...It may be true, as a mystic once contended, that most people, sometime in their lives, are moved by natural beauty to a "mood of heightened consciousness" in which "each blade of grass seems fierce with meaning," but the question is: What meaning? "All nature," contended another mystic a century ago, "is the language in which God expresses her thought." Very well, but what thought is that?
The chief lesson is that the world displays a lovely order, an order comforting in its intricacy. And the most appealing part of this harmony, perhaps, is it permanence---the sense that we are part of something with roots stretching back nearly forever, and branches reaching forward just as far. Purely human life provides only a partial fulfillment of this desire for a kind of immortality. As individuals we feel desperately alone: we may not have children, or we may not care much how they have turned out; we may not care to trace ourselves back through our parents; some of us may even be misanthropes, or feel that our lives are unimportant, brief, and hurried rushes towards a final emptiness. But the earth and all its processes---the sun growing plants, flesh feeding on these plants, flesh decaying to nourish more plants, to name just one cycle---gives us some sense of a more enduring role. The poet Robinson Jeffers. a deeply pessimistic man with regard to the human condition, once wrote, "The parts change and pass, or die, people and races, rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole.... It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of a deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation...."
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
{T.S. Eliot}
Individuation & Soul Retrieval as Remembered Wholeness
Individuation, or becoming a whole individual through self-realization, as an ongoing journey involves a natural "re-collection", re-gathering, or Platonic anamnesis (remembrance) of an innate wholeness and centre, the Self. The aim of personal individuation is the reproduction of this unity, the Original Being, who in Platonic thought was a sphere. This concept of the androgynous Original Being, then, represents both the origin and goal of psychic wholeness, a wholeness which is lost, or forgotten when through the emergence of the ego we fall from an original state of innocence into a state of conflict. This division, or "dis-ease" is in turn resolved through the restoration of psychic harmony in a reclaimed "higher innocence" of conscious centredness in the Self.
Individuation as Re-Collected Unity
At the heart of Neoplatonism, a forerunner of Jungian 'gnosis', is the assumption of an a priori knowledge grounded in archetypal forms and aimed toward a unification of the ultimate principle of "the One", or "The Simple" with the diverse phenomena of "the Many". In the same way as in Neoplatonic thought the Many are resolved through self-reflective synthesis into the One, so psychic opposites become individuated into and through the Self. Since the Platonic Ideas are also the basis of an innate self-knowledge, through anamnesis acquired knowledge is the recovery of what was once possessed in a precarnate existence in the realm of transcendent Forms, an assumption which underlies the Romantic poet Wordsworth's claim that:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar...
As a natural centring and unfolding of the personality, individuation is an alchemical cycle of separation and synthesis which involves the dethroning, or relative abolition of the ego. This mythic process takes place through the gradual distillation of the Self - the ambivalent archetypal core of the personality - out from a latent condition of unconsciousness into its rightful place at the centre of consciousness. Individuation is a lengthy process, indeed one which once begun, never ends, for becoming centred in the Self is merely the starting point of a new journey which, like the Medicine Wheel, moves outward in an ever-widening spiral to embrace the fate and soul of World and Cosmos.
Re-Connecting to World Soul
What, then, is the nature of this 'soul' that needs to be retrieved, not only for the individual but ultimately for the world as the anima mundi whose children we all are? Is the 're-connection' with soul the same as the 're-collection' of Self that underscores the individuation process?
If, as Jung made clear, individuation does not shut one out from the world but gathers the world to oneself, so soul-making gathers the individual to all-pervasive soul, anima mundi expanding into the even more inclusive sphere of unus mundus. In this interweaving waltz, through the Dionysian explosion of the isolated ego, soul's diffusive movement outward meets soul's infusive movement from outer to inner, and the two merge in an imaginal Cosmos, whose Centre, as all shamans know (through imaginal 'gnosis'), is everywhere
If "soul" refers also to an anima mundi, a world soul, then as alchemists such as Paracelsus stated, the soul in one sense lies beyond the individual and belongs to a mode of reality beyond our control. In the Neoplatonic Fourth Ennead, Plotinus discusses whether all individuals are one soul, while the merging of individual and universal Tao is, as the alchemist Gerhard Dorn noted, the third degree of the alchemical coniunctio, the most mature phase of individuation as the realization of one's communion with an original unitary reality, what Jung describes as 'the eternal Ground of all empirical being.' As a mode of consciousness, such re-collection is grounded in the intuition of a centred sphere of soul, a microcosm which through the alchemical dictum "As Above, so Below", mirrors the outer macrocosm of Cosmos.
Therapy as Soul Mythos & Pathos
An appreciation of the complementarity of individuation as 're-collection', and Soul-making as 're-connection' to World Soul, has vital repercussions in the arena of psychopathology. James Hillman has undoubtedly contributed more than anyone in the post-Jungian camp to stressing our need to honour the Dionysian, or 'dis-integrating' dimension of therapy. Conversely, positive thinking - as a psychological theory - assumes that anything that's broken, or off-centre (eccentric!), or suffering, or in darkness, depression, neurosis, or symbolic death needs to be immediately fixed up, centred, unified, or brought into the light of health.
As Hillman notes, there is a soul-world of difference here between 'spiritual discipline' and therapy. As he puts it: 'Anyone who tends to dismiss pathology for growth, or anima confusions for ego strength and illumination, or who neglects the differentiation of multiplicity and variety for the sake of unity is engaged in spiritual discipline.' Therapy, on the other hand, concerns itself with 'soul' which, as Hillman stresses, is inherently pathological, multiple, prone to wandering, death, depth and depression.
An awareness of the potential value of pathology is accordingly essential in psychotherapeutic practice. If we understand therapy as (literally) 'a service to the gods' who inform soul, then we need, firstly, to avoid the trap of assuming that reintegration is tantamount to elevating psychic unity over plurality, or that an absence of 'dis-ease' is in all instances helpful, necessary, or appropriate to the mythic context of the pathological state. Reintegration, at least in my understanding of it, amounts to re-establishing a conscious relationship between fragmented soul-parts, or splinter personalities. It does not necessarily mean annihilating these splinter psyches, or otherwise merging them into one at the expense of the many. Hence to denigrate dis-integration as in all instances undesirable is to privilege the still centre of the mandala over the tension of opposites at the circumference; it is to promote monotheism above the soul's need for a plurality of gods, to elevate the pristine heights of spirit, as an archetype of unity, over the soul's need for immersion and dispersion in the human sufferings of the vale. And it is to set god against god, Apollonian simplicity against Dionysian multiplicity, reason over divine madness, order over chaos, focus over radiation, coagulation over dissolution. Individually, the gods, after all, are just as likely to be found in one camp as in the other.
The re-connection with soul, then, is not equivalent to the re-enthroning of the monotheistic myth of psychic unity, but is rather on one level the reinstatement of soul in all its imaginal complexity and fragmentation, its meanings and meanderings; for if the psyche protects against splintering, it is also prone to splintering its protection. Perhaps, in other words, we need to 're-vision' soul retrieval by viewing it not only as a reintegration of the personality, but also as an affirmation of polytheistic soul that is at the heart of the "I-Thou" of human and Cosmic life. If soul is both one and many, then the centripetal re-connection to multiple soul compensates the centrifugal re-collection of an original unity of soul.
Just as shamans, through initiation death-rebirth must heal themselves, so the effective depth therapist is one who through individuation as the ongoing "re-collection" of wholeness, has transcended the "dis-ease" of imbalance and conflict by becoming consciously centred in the Self rather than in the one-sided ego. This re-centring does not obliterate conflict, multiplicity of soul, or pathology, but rather allows for the coexistence of a more central and detached vantage point from where an untouchable core of the personality serenely views the conflict, while the pathologizing soul is unavoidably immersed in it. Our wounds, after all, parent our destinies and keep us in the body - and in the world. They stop us from the temptation to escape upward along the vertical axis of "spirit" and keep us anchored instead in the World, hence along the horizontal human axis of Keatsian "Soul-making", with all its attendant yet necessary limitation and suffering. (The Puer complex, for example, as the limping wound through which Otherworldly vision is earthed and can flow, is accordingly common among artists and shamans alike).
Integration vs Pathological Dis-Integration
Hillman is accordingly, I suggest, setting up a straw Jung when he attempts to pit his ideology of multiple soul against Jung's focus on wholeness, particularly as it is symbolized in the mandala. The mandala, after all, is not an image of undivided unity but rather one of totality, in which opposing forces at the circumference are reconciled in the still centre. As such, neither circumferential multiplicity nor core unity are privileged; instead they both thrive through creative tension in a compensatory relationship. Such wholism as 'unity-in-diversity' is not - as Hillman at times seems to suggest it is - Jung's pet philosophy, since as Jung (based on his immense experience) takes great pains to stress, mandalas arise in nature and are dreamed, drawn, danced, or enacted spontaneously, particularly by individuals in crisis or conflict situations. (A notable example is mandalas drawn by chronic sufferers of schizophrenia, in which a fragmented central area is counterbalanced by an ordered circumference).
A more feasible opposition, I suggest, is that between integration (i.e. 'individuation') as the conscious cooperation, mediated by the central Self, between multiple or opposing soul-parts, and the kind of pathological dissociation which occurs, for example, in Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD], debilitating schizophrenia, and destructive psychoses, all conditions in which splinter personalities are unaware of or hostile to one another. And it is precisely here that the shaman's power to retrieve lost or wandered soul must meld with the therapist's ability to discern whether reunification is helping or stifling the death-in-life of the elusive butterfly of soul.
Therapy & Mythic Contextualization
Soul has an insatiable hunger to imbibe the full spectrum of life in all its tragedy and glory. Ideally, as Jung stressed, the therapist in this sense needs an in-depth knowledge of comparative religion and mythology to do justice not only to the mythic potential of soul's wounded condition, but also to soul's infinite complexity. Similarly, by recognizing and respecting the mythic context of the patient's suffering, the therapist, instead of intervening prematurely or unnecessarily, honours the necessity of the patient's presence in a wounded, dismembered, or deathlike phase of the myth.
The goal of therapy is in this light to guide the person through the myth, that they may thereby achieve a sense of empathy with the wider sphere of the collective soul, with life's unending cycle of death and rebirth, hence with the overall purpose of the Cosmos as it mirrors that sphere and cycle in a synchronicity of soul and embodiment. In this sense, the therapist as the servant of soul is not primarily a saviour from suffering, but rather a soul-guide through it. The 'patient' is reconciled with life and participates in the mythic drama of the gods. This realization that one is not alone and that one's struggles, darkness and suffering, when embraced in a mythic context have an innate purpose and direction - the forging of soul amidst the vales of suffering - in itself constitutes a healing restoration of the individual to his/her place in the overall mythic scheme and boundless mysterium of the Cosmos.
Pathological dissociation and its attendant soul loss, on the other hand, in cases of MPD is often found among victims of childhood sexual abuse, and among others that have been severely traumatised, for example through war experiences, abandonment, or through shocking or violent loss of a parent, or close personal relationship, and increasingly nowadays, through UFO abduction trauma. As a survival strategy, dissociation can help the sufferer cope and escape pain through, for example, mentally leaving the body. In the longterm, however, if the trauma remains buried and unrecalled, hence unresolved, these self-protective maneuvres can amount to a debilitating loss of soul, which often resurfaces later on in the form of promiscuity, claustrophobia, kleptomania, fear of sex, chronic depression, poor self-esteem, eating disorders or addictions.
In my own work (as both shaman and psychotherapist) with chronic sufferers of schizophrenia, I have on the other hand at times watched the unfolding of dream and hallucination dramas which are sometimes desperately struggling toward a reintegration of the personality. The decision I am then faced with is whether to nurture and allow the process to unfold psychotherapeutically, whether to intervene shamanically, or whether to combine both.
The shamanic retrieval of lost soul, however, is not always the same as a reunification of the personality. Indeed, there are kairos times when, in the context of mythic 'dis-integration', soul as inherently multiple and pathological thrives on fragmentation, which in chronic cases of schizophrenia, for example, is indistinguishable from shamanic initiation. The key question here is whether the wounded condition or dissociated state, or loss of soul is overridingly, or ultimately debilitating. Given the close correlation between schizophrenic breakdown and shamanic initiation, the shaman in dealing with schizophrenia is faced with a possible dilemma. As she knows from her own experience, it is the schizophrenic who can self-heal and reintegrate who has the makings of an authoritive shaman. If she intervenes prematurely, or unnecessarily, she may be robbing the schizophrenic of an authentic initiation experience. Here her ability as psychotherapist comes into play when she is called upon to discern the significance of key developments in the schizophrenic's dreams, visions, voices, and degrees of adaptation to outer reality.
At-one-ment as Remembered Singularity
Whatever the therapeutic situation, though, I am constantly aware of the need to distinguish healing through integration, or through reconciliation to anima mundi, from healing as the elimination of pathology and plurality of soul. In the broader context, whether we are dealing with soul pathology, soul loss, or with the natural spontaneity of individuation, the reawakening of our sense of the sacred and of the transcendental, unitary Ground of all phenomena (Tao), goes hand-in-hand with our re-connection to anima mundi as World Soul. In this quest for transpersonal 'at-one-ment' as the religare which links us back - through re-connection and re-collection - to the all-pervasive Centre of the boundless Sphere of soul, our challenge, finally, is to marry fragmentation with synthesis, imaginal unity with incarnate pathology, Saturn's hobbling peg-leg with Puer's Icarean wing, the dizzy peaks of spirit with the clammy depths of the vale of Soul-making. For only by cross-connecting the vertical axis of unifying spirit with the horizontal axis of pathologizing soul can we consciously embrace the core singularity of remembered Self, the central Point, which as the God archetype both transcends and unites them both.
Soul-making & Soul Retrieval:
Creative Bridges Between Shamanism and Depth Psychology
by
Maureen B. Roberts
People who undertake spiritual exercises with a sense of acquisitiveness, even with regard to "spiritual states," are really doing the work of demons, even if they feel they are being spiritual. Those who seek knowledge and extraordinary powers for the sake of personal gain and fame are also doing the work of demons.
When people are possessed by such inner demons, they may become receptors of external forces that artificially boost their intellectual or psychic powers for a time. Not realizing that it is a false and deceptive condition, such people attribute this to themselves and become all the more conceited and possessed by their demons.
A simple method of quelling demons is to refrain from clinging to anything mentally. This is illustrated by an ancient story, in which a strange person used to roam around the grounds of a hermitage of a certain meditation master. Sometimes he would appear as a Buddhist saint, sometimes as a celestial king, sometimes radiating extraordinary light, sometimes uttering strange sayings. This continued for ten years, and then it stopped.
The meditation master told his disciples, "A celestial demon had been coming here to bother me, but no matter what appearance it created, I dealt with it by not looking or listening. The demon's manifestations had an end, but my not looking and not listening have no end."
Lin Chi said, "If you can put to rest the mind that frantically seeks from moment to moment, you will be no different from old Shakyamuni Buddha." He wasn't fooling people. Even bodhisattvas of the seventh stage seek Buddha-knowledge without their minds being satisfied:* therefore it is called "affliction." Really there's no way to manage: it's impossible to apply the slightest external measure.
Several years ago there was a certain Layman Hsu who was able to find an opening; he sent me a letter expressing his understanding that said, "Empty and open in my daily activities, there's not a single thing opposing me; finally I realize that all things in the three worlds are fundamentally nonexistent. Truly this is peaqce and happiness, joyful liveliness, having cast it all away." Accordingly, I instructed him with a verse:
Don't be fond of purity:
Purity makes people weary.
Don't be fond of joyful liveliness:
Joyful liveliness makes people crazy.
As water conforms to the vessel,
It accordingly becomes square or round, short or long.
As for casting away or not casting away,
Please think it over more carefully.
The three worlds and myriad things
Are no refuge---where is there any home?
If you are just thus,
This is a great contradiction.
This is to inform Layman Hsu
That his own kin are creating disaster---
Open wide the Eye of the Thousand Sages,
And do not keep praying for relief.
*The Hua Yen Scripture propounds ten stages of bodhisattvahood.
Only with the seventh "Far-Going" stage is the discriminating knowledge
that clings to existence and nonexistence cut off. But at the seventh stage
there's still agent and object, wisdom apart from the truth, and hence accomplishment.
"Though entering the gate of knowledge of contemplating emptiness,
they scrupulously cultivate merit. Though detached from the three worlds,
they adorn the three worlds."
With the eight stage, outward seeking ceases,
and accomplishment is abandoned, even as the Dharma is actualized in this
"Immovable" stage. All the great deeds of benefiting self and others is likened
to what happens when a person dreams of drowning, and generates a
great burst of energy and acts with expedient means to save himself,
and thus by his efforts wakes up. After he awakens, his doings cease.
Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui
Q: How does one deal with the practical life situations
while trying to be simple and experience space?
A: You see, in order to experience open space one also must experience the solidity
of earth, of form. They are interdependent. Often we romanticize open space
and then we fall into traps. As long as we do not romanticize open space as a
wondrous place but rather relate that space to earth, then we will avoid these traps.
Space cannot be experienced without the outline of earth to define it. If we are going
to paint a picture of open space, we must express it in terms of the earth's horizon.
So it is necessary to bring oneself back to the problems of everyday life,
the kitchen-sink problems. That is why the simplicity and precision of everyday
activities is very important. If you perceive open space, you should bring yourself
back to your old, familiar, claustrophobic life-situations and look into them more
closely, examine them, absorb yourself into them, until the absurdity of their solidity
strikes you and you can see their spaciousness as well.
Q: How does one relate to the impatience that accompanies the waiting period?
A: Impatience means that you do not have a complete understanding of the process.
If you see completeness of each action, then you will not be impatient any more.
Q: I experience calm thoughts as well as neurotic thoughts.
Are these calm thoughts something I should cultivate?
A: In the practice of meditation all thoughts are the same: pious thoughts,
very beautiful thoughts, religious thoughts, calm thoughts---they are all still thoughts.
You do not try to cultivate calm thoughts and suppress so-called neurotic thoughts.
This is an interesting point. When we speak of treading the path of dharma,
which is the Fourth Noble Truth, it does not mean that we become religious, calm, good.
Trying to be calm, trying to be good, is also an aspect of striving, of neuroticism.
Religiously inclined thoughts are the watcher, the judge, and confused, worldly
thoughts are the actor, the doer. For instance if you meditate, you might experience
ordinary domestic thoughts and at the same time there is a watcher saying,
"You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, but you should come back to meditation."
These pious thoughts are still thoughts and should not be cultivated.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa
The method to be practiced is as follows: you are to doubt regarding the subject in you that hears all sounds. All sounds are heard at a given moment because there is certainly a subject that hears. Although you may hear the sounds with your ears, the holes in your ears are not the subject that hears. If they were, dead men would also hear sounds.... You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself what the subject of hearing could be.
Pay no attention to the illusory thoughts and ideas that may occur to you. Only doubt more and more deeply, gathering together in yourself all the strength that is in you, without aiming at anything or expecting anything in advance, without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened; become like a child within your own breast... But however you go on doubting, you will find it impossible to locate the subject that hears.
You must explore still further just there, where nothing is to be found. Doubt deeply in a state of single-mindedness, looking neither ahead nor behind, neither right nor left, becoming completely like a dead man, unaware even of the presence of your own person. When this method is practiced more and more deeply, you will arrive at a state of being completely self-oblivious and empty. But even then you must bring up the Great Doubt, "What is the subject that hears?" and doubt still further, all the time being like a dead man.
And after that, when you are no longer aware of your being completely like a dead man, and are no more conscious of the procedure of the Great Doubt but become yourself, through and through, a great mass of doubt, there will come a moment, all of a sudden, at which you emerge into a transcendence called the Great Enlightenment, as if you had awoken from a great dream, or as if, having been completely dead, you had suddenly revived.
{Sermons of Takusui}
"awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory"
Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring... Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns wholeheartedly to confront the world which threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened.
The Way of Transformation by Karlfried Graf Von Dürkheim
How do we make the teachings real? In the midst of our over-scheduled lives, how do we discover our inherent clarity and compassion? How do we develop trust that openness and maitri are available even in the most frantic moments? When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior's perspective and contact bodhichitta?
Sharing the heart is a simple practice that can be used at any time and in every situation. It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection. A version of tonglen on the spot, it is also a method for enhancing our ability to rejoice.
The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It's a way of acknowledging when we are closing down and of training to open up. When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we make the wish that others can also experience this delight or this relief. In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others. If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well. It's a way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening bodhichitta.
Even the simplest of things can be the basis of this practice---a beautiful morning, a good meal, a shower. Although there are many such fleeting ordinary moments in our days, we usually speed right past them. We forget what joy they can bring. So the first step is to stop, notice, and appreciate what is happening. Even if this is all we do, it's revolutinary. Then we think of someone who is suffering and wish that person could have this pleasure to sweeten up his or her life.
When we practice giving in this way, we don't bypass our own pleasure. Say we're eating a delicious strawberry. We don't think, "Oh, I shouldn't be enjoying this so much. Other people don't even have a crust of bread." We just fully appreciate the luscious fruit. Then we wish that Pete or Rita could have such pleasure. We wish that anyone who is suffering could experience such delight.
Discomfort of any kind also becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing that our pain is shared; there are people all over the earth feeling just as we do right now. This simple gesture is a seed of compassion for self and other. If we want, we can go further. We can wish that a specific person or all beings could be free of suffering and its causes. In this way our toothaches, our insomnia, our divorces, and our terror become our link with humanity.
This simple way of training with pleasure and pain allows us to use what we have, wherever we are, to connect with other people. It engenders on-the-spot bravery, which is what it will take to heal ourselves and our brothers and sisters on the planet.
The Places That Scare You, by Pema Chödrön
(Images linked/Art by Jason Thielke/Programming by DPC)
To make things as easy as possible to understand,
we can summarize the four boundless qualities in
this single phrase "a kind heart." Just train yourself
to have a kind heart always and in all situations.
...by ensuring that the paradigm will not be too easily surrendered, resistance guarantees that scientists will not be lightly distracted and that anomalies that lead to paradigm change will penetrate knowledge to the core...
The Structure of Scientific Revolution, by T.S. Kuhn
Human beings find names essential. Names are discriminating; they distinguish one thing from another. By distinguishing one object from another object, we are aided in understanding the world. If we did not know the nature of an object to which we have given a specific name, it could not be distinguished from another object. Therefore, discrimination is essential to understanding objects. But names are not everything.
Another unique aspect of human beings is this: people by nature manufacture all kinds of tools. Names are also tools. With names we handle objects. But inventing tools may lead to the "tyranny of tools." When tools become tyrannical, instead of our making use of them, they rebel against their inventors and take revenge. Then we are made tools of the tools we make. This strange process is especially noticeable in modern life. We invent many machines, which in turn control human affairs, our human life. Machines, especially in recent years, have inextricably entered our life. We try to adjust ourselves to the machines, because the machine refuses to obey our will once it's out of our hands.
In our intellectual processes, ideas can also be despotic, for we cannot always control the concepts we use. We invent or construct many ideas, many concepts. They are very useful to us in dealing with our life, but convenient ideas frequently control their inventors and become despotic. Scholars who invent ideas forget that they formulated them in order to handle realities for a specific purpose. Each science, whether it is called biology or psychology or astronomy, works with its own premises and its own hypotheses. Each science organizes the field it has chosen--whether it be stars, animals, fish, and so on---and works with those realities according to the conceptual scheme especially devised to study them for our understanding. In pursuing their theories and using their formulations, scientists sometimes find themselves in situations that cannot be explained by their concepts. Then, instead of dropping those ideas and trying to create new concepts so that the unexpected difficulties can be included and handled, they often stick to the first ideas that they devised and try to make the new realities obey those ideas. Or they simply exclude anything which cannot be covered by the network of ideas they have created.
You might say that some scientists catch fish in a net with certain standardized meshes. Those fish that cannot be scooped up and captured in the net will be dropped--they won't be considered worth saving. The scientist-fishermen just take up those that can be caught in their net and try to explain their catch by means of the ideas they already possess. Other fish are considered not to exist. The person holding the net says, "These fish exist, caught in my net. All others don't exist...."
Such conclusions are altogether unwarranted. If scientists were content with reaching conclusions on what they can survey or measure, that would be all right. If they maintain that beyond that they do not know and don't venture any theory or hypothesis, that is also all right. But sometimes blinded by their own brilliance, by whatever success they have already achieved within certain boundaries, they try to extend that achievement beyond the established boundaries, as if they had already surveyed and measured that which is beyond what they already know. That is the trouble with some scientists.
Now the problem with ordinary people is that they blindly rely on what scientists say. But scientists must always make conditional statements, for they all begin with certain hypotheses. When scientists could not explain light, for example, they invented what they called "wave theory." But the wave theory did not account for all phenomena connected with light, so scientists introduced "quantum theory." This made the explanation of other phenomena possible, but then scientists discovered that in order to explain all phenomena they had to use both theories. Unfortunately, the two theories contradict each other, so that when the wave theory is adopted quantum theory must be thrown out. And when the quantum theory is utilized the other theory must be discarded. But certain phenomena exist, and scientists cannot deny their reality. Thus, however, contradictory they may be, both theories have to be adopted. Somehow they have to coexist.
Furthermore, we have the five senses, and our knowledge of reality is connected with them. If we had another sense, or two or three more senses beyond the existing five, we might find something altogether different existing. If we say that our five senses exhaust reality, that is presumptuous on our part. We can say, however, that as far as our five senses and our intellect are concerned, the world is to be understood, explained, and interpreted in a certain way. But there is no way to deny the existence of something (it may or may not be proper to speak of "someone") higher or deeper, something that covers the field more extensively. There may be something beyond the measure of our five senses and our intellect. We may possess some such thing in ourselves, perhaps largely under-developed. If we have another way of coming into contact with reality that is much deeper, more extensive, than our senses and intellect permit, it is presumptuous of us to deny such an intuition, and claim, "There is no such thing---nothing exists outside my senses and intellect."
Images linked
Art by Laurie Lipton
Programming by DPC
In order to KNOW, we must keep in mind the fact that reasoning and emotion, while indispensable as a foundation for our believing, can never give us that final, complete and everlasting inner “knowing” that for all our years dispels doubt as light dispels darkness. The light can come only from the high Self, for it is The Light.
This shining and wonderful thing which we are discussing has been the subject of numberless esoteric teachings and writings. They may all be summed up in the cryptic command, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
The intuitive knowing has been called “realization” in some lands. In Christian circles of a very early day it was called “illumination” because so many were able to see the High Self as a white light unlike any earthly light. Later on, the word “baptism” came to be substituted for “illumination” and the true meaning was gradually lost.
The early sages of Islam were inclined to veil the Secret less heavily. In the Kashf Al-Mahjub we can still read the final conclusion reached after long deliberation by a great sage whose bible was the Koran.
He wrote:
“You must know that the knowledge concerning the existence of the spirit is intuitive…, and the intelligence is unable to apprehend its (the spirit’s) nature.
Our search for God is our search for ourselves…..
Growing Into Light, by Max Freedom Long, pp. 59-60
"The moment one particle is brought up,
the whole earth is contained in it.
Who is it that can open the borders and extend the land as a lone rider with a single lance,
and so can be the master anywhere and encounter the source in everything?"
If everything is interdependent, then everything is part of the existence of every thing. Using this one quintessential understanding of universal interdependence, it is possible to extend the horizons of consciousness by means of the infinite network of causality. In this way, we are in the midst of the limitlessness even in the midst of the finite, what determines the depth and breadth of our world is the richness or poverty of our perception.
Once as the Buddha was walking along with a group, he pointed to the ground and said,
"This place is suitable for building a sanctuary."
Shakura, Emperor of Angels, struck a blade of grass in the ground and declared,
"The building of the sanctuary is done."
The Buddha smiled.
Buddha traveled in the company of all beings. Shakra, the Emperor of Angels, is also called Indra. In the Avatamasaka teaching, the pearl net of Indra in the skies above reflecting the world below represents the infinite network of interdependence phenomena and principles.
Buddha points at the ground and says it is suitable for a sanctuary; this stands for the universal principle, which is everywhere. Indra plants a blade of grass in the ground and declares the sanctuary built; this stands for the concrete manifestation of principle in phenomena. Realizing the perfect correspondence of the abstract and the concrete is the third of four realms of reality in Avatamsaka Buddhism and the third of five ranks in the Ts'ao-Tung school of Ch'an Buddhism.
T'ien-t'ung said in verse:
Infinite spring in the hundred grasses;
Picked up in what comes to hand, it's used familiarly.
The glorious embodiment of virtuous qualities,
Leisurely Buddha leads by the hand into the red dust,
Able to be master in the dust;
A visitor shows up from outside Creation,
Life enough as it is whenever he is,
Not minding if he's not as clever as others.
The infinite spring in the hundred grasses is the universal principle underlying phenomena. When this universal principle is realized, it can be illustrated in anything.
An embodiment of virtuous qualities represents Buddha as embodying abstract truth in concrete manifestations. The practice of enlightenment is actualized in the ordinary world, while the enlightenment of the practitioner is independent of objects.
The Emperor of Angels is the guest from outside of Creation. The idea of being "outside Creation" in this case refers to a total perspective on the whole of being, rather than a limited perspective from an isolated point of view. The sufficiency of his life wherever he is refers to his ability to experience everything as part of everything else; unconcern for his comparative lack of cleverness refers to the actual reality of universal interdependence, which does not need to be artificially constructed to be true.
The more ripe a cluster of rice becomes, the lower it bows down its head.
A Japanese proverb
Shin Buddhism, or the teachings of Shinran (1173-1262), teaches us the importance of humility, the most important universal virtue. Many people think that the ultimate goal in Buddhism as well as human life is to become good. But according to Shinran, it is to become humble. Being good is not good enough; we must become humble persons. We must know our evilness, the existence of our ineradicable egoism. We must know our ignorance, the limitations of our intellects. We must become humble persons who can say, "I'm evil and ignorant." In order to explain that Shin Buddhism teaches us the importance of humility, let me first discuss the two stages of life that Shinran experienced.
The most important event in Shinran's life was his meeting with Honen (1133-1212), the founder of the Jodo School, when Shinran was twenty-nine. This event divided his life into two stages: the period before the meeting was the first stage and the period after it was the second stage.
When Shinran met Honen, Shinran realized that he had had a shallow view of Buddhahood. His thoughts on the subject went through a total transformation. Before Shinran met Honen, Shinran thought that a Buddha was a "good" and "wise" person-a holy person who was possessed of wonderful virtues. In order to become such a Buddha, Shinran attempted to purify himself by eliminating evil passions. But he could not attain Buddhalhood. Not only was he unable to become a Buddha, he was feeling more and more depressed and miserable. His goal of Buddhahood seemed far away. He could not understand what was wrong.
When Shinran met Honen, Shinran saw a Buddha in him. But the Buddhahood that he saw in Honen was totally different from what he had anticipated. More than anything else, Shinran was moved because Honen was a humble student. Honen identified himself only as a student of Shan-tao (613-681), a Chinese Pure Land master. Honen said that the only important thing for him was to learn from his teacher. This way, Honen embodied the spirit of a Buddha by the name of Namu Amida Butsu (Bowing Amida Buddha). Namu (Bowing) is a part of the Buddha's name. The Buddha's name symbolizes the humblest human spirit. Before Shinran met Honen, he had thought that a Buddha was a teacher, a respected and worshipped person. But now, having met Honen, he realized that a Buddha was actually a student, a respecting and worshipping person.
Further, before Shinran met Honen, he had thought that a Buddha was a "good" and "wise" person. But now Shinran realized that such an understanding of Buddhahood was a shallow one. He realized that he had been seeing Buddhahood only objectively, from outside. He had not known the subjective reality of Buddhahood--what a Buddha would say about himself. Although people would see a Buddha from outside and describe him by saying, "He is good and wise," a Buddha would describe himself by saying, "I'm evil and foolish." Having met Honen, who had deep insight into his own evilness and ignorance and said, "I'm evil and foolish," Shinran realized that the true essence of Buddhahood was humility--deep insight into one's own evilness and foolishness.
Thus in the first stage, i.e., before he met Honen, Shinran thought that a Buddha was a "good" and "wise" person, and Shinran made efforts to become such a Buddha. But in the second stage, i.e., after he met Honen, Shinran realized that the essence of Buddhahood was humility--studentship and insight into evilness and ignorance.
Thus, having been moved by Honen's humble spirit, Shinran also became a humble student. He recognized that he had ineradicable egoism at the basis of his being and that he had no goodness that he could rely on as the basis of his liberation. Thus he stopped his practices designed to transform himself into a holy person. He realized that a wonderful Dharma tradition had already been given to him and that the only thing necessary for him was to listen to it. This realization was his liberation.
"What Is Shin Buddhism?"
by Dr. Nobuo Haneda
Reprinted by permission of the The Maida Center of Buddhism,
2609 Regent Street,
Berkeley, CA 94704,
(510) 843-8515 source
programming by DPC
In John Christopher’s apocalyptic novel The Death of Grass, an agricultural virus wipes out the world’s grain. The loss of wheat, rice and barley sets off a chain reaction. Livestock die, mass starvation ensues and civilization collapses. Like most novels in the dystopian genre, Christopher’s story follows a tribe of humans as they struggle to survive.
The central conceit of the novel is that the protagonist’s brother owns a farm in an easily defensible valley. The farm is a metaphor for eden: an ecological utopia with a surplus of fertile land and a bumper crop of potatoes ready for harvest. Unfortunately, civilization collapses more swiftly than anyone expects and the protagonist and his family must fight their way several hundred miles to get back to the farm. Along the way, others join their party including a gunsmith whose sniper rifle becomes the tribe’s main tool of survival.
As the novel progresses, the murderous acts they commit steadily increase. They kill for food, for revenge and, finally, for control of the farm. And in the end, an explicitly patriarchal despotism develops. Tyranny conquers utopia.
The reason to read The Death of Grass today is that invites us to ponder what would happen if society collapsed tomorrow. The answer Christopher offers is that we would fall back upon the same individualist, survival mentality that ushered in collapse. He argues that we would repeat the mistakes of the past, brutally installing a dictatorship and ruthlessly killing others to save ourselves. Christopher does not pretend that goodwill and solidarity will exist the day after catastrophe unless they existed the day before.
The moral of The Death of Grass is that tyranny is the necessary result of ecological catastrophe if collapse comes before a spiritual and moral revolution. This is a message that we ought to take to heart because, like in the novel, the warning signs of environmental collapse haunt us. Although we try to repress our awareness of the looming zero point, the death rattle of nature is growing louder.
In light of the death of nature, I believe that we have only three options.
The first option is to do nothing: ignore the warning signs and continue on the path of reckless consumerism. Under this model, we simply keep living our lives, building our careers and believing that everything will be fine. We place our faith in the corporations and the American way of life.
The second option is largely the same as the first but it appeals to liberal-minded environmentalists. This is the so-called “green capitalism” option whereby we keep consuming but we make ourselves feel better by purchasing “green” products. Ultimately, this path only appeals to the very rich who can afford to shop organic, buy hybrids, use bamboo flooring and follow the latest corporate endorsed trends.
In the end, these two options are basically the same. They refuse to accept the need for a dramatic reduction in First World standards of living. As such, they are not options at all because they merely ensure the extinction of nature. These two options guarantee that when the collapse happens it will bring an ecological dictatorship. Both “green capitalism” and consumerism, in their refusal to endorse a spiritual turn-around, lay the foundations for eco-tyranny.
The third option is to immediately take the threat of ecological collapse seriously and to re-organize society around confronting that threat. This requires a fundamental change in the goals of society: an end to economic development, to the acquisition of things, to the desecration of the earth. And it requires an essential shift in the nature of humanity: a moral and spiritual uprising against the soul poisoning of advertising. This option is the only viable alternative to eco-tyranny. It asks the most of us, but it is also the only way to prevent an authoritarian post-apocalyptic society.
Some believe that averting ecological catastrophe may no longer be possible. Regardless of whether this is true–after all, how could we know?–the best strategy may be to assume that the tipping point has already occurred and that preventative measures are no longer sufficient.
Instead, what is needed now is a frank discussion about what will happen the day after. If all we can imagine is that it will be a terrible dictatorship of violence, then we must immediately begin the process of initiating a spiritual revolution, an inner-insurrection that lays the foundation for an egalitarian post-consumerist society.
Micah White is a contributing editor at Adbusters and an independent activist. He lives in Berkeley and is writing a book about the future of activism. www.micahmwhite.com or micah (at) adbusters.org
1) The door of emptiness. Of no-where. Of no place for a self, which cannot be entered by a self. And therefore is of no use to someone who is going somewhere. Is it a door at all? The door of no-door.
2) The door without sign, without indicator, without information. Not particularized. Hence no one can say of it "This is it! This is the door." It is not recognizable as a door. It is not led up to by other things pointing to it: "We are not it, but that is it--the door." No signs saying "Exit." No use looking for indications. Any door with a sign on it, any door that proclaims itself to be a door, is not the door. But do not look for a sign saying "Not-door." Or even "No Exit."
3) The door without wish. The undesired. The unplanned door. The door never expected. Never wanted. Not desirable as door. Not a joke, not a trap door. Not select. Not exclusive. Not for few. Not for many. Not for. Door without aim. Door without end. Does not respond to a key--so do not imagine you have a key. Do not have your hopes on possession of the key.
There is no use asking for it. Yet you must ask. Who? For what? When you have asked for a list of all doors, this one is not on the list. When you have asked for all the numbers of all the doors, this one is without a number. Do not be deceived into thinking this door is merely hard to find and difficult to open. When sought it fades. Recedes. Diminishes. Is nothing. There is no threshold. No footing. It is not empty space. It is neither this world nor another. It is not based on anything. Because it has no foundation, it is the end of sorrow. Nothing remains to be done. Therefore there is no threshold, no step, no advance, no recession, no entry, no nonentry. Such is the door that ends all doors; the unbuilt, the impossible, the undestroyed, through which all fires go when they have "gone out."
Christ said, "I am the door." The nailed door. The cross, they nail the door shut with death. The resurrection: "You see, I am not a door." "Why do you look up to heaven?" Attolite portos principes vestras. For what? The king of glory. Ego sum ostium. I am the opening, the "shewing," the revelation, the door of light, the Light itself. "I am the light," and the light is in the world from beginning.
