“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.”  – Sekkei Harada, Zen Master

Our accepted sense of ourselves in the world is that we are separate objects in a world of separate objects.  This is what our senses tell us and this is what our culture reinforces.  This is a misperception that both the wisdom of the ancients and modern quantum physics and cosmology inform us must be corrected if we are to realize who we truly are and to find our place and purpose in the Universe.  We are individualized expressions of a complete unity that is the Universe as is every life-form and as is every material form.  We are systems of perfect harmony and balance at many levels of organization from the sub-atomic to the molecular to the cellular to the collection of sub-organisms and organ systems coexisting within the complete organism that is a single human being and beyond, reaching into vast cosmic levels, yet at the psychological, familial, social/cultural, national, trans-national and ecological levels, we fail to experience and express this unity and harmony.  Something is happening at the psychological level that amounts to a disconnecting trauma that must be understood and corrected.  To experience ourselves only at the level of the boundary contained within the skin and as this separate and striving person in our minds is to be lost in the vastness and complexity and to be exiled from the experience of the harmony and balance.

Every animal has this experience of skin-boundary separateness, yet this does not throw the organism out of its sense of harmony with its environment, with its own or other species, or with itself, except for humans with their far more complex psychological sense of identity (ego).  This problematic experience of separateness in humans is essentially a psychological state of isolation, and if we are to identify what trauma is, it has to be as degrees of solidification of this sense of psychological separateness and vulnerability that generate the emotion of fear, and fear causes contraction deeper into the separateness and isolation.  And so, a feedback loop of injury and fear causes increasing psychological isolation from our true essence of Beingness in connection with all that is.  Our “True Self” is unable to make contact with others and the world, and this is what Buddhism points to as “suffering” and why we feel insufficient and life as unsatisfactory.

Trauma therefore can be understood as injury in the development and functioning of the psychological ego-structure that causes a sense of separation, as broken connection from our True Self and the True World, which in turn causes the ego-structure to contract and solidify around a story of the injury and isolation which in turn intensifies the experience of broken connection to others and to Life itself.  This, of course, leads to great dysfunction and harmful relationship with self and others.  It can be seen, in fact, as the root of mental illness, and here I designate mental illness as not only the extreme manifestations our culture allows as such, but the cultures themselves and what the cultures consider the “normal,” yet terribly dysfunctional way we conduct our lives and run our societies.  What is mental illness, after all, if not a delusional state of separateness from this sense of security and connection that is the true core of every human, amplified by the story of separateness and competition that has been the story of human cultures from the dawn of civilization?

This “traumatization” begins in the slow and persistent process of acculturation and socialization of an infant and small child using their fear of separation to essentially hypnotize into the child stories about who they are in the world based in their vulnerable separateness, a process that continues throughout a person’s life.  We come to believe and experience the world as a dangerous place in which we must become skillful combatants and manipulators and that those who cannot be skillful combatants and manipulators will be victims.  We thus begin sorting out into who will be socially dominant and effective and who will be insufficient and ineffective.  Injuries begin to pile up, and for some the injuries are of such amplitude that they qualify for the identity of “victim with PTSD” and this identity is in itself a great injury, causing an even deeper sense of isolation.  Yet who, in all this is not a victim, and who does not suffer the trauma of the terrifying sense of separateness and vulnerability against which we engage so many ineffective and often destructive tactics to ameliorate?

Very powerfully and paradoxically, while trauma separates us, it can then also be a powerful force for connecting groups of people who SHARE a sense and story of their own traumatization, and we can see what is currently being identified as “tribalism” as the grouping together of individuals into shared victim identity and this can be a very dangerous phenomenon.  An individual who identifies as a victim can be a very dangerous person precisely because they have no sense of their own validity and strength that comes from feeling connected and in balance with larger systems than themselves.  They therefore believe that if they are to assert themselves they must summon powerful emotion and engage all the ego’s defense mechanisms including projection, rationalization, denial, and displacement in order to have even minimal effect, thus their “defenses” translate into offensive and dangerous behavior.

This is why those who are the perpetrators of so much trauma to others have in some fashion inevitably been victims themselves of the trauma of ego-damaging insecurity.  No person who is secure in their sense of inner harmony and connection with others is going to be so dangerous.  This is equally true with collectives who live within their own perceived story of victimization – even including those groups who actually hold power, for they perceive at some level the illegitimacy of their dominance and they project threat from those they dominate.  It is a truth that nearly every human being carries a story of their trauma and so too, every collective carries some story of the need to solidify around and defend their separateness from those perceived as threats – and, of course, perception becomes reality.  Trauma begets more trauma and the insanity spins on.

So here humanity is, in the beginning of the 21^st century.  Individual mental illness is rampant, collectives within our American society and within the global community feel threatened by and hostile toward each other, our social institutions are dysfunctional, running on unquestioned momentum yet failing to support humanity while demanding that humanity support them.  Humanity’s broken connection with Nature is about to set loose a cataclysm of disaster upon the ecosystems that humanity and its fellow life-systems depend on and that support our societies, and we are set on a course of disaster that we do not seem able to alter.  Yet – we can.  For if the problem is broken connection, the solution has to be in reestablished connection, and for this we must look to the most precious of human capacities – empathy.

Empathy is the opening of the ego-boundary to encompass the subjective reality of another where there is no “me” separate from “you” or “it” – there is only this moment of Life in shared identification.  We all know what this moment is for we have all experienced it.  It usually happens quite by accident in the finding of commonality with another human – or even with an animal with which we invest common comfort such as our pets.  We see the sacred right to life and happiness, the right to not have suffering inflicted.  We feel what it would be to have that suffering inflicted, and so in that moment could not possibly bring harm.  Empathy is an opening of receptivity to the commonality of another in this terribly vulnerable experience that is Life, and from this resonance in the inner psychological field arises compassionate action so as to heal the rifts in the actual world.  And it is here in the recognition of our common fear-based functioning and the damage that it causes that we can find common cause and action, calling us to common compassion.  We must let down our guard to be actually present with each other in our common vulnerability to reassure each other we have nothing to fear when we have recognized our bonds of connection that need to be healed and strengthened.

Our task as evolving beings is to bring this capacity for empathy increasingly into our lives with every encounter – and with it, our capacity for compassion, the action that naturally arises from empathy.  We must come face-to face with the inauthentic egoic-self that has brought us to this historic and evolutionary crisis and restore it to its proper function and dimensionality as servant to us, rather than we as servant to it.  We must find our way to meeting our True Self – as individuals and as human collectives.  Can there be any doubt that in the vast Universe of harmony that humanity HAS to find and express itself as this same harmony?  Lost, however, in our unawareness, our unconsciousness, seeing only outer form, unaware of shared inner essence and interconnectedness, we spin on, caught in the inevitability of acting out the stories of our perceived threat from each other and from Nature, mechanistically acting out our own demise.  Humanity faces the very real possibility of social and economic collapse, possibly even serious mortal threat to entire populations in the coming century – unless we find the capacity to reinvent human society away from the violent competition that causes individual and collective traumatization, into social systems based in empathetic, compassionate and healing connection among human groups and with all of Nature.  We must find the courage and faith to reopen our ego-boundaries to allow the energy of Life to flow through us unimpeded as it does through every life-form, to open the false boundaries between human individuals, groups of humans, and humanity with Nature.   We must receive each other in empathic embrace, acknowledging the wounds we have inflicted upon each other, the trauma imposed and passed from generation to generation in individual defensiveness, in tribal hostility and suspicion, in violence of every imaginable magnitude from subtle interpersonal insult, to demeaning, threatening, exploiting and objectifying each other, to our institutions dehumanizing and exploiting us, to bitter tribal political and religious antipathy, to war, genocide and ecocide.  Compassion must mark the new era of human civilization.  Empathy must be employed universally to heal our trauma and set humanity on the course toward a new and flourishing era as expressions of True Self.  As Master Harada said “This is the objective of Life.”

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –  Lao Tzu 5^THcentury BCE

Reality is not what we think it is.  We live inside our minds, believing the picture show happening there to be reality, and in one way of looking at reality, it is.  It’s our reality.  People of the same socio/economic/cultural orientation have a lot of overlap of their realities, yet even with siblings, there can be startling variation in what they believe concerning the history and experiences they have in common.  Imagine comparing our notion of reality with a person of another historic/cultural orientation entirely, say with a 5^th century BCE Chinese.  We would find the area of overlap to be much smaller than with a person of our contemporary orientation and the areas of difference to be much larger.  In a very real sense, we collectively think a 21^st century America into being while 5^th century BCE China was thought into being by the minds of those who lived that experience.  Individuals and historic periods have stories they tell and call these stories reality, when, other than relatively speaking, they are not.

The swirling thoughts and images which fill our consciousness are creating a virtual reality in our minds made of a soup of information (and much misinformation) about who we are and what the world is about.   From the moment of our birth, society and culture, in the shape of parents and all the social influences around us, begin creating this idea of a world for us that we accept as real and true when it is only real and true in an extremely limited way.  It is a very selective and limited representation of the everything that reality actually is.  In returning to what it would be like in 5^thcentury BCE China, one interesting variation of this scenario is the question:  if you were born into this world, into an entirely different historical and cultural period, would you still be you?  Could you be born into any other circumstance other than the one you WERE born into and be you?  It all depends on what you believe the real you to be.   Are you the perspectives and attitudes and beliefs you hold, or are you something much more fundamental? 

Could it be there is some essence of a person that transcends the mental illusions they hold about reality, an essence that is like the clay that society, culture and experience, both shared and individual, shape into a socio-historic person that has a particular take on reality, a reality that from other perspectives might be considered delusional madness?  I think we would have to say absolutely yes, for the total disorientation of a 21^st Century person and a 5^th Century BBCE Chinese person in the others’ world, which would at first feel like madness, would slowly give way to more and more shared reality constructed out of the new experiences.  Some essence of the person, a consciousness not shaped by conditioning, would, over time, cause our total disorientation to give way to adopting more and more of the contextual reality of the place and time we found ourselves.  We would still be the human being we are, with our own particular uniqueness, beneath any of the new conditions, circumstances or beliefs we held concerning reality.

From a Zen perspective, the real you, the essence of you, could be born into any circumstance and still be you, for you are not considered to be the social/cultural/personal psychological content that goes into the mind, but rather the consciousness that is the basis of mind itself.  This consciousness energy is then shaped and individualized into a unique expression and way of perceiving that is a person.  The uniqueness, however, precedes the conditioning. As Zen draws its reference for reality from Nature, it recognizes that for humans, just as with leaves and snowflakes, there is the commonality of the leaves, snowflakes or humans, yet each is unique, no two are exactly the same.  In Nature, the law of reality is a unity of Life replicating uniqueness within commonality through dimension after dimension.     

Born into this world a unique person, we experience our separateness, reinforced to greater or lesser degrees by how our culture emphasizes separateness, yet there is always some instinct, some insight, some intuition, that separateness is not a true and total picture of reality.  Despite our senses registering separateness, there is this deeper sense that pulls us to oneness and connectedness, to the Way of Nature, as ultimate reality.  This is why a contemporary can read the writings of the 5^th century BCE Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, the fountainhead of Taoism, and recognize truth as he beckons us to look to Nature to find the template for a wise and true life.

So, when the Zen master exhorts us to show our “original face,” what is being asked, and how is one to find this “face?”

We must realize that one level of reality is how the human brain processes the information of our senses which then, within our field of consciousness, constructs a “reality.”  This virtual reality matrix of our psycho-social-cultural conditioning is held together and in place through constant movement of the contents of mind, retelling the story of this virtual reality with every perception that leads to an interpretation of the perception consistent with the story.  We live inside a swirling and mostly opaque screen of thoughts and images holding together our virtual reality, and as long as this swirling movement is all we attend to we have no sense of the truths and reality that lies deeper. 

And so, one common reality for humans of every era and culture has been, when searching for deeper understanding into reality, to learn to slow down and even stop the swirling matrix so as to discover a vibrant, dynamic energy of stillness where the Universe enters into manifestation through an individual human life – there to glimpse the deeper principles of Reality, of the Universe itself. 

Lao Tzu’s Taoism and its philosophical offspring, Zen, are just such attempts to search for deeper and deeper levels of reality.  They recognize that the matrix of spinning ideas and images must be penetrated to see what is beneath them, to understand their place and purpose in the unfolding saga of what it means to be human.  And so their first task and teaching is to slow down, perhaps even stop, this spinning matrix to see what is beneath and prior to it.  Profoundly, the word “zen” translated into English means “sitting,” and the genius of Zen as a practice for penetrating into Ultimate Reality is that it realizes that if we just stop, if we just “sit,” if we quiet the swirling manifestations of our virtual-reality minds, there we find the Universe as-it-is.    Here, this moment, without projecting any of our conditioned virtual-reality upon it, we feel, we see, the illusion of our matrix for what it is. 

When the illusions of our conditioned reality as individuals or an entire society’s illusions, begin to fail us, this then becomes the time for stopping, for “sitting,” for waking up to look for deeper levels of reality.  It becomes time to check in with our deeper reality and truly see what works and what does not, to see what is needed to reconnect and establish flow with changing conditions – and we will always find that what will be required is more honesty, more inclusiveness, more compassion, more creativity, more courage, and more connection with what is natural and true.  We must change our reality.   We must evolve our reality to contain in harmony what it could not previously contain while we also let go of illusions, false concepts that had been accepted as true, but which our new, expanded view exposes as false.

The great 20^th century scientist, Albert Einstein, observed that problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created the problem.  He also shared that his great insights into the nature of the physical universe would come to him, not through thinking, but through silent contemplation, or even quieting the mind by taking a walk or swim.  Without being a Zenist, he was realizing Zen, for the art of Zen is in the cultivation of ever-increasing skill in penetrating through our swirling thought-show to experience deeper and deeper levels of truth into what-is.  We must stop so as to see and feel Reality.  Thinking and language then become the tools we use to express that which emerged from silence. We really do not have to go to 5^th century BCE China to realize that this reality we accept right now has not always been our reality.  After-all, how much of our own reality has changed through the course of our lifetime?  True Reality is always a fresh horizon awaiting our willingness to see it for what it is at subtler and deeper levels than we ever thought.   Sitting in the here-and-now with quiet mind opens the portal through which we can view the horizon ahead with fresh insight, to realize and create new realities, new consciousness, to solve the problems created by old realities that have outlived their purpose and are now creating rather than solving problems.  We must let go of what was to find what can be.

“No self, no suffering.” – Buddha

Buddha is said to have stated, “I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and the path to its transcendence. That’s all I teach,” but what this is also saying is that The Buddha taught entering into a deep examination into negative, problematic human emotions – what causes them, and the means to effectively managing them.   This is so important because no matter how “smart” we may be, there seems very little correlation between the kind of intelligence that makes a person an expert in some field of study, in the academic or professional worlds, and emotional stability.  There may even be, in many cases, an inverse relationship where with higher and more complex intelligence, there is little practical wisdom and little of what is sometimes called “emotional IQ.”

The Buddha taught that in all of Nature, humans, because of their evolved brains, are unique in their ability to create a virtual reality called culture and to develop techniques and tools for living in a complex and exploitive relationship with Nature.  This is a good thing from the standpoint of greatly freeing humans from the dangers and limitations of Nature while releasing us to be creative, making ever-more complex culture and tools.  But Buddha also realized there is a very big problem connected to this evolutionary human trait of complex brain function.  To borrow from a modern paradigm drawn from the very complex tool of cybernetics, humans live in very much what are virtual realities constructed of information manipulated by these complex brains, and this virtual reality generates a sense of a virtual-reality-sense-of-self that psychology calls ego that is quite disconnected from our true nature and from Nature itself with serious consequences for both us humans and for Nature. 

Buddhism teaches a model of mind that considers thoughts and emotions to be mind-objects or forms that exist within the formless energy of mind-consciousness that individuates into awareness, the faculty for directing consciousness energy with its inherent intelligence into the examination of experience.  In recognizing this multidimensional model of mind, Buddhism then gives us a methodology from which we can train in building skill at managing the contents of the mind by directing awareness into this examination.  The Buddha further taught that having realized this dimension of awareness that can examine the contents and activity of mind, the insight becomes natural that we then must not be the contents, the thoughts and emotions, as most people assume and our culture reinforces.  Rather, if awareness can examine the contents and activity of the mind, then who we fundamentally must be IS this awareness and not the contents and activity.  We are not egos that have awareness; rather, we are awareness that has an ego structure so as to engage the world.  This shifts our experience of mental activity from one that seems helpless in its management to one that is interactive and opens the way for skillful management.

While Western education focuses intensely on feeding the mind full of information and ideas along with methods of logic for putting these ideas together effectively for utilitarian application, it teaches nothing about managing these contents in a manner so as to maximize mental stability, serenity and wisdom.  The Buddhist model, on the other hand, emphasizes that we can manage mind through meditative techniques where mind examines mind, shining the light of awareness on the content of mind giving us perspective and insight, while developing awareness of awareness, allowing us to explore its potential for intuitive insight into the nature of existence.  We discover that as awareness, we are free of the contradictions and imbalance of the egoic mind, and we can deepen the exploration of life lived as awareness, the dimension that is the true source of intelligence, creativity, wisdom and insight.

To continue borrowing metaphor from the cybernetic world, as the saying goes: “Garbage in, garbage out” and any crazy thing can be programmed into these computer-brains of ours, much of it being completely contradictory and at odds with actual reality.  Most importantly, these reality-virtualizing brains generating a virtual-self experiences itself as unique and separate from all else in the world, and this virtual-self is acutely aware of its vulnerability and its mortality; living in a story of itself in time, the past defining us and the future challenging us.  This sense of limitation, vulnerability and dependency on the external world for stability and validation, and the too-often failure of the external world to provide consistency and validation, causes the contents of mind to be all too often marked by anxiety, frustration and unhappiness.

At the core of most negative emotional experience – of depression, anxiety, anger and loneliness – is an exaggerated sense of this virtual-self in personal isolation along with a time-focus in the past or future.  Most of the time, our focus of attention is on our “self” in our story-line in time that is too often distressing.   Even anger, which in a given moment seems to be present-moment activated, has a strong component of residual past distress and disappointment brought into the present situation and is often carried quite inappropriately into the future, the ego chewing on its grievance over and over.  The world, with the exception of whatever or whoever may be the focus of stimulating the emotion, has receded far into the background of our attention.  Even the stimulating event or person is being experienced principally in its distressing connection to self, not in its larger context which would give the experience more sense and proportion, and thus greater acceptability.  The world has to some inappropriate degree collapsed into the situation, thoughts and emotions orbiting our focus on our self.  

Buddhism recognizes this and teaches us to realize the antidote to such a perception is to expand the field of awareness to deliberately include what is NOT about our virtual-self and our distressing situation, thus preserving context and perspective.  It teaches us to give full awareness and attention to what is NOT our emotional quagmire, our self-imposed exile from Life.  Rather, Buddhism teaches that we must direct attention into the sublime everyday with such presence that the miracle and wonder, the interconnectedness of who and what we are with everything, begins to be increasingly apparent.  Here, we re-enter the flow of Life, and the emotions associated with our perceived isolation then fall into the background, realized as either illusory, or now, much more manageable.

Very importantly, when a human is in this flow of Life, there is very little of the preoccupation with the ego or virtual-self.  Awareness blends like a surfer riding a wave with the present moment.  These are the moments of our greatest adaptivity, balance and skill.  In a very real sense, the ego-self disappears, leaving behind what is a genuine and intelligent human organism that IS the moment in flowing consciousness.  There is no isolated “self” struggling with “out there.”  There is only the blending of self and the moment, of meeting the challenge.

With training in Buddhist meditation we begin to transfer our sense of self from the activity of the mind reacting to the world “out there” into the awareness that witnesses the activity of the mind.  We move our sense of who we are from the virtual-self to the authentic-self, a unity with what is happening.  Once this state of being as witnessing discerning awareness begins to actualize as our operational self, we increasingly can engage the world in a manner that Buddhism refers to as “mindful,” and we can begin to live more and more in a sane and adaptive manner.

 We will continue to have negative emotional states, but now rather than being helpless in their grip, we know them for what they are and what they are not.  Most importantly, they are not who we are.  We know ourselves as awareness, and this awareness is trans-personal.  In a very real way we become what Zen refers to as “nobody,” not identified with the virtual-self.  And where there is no virtual-self, there is, as Buddha said, no suffering.  Yes, there will be pain.  Pain is a natural part of Life, but there will not be as much suffering over our experience of physical and emotional pain.  Nor will there be this self telling itself over and over of the unfairness of having to endure pain.  Pain translated into suffering will not blot out all the beauty and miracle of Life, but rather the painful takes its appropriate place in the dance of everything that is real Life, and we can manage the emotional pain with much greater skill and acceptance.

Humanity is at a crossroads.  What lies ahead is a choice to continue on the path we have trod for thousands of years through many formulations of political organization or to head in a radically new direction.  Why head in a radically new direction?  Because we must.  For if we stop and look with absolute honesty at the circumstance of human civilization we will probably be horrified, for we will be looking at the devastation of Eden and a future marked by escalating social chaos.  We will see a beautiful and bountiful home planet that has been terribly defiled, facing exhaustion and violent environmental change in the not distant future.  We will see a growing imbalance between the reality of Nature, which is marked by harmonious coexistence, and the actions of humanity, which seem to be marked by the impulse to dominate and exploit not only Nature, but also each other. 

Until recently, the vastness of Nature and the limits of human technology were such that the planet could contain humanity’s rapacious activity, but the equation is rapidly shifting.  Humanity is now, for the first time in its history, of a dimension in its sheer numbers and technology, capable of exhausting Nature’s capacity to support the web of myriad life-forms on this planet while also threatening the civilizations that depend on environmental stability.   Should this happen, while the planet will regenerate itself in geologic time, humanity faces disaster.

Should we stop to look honestly, we would see that there is something in the character of humanity that has placed us in an antagonistic relationship with our own environment while pitting us in continuous strife amongst our various nations, races, religions, classes, and ideologies.  Further, we see that there is something in the human character that can have the evidence and the consequence of this antagonism unfolding right in front of us yet fail to sufficiently come out of denial concerning the inevitable looming catastrophe to do what is necessary to change course and avert disaster.  We see human history for what it has been – the endless confrontation and competition among individuals and groups in which too often, not the wisest and noblest, but the strongest, cleverest and most aggressive dominate.  The phrase is “dog eat dog” – but it is not dogs that connive to break and dominate each other – it is humans.  With this, we also see the plague of psychological illness that results from a culture based in interpersonal competition that gives rise to emotional insecurity.

That’s the bad news.  If, however, we continue to look honestly, we see not just a single path marked by aggression, competition, excess consumption and domination.  We also see that another path intertwines and has always been present.  We also see a path marked by wisdom, honest intelligent curiosity, dedication to truth, compassion, inclusion, generosity, justness, courage, creativity, and the impulse to harmonious beauty.  It is a path with its own particular strength and has been a constant modifying force to the path of aggression and domination.   Human history has not been steered solely by the impulse to power, its abuses and iniquity, but also by these nobler impulses.  In other words, within the human character there exists paradoxically both the impulse to dominate and deny Nature and the impulse to reflect the same harmony and balance that is Nature.  These paths intertwine, yet it seems one path has, to date, dominated and set the overall direction for humanity’s journey, and so far, it has been the path of greed and willful ignorance that now leads us all toward the cliff of disaster.

These two paths have been identified for millennia, and even given names.  The first path is that of human ego, that capacity unique to humans within all of Nature to abstract its experience out of Nature.  It is the legendary fall from Eden, the source of original human sin.  It is the capacity to separate ourselves psychologically as individuals and as a species from the interconnected web of Nature, to deny its laws of balance, to use, consume and destroy only for the purposes of our own aggrandizement.  But there is also this second path that reflects the interconnectedness of Nature.  It is sometimes called wisdom, sometimes called spirituality, sometimes called love, and its laws of harmony and connection are deeply imbedded within us, for in truth we cannot be separated.  It is the source of all spiritual truth and psychological insight concerning humanity, and it is the source of political and economic justness.

We have to recognize that within us exists the capacity for our own salvation and we must dedicate ourselves anew to living in truth.  While we may have forgotten our interconnection to Nature, Nature has not forgotten us.  It has operated as the unconscious impulse to all that is good and has been the saving grace of humanity.  It has been the counterbalance to the arrogance, lust for significance, power, and the blind need for excessive consumption that has often erroneously been described as “human nature,” but is really aberrant to our deepest nature.  Perhaps silently, unconsciously, the path of wisdom has always guided us over the long road of human social evolution, for actually we have moved increasingly and inevitably in its direction intertwined with the dominant  path of power and domination.

Now, however, we must recognize that which has been unconscious and make it conscious.  Humanity’s identification with ego and its destructive impulses must be seen for what they are and overcome while we choose and open to a conscious flowering of our own interconnectedness.  We must realize that we cannot continue functioning in denial of truth or it will most surely bring about humanity’s downfall.  Buddhism refers to this denial and attachment to ego as dukkha – suffering  – while other religions refer to it as sin – and the suffering that awaits us should we fail to change paths is certain to be immense, even catastrophic.

While Buddhism addresses our circumstance eloquently, this concept of ego’s fatal allure is not entirely foreign to the West.  In our very beginning, the ancient Greeks, who valued balance, beauty, and wisdom above all, also had a term for this denial.  They called it hubris, described as the overweening arrogance of assuming human equality, even superiority to the Gods (Nature).  Hubris exalts the pursuit of glory, of power, of wealth and conquest and in the ancient world this egoic hubris was embodied in imperial Rome supplanting the Greeks as the definers of Western civilization.  And though Imperial Rome lasted five hundred years, hubris took it inevitably to its fall.

So now, several millennia later, it would seem we are perhaps headed for our fall, a fall like no other, and humanity must find within itself the wisdom and courage to change its path from this egoic hubris.   Available to us is the path of awakened consciousness, the knowing of our appropriate place within Nature and the Universe.  This too is not a new message.  It is the foundational teaching of Buddhism as it was for the Greeks.  It is the message of wisdom, and it has journeyed with humanity from the beginning of civilizations, mostly hushed and treated like a step-child.  But now, it must be given its place as the true pathfinder leading into the future.  To not do so surely will be even more catastrophic than it was for the Romans and Western Civilization that fell into the long historic period known as the Dark Ages, for while culture fell, the world of Nature was safe to nurture new civilization.  Now, it is Nature itself that is threatened.

Buddha knew, the wisest of Greeks knew, and the prophets and seers of all the ancient cultures knew that truth is heard, understood and manifested only when the human egoic mind is stilled, allowing the quieter subtler wisdom of humanity’s deepest nature to be heard in its whispers.  The path of wisdom is here for us.  It always has been, emerging out of our ancient past, the guiding hand of all of humanity’s noblest actions.  It is not the Greek Fates, but we who will decide.  Fear and domination cannot be the way; we must embrace each other and Nature as kin and source if we are to avoid a dystopian future.    Ego’s tricks are endless and its allure is very strong, but its call is a lie that has led us to this existential moment.  Even the slightest allegiance to truth tells us it is time to change paths.  We must go within once again into our inner nature to find the wisdom, will and strength to choose truth, to choose to love each other and all of Life, to live in balance and beauty.  We must reinvent human society and culture before chaos and massive disruption send us into a new dark age.  We must leave the path of greedy cleverness we have trod for so long and now choose the ancient path of humble yet noble truth, harmony, and wisdom.     

“Be a light unto yourself.” –  Buddha

Buddhism is very different from Christianity in that rather than the “light,” the good and perfect, being embodied in a demi-god-being bridging the realms of the Divine and the worldly while humanity exists in the profane world of “fallen,” Buddhism holds that what is true and good is in the nature of everyone, for that matter, in everything.  The Buddha is not meant to be the object of worship, simply the model of a fully realized human being.   As a very logic-based, rather than magic-based religion, Buddhism simply teaches that it is logically impossible that the perfect harmony that is the Universe is not at the very core of every manifestation of the Universe, including humans.   This, of course, presents a problem for us, as clearly there are destructive forces in the world which cause us to recoil.  There is the dance of life and death, the wolf killing the fawn, the virus bringing horrid illness and death; there is cancer and famine.  There are terribly destructive earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires caused by lightning. There is pain and suffering.  We feel that this cannot be light; this cannot be harmony and good.

There is also a particular kind of human darkness and evil beyond the realm of Nature’s catastrophes.  There are Hitlers and Charles Mansons, the evils of hate, war and vicious criminality.  There is also all the everyday petty meanness, cruelty, dishonesty, and hurtfulness that people inflict upon each other, while society seems to be organized around the mundane heartlessness of corporations and bureaucracies.  It is right to ask: where is the perfect harmony, the good and perfect, the light in all this?

Buddhism teaches that while within us is the perfect harmony of the Universe, just as it is within every squirrel and bird, there is a problem in that in humans this core of harmony gets covered over with social/cultural/psychological conditioning telling us all kinds of crazy things about who we are and what the world is.  We do not experience ourselves within an infinitely connected, harmonious and balanced universe.  Rather, we experience ourselves alone and struggling, with but a few tenuous connections of family, friends and affiliations which all too often feel broken.  Buddhism calls this Dukkha – a unique kind of suffering experienced by humans caused by our misperception of ourselves in separateness and our clinging to an identity and value system based in this separateness.  This is a violation of what Buddhism calls Dharma, the Way of the Universe or Nature, with its infinite interconnection and interdependence.  Our light is obscured and our harmony upset, but Buddhism, and all true spiritual traditions, point out that while the light may be obscured, it is not, cannot be, extinguished, for, and here I move into mystical language, The Light is who we are. 

Life needs death, Creation needs destruction; they are inextricable.  This is Dharma.  The difference in Nature is that all death is in the service of Life; all destruction is the necessary making way for creation.  Hurricanes and forest fires caused by lightning are natural occurrences that cleanse and clear away so that new growth can occur.  An ecology needs predators to maintain balance so that the herbivores do not strip away vegetation causing imbalance that will lead to the reimposition of balance through death by starvation.  To the surprise of many, the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park has reestablished a balanced ecology where all species flourish more abundantly.  Life moves to balance.  Always.

But humans do not destroy and kill within the laws of harmony and balance; they clear-burn and clear-cut forests, forever destroying ecologies. They callously, thoughtlessly, industrially raise, slaughter and process animals who never experience a moment of freedom or comfort in their short lives.  They make war on each other and Nature.  They steal, swindle, lie, cheat, abuse, kill and destroy so as to make and take more for themselves, and this creates imbalance in The World – it creates dukkha.  Cynics, nihilists, and some atheists point to this enduring fact of human history as proof that there is no transcendent intelligence, no balance, no hope, no Light, yet, they typically neglect that it is NOT true that we are moving inexorably toward darkness.  To the contrary, history proves that we are moving toward The Light, and that The Light has always been with us and within us. 

The nihilist view neglects that for thousands of years humans lived in magnificent and rich cultures on the American, Australian and African continents in complete harmony with Nature.  It neglects that Western and Asian history has moved from tyrannical and violent monarchical class systems into ever growing democracies, being pulled by the light of reason and compassion to move their societies toward justice, fairness and compassion, no matter how much further is still needed.  The Light is in us and pulls and guides us as human collectives and as individuals, even while the darkness misleads and confuses us.  This is the dance of the human experience.  What seems undeniable is that the Universe has given us just a bit more Light, for otherwise, all would have been completely lost long ago.

As it is a commonality of all religions to call us to move to The Light in whichever way the religion depicts it, perhaps we can reframe the entire notion of religion to that which calls us to our basic “religious” task of uncovering this basic ground of goodness and bringing it into the world, whether we consider ourselves identified with an organized religion or not.  Perhaps we can make our religious task to be that Light unto ourselves that Buddha called us to when darkness and confusion surround us so that we can then bring this Light into the world.  Our journey into healing can be found it would seem, individually and collectively, not through adding on more complicated psychological, religious or spiritual jargon and practices, more political or economic complexity and cleverness that is all too often egoic deceit.  Rather, our journey is in turning inward towards our own silent knowing.  It is to find The Light within while also looking outward into the quiet simple truths in the infinite energy of Nature, harmonizing these inner and outer worlds until it is recognized there is no inner and outer.  It is to realize there is just the Universe and its Dharma of interconnection and balance, of compassion, kindness, and love, that manifests through the dance of creation and destruction in the service of Creation, what Native Americans called “The Great Giveaway.”  This is The Light that is in each of us and all of us.

We might recognize that we are all Light and dark, essential harmony AND egoic confusion, but we must have faith that The Light is our truth and is actually stronger than the dark, for this egoic kind of dark is an aberration, and is destined to disappear into lumination as individuals, societies, and eventually the species, find the wisdom to walk guided only by The Light.   Each of us is a unique expression of the Universe manifesting a unique person, dancing the dance of Light and dark.  Our sense of religious task can be to strengthen The Light and better manage the dark, for the dark does have an important purpose.  Just as death and destruction are natural in the dance of Creation, so too our own darkness can be an important element in our dance of creation, destroying and reorganizing, giving new life and perspective to our world-view and expression of ourselves.  This is how we evolve.  This is how we move to The Light.

What is important is that in this dance of light and dark, we must commit ourselves religiously to being guided by The Light.  We must realize that whenever we are seduced by the dark and it becomes our guide, we of course become lost, for we cannot see clearly in the dark, and so we become dark ourselves.  This, our histories as individuals and societies, have taught us.  Look to The Light that is you, to the you that is Dharma.  Know your darkness well and own it so that it does not own you.  Knowing darkness can lend itself to creativity and insight, yes, but for knowing and being who you truly are, you must move to your Light. 

Now if one is honest, they’d have to admit much of their life is spent in dissatisfaction.  We’re unhappy with this and we’re unhappy with that.  Along with undeniable moments of happiness and satisfaction there seems to be an underlying disgruntledness that percolates in us looking for reasons to push through, and it usually does not take much to push us into grumbling and complaining. 

It could be said that the teachings of Buddhism or any of the myriad “spiritual” teachings, whether religion-based or secular, like Eckhart Tolle, are mostly about the human problem of dissatisfaction.  Humans feel dissatisfied quite regularly, some practically live in this state, and this is a big problem, not only for the dissatisfied humans but for those they affect; and in fact, ultimately for all life on this planet.

All of Nature lives in a simple realm of sufficiency except humans.  For humans, finding sufficiency seems to be an impossible task.  An animal or a plant does or does not have what it needs to flourish in its basic nature, but for humans, there seems to be an endless challenge in finding sufficiency, perhaps because we have no idea of our basic nature.  Having been taught that to be sufficient, we have to be “the most we can be,” it seems we must have “more,”  and as for how to quantify this “more” or what is “enough,” seems quite beyond us.  This is then a kind of insanity.

Please understand I do not use the word “insanity” lightly.  Insanity is generally understood to mean having lost touch with reality, and if reality is anything, it has to be “enough.”  But since humans do not live in reality, but rather in artificial worlds made up in our minds, both as individuals and collectives, we know very little of reality or enough.  We have lost touch with our basic nature because we seem to have lost touch with the basic way of nature.  Buddhism makes a very big deal of this, for if reality is anything, it HAS to be nature, which HAS to be enough, for it is all there is.

Zen Buddhists like to use phrases, like “just this” or “thusness” or “suchness” to refer to reality and whatever particular “this” might be in front of us.  But what is “this?”  Zen calls “this” a koan, a riddle to be entered into with one’s whole mind – not just intellect, but senses, emotions, and particularly intuition, as well.  Ah yes, intuition – a koan in itself to a Westerner.  This is why Zen also recommends sitting with bright, relaxed attention in silence – discovering the silent mind of intuition beneath the cacophony of the sensory, emotional and intellectual noise chamber that is a human mind, chronically dissatisfied, always wanting more.

This finding the silent mind is very important in this quest for satisfaction for what more does silence need?  More silence?  No – silence does not actually exist in time, so what is more silence?  Really.  Sure there is more quantity of silence, but silence isn’t a quantity; it is a quality, a state of existence.  When silent, is not this moment as the silence all that exists?  To want more is to come out of silence and into some intellectual, emotional notion of wanting more of what cannot be more.  Silence is completeness, like our intuited notion of the Universe – a vast silent space within which all matter and sound happen.  The intuited Universe is vast – it is space, it is silence.  Zen knows.  This is “this.”  It is Thusness, Suchness.  Even in the petals of a flower, or the bee that follows its nature to the heart of the petals, or the winter wind that kills the flower and takes the bee into the hive to survive.  Thus is suchness.  It is Nature.  It is enough.

For a human then, what is “suchness?”  What is our basic nature?  Zen knows it cannot be separate from the Nature that is the Universe; otherwise, that would be crazy, not real.  So, as humans get further and further away from Nature, from what is real, we get crazier, and this is our dissatisfaction, and this brings us back to that very big problem not only for the dissatisfied human, but for the collective of dissatisfied humans that is society, and, of course, for Nature, which all these dissatisfied humans trample and use so thoughtlessly.  Buddhism calls this not only dissatisfaction, but suffering.

This phenomenon of crazy human dissatisfaction and all of the suffering it causes drove a human named Siddhartha Gautama to sit beneath a tree some 2500 years ago vowing not to get up until he’d figured out this dissatisfaction.  It could be said he was on a quest for satisfaction, on how to be human and be satisfied, and he did indeed figure it out in what is called his “awakening.”  It is called this because he figured out that humans live mostly in a dream-like state making up a world in our heads, which being an artificial reality, can never be enough, because real IS, has to be, enough, and these worlds in our minds are neither real nor enough, and so these artificial realities are what drive us crazy wanting “more” without ever knowing what this “more” might be.  So we abuse our lives and abuse each other and abuse nature in this quest for more.

Because his sitting resulted in this “awakening” Siddhartha became known as The Buddha – which means “Awakened,“ and the tree he sat beneath became known as the Bodhi tree – the tree of awakening.  The teachings that flowed from this awakening became known as Buddhism – the practice of awakening, and the practice of sitting in silence, listening into Nature, into our nature, into the Universe, while taming and quieting the unnatural human mind, became known as Buddhist meditation, or mind-training in awakening.

So, to train in getting beyond dissatisfaction, it is recommended to take one’s seat at the foot of the metaphorical Bodhi Tree.  Sit in meditation, in contemplation, in stillness with the intent to receive guidance from the Universe, from God if this is your frame of reference for the Ultimate.  For the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pantheist, secular mystic or contemplative, the path beyond dissatisfaction likewise leads inward – to silence – and then – out into the Great Silence that is the Universe.  Here, we can discover the center of all things.  We discover that each of us is A center where the Universe enters the World through a human life, or a bird or a tree, even a mountain, river or stone.  

Here, we can learn to see how all the things of the World circle a center of consciousness that is what we really are, like on the rim of a great wheel, all passing and passing while That which watches at the center does not pass.  We watch love and hate, life and death, beauty and ugliness, peace and violence, generosity and greed, wisdom and ignorance, creation and destruction circling and circling. While here at the hub of the wheel, at the foot of our Bodhi Tree, we sit experiencing what it is to be enough.  We discover we are That which does not pass and are filled with the great thick thusness of all that does pass, now beyond dissatisfaction.  We discover we are free to do what we do and possess what we possess (because this is human nature) while holding to the Truth of Nature that instructs to not take from others more than is actually needed.  We discover enough is enough, and we will know satisfaction at last.  And when we all know satisfaction, we and the world will be safe, for we will know we and the World are the same.

“Like vanishing dew, a passing apparition or the sudden flash of lightning — already gone —
thus should one regard one’s self.”

The Japanese Zen monk and poet, Ikkyu, wrote these words nearly six centuries ago; his intent, generally considered to be the extolling of selflessness and focusing our minds upon the impermanence of all things, including ourselves.  Yet there is another, and perhaps even deeper, insight to be had in the recognition that just as these images represent manifestations of Nature, so too, we are manifestations of Nature, perhaps with more substance than dew, but still, just as the dew consists of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen combined to create water, we too are essentially a combination of atoms – all born billions of years ago in the furnace of a far-off star.  Just as the flash of lightening is a discharge of energy when atmospheric conditions are conducive, so too, we are energy discharged into the world because conditions are conducive for this combination of atoms to be breathed with life into the creation of a person – and in the vastness of the Universe, a single human life is no more than a passing apparition, a flash of lightning – and yet – an expression of the totality of the Universe, just as is the flash of lightning. 

It took the Universe over 14 billion years to create human life, an absolute miracle of an evolutionary process of increasing complexification occurring within a unified organism.  For instance, when we look at our own hand, we are looking at a miracle of evolution.  That our thumb sits in an opposed position to our fingers is a truly remarkable advancement in biological technology, allowing for a level of manual dexterity possessed only by creatures of the primate family that includes humans.  That we can consider the implications and importance of this opposable-thumbed hand is an even greater evolutionary triumph by the Universe, the sole domain of the species hominid, for the cerebral cortex of a human with its trillions of neurons and connecting pathways is the most complex organization of biological matter allowing for the most complex and advanced awareness and creative relationship with our world of any creature on Earth.  Yet, this complexity and dexterity of hand and mind seems to be working against the flourishing of life on our world.  Some have come to view humanity almost as a devolutionary and destructive force, like a highly advanced virus infecting the organism that is the planet, killing off the intricate web of life-forms necessary for the Earth to be healthy and support life.  The question is – is this so, or is this really only a phase in a larger process?  Could it be that this perfect and balanced Universe created an imperfect and unbalanced being, or is a larger view needed to make sense of this?

It cannot be denied that humanity and all life on this planet is suffering because modern civilization lives from a dysfunctional view of humanity’s place within the Universe.  The evolution of the human species has led to what amounts to a geologic force such as no other animal could possibly pose.  Humanity is now capable of altering the conditions on this planet so as to diminish the possibilities for the continuation of the flourishing of the vast diversity of life that co-inhabits this planet with humans.  Our civilization and way of life face an existential threat such as has never been seen before as we are confronted by twin catastrophic possibilities of a nuclear wasteland caused by war and environmental catastrophe caused by our consumer-materialism style of living and relationship (or non-relationship) with Nature.  Could humanity be but a passing apparition in the life of the Universe, the 350,000 years of Homo sapiens life on this planet being no more than a flash in the 14+ billion years life of the Universe? 

Yet, born in the stars, actually born with the Universe itself in a pinprick flash of unfathomably dense photonic energy that expanded into the totality of the Universe, first as hydrogen and helium atoms, and then into dense hydrogen/helium clouds that condensed into stars and then into the entire spectrum of atoms formed in the fire of these stars that then exploded into the vastness to form the material for planets and moons and comets and meteors and all forms, including life-forms on the planet Earth that then evolved into human beings.  In a very real sense, we could consider that our existence is as old as the Universe; that we have always been – for the totality of the Universe is present in the atoms and molecules and cells of these human bodies.

In this expandingly intricate dance of evolution of over 14+ billion years, the result of joining atoms in ever more elaborate combination has all led to this most complex of all things, the human brain.  And along with this complexification of matter, there has evolved through this human species increasingly complex systems of understanding of the nature of the Universe and humanity’s place within it from ancient mythic representations to modern scientific understandings.  We have evolved cosmologies from nature-based representations of Spirit manifesting Life, through pantheisms of human-like gods, through medieval notions of a human and Earth-centered Universe with God-the-creator in Heaven (which despite a vague sense of evolution and a solar system and galaxy based universe, largely remains the modern common person’s underlying experiential belief) to astronomical, quantum and field theoretical physics, which now see a vast integrated Universe in which the properties of consciousness can be found operating at the sub-atomic level everywhere.  Astonishingly, the mystery of consciousness is being found at the very foundational level of all matter, pervading the Universe, with immense implications for human relationship to the entire Universe.  In these new models, which intriguingly mirror ancient mythic cosmologies, the question becomes vivid – where do we actually begin as conscious beings and where do we end?  Is there actually a continuity of consciousness existence that transcends a physical life-span, for just as physical matter-energy cannot die, only recombine, could this be true for consciousness-energy as well?  The ancients answered, “Yes,” and we now, as modern science-based rational beings, have to give this possibility real consideration.

In shifting our focus from an anthropocentric view based on individual lives that come and go, to a view centered on the Universe itself in which we are a continuation of a billions-of-years process of increasing complexification of matter and consciousness in a Universe that seems to be intent on creative realization of itself, bridging the gulf of the manifested world of matter with the unmanifested world of consciousness, our current seemingly purposeless individual and collective lives take on a cosmic purpose.  To view each human life as an evolving organism within the evolving human species organism that is an integral expression of the evolving organism that is the planet Earth that is an integral expression of the evolving Universe, is to give new and vital perspective to this human expression. 

We have labored for centuries with the delusional cosmology that we humans, as we are, represent the final expression of Creation, whether Divine or Natural, and this view carries with it a karmic consequence of exactly the kind of cataclysmic destiny we are currently shaping.  But – what if we adopt a new cosmology based in our new sciences that sees and experiences our individual existences as enfolded within larger and larger macro-existences?  And what if we come to understand the human species as continually evolving, much like an individual human evolves through developmental stages of life, and we can identify that the current egocentric, materialistic human culture, deficient in empathy and compassion, stumbling self-indulgently through existence without much thought to the consequences of this behavior can be seen to be very similar to the way an early adolescent human behaves and views themselves in the world?  What if we could see that our true task as individuals and as a species is to evolve into our adult stage as responsible co-creators with the Universe?  As we look at our current circumstance and appropriately ask – Could humanity be a mistake? –  Could we not see that just as a world of only thirteen-year-olds would make no sense, the world we shape now with much the same egocentricity and callousness of a thirteen-year-old requires our collective growing up to begin to make sense?

Born in the stars, journeying for billions of years, matter and consciousness evolving with a destiny to reflect and manifest the perfect harmony that all the Universe expresses, can we not see our existence in this way and take responsibility for our place among the stars on this beautiful and unique planet where the Universe has brought together a collection of atoms in a most propitious environment for life to flourish?  Born in the stars, can we take our place among the stars as mature tenders of a beautiful and abundant expression of the Universe’s evolution? 

Yes, like dew, our individual lives pass like apparitions in the vast unfolding of the Universe – yet – in ways we are only beginning to comprehend, the matter and consciousness that combine to create this one human life has always been, and so, will also always be, journeying in co-creation with the Universe.  Perhaps, “Thus should one regard one’s self.” 

To study Buddhism is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. – Dogen(13^th century)

In recent years, there has been a growing understanding that the basic problem with humanity is egocentricism or egoism, the placing of the idea of “me” and “mine” as the centerpoint of what is principally to exclusively significant in a person’s life.  Egoism expresses itself in relationship with all that is not me and mine in a manner that ranges from appreciative consumption, to disregard, to exploitation, to outright hostility and wanton destruction.  It is an approach to life that says happiness is achieved by maximizing what me and mine can get out of life without serious consideration or concern for the cost to all else, and it also makes us blind to seeing the patterns of interconnections and interdependence that actually make life work.   Seeing egoism as a problem, however, is actually not new at all; it is at the heart of any true spiritual tradition, and Buddhism makes a very particular point of noting egoism as the source of human suffering, importantly not only for others, but for ourselves, and points out It is a very counterproductive strategy for life. 

In American culture, however, this notion of egoism as a problem is very new and very radical for we are a culture built on the celebration of the individual and the individual’s “pursuit of happiness,” a very egoistic notion (not that happiness is egoistic, but “pursuing” happiness creates an egoistic purpose to life that can become terribly distorted).  After all, we are a nation built not only on many noble ideals and great industry, but on genocide of the native inhabitants, enslavement of an imported racial population, despoiling the environment and the extermination of many native species in our pursuit of happiness.  Our economy is based in conspicuous consumption and exploitation of resources and labor, all to enhance status and wealth for those favorably positioned in this zero sum game.  We seem to be unable to address seriously a growing climate-change crisis caused in significant part by our great industry and appetite for consumption because of what seems to be an addiction to this egoism.   Egoism could well be considered the dark side of the American personality. 

Increasingly, however, there is growing understanding of the problems brought by this addiction and the counterproductivity of egoic consumerism as the way to sustainable well-being and happiness.  There is a dawning awareness that while a certain level of material security is important in keeping us out of unhappiness, increasing amounts of ego-feeding materialism seems to have the opposite effect, and ancient spiritual traditions that offer this warning are being found to have much to say about our modern psychological health and even continued societal viability.

Egoism blinds us to the realization that life really only has meaning and functions best in the experience of its interconnections, in appreciative loving and caring relationship, happiness best generated when we are free of self-centeredness, instead immersed in life with all its “myriad things,” including, of course, the people around us, focusing on their well-being and happiness.  All the terrible things that humans do that can elicit the question, “Why do people do such things?” can be answered with the word egoism,  the hopelessly small idea we have of a self that is always desperate to make more of itself, generally at the expense of the myriad things of the world including other people.   Experiencing self in ego leaves us alone and small in the world and ego keeps attempting to build itself up by using, abusing, consuming, and tearing everything and everyone that is not “me” or “mine” down.  Ego is, of course,  quite blind to all of this, defending its right to self-interest, and is also quite paranoid in that it projects its own predatory and competitive nature onto everyone else and onto Nature, and since it is really only an idea of a person, it is hopelessly inadequate at realizing fulfillment.

Zen, and all mystical spiritual traditions, instruct us that fulfillment can only be realized, as the word fulfillment  suggests, through full-filling, but not a full-filling through the material aspects of life, but  rather, the spiritual, and spiritual full-filling cannot happen when our minds are already filled with the story of the striving and anxious “me.”   The sense of full-filled can only happen when we are empty of the egoic story of the dissatisfied “me” and rather, our sense of self is in the world, the myriad things, the morning sun, the wind in the trees, this simple household chore, the happiness of the person in front of us.  To be happy is not in the using and consuming of the myriad things, but, as Dogen advises, by being actualized through them, that is, being filled by our sense of connection with the myriad things, self having been forgotten.

This having been said, it is important to understand that ego in itself is not the problem, nor is ego bad. This is a mistake often made by those on the spiritual path.  Ego certainly is not to be eradicated; it cannot be eradicated, for it is an essential capacity of any living organism.  It is a necessary element of an organism functioning in the world, identifying and meeting its needs, of being a manifested object interacting with manifested objects.  The squirrels and birds engaged in their squirrel and bird activities are fulfilling their needs as organisms and doing what is needed to fulfill their squirrel-ness and bird-ness.  This is squirrel and bird ego in action. 

With human-beings, however, to fulfill our human-beingness is quite more complicated, for our human-beingness is not only in meeting biological needs, but psychological needs as well.  To be writing these words and communicating to the reader is a very high-level function of the ego that creates these mind-objects called words and employs the invention of writing and word-processing with a computer, and fulfills the desire to communicate ideas to the reader who wants to experience these ideas.  We are fulfilling an essential need of human-ness, to explore concepts and grow conceptually.  This is all activity of ego that is healthy, necessary and good, even spiritual, for it is about connecting and valuing. 

Likewise, to have a sense of a spiritual journey and to make the choice to understand what that journey is and make the necessary commitments to engage and follow the spiritual path is human ego in its healthiest manifestation.  After-all, no other creature needs to create a spiritual life.  To pursue a spiritual path, however, motivated by the idea that it is attractive in its mysteriousness, and that its mystery makes me a “better” person, even a more interesting person to others, or because there may be intriguing rituals and philosophical ideas that somehow imbue me with some specialness, is a misapplication of ego.  This is egoism, not fundamentally different from wanting to be a physician because of the status and wealth the profession offers, not because of the pull to healing, an important manifestation of selfless service.    

No, the problem is not ego; it is egoism, the misplacement of this natural psychological function into our identity, and placing ego expression and gratification as the purpose of life when egoism actually deprives life of meaning for it stands as an impediment to experiencing the connections and wonder of life, that which actually gives life meaning.  Egoism sets humans upon a frantic and fruitless search for meaning in ever more egoic pursuits, seeking security through acquisitions, status, power and the diminishment of others, all in a fruitless attempt to acquire personal fulfillment.  These are all impossible strategies for it is like drinking sea water to quench our thirst; it only makes us thirstier and sickens us.  

Egoism is what is behind racism, classism, sexism, nationalism, and religious and political tribalism, people finding identity and meaning in identification with collective egos that can function very destructively in the world.  In its most malignant form, it is what drives criminality, sociopathy and psychopathy, the making more of “me” by victimizing others.  In its most mundane expression, it is in everyday conversational gossip or holding judgmental opinions of others which when examined closely, are about elevating ourself through the diminishment of others.  Egoism can even be expressed through the sincere study and practice of religion and religion’s rebellious cousin, spiritual practices, when such practices are about feeding into the need to be part of an exclusive community or for enhancing one’s aura of specialness.  It is even in the diminishment of everyday experience into restlessness and boredom, elevating our own importance above the commonplace and ordinary. 

In a very important way, egoism represents what is metaphorically expressed as “The Devil” in Western religious culture.  It is that which entices and seduces us into destructive behavior, in diminishing the sacredness of life, all life, in favor of the elevation of me and mine.  If the origin of sin is, as Jewish mystic Abraham Heschel describes, in “the denial of the sublime wonder of life,” it is egoism that whispers these denials, these diminishments in our ear.  To find happiness, to find true sanity and fulfillment, it is quite clear, we must follow Dogen’s advice and forget ourselves.  We must be actualized and filled wondrously by the myriad things, by Life in all its miraculous interconnections, complexity, perfection and balance.

“To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.” – Alan Watts

We all think we know what is going on.  We think we have some basic sense of what is true and not true concerning who and what we are, what our family and social interactions are about and what is true about our society and the world.  We would be shocked and offended if someone were to say that we were delusional about much of this, but it actually is quite true that a good deal of our view of “reality” amounts to a delusion of sorts.  It is a delusion built on convention, and convention is really a shared habit of interpreting the world and responding based on unseen forces of evolving culture and society going back through generations into the mist of unknowable origins.  It’s “the way things are” or “what is” at any given place and time, and interestingly, for being “what is,” it is always changing.

It is very important to realize that the world-view we believe in is profoundly different from that of a 10^th Century Arab, who similarly believed that their world-view was true, or for that matter, a 21^st Century Jihadi Arab, or perhaps, in very important ways, a fellow 21^st Century American who votes for a different political party.  Most importantly, OUR world view and sense of who we are, our “what is,” may be very different from what it was ten or twenty years ago.  How can this be?  We all live on the same planet, with the same senses and brain.  We are all of the same species.  A 10^th century squirrel and a 21^st century squirrel, no matter where they are on the planet, have a pretty universal squirrel “what is.” Yet, we humans from different places and times have very different notions of what is true and not true.  This is because humans have abstracting minds that generate what amounts to virtual realities, stories about who we are, and what is true and not true created by cultural, historical, social, and psychological perceptions, all quite subjective.

What IS true is that we humans mostly live inside these stories in our minds about what we want and what we fear and what we believe to be true – repeated over and over creating the effect for us that these stories ARE true and real – when they are not.  Within a relatively narrow range of political, cultural, religious and personal differences, white, financially secure Americans have a large overlay of agreed consensus-reality, such as America being the best country in the world with the best system of government, which is the same belief most citizens of other countries have about their country despite all the complaints they may have about the country’s actual functioning.  Most “mainstream” Americans similarly believe that the American capitalist consumer economic system is the best system despite mounting evidence that it does not lead to happiness or fairness, and is threatening the environmental sustainability of the planet.  That Native Americans, many people of color, those who are in poverty, or those who have studied these issues carefully might not agree with these stories doesn’t really seem valid to the “mainstream” American.  So if these stories of American exceptionalism may not be true, what IS real and true?  It might be helpful to remember the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates who said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

Yet, it is important we seek to have as good a grasp on the possibility of truth and reality as we can.   Zen addresses this conundrum by seeking to guide us into the fine-honing of all our sensory and mental capacities through training in in-the-moment awareness.  It teaches that we are mistaken in believing we are the activity of our mind, all these thoughts and emotions, but rather that we are the energy of consciousness prior to any belief or opinion of this or that.  It teaches us to be vitally present, to be increasingly aware of being the witness of the moment, to bring non-judgmental questioning into the “thusness” or “what-is-ness” of the moment, including the stories our mind is telling us.  It encourages us to acknowledge the underlying mystery of existence while conceding that we must believe and do something, for the world must also be approached in a practical and functional manner.  For this, convention is useful.  It is just important not to mistake convention for truth.  It is A way, not THE way of any situation.

Buddhism tells us that which IS real is the unfolding moments of life at multi-dimensional levels from the microscopic to the cosmic and everything between, including humans with their stories.  It is a dance, an interplay of phenomena, energies, forces, Nature, history, institutions, persons and intra-psychic conditions and conditioning.   It is also the projection of our stories onto whatever and whoever is happening in front of us.  It is an acknowledgement that whatever our truth is in the personal, cultural, social and political spheres may be as true or untrue as any other, that what really matters is what actually works to minimize unnecessary suffering in the world.  It warns that our anticipations of the future are mostly unlikely, just as our memories of the past are mostly distorted projections of whatever is OUR story.  Even more importantly, Buddhism points out that we are seldom truly present for whatever and whoever is happening in front of us.  Rather, it cautions us, to notice that we are often only partially present for the what-is that unfolds around us, and instead are caught up in telling and projecting our mental stories.  We are missing Life as it happens.  In a very important way, this is simply insane.

To be truly sane, to be what Buddhism calls awakened, is to realize that these stories are a kind of virtual reality created by the mind, and instead of continuing to be pulled into and motivated by these stories, to get in touch with and respond to the realities of the what-is in the moment as it unfolds. This is mindfulness. To be mindful is to engage the moment as the observing awareness that can watch these stories arise within us and others, noting their shifting, morphing, unstable and impermanent nature, and how they pass, making way for another story that will arise, have a duration and then pass. To be mindful is to realize this witnessing awareness is completely stable and enduring, as is Nature, and so this awareness is OUR nature, and it has been the witness that is the true core of who we are for our entire life.  And it is entirely sane.  Action that arises from this mindful engagement will then be more likely true to the situation and beneficial.

To be mindful is to train in stabilizing awareness as our present-moment self, in penetrating with ever-increasing subtlety of awareness into the flow of the moment, to realize awareness as our true presence that can penetrate the “what is” of the moment in a balanced application of our senses, intelligence, emotions and intuition.  This has been the reality of every mystic in every culture throughout human history.  It is the perception that allowed Socrates to note the nature of wisdom over 2500 years ago, interestingly at approximately the same historic time that Lao Tzu was making such an observation in China and Buddha in India, perhaps because the civilization-myth-as-reality was fully replacing human identification with Nature about that time.

As long as we live out of the stories that pass nearly randomly and involuntarily through our field of consciousness, we will be unable to address effectively the real and true challenges or celebrate the real beauty of life. This is true for individuals and it is true for society. We are unable as a society to address effectively the challenges we face precisely because we are living out false and limiting stories concerning what-is, and instead we act out of the false narrative of stories that no longer apply. This is why our politics and governing is so dysfunctional.  To evolve is to become increasingly aware and adaptive to what-is, and never in human history has it been more imperative than it is now to let go of living out of stories of what was and come into the real challenges of what is. 

To have enlightened and effective societies we must first do the work of becoming effective and enlightened individuals. We must STOP LIVING INSIDE THE OLD STORIES. We have to be ready to face the very real possibility that the story of American society may be about to change dramatically in the coming years and it is imperative that those who want to shape that story in a more enlightened and compassionate way are unafraid and capable in the face of whatever new “what is” may come along.   We must be ready to break free into the “what-is” that unfolds moment to moment with a questioning and open mind.  There is no doubt that we can create beautiful lives individually and collectively, but only if they are built on the true shifting sands of what-is with humility, wonder, skill and faith that no matter the what-is we can find a path of action (or non-action) that will sustain and nourish us and lead our society in the path of enlightened evolution.

I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know…, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many find it hard to make sense of modern day America and they feel that sincere efforts to influence the society toward greater inclusion, fairness, ecological consciousness, toward public policies based in idealism and effectiveness don’t seem to be bringing the result they feel they need to maintain optimism. As a result, they are losing hope and feel like disengaging.  Listening to the news can be enough to send a person into depression. It could be asked, is the American Dream of life and society always improving over? Possibly, yes, if you think in terms of immediate results as you imagine them to be. But that’s the point. It is a dream of things always making sense as we interpret sense and of effort producing desired results as we want them to be. To be honest this is very egoic and narcissistic, and it is very American.

Does the current situation make sense? Of course it does. It is exactly the result of America being a materialistic, bigoted, dogmatic, jingoistic, instant-gratification, stimulation-addicted consumer society that is a major contributor to humanity’s current path toward destroying the ecological balance of the planet.  Adding to the discouragement, there are many, if not most, in America who either disagree with this assessment or seem to have very little concern about it.  AND… at the same time, in counterbalance, there is a growing presence of progressive and evolved political and social thinking taking root for a more inclusive, sustainable, and fair society than would have seemed possible only a short time ago.  There is a strong historic strain of democracy, responsibility and fairness that runs through the consciousness of our society that sometimes quite surprisingly turns public thinking around in what seems like quantum leaps. 

Recent elections have placed more women and minorities into office than ever, serious legislation concerning climate change and greater economic fairness are challenging the establishment, and in Chicago, a gay, black woman was elected mayor while exceptional minority and progressive politicians are succeeding across America.  Two powerful states of political consciousness, one regressive and the other progressive, strain our political and social system.  Our situation is, of course, reflective of our past trajectory into this moment exactly to these results.  This is the meaning of the Buddhist notion of karma.  The present is exactly the summation of the past.  To stay realistically engaged requires knowing this and seeing our current circumstance in a broad historic context.

Will sincere effort to bring us to a course correction toward idealism and sane public policy that actually addresses the problems we face bring good result?  Of course it will – yet most likely not in the time-frame many wish for or in quite the way we hope, nor will it happen without our suffering consequences from harmful conditions long established and continuing.  There is no escaping karma.  The problems that not only America but humanity faces are the result of an entire epoch of human history and evolution that has been based in human egoism, materialism, narcissism, and rigidly dogmatic belief systems quite disconnected from reality.  The problems we face will not be corrected without shifts in consciousness that seem nearly impossible given the current preponderant mindset, yet this shift is happening. 

There can be no doubt we will evolve and progress toward an order of harmony and wisdom that presently seems impossible.  This will happen because it must, and evolutionary dynamics are just as inexorable as karma.  We will adapt because we are challenged by vast social, economic, and geo-climactic forces, by the growing dysfunction of our social, economic, political and cultural institutions. How we adapt will determine whether the near future is beautiful and sustainable or dystopian, as is depicted in so many of the currently popular movies and television shows, with a deeply diminished quality of life in American society and on this planet.  In either case, we are a resilient and creative species, and Nature is endlessly creative and resilient.  The evolutionary trajectory of humanity eventually will lead us to living in the wisdom of harmony, and it is this harmony that is the Promised Land.

This brings us to another ancient Buddhist principle called dharma, the principle of the way things work, the laws of the Universe.  Dharma tells us that only through evolving the collective consciousness of human society will the trajectory of human society and life on this planet begin to move in significantly healthier and saner directions.  It also tells us that the collective consciousness of human society is progressed only through individuals who progress in consciousness, increasingly understanding and living within the truth that all phenomena are interrelated and interconnected.  Dharma tells us that the Universe and humanity-as-an-expression-of-the-Universe are inexorably evolving into more complex unities capable of manifesting intelligent harmony, and so, for one who understands dharma, all that is necessary is to find and manifest intelligent harmony in themselves, both personally and in the public sphere.  Karma and history will move humanity in the necessary direction. 

In Buddhism, one who understands and lives by dharma for the benefit of all beings is called a bodhisattva, an awakened being.  A bodhisattva knows that an evolved and enlightened human society is inevitable, in a sense, a promise, and knows they will most likely not live to see it, yet they dedicate their existence to its accomplishment.  This is known as The Path of the Bodhisattva, and a bodhisattva realizes that Life makes perfect sense. Karmic forces (the state of consciousness and the ensuing actions) have created the results we presently live with and will shape all future results. And, very importantly, a bodhisattva knows that the ultimate sense and purpose of Life is to evolve and to be committed to the betterment of life for all beings – because it is what is needed by all beings, not because it is what they need. 

What we can have faith in is that if we do our part to evolve in compassion and wisdom, the collective of humanity is just that much more compassionate and wise, and others will find inspiration and courage to make their own journey and to take their own stand for what is right and good.  We can have faith that no matter how much cruelty and ignorance are manifesting presently, it is less so than was previously and will be even less so in the future.  Within the human community there is an inexorable increase in wisdom and compassion with each passing generation.  There are periods of regression, most certainly, and it could well be argued that we are presently in such a regressive phase, but the pain, confusion, and harm done by this regression is really only setting the stage for waking people up and propelling us into the next evolutionary progression.  This is happening not for our own satisfaction and sense of accomplishment, but because it is inevitable.  We can have faith and find solace in knowing our own development and evolution are for the betterment of all beings, that we are instruments of human evolution. There is no place for personal discouragement, for these forces are not operating on the scale of the personal. It is in the full knowledge that, as the modern bodhisattva Dr. Martin Luther King declared – “I may not get there with you. But… we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

What is the Promised Land? It is an evolved human society built on harmony and wisdom buttressed by respect and compassion for all life. When will we get there? When a sufficient number of humans have done the work of becoming selfless – that is, wise and compassionate, aware and awake, thinking far less about how to make more of themselves while focusing far more on the well-being of their fellow humans and all the life that shares this planet, our collective home.  How does this happen? Through individuals doing the work of their own evolution and refusing to become discouraged, by doing little personal acts of kindness and compassion daily while we seek to do what we can to influence politics and policy, holding to a much longer vision than needing today’s efforts to yield the desired results today. It is in having the wisdom to see that even perhaps in a particular political policy or candidacy defeat today, we have articulated and handled ourselves in a way so as to realize a more compassionate and wise result tomorrow or next year or in ten years or a hundred years.  We WILL get to the Promised Land.  It is inevitable. The time is now.  The time is always now.  The future is built on now.  Be a bodhisattva. Do what is necessary to become awake and set the ground for others to become awake. This is how life can make sense.  This is how The Promised Land will be realized – for future generations.  And… we may be very surprised at what progress we can see in our lifetime.  For a person who is today seventy years old, they have seen barriers in racial, gender, and sexual identity discrimination fall in ways that could never have been anticipated in the world they were born into in the late 1940’s.  More work in the struggle for human rights and economic fairness needs to be done, as well as work in recognizing animal rights and the right of the Earth to health and balance.  This is the work of the next seventy years and beyond, and great progress will be accomplished.  This we can have faith in because progress has shown itself as the true long course of human history before.  We are shaping the karma of future generations today by doing what we can to shape a more resilient, idealistic, compassionate, and wise America and world.  Do not be discouraged; just do the work because the work is needed.  The Promised Land is just over the horizon.         

Who we are is the Universe peering into itself from billions of points of view. – Alan Watts

Zen teaching emphasizes the most important of all koans: “Who/what am I?”  Of course we have an immediate answer that it is “me,” a human being, a mind and body with a history and identity; to which the master replies,  “Superficially yes, but you must go deeper, go deeper.  Who/what is this ‘me’?  Meditate on this.” 

When you meditate, what is happening?  Is not meditation the stepping back of the sense of self from entanglement in sensations, thoughts and emotions into looking at the sensations, thoughts and emotions that flow through the field of mind?  So who/what is looking?  It cannot be the sensations, thoughts and emotions because they are what is being looked at.  Perhaps it works to say the sensations, thoughts and emotions are the egoic “me,” a personality with unique traits, but at the most fundamental level, who/what is looking? 

A very powerful practice can be to close your eyes and try meditating on the view beyond your closed eyelids.  You must realize that the closing of the eyelids does not extinguish the faculty of vision, it simply keeps it from being entangled in the immediate environment.  In a sense we are looking into infinity.  This can be very liberating and enlightening.  So returning to the koan, who/what is looking into infinity?  Is it your mind of thoughts and emotions?  It is quite possible that while doing this meditation, thoughts have ceased entirely, so certainly it is not the mind of thought.  Typically those initiated into meditation will answer that it is awareness that looks, but what is this awareness?

We have stumbled upon the energy of consciousness, that which we never give any consideration to in our culture.  Like fish swimming in water that have no sense of water, it is very difficult for us to have a sense of consciousness since consciousness is the constant of our experience.  We focus attention on the varying and changing contents of consciousness but not on consciousness itself.  Of course without consciousness we would have no experience of anything, but what happens when we begin to be aware of awareness, of consciousness?  Going deeper, we must now ask what is this consciousness?

Ancient Vedic culture, the precursor to Hindu and Buddhist culture, described the origin of existence as a universal consciousness (Brahma) that brought forth the form of the world and all the forms in the world, including human, and these forms are pervaded with consciousness and the consciousness of a human being is a microcosmic extension (Atman) of that macrocosmic consciousness.  Modern quantum and field theory physics describes a universe that is a unified field of proto-energy out of which the energy of matter as sub-atomic particles spontaneously emerge and then engage in the great dance of merging and joining and complexifying that eventually leads to a human being with a brain that is the most complex organization of matter in the known universe.  Furthermore, experiments and theoretical extrapolation have us stunned by evidence that the behavior of these sub-atomic particles, even the way they manifest varyingly as particle energy or wave energy, demonstrates consciousness and the capacity for inter-particle communication.  It seems this ancient cosmology that expresses existence in poetic language may well be finding validation through modern science!

In our human-centered culture and religions, we limit assigning meaningful consciousness to humans while acknowledging limited consciousness in animals, but is this an accurate identification of the realm of consciousness?  Consciousness is defined in a google search as “The state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings,” “The awareness or perception of something by a person,” and “The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.  Consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain.”  Immediately we are struck by identification of consciousness in these conventional definitions with humans and with the brain.  But, does a tree not have consciousness that turns its leaves to the sun, that causes its roots to reach to nourishment and water sources, that has trees even communicating with and nurturing other trees, as recent studies are indicating?  Is there not a type of consciousness that beats the heart and moves the lungs and performs a thousand intricate and balanced functions in every animal organism?  What of indigenous peoples who believed and lived within a world in which mountains and rivers, even rocks or places on the ground manifested different qualities of consciousness and even spoke to them?  Was this just superstition or a more refined ability to sense and resonate with consciousness that pervades all things?  Vedic culture believed that rather than consciousness emanating from us, we emanate from consciousness.  We are not a body and mind that has consciousness, we are consciousness that has a body and mind.

What if the answer to who/what am I? is that we are a biological technology evolved over 14 billion years by the Universe to interact creatively with itself, and that these complex brains that have a neural network design tantalizingly similar to the extrapolated patterns of the network structure of dark matter and energy (which make up 96% of the Universe) are microscopic reflections of this macroscopic design that function as receivers and tuners for consciousness energy originating from and as the infinite vastness of the Universe entering into the finite?  What if what we are is a portal for consciousness energy between the dimensions of the infinite and the finite?  The intuited truth of this postulation is in the summation of ancient Vedic cosmology voiced by Alan Watts in the opening quote of this column and there is no question that Buddhism has clearly identified the essence of who we are as awareness, the field of consciousness energy though which flows all the content of mind.  All that is left to have a cosmology and ontology that reconnects the human experience to the Universal is the recognition that the energy of consciousness is not personal, but rather universal, and that awareness is the individual channeling of this energy that pervades the Universe.

We currently have no sense of ourselves within an unfolding evolving cosmos and this leaves us adrift and insecure in the vastness of the universe, and so too on our planet, in our societies, our families, even our own skin. Even when people do look at the stars, it is usually within a romantic sense centered on themselves. But what if when looking into the starlit sky we could see ourselves?  What if we could see in the stars the source of every atom that comprises our bodies and the world around us and to have a sense that our eyes are the eyes of the Universe looking into itself, infinity gazing into the finite as well as the finite gazing into the infinite?  Would we not be more likely to see our existence as a responsibility to serve as an instrument of the Universe realizing itself – given the gift of a planet that is paradise – and would this not lead us to behave not as destructive consumers but in ways that honor the sacred task we have of understanding, preserving and creating within a great intimate dance?

Cosmologist Brian Swimme offers and warns, “We need to put our energy into inventing new cultural forms for initiating ourselves into an ecstatic sense of involvement with the community of beings that is the very universe.  If we refuse to devote ourselves to this work, we’ll just have to make the necessary adjustments to deal with the river of misery flowing out of the perverse way of life yoking insatiable greed with drugs known as consumerism.  Cosmology when it is alive and healthy in a culture evokes in the human a deep zest for life, a zest that is satisfying and revivifying.”  We could at last feel at home and with purpose in the Universe, on this planet, in our societies, our families and in our own skins.

Zen is the simplest yet most challenging of practices – it is to train in experiencing the simultaneity of the day-to-day with the eternal, the finite with the infinite, to know we are always both here in the most immediate way and in the vastness of existence. “Be here now” is not just a catchy phrase – it is the essential koan directing us to experience how we exist as immediately as this place where our feet stand and our senses perceive AND we are that which can only be perceived with the intuitive sense – that sense which our culture ignores completely – as infinite, the vast Universe that is also the here and now. Breathe and be. We are this flesh and blood AND the dust of stars AND the infinite streaming energy of timeless and boundaryless consciousness. To walk the world in this knowing is Zen. It is to be complete and free of the insecurity of never being enough that has plagued humanity for millennia.  When we know we are a wave on the vast ocean of infinite consciousness energy, meaning we are also the ocean, it is more than enough.  Wherever we are, it is home.

Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped. Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom. – #14 – The Tao Te Ching (Mitchell)

We are a society and culture mesmerized by the objects of the world. We find value in and through objects like our possessions, and one of our strongest myths tells us that material wealth will lead to happiness and well-being when evidence proves this is not so.  Likewise, we look to belonging to identity groups like our nationality, religion, race, political and interest group affiliations as well as our social status to give placement and meaning to our life.  We accumulate things and affiliations, seeking to allay a haunting feeling of not being enough, and ultimately no matter how many things and affiliations we acquire, this feeling continues.  We need to fill our lives in order to feel OK, and there just doesn’t ever seem to be enough, and we are seldom unequivocally OK.

On a much subtler level, this is true with our relationship to mind itself. In Buddhism, thoughts, emotions and sensations are referred to as “mental forms” and we tend to define mind and our subjective sense of self through our thoughts and emotions.  We seek pleasurable sensory experiences to enhance desirable emotions, as if this gives life special meaning.  We look for ideas in the world that conform to, confirm and expand the ideas we already have so as to buttress our sense of self.  Unfortunately all this seeking and accumulating of ideas and emotions can also entangle us in the contradictions of the contents of our mind and this can make life most uncomfortable, if not at times crazy.  The mind can become like a rat’s nest of entangled ideas and emotions that plagues us.  When all is done, we find that none of the forms, material or mental, can give us lasting happiness, peace and well-being.

So, as “mental forms,” sensations, thoughts and emotions, are the stuff, the objects of the mind, just as material objects are the stuff of our lives, we tend to fixate on these mental objects and confuse them for the totality of mind when they are no more the totality of the mind then material objects are the totality of the world. In both cases, the space in which the objects occur is quite neglected, and this neglect causes us to miss the true value and meaning of existence. A world made only of objects is impossible, there must be space in which they occur, and too many objects in a limited space is rightly called cramped. A compulsive hoarder’s home is an assault on the senses and we usually feel uncomfortable in cramped and cluttered places.  In the opposite direction, we are drawn to the experience of open space, and it is why we climb to mountain tops and seek out places of vista, and why deserts have a mystical quality to them. So too, our cramped and cluttered minds are quite uncomfortable, particularly when it feels like the runaway contents of our minds are closing in on us and there is no escaping their suffocation.

We have no cultural tradition for recognizing the spacious mind as the real source of comfort, peace, and well-being, and despite all evidence of how crazy and dangerous so many of our thoughts and emotions are, we invest the realm of thought with intelligence and our emotions with much of our sense of self.  We neglect all our experience that shows us that it is the spacious silent mind that is the true source of intelligence and wisdom.  We fail to give proper notice to how it is that when we are caught in swirling circles of thought and emotion, we might take a walk or a shower or bath, or play with the dog, or wash the dishes, and out of the silence the insight that had been eluding us emerges.  But nothing in our culture validates this, so few give this insight the affirmation deserved. Even our psychologies, philosophies, and religions are filled with complicated ideas that seem to bring us no closer to peace and wisdom.

That real happiness and well-being most often occur when NOTHING is happening, as during the quiet space of the moment in an experience in nature, with a treasured person, or when just sitting alone, gets completely overlooked.  An equally valuable insight is that just as we seek open physical vistas for comfort and inspiration, so too it is wise to look to a spacious and quiet mind for happiness, insight, and well-being. Yet, since this is not an object in the mind – you cannot seek it, as many a frustrated seeker experiences – you can only allow it.  As many an intellectual or spiritual seeker experiences, they may fill their mind with many esoteric ideas and engage in many elaborate spiritual practices, but it brings them no closer to peace.

Just as space is the natural environment of a room before it is filled with objects, space is the natural quality of mind before it is filled with the objects of thoughts, emotions and sensations. This you can only relax into, breathe into, allow its natural presence. It is always there, for it is truly who we are, not the clutter with which that we compulsively fill it. This space of pure consciousness is what Buddhism refers to as “original mind” – mind before the clutter – and it is what all of Buddhism and its practices of meditation and mindfulness are meant to awaken.

Mystic traditions of all cultures, including Judaism and Christianity, recognize the contemplative and meditative mind, the quiet mind that is not seeking, but rather sitting in receptive reflection, as essential for higher levels of inspiration, understanding and spiritual realization.  Even higher levels of scientific inquiry as well as artistic inspiration depend on quiet, intuitive receptivity for breakthroughs.  Instead of focusing on the contracted mental energy of thoughts, this receptivity requires expanded openness of the energy of consciousness.  “It returns to the realm of nothing.”

An open outdoor vista is a good place to encourage and support this allowing, yet it is important to realize that your own true nature already IS the infinitely vast open vista of pure uncluttered consciousness. As this spacious consciousness is what makes experiences in the world meaningful, when space is experienced as a connecting energetic force rather than a source of separation, so too, it is this spacious consciousness energy prior to thoughts, sensations and emotions that is what creates the sense of connection within us.  When we train ourselves to abide in this quiet stillness, this openness, even amidst the clutter and noise of the world, this intuitive connection and sense of well-being remain.  In the mystical language of Taoism and Zen, rather than striving to be somebody looking for something, we become nobody abiding in the realm of nothing while everything swirls around us.  The open vista of original mind is felt as our source and stability. I encourage you into this allowing and finding of that which is not objects in the mind, but rather the vastness of Being, the space of consciousness prior to its energy contracting into objects of sensation, thought and emotion.  Just relax, breathe, allow, and expand into the space that is within and all around – and then – the objects that arise within and out of the space will be imbued with the beauty and wisdom of Reality. You will no longer experience yourself as a separate object looking to the accumulation of objects, whether material or mental, to validate you. You will know yourself as the consciousness energy that is the space, which can value what is natural and true without needing anything, and this is happiness, peace and well-being. There is no need to seek it, for you already are it.  Just learn to relax into it.

Love is not what we become but who we already are. – Stephen Levine

Pay special attention to what happens to the energy of the space that exists between you and a person or anything that you love as you are experiencing that love.  Does it not come alive and connect you with what or who is loved?

Perhaps this insight sounds completely nonsensical, but it is one of life’s most important discoveries and illuminates what Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh refers to as “The Miracle of Mindfulness.”  All of Buddhist teaching is aimed at getting us to notice and pay attention to that which we typically overlook but which when closely observed and deeply experienced,begins to reveal the most important secrets of Life, and there is no more vital hidden truth in our culture than that the space between objects is living energy.  So too are the objects – even those we conventionally think of as inert – and this energy resonates with the quality of the consciousness of the person experiencing the space and the objects within it.  We are energetic beings in an energetic universe with consciousness energy pervading this unity.

So what is love?  We might describe it as to hold dear, to feel passion, desire, affection, to take pleasure in something or someone.  We know it is a very strong emotion that arises when we are very attracted to and strongly like or identify with something or someone, but does any of this really explain what is happening and why it is happening?  We need to know what is happening and why because we tend to have a rather passive sense of love – it happens or not – if it’s there it’s there, if it’s not, it’s not.  We don’t have much of a sense of whether we have any active role in creating love, cultivating it and sustaining it and this is unfortunate, for the cultivation of love is quite possible and very necessary for love to bloom optimally.  It is very important to know that we can have a very active and creative relationship with love, and that this knowledge contributes greatly to living an awakened life.

So – what is love?  Simply stated, it is connection.  Is it not?  For what is experienced when love is present if it is not connection?  But then, what is this connection?  As with every aspect of the human realm, there are two fundamental dimensions, and here I am addressing the egoic realm and the very poorly understood spiritual, or realm-of-Being dimension, that which we struggle to find words to describe, for our culture lacks any agreed-upon vocabulary for this most precious of experiences.  As we are a strongly materialistic culture, if an experience is not anchored in the material we tend to overlook it, and for this conversation concerning love, we will be entering what we might call the purely subjective heart-realm, and there is nothing material about it.

At the level of ego, that experience of our own separate and insecure identity in the world seeking to be buttressed and comforted, love is of course connection, but the quality of the connection is limited.  It is the experience of the ego connecting and identifying with a person, object or experience and seeking its own validation and significance through this experience.  It is the “I love it!” in response to a personal validation, victory, enhancement or stimulation, even if the “it” is another person.  The experience maintains a strongly dualistic quality even as a unifying connection occurs.  I am here – experiencing and loving that which is there.   If we pay very close attention, however, we might realize that there occurs an extension of our sense-of-self boundary to include the object of the love, and for this to happen, the space of consciousness energy that is our essence must amplify and now include the object of the love.  Almost amoeba-like an extension of the boundary of ourself extends and includes that which was not previously included.  To love means to have the sense of self expand to include what is loved – and this is non-dualistic; two becomes one in intense connection. The space between becomes alive with consciousness and connecting energy where it was previously experienced as a separation.  What is extended is the essential core of ourself and here we make a discovery: this essential core is love.

As consciousness energy extends and encompasses the object of love, the experience begins to shift from the egoic into the heart-realm, and now there is a very important choice to be made.  We can either retain much of our sense of identity in our separateness, continually assessing whether the enhancement of self-experience is sufficient to maintain the connection or we can release into real union – our Self-that-is-love encompassing that which is the focus of our attention.  If we remain primarily the separate ego-self, attention will drift, searching for some new experience.  We likely will find some deficiency in the object/situation/person, and the consciousness energy will diminish or withdraw completely.  We will return to our sense of separate and restless sense of self, and the thing, situation, or person that was loved becomes separate and just ordinary again, as do we.  Or – and here we have the opportunity to fully manifest ourselves as loving beings – we can, recognizing that our greatest fulfillment occurs in the state of connected oneness, deliberately energize the connection and sustain and amplify the loving heart-realm that is our truest self in enfoldment.  This is conscious loving.  We commit to the decision and intent to BE love.  Here, we surrender our separateness and commit to union.

To live the mystical life, the awakened life, is to know and practice this truth of the power of love as consciousness energy to connect with all the elements of Life all around us always.  It is to love all that passes through our field of consciousness – the bird in the tree and the tree, the clouds passing overhead and the warmth of the sun, even the previously insignificant or repulsive; it is to recognize and love as self everything.  This is, of course, particularly powerful and important with people, and of most importance with those with whom we are in loving relationships.  The wisdom traditions teach us that ego separates and conscious heart-felt presence connects, and this does not have to be random and accidental.  It can be the centerpiece of one’s spiritual practice, which is simultaneously a commitment to sane and healthy living, including our most significant relationships.  We can live as loving presence.

For this to occur, we must awaken to the realization of self-as-consciousness-as-love.  We have to take the concept of consciousness as energy that connects us to heart-realm out of the theoretical and into living reality and this is the real purpose of our mindfulness practice.  To do this, it is most helpful to repeatedly, choicefully, anchor into the present moment through our senses – seeing, hearing, touching the object, circumstance, or person with the intention to love without distraction.  We must be really present, as the heart-realm can only be accessed from within the present moment, realizing the present moment is the only actual reality.  Only then can silent, intuitive consciousness fully energize and our nature-as-consciousness-that-is-love come fully alive.  Presence, full presence without mental commenting or distraction, with full focus of consciousness-energy on the loved one, is essential.  Then we can deliberately further energize the space of consciousness with our loving essence to envelope what or who we have focused our loving intention upon to create what consciousness teacher Stephen Levine called The Beloved, a union of what was two that becomes one.

Loving human relationships are complicated.  Often they are filled with as much wound and disappointment as with shared beauty and this can be an obstacle to opening and sustaining the connection of the heart-realm in living consciousness energy.  Ego wants to hold on to and feed these resentments.  This is why all spiritual traditions have emphasized forgiveness and gratitude, and why making a practice of releasing any resentment or negative feeling towards our loved ones and replacing it with reasons for gratitude when the relationship is challenging is essential.  This shift from mental focus on the ego’s accounting system where resentment is stored (for the ego is always keeping track of whether it is getting what it wants) into the heart-space where gratitude is realized will open us and allow our consciousness energy-field to enfold and embrace, to shift us from two to one, from “me” to Beloved.  The Beloved is within you and right in front of you and all around you awaiting your choice to open and embrace with living consciousness energy, to discover the Beloved IS you.  The paradox is that while it is the ego that is tracking whether it is happy or not, the ego has no idea how to generate happiness.  It is the heart-realm that is the true source of happiness, both the giving and receiving of happiness, and for it to be actualized, the separation caused by the ego must be bridged and self-as-love uniting with Life realized.  When we open our heart-realm, understanding that this is really consciousness-energy, love – that which is our original and true nature – embraces us as it embraces others.  The Beloved comes alive as truly do our relationships and the entirety of our life.

“Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves… it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness.” –  Thich Nhat Hanh

Let me offer you a koan, one of those mess-with-your-mind word puzzles of Zen.  “Here we are.”  In the spirit of koan, if you penetrate deeply into the meaning of these words enlightenment awaits you.  Rational mind can get you to a surface understanding, but the full miracle, the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves, lies beyond the capacity of the rational mind.  That’s where a koan is supposed to take you, to the magical realm of intuitive insight.

The rational mind hears these words and says, “OK,” we are here, where else could we be?  Well, of course where we are is where our mind is, and much of the time, our mind is not “here.”  It is in there and then, or when or what-if.  We are not fully here.  We are here sufficiently to get by, to not trip over our feet, to hold a conversation, to fulfill a basic task, but we are not here in a way that the word “master” used by Thich Nhat Hanh could apply.  We are not completely here, wholeheartedly here, in a manner that could be transformative, that could restore us to wholeness.  All of nature has no problem being completely “here,” but for humans in contemporary culture, this can be a very great challenge.

If we are not here, where are we?  Of course, we are here physically, but who we are is certainly not our physical body.  I don’t think many would argue that a severely psychotic person, or a person in a coma is not truly here.  Given sufficient consideration, I think most would probably agree that who we are is a matter of consciousness.  Even a person who is severely distracted is often queried, “Where were you just now?”  They may be admonished to get their “head into the game,” the “game” being the matter at hand, here.

Even as we go about our lives assuming that we are “here,” it is worthwhile to ask, just where, actually, is a very significant part of us?  Wouldn’t we have to admit we are very much in our head in the where, when, what-if, world of mind-spin?  Are we not dispersed and unfocused in very profound ways?  We live in a time when inability to hold focus and attend with stability has been given a diagnostic label – attention-deficit disorder – and while most people do not fit the criteria for the disorder, few would say they are free of the symptoms.  So, most of us most of the time are only here, really here, in a rather superficial sense.

So, we might say to ourselves, like a tyrannical grade school teacher conjured in a bad dream, “Concentrate!  Really focus into being here!”  Should you do this, you might notice that you become rather tense.  Yes, concentration is an important element of being here, but concentration alone doesn’t seem to have this miraculous quality that Thich Nhat Hanh is calling us to with “mindfulness.”  And while the ability to concentrate has benefits, it hardly would rise to something we could call a miracle.

What then is this mindfulness that Thich Nhat Hanh attributes with miraculous power?  Let us come back to his use of the world wholeness.  Even in a state of intense concentration, when we are focusing into some element of the present moment, the descriptors natural and whole, and the word restore don’t seem applicable.  We are tense and there is a strong feeling of being separate from what we are concentrating on.  There is the “I” concentrating and there is the object of the concentration.  There is a clear division.

You might try an experiment to understand the difference between concentration and mindfulness.  Go outside and look at a tree.  Concentrate on the tree.  Really, eye squinting, concentrate on the tree.  Truly, you are present, yet nothing “miraculous” is happening.  Now, while concentrating on the tree, also notice your breathing, and notice the tension in your face and your body, and as you breathe, soften the tension, and with each exhalation, relax a little bit more – while still holding a very alert attention on the tree.  Awareness of your breathing is very important for this exercise.  Let the breathing be natural, not forced or regulated.  Still looking at the tree, notice ever more deeply the sensations of your breathing and your body.

After a little while, with this relaxing conscious breathing, we are still looking at the tree, but not concentrating now in the tensely focused manner.  Everything is softer.  Perhaps you may begin to notice small detail and texture to the branches, leaves, shape, and trunk of the tree.  You may begin to see the tree in more nuanced relationship to the other trees and landscape around it.  Instead of a very narrow focus, your focus may begin to expand, still with the tree at the center of the field of focus, but more and more of the context in which the tree appears becomes apparent whereas in the state of intense concentration, the tree alone was your field of focus.  You could not, in a sense, see the branches or the forest for the tree.

You may begin to be aware of the space in which the tree appears and in which everything around the tree appears, and as you continue with this softened directed awareness of the tree and its surroundings, it may occur to you that you are also in this environment that centers on the tree.  Instead of experiencing the tree as “over there” and you being “here” looking at and concentrating on the tree, you may begin to experience that “here” is the tree and you and the bird flying overhead and the cloud in the sky and the grass beneath your feet, all held in a relaxed state of vibrant presence.  In a flash of a moment, a feeling of wholeness, connectedness, restoration of a sense of place and belonging in this world may come over you.

You might feel real love for this tree that was just another tree only a few moments ago and with it a deepened sense of love for life, all of life.  If someone came along with a chainsaw and said they were there to cut down this tree, you might find this to be quite upsetting, for you have felt connection with this tree, and with the environment of the tree.  If the person with the chainsaw said the tree was badly diseased and had to be cut down, you would be sad but understand.  If the chainsaw person said they just hated raking leaves so they were cutting down the tree, you might have a deep sense of how wrong it is for people to have such a callous and destructive attitude toward nature and its beauty.

The full beauty and vulnerability of life may arise as a deep knowing in you.  That life is this beauty, and that this beauty and life are transitory and therefore all the more worthy of your full presence and appreciation may arise within you, and the wrong that is the mindless trampling of this beauty by those who cannot see it, but can only see the mind-spin of their shallow likes and dislikes may become very clear to you.  That we ARE this life in kinship with the tree and the birds and the lakes and the rivers and the air that we breathe and all the animals and people of this world may arise within you.  And in this knowing and experiencing we may feel a kind of wholeness that reconnects us to a feeling we last had as a small child, and perhaps we feel restored and as master of our life and not mindlessly lost in the busyness and striving we had come to accept as normal, but always with great unease.

This is mindfulness.  This is the miracle of mindfulness.

“This moment, what is lacking?” is a classic koan.  Allowing that the moment is, in fact, the totality of all experience, the answer is, “nothing is lacking.”  The moment contains everything.  To borrow a phrase from Ram Dass, the moment is “thick.”  It contains not only what is occurring in the present, but also past and future.  It contains happiness.  It contains sadness.  It contains good. It contains evil.  It contains satisfaction.  It contains want.  It contains love.  It contains hatred.  It contains the physical.  It contains the mental.  It contains the spiritual.  It contains you and me and everyone and all life.  When does the moment begin; when does it end?  Where is it not the moment?  It is as immediate as the blink of your eye and as vast as the Universe.

We might find ourselves realizing that everything occurring everywhere and all that has ever occurred or will ever occur exists only in the vast moment that is the Universe, and that all that exists does so because of what precedes in the flow of the great Universal moment and all that will be is the result of seeds planted in this moment, and so their fruition is connected with this moment. We might realize that “here we are” is all and everything, when a moment ago, in that universe in our minds where we and the tree were very separate entities in a universe of nothing but separate entities, there was just a tree we were squinting at while we tried to wrestle all the there and then and what-if in our mind into some semblance of quietude.   And we might have the insight that all the where and when and what-if swirling in our minds and all our likes and dislikes are pretty petty in the great Everything that is Now, and we may begin to let go of some of that mind-spin to find we are capable of living from a much quieter, peaceful and compassionate place.  I ask you, wouldn’t you call that a miracle?

“The greatest sin is to be unconscious.” – Carl Jung

In its original meaning, from the ancient Greek and also in Hebrew, to “sin” is to miss the mark, the term drawn from the world of archery.  It also has as its meaning, “to be in error.”  It is pointing us to the realization of what the purpose of our human life is about – and to miss it is to be in profound error, leading to life-negating consequences.

The 20^th Century Jewish theologian and mystic Abraham Heschel spoke of the origin of sin to be “in denial of the sublime wonder of life.”  In other words, Heschel is saying that to fail to be conscious of our being in the midst of mystery, of Creation unfolding, and to fail to be deeply present, curious and reverent in approaching this mystery will surely cause us to miss the point of life and will have us behaving in ways that are in error – disrespectful, manipulative, exploitive and harmful.  These attitudes form the precondition for egregious behavior, in other words, sin.

From this “sinful” perspective, we will objectify ourselves, others, and all that is in the world, and our relationships consequently will be conflictual and utilitarian rather than respectful and sincere.  Careless and thoughtless harm generates from such an attitude.  The cause of any action that could be called “sinful,” therefore, is a state of mind that is deeply in error – one that entirely misses the mark of the purpose of our existence as to be in harmony with the miracle that is Creation.

The issue of consciousness becomes relevant here in that when we look deeply at a thing, event, or a circumstance we begin to see detail, subtleties and connections not noticed by superficial looking.  What might seem isolated and disconnected, upon deeper examination, may begin to reveal subtle connections, and the more deeply we are able to look, that is, the more consciousness we bring to the investigation, the more subtle and far-reaching the connections reveal themselves to be.  From Jung’s depth psychology perspective, and from a Buddhist perspective, to be conscious is to see the event taking place within contexts of infinite connections without which the thing cannot exist.

In illustration of this point, Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is known to offer the observation that this paper you hold is more than just a paper.  It is also tree, soil, sun, rain, the labor and the creativity and effort of the writer, the editor, the printers, the paper millers, etc.; in fact, if you look deeply enough, you can see the entire universe and its evolutionary history happening in this interface of the paper and the person who reads it, who brings consciousness to the event of seeing.  We begin to experience mystery, that is, a knowing that is both particular and vast – ultimately beyond our ability to articulate other than perhaps as poetry and metaphor.  The deeply observational consciousness of modern science tells us this is true, and the deeply intuitive consciousness of the mystic has told us of this truth for thousands of years.

And so too, what happens when we look deeply at ourselves?  Just as when we look deeply at what occurs seemingly outside of us, when we look deeply at and inside ourselves, we begin to be conscious of infinite subtle levels of connection, process and mystery.  We begin to be conscious that this seeming separateness is an illusion.  We begin to experience that inside, outside, self and other are all happening within one thing, the greatest mystery of all, consciousness itself.  Now we are arriving at the definition of consciousness that Jung is addressing – consciousness examining mind happening in consciousness, where that which looks discovers it is looking at itself from across dimensions and is capable of great compassion and insight; even realizing the looking becomes like an act of prayer, a communication with the infinite petitioned by the finite.  Sublime wonder and a sense of sacredness begin to arise naturally.

Much of Jung’s work focused on archetypes, that is, symbols and signs that point to deep and universal human psychic experiences, and the entire archetypal concept of God and the reasons religions exist are because of this human capacity for intuiting that consciousness is not some faculty of our separateness, but rather the vehicle of discovering our connectedness with all that is.  To be unconscious in this context is to be held by the sway of the myth of our own separateness and the separateness of all that comprises life, and even to create sciences, psychologies and religions that emphasize this separateness.  It is from this objectifying perspective, as Heschel observed, that we seek to make more of ourselves, to allay our terror at not being enough, by diminishing and recklessly exploiting what is perceived as not us, and the result is “sin.”  The result is the missing of the mark, the great error of living in insatiable hunger to fill a hole in our sense of being, what the 17^th Century scientist/theologian Blaise Pascal described as “The God Shaped Hole.”

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.  –  Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)

And we ask, what is this God that can fill this hole?  It certainly cannot be the conception of God that creates bloody lines of religious division throughout human history.  It has to be the realization of the unity of all things within which, and as an expression of, we exist.  It is the wonder that reveals itself when we look deeply enough and find, as mystics of all cultures have with their various meditative arts, that who we are is, as theologian/philosopher Alan Watts noted “the Universe peering into itself, from billions of points of view.”  We are consciousness that has a human life, body and mind so as to experience existence, and the natural result of this discovery is profound and sublime wonder.  Thus, finally, we reclaim our capacity to hit the mark, to be without error in our experience of this unity.

Only this wonder and discovery can fill the hole.  We slowly come to realize that who we are IS consciousness and that like the energy of matter, the energy of consciousness is a fact of the Universe, and that energy of either dimension shares the common property of indestructibility. The form, the vehicle of the energy is impermanent, yet the energy itself is indestructible. We have found and hit the mark.  This journey into consciousness, into sublime wonder, fills us and there is no longer a need for coercive morality policing a “sinful” nature for we no longer are in error as to who or what we are.  The fear that comes with being unconscious of this truth leaves us.  We are each other and we are the world and the Universe itself.  There is no abyss except in our mistaken state of unconsciousness, and there is nothing to fill for we already are everything.  We are the dust of stars and the consciousness of life itself journeying as a human being discovering we are, always have been and can never be anywhere but home in the vast Universe of here and now.   How sublimely wondrous!

Don’t Take Anything Personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. – From The Four Agreements don Miguel Ruiz

We take things so personally.  If someone likes us, we tend to like them and feel good about ourselves.  If someone dislikes us, we generally dislike them and can have our sense of well-being and personal peace disrupted.  If the world and the events around us are playing out in ways we favor, we are generally happy.  If the world and events around us are playing out in ways we do not favor, our happiness and well-being are typically affected negatively.  This can be in regard to something as clearly impersonal as the weather, yet we make it personal.  When it involves another person or groups of people, when it involves our personal desires and ambitions, we tend to take it very personally.

You might ask, “Shouldn’t we care what others think of us and shouldn’t we care if life is the way we want it to be?”  And the answer has to be yes and no.  Caring is one thing.  Personalizing is another.  To care means that we are taking circumstances and people seriously, and we care whether some sense of greater good is being served in how events are unfolding.  Personalizing means we are being a weathervane for every wind that blows, and there can be some very cruel winds in this world.

It is not uncommon for people to be having real difficulty with another person.  It may be that for whatever reason someone has targeted them and is behaving in a bullying and intimidating manner, or it may be that someone is being disrespectful to them, or ignoring them, or manipulating them.  There are so many ways that people behave that can be taken as assaults on our dignity, autonomy and value.  Likewise, the events of the world and the circumstances of our lives can turn distinctly to our disliking and personal disadvantage.

Should we care?  Yes.  We should care to understand what is happening and why, and we should care to do what we can if a situation can be addressed so as to bring about some greater understanding and we can address its effect in a way that minimizes harm and increases general benefit.  Should we personalize and find our own sense of well-being and balance dependent on people and events being the way we want them to be?  Of course not.  When we have our sense of balance, well-being and confidence dependent on events and persons outside of us, we have no real balance, well-being and confidence at all.

As for interpersonal difficulties, don Miguel Ruiz’s advice in the Four Agreements is very wise.  It resonates with a maxim from the Gestalt Therapy founder Fritz Perls who offered the observation, “Thou art projection.”  Human beings most often have a sense of themselves and the world that is not what is real and true, but rather is the amalgam of psychological, social and cultural conditioning creating a virtual reality of what they believe to be real, and they project this virtual reality onto others and the world.  In a very real sense, we are projection screens for others and they are projections screens for us.  Everyone is projecting their own assumptions and personal history and neurotic tendencies onto each other.  So it clearly cannot be wise to invest our sense of balance, security and well-being in this multi-plex of movies that is any gathering of people or set of circumstances.

I like to offer in illustration that we could take ten random people off the street and have them experience a person for a day, and then interview these ten people and we would get a breakdown of opinion that would roughly have three of them really liking the person, three of them not particularly liking the person and the other four pretty much indifferent.  Consider this when the next person out of ten is giving you a hard time and your whole sense of balance is being thrown by that person.

As for circumstances, it is important to pay attention to how everything can be going along just fine and then something “goes wrong” – and we become completely taken over by what we are judging to have gone wrong.  There are several lessons to be learned here.  The first is that we pay very little attention to what is going right – just like we give very little mental energy to the people who like us or have very little opinion of us.  That’s because these circumstances and people are not feeding into the insecurities of our ego.

A sad truth is that most people have really very insecure egos.  It’s kind of the state of affairs in our society.  It isn’t our fault and it doesn’t make us bad.  We are all shaped and conditioned by those psychological, social and cultural factors I mentioned earlier, and in our society, it is quite rare for a person to be raised in a manner that results in them being calmly confident and relatively free of depending on circumstances for their sense of well-being.  So, circumstances and other people’s behavior and opinions play a very great role in a person’s confidence and well-being, and in this matter, we tend to be a bit paranoid, that is, looking for the circumstances and people that shake our happiness and confidence.  And of course, we will find them, for life is everything and all kinds of people and all kinds of circumstances.  If we allowed all the things that go right and all the nice people who treat us quite well to register with the same importance we give to the problematic situations and people, we would not tend to get shaken so readily.

The second factor is this issue of what’s good and what’s bad for us.  There is a truth in psychological and spiritual teachings that difficult situations and people are really beneficial to us, for they give us the opportunity to see where our conditioning needs some attending, where our skill-set with life could use some development and improvement.  All of us can relate that there are times in our life that have been difficult and we would have absolutely preferred not to have gone through them, yet we can also look back and realize that often these times were ones when we learned a great deal about ourselves and about life.  They were times when, although difficult, we perhaps achieved some real growth, became more skillful, more discerning and more compassionate.  They were times when perhaps we became more discerning at the difference between compassion and codependence, perhaps more confident in our ability to handle the travails and setbacks of life, and learned better what to value and what not to, and which people to trust and which not to trust.  We may even have learned how to not trust someone compassionately, that is, to realize it is only their conditioning that has them behaving in this untrustworthy manner, so there is no need to dislike or hate them, that it is simply not wise to take them into our zone of trust, and certainly not wise to take their opinions and behavior personally.

There is a Zen saying that “obstacles do not block the path, obstacles are the path,” and it is that saying that applies here.  What is important is whether we will take these “difficult” times as opportunities, or whether we take them personally as set-backs and defeats, as confirmation that we are somehow defective, inadequate and not up to the challenges of life.

Life is perfect.  It is perfectly all things, and we are expressions of life, and so, we too are perfect, capable of facing all challenges if we hold our center knowing we are expressions of life.  If we face our challenges with curiosity and compassion rather than fear and projection, we can manage anything and anyone.  Another Zen saying says, “You may kill me, but you cannot defeat me.”  Not when I truly know who I am, and live in the unshakeable sense of “I am,” for that is what we are.  Not “I am this or that,” but rather simply and unshakably, “I am.”  Our spiritual and psychological journey is arriving in this unshakeable realization of who we are as a Being that is an expression of the Universe just like a bear or a bird that takes nothing personally and just lives the life it is given as skillfully as its faculties will allow.   Nothing is personal.  It’s just another thing to be understood and engaged in the great and sacred cosmic dance of life.

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 sepa