Open Enlightenment

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.

Bookmark this article

The Myth of Lineage

There is a common misperception in the West regarding tradition, especially as it relates to lineage within a school that facilitates enlightenment. The two main elements of this misperception are:

In the East, there are unbroken lineages of enlightened teachers/students that transfer the dharma successfully from generation to generation, evident in many of the schools of Buddhism.

In the West, there is and never have been any awakened lineages to speak of. As a result, no Western ‘tradition’ really has anything to offer comparable to the Eastern schools.

But what exactly is meant by ‘dharma’?

Is the dharma the teachings of Siddartha Gautama (563-483 BCE)?

If this is the case, then dharma transmission is nothing but the teaching of concepts, method and culture that have accumulated over the last 2,500 years since the historical Buddha lived. This is completely divorced from the actual experience of awakening, and transmission of the dharma would not require direct, personal experience of enlightenment in order to become a ‘dharma heir’.

Indeed, we can see such a culture evident in Japanese Buddhism, where certain Zen schools are owned by families who pass down the ‘possession of the dharma’ from father to son. This is dharma transmission as family business.

Furthermore, it is common scholarly knowledge that there exists no authentic record of any lineage dating back to the historical Buddha, none whatsoever. Any lineage claiming such a thing is a result of an attempt at some point in the past to raise the profile of the school in question.

Is the dharma the order or law of the universe?

Again, this is not the experience of enlightenment, but a conceptual model or framework of reality. Does the ‘transmission’ of such a model equate with the direct personal experience of awakening?

Is the dharma the transmission of awakening itself?

The Record of the Transmission of the Light reports:

Once, the World-honoured One (Buddha) held up a flower and blinked his eyes. Kashyapa broke out in a smile. The World-honoured One said, ‘I have the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma, the ineffable mind of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.’

The moment that Kashyapa smiled is the moment he became awakened in the presence of the Buddha. Regardless of the historical accuracy of this record, the phenomenon of the transmission of enlightenment from one person to another is not just reported by Buddhism; for many Advaita Vedantist’s, it is the only way to achieve enlightenment.

However, although it may appear as if ‘something’ is transmitted from a teacher to a student, the truth of the matter is that what is recognised during enlightenment is not a ‘thing’ locatable in space/time, nor is it something that is ‘missing’, ‘lost’ or ‘lacking’ that the newly awakened student ‘receives’ from outside of him or herself. Similarly, it is not that the Buddha or any awakened individual has ‘gained’ that which is recognised at enlightenment, and so it is not possible for that person to ‘give’ it to anyone either.

This does not mean that awakening cannot and does not occur in the presence of someone already awakened, as my own experience is testament to. But a more fitting understanding of the phenomenon might be the idea of resonance, as if something about the behaviour of the awakened individual can cause another to resonate in a similar fashion to foster a recognition of his or her own, much like a vibration at a particular frequency can cause objects to vibrate in a similar fashion (note that this is just a metaphor; I am not positing ‘enlightenment vibrations’).

It follows then that the dharma as direct, personal awakening is not something that can be possessed, owned or given by any lineage; but a lineage that teaches an understanding of enlightenment – dharma as the teaching of the Buddha and as a model of reality – and helps to facilitate enlightenment in students – which includes the presence of awakened individuals – is certainly something of value.

However, exactly how many lineages match such a description?

Genesis of a tradition

What are the possible origins of a tradition, school or lineage? Here are a number of elements that may play a part in their creation:

• An individual’s experience of awakening
• An individual’s particular understanding and model of reality
• Politics
• Greed for power/money/sex
• Business
• The kudos of being a holy teacher

No doubt there are many more, but this is enough to understand that there is a staggering number of possible combinations of the above that may go in to the creation – and revision – of a tradition.

For instance, someone who has a good model of reality after years of sitting and study might start teaching for the kudos and the access to easy sexual conquests.

Or a genuinely awakened person might decide to make a lot of money out of the fact they are the real deal.

Or someone who really wants to help others experience enlightenment might also enjoy wielding political power.

Even if we leave the question of motivation out of the equation for the moment, and just focus on the authenticity or quality of a teaching or school, we should be aware that:

• Just because an individual has had a genuine awakening, it doesn’t mean he or she can produce an accurate understanding of the experience or a useful model of reality, nor does it mean he or she will or has helped anyone else experience enlightenment, even if a lineage is produced in his or her name, and even if to this day it remains ‘unbroken’.
• Just because an individual has spent many years with awakened teachers, and has a firm understanding of an accurate model of reality and enlightenment, it doesn’t mean he or she has had a genuine awakening, even if he or she decides to set up a school or lineage.
• Just because a lineage teaches a model of enlightenment, it doesn’t mean it is accurate or helpful, that any of the teachers have any direct experience of what they are talking about, or even that the lineage began with an awakened individual.

Given everything considered above, the idea that we should simply look to the East to find ‘unbroken’ lineages of enlightened, ethical and wise individuals is naive at best. A failure to consider the many possible variables involved in a school that promises dharma transmission is no doubt a large enabling factor to the countless abuses perpetrated by guru after guru in the late 20^th century (and which no doubt still occur today).

Next time you come across an ‘unbroken’ lineage, you should ask yourself exactly what is ‘unbroken’: a certain view of the world? A business model? An empty, irrelevant and unaccessible culture? Superstition? Abuse?

Or that rare thing: a group of genuinely awakened individuals, with a good understanding of the phenomenon, whose main concern is helping others to wake up too?

Right on our doorstep

We can now offer a slightly revised definition of the dharma:

The signifier: a model that describes reality based on awakening/enlightenment

And the signified: That which is recognised at awakening/enlightenment, including our relationship to ‘that’, the resulting view of the world, the way we live according to ‘that’ and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, each other and reality.

Although there is much historical evidence to suggest the ‘unbroken’ lineage of a number of occult or secret traditions of enlightenment in the West, we have no way of knowing just how many authentically awakened individuals were a part of these lineages, what was transmitted, what the motivations were behind many of them and their members, or even who the traditions started with. Sound familiar?

However, we do have many surviving Western teachings or models of reality – examples of the signifier – in the works produced by the Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Plotinus and Proclus; the Christian mystics, such as Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Theresa of Avila; the Medieval alchemists, such as Paracelsus and Agrippa; the Renaissance Hermeticists and Christian Cabalists, such as Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno; the Elizabethan magicians and alchemists, Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley; the Rosicrucians and the countless mystery schools; the Freemasons, such as Elias Ashmole; the Traditionalists, such as Julius Evola and Rene Guenon; the Fourth Way and G.I. Gurdjieff; and the traditions of Thelema and the A.’.A.’., founded by Aleister Crowley and continued by Robert Anton Wilson.

(Of course, there have been many ‘pseudo-traditions’ in the West, such as Theosophy and the Typhonian O.T.O., but again, this is just as prevalent in the East.)

I have to agree with Pierre Grimes when he claims that there is not any metaphysic – produced by anyone, anywhere – as profound as the one offered by the Greeks; and I have personally found the models offered by all of the above Western schools helpful, accurate, challenging, insightful and rewarding. And many of them speak in a very profound sense to my experience of enlightenment.

What this means is that there have always been people in the West experiencing enlightenment – albeit underground for a good millennia and a half – creating a spiritual culture as colourful and as rich as any found in the East. If you are interested in awakening, might there be something of value to be found here?

Ultimately, I don’t believe in tradition; unless there is another type of human being on this planet, with a different brain or mind or heart, the answer to the questions ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What is the truth?’ is the same for all of us. It doesn’t matter whether we are born in Burma or Birmingham, whether we are Hindu or Atheist, whether we are a part of a tradition or not, whether we know someone awakened or not; enlightenment is a human phenomenon, it’s everyone’s birthright, it’s possible for anyone to experience it and there are no definite limitations to who might provide a useful, accurate and helpful view of awakening and reality itself, regardless of lineage, culture or geographical location.

So I think it is time we dropped our naive infatuation with the East as somehow more ‘spiritual’ than the West, as well as our naive disregard for the Western pioneers of enlightenment who more often than not taught awakening at great risk of torture and murder. Rather than investing in the silly notion that the Buddha magically appeared in the East as the very first awakened individual and produced a number of unbroken lineages of realised humans right down to the present day (only coming to the West very recently), we should instead consider enlightenment as a human phenomenon that has occurred to many people all across the globe – as it did during the Axial Age, in three other places besides India: Greece (Philosophy), Israel (Monotheism – but not as we know it today!) and China (Daoism) – that is not dependent on adopting any single culture or religion.

Enlightenment is a human phenomenon, not the product of any lineage or school; isn’t it time we approached it as one? What might we be missing if we pigeon hole ourselves as ‘belonging’ to a ‘tradition’?

Bookmark this article