The Awesome Truth Series

[Reefs]

Jun 24, 2022 14:34:36 GMT -5 maxdprophet said:

Jun 14, 2022 21:59:01 GMT -5 Reefs said:

This term 'creating from the inside out' is actually one of those buzz words A-H use a lot. And in the deliberate creation context, it essentially means the same as Alan describes it. It's the difference between making things happen (forced, efforting) and letting, allowing things happen (naturally, effortlessly). People often misunderstand this LOA/deliberate creation business in a very fundamental way. The fundamental principle is "ask and it is given". So the point is not to put in effort via positive thinking, visualizations, affirmations or skillful action in order to will or force what we want into place - relationships, things and events. That's like making artificial flowers. The point is to be in a state of being that we prefer and then everything around us will naturally and automagically adjust to and reflect that state of being - relationships, things and events. And that's more like a flower growing, naturally and effortlessly. So this disconnected action orientation in the Western world shows a fundamental misconception of how nature or creation in general works. Sure, effort and action and nose to the grindstone gets things done, but compared to the natural and effortless unfolding we see in nature, the results are not really that impressive and also not that long-lasting and usually create additional problems that then have to get fixed with even more disconnected action. So I think this is a very important distinction Alan is illustrating here, the focus on being vs. doing. After all, we are human beings, not human doings, hehe.

If one is in a state of being we prefer and everything is automagically adjusting to reflect this, what motivates even the asking of 'ask and it is given'?  Wouldn't whatever it is just appear effortlessly anyway, without even a question?  Is the state of being where this principle holds sway a state that is great-in-every-way-(except-for-<insert list>)? 

Contrast! There's wanted and unwanted aspects in everything. 

[Reefs]

All,

Off-topic discussion has been moved here.


R

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

1. Spontaneity vs. Discipline


There are some problems which Western people have in understanding the life of Zen... And I think the central problem is the question of whether Zen is a kind of capricious do-as-you-like spontaneity or whether it's a very rigorous discipline.

If you read, say, a book like "The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac, you might get the impression that Zen is simply living the way you feel, following the natural rhythm of your own spontaneous inner life. On the other hand, if you read some of the books by Doctor Suzuki or other authorities on Zen, you would gather quite the contrary, that it is an extremely rugged and difficult undertaking. And what the old masters have to say about this is sometimes rather confusing.

For example, the old Chinese master Lin-Chi has this to say:

In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Move your bowels, pass water. When you're hungry, eat. When you're tired, go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me. But the wise will understand.

And then another old master, Ma-Tsu, says:

In the Way [that is the Dao] there is nothing to discipline oneself in. If there were, the completion of such discipline would be the destruction of the Dao. On the other hand, if there is no discipline at all, one remains an ignoramus.

So they seem to say no, it isn't a discipline. And yet, yes, it is.

And therefore, we outsiders, trying to understand what's going on, remain profoundly puzzled. For on the one hand, we see the kind of floating life by the old masters, the life of cloud and water. As I told you, a Zen monk is called unsui (雲水) which means that he drifts like a cloud and flows like water. But on the other hand, here they are in their monasteries, or, more correctly, seminaries, living a very rugged life indeed, under the stern supervision of their teacher.

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

2. A World Of Complete Relativity

There is a special word which designates the fundamental Buddhist idea of the character of the universe in which we live. And this Sanskrit word is the Dharmadhatu. The word "Dharma" has many meanings in Sanskrit. Sometimes it's 'doctrine'. And sometimes it's 'method'. But here, I would say it means something like 'function'. And "dhatu" means 'realm' or 'world'.

So this is the doctrine of the whole functioning of the universe. And it gives us a picture of a universe which is completely relativistic. What does that mean? If you stand on the Earth, it seems to you that the Moon is moving. If you stand on the Moon, it seems that the Earth is moving.

And there's a Zen poem which says:

Empty handed I go,
And yet a spade is in my hand.
I walk on foot, and yet,
I'm riding the back of an ox.
When I cross the river,
The bridge flows and the water is still.

In other words, I don't know what an empty hand is, except in relation to a hand with something in it. I don't know what it is to walk on foot, unless it's in relation to some other kind of transportation, such as riding. And I don't notice motion unless it's a relationship between something that's still and something that's moving.

And so where you've got an idea of the universe in which everything is relative to everything else, you have, as it were, a scheme of interconnections between innumerable points, reminiscent of a spider's web with dew on it or of the image of Indra's Net, which is a tremendous collection of jewels, all linked together in such a way that each jewel contains the reflection of all the other jewels:





And in this sense then, Buddhist doctrine is saying that our universe is so interconnected in all its parts that one part of it, so-called, can exist only in relation to all the others. All motion, too, is in relation to all other motion.

It works, as we would say in physical theory, as a field of forces. There is no separate center in which any motion or activity originates. All activity that occurs at any spot, as it were, originates over the whole system. And this is another meaning of the Daoist idea of wu-wei.

You remember this term, "wu-wei" (無為), ["wei" 為 meaning] 'acting' or 'striving'. The deeper meaning of this idea is that nothing acts of itself. There is, as it were, no such thing as an agent. For action is the nature of the whole thing. And it, as it were, appears in one place in relation to stillness in another, and so on.

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

3. The Three Deceptions Of Social Order

Now, when you have a highly relative system of this nature, if you want to introduce into it some kind of order, as we want to introduce order into society, we can't base a social order on a completely relative conception of the world. Because in order to have cosmos instead of chaos, you've got to have some standards. But since these standards don't exactly exist in the universe, we invent them.

And therefore our social life depends, as it were, on practicing certain deceptions. The Western philosopher Vaihinger, invented the term the philosophy of "as if." And all social order and communication depends upon certain deceptions being practiced.

And I would say these deceptions are as follows:

The first deception is that there are things. That is to say that these vortices or nexuses in the total pattern of the universe are real and separate from each other and can be treated as such. In other words, to describe, to talk about the world, we have to break it down into various different units. Just in the same way if you're going to eat a chicken, you have to chop it up in sections. And it's easier to eat that way. But the cut-up fryer doesn't come out of the egg. It isn't found in nature. Nor do you find eggs where there are no chickens. Nor do you find chickens where there is no environment suitable to them, and so on. So the pretense that things are separable for each other is necessary in order to think and talk about them.

The next thing we have to pretend is that there are agents. That, in other words, the human individual is a separate thing, originating action and responsible for it. But in this conception of the completely relative universe, action does not originate at any particular spot. It's a property of the whole field, as it were, focusing action at these spots. But for purposes of social intercourse, we have to pretend that we are individual agents from whom action comes. And this pretense is enhanced by the third thing, the rewards and punishments.

Now, this is terribly important. The reward for regarding oneself as a responsible agent and acting accordingly is a promise of something good coming in the future, whether it be in this life or whether it be in some other life. So that we are constantly attracted and kept at this game based on these three deceptions by living for a good thing coming in the future. And this, as it were, conceals from us what our own proverb tells us in saying, tomorrow never comes. We are only really ever alive now. And we get distracted from living fully now by having our eye on the future. Now, of course, there is a reasonable advantage in planning for the future. But a person who is, as it were, hypnotized by the future and unable to be awake now, really has no use in planning for the future because when his plans develop, he won't really be able to enjoy them.

Punishments are not only the punishments that parents and teachers mete out to recalcitrant children, but we begin to get the feeling that, for example, things like disease or accidents are punishments. And that death, too, is a punishment. And as if that weren't sufficient, societies have always invented a complicated system of post-mortem retribution, various heavens and hells, whether they're permanent or impermanent, in which the rewards and punishments are further extended.

Now, this system of deceptions—we could say creative deceptions. I don't want the word "deception" to have a bad favor—is inculcated into us in childhood, in every culture in the world. And it leaves a permanent mark on us. The mark being that we come to believe that these three things are real.

[Reefs]

AW: The first deception is that there are things. That is to say that these vortices or nexuses in the total pattern of the universe are real and separate from each other and can be treated as such. In other words, to describe, to talk about the world, we have to break it down into various different units. Just in the same way if you're going to eat a chicken, you have to chop it up in sections. And it's easier to eat that way. But the cut-up fryer doesn't come out of the egg. It isn't found in nature. Nor do you find eggs where there are no chickens. Nor do you find chickens where there is no environment suitable to them, and so on. So the pretense that things are separable for each other is necessary in order to think and talk about them.

This is a really good analogy. In order to consume something mentally, in order to digest it mentally, it has to come in thing-ified form. Or else it would be mentally inedible, indigestible. It can't be taken in directly, as a whole, as it is. It has to be broken down into logical classes, abstract mental categories. And so, the world perceived that way, the world taken in that way, will always remain piecemeal, no matter how hard we try to re-construct it into something whole again, by trying to glue all the pieces together again, by trying to relate all the pieces to each other. It's essence, what is originally holding it together, will be lost in the thing-ifying, in the mentally chopping-up process. It can't be mentally reverse-engineered again, because its essence is lost. You can't restore the live chicken from the pieces after you've chopped it up, even though you've got all the individual pieces. 

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

4. Freeing Human Beings From Deceptions

Having accomplished the job of creating a social discipline and of getting human beings to step to the right paces, to dance, as it were, to the tune played by the piper, having done that, they are burned into us. And so we come to feel that we really are separate things. That we are agents and sources of action. That we are actually responsible for what we do. That there is that ego thing inside us which is the initiator, the doer, the will behind all action.

And so we also come to believe in these various rewards and punishments, whether it be the Christian system of heaven and hell, or whether it be the Hindu/Buddhist system of transmigration or reincarnation, living life after life after life, inheriting in each following life the karma or destiny which we prepared for ourselves in the preceding one. And this is very convenient because then there is no, as it were, way of escaping the police. There are celestial police, as well as terrestrial police. And by this, we are kept in order.

But you see, this stratagem of these social deceptions is really like a raft that we use to cross a river. When we have, in young people, inculcated the order, to go on being taken in by these deceptions is like picking up the raft when you've crossed to the opposite bank and carrying it with you. And it becomes a burden.

And so what Zen is basically, is a way of freeing human beings from those deceptions, returning them to the vision of the world in its complete relativity. The training which one goes through with a Zen teacher shall we say lifts these deceptions off one's mind.

[Reefs]

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

5. The Unreality Of The Individual Agent

Now, you might say, “I can understand intellectually. I can understand the idea that I only seem to be an agent, a source of action. And that things only seem to be separate from each other, but are actually interconnected. But does this make me feel any different inside?”

And you might say, “Well, no, I don't think it really does. To understand it fully, I would like to change the way I feel.” But here comes the crucial point in the understanding of Zen. On the one hand, if you set out to change the way you feel, that might be called a discipline. On the other hand, if you decide simply to accept the way you feel and not try to change your inner feelings at all, that might be called letting things alone.

But here's the point. If you have understood clearly that you as a separate will or a separate ego are a fiction, then, on the one hand, you can't change it. And on the other hand, you can't do nothing about it. Because there is no agent, no separate doer, either to do something about it or to do nothing about it.

And so this situation seems, as it were, paralyzing if you can't do, and if you can't don't, what's going to happen? But the point of this is that that paralysis is a realization of the unreality of the individual agent.

So what happens? From this point, one ceases to take one's self seriously. Now, of course, there is always a danger in not taking the things seriously which society says we should take seriously. There's the case of the raw youth, the sort of juvenile delinquent type who is in revolt against society and would use the experiences and ideas of Buddhism to justify that revolution. And that is why the practice in Asia is to reveal this point of view only to those who are socially mature.

And so the discipline of the Zen school is a safeguard for the dangerous understanding, or the dangerous insight, which is there, being hatched. And so all those rigorous tests which I explained, the rigorous regimen of life, these, as it were, do not directly produce the understanding. That they are, as it were, the guarded stockade around it.

Zen, you see, is fundamentally an insight. The recognition, in other words, of the deception, the "as ifness" of these fundamental assumptions about the world, which are necessary to social life. But then, when you don't take them seriously anymore, when you don't take your own separate existence seriously anymore, then you have, as it were, been inwardly relieved of the burden of this feeling of responsibility
which society inculcates.

So you might say that the object of Zen is not to obliterate the order of society or to get rid of its conventions, but to take them lightly, to treat the conventional, unconventionally.

[unseekingseeker]

Jul 30, 2022 21:32:36 GMT -5 Reefs said:

The Life of Zen (S01 E14)

5. The Unreality Of The Individual Agent

“So you might say that the object of Zen is not to obliterate the order of society or to get rid of its conventions, but to take them lightly, to treat the conventional, unconventionally.”

This dilemma keeps cropping up ~ how to be a non-doer, a receptor, unresistant and yet be focused, mindful, attentive, aware.

Taking a step back, we see that all ‘paths’ are essentially searching for a deeper truth, a lasting joy, something that expands our aliveness. The serious aspirants are those who have recognised that the external ephemeral cannot offer these attributes, so they go in, within, essentially internalising attention. Now, this is a choice, a kind of burning yearning, effortlessly vibrant.

The problem of doership arises because we are here in this-ness of body-mind and are habituated to strive for attaining objects of heart’s desire. However, here, there’s nothing to seize but rather to connect, to flow, to meld … to love, to become love. Thus, there’s no paradox. Accepting ego identity as an interface necessary to function in body vehicle but assigning it the role of an instrument, a sensor, if you will, it’s impulses recede, resistance ebbs. our emptiness magnetises form which draws in the current ~ we can call it Chi, kundalini, life breath, Holy Spirit, it’s all the same.

Once the divine energy pervades us, we are transformed, transmuted, in as we vibrationally shift in physicality, cognisant to and rapturous in the bliss current. This, apart from being a wonderful state, that too in permanence, it fixates our attention in the flow. The zen mode or meditational orientation is automatically enabled ~ not by thinking but by so becoming.

The tricky stage is resting in emptiness before getting to fullness. Or plateaus after glimpsing peaks, what some call, the dark night of the soul. The searching stage is doership for we use free will to rotate polarity without knowing what’s on offer. We yet do so because we’ve recognised that the external is a dead end. Yet, the shift perhaps cannot be held steady unless we receive grace. Who wants to be in a dark abyss?

Speaking for myself, I recall how earlier on, meditation was a euphemism for concentration, simply because thoughts were always present. Only by contemplation, slowing down thoughts, words, deeds, gradually it became possible to abide in thought rested stillness. Poets, musicians, artists, right brained people find this easier.

So the zen mode, receptive, aware, non-judging, poised in animation of astonishment and wonderment without any desire ~ it’s a state of emptiness vivified by the bliss current in my view. Void centric stillness.

[Reefs]

Jul 31, 2022 0:16:03 GMT -5 unseekingseeker said:

Jul 30, 2022 21:32:36 GMT -5 Reefs said:

This dilemma keeps cropping up ~ how to be a non-doer, a receptor, unresistant and yet be focused, mindful, attentive, aware.

Taking a step back, we see that all ‘paths’ are essentially searching for a deeper truth, a lasting joy, something that expands our aliveness. The serious aspirants are those who have recognised that the external ephemeral cannot offer these attributes, so they go in, within, essentially internalising attention. Now, this is a choice, a kind of burning yearning, effortlessly vibrant.

The problem of doership arises because we are here in this-ness of body-mind and are habituated to strive for attaining objects of heart’s desire. However, here, there’s nothing to seize but rather to connect, to flow, to meld … to love, to become love. Thus, there’s no paradox. Accepting ego identity as an interface necessary to function in body vehicle but assigning it the role of an instrument, a sensor, if you will, it’s impulses recede, resistance ebbs. our emptiness magnetises form which draws in the current ~ we can call it Chi, kundalini, life breath, Holy Spirit, it’s all the same.

Once the divine energy pervades us, we are transformed, transmuted, in as we vibrationally shift in physicality, cognisant to and rapturous in the bliss current. This, apart from being a wonderful state, that too in permanence, it fixates our attention in the flow. The zen mode or meditational orientation is automatically enabled ~ not by thinking but by so becoming.

The tricky stage is resting in emptiness before getting to fullness. Or plateaus after glimpsing peaks, what some call, the dark night of the soul. The searching stage is doership for we use free will to rotate polarity without knowing what’s on offer. We yet do so because we’ve recognised that the external is a dead end. Yet, the shift perhaps cannot be held steady unless we receive grace. Who wants to be in a dark abyss?

Speaking for myself, I recall how earlier on, meditation was a euphemism for concentration, simply because thoughts were always present. Only by contemplation, slowing down thoughts, words, deeds, gradually it became possible to abide in thought rested stillness. Poets, musicians, artists, right brained people find this easier.

So the zen mode, receptive, aware, non-judging, poised in animation of astonishment and wonderment without any desire ~ it’s a state of emptiness vivified by the bliss current in my view. Void centric stillness.

(Non-)volition is one of the trickiest topics in spirituality. It can be approached from a philosophical or practical perspective. Wei Wu Wei wrote a book about it, All Else Is Bondage: Non-Volitional Living. It's a highly abstract, purely philosophical treatise on non-volition. With some reservations, I think it's really good book. Check it out here:

web.archive.org/web/20161221013906/http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/aeibcontents.html

From an entirely practical perspective, if you have any reference for deep flow, then you already got a taste of what non-volitional living means. 

[unseekingseeker]

@ Reefs ~ true, Wei Wu Wei is abstract as is Kant and yet it cannot be denied that the noumena wherefrom springs phenomena or manifestation lies behind a veil that rational mind cannot penetrate.

The terms employed to point out to nuances of realisation vary from culture to culture, from practice (or non-practice) to practice. For example, the Ashtavakra Gita is equally abstract as is any non-dual recognition in active awareness.

Take Samadhi for instance. A singularity. Yet here too, apart from different ‘attributes’ of oneness, say, bliss for one, the core life flow itself as another, the ‘becoming’, transcending space-time, wherein consciousness just is, as a one without any second, necessarily has an aspect of itself which activates reattachment of the self with mind-body. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. Thus, profound and yet incomplete, since it comes and goes.

On a more basic level, in our daily routine, we may be aware in waking state and train ourselves to remember dreams and even track our responses therein but what of deep sleep as well as the moment of transition between each state ~ the precise moment, when the tumbler falls?

There are a few people I know who claim to have an unbroken awareness through all states. Swami Lakshmanjoo spoke of this in his discourses, as did Master Kuthumi.

Here, in third density, I’d say love is a singularity for all practical purposes, which if and when etched in each pore of our being, blurs boundaries and transforms us as living light.

[Reefs]

Aug 3, 2022 23:03:43 GMT -5 unseekingseeker said:

@ Reefs ~ true, Wei Wu Wei is abstract as is Kant and yet it cannot be denied that the noumena wherefrom springs phenomena or manifestation lies behind a veil that rational mind cannot penetrate.

What I like about Terence Gray (aka Wei Wu Wei) is that, like Alan Watts, he tries to explain everything in English. And for good reason, as he writes in the Foreword of the book:

WWW: There seems never to have been a time at which sentient beings have not escaped from the dungeon of individuality. In the East liberation was elaborated into a fine art, but it may be doubted whether more people made their escape from solitary confinement outside the organized religions than by means of them.

In the West reintegration was sporadic, but in recent years it has become a widespread preoccupation. Unfortunately its technical dependence on oriental literature - sometimes translated by scholars whose knowledge of the language was greater than their understanding of the subject - has proved a barrier which rendered full comprehension laborious and exceedingly long. Therefore it appears to be essential that such teaching as may be transmissible shall be given in a modern idiom and in accordance with our own processes of thought. But this presentation can never be given by the discursive method to which we are used for the acquisition of conceptual knowledge, for the understanding required is not conceptual and therefore is not knowledge.

This may account for the extraordinary popularity of such works as the Tao Te Ching, and in a lesser degree for that of the Diamond and Heart Sutras and Padma Sambhava's Knowing the Mind. For despite the accretion of superfluous verbiage in which the essential doctrine of some of the latter has become embedded, their direct pointing at the truth, instead of explaining it, goes straight to the heart of the matter and allows the mind itself to develop its own vision. An elaborately developed thesis must always defeat its own end where this subject matter is concerned, for only indication could produce this understanding, which requires an intuitional faculty, and it could never be acquired wholesale from without.

It may be doubted, however, whether an entirely modern presentation of oriental or perennial metaphysics would be followed or accepted as trustworthy at present. Probably an intermediate stage is necessary, during which the method should be a presentation in modern idiom supported by the authority of the great Masters, with whose thoughts and technical terms most interested people are at least generally familiar. Moreover the question is bedeviled by the use, which has become a convention, of terms, mostly of Sanskrit origin, the colloquial sense of which, accepted by the early translators, is still employed. Often this sense is considerably different from the technical meaning given these terms in the Chinese texts, and it occasionally implies almost exactly the opposite. These misleading terms are still used, which is a matter of no importance to those few who understand to what they refer, and for whom any word whatsoever would suffice, but are a serious hindrance to the pilgrim struggling to understand.

So, relying on translated texts or imported vocabulary is always risky for the reasons Terence mentioned. That's why I think forums like this one can be very helpful to seekers, where you have people who can point to the truth like the ancient masters did, but who are not stuck in ancient vocabulary or ancient conventions. This is where I see Alan's and Terence's greatest contribution. They make these ancient texts and concepts more accessible to modern man, so that modern seekers don't fall so easily into the trap of taking these ancient terms, some of which have long have changed their meanings, literally and then come to erroneous conclusions, or start measuring their progress based on irrelevant factors because they looked only at the finger, and missed the moon where the finger was actually pointing to.

[unseekingseeker]

@ Reefs ~ well, there’s no substitute for direct experience. Scriptures address the mind but yet useful, since we wish to understand rationally, rather than cognise and imbibe intuitionally. Then, what the experience is, varies from person to person, each being valid in its own right, as an intermediate knowing. It’s only when everything drops away that true recognition occurs. After recognition comes assimilation, which can take a while or as some affirm, it can occur just like that, in an instant. I’ll not comment on it, since as yet I languish in the oscillatory phase.