In Japan, dokusan is a private meeting of a Zen student with his master, providing the student an opportunity to demonstrate the state of his meditation practice. For background, readers must see my
book, Conjuring Archangel: Chronicle of a Journey on the Path, because the conjuring continues. Dokusan will present contributions selected from Anna's ongoing journal, with her kind permission and at her discretion, in the hope that the gathering of insight may prove helpful to others entangled in the nettlesome web of karma.
Next week, Archangel, we celebrate the birth of your erstwhile colleague of the unfortunate venue.
Much is made of it, my darling, I know, and I understand our friend Grey plans to excerpt my tale of that virgin birth on the blog - a splendid idea by the way.
I daresay I agree, and surely you concur with our suspicions that Jesus was a closet Buddhist.
Most definitely. His message of compassionate forbearance even toward one’s enemies was extraordinary in that time and place, very much resembling the Buddha’s. It was the antithesis of the tribal mindset, yet over the millennia has been turned on its head. Ancient scripture in an ancient language translated variably over two thousand years may easily, indeed probably, misconstrue the original meaning, especially when used to validate a different religious agenda. Did he really say that the only passport to eternal life was a devout belief that he was the son of God? Did he even claim to be? But the Romans were a strong and clever tribe, and having once been converted to the early Church, found Christianity useful in pacifying the heathen tribes they conquered. Promise them eternal life!
And Christmas.
What could be better! Set the date near the winter solstice. Yet we must recall that religion, since prehistory when humans lost the natural instincts, was a necessary tool to control human behavior. As a tribal institution, however, it inevitably became a cudgel against the enemy tribes, a righteous excuse to destroy non-believers.
Always “in the name of God.”
Exactly, the ultimate distortion. Still, my precious, that ancient bodhisattva transmitted his message of peace through centuries, received and welcomed by the peace loving, who are legions.
And if his birth truly was of a virgin, my Guardian, it may well have occurred just as you told it!
Thank you, child.
I have heard it said, Archangel, that “love is all we need.” A rather sweeping assertion, but what do you think of it?
In our book, my darling, we often discussed the matter of love, which seems a special problem for humankind, considering their distorted views of it and lack of the sentiment toward each other. But in the assertion you quote we see a yearning reflective of the apprehension of loneliness. Such is the human condition that the Great Physician dedicated himself to assuage. Clinging to the individual persona, refusing to see, even in the nature of which they are part, the unity, the oneness, they are fearfully isolated. As I instructed in Conjuring, there are many kinds of love in the sangsara, variously defined but all imperfect.
Of course, Guardian, the definition changes as we progress through the phases of life. But religious people believe in the love of God.
And that is as close as they come to the truth, though they remain as isolated from the deity as they are from one another, perhaps more so. In the dual realm there are the self and the other. As long as this state is regarded as reality, the emotion of love will be tainted by ego - some degree, however slight, of selfishness.
So in terms of this realm, are you saying love is hardly all we need?
Well, my precious, there is an even more sweeping context in which we might interpret the saying.
Pray continue, my Guardian.
Love in terms of oneness, the ultimate reality, is not all we need - it is all there is. Do you see, child?
Clearly, Archangel! You speak of our trinity, the three traits of the Singularity, which science will never reveal, having fallen into the abyss of nihilism.
Exactly: wisdom, love and strength. The greatest of which, as an apostle of my ancient colleague wrote to the Corinthians, is love.
Praise the Lord!
You know, Archangel, that our friend Grey firmly believes Jesus was a closet Buddhist.
Indeed, my darling, Grey is a clever fellow. But truth is truth, and ultimate reality has always been accessible to human consciousness from the beginning. Buddha was awakened to it. Jesus, despite his unfortunate venue, as Grey calls it, was informed by a like truth, and the Jew Spinoza arrived at it through an exacting logic.
Only to be spurned, I know.
He refused to forswear truth regardless of consequence.
Is it not plausible, Guardian, that primitive man was closer to this ultimate reality than we are now?
More than plausible, child, it is a certainty. A hallmark of the species, along with the opposable thumb and capacity for speech, was at the beginning a sense of awe at natural wonders, and until early civilizations brought new knowledge, early man believed all of nature to be suffused by spirit. The “mountains and the rivers” had spirits, which it turns out according to nuclear physics to be the ultimate nature of reality.
Just ask Brian Greene. Yet modern science never refers to Buddha, my Guardian, though Buddha arrived at that conclusion in ancient times.
As I told you, my precious, scientists reached the abyss of nihilism and fell in. Buddha did not. Having realized more - struck by the lightning spark, the brilliancy - he saw the ineluctable paradox of form and emptiness, which to accept, the mind must stretch to embrace timelessness and boundlessness.
And Jesus?
Clearly a bodhisattva, my dear. The words of the sages are always filtered through contemporary minds. They should be interpreted in respect to the truth of ultimate reality. Do you see?
“In my father’s house there are many mansions.”
The myriad forms.
As you know, Archangel, a very old friend of mine, now age 91, is at death’s door, having dealt with cancer for four years, finally deciding against further treatment. She is Jewish, not practicing, but like many modern secular people, she believes the spirit of God lies within herself, experienced as a spiritual feeling. What are we to make of this widespread rationale?
It is but one example, my darling, of the way human consciousness stubbornly ignores intuition, which truly is an inborn knowledge that occurs without input. There is a spiritual sense in humans, but to believe it is God sets that spirit apart from self - it is not. It is one with our sense of self, and nothing apart. People are desperate to believe that their marks of individuation are permanent, even eternal, the incarnation of one persona. And few are persuaded of reality.
Our book, Guardian, was a noble attempt, but it doesn’t sell. Even Buddhists cling to their own traditional dogmas. But surely the obvious impermanence of physical manifestation is persuasive. I am clearly distinct from what I was in the prime of life, let alone as a child.
Indeed, and as we observed last week, it was just that obvious impermanence that sparked Buddha’s enlightenment. Even some disturbance in the brain, the organ by which persona is threaded on a string of beads called memory, can destroy it, robbing that person of their delusion.
And time also, my Guardian.
Exactly, my precious. While craving to be eternal individuals, we manifest instead the timeless and transcendent one, the singular brilliancy.
Why is that not enough then?
Remember the open drawbridge at the opening of Conjuring Archangel ?
Yes, of course. The bridge spanned the abyss of nihilism, which you used as a metaphor. Religious people got to the open drawbridge and stopped. Scientist reached it and fell in. Then you shouted to me, "Jump! I will catch you."
And you passed my test. You did not jump, realizing that you were already on the other side. Most people are simply afraid to jump.
I once subscribed to "Buddhadharma", Archangel, mouthpiece of the Tibetan diaspora, but issues piled up unread, so I discontinued it.
I remember, my darling, and you occasionally pick one p to read. Pray continue.
One issue was on the paramitas, upon which you remarked recently, and I read the article on prajna paramita by a Tibetan lama. It was most instructive.
And what did you learn, child?
He wrote that Buddha in his early pursuit of enlightenment practiced various methods, following different dogmas, and finally under the Bodhi Tree determined to simply let go of all concept, to let things be as they are. This brought at last the spark of lightening, which was the realization of emptiness, that emptiness is form, and form is nothing but emptiness.
Aha! The paradoxical, ultimate reality. We think of prajna paramita as wisdom, the practice of wisdom. What the good lama was saying is that it is the wisdom beyond wisdom. The practice of it is simply that letting go of the terrible entanglements, the biases, the attachments, to see the brilliancy of the one un-refracted reality underlying the duality of perception by which we are fooled.
You summed it up I believe, my Guardian, when you advised me in two words.
Accept and expect, right you are, my precious. Accept what is, while expecting perpetual change. You see, the realization of emptiness is preceded by the inescapable evidence of impermanence. Every sane person will recognize this truth before or as they die.
I have seen that recognition, Guardian, in those I have known who live to reach great age. They will relate that matters that once seemed so important, so pressing, are now revealed as nothing.
That’s the point, dear child, isn’t it, to see the truth before you are at death’s door. One does not have to die.
To realize that no one dies.
And no one is born.
There is now considerable gnashing of teeth, Archangel, around the world among those of us who held out hope for civilization in election results.
I understand, my darling, and especially difficult for those clairvoyants like yourself who have seen and know the tidal processes always at work in the dual realm of the sangsara. There is human nature, immunized by it own cleverness from further evolution; and then the predictable rise and fall of civilizations from the start of their relatively brief history.
In fact, Guardian, one of my early sources in the quest for wisdom was Teilhard deChardin, the Jesuit whose immense scientific curiosity brought down the wrath of Catholic hierarchy for his “doctrinal errors.”
Nothing new under the sun then, child. He too was in search of ultimate reality, and sought to reconcile his research with his religion, which is possible to a degree in Christian theology, but only if one interprets that Bible figuratively not literally. Of course he remained a theist, and thus fell short.
Strange, my Guardian, that he did not discover Buddhism during his many years of research in China.
Or perhaps rejected it, my precious. The shortfall for the Western mind is this: theism describes a reality in which a Theos is supreme and separate from the perceived. What is true in contrast is otherwise, and that is the One. One essence suffuses all we perceive and of which none are separate. Only as Tathagata, coming forth, is it yin-yang. Again I say, the brilliancy of the enclosing circle, when emptied, is the reality, the One.
I could not have said it better, Guardian!
Then stop gnashing your teeth! Ha, ha, ha, ha………………….!
Last week, Archangel, in Dokusan I observed the cruelty of the dual realm, upon which you commented briefly that polarities are the error of our perceptions. Meanwhile you have suggested to me the yin-yang symbol as an apt metaphor. Please explain, Guardian.
Certainly, my darling. Yin-yang is the perfect representation of the dichotomous sangsara; yet as I have often instructed you, it is the enclosing circle speaking to us of the ultimate reality. Now it will be obvious to your keen discernment why the dual realm must seem cruel.
I begin to see dimly what you are driving at, Holmes.
Thank you, Watson. Configured as you have been through evolution, i.e. causation, you perceive the extreme polarities thus: if one is high, the other is low; one hot, the other cold; one bright, the other dark…
One strong, the other weak.
Exactly, my precious, and of course strength has an advantage that is often cruel. Just consider nature, the evolution of the food chain, for example. At the top sit the predators. Are the wolves merciful or fair when they prey upon the young or the old and weak? It is in their nature, and it preserves the balance of natural populations. Ironically, it seems cruel to you only because your human consciousness harbors the option of mercy, while relating in some degree to other sentient beings. I say ironical as this same highly evolved mind, free of the predatory drives that control the wolves, notwithstanding, so often chooses against mercy.
Indeed, my Guardian, that is the worst of it. We have a positive inclination to show no mercy to any other beings even of our own kind.
Observe, my dear, the pendulum: a tendency toward one pole swings likewise toward the opposite extreme. And humankind is the most evolved of creatures - for good or ill - monsters on one side, saints on the other. Do not despair, child! What is the operative word of the day?
Phantasmagoria!
The enclosing circle, empty of yin-yang, holds the brilliancy.
In meditation, Archangel, you advised me to calm myself in this time of turbulence by holding in my thoughts one word…
Yes, my darling, that being “phantasmagoria,” which perfectly describes this world of your perceptions, a cauldron of ever changing conditions, the bubbling pottage of Tathagata, alternately beautiful and terrifying, but ultimately phantom.
Excellent advice, my Guardian, and a wonderful word, originating in France in the late eighteenth century by a magician. The ending “-agoria” is thought to come from “allegory,” but I prefer to relate it to “agora.”
Why not! Especially as we see the chaotic “marketplace” of this turbulent world so aptly depicted thereby. Never forget though, my precious, that the glaring ironies we observe in this world - for example, how men strive so desperately for power as though they intend to live forever - reflects an intuitive truth that self is indeed ultimately timeless.
The very thing that Khayyam wrote about so tellingly, my Guardian.
Exactly: “The lion and the lizard keep the court where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.”
I love those quatrains, Guardian.
I know you do, child. They are exquisitely wise. But as to these turbulent conditions, step back please and recognize the there are waves in this dual realm, the rising and falling between extremes. These are strictly subject to causation, not under control of any other force nor of anyone. Calm yourself and think…
Phantasmagoria! Something you said just recently, Guardian, is also in my thoughts. You explained that old age is a time when abstract ideas are translated into experience.
You find it a hard saying, my darling?
Very hard, yet like ksanti paramita it brings focus, and I start to see the dual realm as terribly cruel, transcendent and even so, cruel.
Were you to perceive the brilliancy, you must know it as the source of all polarities, but polarity is the error of your perception. The dual realm only reflects transcendence, which in truth is of the singular, the one, the brilliancy.
Wonderful, my Guardian - “dual” rhymes with “cruel!”
You really are singularly fanciful!
(8)As you closed our last Dokusan, Archangel, I was reminded of your saying, recorded in our book, Conjuring.
We recorded a good deal of our conversations, my darling. Might you be more specific?
“Timelessness will explode your karmic fate.”
Ah yes, child, that blew you away at the time, and now it surely pertains to your anxiety about looming disasters. Since the ultimate reality is timeless, the laws of cause and effect are not ultimately real. Buddha himself said so. An effect follows a cause only in the realm of time, the dual realm, the sangsara. You are configured to perceive things this way, and moreover, to miss the true reality beneath it all, the self that is only one, transcendent, timeless and egoless, and yet…
I know, my Guardian: the same self I know as self, and have always known since awaking in this life.
I congratulate you, my precious! And now as you age, you are translating that knowledge into experience.
Schooled by disaster?
Perhaps, but disaster like nature proceeds by degrees, while at its climax an unnatural slowness gives proof of time’s delusion. That delusion negated, who is there to suffer this karma? Mainly, my dear child, you begin to perceive, both sensually and emotionally, the abstractions you have long held, to feel the fear and to face it, to see the moon face of Buddha, and to test with a clear mind “the peaceful and the wrathful deities.”
And the Ground Luminosity?
In the end, and with Bassui Zenji, you will exclaim…
“What is this!”
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