Oriental philosophy from the writings of Wei Wu Wei
(pseudonym of
an Irish nobleman n/o Terence Gray - 1895-1986)
(Wei Wu Wei is a Taoist term which translates as action that is
non-action)
The Masters of Zen rarely discoursed. Discoursing they regarded as
one of the obstacles to enlightenment, for it encouraged and developed the
wrong kind of thinking - that 'mentation' or 'intellection' which affirms our
false identification with a fictitious ego.
'The ignorant are delighted with discoursing,' the Lankavatara Sutra
states, 'discoursing is a source of suffering in the triple world.' We would
not doubt it; yes, indeed, but when the Lanka says that discoursing is a source
of suffering it means more particularly that it is a hindrance to the removal
of ignorance, and so perpetuates our normal state of suffering.
But, nowadays, what was meant by discoursing is chiefly represented
by books. In books, as conventionally and commercially produced today, no idea
can be conveyed in less than about ten thousand words - with apologies for not
making it a hundred thousand, in which form it would have been much 'better'.
No chance for anyone to think except the author!
Yet, when ideas are buried in a haystack of verbiage, who remembers
them, and, conversely, when ideas are concisely expressed, who pays any
attention to them? The most vital statements of the sages and prophets, even of
the Buddha and Jesus, are not taken seriously - presumably because they are not
served up in a sauce that conceals their flavour and substitutes its own.
Instead of apologizing for not burying their ideas even more deeply
in verbiage would not modern authors do better to apologise whenever they are
unable to express an idea more concisely than in, say, one thousand words?
Ideas may vary in the amount of expression they need, for many a hundred words
should be ample. After all, the more fully ex-pressed the less juice there
remains in them, the more complete the exposition the more dead they are on
delivery; ideas mummified in words are only museum specimens.
The ideas of the Masters, expressed in half a dozen words, are
still alive after centuries, but they are fingers pointing to intuitional
understanding, not fossilized examples of intellection.
Have we any greater difficulty than the famous 'Void' which forms
the principal subject of so many sutras and statements of the Masters as of the
Buddha himself? How many hair-splitting definitions, negations of negations and
contradictions of contradictions have been attempted in order to suggest its
meaning to our tri-dimensional minds?
Supposing we ask Hui Hai?
'The Void is simply non-attachment'
* *
It may be necessary to regard the Void in a more metaphysical aspect.
'Emptiness', 'the Void' - if one thinks about it, surely the epithet most suggestive
and least misleading to us today should be just 'Non-Manifestation'?
If anything is clear it is that the Taoist conception of Non-Action
is the basis of all action. Similarly Non-manifestation must be the basis of
all manifestation.
Most, if not all, sects of most, if not all, superior religions seek to transmute hate into love, i.e. negative into positive. Zen alone requires no such transmutation between two aspects of a single thing, which are evaluations of an affective manifestation. Instead it requires absolute non-attachment, the exclusion of both hate and love, which may be defined as the abolition of affectivity itself. One may look for the origin of this in the original Taoism.
But if Caritas, impersonal
compassion, be an accurate description of the resulting state, one must
envisage it as a strictly non-affective condition of the mind…. Detachment is a
state; it is not a totalization of achieved indifferences.
Every
action should be an adequate response to circumstances, whether that be
slaughter or self-sacrifice.
Since our egos hinder us from responding adequately to
circumstances we are well-advised to abide by the classification into 'good'
and 'bad' devised for purposes of social order, but do not let us imagine that
they are really such.
As regards discrimination on the
plane of seeming no quotation is necessary, since every Master has condemned
it. As regards correct discrimination Hui Hai says 'An equal combination of
abstraction ('abstraction' here means detachment from affectivity) and
understanding is called deliverance.'
'To be able to distinguish minutely between every kind of good and evil is
called understanding. Not to feel love or hatred or to be in any way affected
at the moment of making these distinctions is called abstraction (detachment).
This is an equal combination of abstraction (detachment) and understanding.'
And, therefore, 'is called deliverance'.
But let us not forget that on the plane of seeming
discrimination (i.e. affective), discrimination between 'good' and 'evil' is
illusory.
Hui Hai also states, 'No attachment means that
feelings of hatred and love do not arise. That is what is meant by no attachment.'
Judging is an automatic response of
the ego asserting itself: in so far as pure-intelligence (buddhi) has
reduced the power of the ego, the automatic response to stimulus is
understanding.
We tend to conceive everything as subject to our notion of time. But
'living for ever', i.e. going on living, is not the same thing as being
eternal. The former is impossible, a pure illusion; the latter the only
reality. Being eternal is never having been subject to the conception of time.
Being eternal is not 'going on living': it involves no process of
becoming: being eternal consists simply in Being.
Whatever we may do we find a surface opposed to another surface.
On the plane of Manifestation each of us is utterly separate and alone.
Union is only on the plane of Reality, and thereon mutual possession is
universal and absolute.
Our notion of love is perhaps a nostalgia for that.
The association of male and female has the apparent effect of
restoring this double imbalance to a state of equilibrium. Since the attainment
of equilibrium is constantly and automatically sought throughout manifestation,
the mutual attraction of male and female and the mutual need of one another
thereby becomes comprehensible.
But it is a need that can never attain fulfillment during life, nor
anything but a simulation thereof. From this, there results all sexual performances
on the one hand, and all specific conflict between the sexes on the other.
This inadequate utilization of the mind is even more clearly defined when the subject matter is personal. Whereas a controlled mind will receive personal criticism with interest, even with eagerness, seeking to benefit by any truth it may be able to recognise in the criticism - since it is inevitably difficult for human beings to regard themselves dispassionately, so that the criticism of others can be of great value - the primary intelligence will fight back at once, using any argument, however inadequate, that comes to hand, and without any reasoning other than self-defence, self-justification, or offence.
Thus it becomes virtually impossible for the primary intelligence to learn anything from discussion, particularly concerning itself. Strange as it may seem this condition can be observed even in people who, otherwise, have quite a high standard of culture.
One would have thought that the first object of education should be to remove this obstacle to mental development. But education seems to be more concerned with effects than with causes, much as primitive medicine is more concerned with symptoms than with their origins.
Since, in our present state (conditioned by conditioned reflexes), we are the unconscious 'victims' of an intricate mechanism that goes by the name of cause-and-effect and can only do what we must, it makes little difference whether we know that we know what we have to do, whether we suspect that we know what we have to do, or whether we are totally unaware that we know it.
It is inevitable that we know it, since we have done it again and again in the beginningless and endless circuit of the time-process which we see as future-into-past, but which from the dimension at right-angles is a composite present.
To promise to do something which we must do anyhow is meaningless. To promise to do something that may not be, or is not, what we must do, is not only meaningless but sets up a conflict between what we think we want to do and what we have to do, a futile conflict, since ultimately we can only want what we must, and this conflict represents an attempt to obtain what we want by doing something that we are not able to do, or, if you prefer, an attempt to want one thing and obtain the result that could only come from another.
A promise, therefore, is devoid of significance; it cannot have any part in reality. It is no more than a form of words which in no circumstances can express more than the desire or sentiment which actuates us at a given moment.
To make a promise in all seriousness presupposes the notion that we are free to do as we will at any given moment, which is manifestly absurd, and which only ignorance and incomprehension could allow us to suppose. Knowing this, to make a promise is either dishonest or just a conventional form of words to express a sentiment. To try to 'keep' a promise, or to try to oblige another to do so, is as futile as trying to stop the tide from coming in because you want to keep your feet from getting wet....
Louis de Broglie and Schrödinger, crowning half a century's work in
physics, seem to have demonstrated mathematically and in the laboratory that
there is nothing real that exists, nothing absolute that could exist. Mass
appears to be only resistance to change (to movement of energy), decreasing in
bulk in accordance with acceleration and increasing proportionally in energy.
Matter, therefore, has no existence as such.
Hui Neng seems to have known that about 1300 years ago. Scientists have
now demonstrated it. Wise men believed Hui Neng; the unwise will believe the
scientists.
An inexperienced shot will fire at a partridge the moment he sees it.
When this error is brought home to him he tends to go to the other extreme and
to wait until the bird is out of range before he shoots.
An experienced shot, on the other hand, understands the curve of opportunity,
aims with unhurried deliberation, and shoots at the summit of that curve. And,
if for any reason, for instance the intervention of circumstances beyond his
control, he misses the effective period of that curve of opportunity, he
forbears to fire when he could only hope to wound the poor bird, and allows the
occasion to pass as though it had never arisen.
PERSONA (literally 'mask': the artificial 'me'): You say that I
don't exist, that I have no reality; you liken me to a puff of smoke, vapour, a
passing cloud, even a mirage. But here I am.
RELATIVE EGO: Look, there is passing cloud!
PERSONA: Then what am I?
RELATIVE EGO: You are the resultant of all my contacts with the 'not-me'. Your
substance is memory, also called 'habit energy', your vitality is psychic
tension, and you live on affirmations and negations.
PERSONA: Is my substance not real?
RELATIVE EGO: Memory is not real; it is like a reflection or echo of that which
has been perceived and is no longer perceived - though it has not ceased to be;
it is a distorted image of a perception.
PERSONA: Even if I am not real, how can you maintain that I do not exist?
RELATIVE EGO: Because you are not a thing-in-itself. You only exist in the
colloquial sense that everything we recognise may be said therefore to have an
appearance of existence. You are an evaluation, not a reality.
PERSONA: Yet you and your friends spend a lot of time talking about me as
though I existed. You say that the ego of so-and-so sticks out like the
bristles on a hedgehog, that such another has an ego like a boil on his nose,
that a third is an 'insufferable egoist'. You have just been saying that pride
and humility are merely functions of the ego, that when I am powerful they manifest
as pride, and that when I am weak they manifest as humility. How can they be a
function of something that does not exist?
RELATIVE EGO: They do not exist as things-in-themselves just as you do not, and
for precisely the same reason; just as they are merely estimations of a
function depending on you, so you are also just a functional manifestation.
PERSONA: So they are a function of a function? What is a function?
RELATIVE EGO: It is defined as 'a quantity that is dependent for its value on
another quantity'. No function exists as a thing-in-itself.
PERSONA: Of what am I a function?
RELATIVE EGO: Of me.
PERSONA: And what, pray, are you?
RELATIVE EGO: As Bodhidharma stated long ago to the Emperor of China in reply
to the same question - I do not know.
PERSONA: Is that a qualification for accusing others of not existing?
RELATIVE EGO: I am a function of maya. When Reality refracts Itself through the
prism of Time, and appears in Mind as manifestation in three dimensions - which
is maya - I appear as the nucleus of this so-called individual.
PERSONA: Why so-called?
RELATIVE EGO: Because the word 'individual' means that which is undivided, and
the manifestation in question is just the opposite of that. He is a 'dividual',
but he has the superficial appearance of singularity.
PERSONA: Multiple or single, are you real at least?
RELATIVE EGO: Good Heavens, no: I am relative.
PERSONA: That is a comfort.
RELATIVE EGO: Thinking of yourself as usual!
PERSONA: That is my job. How do you know that you are not real?
RELATIVE EGO: The Lord Buddha, in the Diamond Sutra, many times used a phrase
which was admirably inclusive. That which must not be conceived as really
existing he termed 'an ego-entity, a personality, a being or a separated
individuality'. We are all in that.
PERSONA: Well, what is the difference between us?
RELATIVE EGO: I fulfil a useful function; without me this so-called individual
would disintegrate, could not remain in manifestation.
PERSONA: And me?
RELATIVE EGO: You are just a nuisance, a by-product, a malady, a bad smell. I
have only to cut off the psychic tensions which are your life-force, or deprive
you of the affirmations and negations on which you feed, and you dissolve like
a puff of smoke, vapour, or a cloud in the sky.
PERSONA: You try! I am strong; I know how to fight and protect myself.
RELATIVE EGO: Nonsense, you are a clown, an illusionist. When one grows up and
sees through the tawdry mechanism of your tricks, and watches you performing
them, you wilt and crumple up like a balloon that is burst. Your strength is
that of a bully, but you are only a poor fish. You have nothing substantial
anywhere in you to hold you together. You are just hot air.
PERSONA: You think you are somebody just because you have Reality behind you,
attached to your name by a hyphen.
RELATIVE EGO: Potentially I am Reality, but as long as I am encumbered with you
I am tied down to perception in three dimensions and can only know that
intellectually. When I am rid of you I shall be free to turn round - paravritti
it is called in Sanscrit, the 'turning over of the mind' - and live in
accordance with cosmic necessity, free from conflict, free from all the
miseries that come upon me through your antics. I shall be able to cast off
relativity.
PERSONA: Can't I come in on that?
RELATIVE EGO: In that state there remains no sense of a 'me', there is no
longer differentiation between one and other. How then could you participate
therein?
PERSONA: That's all ballyhoo; I'm off to see if I can't find a means of having
a good time. I 'exist' all right in my own way.
RELATIVE EGO: Incorrigible! What a lout! You could not understand it, but to
'exist' connotes 'dualistically'; all idea of existence is dualistic. That is
why it is unreal, why nothing exists in reality - as Hui Neng told us. But
'being' is always in unicity. And nothing dualist (relative) IS.
The Zen masters made it clear to us that we must 'die to the past'; the
Lankavatara Sutra, which, with the Diamond Sutra, constitutes the Buddhist basis
of Zen, explains the disastrous role of habit-memory in anchoring us to the
fictitious self which finds therein its principle source of power.
But the Zen masters show little sign of having understood the
nature of time. Let us, therefore, seek to interpret this essential concept in
the time-context. The past does not exist as such, neither past nor future can
be passed or to come - for nothing is either 'before' or 'after' anything else.
That, the time-sequence, is merely a phenomenal illusion, a product of our
receptive mechanism. We visualise time-as-the-fourth-dimension-of-Space as best
we may - that is spatially. Perhaps we use the analogy of the runway lights,
seen one after the other from the aeroplane that is gathering speed, but seen
simultaneously in a pattern when the further dimension of height has been
gained.
But we can approach more nearly to reality than that, even though
ultimately it should be necessary entirely to discard a spatial concept: the
notion of parallel lives is surely a clearer reflection of the truth.
Ouspensky seems to have sensed this, though he never - to my knowledge
- developed the intuition, preferring the already admirable, and ancient,
concept of recurrence in time. But surely the nearer-truth is that we live lives
parallel to the one of which we are conscious from moment to moment. Every
moment of our lives should be parallel to every other, so that we live every
moment of our lives simultaneously. We do not live again and again in circles
of time, as Ouspensky - and no doubt Pythagoras - suggested. We are not reborn
every seventy odd years in the same conditions (period, place, and
circumstances), repeating every detail of our lives unless we have been able to
change our selves and evolve in a further dimension; rather are we living every
detail of our lives at the same time on parallel planes.
In this there may seem to be two concepts apparently confused:
parallelism of each moment as it enters consciousness, that is parallelism of
the time sequence itself, and simultaneity of every moment of the complete
time-sequence of a life. In this apparent confusion two different dimensions
are involved, at right-angles to one another, in which a single phenomenon is
envisaged from two different angles.
Of the dimension in which the simultaneity of a complete life is
visualised I know of nothing to say, save that it is difficult for us to
conceive, but the dimension in which we are living in parallel to ourselves at
this, and every, moment is nearer and may more readily be visualised. Indeed it
may merely be the fourth.
The alternatives that appear to be offered us at every moment of our
lives may not be the pure illusion that we have assumed them to be. It may be
possible, theoretically at least, to 'choose'. But in practice it is unlikely
that we often can, or that most of us ever do, for in order to 'choose', that
is to change the 'alternative' that lies in front of us on the tram-line of our
one-dimensional displacement in time, we must necessarily have effected or
undergone a change in ourselves - and that happens rarely, if ever, to many of
us. But, admitting such a change, or the culminating moment of a process
leading up to such a change, it would seem probable that we find the points
ahead of us re-set and our tram switches over to a line that, at that moment,
is running parallel to our own. On such an occasion we are unaware of any
variation in our surroundings (or are we always unaware?), but we have in fact
switched over into a parallel life.
* * *
But who are the 'we' that have switched over? Who are the 'we' that
have experienced a change in our selves?
* * *
Satori should be the supreme example of such a change-over, and it is
likely that all authentic 'spiritual' experiences are so also, but there seems
no reason to suppose that such a change is necessarily accompanied by any
recognisable 'experience' as such.
The change in the self that precipitates such an event should
inevitably be a reduction of the fog of illusion that surrounds the relative
self in the form of the supposed personality or fictitious ego, such reduction
liberating the element of reality and enabling it to become conscious of life
on a more brightly-lit plane.
But what becomes of the other trams which were left behind on the other
line; won't they miss ours? And won't they be surprised to see ours on the new
line to which we have switched over?
We are only using a metaphor, we are not describing something that
exists as such. How difficult it is to bear that in mind! Let us say, then,
that the 'points' are a railway junction and that we change trains. Both trains
run from a beginningless beginning and go on to an endless end, but one is on
the Inner Circle and the other is on the Outer.
And let us remember: there are no trains anyhow, and
no passengers, but only fluctuating force-fields in which energy pullulates in
diverse patterns, energy that is conscious of itself.
From: ‘Why Lazarus
Laughed: The Essential Doctrine
Zen-Advaita-Tantra’
That of which we need to rid ourselves, to transcend, is the false concept whereby we assume that entity's existence. We have only to look with penetration in order to perceive that there is in fact nothing in us that corresponds to the concept of an entity, in our ever-changing kaleidoscope of electronic impulses interpreted in the false perspective of a time-sequence. A pulsating force-field is not an entity to be transcended, any more than is vapour issuing from the spout of a kettle, or the apparently living being resulting from the rapid and consecutive projection of isolated and motionless 'stills' (or quanta) on to a cinematograph screen.
There is not, there could not be, any entity; the Buddha based his doctrine upon that realisation; there can be nothing of which to rid ourselves, or to transcend, except an erroneous concept....
That is a highly technical sense of what is ordinarily meant by Non-attachment or by Detachment, and that may be what the word Dhyana, so inadequately rendered by 'Meditation', really implies.
The Zen Masters' condemnation of meditation applies to mental meditation, which implies thought, whereas Dhyana may imply non-mental (No-mind) meditation. Misunderstanding of the meaning of words, in translation, is the cause of much confusion.
It is no less absurd to blame our contemporaries in the moment of history in which ourselves are sustaining a role.
We may envy or pity those who have to play certain parts - that can hardly be called absurd, although ultimately we ourselves play every part and are the picture itself.
If to praise or to blame is evidently an example of failure to understand, is their extension, 'loving' and 'hating', any less idiotic?
·
On the phenomenal plane
we seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the noumenal plane we know the
absence of both - which is bliss.
Nothing is permanent except Consciousness Itself. Everything, intelligence,
sensation, the body, is discrete, without continuity or duration. Every
momentary manifestation of every one of these notions is a fresh manifestation
of Consciousness Itself. That each such manifestation seems to resemble its
immediate predecessor, giving the illusion of a continuous entity, has obscured
the realisation of this essential condition.
This reveals the full meaning of what the Sages have told us, and we can
see that Consciousness is the only Reality, alone IS, alone is us, and that
there is nothing else to look for since It only is here and now.
It is us, we are It, anything else is just an apparent object of that
Consciousness, i.e. a concept therein.
* * *
At every moment and in all circumstances we must realise our identity
with Consciousness Itself, once and for all we must see ourselves united
Therewith, observe as the Witness Itself everything perceived via senses or
mind, including that mind and body themselves, realising everything so observed
as apparent objects within this Consciousness outside Which there can be
nothing.
This is the transference of identification from the so-called
psycho-somatic apparatus to Reality, but it is in fact merely the removal of a
false identification and a return to the norm. Nothing any longer can be seen
as from a subject, as the object of a subject that is other than pure and
original Consciousness (Reality) Itself. I, we, no longer see, hear, touch,
smell, taste, think, feel, for there is not, could not be, any I or we, which
were only notions that transformed transitory objects of Consciousness into
imaginary entities. Such imaginary entities were powerless to do anything
whatsoever, they were only thoughts renewed every instant, apparent
objectivisations of Consciousness Itself. 'I', 'we' were evaluations,
notions, ideas: I, we are nothing but Consciousness, Reality, and never
could be anything else.
'We' have no percepts, concepts or ideas of any kind, 'we' have nothing
- for 'we' do not exist, only Consciousness appears to have them, and as
Consciousness we know them.
Now that we are seeing directly at last - have we understood what
we ARE?
* * *
That is the meaning of Vedanta Advaita, of the Lankavatara Sutra, of
the Diamond Sutra, of Hui Neng, of Huang Po, of every explanation of the
Maharshi.
Every authentic explanation coming from the plane of Reality tries to
tell us just that. A re-statement, certainly not in any way 'better' in itself,
but in current language, may cause understanding to arise, but such
understanding cannot come from the transient phenomenal aspect of mind: it can
only come if an intuition of Consciousness Itself finds sudden dualistic
expression via the projected mind.
·
When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realise
that you are giving it to yourself?
When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realise that you yourself are
being helped?
When you kick a man when he is down - do you realise that you are kicking
yourself?
Give him another kick - if you deserve it!
ONE: The universe is My dream. Every thing therein, including 'you' and
'me', is an element of that dream - from elephant to virus, from nebula to
atom.
TWO: Then each of us dreams a universe? How comes it that we all dream the same
universe?
ONE: Each of us does not dream a universe. Only I dream the universe. You all
perceive the same universe because you are all elements in My dream.
TWO: Is that concept not - let us say - somewhat egotistic?
ONE: 'Egoism' is a dualistic concept and implies 'non-egoism'. But there is no
such thing in reality as non-egoism. Therefore there is no egoism either. There
is only I - and nothing else (which would be necessary) to constitute egoism.
TWO: But why is the universe your dream any more than mine?
ONE: I have already told you: 'you' do not exist except as dreamed by Me.
TWO: Supposing I reply that 'you' do not exist except as dreamed by Me?
ONE: That is unnecessary: it goes without saying.
TWO: There is evidently something I have failed to understand.
ONE: That is due to our dualistic language, inadequate to the communication of
truth. We have to use the same word to convey several meanings. You are still
thinking in terms of identification with a body. You are using the terms 'you'
and 'me' in order to indicate the unreal elements of My dream which are holding
this conversation. Unreal elements of a dream cannot dream the universe of
which they are elements.
TWO: Then who dreams it?
ONE: I do. Anyone who says 'I do'. For that I is the Absolute, Reality,
Consciousness Itself, Cosmic Mind, Tao. That I is One - no matter who
says it.
TWO: Obscure, very obscure!
ONE: 'Obscure' my foot! It is as clear as daylight, as simple and obvious as
anything within the grasp of Mind in manifestation. Only its expression is
obscure - for it has been expressed in words.
TWO: So I am everything in this universe, as I am everything in the universe of
my sleeping dreams, every elephant, every virus, every nebula, every atom,
'you' and 'I'?
ONE: You have understood.
TWO: What more is there to say?
ONE: Nothing whatsoever. Everything is explained, every word of every Sage and
Master. That is the meaning of the Lord Buddha expressly conveyed in the
Lankavatara Sutra, and Sri Krishna if he be regarded as responsible for Vedanta
Advaita.
1.
Will
is an imaginary function of an imaginary entity.
2.
As
ultimate Reality we can have no will, for Non-Being is devoid of attributes.
3. As relative
Reality, in the dualist aspect of Consciousness and objects of Consciousness
– Observer and all that is observed –
we are integrated in the Cosmos and act accordingly.
Will, therefore, is just a figure of speech. We are like passengers
in a railway-train who think that we can change our mind and make the train go
anywhere we wish.
The apparent self in our dreams believes in himself; the sea or motor-car
in front of him is real, dangerous, powerful or whatever it may be, and the
people, some of them to us long dead, are as real as they were when we knew
them. The mind that dreams our dreams as convincingly as the mind that dreams
our so-called waking life. When we awaken, our critical mind, applying its
waking standards, sees the dream personages as unreal, as distorted, as
fantastic, as what it calls 'figments of the imagination'.
And those who awaken from their 'waking' dream, from the dream of
'daily life', can we doubt that they see their 'waking' dream personages as we
see those of our sleeping dreams, i.e. as unreal, distorted, fantastic, as
figments of the imagination? From their words it seems clear that they do, and
that so it is.
Neither dream, and there are other kinds of dream experienced in other
states, to which the same applies, is one whit more or less real than the
other, for both, all, are mind-manifestations experienced by consciousness in
different conditions.
The only reality in either, in any kind of dream, of
mind-manifestation, is Mind Itself.
The eternal present, the now-moment, the
interval between thoughts, which we normally never perceive, alone is real.
·
Everything we perceive
is only an interpretation in a dualistic, temporal and formal framework, of a
suchness, a reality which we are unable to know. Were we able to know the
reality of anything at all, we may surmise that it could only appear to us as something
such as a mathematical or algebraic symbol.
Many of us realise this well enough, but fewer have understood that what we regard as ourselves are also objects that we perceive, subject to the same conditions of perception as everything else. If we strip ourselves, our friends and our dogs, of the names, functions and qualities we clothe them with, nothing remains but our suchness - which cannot be represented otherwise than, just possibly, by a mathematical symbol. Let us not forget that the image which 'strikes' a retina only produces chemical changes therein, and that these changes, transmitted by nerve-impulses, only effect corresponding chemical changes in cerebral matter, the resulting image being merely an interpretation in consciousness of chemical changes in that cerebral matter. To suppose that anything really is (is in timeless, formless Reality) that which it appears (as an interpretation, in a space-time context, of chemical changes in matter) - is surely the limit of absurdity! At the same time the image that 'strikes' a retina is itself the projection of that image in consciousness, as is any such image when we dream it, and is not anything external - for nothing can be external to consciousness.
So much for what we aren't! But what are we? Strange as it may seem to us - who have been thinking that we are what we think we see in a looking-glass - we are reality. Just that, and nothing else whatever. If we could get that into our heads our troubles surely would be over.
Was this not a symbol of man set up as an individual, a separate self,
an ego, an independent personality? For his day of life as such he imagines
himself an independent being, possessing free-will and all sorts of 'rights'
and dignities ('la dignité humaine', 'la personne humaine', 'the rights of
man', 'liberty', 'justice', and all that clap-trap), and he never notices that,
as an individual - he has exactly no power whatever to do anything whatsoever
except glory in his illusory situation. Both are puppets, for neither has any
existence at all as what he imagines that he is.
Hard words?
And yet we wonder and are shocked when we read that the Zen Masters
treated their pupils so roughly, using these same methods to the same end!
Evidently in our consciousness, dualistically divided, we know ourselves as subject and object, as positive and negative, as yang and yin (as the Chinese put it), and since we are unable to be conscious of more than one thought at a time we have to recognise these dual aspects of ourselves consecutively, and can never recognise them together, which indeed is the mechanism of duality. Yet Huang Po tells us that they are not divided in reality, that they are one, and that to realise that unity in an intuition - since we are unable to realise it as a concept - is to realise our reality.
How simple it appears!
Perhaps it is? What, in fact, is hindering us from experiencing this essential intuition? Surely just the concept whereby we think of our objective aspect as subject? That is an erroneous identification, for subject and object are one but object is not subject when experienced dualistically, and that error is responsible for the notion of an 'ego' which all the Masters told us does not exist.
Subject and object, positive and
negative, can have no independent existence; when one appears both are present:
therefore they are one whole thing in reality. Are we the obverse or reverse of
a coin, the effigy of the sovereign or the symbols of sovereignty, 'heads' or
'tails', 'subject' or 'objects'? We are the coin itself - nothing else in the
reality of this image; in its dual aspect we appear as both sovereign
and symbols, but our reality is just gold.
As subject I speak, look, listen, as subject I am action - but that which seems
to do it is object.
Some people go out to the far-East in order to learn it. Even so one
wonders what, in fact, they learn, and, more particularly, if that really is
what the Masters meant - since they roundly condemned 'meditation'.
In meditation there is movement; in concentration there is effort; in dhyana
there is neither.
- - In short it is dualistic thought which
has to be transcended. Huang Po goes so far as to say, 'Yes, my advice is to
give up all indulgence in conceptual thought and intellectual processes. When
such things no longer trouble you, you will unfailingly reach Supreme
Enlightenment'.
To most of us the idea of letting go of our precious intellect, even
for a moment, is almost unbearable. - - Is the answer not simple - as answers
should be, if they are real? Are the Masters not asking us just to withdraw our
subjectivity from the object, thereby reintegrating the subject?
In that state, if someone comes and insults us, practises a fraud upon
us, or strikes us - we do not react. How could we? What we misinterpreted as an
'ego' is no longer there. It is almost as though we were reading about such
actions in a newspaper, only, in the latter case, we tend to identify ourselves
with the victim - and react.
In that state the mind is still, but there is no lack of - but
increased - awareness. No concepts arise, but intuition can enter freely. Its
tranquillity is restorative, and its serenity has an element of bliss.
Ouspensky sought to inculcate a similar practice, which he called
'self-remembering'?
We have been doing what primitive medicine did - attacking the symptoms in order to cure a disease, and aggravating the disease by so doing. For instance, a fever is a defensive measure on the part of the body controlled by organic consciousness, and where, by artificial and violent means, doctors counteracted the fever they thereby thwarted the body's defensive mechanism and aggravated the malady.
Need we be surprised at the unsatisfactory results of our efforts? Did the Masters not warn us not to make them?
We have only to eliminate the ego-notion by succeeding in the difficult task of understanding that it does not exist except as a notion. Which, by the way, is the subject/object of this book!
Speaking in a general manner it may be said that almost every point of
view favours the idea of reincarnation - or transmigration as it is less
inadequately termed - except one.
It is explicitly accepted by almost the whole of the Eastern and wiser
half of the world, and none of the Masters has ever denied it: it is taken for
granted by wise and simple, and the Sages frequently refer to it as a fact. But
against it there is one apparently insuperable objection. The central or
pivotal element in the doctrine of the Buddha, and the fundamental belief of
everyone who has ever fully understood that doctrine, results from the
realisation that no entity has ever existed, exists, or ever could exist, and
that therefore there is nothing, could not be anything, that could incarnate,
reincarnate, or transmigrate in any circumstances whatsoever!
We all understand this, I hope. But let us consider this matter once
more, and in the simplest possible manner.
What can we imagine 'reincarnating' anyhow? Anything might reincarnate
if there is anything to reincarnate, but unless it were potentially
identifiable as having incarnated already it could never be known as having
done so, and the very idea would be meaningless. Nothing, however, can fulfil
this essential condition but that which has the notion of self. In other words
- if anything can 'reincarnate', that thing must be, or must be accompanied by,
the I-notion.
But - and who knows it better than we do by now? - what is the I-notion?
It is a concept. And a concept is not an entity. Do we know what becomes of a
concept? When an I-concept finds the body decaying that it supposed was itself,
what does it do, what becomes of it?
I do not, of course, know; nor, I presume, do you; but being subject to
Time, why should it not attach itself to another nascent body, if it can find
one? And might it not be attracted to one with inherent, or genetical,
similarities to the one that has left it high-and-dry by dissolution? Whatever
it be in metaphysics - a minute electronic force-field in flux, a fluctuating
vibrational complex, might it not be associated with residual experience which
it could bring over and deposit in the psyche-soma in which it has found a new
home? If that reads like a description of an entity, the fault is mine: it is
not an entity in the sense of the Buddha, any more than is a cloud or a smell
or an electric storm.
What may have occurred is like any other occurrence in the 'waking'
dream of manifestation. The concept-complex had a discrete existence in
illusory time, as an object of a dream-subject, and, after an instantaneous
experience of timelessness on the dissolution of its past, associated
body-object, it became attached to another nascent body-object and re-entered
the sequential or time-illusion.
From: ‘Ask The Awakened’
What, then, is it - this metaphysical silence? Clearly it is the
'Buddha-mind' of Ch'an, the 'Witness' of Vedanta, the 'Father' of Christianity,
i.e. whole-mind. The mechanism of dualism seems to be that of the escapement of
a clock, which is also an instrument for recording time. One half momentarily
stops the flow of time, and then the other, tic-toc, tic-toc. So does each half
of split-mind, tic-toc, tic-toc, and the interval between each tick is pure
movement, the background, the intemporal reality which, measured by each
alternative tick, becomes time as we know it. And the tic-toc, the alternative
stoppage, is the comparison of opposites, the activity of split-mind, which we
know as thought and mentation.
We can now see why every one of the awakened tells us ad nauseam
that all we need to do is to arrest the movement of thought in order to know
whole-mind and find ourselves awake. It explains also why wu or satori
is always precipitated by a sudden sound, anything from a clap of thunder to
the snapping of a twig, or, indeed, any other sensory perception whatever. Such
perception momentarily arrests the eternal tic-toc of thought and, the subject
being ripe, whole-mind takes possession and is no longer split.
That the awakened continue to know divided mind, in communicating with
those who remain identified, is evident, but for them that condition is the
abnormal, and the state of whole-mind the normal, instead of the contrary as
with the rest of us. But it is surely an error to suppose that we do not know
whole-mind in our daily life - for the consciousness that is aware of our
having thought is certainly that, a consciousness that is ever awake, is always
present, and that alone is 'real'.
All talk about the Void being this and that, not meaning that and the other, is not only baulking the issue - it is shutting oneself off from the truth. It is necessary to realise that the Void means exactly Nothing, and that exactly Nothing is all that there is. And that that is the reason why anything can appear to be. Otherwise one has the whole situation the wrong way round, for one continues to think that reality is positive, something positively existing, of which the negative is inconceivable. But reality itself is negative, and its positive is just appearance, and both are concepts of the split or samsaric mind. In whole-mind, reality is neither positive nor negative - for there is nothing of the kind. Reality simply IS NOT.
This seems to be the Essential Doctrine of the Prajna-paramita, revealing the illusion which constitutes the bondage of Samsara, the barrier which prevents mind from knowing itself as no-mind, pure negativity or the absolute unconscious.
The 'real' nature of all manifestation is no-nature, and of all ideas of 'reality' and of being - for all such are concepts or dharmas. They are directly negative or void, and only indirectly positive and relative.
To look upon the Void as an emptiness that exists somewhere in a cosmic fullness will never open the mind to its wholeness. Vision must start afresh by realising that a cosmic plenitude is an imaginary implication, and that the cosmos itself is not. The Void is not nothing somewhere within something: that something is nothing, there is nowhere within it, and the Void is that.
Take any object - say a jug - and let it represent, be a symbol for,
reality. If you then photograph it you have a negative representation of it in
two dimensions, composed merely of light and shade. The positive reproduction
of that symbol reverses the light and shade, and reveals an image which we can
recognise as that of what we know as a jug. An animal, unable to form concepts,
cannot normally recognise the object, but sees only light and shade.
That, in fact, is the Buddha's formula, in reverse. The positive image
is that which appears to be in phenomenal existence. The negative image is the
background of that, its relative reality from which it derives, that which
precedes it and without which it cannot be. But both are just two-dimensional
images composed of light and shade, quite illusory, unrecognisable except by
beings who use concepts - just representations of the jug-reality whose
existence is in a further dimension.
So you have the formula exactly: it is (as an appearance); it is not
(is a negative): therefore that which is represented (and is real) alone is.
Note 1: We notice in passing
that this example reveals clearly the three degrees of perception available to
man: perception of 'reality', known only to the awakened; perception of
'relative reality', the objective world known to us; perception of images and
symbols by means of conceptualisation. The first is real; the second is a
representation of the real; the third is imaginary. The Buddha's formula treats
of the two first forms of perception; our example is applied to the two latter.
Note 2: The photographic
apparatus represents the sensorial apparatus by means of which we interpret, or
create, the apparent world which surrounds us.
At that point it is to be found, and that 'point' is in every
direction, so that wherever we turn we cannot avoid it. Nor, of course, is it a
long way off. It is not 'off' at all: it is within, here and now, and where we
are before we start to look for it. We don't have to look for it, nor could we
ever see it by looking. By the absence of looking, listening, touching,
tasting, smelling, and thinking we realise that we are it. For it is the
unmanifest of that which we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and think of as
manifest. It is the negative of everything that is positive to us, the reality
of every illusion - and every sensory and conceptual experience is an illusion.
I have only to cease to be in order to become that which an I is, to realise
that I am not in order to be That I Am.
Where our sensory and intellectual experience ceases, where we can no
longer know anything by their means, there lies what to them can only be
Nothing or the Void - that is our 'real nature', that is pure consciousness
which is all that is, and it is just that.
Put in another manner, it is just the
underside of the surfaces which are all that we are aware of anywhere or in
anything, the within of the without which surrounds us on all sides, the back
of the front. It is the Unmanifest from within which everything manifests, the
Not-I which is all theI that is.
From
'All Else is Bondage; Non-Volitional Living':
·
TAO
The Doctrine is the doctrine of
non-doctrine,
The Practice is the practice of non-practice,
The Method is meditation by non-meditation,
And Cultivation which is cultivation by non-cultivation.
This is the Mind of non-mind, which
is wu hsin,
The Thought of non-thought, which is wu nien,
The Action of non-action, which is wu wei,
The Presence of the absence of volition,
Which is Tao.
Non-volitional living is glad living.
This is the
only 'practice'.
Since we are obliged to use dualistic language in order to communicate
understanding we should be well-advised to use words in a manner which is
verifiable, that is in a way which is etymologically correct.
To per-ceive means 'thoroughly to take hold of', but metaphysically
there is no one to take hold of anything and nothing to take hold of. Therefore
perception is the first stage of the conceptualisation process, and the two
elements - perception and conception - form one whole, and that one whole is
the mechanism whereby we create samsara.
What we are required to do is the contrary, to lay everything down, to
be nothing, to know that we are nothing, and thereby leave behind the whole
process of conceptualisation. So-doing we cease to be that which we never were,
are not, and never could be. That, no doubt, is nirvana, and, since
nothing is being conceived, nothing is being perceived, and nothing is being
'projected' via the psycho-somatic apparatus which itself is a conceptualised
percept.
At that moment the phenomenal universe no longer exists as far as we
are concerned. We are 'sitting in a bodhimandala', in a state of perfect
availability. So placed - and automatically - we should re-become integrally
that which we always were, are, and forever must be. And that - because it is
THIS - can never be thought or spoken, for this, being purely non-objective, is
in a different 'direction of measurement' from any conceptual dimension, being
the source of all dimensionality and phenomenality.
This is the sun itself, shining through the dualism of negative and
positive, whose rays (which are Itself) appear to split into that negative (nirvana)
and that positive (samsara) from which arise all phenomena, the
perceptual-conceptual universe, including that which we have known as
ourselves.
'I am that I am', said Jahweh - which no doubt means 'this which I am'.
We, too are 'this which we are', for THIS is everything that ever was, is, or
could be.
The extrovert assumes that things objectively exist, and that subjectively they do not. That indeed is the accepted sense of those terms and, I think, the theoretical and experimental basis of science.
It requires years of intuitive research to understand that the opposite is the truth: that no thing exists objectively other than as a concept, and that subjectively every thing has potential existence, i.e. permanently exists as potential.
When the Masters say tirelessly that every single thing 'neither exists nor does not exist' they mean just that: its only existence is as potential which is the integration of object and subject, of negative and positive, by which each interdependent counterpart has been obliterated.
The term 'realisation' - 'making real, a thing' - logically is only applicable to the illusory process of assuming conceptual objects do exist, for they have no other reality.
That which ultimately they ARE, and
all that they could ever BE, is neither Reality nor Relative Reality (even with
capital 'R's) but Potential (with a capital 'P' if you wish).