BIG PICTURE

You cannot have solid without space, day without night, life without death.  Such opposites, though, only APPEAR to be opposites when in fact they are two aspects of one reality. They are two side of the same coin.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c.a. 535-475 B.C.) used the analogy "the road down and the road up are the same road."

These opposites arise mutually, called the coincidence of opposites, so that you cannot have one without the other. Taoism states that within every opposite lies its counterpart.  In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin in yang, and a dot of yang in yin.  Within sickness lies health and within health lies sickness.  This, according to Taoism, is because all opposites are manifestations of the single Tao and are therefore not independent of one another.

Advaita Vedanta speaks of the seeming duality of things in terms of the soul, or Atman, and the godhead, or Brahman.  When a person tries to know Brahman through his objective mind, Brahman appears to be separate from him.  In reality, there is no difference between Brahman and Atman.  They are the same thing.  Liberation lies in realizing his. 

Buddhism addresses this issue as well, but regarding Subject and Object generally. This is stated by the Buddha in verses such as “In seeing, there is just seeing.  There is no seer and nothing seen.  In hearing, there is just hearing, no hearer, nothing heard.”  Non-Duality in Buddhism does not mean a merging with a supreme Brahman as in Vedanta, but, instead, an understanding that the duality of a self/subject/agent/watcher/doer in relation to the object/world is an illusion.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE BUDDHIST QUESTION

(To mark the eight-year anniversary of this blog I am reprising selected previous postings, beginning with the very first one.)

Whether or not to be engaged in the world is the perennial question for Buddhists.

The approach in Hinayana Buddhism is to not be engaged, to be the lone rhino on the plain, so-called, to be a pratyeka-buddha, one who is in it for himself alone.  Seek out your own salvation with diligence, was the Buddha's message.  Hinayana, called the Lesser Way, the Lesser Vehicle, or the Little Raft, claims to be the only form that follows the original teachings of the Buddha.

 Since Hinayana is oriented solely toward the individual, it is viewed negatively by Buddhists of other schools, such as Mahayana Buddhism.  Hinayana these days is termed Theravada Buddhism, meaning the Teaching of the Elders, or the Old School of Wisdom.

Called the Greater Vehicle, Mahayana Buddhism is other-oriented.  Their ideal is the Bodhisattva, the buddha who refuses final nirvana in order to return to the world to teach others how to become enlightened themselves.  Mahayana Buddhists offer the world salvation through knowledge, and through example.

One's temperament has something to do with which approach he or she takes, but not everything to do with it.  Some of us are solitary types by nature and have followed the original teachings of the Buddha for years.  Seeking out our own salvation with diligence was, and is, what resonates most for us.

Something, however, has changed for me at least.  That I am an old man now, or am becoming one rapidly, has something to do with it.  I feel that I have lived my life, have had my shot at it, and therefore have a feeling for other people that I did not have in the past.  In Mahayana Buddhism this is called compassion.

My increasing age, however, is not the complete explanation for this.  Buddhism grew out of Hinduism and so there are aspects of the latter that still work for the former.  One of these is the idea of a shared consciousness.  It has been called cosmic consciousness, the idea that life exists as an interconnected network of consciousness, with each conscious being linked to every other conscious being.  In Buddhism this is referred to as Indra's net, or the Net of Jewels.  Another analogy is a spider's web, where every dew drop on it reflects every other dew drop on it.

Cosmic consciousness is all the more reason to be engaged in the world.  Cosmic consciousness says I am already.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

What if we received a memo from on high that said that the future is cancelled?  What would happen to all the expectations we, our family, our friends, society have of us?

They would be gone in an instant, which is when we would see what a burden they have been for us, baggage that we have carried around with us for years.

We can jettison that baggage, without any memos, the way Buddhists do it.  They just do it.  Nothing is expected of Buddhists.

TRANSMIGRATION

The last time you were over there, backstage, behind the scenes, just out of sight, all was calm. 

There was no place or time, yet it was not a void. 

Because a room has no furniture in it does not mean it is not still a room. 

Because no one is in the room does not mean it is empty.

The room you were in was not empty.  Then it was.

WHERE GOD GOES

When God disappears suddenly in a person’s life--called the “dark night of the soul” in Christianity--it is because the person has slid into one of three changes of view.

Atheism is the absence of belief in God.

Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God or the supernatural is unknown.

Apatheism neither accepts nor rejects the existence of God, deeming it irrelevant.

What has happened to the person is that his thinking mind has intervened, has switched tracks like a train is rerouted, sending it in a different direction.  The thinking mind, though, is not where God is.

Returning a person to his faith takes time, since the thinking mind is persuasive, persistent in its argument against God.  Mother Teresa admitted to having a loss of faith that lasted for decades.

But a person who has known God will always know God, whether they are cognizant of it or not.  God is in the heart, which Mother Teresa rediscovered prompting her return to faith.  

GETTING IT OVER WITH

The universe doesn’t like being the universe.  It just wants to get it over with.

WHO WE KNEW

We knew no one.  We’ve met a lot of people, had a lot of people coming and going in our lives, but have never known them.  We knew something of them, but never knew them entirely.  I knew something of my father and mother, but did not know them fully.  They were acquaintances of mine more than anything. 

Nor have I known myself.  I am an acquaintance of mine, too, more familiar to me than the others, but still no more than a passerby.  The reason for this is flux, the ever-changing nature of this existence, where nothing is ever just one thing. Everything is constantly becoming what it will be next.  I am forever becoming what I will be next also, the next passerby.

BENEATH THE MOMENT

Beneath the moment, where the world happens before it happens, where I happen before I happen.

THOUGHT WATCHING

I have been practicing the Zen technique of watching my thoughts. It’s like standing on the platform of a railway station watching the trains pass by.  The question has occurred to me, though, who, in fact, is it that is doing the watching?  I say I am doing the watching.  But “I” is only another thought.  No one is doing the watching, Zen says.  There is just watching. 

FOREVER LOSING INTEREST

The world of form is a moving target, so maintaining an interest in it is impossible. Since our minds are moving targets, too, we should be able to keep up with the world of form, but we cannot. Consequently, we lose interest in it, in its ideas, its people, ourselves.

How we come back to it, which invariably we do, is by creating a narrative about it.  That the world has a purpose, for instance.  We make the world something that it is not, but convince ourselves that it is. Buddhism is based on this.

BEYOND THE SENSES, CONSCIOUSNESS

Where is the field of the Spirit?  It is beyond the senses, Swami Vivekananda said, beyond our limited relative consciousness.  Consciousness is only one of the many planes in which we operate.  We must transcend this field of relative consciousness, transcend all our senses, grow nearer to our own center, and as we do so, we will grow nearer to Brahman.

CREATING A GAP

To quote spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, “Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”  In Vedanta this would read, “Every time you create a gap in the stream of the thinking mind, the light of the Atman/Brahman consciousness in you strengthens.” 

Classical music is one way to create this gap.  Classical music is abstract, free of ideas, concepts.  It is sound only.  Full orchestras may be too busy for some of us, too stimulating, too many ripples on the pond, as they say, but solo piano performances, by Lang Lang, for instance, who is popular now, but then also by Horowitz, Rubenstein, and Cliburn are the least agitating.  It is a still mind that allows the Atman/Brahman consciousness to surface.

After an hour of classical music, you will find that the walking meditation that you follow it with, if you choose to, feels utterly different, feels entirely altered, evidence that you remain in your Atman/Brahman consciousness. 

ENCOURAGING WORDS

Swami Vivekananda said that every being in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the senses, that even a little worm will one day reach Brahman.  No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe.  A hundred times we will hurt ourselves, he said, a thousand times we will tumble, but in the end we will all know our divinity.

There will come a time when even the lowest soul will have to go upward.  No one will be lost.  We are all projected from one common center, which is Brahman.  The highest as well as the lowest life that Brahman has projected will go back to the source of all lives, Brahman.

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT IN VEDANTA

The three mains schools of thought in Vedanta (one or more of which are found as well in other religions) are dualism (Dvaita), qualified nondualism (Vishishtadvaita) and nondualism (Advaita). 

These three concepts are not mutually contradictory, but successive steps in spiritual realization.  Sri Ramakrishna pointed out that the third and last step, Advaita, was attained when the aspirant’s true self, the Atman, unites with Brahman.

This last step is not difficult to grasp intellectually, but that is all it is, an intellectual understanding.  The thinking mind sees everything in terms of subject and object, the seer and what is seen, for example.  In Advaita, however, the subject and object are the same thing.  The seer and that which is seen are identical.  

VEDANTA: AN OVERVIEW

Vedanta is often, but less correctly, called Hinduism, a word first used by the Persians for the inhabitants of India living on the far side of the river Sindhu, or Indus. 

Vedanta teaches that the purpose of a person’s life is to realize the one ultimate Reality, or Godhead, here and now, through spiritual practice.  The word Vedanta often refers to the nondualistic aspect of the philosophy, Advaita Vedanta. 

Advaita Vedanta states that the universe of name and form is a misreading of the one ultimate Reality.  This one ultimate Reality is called Brahman when regarded as transcendent, and Atman when regarded as immanent.  Since this one ultimate Reality is omnipresent, it is in every creature and object, making them, and man, divine.

Direct superconscious experience of his identity with Atman-Brahman releases a person from all the worldly bondages, karmas, he has brought upon himself, freeing him from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

BUDDHISM: AN OVERVIEW

Buddhism is an offshoot of Vedanta.  It was founded by Gautama Buddha and is based on the following doctrines.  1. The Four Nobles Truths.  This states that there is personal suffering in the world, that this suffering can be overcome, that there is a prescription for achieving this, and that the prescription is as the Buddha teaches it in The Eightfold Path.

2. Nirvana.  The world of mind and matter is in a state of constant flux.  To withdraw the mind from the flux is to free oneself from suffering and rebirth.  3. The Eightfold Path is how to withdraw from the flux.  The Buddha describes them as right view, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.

The two main schools of Buddhism are Hinayana (The Lesser Vehicle) later called Theravada, meaning the Way of the Elders, and Mahayana (The Greater Vehicle).  The ideal of Hinayana is arhathood, sainthood, achieved by ascetic seclusion.  Mahayana, where the teachings of the Buddha were popularized, resulted in the worship of Gautama Buddha as a divine incarnation.  The Buddha, however, did not want to be worshiped, so this did not occur until after his death.   

RECALLING AN INCIDENT

It was spring break at his college, so he decided to go somewhere, to travel someplace.  He was in his freshman year so this would be the first time he had ever had a spring break.  His father, a professor, acquiesced, thinking it would be a good experience for him, particularly because he would be going alone, free of his buddies who might get him into trouble. 

The next thing was, where would he go?  He took out a map and, closing his eyes, pointed to a location.  Opening his eyes, he saw that he had selected a town straight north from here.  Midland, Ontario, Canada was the town, a place where it so happened there was a tourist sight he could explore.  The sight was Martyr’s Shrine. 

The Shrine, a church, memorialized eight Jesuit priests who, in the mid-1600s, were tortured then murdered by the Huron Indians living in a missionary settlement there called Ste. Marie among the Hurons.  It was in the Wye Marsh down the hill from what later would be the Shrine.  The priests had been converting the Indians to Christianity when, somehow, something went terribly wrong. 

It had taken him six hours by bus to get to Midland, but now here he was in the settlement looking up the embankment to the Shrine.  It was all quite interesting to him. 

Was it the massacred priests who then, in that moment, made their presence known to him, or was it his imagination?  Somebody was there other than him.  He looked around to see if any of the other visitors were feeling it, too.   Judging by their wide eyes, three others were, an elderly couple and another man.  They glanced at him as well, as though confirming the experience. 

It was a so-called religious experience maybe, except that it wasn’t.  It was simply God’s presence, generally, except that it wasn’t.  It was a play of the afternoon light somehow, but it wasn’t that either.  No, it was the priests definitely, ghosts now.  The bus, as though itself contemplating what had happened, took twice as long to get back home.