CRANK’S RIDGE

Kalimath, also known as Crank’s Ridge or Hippie Hill, is a pine-covered ridge located on the way to Kasar Devi temple, above the town of Almora, Uttarakhand, India, the ancient capital of Kumaon.

It is considered an ideal spot for spending long hours in quiet solitude, as it has a magnificent 400 km view of the Himalayas, from Api in Nepal to Bundarpunch on the Himachal Pradesh border.  Kasar Devi temple is located in the Kashyap Hills, 7 km north of Almora, where, in the late 19th century Swami Vivekananda once came to meditate.

Crank's Ridge became a haunt for bohemian artists, writers, and spiritual seekers in the 1920s and ‘30s, including notable Tibetan Buddhist scholar and author W. Y. Evans-Wentz, and well-known Buddhist author, painter, and poet Lama Anagarika Govinda. Also visiting Crank’s Ridge were Indian spiritual leader Anandamayi Ma, and Hindu guru and mystic Neem Karoli Baba.   Other early people connected to Crank's Ridge were Earl Brewster, an American artist, author John Blofeld, and Danish mystic Alfred Sorensen.

In 1934, Sorensen, who was introduced to Nehru by poet Rabindranath Tagore, visited the home of Nehru’s sister and brother-in-law at their house in Khali, Binsar.  It was while staying with the Nehru family that one of their friends offered Sorensen a piece of land on Crank's Ridge where he could live.  Sorensen subsequently built a hut there and made it his residence for the next 44 years.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, luminaries of the counter-culture, including Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens, made pilgrimages to the ridge to visit the inhabitants.  In 1962, Allen Ginsberg came with poet and actor Peter Orlovsky, poet Gary Snyder, and poet and author Joanne Kyger to visit Lama Govinda.  Ginsberg commented in a letter to professor John Kelley that the area was not unlike the Catskills, readily accessible, only more spiritual.  

In late 1964, Ralph Metzner visited Lama Govinda on the ridge and was later joined by Timothy Leary, on honeymoon with his wife Nena von Schlebrügge.  Metzer was a psychologist, writer, and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard in the early 1060s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.  While on the ridge Leary wrote much of Psychedelic Prayers, a psychedelic version the Tao Te Ching composed from nine English translations of the book.  Later in the decade Richard Alpert, who became the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, visited the ridge as part of a spiritual pilgrimage.

Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing spent some time there in the early 1970s, as did Robert Thurman, the Buddhist scholar.  While researching his doctoral dissertation, Thurman spent six months at the ridge studying with Lama Govinda.

A cult destination, it now has a small community of backpackers and hippies living there, the result of its reputation in the 1960's counter culture as a "power center."  This reputation is due to the alleged gap in the Van Allen Belt above the ridge, a perception arguably strengthened by the free and easy availability on the slopes of marijuana. 

A Buddhist meditation center is there now.  The center is in a Buddhist ashram originally the estate of Evans-Wentz, then of Lama Govinda, then of a Tibetan Ladakhi family.  It is affiliated with the Drikung Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism.

PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF VEDANTA

The three primary schools of Vedanta are Dvaita (dualism), Vishishtadvaita (qualified nondualism), and Advaita (nondualism).

Dvaita, as taught by Madhva (1199-1276), holds that matter, human souls, and Brahman are absolutely different from one another.  Here salvation is not thought of as union with Brahman, but as drawing close to him and dwelling forever with him in the contemplation of his glory.  Brahman saves souls entirely by his grace, without which even the intensest devotion and strictest morality are of no avail.  Dvaita is the only branch of older Vedanta in which Christian influence is almost certain.

Vishishtadvaita was taught by Ramanuja in the 11th and 12th centuries A.D. and states that all living creatures and non-living matter are parts of Brahman, who is their sole and controlling power.  Vishishtadvaita is "the way of devotion," as opposed to "the way of works" and "the way of knowledge."  It believes that liberation is only to be gained by intense devotion to Brahman, until the worshipper realizes fully that he is but a fragment of Brahman and wholly dependent on Brahman.  Only by completely abandoning oneself into the hands of Brahman, and humbly awaiting his grace, can one's salvation be realized.  The emancipated soul is one with Brahman, yet separate. 

Advaita is the premier and oldest extant philosophy among the Vedanta schools.  As taught by Shankara (circa 750 A.D.) it maintains that there is a complete and essential identity between Brahman and Atman, and between God and the individual soul.  When this identity is fully realized, not merely as a logical proposition but as a fact of one's inmost consciousness, the soul is raised above the illusions of this transitory world and is lost forever in the one final Truth that is Brahman.

SHANKARA

Shankara, or Shankaracharya, was one of the greatest philosopher-saints of India, and chief exponent of Advaita (nondualistic) Vedanta.  The dates assigned to him vary form the 6th to the 8th century A.D.

Shankara was born in western Malabar, South India.  At the age of eight, when he renounced the world, he was thoroughly conversant in Vedic literature.  During his brief life span of 32 years, he organized a system of monastic denominations which is still in existence today.

His literary output which is quite enormous includes commentaries on the Vedanta Sutras, on the principal Upanishads, and on the Gita.  Two major philosophical works, the Upadeshasahasri and the Vivekachudamani (the Crest Jewel of Discrimination), are attributed to him.  He wrote, as well, many poems, hymns, prayers, and minor works on Vedanta.

Shankara travelled across India and other parts of South Asia to propagate his philosophy through discourses and debates with other thinkers.  He founded four mathas (monasteries), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta.  Shankara is believed to be the organizer of the Dashanami monastic order and the founder of the Shanmata tradition of worship.

Advaita (nondualism) is often called a monistic system of thought.  The word "Advaita" essentially refers to the identity of the Self (Atman) and the Whole (Brahman.)  Advaita Vedanta holds that the one unchanging entity (Brahman) alone exists, and that changing entities, all forms in the material world, do not.  The ocean's waves have no existence separate from the ocean, he said.  A quote that succinctly summarizes his philosophy is: 

"Brahman is the only truth. The spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and the individual Self (Atman)."

SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI AND SELF-INQUIRY

Sri Ramana's teachings about Self-Inquiry, the practice he is most widely associated with, have been classified as the path of knowledge, or jnana marga.

Though his teaching is consistent with and generally associated with Vedanta, with the Upanishads, and particularly with Advaita Vedanta, he gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices from various religions.

Although he advocated Self-Inquiry as the fastest means to realization, he also recommended the path of bhakti, or devotion.  This would be devotion to one's deity or guru, either concurrently or as an adequate alternative to Self-Inquiry, which would ultimately converge with Self-Inquiry.

What is Self-Inquiry?  It is a method for recognizing not the body and the mind but that which experiences the body and the mind.  It is awareness, that awareness that is aware of itself.

Sri Ramana's method of teaching was characterized by the following:

He urged people who came to him to practice Self-Inquiry.

He directed people to look inward rather than seeking outside themselves for realization.  He said that the true bhagavan i.e. the supreme one, Brahman, resides in the heart as the Atman.  This is who a person truly is.

He viewed all who came to him as the Atman rather than as lesser beings.  The jnani, a self-realized person, sees no one as an ajnani or non self-realized person.  All are the Atman.

Sri Ramana charged no money for his teachings and was adamant that no one ever ask for money, or anything else, in his name.  He never promoted or called attention to himself.  Instead, he remained in one place for 54 years, offering spiritual guidance to anyone of any background who came to him. 

The deep sense of peace one felt around a jnani was, he said, the surest indicator of that jnani's spiritual state, no doubt why so many sought him out.

WORDS AS POINTERS

Words are not truth, but they can point to truth.  As it is said in Zen Buddhism, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, or as the semanticist Alfred Korzybski put it, the map is not the territory.

Unfortunately we get hung up on the words.  It is like throwing a stick across the yard, pointing at it and saying to Fido, "fetch."  The dog stares at the finger.  We stare at the words.

It is similar with ritual.  A religious service shows the way to something, rather than is that something itself.

Regarding words, once the truth is recognized, the words pointing to it may be discarded.  The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu wrote:

“Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish, but when the fish are got, the men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares, but when the hares are got, men forget the snares.  Words are employed to convey ideas, but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words.”

The Buddha said in a like way that when the raft of his teachings has been taken to the opposite shore (enlightenment), there is no need then to carry the raft across the land.

The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said concerning words that much emphasis is placed in our culture on the value of printed and spoken words for conveying truths.  Unfortunately, these words are taken literally at times, as if truth itself.  Words are not truth, but they can point to truth.

He said that we often ANALYZE words as though they are the truth.  What is the real meaning of this or that word? we say.  Let's go into this more deeply, we say.  But analyzing the pointers is pointless. The pointers are not the point.

THE TRUTHS AND THE PATH

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are like a physician's diagnosis of an ailment.  First, there is the determination that there is a problem, in this case human suffering.  As the Buddha put it, birth is suffering; decay is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering.  Presence of objects we hate is suffering; separation from objects we love is suffering; not to obtain what we desire is suffering; clinging to existence is suffering.

Second of the Truths is the determination that this suffering has a cause.  Craving is the cause, the Buddha said, craving in the sense of blind compulsion.  Suffering is caused by craving what one cannot have, or craving to avoid what cannot be avoided.  Craving money when one is poor leads to suffering; craving health when one is ill leads to suffering; craving immortality in the face of the inevitability of death leads to suffering, and so on.

Third of the Truths is the determination that this suffering has a remedy.  Suffering ceases with the complete cessation of craving, the Buddha said.

The fourth Truth states that the cessation of craving is accomplished by the Noble Eight-fold Path, which is Right View or Belief, Right Aspiration or Purpose, Right Speech, Right Behavior or Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Effort or Endeavor, Right Mindfulness or Attentiveness, Right Meditation, Contemplation, or Absorption.  The word "right" is not in a moral sense but in the sense of correctness, what is accurate.

Right View is an understanding of and belief in the Four-Noble Truths and the possibilities reflected in them.  To begin with, a person must look at life for what it truly is.  When he understands that his trouble is caused by his not seeing the true facts of this life, and when he accepts responsibility for this, he can proceed to eliminate his craving/suffering.  The Buddha said that as long as we see life from the wrong viewpoint, we will continue our craving.

The second step on the path is Right Aspiration or Purpose.  Everyone aspires after something.  The trouble is that often we aspire after the wrong things.  We do not focus on worthwhile objectives, such as kindness and compassion.  Aspiring to kindness and compassion can only occur when we have gone beyond "I," "me," "mine."  Self-centeredness has no place in Buddhism.

The first two steps deal with correct understanding while the next three address correct conduct.  Accordingly, Right Speech states that one must not participate in gossip, slander, and abusive or idle talk.  Our speech must be controlled, considerate, and thoughtful, stemming as it should from kindness and compassion.  Right Speech means avoiding all talk that would lead to unhappiness, using instead that speech that would bring about happiness.

Right Behavior means avoiding killing or hurting, and precludes stealing, cheating, and all otherwise immoral activity.  One's actions should aim at promoting peace and happiness in others and respecting the well-being of all living creatures.

Right Livelihood extends the principle of Right Behavior to one's chosen profession.  It rules out professions that would harm others, such as trading in firearms, liquor, drugs, poisons, killing, and so forth.  Only those means of living that promote peace and well-being are in accord with this principle.

The final group in the Noble Eight-fold Path deals with correct concentration.  Here Buddhism is most akin to Brahmanism.  The goal of these steps is the pure ecstasy that comes from meditative exercises.  Thus, Right Endeavor or Effort entails a commitment to discriminating between wise and unwise desires and attachments, with a determination to live a liberated life.  This sets the stage for Right Mindfulness.

By Right Mindfulness or Attentiveness the Buddha meant paying attention to all of one's activities, be they of the body, of sensing and feeling, of perceiving, or of thinking.  Being attentive this way means understanding what these activities are, how they arise, how they are developed, controlled, linked together, and, if need be, gotten rid of.  Being aware this way yields a calmness that in turn sets the stage for the final step, Right Concentration.

Right Concentration, Meditation, or Absorption is the turning away from unwholesome mental activities such as lust, ill-will, laziness, worry, anxiety, and doubt, and replacing them with feelings of joy and happiness.  Next is seeing through and getting beyond ALL mental activities, no matter what they are, and replacing them, once again, with feelings of joy and happiness.  This is followed by a going beyond joy and happiness and proceeding to feelings of equanimity.  Complete equanimity beyond all feelings is bliss, nirvana.

At the heart of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eight-fold Path is the Buddha's contention that the mind is behind everything.  If we are unhappy, the mind can be blamed.  If we are happy, the mind can be thanked.  As the Buddhist Dammapada puts it: 

"Mind precedes all unwholesome states and is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.  If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, misery follows him like the wheel that dogs the foot of the ox.  Mind precedes all wholesome states and is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.  If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

HINAYANA AND MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

There are two principal schools of Buddhism: Hinayana or "Lesser Vehicle," and Mahayana or "Greater Vehicle."  Both were born in India.

In Hinayana Buddhism, found predominantly now in Sri Lanka and other Southeast Asian countries, the monk is the central figure.  Ideally the monk attains arhatship i.e. sainthood, a state he can realize by his own efforts, without the aid of outside agencies.  In all of the Hinayana monasteries, solitary meditation is the rule.  Hinayana stresses the three Refuges--the Buddha, the Dhamma or teachings, and the Sangha, the brotherhood of monks.

Hinayana claims to be the only form of Buddhism that follows the original teachings of the Buddha.  Accordingly, it is also called Theravada Buddhism, or Teachings of the Elders.  The monks, clad in yellow and with shaved heads, go forth in the morning to beg, just as in Gautama's day, and they follow the same daily schedule as in old times.  The whole emphasis of their lives as monks is the acquiring of merit toward salvation.

But while all of this is in strict conformity to Gautama's original teachings, even the Hinayana doctrine has developed in the direction of the popularized Buddhism of the Mahayana school.  For instance, all Hinayanists take a reverent attitude toward the relics of the Buddha, and have made images of him of every size, from the minute to the colossal. 

Even Hinayana's Pali texts depart at times from Gautama's own views, and contain essentially many of the ideas elaborated later in the Mahayana.  They, for example, declare what Gautama may have said, although it is doubtful, that he had predecessors in other ages, and that he will have successors, such as Maitreya, a messianic, apocalyptic buddha.

Mahayana Buddhism established itself in countries beyond India, and in China and its satellites, where buddhas and other deities had multiplied to such a degree as to rival in numbers the Hindu gods, whom Gautama had opposed as mere superstition.

An important development of the Mahayana school was the bodhisattva, or buddha-to-be.  Anyone could become at least an arhat, as in Hinayana Buddhism, but in Mahayana they could also become a bodhisattva.  The idea was that once a bodhisattva became a buddha he could no longer be present to aid humanity, so therefore it was highly desirable and noble for him to remain a bodhisattva.

Unlike Hinayana Buddhism which stressed the monk and his solitary path, Mahayana offered everyone in the world salvation and in a far less isolated way.  This was accomplished by offering the Buddha's teachings, on the one hand, but then also by faith alone.  In this way, a person was not required to renounce the world and family and enter a monastery in order to gain salvation.  

In the Pure Land sect, for instance, salvation required only faith in Amida Buddha.  One needed only say Amida's name to enter Pure Land's paradise.

Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, and Zen/Chan are among the other Mahayana sects.

THICH NHAT HANH: CONTEMPORARY ZEN BUDDHIST

Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and, at the age of sixteen, was ordained a Buddhist monk.  Eight years later, he co-founded what was to become the foremost center of Buddhist studies in South Vietnam, the An Quang Buddhist Institute. 

In 1961, he went to the United States to study and to teach at Columbia and Princeton Universities.  In 1963, however, his monk-colleagues in Vietnam asked in a telegram that he come home and join them in their work to stop the escalating war.  This was following the fall of the oppressive Diem regime.  He returned at once and helped lead one of the great non-violent resistance movements of the century, based entirely on Gandhian principles.

In 1964, along with a group of university professors and students in Vietnam, he founded the School of Youth for Social Service, called the "little Peace Corps" by the American Press.  Teams of young people went into the countryside to establish schools and health clinics, and later to rebuild villages that had been bombed.  By the time of the fall of Saigon, there were more than 10,000 monks, nuns, and young social workers participating in the work. 

Also at this time, he helped set up what was to become one of the most prestigious publishing houses in Vietnam, La Boi Press.  In his own books, and as editor-in-chief of the official publication of the United Buddhist Church, he called for reconciliation between the warring parties in Vietnam, and because of that, his writings were censored by both opposing governments.

In 1966, he accepted an invitation from the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Cornell University, to go to the U.S. "to describe to [us] the aspirations and the agony of the voiceless masses of the Vietnamese people" (New Yorker, June 25, 1966).  He went on to speak convincingly in favor of a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was so moved by Nhat Hanh and his proposals for peace that he nominated him for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize.  Largely due to Nhat Hanh's influence, King came out publicly against the war at a press conference, with Nhat Hanh present, in Chicago. 

When Thomas Merton, the well-known Catholic monk and mystic, met Nhat Hanh at Merton’s monastery, Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky, he said, "Just the way he opens the door and enters a room demonstrates his understanding.  He is a true monk."  Merton went on to write an essay, "Nhat Hanh Is My Brother," an impassioned plea to listen to Nhat Hanh's proposals for peace.

Following meetings with key U.S. senators and government officials, Nhat Hanh went on to Europe where he had two audiences with Pope Paul VI, urging cooperation between Catholics and Buddhists to help bring peace to Vietnam.  In 1969, he set up the Buddhist Peace Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. 

After the Peace Accords were signed in 1973, he was refused permission by the now Communist government in Vietnam to return to his homeland.  He then established a small community a hundred miles south of Paris.  There he spent his time meditating, reading, writing, binding books, gardening, and occasionally receiving visitors. 

In June 1982, he set up a larger retreat near Bordeaux.  In the years since, he has travelled regularly to North America to lead retreats and to give lectures on mindful living and social responsibility. 

VEDANTA IN ESSENCE

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

 Advaita, literally non-dualism, meaning that a person and the godhead are not separate from each other but are one, is the oldest of the Vedanta schools and has as its principal exponent Shankara, or Shankaracharya (circa 750 A.D.) 

Advaita declares that the universe of name and form is not the ultimate Reality.  The ultimate Reality, the godhead, is called Brahman when regarded as transcendent and Atman when regarded as immanent.  Since it is omnipresent, this Reality is within every creature and object.  

A person, therefore, along with everything else in existence, is divine in essence.  Direct intuitive experience of his identity with Atman-Brahman releases a person from the worldly bondages that he has superimposed upon himself over time.

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

Vedanta accepts all the great spiritual teachers and personal or impersonal aspects of the godhead worshiped by different religions, considering them as manifestations of the one Reality.

MAYA

The term "maya" in Vedanta generally means world illusion.  But what does it mean more precisely?  The root of the word is "matr," from which we get the modern words "measure," "meter," and "matrix."  Maya is the world as measured, which is how the human brain sees it, in bits, as if a grid were placed over it.  The world, however, is not bits, but is an entirety, so vast that the mind cannot grasp it in its true state.

Maya also means magic and play and in this way is the creative illusion that the Brahman, the godhead, generates.  But it is not illusion in the sense of unreality. Rather it is cosmic play or cosmic sport.  

The world is further described in Vedanta as a drama.  The Brahman plays all the parts in the drama, and it is through us humans that it witnesses it.  As part of the drama, it believes that the roles it is playing are real, until eventually it awakens from it, at which point the world ends--until the Brahman begins it again.

The ever-changing mirage-like aspect of life, where a piece of rope lying by the roadside will appear in twilight to be a snake, or a distant post a man, is also maya.  Maya is described as that illusion of reality which is not Reality itself, even though it is embodied in that Reality.

The Vedanta model of the universe as a drama is contrasted with the model of Western religions where the universe is seen as an artifact, something that is made, like a potter makes a pot.  With this model God created a human out of clay, blowing the breath of life into its nostrils.  The Chinese model as found in Taoism, on the other hand, is an organic one.  The universe is seen as an organism, with every part affecting every other part. 

The inspiration for the Vedanta model might well be the way in which we humans feel at times like we are playing roles.  We have a public self that meets and interacts with the world, and then we have a private, personal self.  But it so happens that there are lots of selves that we create throughout our lives depending on the circumstance, all of which we feel sooner or later to be an illusion.  In Vedanta, our realizing this is the Brahman waking from its play, albeit ever so briefly, before going back and playing at it some more.

FLUKES ARGUMENT

The big bang, so-called, was a fluke.  The universe that resulted, with its galaxies, stars, and planets, is also a fluke.  

Life forms in this universe are a fluke.  That we humans are self-aware is a fluke.

That God exists is a fluke.

THE BIG WHY

Why is there something and not nothing?  There should be nothing.

GOD “ISMS”

THEISM is the belief that at least one deity exists.  In a more specific sense, it refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe.  Here it conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe.

The claim of no knowledge, no faith, and a complete rejection of theism is known as agnosticism, atheism, and antitheism, respectively.

MONOTHEISM (from Greek μόνος) is the belief that only one deity exists.  Some modern day monotheistic religions include Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism.

POLYTHEISM is the belief that there is more than one deity.  In practice, polytheism is not just the belief that there are multiple gods, it usually includes belief in the existence of a specific pantheon of distinct deities.

Within polytheism there are hard and soft varieties:

Hard polytheism views the gods as being distinct and separate beings.  An example of this would be the Egyptian and Greek Religions, along with certain schools of Hinduism.

Soft polytheism views the gods as being subsumed into a greater whole.  Some forms of Hinduism such as Smartism and Advaita Vedanta are examples of soft polytheism.  They accept all the major Hindu deities as forms of the one Brahman.

Polytheism is also divided according to how the individual deities are regarded. Accordingly:

Henotheism:  The viewpoint/belief that there may be more than one deity but only one of them is worshipped.

Kathenotheism:  The viewpoint/belief that there is more than one deity but only one of them is worshipped at a time, or ever, and another may be worshipped at another time or place.  If they are worshipped one at a time, then each is supreme in turn.

Monolatrism:  The belief that there may be more than one deity but that only one is worthy of being worshipped.  Most of the modern monotheistic religions may have begun as monolatric ones.

PANTHEISM is the belief that the physical universe is equivalent to a god or gods, and that there is no division between a Creator and the substance of its creation. Examples include many forms of Saivism. 

PANENTHEISM:  Like Pantheism, panentheism is the belief that the physical universe is joined to a god or gods.  However, it also believes that a god or gods are greater than the material universe.  Examples include most forms of Vaishnavism.

DEISM is the belief that at least one deity exists who created the world, but that the creator(s) does/do not alter the original plan for the universe.  Deism typically rejects supernatural events, such as prophecies, miracles, and divine revelations, prominent in organized religion.  Instead, Deism holds that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of a supreme being as creator. Other forms of deism are:

Pandeism is the belief that a god preceded the universe and created it and is now equivalent with it.

Panendeism holds that the universe is a part but not the whole of the deity.

Polydeism is the belief that multiple gods exist but they do not intervene with the universe.

AUTOTHEISM is the viewpoint that divinity is inherently within oneself and that one's duty is to become perfect, divine oneself.

Autotheism can also refer to the belief that one's self is a deity, the only one very often, within the context of subjectivism.  This is a fairly extreme version of subjectivism, however.

EUTHEISM is the viewpoint/belief that a deity, or deities, is wholly benevolent.

DYSTHEISM allows for there being evil in the divine realm.

MALTHEISM is the belief that a deity exists but that this god is wholly malicious and abusive.

NOTES FROM THE PATH

“Seek out your own salvation with diligence,” the Buddha said.  “Try it, see for yourself.”

The Buddha said, “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.  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.

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, for example, 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 basic 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 heart beat at a time.  

Remembering the past and planning for the future are done now, in the present moment.  “All we have is now,” Marcus Aurelius reminds us, as does Eckhart Tolle who speaks of now as “Isness,” what actually "is.”  Alan Watts said, “There’s no place to be but here and now.  There is no way to be anywhere else.”  Watts added, “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 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 them, are bored with them.  Time kills them.

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.

Hormones contribute to the illusion of the self, the lie of hormones.  It is not, for instance, until testosterone recedes in men in their fifties that they see the extent to which they have seen the world through a veil all these years.

There is as well the lie of mental states.  We are conditioned to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which is false often times.  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 it using symbols that are approximations at best of what we mean.  Semantics scholar Alfred Korzybski notes, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts adding, “nothing is really describable.”  Meanwhile, 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 are false, too, often times.  When one is lonely, he misses his family and friends.  Loneliness, though, like all other feelings, comes, as Krishnamurti explained, from thoughts, and thoughts 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, to be enchanted, spellbound.  What we actually are is just consciousness.  We are a conscious body.  In Hinduism, this 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 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.  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 that expires when the individual expires.

WHAT IS WORTHWHILE DOING?  "Survival is not the issue because you’re not going to survive," Alan Watts said.  Liberation, nirvana in Buddhism, moksha in Hinduism, is the goal.  Everything other than the Path to it is irrelevant.  In this way, as the Dhammapada states, “It is not what others do, or do not do, that is my concern. It is what I do, and do not do. This is my concern.”

MEMENTO MORI:  The Dalai Lama’s hobby is fixing clocks, a reminder to him that he, like everyone else, is “on the clock.”  Memento mori, remember death.

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 a wrong-doer, he has had his head cut off.”  Life is not all suffering, but largely it is suffering.  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.

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 pleasures to where we need more and more of them to get the same effect.  Addiction is the result.

WHY ARE YOU UNHAPPY?  It is because you are filled with wanting, with desire, to the point that eventually the desire becomes a thirst that 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, again, 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.

WEALTH, POWER, AND PRESTIGE:  Wealth, power, and prestige are what society teaches 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?”  As the old adage goes, "Beware of what you want, you might get it."  Or again, "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 of Buddhism is to eliminate suffering.  The saying “less is more” is correct.  Have nothing and want nothing, and in this way you will take the greatest pleasure in the smallest things and be 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.  This is because 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 of Buddhism is to end such suffering.  There is a popular picture of Buddhist monks shooting pool, a seeming contradiction to this tenet.  The monks, though, are not competing.  They are just shooting pool.

WHY 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 empty 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 yourself.  Attaching yourself to things is folly because soon enough you are tired of them, wish you never had them, yet cannot get rid of them.  You find you become attached to people but because you don’t like most of them all that much, it jeopardizes your happiness in the end.  Have feelings for people, the Buddha said, but don’t make them responsible for your happiness.  Meantime, why should you attach yourself to yourself, to your physical self especially, for your physical self is dying, has been dying from the day you were born?  And why should you attach yourself to your psychological self when your psychological self is 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.  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.

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.  We are in denial about our life on this rock.  We understand it intellectually but cannot fully grasp it.  When we look up 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 outside it.

DIRECT EXPERIENCE IS SUPERIOR TO SECONDARY EXPERIENCE.  Direct experience is, for example, classical music, i.e. 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 in this way is false, or 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.  It is like a clock where if one wheel turns, all the wheels turn.  Everything changes with one change, or not. The moral implication of this is, what are the consequences of one’s actions?  Will they lead to hurt of self, of others, or of both?  What will happen if one stops, or does nothing?

JI-JI-MUGE.  Similar to dependent origination is 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 dew drop on it reflects every other dew drop on it.  A net of jewels is another way it is described.

MINDFULNESS.  To be aware of dependent origination and ji-ji muge is called mindfulness.  Persons not aware of them are either ignorant, avidya, or they are ignore-ant, that is, have chosen to pay no attention to them.  The result of ignorance is an endless chain of false illusions in which each succeeding illusion is due to its preceding illusion.  Ignorance, therefore, is at the heart of all human misery and evil.  Humans are so darkly ignorant about their own nature that all of their actions have the wrong orientation.  Not moral transgression then, but mental error is the root of human misery and pain.

AHIMSA.  Non-injury to other living beings.  “All things breathing, all things existing, all things living, all beings whatsoever, 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.  Thus, Jain monks, while walking in the forest, carry long staffs that they tap on the ground in front of them.  This is to drive off any insects lest the insects get innocently trampled.

NO VIOLENCE.  Physical violence goes without saying, but mental violence must also be avoided.  Anger and ill will are mental violence.

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, therefore, have compassion for all living things, even for the bacteria that may one day kill us, for they live here too.  Compassion is the cornerstone of Buddhism because it not only benefits the recipient, but it aids the one bestowing it as well.  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 to be able to sympathize, or have not yet lived a particular aspect of life, we can at least empathize with others.

FORGIVENESS.  Forgiving someone of something is the greatest gift a person can give another, and 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, for example, 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.  Only the present exists.  We must treat each heartbeat, each breath, each meal, each laugh, as if it were our last, because one day it will be.

ZEN'S VIEW.  The four propositions are that something is; that something isn’t; that something both is and isn’t; and that something neither is nor isn’t.  Zen asks in a koan what is beyond the four propositions?

BAD LUCK.  If there is good luck, there is also 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 one day.  Every person in the world will die, just as every speck of living anything will die.  The Buddhist response to this is to live a simple life, to be nothing, especially to be no ego.  If you are nothing, you have nothing to lose.  “When Death came, there was no one there,” Alan Watts put it.  There are those who say that Buddhists have a death wish.  It is not that they don’t want to live, but that they don’t need to.  The reason?  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.

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.  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 it is not the point.  What matters is liberation, in real terms, today.

ICONOGRAPHY.  Even Zen Buddhists can be found bowing to statues of the Buddha in elaborate temples, but this, as Alan Watts said, 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.  We do what other people around us are doing, called, in psychology, contagion.  The result of contagion is conformity, even when, like with war, it is bad for us.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE.  Rather than dwell on how your life might have been better had you done this or done that, you should think of the ways in which it might have gotten worse.

BURDENS.  Talent, celebrity, intelligence, duty, and victory cease to be burdens when they are no longer sought.

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

SAMADHI.  A remarkable place in the brain.  Samadhi is not self-hypnosis.  It is mental absorption to the point of ecstasy.  Samadhi 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, 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.  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 will still be moved along by it.  If you swim against it, all you will 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.

OUT OF NOTHING COMES SOMETHING.  This is where mysticism begins.  The Buddha termed this Wisdom.  It comes from the emptying or purging of the ego-identity.  One becomes like a newborn child.  One 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, however, but of the intuitive kind.  Just feel it.  Don’t interpret it.  Don’t expect anything from it.  There is nothing to be done about it.  It is here that one realizes that he is all of existence. Tat tvam asi, that art thou.  What follows is mystical union, but not of “self” with “other,” but of self with Self, in the way that, in Vedanta, the Atman is Brahman.  And with this comes a fundamental shift in consciousness.

RIGHT DIRECTION.  Alan Watts said that you are facing in the right direction.  All you have to do is keep walking.

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

REALIZATION.  Our consciousness finds that it is a broader consciousness, not that it is a part of a broader consciousness but that it IS a broader consciousness. 

AWAKENING IN ZEN.  It is likened to your hands resting on your thighs, where your hands feel your thighs at the same time that your thighs feel your hands.

BLOWING OUT

Alan Watts, in a lecture entitled "Limits of Language" that he gave in Philadelphia in 1973, states: "There is nothing you can do to liberate yourself, to change yourself, the reason for which is ringing loud and clear.  The reason you cannot do anything about it is because you don't exist--that is as an ego, a separate will. It just isn't there.  Well, when you understand this, you're liberated (the paradox).

When I say YOU, it is as you conceive yourself to be, that is as your ego, your image of yourself.  It isn't there.  It doesn't exist. It's an abstraction.  It's like Three.  Do you ever see Three, just plain, ordinary Three?  No.  Nobody ever saw it.  It's a concept, a vikalpa.  So in the same way is one's self.  There is this happening, this suchness (physical existence), yeah, sure, you bet.  But it's not pushing you around, because there is no YOU to be pushed around.

By dying to yourself, by becoming completely incompetent, and found that you don't exist, you are reborn.  You become everything."

This view is echoed by J. Krishnamurti, not identified specifically with any religion, but whose heritage is Hinduism.  He said, "There must be the understanding that there is nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to improve, transform, or better yourself.  If you understand this completely you will realize that there is no such entity as YOU.  Then if you have totally abandoned this ambition, you will be in the state of true meditation which comes over you spontaneously in wave after wave after wave of amazing light and bliss."

When one has died to himself, has accepted that he is not his socially-conditioned ego, he returns to beginner's mind, or no-mind, as Zen terms it.  And what is beginner's mind, or no-mind, but consciousness alone, the so-called watcher or observer.  And what is the watcher or observer but the divine itself watching, observing, witnessing itself doing what it does, hence "You become everything," as Watts puts it, Krishnamurti's "amazing light and bliss."

There is, however, an option.  Beginner's mind, or no-mind, can be just this, just consciousness.  It need not have attributes or be ascribed to any entity.  It can just be.  It can be Suchness, Tathata, that which is so of itself.  All the same, it is experienced as peace, joy.  It is the "blowing out" that is nirvana.

AJA DASA ON CONSCIOUSNESS IN VEDANTA

In his book This Moment: Teachings on the Nature of Consciousness (Atma Institute 2002), Aja Dasa, a Vedic priest, said that people want to know what is God, and what is God consciousness.  The reality is that consciousness IS God,  he said.  Consciousness is totally singular, as is God.  They are two names for one thing. The illusion is that there is an individual separate from God or separate from consciousness.  The individual seeks to know God or to be in God consciousness.  But first, one must understand what that individual is.

The individual says that I am--this or that.  There is an assumption that they are limited, that the consciousness of “I am” is limited.  But when “I am” is not equated with this or that, when it remains simply as consciousness, as awareness, it has no boundary.  This is the consciousness which is God.  In the Bible, God says, “I am that I Am,” not that God is this or that, but consciousness itself.  

The best example that can be given is that of the ocean and the wave.  A wave is nothing but the ocean.  A wave has no individuality of it's own.  It is in fact only the ocean taking the form of a wave, pushing up as a wave.  If the wave believes it is separate from the ocean, it may wish to reunite with the ocean.  But water is water.  There is not a boundary where the wave ends and the ocean begins.  It is only the form which arises that suggests waveness different from the ocean.

If the wave were to inquire as to what it actually is, it would find that it is nothing but water.  Not water as wave, but simply water.  In the same way, if we inquire as to what we are, what is our pure subjectivity, we find that we are simply consciousness.   All of the this's and that's are not what we are.  When we say I am this or I am that, we are identifying with an object.

Even a statement like I am consciousness identifies us with something.  But when we recognize that we are ONLY consciousness, there is nothing to limit us.  The wave saying, "I am the ocean," suggests that there are two things, the wave and the ocean.  But when God says, "I am that I am," there is not two things, only one.  When we let go of any and every identification other than being pure consciousness, we are no longer limited to individuality or form.  We are what is.

There is not a separation between the consciousness that we are and the consciousness that God is.  They are one consciousness, God arising or occurring as human, as everything.  So the question is not what is God consciousness? but rather, what is NOT God consciousness?  It is only a matter of letting go of all identifications, including being God or not being God, being individual or not being individual.  Simply be as pure consciousness, I am that I am, and then you are that.