WHAT I REALLY WANTED by Donald L. Simons

WHAT I REALLY WANTED by Donald L. Simons 

I felt from an early age that I was being lied to, was being betrayed.  But by whom?  By what?  At the same time, I felt myself a lie.  When I opened my mouth, I did not know who it was that was speaking.  I spent years in the university, which I argued to myself was worth the effort.  It was stimulating intellectually, and entertaining even, but of what use was it in the end?  It left me with the real question, what is worthwhile doing?  What I really wanted was salvation.

Seek out your own salvation with diligence the Buddha said.  Try it, see for yourself.  He said that you can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of salvation than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.  When we are suffering, we are as much in need of our compassion as is any other being, and we are equally deserving of it.

In the end, only the individual can attain his own salvation.  The Buddhas can merely teach that there is a Way.  It is the individual’s responsibility to follow it.  “Abide with oneself as an island, with oneself as a refuge.  Seek no external refuge.”

Of whatever teachings you can assure yourself that they conduce to dispassion and not to passions, to detachment and not to bondage, to decrease of worldly gains and not to their increase, to frugality and not to covetousness, to content and not to discontent, to solitude and not to company, to energy and not to sluggishness, to delight in good and not to delight in evil, of such teachings you may with certainty affirm that this is the Norm, this is the discipline, this is the Master’s message.

Salvation begins with Right View, which means the way one looks at life, one’s perspective on it.  Without Right View, one is confused, resulting in frustration, depression, and anxiety.  The goal of Buddhism is quieting the conflicted mind.  The following is Right View, the First Door.

THERE IS NO PAST.  “Bring out the past here and show it to me,” the Buddha said.  All there is is memory.  Memory, though, is selective, hence unreliable.  Historians balk at this, because the past is everything to them.  They don’t want to hear about the shortcomings of language, for instance, how peoples’ recollection of themselves, others and events can be faulty, how the interpretation of facts can be suspect, and indeed how the very accuracy of facts can be in doubt.  Whole lives and major events are guided by this often-shaky information, the blind leading the blind.

THERE IS NO FUTURE.  “Bring out the future here and show it to me,” the Buddha said.  All there is is anticipation, planning, expectation, which like the past is unreliable.  This is to say, how can one know what his circumstances, much less he himself, will be like at a given point in the future, will be like even one hour from now.  He may be dead by then.  Only the present exists, one breath, one heartbeat at a time.  Moreover, remembering the past and planning for the future are done now, in the present. “All we have is now,” Marcus Aurelius reminds us, as does Eckhart Tolle who speaks of now as “Isness,” what actually "is.”  Alan Watts says, “There’s no place to be but here and now.  There’s no way to be anywhere else.”  Watts adds, “Interestingly, time is moving, yet there is only now.”

EXISTENCE IS IMPERMANENT.  When the prince asked his jeweler to make him something that would carry him through times of triumph as well as times of defeat, the jeweler made him a ring inscribed with the words, “It will pass.”  Impermanence, “annica,” is the First Dharma Seal.  Existence is in a state of constant flux. Every day is different.  Every moment is different.  All is transient, hence unreliable, hence the cause of all suffering.  We seek fulfillment in life but we never really feel fulfilled because what we seek fulfillment in is time-bound, transient.  When we try to grasp it, it just runs through our hands.  We are not happy with what we achieve, own, and know because too quickly we are tired of it, are bored with it.  Time kills it.  We then go on to achieve, own, and know more, which again because of time is only briefly gratifying.

THERE IS NO SELF.  Present consciousness, anticipation, and memory create the illusion of a self. Krishnamurti said, “Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories?”  There is this physical body, this happening, sure enough, but it is all there is.  As well, there is no self separate from the rest of existence as one's ego would have him believe.  This is the Second Dharma Seal, “anatta” or “anatman.”  One has a body versus one is a body.  Hormones contribute to the illusion of the self.  This is the lie of hormones.  A case in point, it is not until testosterone recedes in men in their fifties that they see the extent to which they have seen the world through a veil.  There is as well the lie of mental states.  We are conditioned to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which may be false.  This includes the lie of symbolic thinking (e.g. thinking about thinking and the problems that thinking creates), and the lie of language (e.g. words about words and problems that words create).  We don’t know what we are looking at half the time and then we go on to communicate about it using symbols which are approximations of what we mean.  Alfred Korzybski notes, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts adding, “nothing is really describable.”  Compounding this, we identify ourselves with our thoughts.  We think we are our thoughts.  Also there is the lie of feeling states.  We are conditioned emotionally to react to the world and ourselves in certain ways, which may be false.  When one is lonely, he misses his family, friends, and God.  Loneliness, though, like all other feelings, comes from thoughts, Krishnamurti explains, and thoughts are impermanent, transient, and unreliable.  Feelings, likewise then, are impermanent, transient, and unreliable.  Yet we identify ourselves with our feelings.  We feel we are our feelings.  We feel we are our moods.  Our lives are just these smoke and mirrors, called “maya” in Buddhism, meaning to be enchanted, spellbound.  What we actually are is just consciousness, the watcher.  We are a conscious body.  In Hinduism, the watcher, or consciousness, is also called atta, or atman, which is the immanent form of the Brahman.  But why so further define it?  Why make it like a soul?  The Second Dharma Seal further states that there is no individual permanent soul that, for example, migrates after death to another body.  This is to discourage clinging, i.e. using soul as a life preserver, so to speak.  All the individual is is a temporary collection of momentary events that are constantly in flux in their causal relationship to each other, with a consciousness which expires when the individual expires.

WHAT IS WORTHWHILE DOING?  Survival is not the issue because you’re not going to survive.  Liberation is it.  Everything other than the Path is irrelevant.  It is not what others do, or do not do, that is my concern.  It is what I do, and do not do.  That is my concern.  The Dhammapada says.  Kill time before it kills you, the art of properly killing time.  The Dalai Lama’s hobby is fixing clocks, a reminder to him that we are all “on the clock,” memento mori.  It is also diversion, much like chanting, to keep the mind from itself.  Everything other than this Path is irrelevant.  Make liberation your occupation.  There is but one thing.  Your day is for this one thing only.  All anyone wants is to feel happy.  We are naturally happy.  The reason we are not happy much of the time is because we are bound up with the irrelevant.  The result is suffering.

SUFFERING.  Termed dukkha in Buddhism, this is the Third Dharma Seal.  Greater than the waters in the four oceans is the flood of tears each being has shed, or the amount of blood he has lost when, as an animal or wrong doer, he has had his head cut off, the saying goes.  Life is not all suffering, but largely it is.  According to Buddhist psychology, every moment of life when happiness and inner peace are absent is a moment of suffering.  When you are rushing, impatient, irritated, frustrated, anxious, angry, fearful, bored, sad, or jealous, when you are filled with desire for something you want that you don’t have, or feel aversion for something you do have that you don’t want, you are suffering.  When you are reliving a painful experience from your past or imagining a future one, you are suffering.  Nothing on this planet is free of it.  Even long-time Buddhists who endeavor to not suffer still do so, because one cannot eliminate all of his sources of suffering.

PLEASURE TRAIL.  To ease our pain, we seek out what pleasures we can find here and there, food, sex, adventure, like chickens on the trail of corn.  The trouble is, we adapt to them to where we need more and more of them to get the same effect.  The same effect, however, is not the same effect.

WHY ARE YOU UNHAPPY?  It is because you are filled with wanting, with desire, to the point that eventually the desire becomes a thirst which cannot be satisfied, even when you achieve what you desire. So how can you be happy?  By ceasing to desire.  Just as a fire dies down when no fuel is added, so your unhappiness will end when the fuel of desire is removed.  We must not strive, grasp, cling, clutch, wanting to do this or to be that, for even when we attain what we want, it is not enough.  The more we have the more we want.  Attaining what we want is suffering just as much as not attaining it is, with “suffering” defined as chronic frustration.  What is gained by striving but wealth, power, and prestige, what society has taught us are the desirable things to have in this life.  But Krishnamurti said, “Think it through.  Do you really want what you think you want?”  Beware of what you want, you might get it.  Hell is getting what you want.  The reality of wealth, power, and prestige is that they are transient and therefore will end soon enough in suffering.  The aim is to eliminate suffering.  The old adage “less is more” is correct.  Have nothing and want nothing, and in this way,  one takes the greatest pleasure in the smallest things and is happy.  “He who knows he has enough is rich,” Lao Tzu said.

DO NOT COMPETE.  With competition there is a winner and a loser, with the biggest loser being the winner.  A hollow victory.  The one who wins must equal or better himself the next time out, feeling guilt at the same time for the suffering he has caused the loser.  As for the person who has just lost, he feels resentful toward the winner, wishing him ill, looking forward vengefully to when they can compete again, perpetuating the cycle.  The aim is to end such suffering.  There is a popular picture of Buddhist monks shooting pool, a seeming contradiction to this tenet.  The monks, though, were not competing.  They were just killing time.

HAVE NO AMBITION.  Ambition is one’s attempt to fill a void in his life, such as a need for love or respect.  Love and respect, however, are transient.  Wealth, power, prestige, love, and respect are hollow victories.

AVOID ALL ATTACHMENTS, FETTERS, CHAINS THAT BIND.  Do not be attached to personal possessions, to location, to money, to other people, and least of all to oneself.  Attaching ourselves to things is folly because soon enough we are bored with them, wish we never had them, yet cannot get rid of them.  We become attached to people but because we don’t like most of them all that much, it jeopardizes our happiness in the end.  Have feelings for people, the Buddha said, but don’t make them responsible for your happiness.  And why should we attach ourselves to ourselves, to our physical selves especially, for our physical selves are dying, have been dying from the day we were born?  Why should we attach ourselves to our psychological selves when our psychological selves are an illusion?

NO DUALITY.  This is known as the principle of relativity.  There is only the appearance of opposites, when in fact they are one, called the unity of opposites. Everything is the same energy.  Opposites are two sides of the same coin.  You can’t have light without dark, substance without space, life without death, self without other.  They go together.  They arise mutually, called the coincidence of opposites, and because Nature hates a vacuum, they continually create each other.  Yet they are one.

REALITY.  The truth is that we are on a rock hurtling blindly through space, a rock containing, by a fluke, life forms.  The biggest fluke is that at least one of these life forms, we humans, is aware of itself.  We are aware that we will die one day, for instance.  Life on this rock has no purpose beyond perpetuating itself, from what we can see.  We are in denial about our life on this rock.  We understand it intellectually but cannot fully grasp it.  When we look at the stars at night, we do not know what truly it is we are looking at, otherwise we would be screaming in terror in the streets.  We have at the same time a false sense of security about it, much as we have when we climb into a jet plane, believing that we are as safe in it as we are walking around outside it.

DIRECT EXPERIENCE IS SUPERIOR TO SECONDARY EXPERIENCE.  Direct experience is, for example, classical music (abstract sound), physical labor, and color. It is the experience of the five senses.  Secondary experience is the symbolic world, thinking and language, life once removed.  While secondary experience is useful in ways, it generates a world unto itself and is false, or, more often than not, is only partly true.

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION.  This states that what is, is dependent upon something else, the law of cause and effect.  If this is, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises; if this is not, that does not come to be; from the stopping of this, that stops.  The skillful man asks, “What are the consequences of my actions?  Will it lead to hurt of self, of others, or of both?  What will happen if I stop, or do nothing?”  It is like a clock where if one wheel turns, all the wheels turn.  Everything changes with one change, or not.

JI-JI-MUGE.  This refers to the interdependence, the mutual interpenetration of all things and events.  It is likened to a spider’s web where every dewdrop on it reflects every other dew drop on it.  A net of jewels is another description.

MINDFULNESS.  To be aware of Dependent Origination and Ji-ji muge is called mindfulness.  Persons not aware of them are either ignorant “avidya” or ignore-ant, that is, have chosen to pay no attention to them, suffering the consequences as a result.  The cause of human misery and evil is ignorance.  Humans in general is so darkly ignorant about his own nature that all of his actions have the wrong orientation.  Not moral transgression then, but mental error is the root of human misery and evil.  The result of ignorance is an endless chain of false illusions in which each succeeding illusion is due to its preceding illusion.

AHIMSA.  Non-injury.  “All things breathing, all things existing, all things living, all beings whatever, should not be slain or treated with violence, or insulted or tortured or driven away,” according to the Acaranga Sutra of Jainism, the view of Buddhism and Hinduism as well.  Jain monks while walking in the forest carry long staffs which they tap on the ground in front of them to drive off any insects lest they innocently get trampled.

NO VIOLENCE.  Physical violence goes without saying, but mental violence must also be avoided.  Anger and ill will are mental violence and are among the destructive emotions, mental afflictions, so called, which also includes hatred, jealousy, confusion, desire, and hubris.

COMPASSION.  We must have compassion toward our neighbors as we hope our neighbors have compassion toward us.  We are all in the same boat.  Everyone suffers.  Indeed, every living thing on this planet suffers, the common denominator.  We must have compassion for all living things, even for the bacteria that will kill us one day, for they live here too.  Compassion is the cornerstone of Buddhism because it not only benefits the recipient of it, it aids the one bestowing it as well.  By shifting his attention away from himself and onto another, one does not feel his own pain so much.  An alternative to the word compassion, since it implies superiority on the part of the one bestowing it, is sympathy.  We can sympathize with our neighbors because we all suffer, and if we have not yet lived all that much life, or have not yet lived a particular aspect of life, such as the death of a loved one, we can empathize with others.

FORGIVENESS.  Forgiving someone of something is the greatest gift a person can give another, to say nothing of himself.  This includes not trying to change someone who does not want to change or who cannot change.

NO REHEARSAL, NO REPLAY.  Our thinking is dominated by our rehearsing what we will say to someone in the future, or our replaying what we have already said to someone in the past.  But there is no future, there is no past.  Rehearsal and replay are “spinning in your tracks.”  Live in the present.  Treat each heartbeat, each breath, each meal, each laugh, as if it were your last, because one day it will be.

ZEN TEST.  The four propositions are: something is; something isn’t; something both is and isn’t; something neither is nor isn’t.  Zen asks what is beyond the four propositions?

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS BAD LUCK.  Baby birds in a nest get killed when the tree trimmers come through.  The birds were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  We will all be in the wrong place at the wrong time one day.

DYING.  As soon as you realize that you are alive, you know that you will be dead before long.  Every last person in the world will die eventually, just as every speck of living anything will die.  If you are nothing, however, you have nothing to lose.  Buddhists seek to be nothing.  “When Death came, there was no one there,” their saying goes.  Some say that Buddhists have a death wish.  It’s not that we don’t want to live any longer, but that we don’t need to.  As for dying too soon, the older one gets, the more he has to worry about.  The longer one lives, the more years he has to live with anxiety.  The longer one lives, the longer he has to suffer with degenerative diseases.  Where’s the argument?

OBJECTS.  Buddhists conceive of an object, a rock for instance, as an event and not as a thing or substance.

THE WORLD.  Buddhists accept the world as they find it, as it is.  Above all, they do not place blame.  They believe that the individual determines what happens to him. The individual, not something “out there,” is responsible for his fate.  The external world only reacts to what the individual does.

SUCHNESS.  Also termed thusness or tathata, it means reality as it is, without superimposing any ideas upon it.

GOD.  The issue of God is avoided in Buddhism because God is not the point.  The point is liberation, in real terms, today.

ICONOGRAPHY.  Even Zen Buddhists can be found with elaborate temples and bowing to statues of the Buddha, but, as Alan Watts put it, this is merely what Buddhism comes in, the packaging.

THE MIDDLE WAY.  The Middle Way is what is common between opposites.  The Middle Way, in practice, is so the cure is not worse than the ailment.

CONTAGION.  Our behavior is that of people around us.  We do what other people are doing, called contagion in psychology.  The result is conformity, even when it is bad for us, like war.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE.  Rather than dwell on how our lives could have been better had we done this or done that, we should think of the ways in which it might well have been worse.

BURDENS.  Talent, celebrity, intelligence, duty, and victory cease to be burdens when they are no longer encouraged.  Why are they burdens?  Because they produce hubris, suffering.

LONE RHINO ON THE PLAIN.  Pratyeka-buddha.  Seek out your own salvation with diligence, the Buddha said.

SAMADHI.  A remarkable place in the brain.  Samadhi is not self-hypnosis.  It is absorption to the point of ecstasy.  It can occur spontaneously during deep meditation or be the result of such “technical means” as repeating a mantra at length.  Frustration over not attaining it at will, though, can make it a fetter.

TAO.  The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.  He who says he knows the Tao does not.  It cannot be said what the Tao is, only what it is like.  The Tao is like gravity.  Wu wei in Taoism means non-interference.  We should flow with our lives, not get in the way of them.  Alan Watts said, “You are going along with the Tao whether you want to or not.  You can swim against it but you’ll still be moved along by it.  If you swim against it, all you’ll do is wear yourself out.  But if you swim with it, the whole strength of it is yours.  Yet the difficulty for us is determining which way it is going.”

WHAT YOU ARE FINALLY.  Your will has nothing to do with it.  You are happening of yourself.  There is nothing for you to figure out.

RIGHT DIRECTION.  You are facing in the right direction, Alan Watts put it.  All you have to do is keep walking.

FLOWER.  A plant at the end of its life suddenly sprouts a flower.  The plant is surprised more than anyone.  It is now what it was meant to be, the only thing it could ever be.

WHAT PRESENCE FEELS LIKE.  It is like sitting with your hands resting on your thighs.  Your hands feel your thighs while at the same time your thighs feel your hands.

REALIZATION.  Consciousness sees that it is a broader consciousness, not that it is a part of a broader consciousness but that it is itself a broader consciousness.

EMPTINESS.  Buddhists are done.  They are empty.  Emptiness is salvation. 

OUT OF NOTHING COMES SOMETHING.   Mysticism begins here.  It comes from the emptying or purging of the ego-identity.  A person becomes like a newborn child again.  He is now on the surface, no longer buried under layers of self, thinking and memory.  Now there is only feeling, feeling not of the emotional kind but of the intuitive kind.  He does not interpret it, does not expect anything from it.  There is nothing to be done about it.   What follows is mystical union, but not of self with some other, but of self with self.  And with this comes a fundamental shift in consciousness.

ETHICS IN BUDDHISM

The fundamental ethical problem for the Buddha was how a person can live in such a way as to limit his pain and suffering, in light of the fact that so much of existence results in misery.

The first, and negative, principle in the Buddha's ethics is that quite simply one is to not indulge in any activities that he knows already, or even suspects, will cause him to suffer.

As obvious as this seems, it is amazing how people so often ignore it and just keep doing what is bad for them, what ultimately makes them unhappy.

But liberation from suffering cannot be attained by negative means only, by just not doing things.  Hence, the Buddha's second principle.  One is to indulge in those things which he knows from his past experience, or suspects from what he's seen, to be truly joy-producing.

It is by participating in these that one transcends and erases from his mind any of his inclinations to do what is bad for him.  Evidence of this is the Buddhist tradition and practice of altruism.

THE CULPRIT

The cerebral cortex in us humans is the most developed section of our brains and plays a critical role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness.

Our false perception that we are separate from everything else in the universe, rather than one with everything else, is the doing of the cerebral cortex.

The egoic self, a creation of the cerebral cortex, is the one seeing itself as apart from the rest of things.  The egoic self is an illusion, a psychologically and socially conditioned phenomenon whose purpose is dubious.

The fall of man, so-called, in religion can be put in the lap of the cerebral cortex as well.  The fall came with the emergence in humans of the discriminating mind.

THE PROBLEM WITH ETERNITY

The destiny of the Atman is to awaken into its source the Brahman.  This may take many lifetimes, in the form of many different sentient beings, including humans.

Spirituality evolves, grows, matures, until finally it is ready to blossom.  After this blossoming, termed awakening, takes place, the Atman will never again be born into the physical world.  Its task is complete.

The human life that the Atman occupied in this process may live decades longer, but this has no bearing on what has already occurred.

Like a drop of spray falling back into the sea, the Atman is now, once again, one with the Brahman.  It is tempting to say that the Atman has returned to eternity since the Brahman is said to be eternal.

But these words eternity and eternal are misleading, insofar as they imply time.  Brahman is timeless, as is now, too, the Atman.

But wasn't the Atman always timeless, since it is the personal aspect, or experience, of the Brahman?  The answer is yes.  But while in the physical world, the relative world of form, it is time bound.  It is not until it awakens into the Brahman that it frees itself of time.

IS VEDANTA FOR THE WEST?

T. M. P. Mahadevan, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Madras in India stated that Vedanta does not distinguish between race, color, climate, or country.

While it came to be discovered first in India, Vedanta is not meant for India alone.

The qualifications that make one eligible for the study of Vedanta do not include any particular place of birth or genealogy.

Vedanta addresses the thirst for the eternal.  It is true that at any given time in the world only a few may become aware of this thirst.

Those who seek Brahman, or God, are as rare as the seeking is difficult.  Those rare seekers, however, are not the exclusive products of any particular time or country.

They may be seen in the most unexpected places.  They may turn up in the least expected times.

IS BUDDHISM FOR THE WEST?

Buddhism is for anyone who suffers, and that is everyone.

Suffering is a central fact of life. Birth entails pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Painful, too, union with what is unpleasant. Separation from the pleasant is painful. Any unsatisfied craving is painful.

This suffering is not exclusive to Asia. It is common to all humans everywhere, including especially in the West. Action and achievement are high priorities in the West, and with such pressing motives comes inevitable frustration.  Frustration equals suffering.

The origin of suffering is the drive to gratify the senses or the craving for material gains, which is particularly pronounced in the materialistic culture of the West.

The elimination of suffering is the objective of Buddhism, and this is to give up, to get rid of, to be emancipated from the desires that cause so much distress.

The one Path that leads to freedom from all misery is the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, and everyone the world over can benefit from it.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Present consciousness (now), anticipation (future), and memory (past) create the illusion of a self. Krishnamurti said, “Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories?” There is this physical body, this happening, sure enough, but it is all that there is. There is, furthermore, no self separate from the rest of existence as our egos would have us believe. There is no little person sitting at a console in our head, "driving" our bodies. It is the difference between having a body and being a body.

Hormones contribute to the illusion of a self. This is the lie of hormones. It is not until testosterone recedes in men in their fifties, to give an example, that they realize the extent to which they have seen the world through a veil.

There is as well the lie of mental states. We are conditioned to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which may be false. This includes the lie of symbolic thinking (e.g. thinking about thinking and the problems that thinking creates), and the lie of language (e.g. words about words and problems that words create). We don’t know what we are looking at half the time and then we go on to communicate about it using symbols which are merely approximations of what we mean. Alfred Korzybski noted, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts adding, “nothing is really describable.” Compounding this, we identify ourselves with our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts.

Also there is the lie of feeling states. We are conditioned emotionally to react to the world and ourselves in certain ways, which may be false. When one is lonely, he misses his family, friends, and God. Loneliness, though, like all other feelings, comes, as Krishnamurti explains, from thoughts, and thoughts are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. So, feelings likewise then are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. Yet we identify ourselves with our feelings. We feel we are our feelings. We feel we are our moods.

Our lives are just these smoke and mirrors, called “maya” in Buddhism, meaning to be enchanted, spellbound. What we actually are is just consciousness, the watcher, so-called. We are a conscious body. In Vedanta the watcher, or consciousness, is called the Atman, which is the immanent form of the Brahman.

Buddhism holds that the individual is merely a temporary collection of momentary events that are constantly in flux in their causal relationship to each other, with a consciousness that expires when the individual expires.  In Vedanta, relative consciousness expires, but transcendental consciousness, the Atman, does not.