Evil, Be Thou My Good
There’s emptiness, and there’s the experience of emptiness.
In what follows it’s important to recognise this difference.
Emptiness itself is beyond experience, whereas the experience of emptiness – of course – is not. But even the experience of emptiness verges upon the ineffable. ‘Non-dual awareness’ is a common description of it, as is the sensation of there being ‘nothing to do, ‘nowhere to be’, and so on. The experience of emptiness is also described as realising or being in the presence of ‘God’, and it’s here, perhaps, that we see most clearly the danger of confusing the experience of the absolute with ideas or with visions of it, although these may indeed also arise at times within consciousness.
Judas: 'Why am I the odd one out?' Christ: 'These halos are a visual metaphor, Judas. Get a clue!' (Simon Ushakov, 'Last Supper', 1685)
The halos around the heads of saints in religious paintings, for example, are a visual or experiential dramatisation of a human being’s experience of emptiness. But on a literal level a halo simply looks bizarre, because it’s pointing to something that from the perspective of everyday consciousness makes no sense.
Feelings accompanying the experience of emptiness often include a sense of paradox that reaches into the very depths of being; or a feeling of ultimate freedom and release; or a sensation of infinite goodness and perfection. But what I want to explore are occasions on which I’ve experienced something very different.
This has arisen only twice – so far. The first time was at third path. At third path the experience of emptiness in real time becomes established for the first time, so I’d be surprised if anyone stumbled across it any earlier. (Although I’ve been involved in this game long enough to appreciate that it shouldn’t be entirely ruled out!)
As I sat one day, emptiness flipped from the realisation of perfection into its opposite. Instead of completeness there was utter lack. Instead of being with God, I was at the furthest point distant from Him. Existence became a curse and the mere feeling of being alive the cruellest imaginable torture, visited equally on all creatures.
This, of course, was the experience of emptiness. I could see that emptiness itself was still the same – i.e. empty. If it hadn’t been the same, then something about it would have changed, and if a ‘something’ was involved then that wasn’t emptiness. So the problem, I assumed, lay somewhere in me.
But the second time it happened was at fourth path, and consequently this has proved much harder to explain.
If we use The Heart Sutra to describe the difference between third path and fourth, then at third path we see ‘form is emptiness’. In other words, we look for phenomena and discover we cannot find them, because – we have realised – they lack any intrinsic self. At fourth path, however, we realise that ‘emptiness is form’. At third, we failed to find any intrinsic being, yet we still assumed a solid centre-point from which to launch our investigation. We started with the assumption that there is ‘form’ that can be empty. At fourth path, this is seen through. Because we now see that there is not even a self that can realise ‘form is emptiness’, suddenly the opposite proposition is the only one that makes any sense: ‘emptiness is form’. In other words, because emptiness has invaded everything (although it was always there from the beginning, of course) emptiness is now our only possible starting point, and from it everything that appears proceeds.
So when, sitting more recently, I saw again how human existence is the furthest possible distance from God; recognised being, once more, as ultimate cruelty; and witnessed reality in its true guise as an utter bag of turds, it was now with a fuller realisation that, actually, this isn’t really a problem.
I don’t mean that this stopped me from feeling like my guts were dropping through the floor, but only that I could see there were never any guts to drop through the floor in the first place – which, if anything, only compounded my view that the universe really was a pile of shit.
Why should we assume that the experience of emptiness is always ‘white light and perfection’? Well, most of the time it is, and there are good reasons for assuming that it should be so. Proclus, in his Elements of Theology, proposes:
If… all beings desire The Good how is it possible that there should be any thing prior to this cause? For if they also desire that which is prior to The Good, how can they specially desire The Good? But if they do not desire it, how is it possible that they should not desire the cause of all, since they proceed from it? If therefore The Good is that on which all beings depend, The Good is the Principle and First Cause of all things. (Proclus: Proposition 7)
In other words, emptiness and ultimate goodness are one and the same. The Good, by definition, is what all things desire, because even if we desire something we know is bad or that proves to be bad, by definition we desire it because it is better in some respect, even if it’s only in the sense that it can do more harm. Examine what’s behind any desire and ultimately the examination points to a desire for the end of desire itself. This entails the surrender of the self into emptiness, into the absolute, or (as Proclus calls it) ‘The One’. Here, in the realisation of emptiness or The One, there is no longer any desire for the Good, because there is only the Good itself.
Emptiness, therefore, is the Good.
In addition, Proclus has this to say:
Hence those things which in a certain way or respect fall off from The Good, at the same time lose the participation of The One. And those things which become destitute of The One, being filled with separation, are equally deprived of The Good. Goodness therefore is union, and union is goodness, and The Good itself is one, and The One is that which is primarily Good. (Proclus: Proposition 13)
So I’m left puzzled by my experience. Proclus seems to be saying here that we fall off from Goodness only to the extent that we fall off from The One. In other words, you can’t have emptiness without Goodness. Yet that’s exactly what I did have! Everything was the worst it could be, yet at the same time it was perfectly bad, perfectly evil, and my own deplorable condition was simply an inseparable aspect of the universal corruption.
All that you ever wanted to know about everything, were too afraid to ask, but probably suspected anyway.
Despite rumours to the contrary, arahats are still subject to the cycle of insight (Ingram 2008: 316), so I’m tempted to conclude that these kinds of experiences are simply ‘dark night’ territory in a post-enlightenment style. Whether the experience is of perfect goodness or of perfect evil, it participates in the absolute only in its ‘perfect’ aspect. The rest is, in a sense, irrelevant.
On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life the bottom-most sphere of creation is known as Malkuth, which means ‘The Kingdom’ and represents the everyday physical world. Its position at the very bottom indicates its status as the end-point and summation of creation, yet it is also at the furthest possible remove from God.
Whichever view is afforded to you of the universe possibly doesn’t matter: it is ultimate evil and the most elaborate expression of the Divine. In either case, both descriptions point to the same place.
References
Daniel M. Ingram (2008). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. London: Aeon Books.
Proclus, Elements of Theology.
(Might I mention the book “Pointing out the great way: stages of meditation in the mahamudra tradition” by Daniel Brown; it is very scholarly, very technical stuff; classical enlightement is just slightly over half of the book, then you get to one-taste and no-yoga, and other stuff)
Judas is pivotal to the story, without him there is no betrayal and thus no story. He deserves a halo too. In real life he probably has a halo, we just can’t see it.
Good to hear that cycles of insight don’t go away after reaching the level of arhat. There’s a kind of perfection even in that. Knowing that there is no ultimate resting point to look forward to is somehow a liberating insight, that even my suffering is just fine as it is.
@Bruno: Hi Bruno! The thing about these experiences is that they are horrible, but there’s no one to feel horrible. There is suffering, but no one to take it personally. As Duff puts it: ‘suffering is just fine as it is’. Cultivation of ‘good’ states is, of course, laudable and highly practical. But cultivation of ‘good’ states is simply not the development of insight into reality, which embraces both ‘good’ and ‘evil’. As a way of feeling better about yourself, however, I cannot fault your advice!
@Ellen: Yes – interesting! I think Christ sees Judas’s ‘halo’ even if the painter couldn’t. He certainly recognises the ‘perfection’ of Judas’s betrayal. But – I don’t know – selling out your guru for a mere bag of silver… this indicates a poor level of spiritual attainment… Stream-entry, at best! 
Thank you Duncan for this very interesting article.
I cannot say much about your conclusion, but it seems to make sense.
With respect to ‘non-dual awareness’, it appears that it is intimately related to the third path of the Theravada four paths model. You are absolutely right about that. Nevertheless, it seems that direct paths such as Dzogchen, Mahamudra, Zen or Advaita Vedanta allow a direct access to ‘non-dual awareness’ (or whatever we might call it, like Buddha-nature, Rigpa or the ‘Self’) without prior energetic development and purification through the cycles of insight as described in the Vishuddhimagga and its brilliant commentaries by Mahasi Sayadaw or Daniel Ingram.
I don’t seem to be the only strange case of people who have stumbled on non-dual awareness directly as the result of self-enquiry and objectless meditation. Since I am always skeptical about such things, I had it checked by a few reliable Zen masters and senior Buddhist students who confirmed me that this was it. Nevertheless, I never really practiced Vipassana as taught in the Burmese Theravada tradition and do not think that I could possibly be on the third path.
What do you think? Could it be that non-dual awareness is a standalone state that is not directly connected with the Theravada stages of insight?
-Alex
My first sensation on reaching fourth path was that the meditation I was then engaged in, and all the practice I’d done to lead me to that point, had nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of the realisation I’d stumbled across… So I’m inclined to agree with you! And I’ve read accounts by those who have got there directly without passing through the mill of the four paths that certainly sound authentic to me…
According to the Gnostic Gospels, of all the disciples it was only Judas who had a halo at all…
Alex,
You wrote, “Could it be that non-dual awareness is a standalone state that is not directly connected with the Theravada stages of insight?”
This is the subject of a hot debate for some of my awakened friends. Some say that the whole non-dual thing is just a passing state that doesn’t point to ultimate reality. Others say it reigns supreme over the developmental enlightenment we see in the Four Path model and other models.
In my current view, I think people can catch a glimpse of non-dual awareness prior to developing and “Paths”, and can even learn to spend a great deal of time in such a state. However, I think that completing the developmental enlightenment (getting to 4th path) provides the best platform available for recognizing and dwelling as primordial awareness.
Then, there’s also the idea that one may simply recognize non-dual awareness and dwell as such, and that this practice will actually lead to the same developmental enlightenment over time. I’m inclined to think this is true as well.
So, the “this or that” of the issue is not as interesting to me as learning about how they go together to facilitate unshakable realization. This is something we should all explore in order to share our experience and come to some firm conclusions if possible.
@Duncan & @Jackson: I fully agree with you and thank you for your wise comments.
Existence became a curse and the mere feeling of being alive the cruellest imaginable torture, visited equally on all creatures.
Things like this that make the whole goal of enlightenment in the first place a lot less enticing, especially for people who are coming at things from a similar chaos magic perspective as you guys initially did.
I had the experience of non-dual awareness long before Theravada third path attainment. Like Huanshen, I have had this verified by an awakened Zen master. Anyway, I’m no expert but FWIW I agree with Jackson and Duncan that the non-dual is accessible to anyone, any time, and there is something to be gained by exploring both.
But – I don’t know – selling out your guru for a mere bag of silver… this indicates a poor level of spiritual attainment… Stream-entry, at best!
Wonderful.
Was that selling out, or was it furthering the real goal? Hmmm?
@Chris: Hmmmm, yeah… There’s both a relative and an absolute perspective on it, isn’t there? As Alan pointed out, if you look at it from the absolute perspective then Judas earns himself a halo too…
@infinitywaltz (who wrote: Things like this that make the whole goal of enlightenment in the first place a lot less enticing, especially for people who are coming at things from a similar chaos magic perspective as you guys initially did.) I can understand that! I fantasize that if an unenlightened person could peek into the consciousness of an arahat for a moment they’d think: ‘Huh. What’s the big fuss about that? Non-duality. Big fucking deal!’ But the thing about enlightenment is that you don’t get it until you’re enlightened. You can’t get enlightened without being enlightened by it! I imagine it’s like having kids. Personally, I think it would be really crap to have kids. But if I had them, I know my whole outlook would be changed forever and I’d love them to bits. In the case of enlightenment, it’s all about truth; not happiness or pleasure.
I’ve come to believe that the fabric of reality is woven out of the interrelationship of “good” and “evil” – expansion and contraction, involution and evolution. Without these two forces, there would be no play of experience (impermanence) and everything would be undifferentiated fullness/emptiness.
Peter Carroll actually got one right, and Josu Sazaki Roshi agrees with him.
Hi Haquan!
It’s interesting how Proclus sets out his metaphysics without recourse to an idea of ‘Evil’. He doesn’t appear to think that he needs it. ‘Evil’ is only the consequence of a falling off from the Good. We can only pursue the Good (which is true by definition, when you think about it). We can fall off from the Good through confusion or ignorance, but there can be no Idea of ‘Evil’ (in the Platonic sense).
I hope I’m understanding this correctly! But even Freud, who approached the problem at a more phenomenal level, perhaps using concepts similar to the forces of involution and evolution that you mention, was obliged to non-dualistically concede that Thanatos (Death) functions ultimately in the service of Eros (Life).
What I find very interesting with Proclus is the idea according to which the soul creates the body (at its own image) to which it then becomes identified. Once identified with the body, passions have a tendency to overwhelm reason, giving birth to what we might call evil.
Evil is therefore not an absolute principle but the result of ignorance, namely the fascination for one’s own material creation. Accordingly, the fall (into the world of matter) is not the result of sin (as it is understood in mainstream Christianity), but its cause.
We can also see that Ramana Maharishi is not far from Proclus: same methods, same philosophy, but different cultural makeup. Chaos magicians can then replace soul by ‘kia’ (would it work?). Freudians will also realize that the myth of Narcissus contains a metaphysical dimension.
Interesting that you are invoking Neoplatonic philosophy, as it seems clear that this philosophy was directed towards a Helenistic enlightenment. I’m much more familiar with Plotinus, but still an interesting thinker. Incidentally, my first reaction to Rigpa was that it was the form of the Good.
Even if we use metaphors like “falling away” from the One, instead of “evil” – what is that? What constitutes “ignorance”? Why should we have that at all?
Of related interest is the Gnostic idea of Abraxis, or the demiurge. Also relevant: “Tzimtzum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm “contraction” or “constriction”) is a term used in the Kabbalahistic teaching of Isaac Luria, explaining his concept that God began the process of creation by “contracting” his infinite light in order to allow for a “conceptual space” in which a finite and seemingly independent world could exist. This contraction, forming an “empty space” (חלל הפנוי) in which creation could begin, is known as the Tzimtzum.” (Wikipedia)
Shinzen Young presents Sazaki Roshi’s concept of the play of Impermanence itself is the interaction of two forces, Expansion and Contraction. The other way to look at these forces is one which is a drive towards separateness and individuality, while the other is towards unity. One could look at them as an opposing dualism, or perhaps as a complementary dualism, like Yin and Yang. Taken to their ultimate conclusion, both resolve in Emptiness. Without them, there would be no experience.
In Nature, we see a kind of ecology between the forces of life and death/decay – they feed on each other. So it is in the Universe, and within ourselves.
D
@Duncan, who said In the case of enlightenment, it’s all about truth; not happiness or pleasure.
Because I’m immensely curious, how has it affected your capacity for happiness and pleasure? I mean, I’ve read Ingram’s bit about Arhats and stuff, but as a general rule, would you say that you’re happier post-Enlightenment?
@infinitywaltz: Yes, happier. But, paradoxically, because it’s now apparent how my happiness is not the point… Things are just as nice or as crappy as they used to be. Nothing has changed, except the relationship to Truth.
This sort of stuff is very annoying, isn’t it? So maybe I’m simply happier because this sort of stuff now makes sense, and isn’t annoying me any more… 
@duncan: Not annoying at all! Some of the descriptions of enlightenment from certain traditions, groups, etc. imply that a life post-Enlightenment would be devoid of most of the things I hold most dear (the Actual Freedom crowd being one modern example, and many of the myths Ingram discusses in his Arhat essay being more traditional examples).
The more of your and Alan’s experiences I read (not to mention Ingram’s and Haquan’s on BH) the more I think these thoughts are unfounded.
‘Emptiness’ can also be interpreted as ‘devoid of meaning’ in that there is no intrinsic meaning to any event before we employ the thought constructs or concepts of good or evil. ‘Transparency’ is another metaphor commonly used to attempt to convey the same thing.
It is very interesting to look at what is commonly accepted as ‘good’ to see where these notions have come from and why they vary so much from culture to culture, in differing contexts and situations and how these notions change over time.
I’d also say that there is a metaphorical case to be made for selling out your guru for 30 pieces of silver. The function of the guru is to teach, not to set himself up to be worshipped. Once he has adequately taught he is of no further use to the pupil and should be left behind.
Good teachers expect their pupils to surpass them, not endlessly parrot the teachings of the guru. Its the sign of a good teacher that he teaches what he knows and then moves the pupil on to continue by himself.
Ellen, the Jesus of the Gospel of John would agree with you to some degree…
“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)
BTW, I’m not a fan of your “selling out your guru” metaphor. One could just as easily walk away from their guru, rather than selling them out to die a horrible death. Just because you no longer need the boat you used to cross the river, doesn’t mean you need to set fire to it. Let someone else use it to find their way.
It was a metaphor, Tom Foolery, and a suggestion of another way of looking at something, in the same vein as “if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him” is a metaphor and a prompt to try to see things from another perspective. I am not promoting widespread gurucide although I could personally make a case for a few that we could lose with no significant impact on the body of knowledge.
Fanwise, it is of course your choice. I’m not much of a fan myself.
@ellen: I totally misconstrued your meaning and went on a guru-slaying spree earlier this afternoon. Fortunately, I confined it to the office at my day job, and after much hunting was unable to find any gurus to slaughter. Glad you clarified things before I went home for the evening.
@ellen: The Platonic Good, of course, transcends all cultural definitions, which is the Good I’m trying to get to grips with here, after having had an experience of the Good which (puzzlingly) took the form of something very unpleasant.
The Good is fundamentally that which all things desire – it is not confined to any specific manifestation, in the same way that the number 2 is not confined to any specific manifestation of two things.
I suppose this is why Proclus admits no concept of Evil, because Evil is that which (by definition) no being desires, and therefore – because no being entertains it – it has no import or does not exist.
What then, is wickedness?
@haquan: Wickedness = a cock-up, not a conspiracy!
@ellen: I’ve been thinking about what you wrote:
Emptiness can also be interpreted as ‘devoid of meaning’ in that there is no intrinsic meaning to any event before we employ the thought constructs or concepts of good or evil. ‘Transparency’ is another metaphor commonly used to attempt to convey the same thing.
I’d hesitate over this definition (if that’s what you’re doing here). If emptiness is ‘that which is devoid of meaning’ (or ‘beyond’ meaning, maybe) then this implies there’s *something* that either lacks meaning or our application of meaning to it, in which case emptiness is not completely empty and it’s contingent upon something. Experientially, this would entail that emptiness somehow ‘stops’ when thought processes arise, or when meaning is applied. But this is precisely not what happens when one realises the experience of emptiness.
Enlightenment, is the realisation that all of this is empty right now, just as it is, and so are any thought processes or meanings that also arise right now.
‘Enlightenment’ as a term does indeed have the disadvantage of all the baggage that comes with it. The advantage of using the term, however, and my reason for using it, is the hope that one day people will stop mistaking all that baggage for what is an attainable, comprehensible and completely human development.
Duncan,
I’m just an ignorant Yank over here. I don’t understand that fancy UK slang.
Cock up=mistake?
D
How about ‘emptiness’ as what is before meaning is applied. Trying to define this stuff is a non-starter as we can only use the means of communication that we have, thoughts and language.
The structure of thought and language posits subjects and objects, using that medium implies the presence of a subject or an object where none may be there.
It is my personal belief, impossible to verify, that the constant and unavoidable use of such constructs as structured thought and language develop a particular architecture in the brain/mind. This particular architecture sets us up for looking at the world in a particular culturally constructed way, and indeed sets up the almost universal experience of conflict in the mind, i.e. the debate, this or that, good or bad, high or low, doubt or belief etc, which is then projected onto the world outside with the consequences we see daily.
The main impetus for my studying zen was an attempt to stop this endless internal debate–of course it cannot be stopped, not is it desirable to be stopped–but it is possible to be seen through— after which it it loses some of the drama, some of the emotional charge and eventually ceases to matter much at all. (Note: the debate ceases to matter, I am not suggesting that life ceases to matter)
The internal debates become ‘empty’ in a very different sense then and the result is truly quite liberating.
The experience of what you are calling ‘enlightenment’ can also be seen through in this way and I believe that seeing through it and moving on yields greater personal results than getting caught in the idea of ‘enlightenment’ as an experience.
The seduction of ‘enlightenment’ or ‘following the guru’ to extend the metaphor (metaphors being all we have to work with) has done its work, it is time then to drop it, not attempt to hang on to it or to extend the experience.
(Apologies for pontificating but you did ask)I think you would be better served by following and exploring your doubts since you have them, at this point rather than trying to shoehorn yourself into someone elses (however ancient and revered that someone else is)
notion of what this is supposed to be.
After all, you presumably want your own mind, not someone elses derivative, as a result.
I would further posit that, far from stopping when thoughts arise, ‘emptiness’ is always there, that thoughts arise and are habitually superimposed upon it.(I am of course unavoidably objectifying ‘it’ to get a point across) We habitually focus on the the thoughts (including images feelings and experiences) as being real and having substance and miss the ‘emptiness’ The ‘emptiness’ like the halo does not disappear, we just don’t see it because we are habitually focussed so tightly on the thoughts. (‘Grasping’ is the usual Buddhist term for this habitual focus, the goal of zen teaching is not ‘enlightenment’ but a supple and flexible mind that does not ‘grasp’ at anything and no longer seeks certainties. ‘Enlightenment’ is a just a way station to this goal–the goal doesn’t exist as its a continuous life-long learning process)
I heard a good metaphor for this: the sky seems blue to us although it is empty space, clouds look real although we know them to be water vapour. Clouds moving across the blue sky are like thoughts moving across vast emptiness of mind, we know they are there because we can see them but they are intrinsically empty.
Although I am a godless heathen, I like the biblical idea of evil being a state of being cut off from god, a state of division from the wholeness, unity of mind that we came into this world with. When I read different creation myths I see this same idea repeated in almost every culture.
When I was much younger I imagined that we could get back to this pristine state somehow, and then that we could maybe evolve or develop to become a future superhuman race that was somehow whole, the usual youthful idealistic utopian dreams.
Now I see that the brain development of the human infant is what sets up this division and that it is unavoidable unless we avoid the human experiences–feral children are not the way to go.
I think that the fruit of the tree of knowledge is an apt metaphor for this, we struck quite a Faustian pact for our bigger brains–if we want to think and speak and speculate we lose the unity. Dumb animals have retained that unity.
That said, the actions of some humans can only truly be described as evil. It is dangerously myopic to look for the good in a tyrant.
Why can’t we call that supple, non-grapsing mind enlightenment or, my own preference, awakening? I agree that doing so applies a label and sets up a duality, but so does any use of language. If we want to communicate with each other at all we have no choice but to compromise.
‘If we want to communicate with each other at all we have no choice but to compromise.’
Exactly, and for my money you can call it what you like.
We can compromise and settle for approximations when dealing with other individuals and would be insane not to do so but when applying this to our own mind ferocious precision is important. Woolly thinking gets woolly results.
It is relatively unimportant if the person listening to me does not understand my meaning but if I do not understand what I am trying to put across then I am truly lost.
I avoid ‘beyond meaning’ also as ‘beyond’ has implications of space and time. Allowing the mind to grasp onto the space and time implications starts up the image-making process.
The most effective teacher I’ve known refused to give any explanations at all, he demonstrated, not an option in cyberspace.
@Haquan: Yep, ‘cock-up’ = a mistake or oversight, usually arising from a lack of competence…
@Ellen: Thanks for this, but your views on emptiness just aren’t empty enough for me! The attempt to relate emptiness to the presence or absence of any condition (whether it be linguistic or neurological) just isn’t it…
Funnily, you’re saying to me that I should not get caught up in the idea of enlightenment as an experience. But if we approach emptiness in terms of neurological or linguistic correlates, then we are reducing it *only* to an experience which someone can have or not have.
You suggest that animals have this ‘unity’ of experience. In which case, it’s odd that Gotama urged us to hone our minds even more than average in order to grasp the true nature of experience – rather than encouraging us to act more like sheep and cows.
I wondered if you’d talked over your views on emptiness with your Zen teacher? If so, what did s/he say in response? How did his /her ‘refusal to give an explanation’ help you? If you’re willing to share, I’d be curious to hear!
His refusal to give explanations forced me to see for myself. I spent 3 years in daily personal contact, anything he said to me was in that personal context so would be as efficacious to another as taking medicine prescribed for a neighbour.
I don’t have any views on emptiness, I have some observations on the discussion of emptiness:
Comparisons are redundant, I cannot know ‘your’ experience of it as you cannot know mine.
Gradations are redundant, this is a linguistic point, empty is completely void, there is no more or less empty.
At no point have I suggested that we should act like sheep or cows. We are thinking animals and one path to this is through finely honed thought that is eventually turned back on itself or negated–as advised by Gautama.
There are other paths, notably the ‘bhakti’ path of devotion and a considerable number of people have stumbled on this following no direction at all. It is an entirely natural state.
We are also neurological creatures, I would like to see anything that you can produce that does not have its source in neurology, ie something happening in the nervous system.
This isn’t something that can be grasped by the intellect, but the intellect is the vehicle.
Every worthwhile teacher that I have met has concentrated not on encouraging his students to pursue this as it cannot be taught but to point out conceptual errors, the linguistic traps and to spot when the student is in trouble long before the student is aware of this themselves.
That is all a teacher can usefully do, keep the student safe until the student is knowledgable enough and confident enough of his own mind to continue by himself.
@ellen
My advise would be to find a real Zen teacher. Even in America or Europe, they are a few. But they are hard to find as they do not advertize much.
From what I can tell, most so called Zen teachers are just poseurs who don’t have a clue as to what Zen is all about. They will then quote Dogen out of context to claim that there is no enlightenment to seek beside a flexible mind, to justify the fact that they are still waiting for Godot.
-H
Hi Ellen -
Unfortunately, I’m suspicious of your teacher too! If he offers no direction, models or feedback, what’s to prevent his students drawing the wrong conclusions from their experiences?
I find your arguments confusing and confused. ‘If we want to think and speak and speculate we lose the unity. Dumb animals have retained that unity,’ you said, but in your latest post you insist that human reason is required for enlightenment. You state that there is nothing except neurology, but then argue that intellect is a vehicle to something that *is* beyond neurology after all. You state you have no view on emptiness, yet this is a view on emptiness! etc., etc.
‘I would like to see anything that you can produce that does not have its source in neurology,’ you wrote. Unfortunately, ‘I’ can’t produce that. But you *can* experience it for yourself. This is enlightenment. This is what the Buddha encouraged us to find and he taught specific methods for doing that. He did not whang on about ‘conceptual errors’ and ‘linguistic traps’; he urged us to uncover the unconditioned.
If you hold the view that everything in consciousness is neurological then everything in consciousness is conditioned (by neurology). In other words, neurology is real. There is therefore no emptiness (and no enlightenment).
This is not a Buddhist position.
It reminds me strongly of the work of Susan Blackmore, however. She’s a scientist and Zen practitioner. You might enjoy her work a lot more than the stuff that will continue to appear on this website!
Some quotes from Dogen’s “Mitsugo” fasicle (where Dogen examines Buddha holding up a flower and Mahakyshapa smiling) that have been helpful for me in clarifying the relationship between “enlightenment” and language. Just a little food for thought:
“If the World Honored One’s words were shallow, his holding up a flower and blinking would also be shallow. Those who say the World Honored One’s words are limited to forms are not students of the buddha-dharma. Although they know that words have form they do not yet know that the World Honored One does not have form. They are not free from the ordinary ways of thinking. Buddha ancestors drop off all experience of body and mind. They use words to turn the dharma wheel. Hearing their words, people are benefited”
“But ignorant people think that ‘intimate’ means that which is known by the self and and not by others. Those east and west, past and present who think and speak in this way are not following the buddha way. If what they think is true, then those who do not study would have much intimacy, and those who who study would have little intimacy.”
Not sure who’s translation this is, I only have it as a photocopy. Also, to clarify, “intimate” here is taken from the word “mitsugo” meaning intimate language, which has also been translated as “secret language” and “mystical language”. “Transrational”, maybe, as a more modern equivalent?
Plus there’s always the heart sutra: “form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form, form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.”
What if we conceptualized Evil as “Lack of Truth”?
D
Could it be that you simply have more stuff to? How about the cultivation of “good” states? Loving-kindness, attentional stabilization, etc. How about “one-taste” yoga and mahamudra, dzogchen, and all those practices that come after enlightenment?
Or is the suffering never really going to end? Or are you describing these awful-sounding experiences, but you don’t “suffer”? (it certainly sounds like you do)