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Thich Nhat Hanh pointed out that in every piece of paper is a cloud. I told this to my five year old niece the other day. And then explained to her that without clouds there would be no rain, and without the rain there would be no trees, and without the trees there would be no paper. She got it. “It still sounds strange though,” she replied. This is a revolution of thinking, of course it does.

Thich Nhat Hanh calls this Interbeing, some buddhists think this is an aspect of dependent co-arising, and I agree. In one sense we are who we are dependent on our parents, on the society we live in, on the people we mix with in our daily lives to be who we are. Moreover we participate in creating society around us, and the people around us who they are. In one breath we can say that we are responsible for everything being the way it is and also say “I am not my fault.” Neither and both.

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, said that you can’t step in the same river twice because by the time you step in it again the river will have changed. It will be different water, different fish, different shapes on the river banks. Just as importantly it won’t even be the same you. You will have changed. The you which has co-dependently arisen will have been changed by your experiences. All that you can really say, and you can’t even say that, is that there is this massive flux. There is certainly no separate permanent you, at all, not even for a second. So don’t delude yourself.

Delusion is exactly what we do. Rather than seeing this massive flux, we particularise. We see discrete fixed objects, and we give them names. And to make things worse we make them good and bad. We cling to our objectifications like a limpet. We define ourselves in terms of our experiences, of our objectified senses, of our objectifying thoughts. As a result, we suffer. When we create good, we create bad.

Yet all the time there is this miraculous awareness. Aware of the passing thoughts, experiences, and just aware in itself. Why define ourselves at all? This awareness doesn’t need definition. Try it. Whatever you define it as, it’s not that. Some would argue that the gateway to this understanding is concentration, but held within a context of not identifying with the thoughts and experiences as they arise. Try it, but don’t become attached to it.

What can we say about it? Or in saying anything have we just objectified and created a new delusion?

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A stream winner, or srotapanna in Sanskrit and sotapanna in Pali, is someone who has entered the stream, of the buddhist eightfold noble path that leads to the end of suffering. Such a being has tasted nirvana and thus knows the truth of buddha’s teaching. He has more than likely achieved this through meditation.

Importantly, because they have tasted nirvana, they have no more doubt. But this is also because meditation has enabled them to penetrate into form and see that there is no self there. This maybe requires some explanation. Traditionally a Buddhist sees the personality as composed of the five aggregates:-form, sensation, perception, mental formations, consciousness. But there is an approach nearer to our culture that does the job just as well.

In the neo-Darwin school, we are nothing more than a mechanism for the survival of our genes. Acquisition whether that’s of things, or personal characteristics is nothing than to ensure the survival of the genes. Richard Dawkins called them the selfish gene. In other words what you think of as your identity has nothing to do with you whatsoever, your identity is nothing other than a strategy by your genes to ensure that they will reproduce. Money, power, and social status are mechanisms through which your selfish genes compete. This gives rise to what you think, feel and experience. Almost all people find this very difficult to accept. But this denial too is nothing other than part of the strategy of the genes.  To see evidence of this you need look no further than a breed of dog or cat.  Why?  Because whole breeds share personalities.  Your personality is not in fact yours.  It’s merely an expression of your genes.

There’s hope. Meditate enough and you will discover that your awareness lies as a substrate beneath thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, which are fluid. Your awareness lies beneath your personality even. And of course you see the impermanence of these thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. In a sense your genes have captured your awareness, but identifying with them will only lead to suffering for the simple reason that they vanish soon enough and your clinging to them lead to misery. So, it’s awareness that’s interesting and has interestingly enough been there all the time. It’s just that we’ve failed to pay due attention to it. Disidentify the awareness from its content and you will be free.

This view that all form is empty of self is only one part of the understanding. Another part is the interconnectedness of all things. This is not as new age as it might otherwise sound. It is in part an understanding that we have been making a huge mistake by reifying, i.e. creating things. Ask yourself this, when is a tree no longer a seed and then a tree? A tree is really one huge process. Moreover it doesn’t stand in isolation. It depends on the rain, the soil, the sun, the wind, other plants, animals, etc. etc. etc. Everything as much as there are things is interdependent. That we see things as separate is nothing other than a convenient fiction.

So our disciple gets the point and decides to move from identification with form and a separative view to identification with awareness and a holistic interdependent view, realizing that he his not the contents of the awareness, realizing that the contents of awareness are without any self, realizing that everything is interconnected and puts the truth into practice and renounces all separate and form identity.

So how does this match with the western occultism’s view? The alignment isn’t as complete as you might wish, but it’s revealing nevertheless. It centers around the purification of the emotional nature.

In the west this initiation is sometimes called the initiation of the Baptism. Christ was said to have taken the second initiation when John the Baptist submerged Jesus into the stream. At the second initiation the disciple has purified his emotional nature and is ready to be born again into the kingdom of heaven.

The normal human identity is rooted in the emotional nature. Few are the people with a true mental identification, which is why the second initiation is much more difficult than the other for most people. To give up identification with the emotional nature is to give up most of the sense of one’s self. It helps to know that emotions arise as a result of wrong view. That identification with thoughts is another wrong view, is to the western occultist a matter of the third initiation, and a mater for another post.

There is a slight mismatch between the Western occultist’s view point and a Buddhist’s. In one view the disciple has given up identity and doubt, to the other he has given up desire. But as we saw the root of identity for most is in the emotional nature.

At the second initiation the disciple has struck a major blow at the sense of I, such that all that’s left are some habits. Buddha was very clear about that.

Buddha then asked, “What do you think, Subhuti, does one who has entered the stream which flows to Enlightenment, say ‘I have entered the stream’?”

“No, Buddha”, Subhuti replied. “A true disciple entering the stream would not think of themselves as a separate person that could be entering anything. Only that disciple who does not differentiate themselves from others, who has no regard for name, shape, sound, odor, taste, touch or for any quality can truly be called a disciple who has entered the stream.”

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It reminded me of a book in my library called Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, which goes into a lot more detail on the subject. He draws on the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Much of the material covered in the BBC documentary is drawn from the same material.

The Bible doesn’t overly suit my type of mind. Neither do lot of Buddhist texts for that matter. In my mind there are no -isms or -anities. What religion is there other than the luminous mind? Gods, devas, and miracles aren’t really my cup of tea as awareness is miraculous enough for me. Nevertheless, as I recall, the Gospel of Thomas (in the apocrypha) talks about Thomas, Mary and Jesus heading down to India.

In the esoteric school I did my early training in, one of the basic beliefs was that Christ was none other than Maitreya Buddha. It all gets a bit complex about the relationship between Christ and Jesus, not that it really matters. One of the views as much I understood it was that Buddha perfected wisdom, creating the religion for the East, and Christ perfected love, creating the religion for the West. Two sides of the same coin.

To that end, the other day, I was listening to a FBA lecture where the basic premise was that for bodhicitta to arise you had to simultaneously detach from the world and engage your fellow beings through loving kindness.

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Despite this amazing and perhaps courageous act, enlightenment didn’t come quickly to Chiyono. However, she was a deteremined student. At last, one moonlit night, she filled her old water bucket from a well (a well that centuries later would still bear her name). As she walked away, she saw the full moon reflected on the surface of the water. As she continued along the path, the circular bamboo strip gave way that had held together the staves of her bucket. Instantly, the bottom broke through, the moon’s reflection vanished, the bucket disintegrated, and all its water drained into the soil beneath. At this moment, Chiyono experienced a sudden, penetrating flash of insight-wisdom.

She later explained it this way: ‘‘I had hoped the weak bamboo binding would hold the water bucket together. But suddenly the bottom fell out of the bucket: no more water. No more moon in the water. Emptiness in my hand!’’

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We can put so much energy into ending wanting and ending anger.  And some good can be done that way.  What greater good is there in abandoning a sense of self!  Not good in some pseudo-intellectual way.  Good in what makes us happy.  What is the point in feeling anxiety?  I really like Shantideva’s observation

All those who fail to understand
The secret of the mind, the greatest of all things,
Although they wish for joy and sorrow’s end,
Will wander to no purpose, useleslly.

Therefore I will take in hand
And well protect this mind of mine.
What use to me are many disciplines,
If I can’t guard and discipline my mind?

Thank you.

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Meditation is so very useful and it’s not necessarily what happens during meditation. Although the stilling of the mind does help. But here’s what I think for what it’s worth.

A common view is that practice has two wings:- emptiness and compassion. I think there’s another way of looking at it, which are the three marks of existence:- impermanence, selflessness and suffering.

It goes something like this. Our suffering is cause by clinging to a sense of self. You feel anxious or stressed, there’s a sense of self behind it. In other words “I am the direct cause of my suffering,” or put slightly differently “When I cling to a self, I suffer.”

Here’s the irony in the situation. The I is an illusion. No matter where you look you can’t find it. Meditation on emptiness, or even meditation on being reveals this. The I is a construct, even a constellation of constructs of beliefs and views, an impermanent phantasm created within our own minds.

The instrument of our suffering has no inherent existence.

In other words. You are free.

Now the nice thing is that meditation develops the precious treasure of mindfulness and extends the time between impulse and action, giving us a spaciousness within action. That’s how we can see that anxiety is linked to self while we’re feeling anxious.

So, if there’s no self, what is there? Whatever it is…

And that’s why right now I’m going to go and sit on my mat.

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Ancestor Nagarjuna said: ‘The mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment: bodhicitta. Thus if we maintain this mind, this mind can become the thought of enlightenment. Indeed, when you understand discontinuity, the notion of self does not come into being. Ideas of name and gain do not arise. Fearing the swift passage of the sunlight, practice the way as though saving your head from fire. Reflecting on this ephemeral life, make endeavor in the manner of Buddha raising his foot.’
Dogen

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“Therefore, Sariputra, the Bodhisattva without mental impediments, without notions of attainment and non-attainment, abides in reliance upon Prajnaparamita. Without mental impediments, he is undisturbed. He has fearlessly transcended the false tendencies to crave for permanence, comfort, concept of self or delight. Thus Nirvana is attained.
The Heart Sutra

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