The Taste of Freedom

If Fate is stingy with me and thus affects my fortune,
I make my virtue ample, and greet my fortune in this way.
If Fate sends toil and thus affects my body,
I put my mind at peace and assist myself in this way.
If Fate brings obstructions and this affects my circumstances,
I make my Way and pass along with ease.
More than this, what can Fate do to me?

--- Hung Ying-ming, The Unencumbered Spirit trans. By William Scott Williams

Hung Ying-ming was a follower of the three great traditions of China: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. It strikes me when I read certain ancient Chinese sages at how easily their minds allow many worlds to exist at the same time.

Now, when I look around, I see Tao vs. Zen, Mahayana vs. Theravada, formal practice v. informal practice, me vs. you, True Zen vs. Your Zen. It is no surprise; this existed in ancient China as well. There is something very human about making these distinctions, and then looking down at all other angles.

I remember talking to a Christian once about judgment. He was going on about how all other Christians were wrong about this, wrong about that. I pointed out that Jesus said: Judge not, lest you be judged. His response: my judgment is right. I’m judging by the rule of God.

So it goes with all things. Zen teachings tell us not to cling and crave, and off we go, clinging and craving in the name of Zen. Buddha told us not to crave, but what I do is not clinging and craving. What you do is craving. Of course, this is simply spiritual inversion.

I see the true taste of Tao and Zen as the taste of freedom. This is summarized nicely in the above quote. No matter what comes, there is a proper response. When one meets the world with the proper response, then there is always freedom. If one practices in the way suggested by Hung Ying-ming, then what can ever stop you?

Discrimination, clinging, craving--- these are fetters that bind us all. They create a prison of thoughts and feeling, a prison that can only exist within us. Is the bark of a dog a Zen bark, a Tao bark, or a Christian bark? If the tree in the courtyard my tree or your tree? It seems ridiculous when put in this way. These things only exist in human minds. In fact, this is the very thing the sages warn us about.

The question for me is not whether a teaching or a practice is true, correct, or right--- these are illusion of the mind. The question is more properly: do these lead to freedom?

The Spiritual Use of Internet Forums

I have come up with a simple exercise that can be used when posting on on-line discussion forums. On-line discussion forums can be a great resource full of different people from different places and cultures sharing insights with everyone else. On the other hand, they often fall into a bickering/fighting/arguing (or so-called “flame threads”) in which nothing is accomplished. This becomes the literary equivalent of two people with their fingers in their ears yelling at each other.

Discussion forums give us the opportunity to practice our spirituality in delayed time with real people. In my mind, it ranks somewhere between real time, real life interactions and just sitting there thinking about it on your own. You are allowed time to think before you reply, you can wait for angry moods to pass, and essentially put your best face forward to the world.

I have found the following exercise very rewarding in expanding my spiritual practice. When I read a post, especially one I disagree with, I ask myself:

Considering this from the other person’s point of view, how can I see that this post is right?

Spiritual teachings of totality tell us that things may exist at the same time without agreement, and neither one is really right or wrong. For one person on the earth, the moon may appear to be the size of the ball. To another standing on the moon, the moon may appear to be a large planet. If the two of them argue, we see this is quite useless. Each of them has a valid view from their perspective, even though they differ. The problem is when each states that their view is the complete or true view.

I find that when I disagree with someone, I have run into a limit in my own mind: my mind is too narrow to see another person’s point of view. By running through this simple exercise, I find that most of the time, I can see a valid point from the other person’s point of view. I find I have much less to disagree with. As a bonus, I find that I have expanded my own consciousness.

Try it and see. Once you practice this on-line, you can also take it into real-life.

The Teachings of Totality

Both Taoism and Zen tend to value an open, flexible mind. There are many reasons for this, but today I want to explore totality.

There is an old Zen poem that goes something like this:

A beautiful woman
Is a delight to her lover
A temptation to the monk
And to the tiger, a good meal

When I first heard this poem, I thought it was pointing to the empty, relative nature of “beautiful”. The woman herself is really none of these. In a sense, this is true, as I will explain later. But this is only one side of the story. If we consider the teachings of totality, she is ALL of these things.

A more classic, philosophical example is a cup of coffee (Philosophical people and coffee are often found together, so it should come as no surprise when we see it used as an example). A cup of coffee may be a refreshing drink early in the morning. It may look white, with a handle, and filled with dark brown, aromatic coffee. Yet now if we look at it with an electron microscope, this cup of coffee is transformed into an ocean of electrons, spinning and shimmering like tiny suns in space. A cup of coffee is a universe in itself. Who is to say that around these little suns aren’t tiny planets, with cities and countries? Now let us look at the cup of coffee from a great distance. It is mere speck, a piece of dust.

So we know our experience of coffee depends on many things: having a human body and mind, having the coffee at the right time of day (morning for some, afternoon for others), looking at it with our naked eye instead of a microscope, and so on.

The problem comes in when we break off one view and forward it as THE view. If one person were to say, “Ah! A nice, warm cup of coffee!”, a physicist might come along and say, “Well, that’s not a cup of coffee at all. Actually, it is a pattern of vibrating molecules that exist near one another.” The first person may retort, “I don’t see any molecules, you must be wrong.” The physicist may say, “No, it is you who is wrong, you don’t have the right materials to see the truth!”

This sounds absurd with the coffee, but when we consider the beautiful woman example, we can see the revelation of a chilling truth. The temptation aspect of a beautiful woman may be seen as the only aspect, and I would wager that this viewpoint has been used to justify the suppression of women throughout the centuries. In fact, we may react to this view by believing that there is no tempting aspect of a beautiful woman at all. Many women (and some men) may see other women as beautiful, but not necessarily as tempting. But this, too, would only be a partial truth. A beautiful woman is both tempting and non-tempting.

To add another level of sophistication, we may then say, “Well, the temptation or non-temptation is not in the beautiful woman, but in the body-mind of the person who sees her.” This is true also. So now we can make absurd statements such as, “The beautiful woman is tempting, non-tempting, and neither tempting nor non-tempting.”

Nor can we necessarily say this is true, that she is both tempting and non-tempting. She is tempting to one person depending on their age, sexual maturity, culture, time, mood, clarity of eyesight, disposition, of mind, and a whole host of other factors. Also depending on these factors, she may be non-tempting. We see here the presence of dependent origination. The body-mind event of temptation, or non-temptation depends on everything else.

Perhaps we get a closer insight when the Buddha says things like, “There is neither one, nor not one, nor neither one nor not one, and not both one and not one.” He says things like this all the time in the Pali Canon.

An open, flexible mind should be open to seeing this from all angles. In Hua Yen Buddhism, it is said that the ultimate Buddhamind is omniscient. From a Buddhamind angle, all of these aspects would be realized at the same time. It is only in our smaller, limited minds that we see only one angle at a time. In Western terms, this a glimpse into the mind of God.

Ignorance prevents us from seeing all of these angles at once. It is simply a lack of knowledge, or to be more precise, a lack of knowing. In the West, we often think of ignorant as uneducated. We often assume that formal schooling leads to amassing knowledge. This is not the case at all. Ignorance, in my view, is better defined as narrow-mindedness, or seeing only part. The more parts you see, the less ignorant you are. In fact, a wise judge would be some one who could fairly hear both sides before making a decision. We tend to think of wisdom coming from experience, and experience is nothing more than knowing. A variety of knowing leads to wisdom.

Narrow minded people may be conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, Christian or Buddhist. On the other hand, all of these types of people may have open and flexible minds. The outer appearance, character, or trait of a person is only part of their identity and really tells us very little about a person. To hone in on this trait to the exclusion of all others doesn't make any sense.

This is why one good practice for expanding the mind is to consider the other side. If some one disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are wrong. It means there are two sides of the story, and in a sense, they may both be right (in a conventional sense). When we are able to truly see the other side, our mind opens, it expands. Having seen this, it is less likely to cling to the part it was clinging to before. Seeing the other side is not helpful for others, but it helps us in our spiritual progress.

Further reading:

The Spirituality of Clinging and Craving

The key insights of Buddhist practice are expressed in the Four Noble Truths: there is suffering, suffering is rooted in clinging and craving, ceasing clinging and craving ceases suffering, and the Eightfold Path.

The Pali word here is "tanha", meaning desire, wanting, or thirst. I prefer thirst, because we've all been thirsty. It is a base, animal urge for something. Thirst captures it because it is an urge we feel very physically, in our bodies.

The problem is that what we crave doesn't last. It doesn't last because everything is impermanent. Because it doesn't last, is cannot satisfy. In fact, craving is at its most intense when the thing we want isn't there. Once we have something, after a short period of relief, we usually take it for granted and move on to craving the next thing.

Non-clinging, or non-attachment, is the golden thread that links classic, Pali Buddhism with Zen. No one does non-attachment like Zen. "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"

In the classic Heart Sutra, it says:

Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or dharmas; no field of the eyes, up to and including no field of mind-consciousness; and no ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death. There is no suffering, no accumulation, no cessation, no Way. And no understanding and no attaining. Because nothing is attained, the Bodhisattva, through reliance on prajna paramita, is unimpeded in his mind. Because there is no impediment, he is not afraid, and he leaves distorted dream-thinking far behind. Ultimately Nirvana!

The Heart Sutra negates every classic distinction of Pali Buddhism. It negates the Five Skandhas, the Four Noble Truths, the 12 Links of Dependent Origination. When everything is negated, where is there left to stand?

Hui Neng was enlightened hearing the words of the Diamond Sutra, "You should activate the mind without dwelling on anything."

Zen Master Powha Sunim used to quote the Bible here: Foxes have holes, birds have thier nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head on it."

Uchiyama Roshi used to say, "Open the hand of thought."

One difficult thing about spiritual practice is this deep tendency to cling and crave to things. In fact, we often trade one clinging for another. Becoming interested in Buddhism, we may cling to Buddhism. Learning about mindfulness and attention, we may cling to mindfulness and attention. Learning concentration, we may cling to concentrate. One after another, the clinging remains, only the object changes. Many people believe this to be spiritual progress, but in fact they are only reinforcing this tendency to cling and crave.

Perhaps the worst clinging and craving has to do with the "Big Spiritual Experience." The "Big Spiritual Experience", or the "Cosmic Orgasm", is often see as the goal of spiritual practice and the sign of enlightenment. This would include "Becoming One with the Universe," "Everything Making Sense," or other such terms.

These experiences don't last. But the clinging and craving does. I think it is important to keep this in mind, even as we discover the wonders of Buddhism, Taoism, mindfulness, or concentration that, while useful, none of these things are the end all be all of spiritual practice.

The key motto of Zen is: Walk On.

Heart Sutra translated by Ron Epstein

Ethics of Emptiness: Part Three

Emptiness and Ethics

In the prior posts, I have discussed emptiness from an ultimate level, and ethics from a conventional level. Even in a universe where there is no ultimate right or wrong, the flow of the Tao favors the ethical person for spiritual advancement.

It was asked earlier: if there is no ultimate relation between cause and effect, what drives karma? Behind this, I detected the question, if the universe is empty, why be good?

The answer is that the Tao favors the virtuous. In fact, the word Te, 德, means on one level virtue. Other Taoists have interpreted Te to also mean the Tao of the microcosm. It is sometimes said that everything has its own te. It makes sense to take virtue as the fruit of one's inner te. Just as all phenomenon are rooted in the Tao, so all our actions are rooted in our te.

The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38 talks about Te:

Therefore, the Tao is lost, and then virtue
Virtue is lost, and then benevolence
Benevolence is lost, and then righteousness
Righteousness is lost, and then etiquette

This is a map of the loss of true Te. The chain goes Tao --> Te --> Benevolence (Kindness) --> Righteousness (Justice) --> Etiquette (Ritual). (The words in parenthesis are Red Pine's translations.)

If we were to reverse the process, we might start with empty formality, then go to fairness, then kindness, then finally return to true Te. In a sense, one can see precepts or ethics as a sort of training. Having lost the natural accord with the Tao, and the wisdom to act, we have to follow these rules. This is like attaching training wheels to the bike. After a while, following moral rules should give rise in us a sense of fairness. This is more of a "feel" for how things should be.

Righteousness or Justice still has a gap between ourselves and others. It is a sense of objectivity, treating people impartially, like objects. This is something our courts often aim to do. But the next step is where it becomes more organic: Benevolence or Kindness. In my experience, true compassion comes from seeing others as ourselves--- it is a result of empathy. Once we know what it is like to be hurt, to suffer, to lose, to be stupid and wrong, we know exactly what others are going through when we them suffer, or lose.

Beyond this, one returns to true Te, then to the Tao.

One who has regained the true Te no longer needs rules. In fact, if we look at Zen classics, we often see Masters acting in strange ways. They may break the precepts, beat their students, or do things that seem odd to us. This include Gutei cutting off a boy's finger or Nansen killing a car in the Mumonkan.

In my mind, they are acting according to Te--- the right response in the right situation. This goes beyond simple moral codes or rules. What is right in one place may be wrong in another. In order to know the difference, we must develop wisdom.

When we hear of Taoists say that morality is unnatural, they are right. Moral codes are rigid rules imposed on us. They are not naturally arising morality. But we need to follow them until we recover our natural sense of morality. In our current state, we are lost, deluded, and confused. What we might think it natural is acting on impulse. As the saying goes, we must first learn to walk, often using external props and supports, before we can run. But once we learn to run, it would be ridiculous to use the props and supports we used before. Training wheels help us to learn to ride a bike, but once we have it, they just slow us down.

This is dangerous because it makes it impossible to judge the actions of enlightened beings. This reasoning has been used to cover up many horrible things in spiritual circles: gurus and masters sexually abusing their students, stealing money, or covering up drug and alcohol addictions. One should always keep one's common sense and knowledge of the ways of the world, especially with a teacher.

Lao Tzu's map shows us the way from rigid moral codes to a free, natural virtue. This can be seen not only in individual cases, but in societies and cultures. A society may start with a rigid and inflexible moral code, proceed to one motivated by justice and fairness, then one of love and compassion. Finally, we would have a society of enlightened beings, acting according to their natures.

This verse is the bridge between ethics and emptiness.

Tao Te Ching translated by Derek Lin

Ethics of Emptiness: Part Two

What are ethics?

Ethics are rules. They tell us what we should or should not do. Ethics are not about some abstract, ultimate notion of right or wrong (these concepts are empty, that is to say, fluid and dynamic). Ethics are based on practical observation. If you put your fingers in the fire, it will hurt. One ethical rule might be: don’t put your fingers in the fire.

Alistair Crowley dubbed himself the “Wickedest Man on Earth”. But even he saw the inner meaning of ethics in spiritual life. In his Liber Aba, Book Four, he writes about yama and niyama in Yoga:

They are the "moral qualities" and "good works" which are supposed to predispose to mental calm... Some of these are only the "virtues" of a slave, invented by his master to keep him in order. The real point of the Hindu "Yama" is that breaking any of these would tend to excite the mind...Subsequent theologians have tried to improve upon the teachings of the Masters, have given a sort of mystical importance to these virtues; they have insisted upon them for their own sake, and turned them into puritanism and formalism. Thus "non-killing," which originally meant "do not excite yourself by stalking tigers," has been interpreted to mean that it is a crime to drink water that has not been strained, lest you should kill the animalcula.

Of course, being Alistair Crowley, he takes it a step further:

But this constant worry, this fear of killing anything by mischance is, on the whole, worse than a hand-to-hand conflict with a grisly bear. If the barking of a dog disturbs your meditation, it is simplest to shoot the dog, and think no more about it.

But Crowley’s point is well taken. Anyone who has spent five minutes learning meditation knows that the mind is hard to control. It wanders, it talks, it dreams, it drifts. Swami Vivekandanda wrote, in his Raja Yoga:

How hard it is to control the mind! Well has it been compared to the maddened monkey. There was a monkey, restless by his own nature, as all monkeys are. As if that were not enough some one made him drink freely of wine, so that he became still more restless. Then a scorpion stung him. When a man is stung by a scorpion, he jumps about for a whole day; so the poor monkey found his condition worse than ever. To complete his misery a demon entered into him. What language can describe the uncontrollable restlessness of that monkey? The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature; then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance. How hard to control such a mind!

The wise sages of old knew this “monkey mind” well. With such a mind, how is it possible to investigate reality? The mind must be calmed, settled and soothed before it can be a proper instrument of spiritual investigation.

Another popular metaphor for the mind is water. Zen masters like to talk about our minds like a cup of water with dirt in it. When it is stirred, the mind is unclear. But if you let it settle, the dirt dribbles to the bottom and the water is clear.

The sages, both Buddhist and Taoist, discovered that the first step on the spiritual path is the practice of ethics.

The simple rule behind ethical conduct is this: immorality is agitating to the mind. A mind that is hooked on sense pleasures never rests. It is looking, looking, looking; waiting and hoping for the next pleasure to come along. A mind that is full of hate is no longer an open, sensitive mind: it hardens, shrinks, tightens. Everything that is considered morally “bad” is rooted in this.

In Buddhism, the three root poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance. In Buddhist psychology, once the mind comes in contact with forms (rocks, trees, flowers, faces) one of three instant feeling reactions arise: a pull toward (craving the pleasant), a pull away (aversion from the unpleasant), or nothing at all (neutral).

This movement of the mind are the roots of the three poisons. The three poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance. These three movements become the axle of the Wheel of Life, powering the entire engine of life, death, and rebirth. A craving mind, a resisting mind, or a numb mind are incapable of seeing clearly. Seeing clearly is the foundation of realization.

Through thoughts, words, and actions, the mind develops habits of acting in a certain way. Over time, these actions wear a groove into the mind, just as a stream wears a groove into rock. Eventually, the path becomes so well worn and smooth it might hardly be noticed.

Ethical conduct seeks not only to calm the mind, but to ensure it is a healthy mind. Lao Tzu pointed out that the soft tongue survives longer than hard teeth. The nature of the mind is to be soft, flexible, flowing. Habits harden, deaden, and slow the mind.

So it could be said that when some one commits a sin (the word for sin in ancient Greece meaning "to miss the mark"), they are the first victim of the act. A murderer in the act of killing kills a part of himself: the mind becomes less sensitive, harder, less resilient. A thief will find that she gets no rest. The reward of the morally upright is a calm, clear mind and a good night’s sleep.

This is where Crowley was wrong. Killing the dog that disturbs your meditation will harden the mind, making true meditation even more difficult.

So why is ethical conduct given first? When the mind is agitated, restless, and unclear, nothing will be seen. In order to collect and cool the mind to the point where it is able to see even basic spiritual truths, it is given a moral code to follow. This code itself will help the mind calm down. Then one can begin meditation properly. However, meditation, investigation, or contemplation without a solid moral foundation will be useless because the mind will be upset and whirling.

The Ethics of Emptiness: Part One

What is Emptiness?

Emptiness can be used to mean different things. In the West, when we talk about emptiness, we tend to mean “nothing”. For instance, if a cup is empty, there is nothing in there: no water, no coffee, no tea, no anything.

This can be confusing when we hear Buddhists say everything is empty. A hammer is empty—then why does it hurt when we smack our fingers? Rain is empty--- then why do we get wet?

Some Buddhist schools take this to mean that nothing exists at all. In my experience, this tends to be the minority view. Rather, emptiness in Mahayana Buddhist thought tends to be a very special kind of emptiness. It is emptiness of a self.

Ok, so what is a self?

When we talk about a self, we mean something that endures, doesn’t change, and is independent of everything else. Like an impossibly hard diamond. It is the idea of an immortal soul of some sort, some underlying real, actual substance that exists separate and apart. In the West, the philosopher Plato popularized the idea of an idea: that everything has its perfect self essence that exists apart from its material manifestations. Every circle is a reflection of a divine perfect circle. This sort of thinking became very well entrenched in the West.

Buddhist and Taoist thought goes against this. In both Buddhism and Taoism, the universe is a fluid, dynamic, changing place. There are no objects, there are movements. There are no things, there are open, changing, flowing containers. A good way to test this is to try to find the self. A classical example is a chariot. A more modern example might be a car. Where is the car in the car? Well, a car has doors, four wheels, an engine. But then you think, what if I remove the engine, do I no longer have a car? Or if it has three tires instead of four?

You can take a car apart and sort it into neat, interesting piles, but you will find no “car” there. You will have an assembly of parts. And if you look at each part, you will find parts of parts, and so on.

On the other hand, there certainly seems to be “something” there. You can get into your car and drive it to the beach or the grocery store. If you tell me I have no hand, I will slap you.

You can do this with all things, including yourself. Try it and see what happens. Most people, except children, shy away from this sort of analysis. We don’t push ourselves this far. Yet this is what Buddhism is all about: pursuing an investigation to the end.

In Buddhist philosophy, there is the concept of two truths. There are ultimate truths (there is no car) and conventional truths (I can get in and drive my car). Even though there is nothing like a “car”, we can still get to work every day. It is important when thinking about things to make this distinction. If you confuse one level with the other, than you may step in front of an empty car to find it smashing into you.

A second point is the inter-relation between all things. A car doesn’t jump from the Tao fully formed. A car is assembled, but some one has to mine and refine the metal. Some one has to put together the pieces. Some one has to transport the car from the factory to the dealer. Some one has to grow food to feed all these people. The sun and earth must exist and be ripe for the food to grow. Behind each car is a factory, a team of workers, farmers to grow food to feed the workers, real estate agents, homemakers, garbage men, lawyers, doctors, societies, civilizations, planets, sunshine, gravity, stars--- the whole universe goes into making that car. One might say, in fact, that a car manifests the whole universe.

If, in fact, there were permanent, enduring selves, then nothing would be possible. If there was an essential metal that existed apart and unchanging, you could never mold the metal into a car. It would always be metal. Likewise, sunshine and expelled air would never become a tree.

As Lao Tzu said:

Thirty spokes join in one hub
In its emptiness, there is the function of a vehicle
Mix clay to create a container
In its emptiness, there is the function of a container
Cut open doors and windows to create a room
In its emptiness, there is the function of a room
Therefore, that which exists is used to create benefit
That which is empty is used to create functionality

One thing that should be clear, but may not be, is that the form and emptiness are both required to have anything at all. Emptiness gives the cosmos its flexibility. Form gives the cosmos its existence. If everything were completely empty empty, all the way through, we wouldn’t have anything at all. If everything were enduring selves, we would have a static universe. Again, it is the middle way that is the way to go here. The Heart Sutra says: Form is emptiness. But it also says, emptiness is form. These are not two.

Tao Te Ching translated by Derek Lin