Depth
August 17, 2009
Morning light illuminates the meditating wrestler.
In his mind, even a wooden temple is washed away.
Who could challenge an ocean’s depth?
There was once a wrestler who, in spite of his great physical stature, lost most of his matches. He consulted coach after coach, but no one could show him how to win. Although he lacked neither might nor skill, he did lack concentration and confidence.
Finally, he went to consult a meditation master who agreed to help. “Your name means ‘Vast Ocean,’” observed the master. “Therefore, I will give you this meditation to practice.”
That night, the wrestler sat alone in the shrine and first visualized himself as waves. Gradually, the waves increased in size. Soon, he became a flood. Then the flood became a deluge, and finally a tidal wave. In his mind, everything was swept before him: Even the gods on the alter and the timbers of the temple were consumed in his surge.
Near dawn, the water settled into a vast and endless sea. That morning, the master came to check on the wrestler’s progress and was delighted. He knew that the wrestler would not lose again.
For each of us, it is only depth of character that determines the profundity with which we face life. We can either add to our character each day, or we can fritter away our energies in distractions. Those who learn how to accumulate character each day achieve a depth that cannot be successfully opposed.
Indifference
August 12, 2009
For a true master,
Sitting on a throne
Is no different than
Sitting on dirt.
A true master is indifferent to the ways of society. Ambition, knowledge, and religion are equally uninteresting. Why? Because all these things are in the realm of human definition.
The holy person transcends all identity. Therefore, wealth or poverty, good or bad, violence or peace makes no difference. Dichotomies are no longer valid to such a person.
Do you find this hard to believe? The degree that you find this difficult to accept indicates the degree to which you are shackled by dualism. True enlightenment comes from understanding the oneness of all reality. Such a realization leads to a perception that all things are truly equal. A master sees nutrition and disease as the same, life and death as the same, morality and imoorality as the same. If you give the masters something to eat, they will eat. If they have nothing to eat, they forget that there was ever such an activity. There is no polarity in their lives.
We ordinary people cannot do this. We make distinctions, defend ourselves and our territories. We feel safe only inside declared boundaries. This is the way we define ourselves, but our identities are also our prisons. Only a master knows the meaning of liberation and has complete freedom.
Be
August 10, 2009
Tao is within us; Tao surrounds us.
Part of it may be sensed,
And is called manifestation.
Part of it is unseen,
And is called void.
To be with Tao is harmony.
To separate from Tao is disaster.
To act with Tao, observe and follow.
To know Tao, be still and look within.
Tao is within us; we are Tao. It is also outside of us; it is all the known universe. All that we can know of ourselves and our universe cannot account for all that is Tao. What we know is merely the outer manifestation of Tao.
The ultimate Tao is called absolute. We cannot know it directly because it has no definitions, references, or names. Our normal minds are incapable of perceiving where there is no contrast. Yet it is precisely this colorless infinity that is the underlying reality to this life.
The only way to fathom it is to remove our sense of division from it. In essence, we must plunge into the mystery itself. Only then will we know peace.
Nonduality
August 9, 2009
Don’t contemplate
As mere activity.
Be void contemplating void.
Once one understands that the ultimate nature of this existence is void, one understands that to be void is the only true mode of meditation. Notice that void is not the object of meditation – to pair meditator and object creates a dualistic relationship between self and environment that leads one astray.
In meditation we are searching for unity. We need something that takes us out of the normal dualistic modes that are the origins of all our difficulties. Therefore, the only true meditation is one that does not put us into a relationship of viewer and object. Any object, no matter how holy, still reinforces the illusion that there is a reality outside of ourselves. What we are trying to gain is the true interior view: There is no difference between our inner and outer realities.
The ultimate meditation is the realization that we ourselves are empty of distinctions, that our sense of identity is only the result of dualistic clinging. Along with that, we should understand that there is really nothing to contemplate, nothing to think about.
River vs. Ocean ~ Being Humble
August 8, 2009
The Yellow River has flooded due to the autumn rains, and the god of the Yellow River believes he is the greatest, mightiest being in the world – until he flows into the North Ocean. Then he realizes that he is puny in comparison to the North Ocean.
Jo, the god of the North Ocean, replies to the god of the Yellow River, ‘A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.’
In other words, the god Jo of the North Ocean can now begin to teach the Lord of the Yellow River because the Lord has experienced the limits of his own knowledge.
The Laughing Man
August 3, 2009
Or should I???
Immediacy
August 3, 2009
When washing your face, can you see your true self?
When urinating, can you remember true purity?
When eating, can you remember the cycles of all things?
When walking, can you feel the rotation of heaven?
When working, are you happy with what you do?
When speaking, are your words without guile?
When you shop, are you aware of your needs?
When you meet the suffering, do you help?
When confronted with death, are you unafraid and lucid?
When you meet conflict, do you work toward harmony?
When with your family, do you express benevolence?
When raising children, are you tender but firm?
When facing problems, are you far-seeing and tenacious?
When you are finished with work, do you take time to rest?
When preparing for rest, do you know how to settle your mind?
When sleeping, do you slip into absolute void?
What Do You Think Of The Theory That Religious Belief And Experience Are Wired Through Evolution?
August 2, 2009
I found the following article in the Los Angeles Times, 31st July 2009… And I am reproducing it here as I fell it raises some very important issues concerning human understanding and the evolution of religious ideals within society.
Homo religious
Point: Michael Shermer
Did humans evolve to be religious and believe in God? In the most general sense, yes, we did. Here’s what happened.
Long ago, in an environment far away from the modern world, humans evolved to find meaningful causal patterns in nature to make sense of the world, and infuse many of those patterns with intentional agency, some of which became animistic spirits and powerful gods. And as a social primate species, we also evolved social organizations designed to promote group cohesiveness and enforce moral rules.
People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking primates. We connect A to B to C, and often A really is connected to B, and B really is connected to C. This is called association learning. But we do not have a false-pattern-detection device in our brains to help us discriminate between true and false patterns, and so we make errors in our thinking. A Type I error is believing a pattern is real when it is not (a false positive) and a Type II error is not believing a pattern is real when it is (a false negative).
Imagine you are a hominid on the planes of Africa and you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator or just the wind? If you assume it is a dangerous predator and it is just the wind, you have made a Type I error, but to no harm. But if you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator, there’s a good chance you’ll be lunch and thereby removed from your species’ gene pool. Thus, there would have been a natural selection for those hominids who tended to believe that all patterns are real and potentially dangerous.
I call this process “patternicity” (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and “agenticity” (the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents who may mean us harm). This, I believe, is the basis for the belief in souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracy theorists and all manner of invisible agents intending to harm us or help us.
People are religious because we are social and we need to get along. The moral sentiments in humans and moral principles in human groups evolved primarily through the force of natural selection operating on individuals, and secondarily through the force of group selection operating on populations. The moral sense (the psychological feeling of doing “good” in the form of positive emotions such as righteousness and pride) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were good either for the individual or for the group. An immoral sense (the psychological feeling of doing “bad” in the form of negative emotions such as guilt and shame) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were bad either for the individual or for the group.
While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the moral sense of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved human universal. The codification of moral principles out of the psychology of the moral sentiments evolved as a form of social control to ensure the survival of individuals within groups and the survival of human groups themselves. Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles, and God — as an explanatory pattern for the world — took on new powers as the ultimate enforcer of the rules.
Thus it is that people are religious and believe in God.
(Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and the author of, most recently, “The Mind of the Market.”)
We die, therefore we are religious
Counterpoint: Francisco J. Ayala
The formal name of the human species is Homo sapiens, or “knowing human.” As a consequence of evolution, ours is the most intelligent species on Earth. A likely explanation of how our exalted intelligence came to be has to do with our ancestors of 2 million years ago, known as Homo habilis, who started to make very simple stone tools. Making tools requires seeing such objects as “tools,” in other words, something to be used for a particular purpose: a knife for cutting, an arrow for hunting and so on. Seeing something as a tool requires forming mental images of realities not present: the deer I’ll seek to kill and the flesh I’ll cut for eating. In turn, forming mental images of things not present requires advanced intelligence, which is why so few animals make tools, and the tools they do make haven’t developed into anything resembling the advanced technologies of our species.
The evolution scenario suggests that those more intelligent among our remote ancestors were able to make better tools. And those who made better tools survived better because they got more food and were more effective at killing their enemies or defending themselves. Therefore, those more intelligent left more descendants, and genes for higher intelligence increased in frequency for thousands and thousands of years among our ancestors.
Our intelligence is curious: We want to understand the world around us, how things happen and why they happen. We seek causal explanations of natural events. Before modern science came of age in the 17th century, humans attributed natural events for which they did not know the explanation to supernatural agents. Spirits or gods caused rain and drought, floods and storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, surely in retribution for human deeds. These beliefs would often lead to worship and rituals.
Seeking causal explanations for events in the natural world was one source of religious beliefs and practices. Humans live in complex societies, which need to be governed by laws and moral norms. Seeking justification for moral norms and social laws was another source of religious faith and cults. Israelites, for example, were told by Moses to observe the Ten Commandments because these were ordered by God.
But there is one more source of religion that also depends on our evolution-endowed intelligence: self-awareness and its consequence, death-awareness. Except for young infants, every person is conscious of existing as a distinct individual, different from other people and from the environment. Self-awareness is the most immediate and unquestionable reality of our experience.
Moreover, we humans are the only animals with full experience of self-awareness, which implies death-awareness. If I know I exist as a distinct human individual, I know I will die because I see other people die. Because we ceremonially bury our dead, we know humans are the only animals that are death-aware. All human societies have burial rituals, although the rites are very diverse. Ritual burial follows from death-awareness: If I know I will die, I will treat other dead humans with such respect because I want to be treated this way when I die.
Because we humans are aware of the transitory character of our existence, we develop anxiety over death. This anxiety is at least in part alleviated by religious beliefs and rituals, which give meaning to one’s own life even though life will end. Anxiety about death is further relieved in the many religions that attribute immortality to the soul, either through successive reincarnations or in the form of life beyond death.
Evolution, by making humans intelligent, predisposed us to be religious.
(Francisco J. Ayala, a biology professor at UC Irvine, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2001.)
No doubt… Once one looks at the psychological facts about how we, as human beings, operate, this kind of sounds plausible… I know I look for patterns. In fact, most IQ tests gauge the ability with which a subject can discern/discover patterns within “sequences” of numbers, words, diagrams and environments, asking them which answer best suites/follows on from a given progression…
If you are curious about where I sourced this article, please click here.
Abundance
August 2, 2009
Sun in heaven.
Abundance in great measure.
Supreme success
In the midst of impermanence.
The midday sun in summer is the hottest and brightest of all. It symbolizes a zenith, a fulfillment, a period of great brightness. In the affairs of people, it stands for the combining of strength and clarity, which yields brilliance. When the times are in accord, abundance cannot be opposed.
The period of abundance is a time for vigorous action. Bright light shines not only on the good but on the bad as well. therefore, when evil is revealed, all good people must oppose it. Pluck it out by the roots and energetically promote the good.
Abundance is a cause for celebration, but followers of Tao also remember to be cautious. No zenith can be preserved forever. In fact, the time of abundance just precedes an inevitable path of decline. Nothing in life is permanent. Therefore, the wise person enjoys and is gladdened by abundance. But while they take advantage of the time, they also prepare for what will follow.
Too Lazy To Be Ambitious
August 1, 2009
Today I will break from my steady flow of scientific empiricism… As an important event is transpiring in my life… One that urges me to remember the “Great Fools” of our times. One of these “fools”, with whom I feel a strong affinity with/towards/for, is Taigu Ryokan… For it is his wise words that I seem to find going around my head as I stand alive on this planet, hanging in the inky black desert of space and time:
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Writen by Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool).
Ryokan lives on as one of Japan’s best loved poets, the wise fool who wrote of his humble life with such directness. He is in a tradition of radical Zen poets or “great fools” including China’s P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang, 740-811) and Han-shan (Cold Mountain, T’ang Dynasty), and Japan’s poets of the Rinzai School: Ikkyu Sojun (Crazy Cloud, 1394-1481) and Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769). Ryokan had no disciples, ran no temple, and in the eyes of the world was a penniless monk who spent his life in the snow country of Mt. Kugami. He admired most the Soto Zen teachings of Dogen Zenji and the unconventional life and poetry of Zen mountain poet Han-shan. He repeatedly refused to be honored or confined as a “professional” either as a Buddhist priest or a poet.
Who says my poems are poems?
These poems are not poems.
When you can understand this,
then we can begin to speak of poetry.
Ryokan never published a collection of verse while alive. His practice consisted of sitting in zazen meditation, walking in the woods, playing with children, making his daily begging rounds, reading and writing poetry, doing calligraphy, and on occasion drinking wine with friends.
