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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George was an evangelist, a proselytiser is probably a better description. Born in Suffolk, at some point he moved to York where he became a stuff warehouseman, as they were called. And in that environment it seems he studied Hebrew and Greek. Obviously he made some impact because he moved to New Zealand in about 1881 to lecture on religious matters.

As far as I can tell the Aldridge family up until he left Suffolk had lived around Thornham Magna and Mellis in mid Suffolk for a few centuries at least. It seems to me that religion was how he lifted himself and his family out of a life of labour. Reading New Zealand Newspapers of the day three things strike me. One was that he was quite widely respected. Another was that he was very dogmatic. And lastly, despite that he did seem to think for himself. Although, I did get a strong sense that it was his way or the high way. And the Church I grew up in, which he ministered for 40 odd years, struck me just like that.

His key doctrine was conditional immortality – the idea that you had to be born again in Christ in order to attain immortality. He even wrote pamphlets pointing out the doctinal errors of some of his contemporaries. What strikes me in my own family is that there is still an element of zeal that pervades it in various shapes and forms. And I don’t believe I’ve escaped. Is my doctrine that meditation and the practice of emptiness is a path to enlightenment any different? As long as they are intellectual concepts they certainly aren’t.

Astrologically speaking I have transiting Saturn opposing natal Moon right now. It’s a good time to dig up the past, especially with natal Saturn in the 4th. And it’s a good time to look at one’s conditioning. As I was sitting reading this stuff in the wee hours of the morning, it dawned on me that there really was no root. How far back do you go to have a sense of identity. It is without limit. Although looking down the male line is kind of interesting, after all that’s our Y chromosome. I wonder what it would be like to look down the female line at the mitochondrial DNA? The rest of us, which is most of us, is a hotch potch of intereraction.

It seems that George and I have a few things in common. Perhaps the religious karma started there, I don’t know. Other karmas probably started elsewhere. There’s probably a lot we don’t have in common as well. What does strike me is just how much who we think we are is nothing more than the result of a chain of conditioning. So who are we? And that takes me right back to the mat.

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Meditation on the other hand embraces that emptiness. It’s nothing to run away from or avoid, it is who we are, and the more we come to know it the more we become our true selves. At least in my understanding and experience.

The message from society is indeed that we must become somebody, which inherently means somebody else. And we absorb that with gusto. One of my friends left the following post on Facebook the other day

It is difficult for the mind to accept emptiness. Think of it like you’re unconditioning the mind to realise that it’s not any of the content that it’s been clogging itself up with. Not a single piece of that content. Once you begin to realise this, you begin to have the freedom to choose your own content, at the same time realising that you’ve chosen it. And why would you do this? Because there is content that makes you miserable and content that makes you happy.

Whatever you put in is relative and short lived and at the same time whatever you put in is going to condition the mind. So choose very carefully because this creates the new you. Yet choose lightly because it’s not you.

The you which is permanent is empty. Nothing there and there’s nothing to be done. The impermanent you? Develop the skills to turn the illusory frog into an illusory king by all means. That’s magic.

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And then there’s the thought of meditation stages:- counting the breath, focusing on the single breath, and I guess focusing on nothing. If I’m to understand the practise of silent illumination properly, this last one is that. Patanjali describes I find focusing on nothing requires a level of concentration that the others I guess are indeed a preparation for. Perhaps this is why people like Gil Fronsdal and Bhante Henepola Gunaratana describe Zen as the most difficult practise.

Huatou practise (wato in Japanese, but more commonly and less correctly known as koan practise does indeed seem much easier. Personally, I like to do that as well. As I wrote in an earlier post, my question is “what is emptiness?”. And these to practises seem to dovetail quite well, but I practise focusing on nothing first. One of the reasons is that while huatou is meant to cut thinking off at the root, the mind occasionally finds things to grip on to. Another reason is that it seems to deepen the sense of emptiness observed in silent illumination practise. Patanjali refers to meditation with seed in Book I, 46 of his Yoga Sutras. And meditation without seed in Book 3, 8.

I think I’ve talked about the first two rules of magic before. The Tibetan as I recall it anyway observed that the personality and soul need to be meditating in alignment. Technical discussions aside, I think the practise of silent illumination is in one aspect the personality actively listening for what Blavatsky calls The Voice of the Silence. And this I think the practise of silent illumination does more readily.

And then both practises are the same. By the way, I think Sheng Yen’s book on this topic The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination is a good one; a good addition to your meditation library.

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The first thing I should like to note is that emptiness equals spaciousness and not allowing thinking to concretise. Thinking needs to be kept flowing and not become a thing, that keeps the mind free. Just like a tree is not a tree, but a process given rise by causes and conditions. The same is true of ideas. They have no truth in themselves. The mind part of heart mind.

The second is metta bhavana. It strikes me that it is true that what you’re wishing for all beings is what you’re wishing for yourself. And this makes metta bhavana the other side of the coin of zen as this is unity from another angle. The heart part of heart mind. And this creates a spaciousness towards other beings.

Thirdly, unity cannot be conceived by the dualistic mind anyway. Every thought is rooted in dualism. Even the word unity is dualistic because it implies there is that which is not dualistic. So how can you hold unity as an object of thought? The root delusion is that we see ourselves as separate, but we need to break through our thinking to get to it. And this is the illness that zen is attempting to cure.

And lastly, trying to reach enlightenment. What is that? It can’t be done. Here and now. This is enlightenment. You can’t find enlightenment by sitting on a mat. You can’t find enlightenment by doing anything. Fully present with a spacious heart and a flowing mind, that’s what love is.

So if you bothered to read this, I hope you got something from it, after all may your heart mind awaken and be free.

I had a dream the other night in which I was standing within a void. I could see the void clearly. It was dark with a diffused light, shining within the darkness, like the fog on the manukau in the morning. But in this case the fog was the light.

I ordered the Lankavatara Sutra, which arrived a couple of days ago. It’s translated by Daisetz Teitarao Suzuki who has an interesting introduction. Although I’m reminded of a comment by Hyon Gak Sunim; to paraphrase it’s not what’s said that’s interesting but what is being pointed to. I think that’s much the case here.

“The Tathata-garba, therefore, whose psychological name is Alayavijnana, is a reservoir of things good and bad, pure and defiled. Expressed differently, the Tathagatagarbha is orginally, in its self-nature, immaculate, but because of its external dirt it is soiled, and when soiled – which is the state generally found in all sentient beings – an intuitive penetration is impossible. When this is impossible as is the case with the philosphers and ignorant masses, the Garbha is believed sometimes to be a creator and sometimes to be an ego-substance. As it is so believed, it allows itself to transmigrate through the six paths of existence. Let there be, however, an intuitive penetration into the primitive purity of the Tathata-garbha, and the whole system of the Vijnanas goes through a revolution. If the Tathata-garbha or Alaya-vijnana were not a mysterious mixture of purity and defilement, good and evil, this abrupt transformation of an entire personality would be an impossibility. That is to say, if the Garbha or the Alaya while absolutely neutral and colourless in itself did not yet harbour in itself a certain irrationality, no sentient beings would ever be a Buddha, no enlightenment would be experienced by any human beings. And as this illogicalness is practically possible, the Mahayana establishes the theory of Mind-only.”

And what I really love is that we find this within. Not that there is a without and within. And besides where else would we find it? Suzuki goes on to say Mind here does not mean our individual mind…

It was only a dream, but perhaps what it pointed to was interesting.

Anyway, the Sopranos are a very interesting lesson in not letting go, in not forgiving. It’s curious all the stuff you keep finding that you haven’t let go of.

I was reading some paper I found online the other day which mentioned that Hui Neng’s initial stanza, you know the there is no bodhi tree nor stand of a mirror bright one. The author suggested that the I wipe my mind hour by hour was necessary to establish Hui Neng’s response.

I agree. I haven’t yet established emptiness. So there is a wiping required.