspective of “this way” or “that way.” If I consider myself “right” in my approach to something (and who doesn’t) and you have a different approach, then you must be “wrong.” Reality is not this simple. Reality is made up of all perspectives, and perhaps the most underappreciated small word in the English language is “and.” Life is seldom this or that, but rather, this and that, and that, and that, ad infinitum.

There is probably no area of human life more locked into dualistic consciousness than politics, and since politics is the arena in which decisions about how the elements of human society interact with each other, and eventually, with the natural world, it is imperative that we find a way beyond dualist thinking in politics. We must understand the inherent limitations of either-or thinking. We must be able to see, for example, that the arguments between individual-liberty/free-enterprise capitalism and support-for-all-socialism are false. We must see that our problems can only be resolved with a non-dualistic political perspective that synthesizes the best of capitalist/libertarian and socialist/collectivist political and economic philosophies.

A dynamic system that skillfully balances protections for the liberty and enterprise of individuals, while guarding against excesses by the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable, is essential. Creative individualism and all-inclusive supportive community has to be the goal. In such a system, government is democratic in a quite pure sense with built-in protections against undue influence and control by special and powerful interests, while guided by an overarching non-dualistic philosophy. Education that trains citizens not only in traditional information and skills, but also complementary non-dualistic wisdom, must be open, available to all, and the highest societal priority.

“I believe that every human being has an innate desire for happiness and does not want to suffer. I also believe that the very purpose of life is to experience this happiness… Sometime we look at the negative side of things and then feel hopeless. This, I think, is a wrong view… However, through training our minds, with constant effort, we can change our mental perception or mental attitudes. This can make a real difference in our lives. If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace.” – The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is right. We all want happiness. Even the surliest curmudgeon wants happiness. Even the vilest psychopath wants happiness. Every child wants happiness. Every rich person, every poor person wants happiness. I want it, you want it, people of every race, nationality and religion want it.

Everyone wants happiness. We all want happiness, yet very few know how to achieve it in any lasting, reliable way, and so we keep falling back into unhappiness. As we fall into unhappiness, we become more and more desperate about regaining happiness and we come up with some very delusional, sometimes even destructive, tactics for achieving what we think will bring us happiness. This observation is the very basis for Buddhism, and as Buddhism notes, the frustration of unfulfilled grasping after happiness is what brings about what Buddhists refer to as “suffering.” It is a great truth that there are many very “wrong views” in this world about how happiness is to be achieved, and these wrong views inevitably lead to suffering.

Mostly we believe we will have happiness by making more of “me,” and there are about as many different views of how to go about making more of “me” as there are people on this planet. It is in the definition of “me” that we get fouled up, for the curmudgeon wants more things to be cranky about, the psychopath wants more victims, the rich person wants more riches, as does the poor person. There are infinite variations of the way to experience “me” with whatever turns “me” on, and infinite, usually ultimately ineffective, ways to pursue it.

In this culture, great emphasis is placed on happiness through material/social success, possessions, and relationships, but it is pretty usually true that there is never enough success or possessions, and it is also usually true that relationships often bring hurt and disappointment as well as satisfaction and happiness, and so happiness is a phantom that keeps slipping away.

The Dalai Lama, when once asked to describe his religion, replied, “My religion is kindness,” and for all its seeming simplicity, this is a deeply multi-layered and profound answer. Upon reflection, we all have a sense that the purpose, the reason for the world’s religions, is to bring about more kindness, compassion and love, less violence and hatred in the world, yet religions seem to have failed in this regard. Driven by strong negative emotions and motivations in the pursuit of happiness, humanity continues to manifest horrifying levels of violence, greed, selfishness and indifference.

If we, however, look at religion as the deepest truth of our existence, and as our search for what will fulfill this truth, the Dalai Lama’s response, while simple, is infinitely wise and true. If happiness is our core desire and motivation, the deepest truth ought to be about how we fulfill this need, and the Dalai Lama is telling us that if you want to be happy, you must be kind, and if humanity wants to be happy, it must learn to be kinder. We must deepen our understanding and capacities for compassion, tolerance, generosity, appreciation and love, in other words, for kindness.

What an astonishing and simple truth! To be happy, be kind. From our usual self-centeredness, we know we are happy when others are kind to us, but how astonishing that most people haven’t noticed that an even greater happiness is experienced when we are kind to others, and when we have a kind attitude toward all that happens in the world – when we are tolerant, forgiving and appreciative toward all that happens, great and small. That we fail to make this connection is a sign of how deep the conditioning is that happiness comes from getting rather than giving.

This is where the “training our minds” comes in. This may seem like an unusual connection, to look to the training of the mind to find happiness, but not so. First, of course, it must be realized that happiness is a state of mind. While we act as if happy is something we get, it is, in fact, something we are or are not. It is a state of mind that is only relatively dependent on our conditions – “If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace.”

Since there is a limit to how much we can get, then it is true that the happiness that comes from getting is really quite limited, and since all things that can be acquired can also be lost, getting is a poor strategy to happiness. There is no limit, however, to how much kindness we can give or how much kindness we can bring into our view of the world, and therefore our potential for happiness derived from a mind that has trained itself to be kind and appreciative is unlimited.

“Meditation is the process whereby we gain control over the mind and guide it in a more virtuous direction. Meditation may be thought of as a technique by which we diminish the force of old thought habits and develop new ones” – Dalai Lama

In Tibetan Buddhism, the word “meditation” means to train the mind, and “virtuous” describes what brings about happiness and lessens suffering. So what the Dalai Lama is saying is that when we train our minds to be free of the old habits of thought and emotion that lead to unhappiness, and open it through insightful meditation to deeper understanding of the connection between happiness with kindness, compassion, appreciativeness, generosity, tolerance and patience, we will find what we all have been searching for in our misguided self-centered aggressive ways but keeps eluding us. Contrary to our social conditioning, it turns out that more of “me” leads to less happiness, while less of “me” leads to greater happiness, and through meditation, this paradox becomes completely clear. We must become “nobody” to be completely happy. This is the great secret and power of Buddhism.

As the Dalai Lama suggests, make a religion out of selfless kindness and you will find happiness. You must, of course, realize this means also not allowing others to be unkind to you, or receiving and personalizing their unkindness. We also have to go beyond just the idea of kindness to see and experience through meditation how the mind is trapped in unvirtuous directions and how we can shape and train it in “a more virtuous direction,” a kinder and happier direction. It is both a simple and a sophisticated concept, and a great challenge, but it can be done, and meditation is the means, “through training our minds, with constant effort.”

In Zen, there is a concept utterly foreign to the American mind. This concept is an ideal; a goal of Zen practice; and it is, paradoxical for an ambition, to be “nobody.” In Japanese, this concept is communicated with the word, ”mushin,” or, in Chinese, “Mu,” which translates as “no-mind.” No-mind means to be without ego, to stand in the world as a phenomenon no more important than a bird or a flower, yet equally, no less important than the galaxies themselves. It means, in the lexicon of Zen, “emptiness.”

The way of the no-mind person is the way of living as “nobody.” Not a nobody, for this implies you ought to be somebody special, but are not. To be nobody is a conscious and positive stance in the world, not a lack or failure of stance. It is about living as a being of and within Nature, not outside it. It is in understanding that to live from ego, as if the structures of ego are who you are, is the “fall from grace,” the “original sin,” the loss of your true harmonious self. To be nobody is to live from the natural and spontaneous source of your own being, using your intelligence and faculties to be skillfully in rather than above or attempting to control life.

With no-mind, blossoms invite the butterfly;
With no-mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes;
When the butterfly comes, the flower blooms.
I do not “know” others;
Others do not “know” me.
Not-knowing each other we naturally follow the Way.
18th Century Japanese poet, Ryokan

The “Way” that is being referred to is the ancient Chinese Taoist Way, the Way that Lao Tzu, described in the Tao Te Ching as the “origin of heaven-and-earth, it is nameless.” It is the way beyond intellectualization, categorization and judgment. It is the way of Nature, not of the egoic human mind. The “not-knowing” that Ryokan is referring to, is not having preconceived ideas about others and about life, rather, allowing each encounter to be fresh, completely and naturally what it is.

Without a preconceived identity and without preconceived ideas about life, self and others, I am, in this sense, nobody experiencing with no-mind. Anxiety, anger, depression, arrogance and selfishness are so clearly harmful and unnecessary to a person who is, in consciousness, “nobody.” The joy of living in Creation, harmonious within and without, is their natural abode.

“The adept in Zen is one who manages to be human with the same artless grace and absence of inner conflict with which a tree is a tree.” – Alan Watts

In the modern world, where we are over-burdened with the weight of our own insecure identity, with the obsessive and desperate need for significance, to be “somebody,” to contemplate the meaning of “nobody” can be a valuable reference point. It reminds us that we have fallen into a terrible hubris, into an arrogance that places us quite outside and at opposition with Nature, and with what Buddhists would call our own original nature. We have become quite caught in our egoic self-centeredness, our ambitions, opinions and judgments; afraid of being a nobody. We take everything personally and are filled with inner conflict. This is a most uncomfortable and graceless place to live.

After all, what is it that we get so upset about? Usually it is about not having things go the way we want them to, or feeling injured, slighted, insulted or discounted in some way. Being upset is usually about the ego-self wanting more control and importance than it has. This can be true over real injury, certainly, or, as is often the case, in just not getting our way the way we want it. The modern spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, describes our emotional distress as the result of being resistant to what is. What a simple and clear teaching. So too then, when we don’t find our identity in ego, we can face many threats and losses, real and imagined, even death, and remain calm and accepting. We take nothing personally. Few bits-of-advice can be given that contain greater wisdom.

It is important to realize – this is not about being passive. Activity and creativity are in our nature and to be active and creative in the expression of life are appropriate and harmonious. In the service of ego, however, action is seldom harmonious. Certainly, there are times to resist cruelty and stupidity, but it does not have to be from a place of fear, anger, or violent emotion. It is just the necessary thing to do. In the parlance of Zen it is then ‘”non-doing”. Certainly there are times to use effort for the benefit of our person, others and human society. Our choice is whether the effort is ego-directed, or from the place of just doing what needs to be done. Non-doing follows our deepest natural imperative, and “betterment” means to become more conscious, alive, and balanced with others, society and Nature within and around us.

As we assert ourselves, face a challenge, respond to injury or disappointment, whether it is slight or great, we can let go of our ego, be nobody, and in so doing, become more in harmony with life as it is, and with our own life as it is meant to be. We can engage a moment that could have been one of struggle and suffering for others and ourselves, and instead, turn it into a moment of mastery. We can be masterfully active and creative just because it is in our nature to be so, noting that to “nobody,” mastery is no big deal. No big deal, but oh, how splendid. Like the stars in the night sky or the butterfly visiting the blossom, like a tree being a tree, we can be naturally human, as is said in Zen, “Just so.”

“Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is – no matter what form it takes – you are still, you are at peace.” – Eckhart Tolle

In Zen teaching, emphasis is given to embracing the present moment without holding conditions on the content of the moment. This means that from the perspective of spiritual and psychological enlightenment, of one’s calm and balanced presence, a moment in a divinely beautiful setting in nature is fundamentally no different than a moment stuck at a traffic intersection, or being diagnosed with cancer. There is, however, a Buddhist saying that “enlightenment is easy for the person with no preferences,” implying full realization of how seemingly inhuman this perfect equanimity would be. We all have preferences. How could we not?

This perfect equanimity must seem like a strange and impossible notion to embrace, and it may well not even seem like a state to which one would choose to aspire, but, as with all Zen teachings, the direction in which it points, though perplexing, is a very valuable path for us to explore.

Buddhism teaches us that our emotional suffering is caused by our resistance to the realities of life. We want life to be the way we want life to be. We grasp after those things that bring us closer to the realization of our desired experiences and goals, and we avoid as much as we can those circumstances that frustrate our desires. This seems self-evident, but its importance is in the insight that the emotional ups and downs of our lives are the result of this search for desire fulfillment, and that it is possible to gain a larger perspective that allows for far greater peace, wellbeing, profound sanity and happiness within life’s ups and downs.

If, like all of God’s other creatures, our desires were limited to the very basic necessities of life, we wouldn’t face emotional turmoil. For a squirrel, a fish or a bee, to have the basic needs of biological survival is enough, but for humans it isn’t. It particularly isn’t enough for modern people living in technological societies driven by a consumer economy. Oh, the suffering of a status-conscious teenager who doesn’t have the newest must-have possession. Oh, the suffering of an ambitious adult passed over for promotion, blocking the purchase of that new home and car. Oh, the suffering caused by arguments among family, a failed love relationship, financial instability or a crisis of health. Oh how we suffer over insults and slights, real and imagined.

What separates the human from the squirrel? Quite fundamentally, it is a more elaborate brain structure capable of abstract thought and sense of self. Certainly, many species of animals have the instinct of hierarchy, and dominance competition is common, but straightforward biologically-ingrained processes resolve such issues, and then everything settles down. For humans, struggles of status and significance are very different.

Humans anticipate this struggle, form strategies and devices to give them advantage, and live in reflected dissatisfaction with the results even when we win – the triumph is always tenuous and temporary, never complete. No squirrel lives in a remembered world of triumph or defeat. No squirrel worries about whether their status is sufficient, about whether they are sufficient, about whether they will gain or lose status or happiness in the future. Humans are obsessed with such matters. It is an abstract sense of self and its time-line story, what psychology calls ego, creating this suffering that is unique to humans.

Buddhism teaches that identifying with, and being driven by, the desires of the ego is what causes our emotional suffering. We want what we want, and we suffer when we don’t get it. We want an entire story line of “me” that is made up, not of moments in the here-and-now, but a continuous flow of moments all strung together creating the time-line of our lives. This time-line is the ego’s story. We live in a blurred cacophony of moments remembered and anticipated all built around our need for significance.

“This moment, what is lacking?” – 9th Century Zen Master, Rinzai
This moment experienced in its purity has no past and it has no future. It only contains what is present. There is no timeline to this moment. There are antecedents and there will be a future to this moment, but this moment held in stillness is completely pristine, and ego cannot dominate experience without its storyline.

“This moment is a perfect moment. This moment is my refuge.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Bring awareness into your sensory experience of the moment. Begin with awareness of the gentle rhythm of your breathing. Pay particular attention to the release of tension that comes with the exhalation. Then experience the bright clarity of perception that is a conscious inhalation. The mind will begin to quiet. It will begin to focus; it will take on a rare quality of stillness, a dynamic stillness that is the quality of a calm ocean, a forest glen. Allow into perception only what is present, without its antecedents and its future, and a world of mystery that is life and Creation in its true form begins to be revealed. Stillness is the key, a dynamic stillness that is the fabric of Nature, of the Universe.

As we become increasingly capable of sustaining contact with the dynamic stillness of the moment, not needing, or feeling compelled, to move on to something else, we likewise become increasingly the master of our own mind, and the saner (and happier) we become. Stillness becomes the ever-present background while we live the activity of our lives. Awareness that all activity arises and passes back into stillness becomes our greatest insight. We learn that we can enter the stillness of this moment by choice and use it, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, as a context and a refuge We can learn from within stillness how petty and unnecessary are most of our attachments and ego cravings, the noise of our lives, and so, how unnecessary most of our suffering is.

Stillness is the realm of meditation and mindfulness. Stillness is the place where we learn that we are not imprisoned within our thoughts and emotions, and thus, victim to their vicissitudes. This stillness is where we learn that all things are manageable when framed from within this moment. Stillness is the doorway through which we can glimpse eternity and Creation. Stillness is the doorway to perfecting psychological and spiritual balance and understanding.

This moment, held in stillness, lacks nothing, for in it, we and the Universe unfold, are one, and are complete.

“Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation, so if you exhale smoothly, without trying to exhale, you are entering into the complete perfect calmness of your mind… Instead of trying to feel yourself as you inhale, fade into emptiness as you exhale…we feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into emptiness. When we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish something, we cannot express ourselves. Small self will be expressed, but big self will not appear from the emptiness. From the emptiness only great self appears.” – Shunryu Suzuki

Zen asks: Who are you? This is the great meditation, and we meditate to discover the answer to this question. In meditation, we sit quietly in complete relaxation while vibrantly alert. We sit with our posture reflecting the paradox that is our totality meeting the moment, looking into the interface of the Universe with this experience we have come to know as “me.” We are instructed to bring awareness to our breathing, to hold awareness on breathing as best we are able, and to watch and learn. And, oh, there is so much to be learned. One insight to be learned is that “Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation.”

While this may sound absurd, it is not. As with everything in Zen, don’t believe it upon being told. You must experience it for yourself. If you follow the instructions for Zen meditation (zazen) you will discover, as your awareness becomes subtler and subtler, profoundly different states of mind come with inhalation and exhalation. With exhalation, comes relaxation, a natural release of the tensions that hold together your sense of personal self (ego). “Fade into emptiness as you exhale.” This puzzlement points to the release of ego-self into non-conceptual awareness that Buddhism means by emptiness.

With birth comes our first inhalation and the long, long process of creating our ego-self through experience and social/psychological learning. With death, comes our last exhalation and the release of this ego-self. At the beginning and at the end, and at every moment between, is the one unchanging constant of our existence: awareness. Awareness experiences this rhythm and all the rhythms of our life. “Fade into emptiness as you exhale.” Master Suzuki taught this pointer towards the realization of our essential self as of extreme importance.

With the next inhalation comes a returning into form, only now, having touched emptiness, having touched, in a sense, our ego’s death, comes the realization that we have form, yet are more than form. We have a body and a mind. We have life circumstances and relationships, yet we are more than all these. All these occur within the witnessing awareness that sits watching the rhythm of our breath and the rhythms of our life. The realization begins to dawn: I am the awareness within which all experience occurs.

We believe we have good times and bad times, and we do. Yet we are more than our good times and bad times. If we weren’t, our bad times would destroy us, but they don’t (unless we make up and live in a story that we are destroyed). Our “great self” is larger than all the bad times. It is bigger than all the good times too. Our great self does not exist in times at all. Our great self, our unshakeable awareness, exists only in the present moment that is also eternity. But no, we don’t live this way.

We live on the inhalation grasping at everything, rushing to get to the next moment. Pay attention and notice – when we want or expect something, we inhale sharply. The exhalation is overlooked. And this is no way to live. This is not life at all. We can’t only inhale. Life is here, and we are always trying to get to there! To inhale is good, but as Master Suzuki said, “In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live each instant…Inhaling without effort you naturally come back to yourself with some color or form. Exhaling, you gradually fade into emptiness.. The important point is your exhalation. Instead of trying to feel yourself as you inhale, fade into emptiness as you exhale.”

Breathing every moment, aware that you are breathing every moment, without regard to the difference between life and death, you touch the eternal. Master Suzuki tells us, “When you practice this in your last moment, you will have nothing to be afraid of. You are actually aiming at emptiness. You become one with everything after you completely exhale with this feeling. If you are still alive, naturally you will inhale again…”

Discovering yourself “still alive,” the world sparkles, life exhilarates in all its brilliant ordinariness. Body and mind are within the moment that is life. The space of the moment, the space of your awareness, is alive, and you realize you are in the space of the moment. This is enlightenment. This is the answer to the great meditation.

A great realm of peace and wisdom has opened. Then you live your life in all its ordinariness, yet there is never again boredom, never again restlessness, never again useless anger or fear. Exhaling into emptiness is to discover the fullness of every moment of life. Inhaling again, we discover the adventure of every breeze, of every flower, of every squirrel and bird, and of every person we encounter
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Inhale deeply. This is life. Exhale fully. This is death. They are one and the same in the Great Self. Spiritual teachings emphasize you must die into life to be fully alive. Each breath, a new moment. Born again! This is Zen.

Meditation is not a separate something from daily life… meditation is a form of understanding one’s relationship to the world and one’s relationship to nature…(We are) enquiring into the whole nature of thinking, enquiring into the nature why human beings are behaving in this way, enquiring into or probing into the depth of life, what it all means, if there is something beyond the ordinary daily monotonous wearisome life. To enquire if there is something sacred. – J. Krishnamurti

The greatest unrealized truth is that meditation is essential to modern humanity, and what is also clear, since meditation is not realized as essential, is that we are in serious difficulty. We are too many and too powerful to continue along in the same basic consciousness as we have for thousands of years, building our civilizations, our monuments to human specialness and competition, our abstractions of what it means to be alive on this planet. We must realize some basic truths. We must face the truth of our relationship to the world and to nature, to the depth of life, to find out, as Krishnamurti said, “if there is something sacred” in this life. The one inescapable truth is that only meditation can do this.

But this search for the sacred is not how we live. We are primarily concerned with our very secular selves, content with fictions about the sacred. We are living in a daze, superficially, trying to avoid anything we consider unpleasant or inconvenient, while stirring up misery and drama unnecessarily, creating as much significance for ourselves as we can, engaged in a never-ending, never-accomplished “pursuit of happiness.” We thoughtlessly believe the purpose of life is to acquire more and more “security” through possessions and status, to seek more and more leisure and entertainment, to accumulate more superficial relationships, and to live as if this will give us happiness, and we are completely mystified that it doesn’t. We never question.

We just up the ante. We work harder, we play harder, we buy more stuff, we stir up more drama, asserting that this gives meaning and importance to our lives. We declare what we do as important and necessary, as the only way to be. We may seek personal improvement through therapies, continued learning, even spiritual practices. We may actually want to be better – or not. The end result still seems only marginally different and improved.

We take more pills that promise relief from depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, gastric distress, headaches and sexual dysfunction. We invest more and more in insuring longer, healthier, more financially secure lives without really knowing what to do with the lives we have. We go to churches and we take up spiritual practices because we are told that in them we will find meaning, and they, like television or other diversions, temporarily relieve our isolation. They stimulate and entertain us; and do give us contact with others who also seek the same meaning we long for. We may actually find some meaning, some sense of touching something infinite, although we don’t exactly know why. But none of it ever changes the basic problems of our lives or the problems of humanity.

What we do as individuals, we likewise do as collectives that have lives of their own: nations, governments, religions, corporations. There is no thought to the implication that these entities lack conscience or compassion while they have resources that give them access and voice a thousand, a million-fold over any individual. Human suffering and the degradation of the planet rolls on.

And we watch our society become one big market place with everything for sale, everything with a price-tag, including our leaders and our laws. What ought to be basic rights like education and health-care have become commodities available only at a price, increasingly out of reach for many. Access to nature now frequently comes with an admission fee. Banks stand looking like temples, as is appropriate to their status in our society. Corporations seem to own everything. We have little morality, but more and more laws and “ethics,” violations of which will swiftly bring law suits, but there is little justice or fairness. No one is responsible for their own foolishness, yet everyone is accountable for any infraction of the rules (except those with influence).

This is actually nothing new. Religions, political parties, nations, ideologies have long functioned as super-individuals (egos), causing untold harm and suffering, pursuing their interests to the exclusion of the interests of those who are not the “we.” Thousands of years of this. With the passing of centuries, the dynamic only becomes increasingly energetic, increasingly concentrated, abstract and sophisticated, causing more harm and suffering, now threatening the balance of the very ecosystem humanity depends on for life, and we seem incapable of the fundamental change that we all know is necessary.

Like an over-indulgent, long-suffering mother, the collective of life and the collective of the planet has indulged this self-centered, self-indulgent childish spoiled behavior. And like a spoiled child who only pursues its own pleasure, the child is not happy, does not know what happiness is, yet acts out even more, seemingly incapable of any insight into its own behavior as the source of its unhappiness. The mother is now exhausted, has little left to give, but the pampered child, in complete denial of its situation, expects the pampering and spoiling to go on indefinitely. The situation is insane, and what is the most insane is that this is what is considered completely “normal.”

Does this seem like an overly harsh and judgmental assessment of the state of humanity? A deeper consideration (meditation) will show the truth of it, and it is the deeper consideration that we are incapable of without being directed to it. We are just caught in the momentum of thousands of years of conditioning to consider all this dysfunction as “normal.” For all of humanity’s technological progress, even its political and philosophical progress towards recognizing the worth of the individual and the universality of some basic rights, we fail to see the basic flaw that comes from living within thought structures that tell us we are separate, self-interested individuals living within separate, self-interested collectives. Compassion is relegated to arcane religious teachings, rather than realized as an essential psychological necessity. We experience the consequences of this delusional consciousness, but we fail to recognize the flaw in the consciousness that is the cause of the consequences.

We believe that we are these separate self-interested entities because our culture has told us that we are. What we fail to realize is that this is nothing but a thought; and a very bad thought at that, and it has been responsible for every war, every act of insensitivity, every abuse, every exploitation, every prejudice, every division and conflict, every inequity that has plagued humanity as individuals and collectives. We fail to realize, to feel, the one indispensable insight: that we are one collective that is life, and so we humans, as individuals and as collectives, fail to act as one collective that is within and dependent upon the greater collective that is life. We fail to realize that we each are akin to the individual cells that make up the individual organs of a human body that act as one collective that supports the organism, a human being. So too, we will be unable to function with real harmony and happiness as individuals, as collectives, as the human species, until we realize the consciousness that is the collective Life on the organism/planet Earth as who we are.

Will this make us unthinking automatons? No. It will allow us to apply our intelligence, our creativity, our individuality in the service of Life, in the service of harmony and happiness, and just like a child who realizes spontaneous, cooperative, kind play is far more rewarding than conniving, selfish, hurtful behavior, we can then discover what true happiness and human productivity is.

But to find this, we must go deeper in consciousness than the programmed thought structures of competitive individual selfishness that human civilization has conditioned into us for thousands of years. We must – as Krishnamurti talked and wrote about – engage in a total inner revolution – a turning over of what we accept as normal – to see what is real. This seeing what is real in the universe of our minds and the universe around us is what meditation is, and only in the silent awareness of true meditation can we look at, see and feel the truth of who we are, what is real and what is unreal. Then, we can discover that there is something sacred, and it is life, and it is you and me and all humanity and all fellow creatures and every moment of this precious experience that is human life and existence.

Then we can rebuild this human civilization in the honoring and celebration of every life and all life. And along the way, each of us as individuals will discover real happiness and creativity and meaning. This is why we must meditate.

“Already we are the Buddha. There’s just no doubt about that. How could we be anything else? We’re all right here now. Where else could we be? But the point is to realize clearly what that means; this total oneness; this total harmony; and to be able to express that in our lives. That’s what takes endless work and training. It takes guts. It’s not easy. It takes real devotion to ourselves and to other people.” – Charlotte Joko Beck

When learning meditation, a very helpful instruction is to “sit like a Buddha.” If this instruction can be fully realized everything a person needs to know about enlightenment will make itself known. But most people don’t get it; they continue to sit like themselves. And that’s OK. Buddhas appear when they are ready. Zen Master Shibayana was known to say, “This Buddha that you all want to see, this Buddha is very shy. It’s hard to get him to come out and show himself.” The purpose of meditation and Buddhist teaching is to coax this shy one out.

Amongst Western psychotherapies, a few are based on a premise that is really quite Buddhist. In some fashion or other, the psychologies of Carl Rogers, Carl Jung, the Gestaltists, and Abraham Maslow all hold that there is a completely healthy, wise and spiritual person within everyone, but it is buried under so much muck of social and psychological conditioning that it is very difficult to call this core healthy person out to be realized in the world. We just don’t believe this person is there.

The only person we truly believe in as who we are is the neurotic personality of “me,” and there is nothing shy about this one. This one is quite bold and tenacious, even if, as in some cases, it employs the face of being anxious and weak. Among the great variety of people, the neurotic self or personality comes in an infinite variety of faces from the timid and depressed to the criminally narcissistic and everything in between. In every case, it is a gross distortion of human potential. The word “personality” comes from the ancient Greek “persona,” from the masks worn by actors in the classical Greek theater, and what it represents in us is just as false as those masks, and it holds on even when it professes to want to change, be sane, be spiritual or find enlightenment. It is who was conditioned into us by parents, culture and society, and we believe in it absolutely; even when we realize the problems it creates for us. To get beyond it “takes guts. It’s not easy. It takes real devotion to ourselves and to other people.”

While the psychotherapies of Rogers (the real self), Jung (the individuated self), Gestalt (the authentic self), and Maslow (the self-actualized self) theoretically do draw on a “true self” model, the methodology of these therapies really don’t seem to have the means to access, to make real, to bring forth this true, sane and natural “self” in a reliable manner. While the theories use language and make reference to a healthy individual within each person, they remain bound within the cult of ego that marks Western culture and psychology. When the problem is ego-centeredness, as Buddhism realizes, the problem cannot be effectively confronted by a psychology that does not see ego-centeredness as the problem.

The perspective and techniques of these psychotherapies typically fall short of the task they have set for themselves. The evocation of the “true self’ becomes particularly problematic when the psychotherapists are themselves not convincing examples of healthy ego-transcendence, and, truthfully, few are. We need to see for ourselves. We need to see examples of ego-transcendence, and this is specifically the path of the Buddhist teacher. We also need to experience our own capacity to stand as witness to the pull of egocentricity, and to realize that this witnessing awareness is completely free of neurosis and is who we are. This is our Buddha within, whose vision we find through wrestling with Buddhist koans and practicing meditation and mindfulness.

What these Western therapies are missing is a truly trans-egoic vision of human potential and the koan and meditation training that is necessary to illuminate and strengthen the capacity for trans-egoic experience. The problem with these psychologies is that they remain enmeshed within Western notions of the ego’s preeminence in the human psyche. Buddhism, and its several thousand years of Dharma (the Way of Awakening, or simply, Reality) is a psychology that truly can take us beneath, through and beyond ego identification to freedom from the ego-masks, into, as Buddhism calls it, our “true” or “Buddha” nature.

The teaching is startlingly direct and profound. As Zen koans might ask: “What in your experience is never masked?” Or, the traditional, “Show me your original face.” Allow direct, authentic, uncorrupted experience of the present moment, as if you were absolutely fresh in the world like an infant, only now, not as a helpless, dependent, unskilled infant, but rather as a fully independent and mature human possessing sophisticated and subtle physical and mental skills with which to engage the world, now realizing it is our conditioned habits of body and mind that comprise our mask, our neurosis.

“The contours of your neurosis are the same as the contours of your awareness.” – Fritz Perls

We experience the world through a limited and distorted lens of conditioned personality. The mask not only limits our vision of the environment of the moment, it also distorts what information is coming in (and certainly what is going out – the “actor’s” role). Buddhism teaches us to take the mask off, to both receive and transmit an undistorted reality, to expand the contours of awareness toward an equally ever-expanding realization of the full potential of Human Beingness, thereby dissolving our neurosis. Beneath the mask, we discover, is a Buddha, an awakened being, and with this realization, we increasingly become a person capable of functioning within the limited perspective of our social and cultural life circumstances from an increasingly expansive and enlightened perspective with our ultimate frame of reference as the unlimited Universe, now free of convention while in the midst of convention.

This awakening can begin when you sit like a Buddha – in your chair or on your cushion – AND – in the Universe – Creation unfolding all around you. “Buddha,” awareness uncontaminated by conditioning, can then slowly, gradually illustrate to you how you keep falling back into the neurotic and limited mask of an ego-self, and how in the purity of the moment-in-awareness you can expand the contours of awareness, growing your experience and expression, into fuller non-neurotic reality.

Realize in your sitting, with awareness tuned into your breathing, into your sitting, into whatever arises in your mind, into the gradual realization of a vast spaciousness beneath the cramped activity of your mind out of which the activity arises, realize that awareness is who you are. Meet your Buddha.

This realization is not, however, easy. The ego-self’s hold is incredibly tenacious. You may sit for years. You will, as a dedicated meditator, probably make significant gains in physical and mental health, in reducing stress, in gaining insight into your neurotic self, but still, you will not quite grasp what this is really leading to. Then (and for some who are truly ready, it may not take years), what Buddhists call “the mental hinge” will begin to turn, the “Gateless Gate” will open. You will see what, who, has been sitting there all along. The Buddha-within begins to emerge as another Buddha-in-the-world.

One day, you will be able to look at a statue or picture of a meditating Buddha and realize you are looking at a mirror of your true self. You will likewise, be able to look in a mirror and see a Buddha. You will look at everyone and see Buddhas hiding. Then, you might enjoy a slight compassionate laugh at how obvious it is. All there is to do is just stand up – in the Universe. All there is to do is shake off your cramped actor’s mask and costume, and go about your ordinary life. Only now, you find you are increasingly able to walk the world awake, far less neurotic, with a lighter step, an easier gate, and perhaps, with that same kind, compassionate, ironic smile for everyone you meet that is the mark of all Buddhas, having realized, “Already we are the Buddha.”

(reprinted in part, March 2012 as “Personal Peace”)
As you are aware of your thoughts and emotions, you must ask yourself – “Who is it that is aware?” – Zen Koan

“Everything is as it can be” – Alan Watts

Change, as in going from one state to another, does not realistically happen in a person. Growth and evolution do. In fact, evolution can be so powerful that it can appear as dramatic change. Evolution begins with a compassionate understanding that you are exactly as you can be by the factors of your conditioning and that we can grow beyond our conditioning. When you understand this, you then have a handle on how to expand your life in a manner that creates real change.

Awareness is you, your true self, as Zen says, your original self. That’s the truth in the world of enlightenment. But here in the world of society, families and insecure interpersonal interactions, what Buddhism calls “Samsara”, the world of the illusion of confusing our conditioning for who we are, we act out our conditioning exactly and only as we can be from within that conditioning.

But, who you are is consciousness. You are not your thoughts or emotions or behaviors. That’s just the stuff conditioned into you that you believe is you, and that society reinforces by all of us judging and identifying each other by our programmed thoughts, emotions and behaviors. We can even get pretty defensive about our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, but guess what? They aren’t even ours. They are from our mother, our father, our society, media, personal experience, etc. They are what we have learned, and they represent a certain level of consciousness that is the only thing we can be from within the prison of our conditioning, but we are not our conditioning unless we continue in the belief that we are

So, you’ve got some addictive behaviors? Some interpersonal hang-ups and insecurities? Tendencies to be impulsive, compulsive, anxious, angry or depressed? If you would like to “change” some undesirable traits in the coming year, it’s important to realize, these traits are exactly and only what can be from within the prison of your conditioning, but break out of the conditioning prison, and true growth, evolution can begin to occur.

The pioneering psychologist Fritz Perls used to say, “The contours of your neurosis are exactly the same as the contours of your awareness.” You are exactly the same dimensions of thought, emotion and behavior as you are aware of the possibilities for thought, emotion and behavior that you are conditioned to. Expand your awareness for what is possible, and the limited neurotic addictions, hang-ups, insecurities, impulsive, compulsive, anxious, angry, depressed features of your false conditioned personality will begin to resolve themselves. You will begin to evolve.

Eckhart Tolle advises us “our suffering is in our resistance to what is.” The “what is” of life contains the entire spectrum of possibility from the sublimely beautiful to the unfathomably hideous, from the birth of a child, to The Holocaust, from the bloom of flowers in spring, to the wasteland of a nuclear explosion or catastrophic global climate change. Many rightfully ask whether it is not necessary to resist “what is” if it is patently destructive, anti-life and human dignity?

The answer is in the manner of resistance we bring. Tolle is not advising us to passivity. He is advising us to wise seeing of things for what they are, and not resisting the understanding that “everything is as it can be.” To oppose a wrong, we must first see the wrong as the natural outcome of the way things are. To change what is wrong and destructive, we must work with the “what is” of the conditions that created it. First, we must be willing to see it for what it is, to not be apathetic, not turn a blind eye. Having seen it, we must not shrink from it as if it cannot be, or that it is too frightening to us. Nor can we fight a wrong from the place of hatred. Hatred created it. In the end, from the place of hatred, we will replicate much of what we fought to displace. Action emanating from love, compassion and courage are the non-resistance that is the only true counterweight to evil, hatred and apathy.

“Everything is as it can be” is an amazing insight into the unfolding evolutionary dynamic of society. Human society is a collective consciousness that, exactly like an individual consciousness, is in a process of evolution, of moving from a narrow, self-absorbed, frightened and limited sense of self into more expansive, inclusive and resourceful awareness. In example: along the path of human history, absolutist monarchies, slavery, religious wars, sexism and racism have been accepted political consciousnesses. Humanity, individually and collectively has, or is in process of, evolving beyond such consciousnesses. The “what is” of humanity has evolved into a new “can be.”

Today, economic, political and national competition and conflicts are accepted political consciousnesses along with unfettered exploitation of the Earth’s resources. Such thinking, however, is beginning to be questioned and challenged by an increasing number of individuals who are evolving in their consciousness. These visionaries see the necessity for a social awareness that enfolds all peoples, all species, even the ecosystem of the planet itself as the necessary identity for humanity if we are to survive and prosper into the future. A growing mass of such evolving individuals is necessary to achieve an evolving, healthy human society that moves what “can be” to entirely new dimensions of “what is.”

It is a very difficult lesson to absorb that without the recognition of the “what is” of the limited consciousness that leads to destructive social patterns; there can be no evolving to what can be. The starkest example of this is that it took the insanity of The Holocaust for the majority of humanity to say, “never again” to genocidal racism. It took the shocking devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a growing realization to take root that unlimited war can never be waged again. It will, sadly, probably take the shock of dramatic consequences to human-created climate change to force a new evolution of human consciousness in relationship to the planet and our place upon it.

The horror of “what is” is sometimes necessary to wake us up to what can be, to what must be, if we are to evolve successfully as a species. No, to realize that “suffering is caused by resistance to what is” is not a call to passivity. It is a call to come out of denial into consciousness. It seeks to awaken us to the need for action that moves us beyond the “is-ness” of a destructive unconsciousness. Paradoxically, this evolved consciousness can bring us personal peace while we engage the forces of history and social conflict.

Sometimes, force is needed to constrain violence, but only peace will bring peace. Ultimately, violence only perpetuates violence. Only identification with the totality of life on this planet will save humanity from the consequences of our identification with separateness, consumption and competition moving us toward Armageddon. Do not resist facing this “what is”. It got this way because it is how everything has been. We must evolve our vision as individuals and then as a species into a new “can be” if the next stage of human history is a consciousness capable of a peaceful, beautiful, sustaining future. To resist this will surely bring suffering.

Wake up! If you are what you can be and the circumstances of your life are what they can be, expand what can be. Evolve. Change is nearly impossible from within the limits of believing your conditioning to be who you are, but if you have the courage to let go of your defensive identity and live as curious, compassionate, resourceful, expanding, evolving awareness, the possibilities are nearly miraculous. All you’ve got to lose is your neurotic self. Then you will begin to see what can be.

At its simplest, karma means the law of cause and effect, and it is wise to be mindful that what we do always has effects. As with everything in Buddhism, there are layers upon layers of meaning for karma, all the way up to the metaphysical, and implications for death and rebirth. But staying for the moment at the level of the most obvious, it is not hard to understand that if you bring anger, strife and violence of attitude or action into the world, or if you bring self-absorbed drama, you will be surrounded by strife and violence, or others’ rejection of your drama and this can never be a peaceful, friendly or secure way to live. The quality of your life will be one of strife and violence, or drama and rejection, full of stress and unhappiness.

As important as this is to realize, I would like to take the discussion of karma to a subtler level, the level of the evolution of consciousness. The cause and effect to be considered here is with the relationship between mind and behavior, and with mind-set affecting our experience and shaping the future. Not so difficult to understand. As we construct the world in our minds, so we act in the world, and as we act in the world, so we reinforce the ideas we have about the world. This can be a way of understanding what Buddhism refers to as “The Wheel of Karma.”

Returning to the violent or angry person, as they construct a violent, angry world in their minds, they look for more reasons to be angry, and they will find them. Their view of the world reinforced, they will behave accordingly, and in that behavior and people’s responses, they have more verification that the world is a violent, angry place, and so their anger and violence is justified, even required. So too, the self-absorbed person will live in an isolated world of their own creation, requiring, in their mind, more reason for self-pity and drama. This holds equally true for an anxious, fearful mind, that finds reason for fear in the world, and the depressed mind that finds reasons for despair and unhappiness.

Of course people will find circumstances in the world to justify their cognitive/emotional predisposition – the world contains everything, and if you are looking for only certain conditions, you will most certainly find them. Each of these states of mind is a cause that creates the effect of finding (and even creating) justifying circumstances in the world that then reinforces the attitude in the mind.

On a societal/cultural level, the very definition of culture is the holding of unquestioned concepts about the nature of persons in relationship to themselves, to each other, to other cultures, to Nature, even to the nature and limits of consciousness. These unquestioned sets of beliefs then lead to behaviors and perceptions that lead to more of the same beliefs, behaviors and perceptions. And so the wheel turns, but it is only spinning, stuck in the mud of our limited set of thoughts, perceptions and reactive behaviors.

The importance of meditation in the resolution of this conundrum cannot be overemphasized, and it can be very helpful to view meditation, first of all, as the act of stopping your usual mental wheel. As we are carried along, caught in the momentum of the turning wheel of karma, constructing a world in our minds as has been conditioned into us by life training and circumstances, we keep recreating in the circumstances of life the reasons to continue creating our mental world in the same limited patterns. The momentum of this circular feedback keeps our consciousness stuck at a very primitive level. So, first of all, we must learn to stop the spinning.

By sitting, we are stopping. Then, in our posture, we are settling into a dedication to balance, stillness, stability, dignity, neutrality and curiosity in these moments. By shifting awareness from being caught in our spinning mind into awareness of our breathing and subsequently looking at the arising and passing of streams of thought in the mind, we create some calmness, subtlety and spaciousness to our awareness. Then, as we notice the arising of our thoughts, as we feel the pull of the thoughts, but we stay in the simple noticing and are not caught and carried away by the thoughts, we create some space and perspective on the mental activity. We realize that this thought is inside me, but we have been living as if we were inside the thought. This is a powerfully liberating insight.

Then, we have the spaciousness to notice the qualities of the thought and, almost literally, its density. Is it angry? Is it fearful? Is it unhappy? We can notice that the more fear-based the thought, the denser it will be, the stronger its pull on us will be. Ego-driven thoughts of personal diminishment or compensatory inflation will be very dense and, amazingly, an experienced meditator can literally feel their density. We can experience the pull of the thought to carry us into its very small and limited perspective and options for behavior. Then, instead of our usual habit of being carried along by the energy of the thought, we return to the spacious awareness of our breathing and the balanced stillness of our sitting, and we can experience the moment opening back up and our tension dissolving, our options for response expanding. We have stopped the wheel.

We discover that we are not caught pursuing the impulses of our thoughts, but rather are calmly, subtly and spaciously present, perceiving situations as they arise with a sense of relaxed connectedness. We realize that we are capable of increasingly calm, subtle and truly intelligent creative responses to our life situations and to the corresponding thoughts that arise. With this practice, we begin to evolve, that is to expand, our consciousness of the possibilities for who we are and what life is about. We begin to realize that the true nature of our mind and who we are is in the spacious awareness in which the thoughts, perceptions and impulses to behavior arise, and that awareness is free of all limitation – like the sun, it shines on everything without bias.

From our meditation experience, we can begin to be more mindful in the world, replicating the inner experience of meditation in our outer actions and responses. We begin to resolve, to evolve, our Karma, moving from limited, fearful, reactive separateness to a more spacious, inclusive connection with life as it is with far more creativity and compassion.

“To resolve Karma, practice forgiveness, gratitude and personal responsibility.”
– Buddhist saying

We are able to bring the Buddhist teaching about Karma to life, to forgive others and ourselves for past harms, to increasingly experience gratitude for life’s beauty and lessons, and begin to be increasingly responsible (that is, non-harming) in our personal conduct. This grows us spiritually and psychologically. The wheel now turns steadily and surely – advancing us towards a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Importantly, as individuals take this responsibility for their lives, we must also wake up and look at the various collective levels of our human society and realize great Karmic debts have been accumulated in relationship to other human communities, and to Nature, that is, to other species and the planet that is our home and source. We can dedicate ourselves to resolving this Karma through the simple formula Buddhism offers us: practicing expanded present moment consciousness and applying forgiveness, gratitude and personal responsibility – then – and only then – will humanity, having gained in true self-knowledge, be able to individually and collectively evolve into a long, healthy and happy future, the wheel of Karma now moving us toward an enlightened destiny.

As a freshman in college during the late 60’s, I was a young alienated intellectual, raised in a liberal Protestant tradition, but who had lost belief in God and religion. Wars, the Holocaust, materialism, hypocrisy, racism, religious factionalism, cruelty, the degradation of nature, churches preaching judgment and damnation, or functioning as little more than watered-down social clubs and places to ritualize holidays and major passages in life, all seemed to spell to me a world without a spiritual basis. That year, however, I attended a lecture by the Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, and that night was a turning point in my life. A person in the mostly Christian audience wanted Heschel to comment on the meaning of sin in relationship to fulfilling religious commandments, and he answered, to my memory, approximately, thusly:

He spoke about how, of course there are the commandments and the laws, but that he could imagine situations in which he would have a difficult time calling some acts which violated commandments a sin, such as stealing to save your family from starvation. “No,” he said to the assemblage, to him, more important than the action was the intent and attitude behind an act. He said he believed that we begin to create the conditions for sin when we are in “denial” of what he referred to as “the sublime wonder of life,” when we experience life as made up of objects for our use and manipulation, rather than seeing everything and everyone as the sacred manifestation of God and Creation. He said that sadly, this denial had become the dominant paradigm of humanity and that we do this with nature, we do it in our dealings with people, and we even do it with the people we love. He said that when we reduce life and people to objects for our use and manipulation, we can justify doing terrible and, yes, sinful things, and that the root of sin was to be found in this “denial of the sublime wonder of life.”

Those words were like a spiritual thunderclap to me. “Denial of the sublime wonder of life.” This is the fall from Eden! With those words, Humanity’s place in the spiritual universe made sense to me. We have a choice. We can be in harmony with Creation, or egocentric and out of harmony. Much that was in the Bible that had made little sense to me or served only as moralistic platitudes began to fall into place. Heschel was implying that the experience of wonder, “sublime wonder,” is both the vehicle and the result of viewing our lives, all life, and the Universe as a harmonious and sacred whole, a Divine Creation. In such moments, spirituality is not a theoretical concept; nor a matter of faith, but rather, it is a direct experience that opens us into “radical amazement” (another of Heschel’s phrases), an expansive non-dualistic presence in life, as opposed to religious sanctimony that closes us off from connection, from transformative loving, compassionate Beingness.

Heschel was articulating the essence of the mystical spiritual perspective, and as I, then with wondering curiosity, explored other religious traditions, I discovered that they all began in mystical experience. They all originated in the experience of infinite wonder, while an individual becomes aware of standing within the Universe – an expression of the Universe – in love, ecstasy and deep compassion. I realized how with time and absorption into some social/political context, these mystical revelations then had been buried under religious dogma, commandments and ritual until the original transcendent experience that gave deep wonder and meaning to life became lost. Heschel gifted me with the realization that we live in a state of constant choice. We can live from the experience of wonder, or we can deny it. This is the fork in the road of spiritual experience.

When I took Heschel’s words and brought them out into the world, I found something wondrous. How obvious! When looking through eyes of wonder, I saw a luminous world of endless interconnectedness and interdependence, a wondrous dance unfolding moment to moment within the fabric of Life, and I had very little sense of my separate and anxious self at all. On the other hand, when looking at the world from my own ego, my psychological conditioning and personal interest, everything was just objects, just stuff. We even experience ourselves as an object in our minds measuring our adequacies and inadequacies in self-judgment, sometimes shame. Likewise, other people are objects – there to make our life good or bad, easy or hard. And of course, we are filled with the impulse to manipulate all this stuff to our advantage and there is an overwhelming preoccupation and insecurity with ourself.

I realized that when we are in this “object” consciousness, the world collapses down to me and my agenda, very small. And the stage is set for doing harm, for sinning, if you will. Our concern in life becomes – what are the rules and what and how much can I get for me? Now the “what?” and “how much?” varies from person to person, but there is always a manipulative quality to it. The centerpiece issue is “me.” However, from the perspective of sublime wonder, from the total openness of curious respect and undivided attention, everything becomes quite beautiful, meaningful and valuable. The experience of the moment expands; it is no longer “self” centered, but rather wondrously centered in the connection of my experience of self with the person or circumstance I focus upon in heightened awareness. I began to understand the meaning of the phrase, “looking into the face of God.” I knew what Jesus meant when He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is spread across the land, but people do not have the eyes to see it.” The eyes that can see are the eyes of Heschel’s “sublime wonder.” The centerpiece is Life – bigger than me. “Me” dissolves into Life, some would say, into God. Zen says, into the Universe unfolding, into the “vastness of existence.”

As I studied other cultures, I discovered there were peoples that had held to wonder as the centerpiece of their lives. I learned of Native American and other aboriginal peoples, and of mystical traditions within mainstream religions around the world. I learned that clearly there is, on the one hand, conventional religion, and then there is true spiritual experience where the active experience of sublime wonder, of the connectedness and sacredness of Life, comes alive. I learned that wonder is that moment when you realize that what seemed outside of you is not, that there is a wholeness and connectedness. I learned that what can be called God is present, always, everywhere, manifested in Life itself and human consciousness.

I learned that mysticism seems to be a middle way between traditional religion and aboriginal spirit living, a way that carries the direct wondrous experience of primitive nature-based peoples that can be applied within civilized cultures. Over time, my own expression gravitated to Zen, a mystical offshoot of Buddhism that teaches that wonder is to be found in the cultivation of full presence, if when listening, we really hear, if when doing a thing we fully experience it, and when with another person, we are wholeheartedly present. This, then, is the focused yet expansive awareness that Zen teaches, and I learned that this perspective is completely compatible with contemporary living. One doesn’t even have to be a Buddhist, and certainly not Oriental, nor follow Oriental rituals to live it (although practicing meditation and mindfulness and studying Buddhist philosophical and psychological teachings do greatly enhance it).

If the primary intent of religion is the cultivation of morality and compassion, as you walk the world with the eyes of sublime wonder, you will notice that you automatically begin becoming an increasingly caring and compassionate person. You naturally begin to do less harm in the world. In Buddhism, an important principle called “Interbeing” teaches the experience – deepened through meditation and mindfulness – that everything is interconnected, interdependent and impermanent, and it brings with it a natural resulting compassion, as understanding takes hold that these are the conditions, along with the problems of ego and conditioning, which you share with the entirety of humanity.

You begin to experience a sacred wonder, a “sublime wonder,” and a bond with all beings and aspects of the world, and begin walking with a little lighter footprint, doing less harm if you can. You might say you begin to sin less. When I let go of my culturally conditioned ego-centered attitude and opened to, rather than denied, the possibility of sublime wonder, it was as if I discovered what the concept/experience of God might really be. I wasn’t an alienated intellectual anymore. I found that the infinite and sacred were everywhere. This was the great gift Abraham Heschel gave to me, opening my nineteen-year-old eyes to the miracle of “sublime wonder.” Try it – as my gift to you. Perhaps it will be a turning point in your life – and – if enough people were to discover real spirituality through cultivating the perspective of living in “sublime wonder,” it might be a turning point for this whole “sinful” world.

A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” To which Joshu replied, “Mu!”

In Chinese Ch’an Buddhism, the spiritual heir to ancient Taoism, and the precursor to Japanese Zen, the single syllable word, “Mu” represents enlightenment. It does not mean any exalted state of contact with heavenly visions of grandeur, or the extrapolation of complex metaphysical systems about astral dimensions or planes of reality. And, of course, it does.

In Buddhism and Taoism, spirituality is not sought in the realms of complex systems of philosophical/theological dogma. Quite the contrary, simplicity and the direct experience of union with Nature are the path to spiritual experience. Complex thought and systems of cosmology just get in the way. So – “Mu” means “no mind.” It means to be completely free of the delusional and egoistic contrivances of the mind that would have us believe that the spiritual experience is about attainment of heavenly visions or mastering astral planes. It means that enlightenment happens when we enter into a mind of absolute and direct clarity about the nature of the moment, beyond any intellectualization. And this is what leads us, without any pretentious ambitions, into realization of the permeating energy of a conscious Universe and the unified, multiple, simultaneous planes of existence.

This realization is represented in the classic Zen poem by the Chinese sage, Hsiang Yen (Kyogen in Japanese), who lived around 900 A.D.

The sound of something struck,

and I forgot everything I knew.

In the story associated with this poem, Hsiang Yen was a monk wrestling with the issue of enlightenment. He was a very intelligent and learned person, but all his knowledge and intellectual prowess could not bring him what he sought: the answer to the question of existence, to the nature of his true Self. One day, his teacher instructed him, “Don’t tell me what you have learned from your reading of the sutras (Buddhist texts), but give me an essential word about your Self before you came out of your mother’s womb, before you knew east from west.”

Hsiang Yen was at a loss. He desperately went back to researching through every esoteric text he could find, but to no avail. In despair he left the monastery and took up a hermit’s life at a long abandoned and dilapidated temple. One day, while cleaning the yard, lost in his thoughts, he tossed aside a broken clay tile and the sound of the tile striking and breaking against a bamboo tree was the moment of his enlightenment. He did not achieve enlightenment from some new bit of information, but rather, by breaking out of the maze of information that already filled his head.

The startling crack of the tile against the tree cut through all thought and intellectualization and brought him to sudden realization: the meaning of his life, his true Self, was completely contained in that moment in simple presence. While he was thinking about the meaning of life, he had been missing the experience of Life. The sound of the breaking tile woke him up, and there he stood, right in the middle of Life, with eyes opened for the first time.

In Taoist, Ch’an and Zen literature, this theme of sudden realization of true self, of pure existence beyond any learned knowledge is repeated frequently. Knowledge is, in fact, often represented as an impediment to enlightenment, because knowledge is always talking about, rather than living and experiencing Life. Knowledge also appeals to our egos, and the more complex and esoteric it is, the more our ego flatters us that we have uncovered something special, something that will make us special – and “enlightened.” In the Tao Te Ching, the original sourcebook of Taoism, made up of 81 short lessons or sections, and attributed to the sage, Lao Tzu, approximately 2600 years ago, it says in the third lesson:

The Master leads by emptying people’s minds and filling their cores,

by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve.

He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire,

and creates confusion in those who think that they know.

(Mitchell translation)

This is precisely what Hsiang Yen’s teacher did for him when he requested: “give me an essential word about your Self before you came out of your mother’s womb, before you knew east from west.” He boxed out Hsiang Yen’s intellect and left him to sink or swim in the current of the river of Life. He challenged Hsiang Yen to realize pure knowing, that which is our natural mind before it is shaped and contorted by society and ambitions of specialness, including for some, “enlightenment.”

No knowledge other than what could be called the pure knowledge that is attainable only by being wholly present, vibrantly alert, and without preconception in the midst of the mystery of Life can awaken or enlighten us. We are born with this capacity – what Zen calls “original mind” – and then we are “educated” out of it by society and its so-called knowledge, telling us “east from west.” This capacity, also known as, “Buddha-mind,” is the felt knowing that exists only in the purity of the moment directly lived. It cannot be intellectually explained.

To understand Zen poetry, then, we must grasp that it is not written to stimulate the intellect. It is written to share a moment of Life lived immediately, and in so doing, awaken our natural mind. Here. Now. – “Mu!” – To empty people’s minds and fill their core.

Spring has hundreds of flowers; autumn the clear moon.

Summer has cool winds; winter has snow.

If busyness doesn’t take your mind, you will know.

Mumon (app. 1200A.D.)

‘If reality is an interaction, an “Interbeing,” how can we penetrate its essence?… Through the activity of looking, reality gently reveals itself. In meditation, the subject and object of pure observation are inseparable.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Political consciousness is intensifying in this country, and progressives are stepping up to be seen, counted and demanding to be listened to. Consciousness is politics and politics is consciousness, for politics is the ongoing discussion of who gets included in the circle of identification and who gets left out, and this is about consciousness. And, as consciousness is the evolutionary trait of humanity, as evolution can be seen as the expanding, ever complexifying circle of identification that humans can hold in consciousness, this is about politics. Politics is the vehicle by which humanity evolves – that is, the circle of identification – of who counts, who is included – what perspective can be included that was previously excluded, expands. Yes, the evolutionary trait of humanity is consciousness – and it is time for an evolution through our politics.

To be a progressive is to be on the side of evolution. To be a progressive is to want the circle to expand, to know that the circle must expand, that if you are not on the side of evolution, you are on the side of devolution and that is death. On the other side, conservatives believe the circle of who counts must not expand, that it has already expanded too much. These have been the basic political battle lines throughout human history.

True progressives look at the world, meditate on the world, and, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, “reality gently reveals itself” as “an interaction, an Interbeing.” Progressives look at the world expansively and see artificial lines of separation causing immoral suffering and seek to dissolve those lines, to include as significant those who had been previously excluded. Conservatives look narrowly, mostly at themselves, meditate on themselves and their own identification group and misguided self-interest, and in fear of reality, erect walls of self-interest. Conservatives fight to keep the circle as small as possible, to keep the barrier between subject (me) and object (other) as high as possible. Progressives, on the other hand, work to expand the circle, to dissolve the barriers between “us” and “other” for they see these barriers to be illusions created by narrow perspectives such as exceptionalism, fear, greed and prejudice.

The good news for progressives is that they always win the war and conservatives always lose. History is the story of the progress of human consciousness. The hard news is that it takes time – sometimes lots of time – for progressive politics is a guerilla war waged against an entrenched conservative establishment where nearly every battle looks like a loss while the overall war inches toward victory. It must be remembered that progressives won the war on the issue of the privilege of monarchy and aristocracy – and so this country was born. Progressives won on slavery – and so this country found morality. Progressives won on women’s and racial civil rights – and so made this country inclusive. Progressives won on labor rights – and so gave this country a dynamic economy and middle class. And the struggles were long and costly, with many victims.

Progressives have worked and continue to work against the indignity and slavery of poverty, another issue of morality. Progressives now work to expand the circle to include the civil rights of all sexual and gender identifications. They work for the rights and preservation of the environment and the world’s other-than-human residents. And progressives currently have to fend off new conservative assaults on protections won in previous battles for middle class, the poor and labor rights, new assaults on environmental protection and corporate and financial regulation and fair taxation. It is discouraging, but these struggles too will be won by progressives.

Yes, progressives always win the wars. It’s just that nearly every battle along the way looks like a loss, and the issue always remains, how much damage will be done by conservatives, how many casualties will there be, and, particularly as regards the environment, can we afford the cost, can the cost be recovered from? How much pain and suffering will conservatives inflict before the unreality of their position is made clear?

The corporate interests that want to maintain an exploitive culture to preserve their own privilege and wealth have powerful weapons. They control our livelihoods, our health care, our retirements, our economy. They own and control powerful instruments of consciousness in the media. They seek to keep the citizens distracted with sensationalist entertainment and propaganda they mislabel as “news.” They set a standard of opulent luxury for themselves and hold any lesser standard in contempt, just as has any aristocratic class throughout history. The corporate interests seek to keep the citizenry addicted to this sensationalism and materialism, feeding insecurities by accentuating “us” and “them” consciousness. They want to convince that only through full participation in (and the continual expansion of) the consumer economy, and ceding of more and more control to the corporate and institutional powers, will security be had. They argue that the problem is immigrants, homosexuals, secularists, Muslims, environmentalists, welfare-ists, labor unions, federal regulationists, progressives, and most of all, socialists. They want to keep the problems identified as “them.” But it is not true. It is not reality. The problem is “us.” The problem is that the “we” is not yet big enough.

“Reality is an interaction, an Interbeing.” And we “must penetrate its essence.” “Through the activity of looking, reality gently reveals itself.” The credo of the progressive is “One world, one people, one future.” This is reality. By looking, we can see. By meditating, we can experience, “the subject and object of pure observation are inseparable.” There is no “us” and “other.” There is only “we.” And the “we” will not be big enough until all interests and participants of this “Spaceship Earth,” as Buckminster Fuller, the mid-20th Century eco-visionary, termed it, are included.

“We” are the immigrant and the established citizen and every human in every country seeking freedom and dignity. “We” are the environment. “We” are the welfare of everyone. “We” are the laborers and the bosses and the investors. “We” are the humans of all races and religions and genders and capacities and sexual orientations. “We” are those who need regulatory protections to prevent exploitation by those who care only about themselves and “we” are the entrepreneurs and inventors who need freedom to innovate. “We” even includes conservatives, religionists, financial manipulators, corporations and those who would misguidedly exploit “others” for their own advantage. “We” are the society – all the human society and the society of nature and the society of all beings on this planet – and all must be included in our circle of identification and compassion for there to be any quality future for any of us.

This is not revolution. Revolution only turns around the “us” and “them.” We need an evolution. “We” are the world, and it is time for an evolution. Join “us” at the barricades – to tear the barricades down.

(An excerpt from a talk at the Black Mountain Unitarian Universalist Church – July 31, 2011)

Insight Meditation and Mindfulness practice introduces us to – as the Zen Master, Sekkei Harada once instructed us, the “one person we must meet: The True Self.”

Who is this true self? In 1951, the scientist/mystic Albert Einstein wrote:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

This is the true transcendental vision – transcending the conventional egoic perspective of a world of competing, conflicting separate objects in which the purpose of life is to dominate – and in domination – destroy Beingness. This is the vision that can transcend and evolve humanity beyond the insufficient consciousness that has caused our problems as individuals and as the human collective.

Through meditation we can meet this True Self. In doing so, the first task is to learn to quiet the superficial dimension of mind that drowns all else out with its incessant talking and self-absorption. This is called Shamatha, Samadhi – Single pointedness of mind – Peaceful abiding.

You must learn to concentrate the mind on the peaceful, transcendent dimension of life happening through you – where the Universe happens as a living Being – through you. And the best vehicle for this is awareness of your breathing, the merging of the two fundamental dimensions of your existence – you as a living biological form and the true and elemental dimension of consciousness that is awareness.

You must realize that you are awareness – in a living biological form. Life in form and consciousness is happening through this mystery of a phenomenon that is a Human Being. Meditation properly directed awakens the realization that who you are is awareness – and this insight is of the absolute utmost importance.

No thought, no emotion, no sensation can be you – they all come and go – we have them – but are not – cannot – be them – we cannot be defined or captured by them – yet – we are conditioned by our society to invest them with our identity – MY thoughts, MY emotions, My perceptions. MY people, MY interests, I think, I feel. I think and care about what I am conditioned to think and care about. Everything else is “other.”

This is the prison that Einstein spoke of.

Buddhism teaches us to attend to that which does not come and go – What does not come and go? What in our experience has constancy? Awareness and Life – the same awareness that witnessed your first breath – when independent sustaining Life entered you – that same awareness sits here now – as Life. But we have become distracted from that which is essential. We are so caught up in our circumstances, our life situations – those thoughts and feelings that are our story about life – that we have lost connection with Life, its totality, the context of everything that comes and goes – with what is essential, with what is unshakeable, with what is the never wavering context for all that occurs.
With meditation, we can return to what is essential.

This is Samadhi meditation, and here are the instructions –

Sit straight – as you would sit to maximize alertness – but close your eyes – we are going to be looking within – As I like to say – “Sit like a Buddha” – as most of you have seen pictures or statues of this perfectly alert, relaxed, slightly smiling, serene figure.

In Buddhism, the statues and pictures are not meant as objects of worship, but rather inspiration, models of what a Human Being is capable of. Buddhism teaches that the Buddha – an awakened True Self lies asleep within us all. So Sit – so as to awaken this perfectly wise and compassionate self – your true self. Sit like a Buddha.

Now – Focus awareness into your breathing.
And with your breathing – relax into that alertness – be alert and relaxed.

With your exhalation, relax more deeply – shed unnecessary tension of body and mind.

With your inhalation, sharpen the clarity of alert awareness trained on the experience of breathing – just normal natural breathing.

When your mind wanders, return it to your breathing.

When your mind wanders it’s OK to note – oh, “thinking”– but rather than following the thought, getting caught in it, just return awareness to breathing.

(Try this now for ten minutes)

There – notice how you feel. Notice the peace of it. Notice the calm of it. Notice the deep sense of presence – really, peacefully, calmly, experience this presence. Feel the sanity of it. This is meeting your true self.

This is Samadhi training – single pointed focus – peaceful abiding. It is the first stage of Buddhist meditation. With its development, we can begin to open into the flowering of the development of the whole mind, into Vipassana – Insight meditation and mindful living – where we truly begin to meet our full true self – where we begin to meet where we and the universe are one. Where we begin “to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

“All things are born of being. Being is born of non-being.” Tao Te Ching (5th Cent. B.C.)
“Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.” – Miles Davis

There are objects and there is the empty space around objects, that which separates the objects. This is the conventional way to sum up the physical universe.

Another perspective is that there is a great energy field that is the Universe, and within it, all connected, are patterns of energy of varying density giving the appearance of objects and space. Objects emerge out of the space. The space can be experienced as what connects the objects, spacious energy connecting denser energy, so there are no completely separate objects at all.

The Universe as connected energy is quite new to Western conceptualization, but it is what the Taoist, Hindu and Buddhist traditions (along with nature-based cultures like the Native American) have believed for millennia and is now what Western science is confirming through advanced physics. Everything is energy and it is all connected. What we experience as physical objects are actually energy patterns of a certain level of density that give the illusion of solidity (or liquidity, gaseousness, or energy waves like sound).

While this may be being taught in advanced physics, it remains a very foreign concept to people living their everyday lives (including, for the most part, scientists). Human perceptual capability using linear conceptual thought, and without the aid of electron microscopes, particle accelerators and advanced mathematical models, simply cannot conceive this connectedness; yet, it is the truth of existence.

As we consider this, what becomes clearly evident is that to operate in the world affecting everything from our individual lives to the world on a global scale without a true model of the Universe, has to be a recipe for disaster, and as evidenced by the dysfunctionality of our individual lives, human society and humanity’s relationship to the natural world, it certainly is. The lesson has to be that when we limit our experience to the realm of the senses and thought, we are missing the reality of existence; we are missing the true capacities of the human mind and our potential for harmonious lives.

A world of separate objects is a clumsy and devalued world. There is no genius in it. All there can be are awkward attempts to manipulate and control these separate objects. But as the modern jazz genius Miles Davis said, to make great music, you have to play not only what is there, you have to “play what’s not there.” Sound emerges from silence. The music is in the relationship of the sound and the silence; otherwise there is just noise. This principle can be applied to everything we do, which is why to Taoists and Buddhists, non-doing is the secret to skillful doing. It is what Taoists called the Fertile Void, the emptiness that gives birth to all things. The genius of any doing must come from skill in non-doing. This requires refining the realms of emotion and intuition as well as the senses and thought.

What is truly radical, and what ancient meditation cultures have known for thousands of years, is that the mind operates by the same rules as the physical universe. As the Universe is all interconnected energy at differing levels of density (and this is fairly readily understandable when it comes to physical matter) what is equally true is that thoughts are objects in the mind – also energy at differing levels of density – emerging from the more spacious, unformed energy of pure consciousness.

Ancient cultures were able to realize what modern science is just beginning to grasp because at the level of consciousness no advanced mathematics or scientific instrumentation is needed. Human awareness is capable of experiencing this cosmological truth unaided when focused skillfully on the Universe within, but just as a scientist must skillfully focus a telescope or microscope to the Universe without or all that is perceived is a blur, so too, we must learn to skillfully focus inwardly-directed awareness. This focusing is meditation, and through meditation, the ancients came to understand the quantum physics of the manifested universe as a reflection of the quantum physics of the unmanifested universe of the mind.

The Universe is energy. Some of the energy appears as objects. The rest of the energy is space. Objects exist within and because of space. Space exists because of objects. They are in relationship to each other. The quality and aesthetics of life, whether it is the external world of objects or the internal world of mind, is found in that relationship. We must intuit the unformed mystery out of which the forms emerge, and we must likewise experience the resonances (emotions) these forms create in their interactions.

Musical genius, as is found in a Miles Davis or a Beethoven, is in knowing how to play not only what’s there, the notes, time signature, etc. (any relatively skilled musician can do that), but in playing what’s not there: to play brilliantly the space the notes emerge from and their interactive resonances. Beethoven, after all, fell deaf half way through his career, yet the genius of his music increased. He got better at playing the space of the music in his mind. He mastered the meditation of music.

What Beethoven and Miles Davis didn’t realize was that their great talent in music could be applied to every aspect of their lives. Without this realization, while they were geniuses in the musical realm, they were deeply flawed, clumsy, even self-destructive and emotionally dangerous in their everyday lives. Many artists, of all media, musical, visual and language, suffer in this manner, and certainly, those of us without even the meditation of an art-form, so live our lives, clumsy in our manipulations of a world we only experience as made up of separate objects, with the frightened separate object of ourself at the center.

Eckhart Tolle refers to awareness of the space out of which the objects in the physical and mental world arise as “space consciousness.” At the heart of Zen is this realization, and with it, the mastery of the relationship of objects with space in every aspect of life. Many teachings and koans instruct the entry point for Zen to be found in refining consciousness into a subtle spaciousness capable of holding more and more elements of what’s there and not there in the field of perception. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” “Listen, listen. This is the sound of my true self.” “Do you hear that distant mountain stream? Enter Zen from there.”

Gestalt psychology expresses this concept well when it talks about the “figure-ground relationship” of perception. Out of the “ground” (the equivalent of objects and space) of the totality of what is possible, the human mind creates a limited “figure” or object. The quality of the “gestalt” of the figure is determined by how much of the ground is still experienced in relationship to the figure. Are you playing all of what is there, and, are you also playing what’s not (but is) there? This is Zen. It is also a very good guide to sanity and effective living.

The practice of mindfulness is to live in as high quality of gestalt and space consciousness as one is capable. Zen is not found in chopping wood and carrying water with intensely focused (or certainly as is often the case, haphazard) attention on the action. Zen is found in chopping wood and carrying water, or walking down a path, or gazing at a tree, or speaking with a person, with simultaneous focused attention on the action and with consciousness of the space from which the action arises as well as the energy that connects us with the action and the object. All with easy non-self-conscious, spacious energy.

Zen is practiced in meditation not only with concentration on the breath, the mantra, or the arising of thoughts and emotions (what Buddhism refers to as mental objects) – as important as this may be – it is also in holding in awareness the energetic space in which breath, mantra, thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions and wordless insights arise. It is in experiencing how we create the figures in our minds out of the ground of potentiality, and allowing the quality of the gestalt to grow and grow. It is in hearing the music of the Universe in all that is there and is not there. It is more than just awareness of your breathing, but awareness also of the space between and around the breaths. Grow your awareness to realize that beneath all sound is the silence out of which the sound emerges, and beneath all action is the stillness out of which the action arises. Sound and silence, action and stillness, form and space. As the old Zen master would say – “Enter Zen from there.”

“When you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings.” – Shunryu Suzuki

People ask me if I’m a Buddhist. My writing and my teaching contain a lot of references to Buddhist masters, philosophy and meditation, so people expect me to be a Buddhist. I always answer that I am not a religious Buddhist, but I believe Buddhist philosophy and psychology are the best insight into the human condition and the best path to psychological and spiritual health ever conceived. Actually, from my take on Buddhism, it doesn’t seem particularly Buddhist to attach ourselves to any religion – even Buddhism. Buddhism is about waking up to a natural sanity and spirituality inherent in every person. That is all. So, I’m not interested in being a Buddhist. I am interested in what Buddhism says about me being me – at one with my surroundings. “When you become you, Zen becomes Zen.” I’d just as soon leave it at that.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, a young prince from the kingdom of Sakya in India, named Siddhartha Gautama, set out to understand and overcome human suffering. After leaving his sheltered and luxurious life, he spent time as an ascetic, totally rejecting any association or identification with society and convention, totally rejecting even the most meager of human comforts. But he did not find what he was looking for. He could not find the answers he sought in either his princely life of unlimited comfort, nor in the ascetic path of rejecting comfort. So, in unwavering determination, he sat to meditate on the nature of human existence. He focused his mind with illuminating single-pointedness and experienced an awakening, and his quest was answered. Siddhartha became known as “Buddha”, meaning “awakened one”. So to understand Buddhism, you have to know that it means the study and practice of waking up.

This awakening teaches that happiness and suffering are mental states to be mastered, that a “middle way,” of life, neither materialistic nor ascetic is best for this practice, and the core teaching is traditionally passed on to us as the “Four Noble Truths.” It says that to be human is to experience a unique kind of suffering caused by being attached to, identified with and grasping after the aspect of the human mind that is built around a storyline of “me,” past, present and future, that wants to control life, wants life to be the way we want and emotionally need it to be. We suffer because we want everlasting life with everlasting satisfaction, but, of course, it isn’t to be had. Life keeps being unsatisfactory. We can never completely get what we want. We can never be completely free of what we don’t want. We experience loss, hurt, anxiety, anger, frustration and failure. We get sick, we get old, and eventually, we die. So, we suffer.

The teaching goes on to say there is a way out of this suffering through learning to understand this grasping nature of the mind and by releasing our identification with it, to discover a deeper, completely wise and compassionate dimension of mind. Put more psychologically, Siddhartha uncovered the human ego, and the mesmerizing hold it has on humans as the source of suffering. In his intense meditation, he saw the truth of who he was, the nature of the human condition, and how humans become out of harmony with life. He then prescribed how to restore the harmony.

He saw that, in truth, he was, we all are, awareness – that it wasn’t just Siddhartha, with all his ideas about how things ought to be, that sat meditating. He saw that it was awareness that sat – with the body and mind of Siddhartha – but was beyond any identification. Awareness was witness to all the ideas, thoughts and emotions that flowed through his mind, but these contents of the mind couldn’t be the limit of who he was because they all came and went, and so could only be a very superficial dimension of self. He realized that he must be, we all must be, at our essence, awareness – that which does not come and go. He realized, beneath the noise of mind, an immensity of quiet and stillness, and that this dimension and the Universe are one, far beyond reactivity, complaint and suffering. He realized that things are what they are, and that when he was truly who he was, he and the circumstances – whatever they were – were one, and there is no suffering in this.

To “awaken” means we realize we live in two dimensions, both an egoic personal dimension, inside our historical story, where events and circumstances need to be dealt with, and also, we exist in the ultimate or spiritual dimension where everything is just what it is – what, in fact, it has to be – because all the conditions of existence have led to it. “When you are you (both dimensions of you), you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings.” You are both active in the personal dimension – seeking to shape events and circumstances as you see are needed – and you accept that, in a macroscopic perspective, all circumstances are perfect just as they are, even the difficult and tragic ones. You wake up into the truth of the paradoxical circumstance of Human Beingness.

You “become one with your surroundings” and you are not only the personal you, you are also the ultimate you, an aspect of the Universe unfolding. You can do what needs doing; live a relatively normal social life, even fight injustice – while being largely immune to insults to your person and unwarranted attacks on your point of view. Failure is a nonsensical concept. There is only what you do and how it turns out. You can shape your life towards meaning, comfort and happiness while dealing with the problems of your life without being caught up in believing that if things do not turn out the way you want them to that it will be a catastrophe. Both the personal and ultimate worlds are present for you, and the ultimate begins shaping the personal towards ever deepening enlightened compassionate living.

So, as the Buddha said that to be human is to experience suffering, and this suffering is caused by what we attach ourselves to, does this mean to attach ourselves to nothing? No. Remember, the teaching is that to be human is to experience this suffering, and we are, and the Buddha was, quite human. (There is a statue of the Buddha weeping that I am particularly fond of.) No, I believe the teaching is reminding us that the quality of our humanity is in the choices for attachment that we make.

If you dedicate your attachment to love, simplicity, wisdom, compassion, justice and peace, these will be the meaning of life for you. Injury to, and assaults on, these valued states-of-being are worthy of your tears, even your anger, and certainly your action – but still, you do not have to suffer – if suffering means you feel diminished and defeated, thrust into reactive negative emotion. There is no fear of feeling and expressing sadness or measured and appropriate anger, or of confronting destructive behavior in others. On the other hand, if you allow your attachment to be in getting your way, indulging your ego, to exceptionalism for yourself and those you identify with, in vanity and materialism, you will inevitably cause and experience much suffering and reactive negative emotion, and it will detract from your humanity and the totality of humanity in the world.

This capacity for enlightened living does not, however, come about by intellectual understanding alone. To awaken requires that, just as Siddhartha, we strengthen and focus our skill for illuminating awareness, that we penetrate the hypnotic hold that our egoic mind and its extension, human society and culture, have on us and become free of it. We must wake up! There is the world as you experience it, and the world as it is. Do you know the difference? Do you know how they are connected and where there is disconnect? Can you bring about their harmony? Meditation will help you discover the clarity of awareness that sees and knows. “When you are you… you become one with your surroundings.” This is Zen. AND – the end of unnecessary suffering.

Opening words – Dainin Katagiri – Zen Master

“Real Knowing comes when we stand in the appropriate place. But usually we don’t. First we want to understand something according to individual knowledge, prejudice, customs and habits. This means we are standing up in our individual place, not the Universal perspective. This egoistic behavior makes it very difficult to see the overall picture. But Buddhas recommend that we first stand up in the appropriate place. Just stand up and be present in the Universe itself.”

*

I want to speak this morning to the important contribution Buddhist meditation has for Unitarian Universalists.

I am usually associated with Buddhism since so much of my writing and teaching draws from the Buddhist tradition – but I always emphasize that I am not a “Buddhist” in any conventional sense. If I were to call myself anything, I suppose I prefer to call myself – a “Universalist” – not as in membership in the old Universalist Church – but as one who stands in reverence to the whole of the Universe, seeking to be in harmony with the Universe

– like Dainin Katagiri suggests – as one who seeks to live life standing up and being “present in the Universe itself,” who works daily to penetrate the “egoistic” perspective so that I can see – and assist others in seeing – the overall picture – and achieve “real knowing,” deeper than “individual knowledge, prejudice, customs and habits.”

To accomplish this is greatly assisted by a dedicated meditation practice – and this is what I’m here to encourage for you as well.

Despite not being a “Buddhist,” I am drawn to Buddhist teaching because it emphasizes being in harmony with the Universe. I am also drawn to Buddhism as a psychology and philosophy of life. I find in it a perspective that is essential to the problems and challenges of humanity in the 21st Century

– but I choose not to adhere to Buddhism in a religious sense, or to be caught in the Asian cultural expressions of it so prevalent in America. Asia gave us Buddhism. Thank you Asia. But Buddhism does not belong to Asia, and Asian culture is not Buddhism.

I see in Buddhism an extremely important perspective from which to find a new way, shaping a new consciousness, an evolved consciousness for humanity on the planet Earth in the 21st century. And I am here today to share with you from the Buddhist tradition of meditation – the practice that opens us beyond just intellectual understanding of this consciousness into the consciousness itself.

Those of you who have heard me before at UU services know I like to point out how the literal meaning of the words “Unitarian Universalist” might also be a good way to describe Buddhism. Buddhism – which literally means – is translated as: “Awakening” into life from the perspective of the Universe. – Into our natural sanity and spirituality. No dogma. No externalized God to pray to. Only a search within our own human consciousness for our own perfect expression of Human Beingness.

Both UU and Buddhism are expressions of awakening beyond the usual and parochial consciousness of conventional society and religion into the BIG perspective – the consciousness of Unity and the Universe – and this is the consciousness that I teach as essential for humanity to enter into a new evolutionary phase, a progression that is essential if humanity and the fellow creature-beings we share this planet with are to have a quality long future.

Let me begin –

– Allow me to share one of my favorite quotes – as I often do – from the 20th century Zen physicist, Albert Einstein – “Problems cannot be solved on the same level of consciousness that created the problems.” – Let that be a koanic puzzle and challenge for you the rest of your lives.

We have serious problems here in American society and here on planet Earth – just watch the TV news programs and cable talk shows – they’ll cause you to weep – they both communicate and represent the problems – and we need a new consciousness to find solutions to these problems. For me, that’s where Buddhism comes in, and that’s where Unitarian Universalism comes in.

As for Buddhism – Out of the long ago past, when civilizations were just beginning, when the consciousness that has led to today was first taking sway of human cultures and societies, I see Buddhism as offering a warning of the suffering that comes with this civilized consciousness that is centered in the inventive, materialistic, egoic dimension of the human mind – of consciousness dominated by thoughts of separateness, judgment and differences – a consciousness driven to achieve personal and identity-group significance and power – and with the thoughts that permeate this consciousness came rationality consuming emotions – anxiety, anger and despair.

This is not a consciousness of unity or Universalism. It was the consciousness of tribalism, racism, nationalism, sectarianism, sexism, paternalism, sexual orientation bigotry, anthropocentricism and individualistic self-centeredness.

Along with much that is undeniably good in advancing the material security and personal freedom of many, this consciousness has also led to thousands of years of war, prejudice, exploitation, criminality and cruelty. It has led to materialism and the valuing of wealth and power above all else, and with it came great exploitation and much corrupting of basic human goodness.

I truly honor the rational liberal-humanistic tradition of Unitarian Universalism that stands to counter the prejudicial, violent and destructive effects of this egoic consciousness. Through rationalism based in the premise of humanism, Unitarian Universalists have come to value a vision of connectedness, interdependence and compassion.

The Transcendentalists of the 19th Century – Emerson and Thoreau – strong influences on many modern Unitarian Universalists – also believed in an intuitive nature as the source of true knowing. They were great admirers of East Indian philosophy and were students of the Bhagavad-Gita. They practiced contemplation and reverie in Nature for the sake of acquiring the premises that logic could then be applied to in the discovery of deep humanism.

And what I want to share today – in a meditation service – is that I see that the UU consciousness – As with the consciousness of Western liberal Humanism generally – can benefit greatly by deepening this tradition of melding intellect with meditative intuition. Head, heart, gut. All working together.

– This is where I find great value in meditation and Eastern philosophy.

I am speaking now in a language that presents a model of the mind that delineates thinking, feeling (emotion), sensation and intuition as the four basic functions of mind, and comes from – as many of you probably know – The psychologist Carl Jung, who in turn, had been strongly influenced by his studies in East Indian psychology.

And those of you who have heard me before, know that I emphasize that Jung believed that to be truly psychologically healthy, a person had to possess equal facility and access to all four functions, along with the two directions of mental energy – introversion and extraversion –

— Well, with this, Jung brought a mystical and spiritual dimension into the definition of mental health that modern psychology would do well to pay more attention to. So too – this model has great value for those who seek to understand and live the full dimensionality of humanism – and for that matter – true spirituality.

Coming back to what I said at the beginning about finding much value in Buddhist philosophy, psychology and practice I want to point out that Buddhism brings particular emphasis to the “practice” of developing what is referred to as the “whole mind” – – including that which is most neglected in Western culture – the intuitive – that which Emerson and Thoreau wrote of – a natural spiritual dimension that is in union with Nature and the Universe – the intuitive dimension that Buddhism has been exploring for thousands of years as an essential element of enlightenment – and that exists within every human. But – you must know how to access and develop it. This is where the Practice element comes in. Meditation and Mindfulness practice.

Buddhist meditation also sensitizes us to our physical connection with the natural world. Here – we begin to deepen our sense of connectedness, becoming ever more subtlety attuned not only to our physical senses, but also to the sense of energetic connections within our own bodies and with the world around us. And with this, a natural quieting of the egoic torrent of thoughts occurs, and meditation opens us into the deeply quiet dimension of mind where intuition speaks to us – a realm of profound presence in the phenomenal world – where “whispered words of wisdom” can be heard. –

– Where we open into our intuitive connection of pure consciousness that is the realm of spirituality – where the consciousness of individuals can enter into direct connection with the consciousness of other individuals, with the human collective, with the sentient being collective – and – even the consciousness of the unformed Universe itself – that which many call – God. What I like to call – as does Eckhart Tolle – the dimension of Being that we share with all Beings.

Here – unity and universalism are not just abstract concepts – but living experienced reality.

This is the realm of the mystic – and I suggest – it is with the integration of the intellectual, the emotional, the highly developed sensate and the intuitive that humanity can power a logic that leads to the fulfillment of what the French scientist mystic Teilhard de Chardin called the “ultra-human” –
– the fulfillment of humanity’s evolutionary destiny in expanded unity of consciousness. This is the consciousness that can solve the problems created by several thousand years of egocentric consciousness.

The psychology and the practices that Buddhism brings to accomplish this fulfilling of human potential, of true Human Beingness, is a particular kind of meditation called Vipassana or “Insight,” sometimes, Wisdom – which includes the in-the-world active practice of mindfulness. And I see these practices as essential for Westerners if we are to reclaim our natural sanity – and achieve balance within humanity and with the non-human world.

I am pleased to be here today not as a Buddhist – but as a Human Being who believes in the concept of Unitarian Universalism as essential – to share with you from Buddhist philosophy and practice
– where the intellect plays a very important part – but it is balanced and integrated with the emotional, the mystical, the intuitive, and the heightened sensate mental functions to bring forth the consciousness of the whole mind. –

– The mind that transcends the egoic while placing the egoic mind in its proper role. This is what must be humanity’s evolutionary task – the evolving of a new consciousness capable of solving the problems created by the old ego-dominant consciousness. –

– And – If I may borrow from deep ecologist Thomas Berry – to take us from ego-centric consciousness to eco-centric consciousness – consciousness centered in the interconnected, interdependent ecology of the Universe – the fulfillment of a consciousness that not only thinks about, but fully experiences the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life – If you will – of a true “Unitarian Universalism.”

I find that Buddhist Meditation – or put more specifically, Insight Meditation and Mindfulness practice – is a particularly effective vehicle of this integration, refined over thousands of years.

This is why I am so pleased to bring to the UU community the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation – so let’s call it “Universalist” meditation – for it is essentially opening us into the possibility of the actual experience – the actual consciousness of Unitarian Universalism – of standing in the Universe – experiencing the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the various forms that are within the one web of Life that is the Universe – with compassionate identification that erases all false barriers and inequalities – Not abstractly in thought alone – but with the whole mind – including the emotional, the sensate and the intuitive, to create what Buddhism refers to as “The mental seal” – in which there is no capacity for denial or prevarication because the connectedness to all of humanity and to life and Nature in its myriad forms is as real as the connectedness we have to our own hands and feet.

This is what Buddhist meditation is about –

First, of course, however, we must learn to quiet and master our minds, to penetrate the false matrix of egocentric separateness held together by a compulsive structure of thoughts about separateness. – This is what is called Samadhi in Sanskrit, or Shamatha, in Tibetan – Peaceful Abiding.

This first level of meditation training is a major achievement for those of us who have been taught to find our identity in our thoughts and emotions – all too often very unruly and disturbing realms of the mind – precisely because they are about our separateness and the sense of our personal insufficiency in the face of a vast sea of competing individuals and forces. We don’t dare stop thinking, scheming, preparing, anticipating – or else we fear we will fall behind, we will fail. And this fear drives us.

In a side note – it was because of this egocentric separateness consciousness obsession and the deep conditioning around its preservation in Western societies that Carl Jung, in fact, believed that Europeans and Americans were incapable of meditation – and so devised his therapy to fulfill meditation’s function.

But I know this is not accurate – while true meditation is a real challenge, we are capable of it, and it is imperative that we master it in developing the required consciousness to address the problems of the modern age and the future.

Now – with the calming of mind, the mastering of the unruliness of mind – with learning unimagined dimensions of calm and concentration that begin to restore our original sanity – we can begin the journey into true insight, focused intuition – the psychological and spiritual dimensions of awakening that frees us from the delusional dream of egocentricity – to where you begin to see things as they really are, the Universe in its seamless connectedness and balance -rather than as we are culturally, socially and psychologically conditioned to experience them – in the small picture of egoic perspective –

Insight Meditation and Mindfulness practice introduces us to – as Zen Master, Sekkei Harada instructs us, the “one person we must meet.. The True Self.” Who is this true self – Well let me take leave of Buddhist explanations to return to Einstein. Who said in 1951:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

This is the true transcendental vision – transcending the conventional egoic perspective of a world of competing, conflicting separate objects in which the purpose of life is to dominate – and in domination – destroy Beingness. It can transcend and evolve humanity beyond the insufficient consciousness that has caused our problems.
*

Now – to meditation – where we can meet The True Self – first – to quiet the superficial dimension of mind that drowns all else out with its incessant talking and self-absorption –

Let us begin with Shamatha, Samadhi – Single pointedness of mind – Peaceful abiding –

You must learn to concentrate the mind on the peaceful, transcendent dimension of life happening through you – where the Universe happens as a living Being – through you –
– And the best vehicle for this is awareness of your breathing – merging the two fundamental dimensions of your existence – you as a living biological form and the true and elemental dimension of consciousness that is awareness

– To realize that you are awareness – in a living biological form. Life in form and consciousness is happening – through this mystery of a phenomenon that is a Human Being. Meditation properly directed awakens the realization that who you are is awareness – and this insight is of the absolute utmost importance.

No thought, no emotion, no sensation can be you – they all come and go – we have them – but are not – cannot – be them – we cannot be defined or captured by them – yet – we are conditioned by our society to invest them with our identity – MY thoughts, MY emotions, My perceptions. MY people, MY interests, I think, I feel. I think and care about what I am conditioned to think and care about. Everything else is “other.”

This is the prison that Einstein spoke of.

Buddhism teaches us to attend to that which does not come and go – What does not come and go? What in our experience has constancy? Awareness – the same awareness that witnessed your first breath – when independent sustaining Life entered you – that same awareness sits here now – but we have become distracted from that which is essential – we are so caught up in our circumstances, our life situations – those thoughts and feelings that are our story about life – that we have lost connection with Life, its totality, the context of everything that comes and goes – with what is essential, with what is unshakeable, with what is the never wavering context for all that occurs.
With meditation, we can return to what is essential -–

This is Samadhi meditation – Here are the instructions –

Sit straight – as you would sit to maximize alertness – but close your eyes – we are going to be looking within – As I like to say – “Sit like a Buddha” – as most of you have seen pictures or statues of this perfectly alert, relaxed, slightly smiling, serene figure.

In Buddhism, the statues and pictures are not meant as objects of worship, but rather inspiration, models of what a Human Being is capable of. Buddhism teaches that the Buddha – an awakened True Self lies asleep within us all. So Sit – so as to awaken this perfectly wise and compassionate self – your true self. Sit like a Buddha.

Now – Focus awareness into your breathing.
And with your breathing – relax into that alertness – alert and relaxed.

With your exhalation, relax more deeply – shed unnecessary tension of body and mind.

With your inhalation, sharpen the clarity of alert awareness trained on the experience of breathing – just normal natural breathing.

When your mind wanders, return it to your breathing.

If you need – To give your habitually talking mind something to do while you strengthen awareness, as you breathe, you might try saying quietly in your mind, “one breath” and with the next breath, “two breaths” and so on up to ten breaths – while you experience your physical breathing with your senses – harmonizing the egoic dimension of thinking with the trans-egoic dimension of pure, subtle in-the-moment sensory awareness.

After the count of ten – simply and quietly just follow your breathing, returning awareness to your breathing should your mind wander into thinking. If you need, do another set of ten, then work with just staying with your breathing.

When your mind wanders it’s OK to note – oh, “thinking”– but rather than following the thought, getting caught in it, just return to breathing.

(meditate for ten minutes) *

There – notice how you feel. Notice the peace of it. Notice the calm of it. Notice the deep sense of presence – really, peacefully, calmly, experience this presence. Feel the sanity of it.

This is Samadhi training – single pointed focus – peaceful abiding. It is the first stage of Buddhist meditation. With its development, we can begin to open into the flowering of the development of the whole mind – Vipassana – Insight meditation and mindful living – where we truly begin to develop the full mind – to meet our full true self – where we begin to meet where we and the universe are one. Where we begin “to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

I see in this the fulfillment of Unitarian Universalism – and our evolutionary potential as full Human Beings. Where “whispered words of wisdom” – the voice of transcendent consciousness walks with us in our daily lives, teaching us to “Let it Be.” Where we let our natural wisdom guide our intellect and – as Beings bringing our whole minds to guide us in our human endeavors – In the continuing journey of discovering our natural sanity and spirituality.

For now – just sit here – experience the remainder of the service –continuing to experience your breathing, profoundly in your bodies, a deep presence marked by inner quiet and an easy spaciousness. Feel this.
You are meeting your true self.
*

Closing words – Sekkei Harada – Zen master

“In the course of our lifetime, there is one person we must meet… who is this person? It is the True Self. As long as you don’t, it will not be possible to be truly satisfied in the depths of your heart. You will never lose the sense that something is lacking. Nor will you be able to clarify the way things are. This is the objective of Life.”

For our personal sanity. For deepening our spiritual connection with the Universe. For deepening our ecological understanding of the interconnectedness and interdependence of this world we live in – so that we can evolve individually and collectively – It is my firm belief that only through meditation can we Americans learn to get beyond our “usual place” to learn to stand in the “appropriate place” to awaken out of the trance of our egoic perspective and clarify the way things are. “To be present in the Universe itself.” – To meet the one person we must meet – to fulfill the objective of Life.

Again – Thank you for the honor of inviting me to share with you.

Blessings to all – May your true self guide you in wisdom & compassion.

Shikan-taza (Japanese). “Shikan” is translated as wholeheartedness. Shikan is exactly becoming one with the process (of Life) itself. Literally “Za” of “taza” means to hit; so, from moment to moment, we have to hit the bull’s-eye… this is exactly life and death.
– Dainin Katagiri, Zen Master

Shikan-taza is, in a way, the heart of Zen. As such, like Zen, it is quite difficult to give definintion to, for it is the complete transcedence of dualistic experience, and to explain or give definition is inherently dualistic. “I” sit here attempting to explain or define “this thing” to “you” over there. The very awkwardness gives light to the difficulty and awkwardness of the human condition.

AND then — there is non-dualistic communicating-with. Just so. The difference is that in the dualistic paradigm, there is interjection of an ego-self, a sense of self that is separate from other and identifies itself as the center of the moment. “Self”-consciousness dominates the experience. “Self”-consciousness is not “just so.” “Just so” is shikan-taza, non-dualistic. The moment stands whole as the center of the experience, with “I” and “you” connected in the moment. There is certainly consciousness of “I” and “you,” but it is qualitatively different. “I” and “you” are integrated in the flow of the moment. The moment speaks to and through us, all connected.

Non-dualism contains dualism and transcends it. “Hitting the bull’s-eye” happens when you and the bull’s-eye are one. Like hitting a baseball or putting a basketball in the basket. There is no thinking. It takes someone with no thought of self to hit the ball or swish the basket. Think of yourself hitting the baseball and it won’t happen. Zen calls this being nobody. Shikan-taza. Just so. But can you live this way? To live this way is Zen.

Classic Japanese poetry embodies this:
The wind has settled, the blossoms have fallen;
Birds sing, the mountains grow dark —
This is the wondrous power of Buddhism.
– Ryokan, (1758-1831)

Shikan-taza literally means, “nothing but (shikan) sitting (taza).” “Sitting,” in Zen, however, does not limit itself to literal sitting. It is, as Master Katagiri tells us, hitting the bull’s-eye of life and death. Just so. It is – as Ryoken points to in his poem – the moment, all it’s elements, including the observer, united in sublime, wondrous, powerful beauty. It is, to use another awkward English construction, “sitting in the as-it-isness” of life. Zazen (meditational sitting) is the particular kind of sitting to practice dissolving ego-centered awareness in an optimal manner, but here, in Shikan-taza, we are “sitting” in Life.

“When sitting, just sit,” advises Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki. “Above all,” he continues, “Do not wobble.” Can you sit without consciousness that you are sitting? Can you just be sitting? No wobbling, no distractedness, restlessness or boredom. Can you “sit” in the moment perfectly as-it-is. This is Shikan-taza. As Master Katagiri often instructed, can you sit not in “your usual place, but in the Universe?” Just so. This is Shikan-taza.

When you sit in the Universe, there are no preferences. The Universe does not divide itself up into this is the good stuff and this is the bad stuff. The Universe is everything. Just so. Beautiful flowers are the Universe. Black muck is the Universe. Sunny days are the Universe. Hurricanes are the Universe. Vigor and strength are the Universe. Sickness is the Universe. Life is the Universe. Death is the Universe. Just so. Shikan-taza.

So, what is the use of this? Don’t we need to know the good stuff from the bad stuff? Isn’t it necessary, as we live our human lives in human society to clearly have a sense of “I” and of “you?”

Well, Yes – and no. And it is the “yes – and no” that is the liberating magic of Zen. We live our lives, we manage our relationships (and in Zen, we realize that all there is is relationship) and we always have the capacity to step beyond our usual place and experience the sacred in relationship, in the Universe. The world of objects, including people and ourselves is also subject. This makes it all sacred. Miracles are everywhere. Just so. Out of this grows compassion for sharing in the catastrophe of the human condition, the yes and no, and compassion is always available to us. Just so. We see.

Yes, conventionally, there is better stuff and worse stuff. We are free to celebrate the better stuff and avoid the worse stuff. We, as persons, day to day, stand in our usual place, and we work and play, and it is right to make things as pleasant as possible. Just don’t stand your life there in the usual place as if there is nowhere else to stand. As Buddhism teaches, then you will suffer. Good stuff goes away. Bad stuff comes. It drives us crazy. What to do? Stand in the Universe. Just so. Shikan-taza. Hit the bull’s-eye of reality.

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains,
and waters as waters.
When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point
where I saw that mountains are not mountains,
and waters are not waters.
But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest.
For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains,
and waters once again as waters.

– Ching-yuan
Just so

In Egyptian mythology, the Phoenix is the symbol of renewal. This creature, beautiful to behold, a bird of magnificent plumage, lived in the desert for hundreds of years. On completing its life cycle, it was consumed in flames and then renewed itself from the ashes.
There are times in our lives when we need to commit ourselves to renewal. Perhaps the way we have been living our lives isn’t working for us anymore. We seem to have completed something, or gone as far as we can with a particular path in life. At such times, the image of the Phoenix can be helpful.

To renew our lives, we must first honestly assess them. We must be courageous enough to listen to the truth about what we know but would prefer not to acknowledge. We must be willing to see the paths that have become habits that lead to frustration rather than fulfillment. In accomplishing assessment and renewal, Mindfulness is a very useful skill.

Mindfulness is a practice from the Vipassana tradition of meditation, a precursor to Zen. Vipassana translates as “insight.” To practice mindfulness is to practice the development of insight into the true nature of life and our part in it. With the focus of a cat watching a mouse hole, mindfulness trains us to watch and be aware of our mental activity, our conduct, our interactions and our experience of the world. In this way we develop a new level of awareness about who we are, who others are and what the world is really about.

You might think that concentrating awareness on how we experience the world would be painful, but paradoxically, the opposite is true. Once we begin to experience how unnecessarily self- conscious and self-absorbed we are in our lives, we can learn to drop this way and begin to just be in the world. Self-absorption and self-consciousness begin to be replaced with a new level of personal awareness that is complimented with a vibrant awareness of the world outside of ourselves. This awareness is like the flames of a pyre, burning away the habits and mental attitudes we have developed over the course of our lives and replacing them with a rich and fulfilling relationship with life.

Our motivation might be a deep unhappiness or simply a yearning to have a more fulfilling and profound life. Either way, when we come to see that we are running on automatic and playing the same neurotic patterns over and over, we begin to see the way to a life free of those patterns. An excellent way out is to learn to quiet our mental activity. This can be done by focusing awareness into the physical reality of the present moment. When we are in present moment awareness, mostly as experienced through the senses, the mind stops its crazy talking and reacting. It becomes clear. Present moment awareness is the key. Mindfulness is life experienced from present moment awareness. Here. This moment. Life is not inside your head, your craziness is. Life is out there, in the World.

Try it. Put down this paper, and turn the same focused awareness you were using to read this article into your physical surroundings. Experience vividly the world that is around you and experience your own physical body and senses. Make note of how your mind wants to distract you. Gently, pay it no attention. Instead, feel what it is to be you in the physical reality of this moment. Pay attention to what you see and hear and feel. Notice your breathing. Don’t think about it. Just experience it. Do this for the next thirty seconds.

Now that you have picked the paper back up, what did you notice? I assume that was a pretty interesting experience for many of you.

When we experience our lives with relaxed focus from the vantagepoint of the physical moment, there is a calm that our lives usually lack. There is a clarity of perception about what feels nurturing and what is and isn’t right in our world– what inspires us and what is out of integrity with what we might call our true nature. We can pay close attention to our reactions and note how we are usually caught up in our own mental experience rather than a clear awareness of what is actually occurring, both within and outside of us. We can learn about our craziness by watching it drag us out of the present moment and into our neurotic routines of thought and interaction, and our assumptions about what is occurring. Watch how this happens over and over. Learn from it. If we can learn about it, we can change it.

A classical question from teacher to student in traditional Zen literature is, This moment, what is lacking? This koan is capable of bestowing enlightenment on the one who grasps its deep meaning, for once it is understood that in the purity of the moment, nothing is lacking, we are returned to union with life. We are freed from our neurotic minds and ushered into a deep, meaningful and spontaneous relationship with life.

Our minds are neurotic largely because they are obsessively locked into patterns of regretting the past and worrying about the future. In a never-ending babble of regret and worry, our minds distract and torture us, off in the past or future, measuring whether we are good enough and whether our ego is satisfied or injured. This is the source of much of our craziness.

Life does not have to be like this. Burn away tired patterns of the mind with the flame of awareness. Breathe, and know that you are breathing in life. Hear, and know that you are hearing life. See, and know that you are seeing life. Don’t think about it. Experience it. Engage even the most mundane activity with absolute concentration and you will experience a satisfying and deep sense of well being that is exceeding rare in this world. Share the moment with another person and really be aware that you are sharing the moment. Be aware that you are giving full and not distracted attention– that you are not caught up in measuring the other person and worrying about how they are measuring you. Here. In this moment. Be as authentic as you can be. A new you is being born.

READINGS IN SERVICE PRIOR TO SERMON

French scientist mystic, Teilhard de Chardin –

“Evolution is an ascent towards consciousness… The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself… Step by step, from the early Earth onwards, we have followed going upwards the successive advances of consciousness in matter undergoing organization. Having reached the peak we can now turn round, and looking downwards, take in the pattern of the whole. And this second check is decisive, the harmony is perfect… Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself… We see a human tide bearing us upward with all the force of a contracting star; not spreading like a tide, as we might suppose, but one that is rising: the ineluctable growth on our horizon of a true state of ultra-humanity.”

– Albert Einstein, 1950 – from a letter to a grieving father consoling him on the loss of his son.

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Excerpts from Chief Seattle’s Letter to the President of The United States – 1854

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

SERMON
(long version – actual sermon was edited shorter)
EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS
HEALING OURSELVES AND THE PLANET

Always good to be addressing a UU congregation.

Unitarian Universalism – great name. What a great philosophical and spiritual perspective when it is realized in its literalness.

What I teach and write about is fundamentally Buddhist psychology and cosmology from a contemporary American perspective. I am not a religious Buddhist. I belong to no sect or school of Buddhism, although I have a particular affinity for Zen. I have not been the student of or heir to any particular Buddhist teacher. I am a psychologist who has been drawn to philosophical Buddhism, and who has drawn on a vast variety of Buddhist teachings and authors along with the benefit of forty+ years of meditation practice – and the reason why I identify with Buddhism is that Buddhism means practically the same thing as the literal meaning of the phrase – Unitarian Universalist.

It is about The BIG perspective. It is about being Awake (as the word Buddhism means in its original language) awake in the world and seeing things as they are in their interconnectedness and interdependence, in seeing what is transient and impermanent, and what is fundamental, essential, universal and eternal.

It is seeing a world in which the intellectual and the spiritual have no gap between them – not because religious dogma rules the intellectual realm, but because intellectual clarity, where all the faculties of mind integrate, is capable of seeing and experiencing the universe as a single conscious, integrated miracle, evolving into the full realization of itself in both form and consciousness. This is the cosmology of Buddhism, and, by the way, as you heard from Chief Seattle, of Native American culture.

In the modern age, it is the cosmology of quantum physics and deep ecology —- although not yet of the main culture – or even science and technology as it is conventionally applied. – And that’s what I want to talk about today.

The readings this morning have all been about the BIG perspective. The remarkable genius of Teilhard de Chardin, Albert Einstein and Chief Seattle are all about a vision where humanity is in harmony and unity with itself, with Nature and with the Universe.

As Einstein said: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe.”

Recently I wrote a column entitled “Psycho-spiritual Healing” in which I noted that I have come to consider psychological health and spiritual health to be inextricably interwoven, and the thread that weaves them together is the issue of self-absorption – that egocentricity is like a conceptual virus that deprives us of psychological and spiritual health. Or, as Einstein went on to say:

“Human Beings experience themselves, their thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.”

A person cannot be psychologically healthy if they are fundamentally self-absorbed, focused on their separateness – I realized that all of what we call neurosis and character disorder in clinical psychology was some form of inappropriate self-absorption, an inability to function in the world with the sense of self integrated with a balanced sense of others and the Big picture – I won’t talk about that here – I’ll save that for this afternoon’s program – but I will say that while psychopathology is characterized by inappropriate self-absorption and egocentricity – it is of the utmost importance to realize that even what is considered by our society as a “normal” or “healthy” psychological profile is overly invested in this egocentric perspective – and herein lies the crux of our modern dilemma.

I also concluded that a person cannot be spiritually healthy while caught in a self-absorbed perspective, for to be spiritual is exactly to transcend experience centered in the small self – the ego, if you will – to enter into a non-dualistic and direct experience of connection with Life, with Nature, with humanity, with the Universe, some would say with God – which I would say are all the same. This is the BIG perspective – bigger than just looking after me and mine – which seems to be the current American credo – including, and in some cases, particularly, some so-called religious groups.

Again – Einstein – “This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

The same can be said about a society – Its psychological, spiritual and political health must emanate from a perspective that is bigger than getting more for me and mine – but that is exactly the perspective of our society. American society absolutely focuses us on “restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.” Add to this our identification with our cultural, class, occupational, religious, political and national memberships, and this is a cosmology that is faulty in its fundamental premise, and that leads to faulty politics, and to a faulty economic system. And to the degree that our health, educational and religious institutions support this perspective it’s just bad health policy, bad education and bad religion.

We are a society and a species facing very big problems. We are completely failing in the BIG perspective. A society that is dedicated to spiraling materialism and narcissism, – to institutions that manipulate the population for the short term gain of an economic elite – that has no sense of a long view moving toward an evermore equitable and personally and spiritually enhancing future for all its citizens – and a future of harmony amongst people and the fellow creature Beings and the ecology of this planet, is a society that is failing – and as we are here in a church – I want to say it is not only a political failure, but a spiritual failure.

Yes – We are facing very big problems – as individuals and as a society.
AND – what I really want to talk about today is that I would go so far as to say we are facing problems that are of the dimension of an evolutionary crisis.

First – there is the issue of individuals living in far more emotional discomfort, pain and even suffering than is in any way necessary. Modern life is hard on people. The pressures are great. Often there is a sense of disconnect from something essential that we cannot quite put our finger on. We work hard, we live up to our obligations, we seek relief in recreation, entertainment, hobbies, friendships and family. Yet something is wrong. We get angry, we feel anxious, perhaps even depressed at times, far more than we want to, or ought to or need to. We go to church; we read self-help, spiritual and inspirational books. We may even go to a counselor or therapist, but none of it really gets us to the sense of well being and connectedness, the making sense out of our lives and the world that we need. We have more material wealth than any culture in the history of humanity. We have more opportunity to celebrate and advance our individuality than any culture in the history of humanity, and yet – something is terribly wrong.

And secondly – and here is where this becomes a crisis that is evolutionary in its scope – As a collective, as societies and as a species –
We are increasingly out of sustainable harmony with the planet that is our home and our fellow creature beings of other species that share this planet.

Consequently – We, like any species when its environment cannot sustain it in its current expression must either evolve, devolve or go extinct. Humanity and the majority of species we share this planet with face just such a crisis – and it is largely man made. Western class-structured, competitive, materialistic corporate consumer culture is quickly becoming the world culture – and the world – the planet – cannot support and sustain it – the culture – the current state of humanity’s consciousness (or more accurately, its lack of consciousness) is causing a problem of existential dimension.

In looking at this crisis, I became impressed with what I call the “Human Being paradox” – for to be a human being is to be caught on the horns of a paradox – a paradox that is perfectly expressed in the name for our species – “Human Beings.” The good news is that I see within this paradox, not only the problem, but also the solution, if we can only solve the riddle.

Here is the paradox – There are two distinct dimensions implied in the term “Human Being” – the human dimension – in which we are absolutely unique and distinct from any other species in our capacity for abstracting intellect, to externalize meaning and value into objects in the world and objects in the mind called thoughts – and with it the propensity to individualize our existence – what psychology would call the dimension of ego – This abstracting intellect also drives us to be inventive, to develop culture and technology along with a driving desire to express our individuality and freedom. These “human” characteristics are a mix of curses and blessings.

The unique human capacity for existential anxiety arises from this dimension, that also gives rise to our neuroses and character disorders, AS WELL AS giving rise to a competitive, acquisitional economic system that creates social inequality, exploitation and disharmony and exploitation of the non-human and environmental systems of this planet to the point of cruelty and exhaustion.

AND – then – there is also the dimension of our Beingness – That which we share with all beings – with existence itself. Being is our most fundamental nature, that which connects us, rather than separates us as the egoic dimension does, and our Beingness transcends our abstracting individuality. There is no neurosis here. Here, there is no anxiety about our place in the world, or our sufficiency in the face of life – Here – our place is certain- It is right where we already are – in the universe – with the same sense of personal security as any creature in Nature.

These dimensions create a paradox – qualities that seem to be in contradiction to each other – our unique human egoic pull to individuality and identity in form – and our collective Beingness – not only with each other, but with all Life and with a spiritual dimension that is not form. One dimension represents the materialistic, the world experienced as separate and antagonistic objects, and with it, a fundamental anxiety – and the other dimension, the dimension of Being is the spiritual, the union, the wholeness that brings with it expansive belonging and security. Buddhism holds that full Human Beingness is a balance of these dimensions. Our modern problem is that there is no balance.

As a thinker trained in both cultural anthropology and clinical psychology, I saw and experienced all of this and realized that rather than this imbalance with the egoic, competitive, self-absorbed dimension dominating and being human nature as Western society proclaims, it was something unique and endemic to our Western culture and particularly to its American expression – and I saw that it was the self-centered focus and the materialism, the self-absorption, in other words, the totally egoic orientation of our culture, and so too, its individual members, that has created the crisis of our modern age.

Hence, the “prison” that Einstein described. We have no connection to the wide circle of compassion he spoke of, that which is capable of embracing all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. We have religions, and we talk about spirituality, and some of us talk about ecology and the need to respect nature, but this intellectual understanding of a Universal perspective somehow does not seem adequate to the task. It is not leading to an urgency and immediacy that causes those who share this understanding to challenge the dominant existing paradigms of our society with a vigor born of a felt sense of that urgency.

Now – When I teach, I often challenge the assemblage with a Koan – a puzzle to the mind that is capable, if fully understood, of bringing about an insight that expands consciousness –
This Koan is – Do you know that you are Nature?
The answer is – no you don’t – not as a member of this society and culture – you may have some intellectual understanding, but the way I use the term “Know” is to imply an understanding that requires no thought – it is who you are. No, no we do not know that we are Nature. Yet – what else could we be?

Because we do not “KNOW” We do not act in harmony, or so as to establish harmony with each other and with Nature as our highest priority.

Chief Seattle knew. And he warned us. “Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

I looked at human culture from a broader scope looking for insight, and I realized that other cultures had a view on an essential aspect of the human experience that Western culture was seemingly blind to. They knew the Nature or Being dimension of the Human Being experience intimately. I saw relevant perspectives in Native American and other indigenous Nature-based cultures, and I saw particularly relevant perspective in the Asian religions of Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism.

With further examination, I was eventually able to see, deeply coded within its conventional teachings, perspectives within the Jewish, Christian and Moslem traditions that have been marginalized in the mainstream practice of these faiths – this knowing – and I am referring to the mystical traditions of these faiths – The mystics knew.

But our mainstream culture, religions and psychology lacked a perspective of humanity within and integral to Nature – to a consciousness that was only given symbolic representation – in words like God and Holy Spirit. We lacked a religious or psychological tradition that could liberate us from the prison of our own limited understanding of who we were within the world. Personal rampant psychopathology and social conflict have been the result as well as economic and social systems based on hierarchy and exploitation of human, other-than-human and environmental spheres.

What to do?

To again take a quote from Einstein: – “Problems cannot be solved on the same level of consciousness that created the problems.”

We need a new consciousness – I would say, an evolved consciousness, and I find very useful the definition of evolution given us by the mid-twentieth century French theologian scientist, Teilhard de Chardin: Evolution is an ascent toward consciousness.

De Chardin also defines evolution as a process of ever complexifying unification in which the seemingly disparate and dissimilar come to be embraced within a new comprehensive whole, an ever-expanding consciousness of unity. This is, of course exactly what Einstein was saying about “widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Now this vision is not new. It is the vision articulated by Chief Seattle. It is the vision of Native American peoples and other indigenous populations like the Aboriginal of Australia. It is the vision articulated out of the Vedic tradition of Asia that brought forth Hinduism and Buddhism. It is the Oriental vision of Taoism. This is the consciousness of humanity’s past – of its very early evolutionary era – emerging out of the forests, at one with Nature – But evolution is not a going back – it is – As de Chardin said – “a human tide bearing us upward… one that is rising: the ineluctable growth on our horizon of a true state of ultra-humanity.”

So evolution is a moving upward – a new consciousness that is a harmonization of what was disparate into a new unity, and this is exactly what is possible with humanity now – the expansion and coalescing of what de Chardin called “The Noosphere” the realm of consciousness – the availability of the totality of human culture past, present and world-wide to create a new and evolved consciousness that brings together the wisdom of the totality of humanity and Nature – the ineluctable growth on our horizon of a true state of ultra-humanity.”

IF — we are not dragged down by the existing and extremely powerful culture of ego-dominated consciousness and its misapplication of technology in the service of consolidating the vision of materialism and human separateness and competition.

The issue is what to do? How do we become instruments, participants, pioneers of this evolution, this new consciousness? My answer to this question is why I teach meditation and Buddhist philosophy. I am convinced that only through training the mind to experience and express itself in its fullness, – not only in intellect, that dimension of mind that has spearheaded humanity’s separation from nature, but also the mind’s fundamental connection with its Beingness nature- that which is connected with Nature, the mind that is expressed by Chief Seattle, and envisioned by Einstein – can humanity evolve and fulfill its destiny which is completely sane and spiritual. This is de Chardin’s “ultra-humanity”

East and West, Primitive and civilized – these are the cultural expressions which, each by themselves, manifest an imbalance on one side of the full potentiality of Human Beingness, the “Ultra-humanity” of de Chardin’s vision. In the expanding Noosphere of today’s world – a world of the World-wide Internet and the growing synthesizing, acceptance and embrace of worldwide cultural expressions, “a human tide is bearing us upwards.” But it cannot occur using only the skills and perspective of the consciousness that has caused the problem.

The call is out – to have an evolution – not a revolution – which only turns things upside down in the same consciousness paradigm, but an evolution – the kind of consciousness we have seen in a Gandhi or Martin Luther King – calling for an expansion of consciousness to include what had not been previously included in the old consciousness.

In this, as a Westerner, It is my belief and experience that within philosophical and psychological Buddhism is an ancient culture prophecy and vision that can give to us in the West the perspective and the training tools needed to accomplish this wholeness, this evolutionary step that will bring about increasing individual mental and spiritual health – and an expanding new cultural expression that holds and expands what is best about the West – technology, individuality and political freedom while embracing and applying the wisdom of ancient cultures towards what another modern bodhisattva of the West, Deep Ecologist Thomas Berry called the Eco-zoic era, – An evolutionary era of harmony between and among the human, the other than human, and the Planet.

It provides a vision that would fulfill the task of freeing ourselves from this prison of ego-centricism and anthropocentricism by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Buddhist teachings and meditation are, in my estimation, key. Through them we are able to open into the realization of our Beingness Nature and to see the delusional prison of our egoistic orientation. I find in them the necessary guide and practices to bring about the harmonization of the Human Being paradox. I see the challenge, however, is in extricating the wisdom and tools of Buddhist teaching from the antiquated cultural context that the wisdom and tools are brought to us. We need a new philosophy and practice of “Awakening” presented and engaging in the language of modernity that also respects and can be inspired by the teaching and language of the old Masters.

One such old Zen Master is Sekkei Harada who said:
“In the course of our lifetime, there is one person we must meet… who is this person? It is the True Self. As long as you don’t, it will not be possible to be truly satisfied in the depths of your heart. You will never lose the sense that something is lacking. Nor will you be able to clarify the way things are. This is the objective of Life.”

This meeting of the True Self – is the objective of Life. It is also the objective of Buddhist teaching and meditation. Another way of expressing this might be – the realization of true Human Beingness is the evolutionary purpose of human existence.

And so we must ask – Who is this True Self?

This is the question that Buddhism asks over and over – who is this true self, original self, sometimes expressed as the Buddha (that is, awakened, enlightened) self?

I am suggesting that the true self, the Buddha self, that Buddhism has been calling to for over 2500 years is the “Ultra-human” of de Chardin’s vision.

Allow me to share from another modern Western figure, whom I have already mentioned, who could be said to possess the consciousness necessary to lead humanity into the future solving the problems created by the old consciousness – the deep ecologist Thomas Berry –
“We need to reinvent the human at the species level because the issues we are concerned with seem beyond the competence of our present cultural traditions, either individually or collectively… the human is at a cultural impasse… Radical new cultural forms are needed. These new cultural forms would place the human within the dynamics of the planet rather than the planet within the dynamics of the human… There is need for humans to develop reciprocal economic relationships with other life-forms providing a sustaining pattern of mutual support, as is the case with natural life-systems generally… Our knowledge needs to be in harmony with the natural world rather than a domination of the natural world. We need the art of intimate communion with, as well as technical knowledge of, various components of the natural world”
– Thomas Berry – The Great Work

This last sentence is key – “We need the art of intimate communion with, as well as technical knowledge of, various components of the natural world.”

Intimate communion and technical knowledge. We have the technical knowledge. This is what Western consciousness is good at. What we lack is the capacity for intimate communion. This is what Buddhism and meditation are good at.

Again- de Chardin –
“Evolution is an ascent towards consciousness…”

Allow me to share – in closing – the vision of a Meditation master – Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is no phenomenon in the universe that does not intimately concern us, from the pebble resting at the bottom of the ocean, to the movement of a galaxy millions of light years away. All phenomena are interdependent… Unity and diversity interpenetrate each other freely. Unity is diversity, and diversity is unity.

We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of some comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self. If we want to change the situation, we must begin by being our true selves. To be our true selves means we have to be the forest, the river, and the ozone layer.
– Thich Nhat Hanh – Meditation Master

These are words in perfect agreement with de Chardin, with Einstein, with Thomas Berry, with Chief Seattle –

I see meditation as a necessary new skill for Westerners in order to evolve the consciousness necessary to address our problems –
Why and how this is true will be explored this afternoon –

There are fundamentally two levels or dimensions to the meditation path – the first is to train the mind into steadiness – sometimes called, “single-pointed-ness” this is referred to as samadhi or shamatha – which in Tibetan translates as “Peaceful Abiding.” And this training of the mind in steadiness and clear observation is what is necessary to open the dimension of Knowing – of Being.

The second stage or dimension of meditation is known as Vipassana – Insight – Wisdom – The realm of Being. It is here that we find the Awakening of Buddhism.
It is the seeing of things as they are once we stop running the program of egoic conditioning – It is opening into awareness as the fundamental dimension of mind that is steady, deep, insightful, with an instinctual wise intelligence that directly experiences and knows the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things.

Now this second stage, this insight and wisdom dimension of meditation, requires the achievement of Shamatha as the opening into the natural, intuitive, connected and spiritual dimension of mind – And within Vipassana, we find the resolution of the Human Being paradox wherein we can bring our whole mind – As the great psychologist Carl Jung would describe it – the dimensions of thinking, emotion, direct intimate sensory contact with the world and the intuitive dimension of Beingness into balanced harmony.

I believe I would have very little disagreement amongst those assembled here today that there is next to no training in our society in the taming of the wildly thinking mind – That being the case – what chance do we have to fully develop the quiet intuitive dimension of mind in which deeper knowing into the reality of existence, our interconnectedness with Nature and the purpose of the Universe occurs, in which realization of our own inherent peacefulness and wisdom resides.

This is what the Buddhist tradition of meditation can achieve – and I believe there is no replacement – and while Jung did not think Westerners in his time were capable of meditation – and so devised his psychology to bring about this integration (actually with little success, I believe) – I am convinced that modern Westerners are capable of true meditation, and that meditation as taught in the Buddhist tradition holds the key to human sanity, peacefulness and evolution – the new consciousness that can solve our problems – as individuals discovering a deep personal sanity within ourselves – and as a human society able to fulfill Einstein’s and de Chardin’s vision.

The wisdom of Nature-based cultures of the past – embodied in Chief Seattle’s description of the world – and the technology of civilized humanity can be blended into an evolved expression of humanity where individuals are sane, compassionate and fulfilled – and the collective of humanity is at peace with itself and knows itself integrally enfolded within collectives of fellow beings and the planet that is our shared home
– but a new consciousness is needed – a synthesizing of a very old consciousness with our modern scientific and freedom celebrating consciousness.

It is my encouragement – For your own sanity – and the sane evolution of humanity – I encourage you to learn this ancient skill and perspective, then bring it into your modern life. Become the master of your own mind, and a co-creator of an evolved new horizon of Ultra-humanity – at home – in the Universe – As Einstein said – “widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

“The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light.” – Eckhart Tolle

Humanity is seeking only one thing. That one thing is lasting happiness. We seek it in everything we do. Yet, happiness eludes us. It would seem pretty simple. We only want this one happiness thing. How hard can that be?

Well – look at human history. Look at your own life. Look at the lives of the people around you. Sometimes there is something we call happiness. We have smiles on our faces. There is laughter and fun. There are meaningful and fulfilling moments. And then – it’s gone. Smiles turn to frowns, sometimes to tears, to screams. And then —- after a while — happiness again stops by for a visit. And the roller coaster rolls on. To borrow a phrase from Mindfulness therapy guru, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the “Full Catastrophe” happens.

What is wrong here? To borrow another phrase, as the saying goes, in this hunt for happiness, “we’re looking in all the wrong places.” We think we will find happiness by looking for it in the circumstances of our lives, and the circumstances of our lives have no stability, no reliability, no certainty to them. Buddhism describes this as having no center, empty. No lasting happiness there.

So perhaps Buddhism can offer us something with its teaching about the nature, cause and resolution of human suffering. It teaches us that the problem of happiness is a problem of consciousness. It tells us that our problem is that we are practically unconscious, believing stories about ourselves, others and society, always worried about what will give or take away our happiness. We try to pull to us what we think will give us happiness and push away what we think will take away our happiness, and we are all left off balance, careening out of control. And this is the basic plan humanity follows – on the individual, family, institutional, community, national, religious and finally, species level of our experience. A catastrophe.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus said, “Unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Now, this “Kingdom of Heaven” is the happiness we seek, a world of security, peace and kindness, of compassion and understanding. It is where we have the eyes to see the miracles of Life all around us, and we don’t feel lost in a sea of troubles. It is where this moment Now is lived as the gateway to Eternity, and even misfortune can be held – as Zen awkwardly describes – in its pure “as it is-ness,”– Shikan-taza, in Japanese.

Unfortunately we live not child-like, but rather childish – in that self-absorbed adolescent sort of way. We think by being greedy and petty, cruel and selfish we will find happiness, that by getting more for ourselves than others have, by scorning simple things for ever-more elaborate and expensive possessions, we will get for ourselves this happiness thing. Well Jesus may have been a Jew, but he was clearly also a Buddha. He saw where our suffering was coming from.

Yes, Humanity is childish. But perhaps the good news is that it is only an evolutionary phase. We have come out of our infancy and simple goodness in the forests where we walked in Eden. We abandoned our primordial world and made proud cities and civilizations with our growing cleverness, places to hoard our shiny toys and make argument with each other. Vaguely we remembered Eden, and so we created religions to tell us stories and fairy-tales about how Heaven awaits us, where Eden will be reclaimed if we are good members of our secret clubs, and happiness will be ours as long as we follow the club’s rules. And here is where the unconscious part comes in, for we are living in these fairy tales, and like an adolescent who creates a cruel fantasy of their own privilege to assuage the pain of their neglect and loneliness, we only drift further from the belonging and well-being for which we hunger.

Increasingly I see in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, and all the religions at their core, time-capsule prophecies and instructions from a time when civilizations were first taking sway of this planet. I see in them warnings of what would be lost in the great age of human ego, and, at least in the case of Buddhism, I see them offering us a vision of what humanity as true grown-ups could be.

And there is an urgent need for humanity to grow up, as our sciences, psychologies and religions fail to cure our existential illness, for an evolving into full mature human consciousness. Remember, “The light of consciousness is all that is necessary.” Can we open our eyes to see we will never have lasting happiness unless we realize we are one people on one planet, shared with all the living creatures – just as it was in Eden? Can we wake up – as the very word “Buddhism” means in its ancient tongue – can we evolve?

What is clear is that consciousness is the evolutionary lynchpin of this universe. Every step of evolution is marked by complexifying consciousness moving inexorably toward a Universe conscious of itself, its own unity and miraculous diversity, all held in a perfect balance – perhaps the mythic “Kingdom of Heaven.” Buddhism asks us to realize, to stop, to meditate, to contemplate what an illusion it is to believe that this selfish egocentric childishness will ever be the provider of the happiness we seek. Buddhism asks us to wake up and to realize the light that we are.

The modern day Zen Master Sekkei Harada instructs us, “In the course of our lifetime, there is one person we must meet… This person is in this world. Who is this person? It is the true self. You must meet the true self. As long as you don’t, it will not be possible to be truly satisfied in the depths of your heart. You will never lose the sense that something is lacking. Nor will you be able to clarify the way things are. This is the objective of life …It is because we think there is a center to something that essentially doesn’t exist that all delusion and suffering arises. So truly accept that… there is no ego-self, the only thing we can do is to become a Buddha.”

This true-self, this Buddha-self is the evolved human that carries the light of consciousness, and as Eckhart Tolle reminds us: “You are that light.” And when humanity shines that light of awakened compassion and caring on all its members, on our fellow creatures and on this planet, our home, we will be like the children who naturally carry these true human values – and we will find Jesus’ “Kingdom of Heaven” – and the happiness we seek.

“What we really want is a natural life…(and) once we begin to see that life can be more open and joyful than we had ever thought possible…we enter a discipline like Zen practice so that we can learn to live in a sane way.” – Charlotte Joko Beck – Zen Master

Long ago, while practicing clinical psychology, I came to two conclusions. The first was that true psychological health and spiritual health are the same thing – to have one we must also have the other, and the second conclusion was that a principle characteristic of every form of mental illness is some inappropriate state of self-absorption. Further, I realized that these two insights are basically the same. Both psychological health and spiritual health are based in becoming free of the dualistic mind-state of self-absorption, of placing yourself as the center of a world experienced as “out there” and separate from “me.” True spirituality requires experiencing a self-transcending connection with Life and with others, but when we live trapped within this disease of self-absorption, the truly spiritual experience is impossible.

As for mental illness being connected to inappropriate self-absorption, consider just what is going on in the mind of anxiety or depression, of mania or paranoia, of psychopathy, hysteria or narcissism. In each of these neurotic, psychotic, or character disordered states, the idea of this self as put upon by the world, or inadequate and undeserving, or the recipient of “special” knowledge, or threatened, or entitled, is completely out of proportion to reality, and it has taken over as the centerpiece of experience. A person is drowning in their self-absorption. These are what we consider pathological states of mind.

Also consider, however, that it is only a matter of degree that separates these disorders of mind from what is considered “normal” in our society. We are all, to some degree, lost in self-absorption because it is what our society teaches us is normal! Increasingly, the basic motto of contemporary society is that “it’s all about me.” We are trained from the time we are small children to enter each situation sizing it up as to what is in it for us. We are trained that it is normal to get for ourselves as much as is legally possible, always looking for our advantage, and to be fending off as much as possible anything that detracts from us. We have at the center of our experience, ourselves. And as everyone is doing this, we compete, subtly or not so subtly, like playing a vast game of “king of the hill,” scrambling up and pushing others down (even if only in our fantasies) to get to the top (or perversely for the “victim identity” – the
lowest-bottom) of whatever circumstance we enter into.

The result is that anxiety, depression, anger, low self-esteem, narcissism, selfishness and sociopathy are epidemic on levels that are considered “normal.” Consider that we have constructed a materialistic society that places status and well-being through acquisition of money, possessions and power as the object of life. We have mistaken competition for “human nature.” Addictive behaviors are ubiquitous. On the collective level, we have no long-term vision for creating a human society that is in harmony with itself or with the planet that is its source and sustenance. This self-absorption cuts us off from sanity, wisdom, compassion, interconnectedness and sustainability as the underpinning of our society and our lives. This has to be seen as just plain crazy. But sadly, it’s just normal.

“The sacred is in the ordinary. It is to be found in one’s daily life… in one’s own back yard… To be looking elsewhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”
– Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) – Founder of Humanist School of Psychology

Most of all, this way of living completely cuts us off from the miracle it is to be alive. As we are psychologically lost, so too, we are spiritually lost. To quote psychologist Abraham Maslow, we fail to see the “sacred in the ordinary.” Many consider themselves religious, but one very big mistake we make, with far-reaching consequences, is in confusing religious faith for spirituality. We use having a “personal relationship” with Jesus or God, and loyal obedience to one of the various exclusive religious sects, as another way of being special and blessed or “saved.” Astoundingly, human ego even manages to co-opt that which is inherently about transcending human ego. We fail to understand and experience that true spirituality is in the ecstasy and compassion of losing our “self” in the daily life of Creation, whether you believe Creation is God’s work or just the Universe happening in its own divine way.

The Gospel of Thomas tells us that Jesus said, “The kingdom of Heaven is spread across the land, but people do not have eyes to see it.” We ignore the instructions to “judge not,” or that a materialistic life is an impediment to a spiritual life. We neglect to practice forgiveness and tolerance. We are unable to be “like the lilies of the field” in our naturalness, or like the “little children,” who are not lost, for they see miracles everywhere. We have lost, as Joko Beck says, “The natural life.” We go crazy looking for meaning in our social status, our possessions and our religious uprightness, rather than in living altruistic, wondrous and natural lives.

“ Meditation helps us wake up from this dream of automaticity and unconsciousness, thereby making it possible for us to live our lives with access to the full spectrum of our conscious and unconscious possibilities” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

The very radical premise of Buddhism is that (apart from severe brain chemistry disorders) mental and spiritual health are the same thing and that we are capable as human beings of accomplishing the absolute in both. Buddhism just happens to call this enlightenment. The key, however, is that you have to get yourself out of the center of your experience to allow the experience of Life – Creation, the Universe unfolding – to be the center of you. This is the puzzling Buddhist concept of being nobody or no-self or empty of self.

The paradoxical miracle of this teaching and practice (accomplished through meditation, guidance by a teacher and contemplation of teachings) is that this little, anxious, unhappy, grasping self then gradually gives way into a full human-being, healthy in mind and spirit – and uniquely for religious teachings, no allegiance to the religion of Buddhism is necessary. This is not a perspective exclusively “revealed” by a jealous divine source. This is simple human truth arrived at by a human being looking deeply into their own “conscious and unconscious possibilities.”

The little self, the personality of “me,” is then experienced in a much lighter, impersonalized way. We begin to have eyes that can see that the “Kingdom of Heaven is spread across the land,” that “everything is miraculous.” Gradually a process of healing psychologically and spiritually into full and natural, compassionate, effective and wise “awakened” living occurs. Buddhism teaches that an enlightened being resides slumbering within every person, and it teaches us that if we only “wake up,” we will find who we truly are – fully sane and spiritual.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– American Declaration of Independence –

“The very purpose of life is happiness. …. Since mental experience is something very important, then it automatically brings up the subject whether we can train mental happiness… human beings through the centuries have developed certain kinds of techniques for shaping the mind… this we usually call meditation.” – The Dalai Lama

We Americans are a nation not only founded on the principle of pursuing happiness, we are obsessed with this pursuit, and we generally look to our circumstances and possessions to provide it. On the other hand, Buddhism could be described as a philosophy of life, a psychology, based in the principle of realizing happiness, not in possessions and circumstances, but rather as a state of mind itself.

Buddhism holds that, regardless of our circumstances or possessions, it is the very idea that we lack happiness and must pursue it outside ourselves that deprives us of happiness; that the whole pursuit of happiness concept is an error, a consequence of human civilization distancing us from our original nature. While it certainly is both right and noble that societies function so as to overcome social/material obstacles to happiness, to truly address the realization of happiness, we must look deeper. Therefore, it would seem that Buddhism might have something very important to say to us about happiness. The very radical proposition that Buddhism puts to us is that while circumstances are certainly influential towards a happy state of mind, perhaps we are very mistaken in believing them to be the source of our happiness, for after all, happiness actually is a state of mind.

Then, in an even more radical premise, Buddhism teaches us that happiness is our natural state of mind. There is nothing we have to do or have to experience it. However, having been thoroughly indoctrinated in the idea of pursuing happiness in outer circumstances to the degree that our minds are overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions about this idea, thus depriving us of happiness, we must do something. And what there is to do, what we can do, is train our minds so that we are not so obsessively caught up in the ideas of this pursuit. This then becomes the purview of meditation. It is, at a basic level, training in subduing this idea of living in ideas, any ideas, whether happy or miserable ideas, and then deepening us beyond the realm of ideas into deeper relationship with Life and with our fundamental being – that which precedes any doing, thinking or having – and we discover there – exactly what it is that we have been pursuing.

What does a human baby need to be happy beyond its basic and immediate need for physical comfort and emotional nurturance? That’s it. Very basic. That’s the realm of our being. And so it is every human’s basic and natural state. But something happens as a human baby matures and develops. Of course it increasingly has to take on responsibility for its own basic needs, but it also takes on a very complicated idea of itself. Society, beginning with parents and then in ever more complicated expanding circles of influence, tells the maturing human who it is and what it needs in order to be significant in the world, and makes happiness synonymous with personal and social significance.

A human ego develops that attac