rebuddha-redux

"What are we looking for?"
"We'll know when we find it."
The Rockford Files

nicing your way to nirvana

This isn't intended as anything but what it is; an investigation into the discrepancy between the world as it is, and the world as we perceive it, prompted by some sayings of the Buddha. I'm not a Buddhist, but credit goes where credit is due.

So should blame.

Buddhism, especially in the pampered, self-centred West, has become a lifestyle choice where analysis of what Buddha said (difficult, and full of inconvenient truths) is ignored in favor of relaxing and flattering pseudo-mystical practices that "elevate the soul", or are "steps on the way to enlightenment." For Westerners, especially ALBs (American Lifestyle Buddhists), Buddhism is a brand, like any other - the consumer choice they have made from the Imported Mysticism shelf.

In the East, Buddhism is integral to society, but religious teachings revolve mostly around the fairy-stories of Buddha's fictional life. And monks are - guess what - just guys dressed as monks.

This (uh) blog is about clearly seeing the world as we make it, and about understanding the vast difference between our world, the man-made world, and the world as it is, the truth behind our artificial constructs.

This is not philosophy or opinion or a point of view or my take on things, and I claim no credit for it. Most of it is simple, using simple words, although nothing here is easy to understand. Truth is always simple, but rarely easy. The terms "thinking" and "internet" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but this isn't the Yahoo home page (IMHO LOL ROFL OMG!!). Not only do I promise you no fun at all, but also no links. This is a dead end you have to reverse out of.

What Buddha said is too good to be left to the Buddhists. Buddhists are, by and large, as full of crap as anybody. Some - the New Age ALBs - are fuller than the average anybody. This is not for those who want to nice their way into nirvana. There's no windchimes, aromatherapy and haiku about kittens here, girls! Buddha offered no comfort, no lifestyle recipes, and very few rules, other than be good. So be good.

I'm grateful to those few who take a little time out from the frenzied cross-clicking of the internet to rest in one place for a while, even if that rest is hard work. The rest of you - including holistic breeze-heads, virtual zen gardeners, Buddhist bloggers, yogic yahoos, and anybody who feels comfortable with themselves - would do well to fuck off right here. But if you're going to get anything out of this (and a lot went in), set aside thirty minutes when you can stare at your screen without interruption. Grab a cold beer, crack your knuckles, and get stuck in.

are you ready for the deep end?

The universe (the world) does not time itself, quantify itself, or name itself. We do this. We impose these artificial frameworks onto the world, and we believe they enable us to understand, control, and predict it. We see our own model of the world, not the world as it is. We actually see a diminished world, a flatter world. We see it in a kind of sleep.

Mind Tattoo: The true world does not name, time, or quantify itself. It exists apart from these systems, untouched by them.

We perceive the world through habits we have built up, as individuals and as cultures, that prevent us from seeing the world as it is. We name, we time, we quantify. These three systems - inextricably interlinked - are not the only barriers between us and the true world, but it's a good place to start.

The alarm is always ringing. Your house is always burning down around you as you sleep. You can't hear the alarm because you're dreaming too loud.

"i am awake"

We're going to have to talk a little about Buddha, but don't worry. You don't have to sit cross-legged or chant.

Buddha is a word. It means awake. This is all about waking up, or at least realizing we are asleep. Siddhartha Gautama was once pestered by someone who wanted to know what he was, who kept asking if he was a king, a saint, or whatever. Eventually Siddhartha (perhaps tiring of saying I am not this, nope, and uh-uh) said, "I am Awake."

Siddhartha Gautama would be a largely forgotten Indian princeling if he hadn't become enlightened. This terrible, terrible word - enlightened - has two clear contemporary meanings; understanding, and broad-minded. We are all enlightened when we understand something, or we may think we have an enlightened view of the world, that we are liberal, sympathetic and open-minded. The word is used fairly indiscriminately in Buddhist scripture and writings, where it very often means enlightened in the commonplace way - when something is made clear, and the monk is enlightened. None of these meanings and associations is appropriate to what Awake experienced. And here the shutters come down. You snooze and you lose.

What Awake experienced was beyond the powers of the intellect to express, and beyond the powers of reason to understand. So he had a problem - shut up, or try to tell people about it anyway? If he'd shut up - as he was tempted to do, given the impossibility of describing his experience, and the futility of trying to teach something non-transferable - he'd still be that forgotten Indian princeling. It's a measure of his success in communicating the incommunicable that we know who he is today. He chose to try, knowing that there would be some people who would be receptive, and to whom his words might be helpful. He didn't see himself on a mission to save humanity. He didn't want to persuade, convince, or argue a point of view. He only saw the value of speaking to those whose minds were already open to some extent. He knew he was a signpost - that he could point the way. Unfortunately, and inevitably, people got hung up on him, and looked at him rather than the way he was pointing. They still do. It's called Buddhism.

The Buddha, pictured yesterday.

And his problem is ours; we will never be able to experience what he experienced by reading, studying, or even understanding his words, or the works of any translator or commenter or analyst. This isn't because what he spoke about is uniquely difficult - even the most accurate description of the process of making and eating ice-cream will never allow you to taste ice-cream. Language has its limits everywhere, but unlike the taste of ice-cream, the flavour of Awake's experience is unknown to us, and so cannot be conjured up by language.

The bulk of Awake's teachings (and he lived a long and busy life) concerned themselves with right living. These teachings are common sense, easily understood, and simple. We are a barbarous lot and need to be told what's right and good. But what he had to say about his enlightenment (that word again) has very little to do with these necessary means of leading a good life. Here in the East (where I live), a surprisingly small amount of time is given to his core teaching (the difficult stuff), while the rules of living are learned by heart, as are the fairy-tales that have inevitably sprung up around his life. I'm interested in neither of these areas. They present no problems in understanding or learning. What I'm interested in is exactly what happened to Awake during his enlightenment. What that dreadful word "enlightenment" actually means. The core of all this. Ask most Buddhists about this (especially American Lifestyle Buddhists) and you'll likely get a lot of tired old blather, delivered with a suitably enigmatic expression. This we cannot know. Is the breeze from the east to be grasped in the hand, little grasshopper? You know - bullshit.

Given that I don't know what I'm talking about (when it comes to enlightenment), and could not talk about it even if I knew, it's more rewarding to investigate unenlightenment, the sleep we all share, the state which has to exist if enlightenment is possible. This investigation of our normal condition (critical distinction: ALBs like to occupy themselves with attaining something they are not, so that they feel superior) is fraught with difficulties. Our habits, of thinking and behavior, our day-to-day embedded opinions and reactions and assumed knowledge, all work against even seeing the world as we made it (the unreal world, if you like), leave alone seeing the true world behind it.

We value our own opinions and learning and judgements and knowledge very highly, but they have nothing at all to do with the true world, apart from obscuring it.

tired terms: enlightenment

Our unthinking familiarity with certain key terms in Buddhism is merely labeling - tagging an ill-understood idea so we can file it away with the rest of what we think we know. React to the label (dismiss it) and move on. We have to be able to come to these terms without pre-judging, "pre-knowing" them if they are to be any use.

This "beautiful" picture - the result of a Google image search for enlightenment - has all the trappings. A peaceful woman sits in the lotus position as the sun shines from her fanny. Add a few grass stalks. the unruffled calm of a lake, and some mystic gases floating above the meditator, and you have as tired and banal a representation of enlightenment as you could expect from someone with no knowledge whatsoever of the meaning of the term, but with a flair for marketing. The hell with this crap.

Most of us have a vague idea of what enlightenment means in the Buddhist sense, and it brings to mind all the stereotypical "spiritual" baggage of meditation, sitting cross-legged, chanting, whatever. Maybe a sitar plays soothingly in the background. The word in itself carries no such baggage. It's just an arrangement of letters. Magical symbols that can only suggest a reality. Language is hypnotic, spell-weaving - a fog that obscures while convincing you that it reveals. Our understanding of the word enlightenment is exactly the same as a blind man's understanding of the word red. He may be able to grasp it in some abstract sense, to have an idea of what the term means, an understanding of it, but the reality, the experience, of red will forever elude him.

Enlightenment is the label we put on what Awake experienced, so we can dismiss it (maybe with understanding - a good way to dismiss something) and move on.

Just as we wake from sleep, Awake woke again (re-awoke, rebuddha) into another state of mind. This state of mind is as different to our waking state as our waking state is to our sleeping state. It is unimaginable. And just as it is possible, while dreaming, to become aware that we are dreaming without waking up, so it is possible, while awake, to realise we are still sleeping, without being able to wake up. "Understanding" allows us this, at least.

Kasimir Malevich, "Red Square" (1913). A tough picture to explain to a blind person. Buddha, in trying to communicate his experience by language, knew he was painting for the blind.



time and magic

"Everything that has a beginning and an end in time is wonderful and magical because of that."

Awake never said a complex thing in his life. But that doesn't mean that it's easy to understand. Or that understanding is in itself anything to get excited about. We "understand" time, right? This saying - everything that has a beginning and an end in time is wonderful and magical because of that - is the key to a massive, rusty old lock in our brains, but you have to work at it, because the implications of these few little words are nothing short of revolutionary. It's about time.

If we approach the idea of time from a different angle, forgetting the idea of measurement, we suddenly realize we're not talking about time at all, but about the nature of things, about simple truth. But what is time if it is not a system of measurement?

Mind Tattoo: An understanding of time is an understanding of the nature of things, not their duration.

"That sounds plausible - what does it mean?"
The Phil Silvers Show

Awake didn’t use a watch. His experience of time was fundamentally different to our own. The “time” we are used to (and which binds and blinds us), with its divisions into seconds, minutes, hours, and so on, is an artificial and relatively recent construct that has no direct relationship to nature. It is an approximate and inadequate attempt to impose a rigid and consistent framework onto the universe. This framework enables society to function as it does. Society runs on numbers, and one of the number systems it uses to organize itself is called "time" (another is "money"). We are so used to living within this system that we mistake it for the true nature of time. We think we see time when we watch a clock, but the natural universe existed before the invention of measurement, and exists now in the same way, untimed, untiming, untimeable.

Dali got it absolutely right - his soft clocks weren't the products of a fanciful imagination (being "weird" for the sake of it) but of a rigorously analytical (or intuitive) approach to time. Dali painted the world as it is, not as a dream or a nightmare, not as intellectual abstraction, not as a slave to the eye, but as it is - boundaries are everywhere blurred, everything metamorphoses, nothing is rigidly fixed in perspective. There is no distance in a Dali painting, no depth of field. Everything is happening all at once, and clocks are useless to control it. Time is not an Aristotlean three-act play, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Nature does not measure itself in consistent, uniform, stable units. Nature turns in infinitely varying cycles. It does not progress along a straight line in measurable units. The second (like any scientific measurement) does not exist in nature. Neither does the day. The day depends on our subjective position within the solar system, and our position on the earth. The day, as a unit, is inconsistent - the 24 hour division is an artificial construct, designed for our convenience, as is the number of days in a month. "Units of time" are fictions, imagined in the mind of man, and not discovered in nature. Our society invests credibility and trust in the system, just as it does in other man-made imaginative control systems, such as Religion, Money, and Law.

Although it obviously exists, time does not express itself in units, but in cycles of coming to be, ceasing to be. This is the simple and beautiful formula of every cycle in the universe – coming to be, ceasing to be.

"Eternal recurrence is the universal law: nothing happens for the first time."
Tertullian

"There is nothing in the Old Testament that does not recur in the New Testament. This is the mysterious correspondence between the two scriptures, to be seen by those who have eyes to see. It makes Old and New contemporaneous, transforms time into eternity."
Norman O. Brown

The Old and New Testaments as iterations of the same story, telling once and telling once again, turning round and round from genesis to omega, from conception to crucifixion, from Eden to the Fall, for ever and ever. The cyclical world, the eternal moment. This is a major secret of the bible, a book swarming with disinformation and ambiguity.

Awake was opposed to the "closed fist" method of teaching - the so-called inner school of the mystic adept. He was entirely open, with no special secrets to hold back for a privileged priesthood. This alone makes him an unsatisfactory leader for those who like to hoard knowledge for themselves, or eke it out to those who (in their eyes) "deserve" it. All secret schools of mystic knowledge - whether wearing the robes of established religion or the corporate uniform of mind control - are run by charlatans for their own benefit. There are no exceptions. All gurus, all popes, all self-proclaimed representatives of the divine truth who like to gather around themselves a clan of worshippers, are play-acting. Nobody can give you the truth, nobody can teach the truth. That's your business, you lazy bum. Nobody is going to save you. Nobody actually gives much of a shit about you (about as much as you give for anybody else, in fact - as much as you may love and care for another, not only is there a limit on what you can do for them, but they are always Number Two to your own Number One, playing second fiddle, being the second person, in a supporting role to your own star performance. You are nothing if not everybody else's other.)

Buddhists do like to bang on about Buddha's compassion. Compassion is one of those creepy words that people use in the belief that its quality will rub off on them. Like humility. Trap words. Do you think you're compassionate? humble? What fantastic arrogance! FUCK OFF!

Buddha didn't care about you, or anybody else, and he certainly didn't claim to die for your sins, to be your Personal Savior. Because he knew that the Self (YOUR NAME HERE - OBLIGATORY FIELD) - that old Number One - was the enemy of the truth, and had no existence in the True World. It's not about You, dammit.

"We are in a world of generation and death, and this world we must cast off."
William Blake

Generation and death - coming to be, ceasing to be. This is our world, the cyclical, turning world. And it is a world we must cast off. The Blake quote is as Awake-like as it's possible for words to be, and these words, or some near-exact version of them, have always been spoken by those who have seen the truth, no matter from what age or culture.

The truth is not Awake's personal property. He has no franchise or exclusive copyright. Anybody can speak the truth. He made sure - through endless repetition - that his monks were able to express the truth, even if they did not yet experience it. The truth is uttered everywhere, overheard by accident or seen from the corner of the eye, never in one place altogether. There is no bible, no word of god, no holy book that contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is no secret key to the kingdom, no arcane wisdom that will open the door of heaven for you. Take truth wherever it finds you.

"round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel .."

Already, the beautiful, valuable truth behind this apparently simple image has been dressed up with religious symbolism - the number of spokes and the their form have liturgical significance. All you need take from this image is the idea of a wheel. A circle that turns. There are many more complex images of the wheel in Buddhist tradition, but in all of them the thing that matters is merely the idea of circularity. Just that. All the rest - the arbitrary divisions, the occupation of the divisions by various deities, are nothing but fanciful invention - the stuff and clutter we form out of shadows for our own entertainment and distraction, or, it should be added, to subjugate others for our own benefit.

The wheel is a recurring image in Buddhism, and it is often interpreted as “the wheel of life” – of death and rebirth, a confirmation of the dubious theory of reincarnation (a theory which was well-established before Awake, and which he more or less refuted, without wishing to destroy its beneficial effects – doing good, even for the motive of ensuring oneself a bigger house in the next life, is still doing good). But the wheel means more (and less) than that. It is a direct and unambiguous symbol of the cyclical nature of time.

The caption ("urbi et orbi" - the city and the world) is a later, Catholic, addition - or perhaps an attempt to disguise the image as Vatican-approved. The image, far from being religious, shows a man looking beyond the vault of the heavens to see the nature of the universe - the wheels within wheels. He is very pointedly NOT seeing "God" or any of his celebrated representatives. The Big Guy With The Beard is conspicuous by his absence, as are angels and heavenly souls of the dearly departed, and it is this that leads me to think that the caption (specifically related to the Vatican) was added to protect the irreligious, borderline blasphemous, image from the priesthood. By showing the sun and the moon in the sky together, our world is represented as the natural world of cyclical time, of coming to be, ceasing to be. What Buddha experienced is universal, and not particularly eastern, and certainly not exclusively Buddhist. There are various interpretations of this image, many dragging in unjustifiable religious associations, but none, as far as I know, equating it with Buddha's experience. And Buddha's experience was not a religious experience. No "God" required.

The cyclical rhythm of the universe is nowhere more apparent than in our own breathing, but it is evident everywhere, in the turn of the tides, the apparent passage of the sun across the heavens, the changing seasons, the opening and closing of a flower. Everything we observe, and everything we are, is somewhere on the wheel of coming to be, ceasing to be. And each cycle is unique to that which turns. The breath is shorter than the day. The life of a planet is longer than the life of a mayfly. The universe does not time itself with a clock. The universe does not time itself at all, in the sense we understand it. It is an infinite series of interdependent cycles, wheels within wheels. The true nature of time is rubbery, elastic, immeasurable.

The elastic nature of time is apparent to every one of us to a certain degree. An hour spent waiting in the dentist’s waiting room is longer than an hour spent sailing a yacht. This is not because we have an inconsistent view of a stable system. There is no stability in time.

So when Awake says Everything that has a beginning and an end in time he is referring to everything that comes to be, ceases to be, everything that turns at its own pace - every thing. Things (objects, events; they are synonymous) are wonderful and magical because they are cyclical, because they come and go.

Mind Tattoo: This world, the humdrum day-to-day mundane world we inhabit, is the magical world, the world where spells are spoken, and dreams dreamed. This is the mystical, airy-fairy fairytale world. Enlightenment is not a retreat into mysticism, but a waking up from it. Breaking the spell. Enlightenment is the smashing of the idols, the dethroning of the king, the breaking of the seal, the tearing of the veil. It is violence, it is revolution, it is fire, it is apocalypse. Everything must go.

The shorter the cycle, the more marvelous it seems to us to be. A lightning flash, the beat of a hummingbird's wings, even a sunset, are impressive because of their evident ephemerality. A geological shift of the earth is a slow and unremarkable thing unless it is violent and abrupt, as in an earthquake. But in reality, every cycle is as marvelous and spectacular as another, and every thing is a cycle, an event. To make a distinction between an object and an event is to misapprehend the nature of the "solid" world.

"As stars, a lamp, a mirage,
As dewdrops or a bubble,
A dream, a lightning flash, a cloud,
So one should see conditioned things."

Everything, from the sun our planet swerves into, to a tiny dewdrop, are all ephemeral, unlasting, impermanent. They are events, not objects. To see the world as events is to see it as it is - things happening, not things with any permanent reality in themselves. Wonder at it, but don't mistake it for permanent reality. All this - look around you - is a firework display. Changing is fire, is burning up, the phoenix always rising from the ashes.

The image of the phoenix rising from its own ashes, dismissed as a fairy story, as myth, is as perfect a visual representation of ceasing to be, coming to be as you're likely to find anywhere. That "mythological creature" is you, if you like to look at it that way, or it's everything, the nature of things, the what's happening, on every level, from atomic to universal. Or look at it this way - it's a fancy representation of a circle. Don't be misled by the beauty of the plumage, the hypnotic gleam of the flames. They are just decorating the idea behind it. Even a purely-drawn and "perfect" geometric circle is a fancy decoration of the idea behind it.

As time is cyclical, the breathing of the universe in all its infinite iterations, so is it the key to what Awake called the eternal moment, which we can call Now.

What time is it? Always Now, never any other. There is no other time. The "eternal moment" is a very difficult concept to get our heads around, because the eternal moment is always changing, always in the process of coming to be, ceasing to be. You can't pin it down for examination, and this goes against everything we believe to be real; we like to hold things steady so we can take a good look at them. If something keeps on changing, we can't time it, quantify it, or describe it. The spells we're used to casting on the world (time, numbers, and language) are incapable of dealing with the concept of the ever-changing yet eternal moment. We're at a loss to know what to do with it, so our dull old thought processes concern themselves with thinking about the past, worrying about the future, fantasizing sex with our co-worker, anything at all but being attentive to the moment. Another attempt at labeling - dismissing - this idea, this reality, is to call it now. Now is, in spite of its slippery nature, all we have, all there is. Everything else is stuff frothed up out of nothing for our diversion. You know, magic.

Awake was at pains to tell his followers to forget the past, because it is gone, and not to concern themselves with the future, because it is not yet here. If we think in contemporary western linear mode, we are at a loss here. We see ourselves as somehow having to stop moving on the track of time. But if we see time as cyclical, it is easy and natural to see the point at which the wheel touches the ground without having to stop the wheel. There is only the moment, the now, but it is not stationary. Nothing is stationary or fixed, either in time or space. There is no fixed datum point in the universe from which things can be positioned and measured. The transient moment, the changing instant, is literally all there is. The problems arise when we try to grab hold of this changing instant, to try to define it and limit it and label it and understand it. It cannot be understood, only experienced, and everything we've learned, everything we think, everything we are, obscures this experience. The answer to the question "what is the eternal instant? What do you mean by it?" can only be, this is it. That's all, and that's the all. The real answer is, there is nothing else.

If time travel was possible, we'd know about it, because someone would have come back from the future (or, indeed, forward from the past) to tell us about it. There's also something inherently fallacious about the idea of someone coming to the present from the past (when technology wasn't so advanced, and a time machine is nothing but technology); at the present moment, we don't have the technology for a time machine - but in the past we did? Unfortunately, there's no "future" to come back from, either. The idea of time travel only comes about from a misunderstanding of time - the notion of us moving along a track towards the future, leaving the past behind us. It's an appealingly simple model of time, but it's hopelessly inadequate. There isn't just one time, one "track" we all move along. There is an infinite number of times, and each of them is a cycle, turning at its own pace. An infinite number of turning wheels, and not a single track for them to run along. Each of us lives uniquely in his own time cycle. We're not in some kind of race together, all running together along the same track towards the same finishing line. If we were, then time travel would not only be possible but inevitable - someone would reach the future (the finishing line) first. And presumably turn and wave to the rest of us.

The future exists in our minds as a kind of reflection or projection of the past. There is a compelling argument that the future does not exist at all. By definition, we have no experience of it, no memory of it, no proof of it in any sense. We have a hazy notion that certain things will happen, based on past experience, and a sense of expectation, but that's the sum total of the proof of its existence. By the time the "future" has arrived, it's conveniently turned itself, momentarily, into the present, leaving us with the unquestioned but nonsensical idea that what was the future is now the present. The present moment used to be the future. And - whoops! it's gone! - it's now the past. The "future", therefore, is only visible and concrete to us when it becomes that which it is not. A second ago, this present moment was the future! The present moment was the future, in the past? There is something so fundamentally wrong with this, and yet it's the unquestioned basis of our every waking moment.

"I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd been born a day earlier. Pretty much the same, probably, only I'd have asked that question yesterday."
Steven Wright

Obviously, we don't, and cannot by definition, inhabit the future. So what is it? Where is it? We don't know, but we order our lives around it, fill it up with appointments, worry about how the story ends. How fantastic! In inventing linear time, we created the concept of the future - the calendar.

Mind Tattoo: Nothing in nature apart from Man concerns itself with what's going to happen next Tuesday.

There's an old metaphor for our relationship to what we perceive as time - we're walking backwards into the future. We can only see the future when it arrives in our peripheral vision - the present moment - and as it retreats into the past (which, strangely, is ahead of us). So where does all this stuff come from? The events and objects that unceasingly come into view and stream past? Are they already formed and waiting, somewhere "behind" us? That is, by the time they come into view have they already existed - does the future exist in the past?

If time is a linear track, why can't we turn around and see where we're heading, instead of where we've been? Take a look around you. Where did all this stuff come from? From a kind of infinitely vast storehouse that we call "the future" which deals out events as it sees fit? That doesn't make sense, yet if the future doesn't hold events that are yet to come, what does it do? When thought about in this way, the future's looking pretty weak and unconvincing, right? Would you buy it? Something you can't see or know or remember, something that changes into something else when it arrives, something that apparently has to already exist in order for it to do its job, that is, exist in the past? If you'd buy the future, I have a national monument you might be interested in ...

To understand - on an intellectual level - that the present moment is both transitory and all there is, and that there is some evidence for the existence of the past but absolutely none for the existence of the future - is not the same thing as experiencing and perceiving and knowing this moment. That is something beyond understanding, beyond the intellect. And that's where the usefulness and interest of this writing (if any) stops, too. This is all only understanding, a passive mode; undemanding, self-flattering, almost comforting.

We need a new model of time. The railway track is going nowhere.

We instinctively think of this picture as looking ahead, to where we're going, to the future. Our eyes are in the front of our head. We move ahead, not backwards (and the word "ahead" is worthy of investigation). Yet our model of time means that we are looking behind us, to where we've been, and that this is the only possible view. All aboard! Next stop - yesterday!

The present, transient moment is all there is, all we can know. This moment sends out ripples like a tossed pebble sends out ripples in a pool. These ripples, moving away from the present moment, are memories - what we think of as the past. In this model, the future doesn't need to be invented. The very idea of the future is redundant. We are no longer moving backwards along a non-existent track into something called "the future", something that is (absurdly) waiting for us with its events already prepared for us to experience. And "the past" is far more clearly comprehensible, and natural, as diminishing echoes of the present event. This is simple stuff, but almost limitlessly profound.

there is no such thing as a thing

"Everything that has a beginning and an end in time is wonderful and magical because of that."

Everything - every event - and everything is an event, or combination of events - has a beginning and an end in time (the pebble dropped and the diminishing ripples), and it is this very quality of eternally cyclical coming to be, ceasing to be made manifest that makes our world magical and wonderful. Things/events are magical, unreal, and fantastic because they seemingly appear out of nowhere and disappear into nothing. Not only the spectacular cosmic events of the universe, the black holes and suns and galaxies - but the mundane objects we see around us, the table we bump our leg on, the leaf in the gutter - are at an atomic level "merely" a complex play of energy, a combination of forces too subtle for us to appreciate, events with no more substance than a rainbow.

The universe as it is, without our interpretation or understanding of it, is the magical world. But there is another level of magic that is man-made, spells spun out of the ghost we call the self. That other magic has nothing to do with familiar definitions and perceptions of the word magic, but it is real and powerful, all the more so for being generally unperceived, for doing its work so subtly and cleverly we're unaware of being under its spell. The concepts and practice of measurement and language are central to this magic. Our all-too familiar sets of numbers and letters are the magical symbols through which the spells of measurement and language are cast. Ask yourself - why (and how) do numbers count, and letters spell? Answering that simple, childish-looking, even stupid-looking question will take you into a very strange country indeed.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it?"
Douglas Adams


everything is all the same

Absolutely integral to the cyclical nature of the universe and all which comprises it, is the concept of non-duality. The idea of non-duality tends to get cluttered with partisan meanings and interpretations - a quick internet search shows a bewildering variety of approaches - but, as in everything Awake talked about, it's best to take it from the source and work from there.

"Light and shade can only be experienced in relationship to each other. There are no opposites, only relationships."

In the linear West, we live in a dualistic/linear culture, with opposites balancing each other out at the end of the line. Black and white, rich and poor, male and female, right and wrong - the list of opposites is endless. And because we're used to a linear way of thinking, these extremes, these theoretical absolutes, exist at polar opposites to each other. They are locked in an eternal, static, confrontation. The linear, dualistic model requires permanence, eternal qualities - a fixed and unchanging male to balance out an equally definitive female. Simple observation of nature tells us the world isn't like that - these definitive, permanent absolutes are nowhere to be found - they are idea(l)s.

The universe turns. It's not a straight line (a mathematical abstraction which exists only in the imagination) with two ends. What we see as opposites are transient moments in the same cycle. In the process of coming to be, ceasing to be, every event is on the same cycle as its opposite. Life and death, hot and cold, ignorant and wise - each of these apparent binary pairings constitutes a unique cycle, dependent upon the "extremes" for its cyclical motion. Without cold, no hot. And as nothing is eternally hot nor cold, each is but a moment in the cycle (the point at which the wheel momentarily touches the ground) on its way to becoming its opposite. Take the concept a little further, and consider that all these opposites, as varied and seemingly unconnected as they are, are expressions of the same idea, on different wavelengths. Without hot, no dark. Without short, no loud. Everything is all the same.

The beauty of the yin-yang symbol is its clarity - white and black are dependent upon each other, contain each other in "seed" form, and turn into each other. This is a universal truth - here expressed in its visually simplest terms (those of black and white) but applicable to any pairing of opposites. There are many more complex variations. A "beautiful" computer rendering of this, with smoothly textured 3D finish and realistic gleam, can be found on the internet. Every step the artist took to create that image distracted him (and us) from its meaning. As with the wheel, it's best not to lose the simplest form and the simplest meaning, which could be just as effectively transmitted in a rougher, less perfect form than this. The wheel, or circle, is the primordial image, and the yin-yang symbol here and the Buddhist wheel (and indeed the phoenix, and the guy looking beyond the vault of the heavens) above say the same thing to those who get the message.

But without reducing the concept to the level where it can only be realized by a Buddha, it's still a powerful tool for understanding every aspect of our ordinary day-to-day life. For example, sleep and wakefulness are the same cycle. Not different things entirely, not opposites, just the same thing (consciousness) at different moments of coming to be, ceasing to be. Countless hours and words have been wasted on the question "why do we sleep?" and even "what is sleep?". That's like asking "why is there black?" and "what is black?" For some reason we call our mental processes during sleep dreams, and those of our waking state thoughts. Again, it's the same cycle.

your house is burning down around you but there's no-one at home

The burning man is you. See the picture of the Phoenix above if you still don't get it.

Given that you are unlikely to experience what Awake experienced (Buddhas are few and far between), the question why bother with any of this? demands an answer. Just as a child shouldn't be discouraged from learning the piano because they're not going to grow up to be Beethoven, we shouldn't be discouraged from investigating (and that's a great word) what Awake experienced. And like it or believe it or not, we're already on the way. It's the natural way. It's not only already happening, it's all that is happening. You're already playing the piano - you just don't hear it.

Understanding enables attentiveness, and that's the key to absolutely everything. Attentiveness to the moment, and its intricate, beautiful quality of coming to be, ceasing to be. Not to be occupied with what's to come, nor what has been. The idea of a transitory moment can be hard to grasp, but it's really all there is. All you have. Everything else is spinning off from this moment, muddying it, making it hard to see. This transitory moment is a flame - everything is everywhere burning up, being changed by fire - and it is where you are right now. It's your domain. Your location, your home, your address, your name, the sum total of your possessions, your time, you. And, of course, Awake had something useful to say about the nature of this "you" that we all hold so dear; this precious, special person that is just you and you alone, around whom the world turns, and for whom every other "you" in the world plays a supporting role. He said you don't exist. This is one of the hardest of Awake's statements to come to terms with, and the Special Person (YOUR NAME HERE) in all of us will cling to the notion of unique and independent existence until it takes its last breath rather than admit it has no value, no permanence, and no real existence. The Self is the enemy.

Here's what Norman O. Brown has to say about the body (that bristly, gristly, muddy, rickety, miraculous manifestation of the Self):

"The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system ... never a complete structure, never static; it is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new."

What he's saying here is a recapitulation of the coming to be, ceasing to be trope, but it's not just limited to the body - your body, my body - it's applicable to every object, everything made manifest in this universe. Everything is everybody. Every body is an event. Every event has a beginning and an ending in time because that's all it is. Magical. Fantastic. Illusory.

And Awake said that the body (your body, my body, and the beautifully toned body of the professional narcissist) is a leather sack of shit.

tired terms: illusory

If there's one corny Buddhist stereotype that everyone's familiar with it's the notion that this world is illusory, unreal. "Wow, man! Everything's an illusion! I see it all!" Well, you probably don't. What Awake meant by illusion refers back to everything that has a beginning and an ending in time. That is, every damn thing in existence. Buddha called this world illusory purely because of its impermanence.

The very idea of things coming to be and ceasing to be is fantastic - Awake was after (and found) the unchanging, the permanent - that which is uncreated and undying. In this sense - a strictly temporal sense - he called the world illusory. Like a dazzling froth whipped up from nothing, then passing into nothing. Everything we take to be real and solid - ourselves, our world, our universe - will sooner or later come to the end of its cycle, and start anew, different but the same. Every combination of events (such as the human body) is continuously re-combining. There is, in reality, nothing fixed and permanent in existence, and since everything was created and is dying, everything is magical. Illusory.

tired terms: zen

Zen, through the shallow power of mass-marketing, has become synonymous with calm. Be zen, dude! Any lingering historical archetype of the Zen master with his staff and stern expression has been buried beneath thousands of softly-lit images of leotard-clad young women, hair up in a soft band, smiling beatifically in a graceful lotus position, at one with the universe and their new, organic beauty or dietary product.

"Zen Table Art by Amelie" - zen as marketable lifestyle accessories. "Zen" has become a brand profile synonymous with vaguely oriental qualities such as peace, nature, simplicity - qualities which reflect your spiritual nature, your refined taste, and your income bracket. Beware (be aware) of the hypnotically calming effect of "elegant white space" and fake-zen touches like pebbles, dried grass and water, which flatter you into believing you share their soothing, meditative qualities. The true zen master would smash this stuff with his staff without a second thought. Or even a first.

This idea of quiet calm as an end in itself is very appealing. Breathe in, breathe out. Chant a bit. Line up the chakras. Emerge refreshed and … pretty much exactly the same crabby, problem-loaded individual that closed his eyes half an hour ago. Yes, a calm state of mind is good. Much better than the agitated, insistent, chattering monkey-mind we usually carry around. But in itself, calmness is just another state of mind, and unless you can carry it around with you at all times – even when not sitting cross-legged – it means nothing more than taking a coffee break in monk’s robes.

Zen is something else entirely. Zen is abruptness. The breaking or the snapping out of any state of mind, calm or otherwise (the stern pose of the professional meditator, intent upon his work). Anybody can enter a state of pleasant calmness, but the experience of zen is only the result of a fearsome struggle. Just as you cannot study yourself into buddha-hood, neither can you ease yourself comfortably into awareness. Peace will not be bestowed upon you by a smiling god like a school prize for the most shiny soul. At some point there must be a terrific upheaval, where you lose everything - including the pain of the loss. The old Zen masters, in seeking to bring about this upheaval in their monks, said the most shocking things (“If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!”), and beat them awake with their staffs.

Mind Tattoo: Zen is hard, dude. It’s not fat-free yogurt.

forget your perfect offering

We take in truth bit by broken bit, by mouthfuls, chewed up to aid digestion. We scavenge truth. We are not given truth. We are not, and cannot be, taught truth. Words are signposts, telling us where to look. In themselves they have no value - the meaning is in the instruction, or clues, or directions, they give. We want a bible, something that spoon-feeds us "literal" truth so we don't have to think, or the most we have to do is interpret the words to our own advantage. We want the word of our god to be printed and bound up, so we have something to wave in the faces of disbelievers. This is not, and never can be, the truth.

The uncomfortable truth is that insight (or satori, or little awakenings) can only come in through a break in our shell, the shell of our personality. We cannot sit peacefully and wait for it to come. We cannot calm (or desire) our way into insight. Insight is won through a battle, a battle which takes no prisoners, which cares nothing for your precious personality or opinions or state of mind or learning. Insight comes of its own, not as a reward. The trick is to recognise it for what it is. For that you have to be attentive. You snooze, you lose.

Norman O. Brown:
"Open is broken. There is no breakthrough without breakage."

W. B. Yeats:
"Nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent."

... and Leonard Cohen:
"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's where the light gets in"

A spontaneous zen brushstroke, its incompletion allowing illumination, or a ring left by a coffee cup? It doesn't matter. They're both perfect circles.

There is no perfection anywhere save as an ideal. The perfect circle is an abstraction, an idea. The universe is gloriously twisted, skewed. Planets orbit a bulging sun in eccentric approximations of a circle. People come in all shapes and sizes. And it is (as Cohen beautifully puts it) the imperfections that let in the light - that allow enlightenment. The universe turns, but never in a perfect circle. It twists and writhes in self-perpetuating fractal turbulence. Entropy is everywhere, breaking the universe down while it recombines. Forget your struggle for perfection, purity of mind and body. Everything is perfect as it is. You will never be an ideal - being human is all. We are all wobbly, mis-shapen planets in uncertain orbit. Ring that cracked old bell, ring it for the first time every time.

the conditioned world

Here's a seemingly banal quote from Awake, the kind of saying that lays itself open to snickers from the wise guys on the back row:

"When this condition exists, that condition is created from it.
With the arising of this, that arises from it.
If this is not here, that does not happen.
When this ceases, that too ceases."

"That sounds plausible - what does it mean?"
The Phil Silvers Show

Awake called this world the conditioned world. By this he meant that every event/thing is brought about through a specific set of conditions that can only result in that particular event/thing. Nothing comes into existence of its own, without cause. When a certain set of conditions (or combination of events) is present, they create that which can only be brought about by that set of conditions. That is, if you're baking bricks, you won't get bread.

The simplest expression of this formula is this and that. There is deep significance in grammatical distinctions, in the parts of speech, in the idea behind the words. This and that is yin and yang, as are to have and to be. Cyclically the same.

This is another apparently bone-headedly simple dictum, one which is likely to get a shrugged so what? as a response, if the eyes haven't glazed over completely. But its implications are wonderful.

We only see this throw as luck because we're ignorant of the forces that produced it. "Luck" is the laziest of labels.

Firstly, nothing is random, and one example will be enough. The roll of the dice is synonymous with chance, with bad luck and good. But the face it shows as it comes to rest is determined by many complex variables, none of which have anything to do with chance. Its speed, attitude and spin on leaving the cup, and how it impacts upon the surface, determine only one possible result that is theoretically not beyond mathematics to "predict". And how it leaves the cup is dependent upon the hand that shakes the cup, the arm that articulates the hand. The dice bone's connected to the cup bone, the cup bone's connected to the hand bone, the hand bone's connected to the arm bone, now hear the word of the lord! That 6 that just landed could not have been any other number, given the conditions that produced it. Nothing chance about it at all, just our own coarseness of perception and addiction to imaginative constructs like "luck".

Mind Tattoo: "Luck" and "randomness" are the names we give to things we don't understand, so we can dismiss them.

Nothing happens of its own self, but as a result of the conditions that caused it, and this is a universal law.

This law also gives us an answer to the so-called problem of free will. Do we have free will, or are we nothing more than machines on a track, doing what we're programmed to do? The notion of a conditioned world provides the answer - simply and with absolute clarity, yet still a hard thing to grasp.

We can make any choice we want, at any time (inasmuch as that choice is between reasonable, possible options). In that respect, we have totally free will. But that choice - whatever it is - will always be informed by the set of conditions which created that choice - whatever decision you make does not appear on its own, without cause or connection. There is no way around this. It's a law. A real law - not a magical spell invoked to generate income for lawyers (the shamen of the Western world). So yes, we have free will, and no, we don't. If you're stuck in linear Western mode, this may be an unsurmountable problem. If you're going with the flow, rolling with the cycle, it makes perfect sense. It's not a black and white thing, it's a blackwhite thing. Nobody gave us free will, as a gift to be use or abused. The notion is embedded throughout the universe. As above, so below. The term "free will" is the human spin we put on the principle, as if it's somehow our domain, our property. We're vain creatures, and still see ourselves at the centre of the universe and the pinnacle of creation; the vainest of our achievements is the inventive imagination of a "god" in our own image, bestowing universal principles upon us as rewards for our specialness.

The idea of choice through free will does not just apply to ice-cream flavours. A choice, a decision, an action, is a fundamental event that creates other events - out of this; that. Matter is comprised of such "choices", or elective affinities. They quite literally make the world go round. Again.

"A photograph of a single molecule (pentacene). The hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen. The space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand." Basically some very small things are going round and round. The universe turns at every level, from solar systems to atoms, and it's the turning that's important, not the scale or size. This image shows the same thing as the Buddhist wheel, the yin-yang symbol, the zen circle ... and all of these images are cross-sections of something more complex, yet just as simple. We see the world (we see the truth) in cross-section, in snap-shots. It's a measure of our gullibility that we applaud scientists for results that could be predicted by just about anybody. When you peer really closely into matter, you see tiny little round things turning around other tiny little round things. Amazing! When you look at really big stuff, like the universe, you see really big round things turning around other really big round things. And here's a heads-up for the bearded boy wonders at CERN - when you finally discover the birth of the universe with your billion-dollar brain, you'll find it's the just the death of another one (actually the same one coming to be, ceasing to be). Why don't you stop wasting all that electricity and spend more time with the kids?

numbers are wrong

Mathematics (numbers) and language (letters) are absolutely dependent upon each other. We have to name the quantity or it doesn’t exist. Before we name “two”, two does not exist. Nowhere in nature will you find “two” of anything. Numbers (and their use) are, incredibly, a function of language. Each number named is a spell cast, to invoke its existence. And take another look at that word “spell”. We cast magic spells. 1 spells one, and one spells 1. Spelling is naming, is counting. We’re all magicians, waving the Magic Wand over our own heads.

Numbers are used for measuring. Measurement is a concept unique to the mind of man. The universe does not measure itself nor present itself in consistent units of any description. Find the metre in nature. Or the second. Or the degree. You may look everywhere in the universe and never find such a fabulous, mythical creature as the ounce. Yet measurement seems the cornerstone of our lives. We count everything. Every second, every cent, every gram, every day, every degree – nothing, it seems, is free of this net we throw over the universe. Yet the universe existed before – and will continue to exist after – the concept of measurement was instituted. It exists right now, blissfully free of measurement, ignorant of it. So what are we measuring? The universe, and everything in it, exists independently of this fantastically fraudulent system, has no need of it, and yet we pretend to understand the universe, to control it, to predict it, through numbers. This is a massively powerful magic spell.

But it is not just our systems of measurement that don't exist in natural reality, but also the concept of counting, which is a remarkable invention of man, with no more basis in reality than Father Christmas.

It is a convenient fiction to be able to say there are “two” (whatever) of anything. What we are saying is that the “two” is a fictive grouping of similar objects. There can, quite obviously and logically, be no more than one of anything. The very idea of individuality and separateness and distinction and definition determines that one is the only possible number.

Mind Tattoo: Once you've counted to one, you've counted everything.

This may seem ludicrous at first, because we are habitually used to stringing the arbitrary symbols we recognize as “numbers” in sequence. We have learned not to count to ten 5-9-1-4-3-7-6-2-8 because an agreement of trust (a common law) has been established, not because the order we know is the “real” and only possible order. The base system of tens, hundreds, and so on is a convenience, too.

Here's a charming picture of a loving mother casting a magical spell over her happy child in the Magical Garden of the Gingerbread House. She's not talking about apples at all, but she's under the same spell herself. The Fall (and our casting out from the Eden of childhood) is not in the eating of the forbidden fruit, but in the naming and counting of it. "Understanding" the natural world in this way puts it at an almost uncrossable distance - we are truly cast out from the garden, and not in any metaphorical or allegorical sense.

Back in the schoolroom, we were taught that two apples plus five apples equals seven apples. We were not taught that “two apples” means “two contemporaneous iterations of the apple ideal similar enough to each other to allow grouping” because this is a tricky concept to get a young head around. But if I have an apple in my right hand, that is the apple. There is only one of it. If I have an apple in my left hand, that is as individual as the apple in my right. It is essentially not the same thing, because it occupies a different space, and differs from it in colour, consistency, taste, and in many other ways. I do not hold “two apples”, I hold expressions of the “apple idea”, each distinct and separate. This argument is true for any object or thing or event – the only true number is one – beyond this, counting is an abstract philosophy, a magical spell. There is only one of everything, and there is only one everything. Even if we were capable of manufacturing objects that were identical in every way (and we are not), they would still refute the notion of quantity by their very separateness. They would not occupy the same space, therefore they are each individually unique objects, not “two” of the same thing.

We call this event an "apple". We separate it from the branch from which it falls, from the tree which grows the branch, from the soil in which the tree grows, from the rainwater and sunlight that feeds the tree, and from the seed of the tree that grew from - guess what - another apple - because we see the world in snapshots, in cross-sections, not as it is - a continuous turning process. "Apple-ness" is an artificial idea, not a thing; merely a changing moment in the cycle that brought it about.
Language labels, and numbers quantify, these passing moments in a kind of sleep, a kind of madness, a kind of death. The similarity of this image to the alarm bell above is intentional.

Each “one” is a unique cycle, yet interdependent with every other cycle. Nothing is truly separate, therefore the notion of “two” (and onwards) is fundamentally fallacious. And every thing is no thing at all (is nothing at all) but a combination of events (at atomic level), and not a permanent reality in itself. An apple happens in my left hand, an apple happens in my right hand. They are contemporary and discrete events, not two of anything, but the events are similar enough to allow us to (or to allow us to think we can) group them together. Two apples plus three oranges equals what?

When numbers are not used for measuring and quantifying the "real world", they become something else entirely. Two apples plus three apples is not at all the same thing as two plus three (try "three apples divided by one apple" for confirmation). Here, in pure mathematics, numbers signify only themselves, and become a form of language, magic in its purest from. But no calculation, no matter how long and brilliant, will equal the truth. 1 + 1 = 2, and so what? So you can do something with the 2 you've just conjured up. Mathematics is a kind of religion, with its own scriptures and priesthood, but no closer to the truth than the madman playing with stones in the street.

Mind Tattoo, redux: When you've counted to one, you've counted everything.

one is the loneliest number

If you choose to believe in a "god", that god becomes real to you. Belief in the religious sense is wanting, willing - invoking, conjuring. If you choose to believe in a "devil", that devil becomes real to you. You put a spell on yourself. We put spells on ourselves all the time, feeding them with faith, clothing them in the gorgeous robes of imagination, finding confirmation everywhere (especially in the delusions of others) because that's what we're looking for.

Buddhists are not immune to this. That -ism is the flag of a believer. Yet Awake said over and over that belief/faith is an impediment. Belief is inherently lazy - winding yourself itself into a comfort cocoon, imagining someone or something is looking out for you because you're a believer, and that's the reward of the believer - salvation. Plus, the warm feeling of belonging to a community of like-minded people. It's an attractive thing, but it's not necessarily a good thing. Clubbing together for any reason is something to be wary of. Anyone who has stayed at a Buddhist retreat (as I have) can be aware of the complex cross-currents in an isolated community devoted to "spiritual growth". There is an almost palpable sense of silent battle to establish personal spirituality. The bloody fight is disguised in politeness, enigmatic smiles, and projection of a lofty "distance".

The way of Awake is nothing if not solitary. It is understandable that people feel lonely, but no amount of communal chanting or meditating (a room full of meditators is a curious idea in itself) or happy chatting over bean soup will oil the hinges on the doors of perception. The sense of alone-ness that seems to demand the support of a community is part of the programme, and cannot be answered by the community. A room of silent people can be deafening, and should, if you're lucky, only increase your sense of alone-ness. The feeling of alone-ness is extremely valuable, and should neither be shied away from, because it repays investigation, nor "shared" with others, because it is yours alone. Be an "infidel" (which literally means un-faithful), be a disbeliever. And the argument that a "belief in non-belief" is just another belief? Don't believe in that bullshit either.

The correlation between "I" and the number "1" is more than typographical coincidence - they are identical in meaning. They can each be represented by a single downstroke, the simplest mark possible after the dot. When we speak with the "I" word, we are speaking, grammatically, in the first person. The boast of "I'm number one!" is true. The self is the one, the only lonely one.

the selfish "I"

"The self is in a fever, forever changing, like a dream ..."

The self - *YOUR NAME HERE - REQUIRED FIELD* - is the greatest and most powerful magic we work, greater than numbers, or time, or language. Greater even than David Copperfield making that jet disappear.

Trick question: where is the self in this picture?

The self is in a fever, forever changing, like a dream. That's the kind of statement we can read without taking anything in at all, other than a vague sense of meaning, of profundity, perhaps. Then we move on.

Let's not. Let's not jump over this one.

Like the time and magic quotation, we need to understand his terms before we can understand his meaning. Here, the crucial distinction is self.

We like to separate the self into what we see as its constituent parts; body (itself separated and labelled in a myriad different distinctions), ego, soul, senses ... the list is as near endless as makes no difference. We do this because we hold the mistaken belief (all beliefs are mistaken) that looking at a thing apart helps us understand its nature. Just as taking a clock apart may help us understand how a clock works but not the nature of time itself, so dividing up the human entity - into no matter what sets of component parts - gets us no closer to understanding the nature of self.

The notion of "soul" is particularly contentious. Like the concept of the future, this is a deep-rooted idea without any basis in observable facts, but most of us feel comfortable with it in one sense or another. Most agree that the soul is in some way a higher thing than the body, a greater and finer thing. But how can a lesser vehicle contain something greater than itself? If you say, "I have a soul", what is this "I" that possesses its finer form? If we look at it the other way round, that the soul somehow contains the body, how can a fine, elevated thing like a soul support something as base and earthly as the body? And why should it need to?

We like to think of the soul as eternal; without any evidence of a soul, we give it immortality. A kind of shining, angelic version of you that for some reason is tied to your earthly form, perhaps guiding it onwards to the light. It's a nice thing to believe in. People sometimes like to think they are "working on their soul" while meditating. Again, who or what is this "I" that's doing the "work", and how can a coarse thing like the human body have the capability of nurturing something greater than itself?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we "have a soul" or not when perceiving self in the way Awake did; that is, as a whole, consisting of an infinitely complex and varying combination of components, none of which are in themselves self. This is why when he was asked "do we have a soul?" he replied in any number of ways, without ever saying yes. He said that the question does not fit the case. That the question is irrelevant. You can argue for the existence or otherwise of the soul, but if you look at the self as Awake saw it - as an idea comprised of changing elements - you will understand that simplification of the self to the primordial "I" is vital to its understanding.

Now we see him ...

"The body is ... a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd."
Friedrich Nietzsche

Back in the 14th century, William of Occam said "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". This dictum, known as Occam's Razor, has a stainless scientific credibility, yet it is just another iteration of the truth that Awake saw. He was shaving with Occam's razor centuries before Occam honed it. Yet we are always multiplying our selves; adding to and multiplying and dividing the primal "I" or "1". This is my personality. These are my problems. This is my spine. This is my soul.

We multiply/divide the "I" up in this way as a defence mechanism - if one of the definitions and distinctions falls, there's a million others to take its place, to support the apparently unshakeable reality of our own individual identity. The lie is "This part is real, and so the whole is real."

It's best, but not easiest, to simplify. Self is "I", all that you are, and all that you (in a physical and mental sense) have. Your name, your identity, your personality, your moods, your illnesses, your zany irrepressible sense of humor, the charming twinkle in your eye, your refreshing naivety ... everything. You are self. You are only one self. Call it by your first name, call it "I". That's yourself. You don't need to start dividing the "I" into compartments (such as "soul", or "teeth", or "taste", or whatever) to understand what Awake had to say about it. If you insist on dividing "I" up into categories, you will be lost in a maze of questions for which there are no answers.

... now we don't.

The self (i.e. "I") is a filter through which the world is experienced. John Smith is a John Smith-shaped reality filter. His world seems different to mine. For one thing, his world revolves around him, whereas I know for an observable fact that it revolves around me, and that the world is telling my story, and everyone else is just a bit-part player, walking on and off to momentarily share my spotlight.

"The body alone is not "self". The body has evolved out of millennia of causes and preconditions that are also not "self". How then can a human body, evolving out of something that is not a self, be a self?"

Or look at it this way. A car is comprised of many elements that are not, in themselves, a car. A steering wheel is not a car, an engine is not a car, and so forth. A car, then, is a combination of things which are, in themselves, not car. Only when all the constituent parts are in their correct relationship do we see car. To think we could learn the nature of car from studying any of its constituent elements is to think we can learn the nature of self by studying the elbow.

... and where is the car?

"The same is true of thoughts and ideas; all have come into existence through the influence of all previous thoughts and ideas. So too with feelings and perceptions ... how could they be a self?"

Self arises when all the constituent elements - which are in themselves not self - are in the appropriate relationship. Then we see the "I".

"That which we call a person is a combination and interaction of components in which it is impossible to find a permanent self."

Impossible to find a permanent self because simple observation shows us that its constituent parts are continuously changing. The body we have now is not the body we had as a child, so where is the true self? Our mood at this moment is not the same as it was a few hours ago, our thoughts are different - so where is the true self?

"The word cart is merely a means of expressing the relationship between axle, body, wheels and poles. When we look at each of them one by one there is no cart in an absolute sense. The word house expresses how brick and wood and other materials stand together in a certain relationship, yet their is no house in an absolute sense. In exactly the same way the word person is just a way of expressing the relationship of body, feeling, and consciousness, and when we examine the elements of being, one by one, we find there is no-one there. In the absolute sense there is only name and form and the mystery they express. Such ideas as "I" and "I am" are not absolute."

Don't worry about defining and analysing your constituent parts, mental or physical. You will not find your self in any one of them. Just as you would not confuse yourself with a tree, don't confuse yourself with your personality, your soul, or your backside. See yourself as a set of constantly-changing events/decisions that, in combination only, give you the sense of "self". Seeing the self in this way enables a deeper understanding of what Awake has to say about the self, and, as the most interesting human being who ever lived, what he has to say is worth listening to.

tired terms: buddhism

I live in Thailand, and teach at a local temple, so I have personal knowledge not only of living in a Buddhist country but also of the lives and thoughts of Buddhist monks. I have traveled throughout South East Asia, and always found monks to be willing conversationalists, and very curious about "the outside world". There are many levels of Buddhism, but the term, in the West, has achieved the hypnotic status of a brand, especially for Americans, for whom "Buddhism" is often an accent to an attractive and sophisticated lifestyle; a little Eastern Mysticism always enhances the personality.

No matter what associations the term conjures up for you, they will have little to do with what Awake said. You do not have to be a Buddhist to get the message. He was insistent upon this himself - what happened to him was not the result of being a Buddhist, but of personal reflection, insight, mental and physical discipline and development, and observation of the natural world. This process is open to the shop-keeper as well as to the monk. The truth is universal, and may be apprehended universally. The truth is not a secret held in a locked room to which only the initiates (probably bearded and robed) have the key. The truth cannot be transmitted or stored or taught. The truth is yours to see.

The car is your attention. The road is the way to enlightenment. The hot woman is a hot woman. See how you just crashed? We're always crashing in the same car.

Awake taught no method for enlightenment. This is an extraordinary thing. He very specifically avoids a methodology to produce results, a formula to follow. He does not advocate asceticism, learning the scriptures, or yogic practices (such as sitting in the lotus position, chanting, mantras, etc.) in themselves. If such a method was possible, then yes, he would have been certain to pass it on - "this is how I was enlightened - do the same, and you will be enlightened too!" But the truth does not work like that. It is not like studying to pass an exam. The truth comes through insight. What enables insight? Personal reflection and observation of the natural world. That's all.

"I don't set out a system of teaching to help you understand. I speak the truth as I find it, and a system of teaching has no meaning because the truth can't be arranged systematically."

The truth has never been taught by Awake, because it is something you have to realize yourself.

Yet we cling to "Buddhism" as we cling to possessions, faith, opinions, beliefs, and our very special and unique personalities. Awake cared for none of these things, and saw them as unnecessary baggage. "Lighten your load. It will be good for you." Forget about Buddhism, monks, chanting, haikus, zen gardens, temples, yoga, sitting cross-legged, chanting, and perfecting an enigmatic yet benign smile. You may find these aspects attractive; flattering jewels to decorate your pure soul and demonstrate to other seekers after truth that you are already well on the way. But ... it's not about you, damn it!

Mind Tattoo: It's not about you, dammit.

a handful of dust

"There is walking to be done, and a way to be walked, but there is no walker."

You see a room full of people – all are standing still, except for one who is walking around. It’s easy to spot “the walker”. Then he stops walking. Where is the walker now? It’s not the same man, because he’s not walking. So what’s happened to the walker? He has disappeared. He is nowhere.

You can rephrase this situation, for instance by calling the man not “the walker”, but “the man who is walking”, but the outcome is the same. When he stops walking he has effectively disappeared. Or the room can be full of people walking around, while one is standing still. When this one starts walking, “the motionless man” has lost his identity.

This is what Awake was talking about when he said “There is walking to be done, and a way to be walked, but there is no walker.”

The significance of this doesn’t just lie in the act of walking. It’s not the Parable Of The Pedestrian. It’s part of Awake’s dismantling of the Self, by focussing on activity. We fondly believe there is an I (YOUR NAME HERE - OBLIGATORY FIELD) doing all this stuff. The walking, the sitting, the eating, the thinking. I am doing this. Awake saw that there is only the this; that the “I” claiming responsibility for the action, owning the action, is an imposter, a fraud, a shadow who – apparently – flits from action to action, reinventing himself all the time to cover his tracks, but to be found nowhere.

As this is getting a little wordy, a little dry,here's a fun picture of a typical American Lifestyle Buddhist to cheer us up! Note the respectful position of the hands, the enigmatic smile hinting at knowledge of a higher plane, the eyes full of compassion yet also boundless humility. He writes a blog! You should read it! There's pictures of, like, stones and water and cherry blossom, and he wrote some haiku! It's cool to be a Buddhist, dude!

"I'm learning how to meditate - so far, so good."
Steely Dan

This is especially interesting when we reduce the action to the basics, such as thinking. There is no “thinker” doing the thinking, only the thought. It gets more profound as it gets simpler – the phrase “I am” is the most primal we can utter, the absolute bedrock of our individuality, the basis of everything we live for and hold real. Yet there is no “I” doing the being, there is only the being being done. What is a corpse but the cessation of the act of living? Where is the one doing the living now? Hiding? Reborn as a dog? Being awarded a halo and a harp for his Good Works? You can search for the self everywhere, you will find him nowhere, not in your heart, not in a thought, not in your desires, and not in the mirror.

There is no actor: there is only the action. This is what The King’s New Clothes is about. King Self has to be seen for what he is, a charlatan, a shadow, a gaudy show. We do everything possible to bolster our belief in the self, on Earth as it is in Heaven. We create Kings to represent our selves on the world’s stage – gilded heads of our body politic. We even, in an act of extraordinary vanity, conjure up Gods in heaven in our image; the existence of the greater self then proves the existence of the lesser.

Mind Tattoo: God created nothing - we created God, in our own image.

And we do this because we are afraid – afraid to our mortal core - of what will happen if we let go, of what is behind the Magic Curtain. The self is the greatest spell we cast, and all other distractions and dreams spring from it. Our most precious creation, our primal possession – this center-stage performance – is not even a handful of dust.

from consciousness to self-consciousness

“Consciousness is a general condition. Do not own it.”
A seemingly simple statement, getting the sounds plausible – what does it mean? award. The key to this is the word owning. Owning is being selfish. Self-ish. Only the self can claim to own anything, and in its greed to survive, it makes a claim of ownership on consciousness – this is me, this is me thinking, these are my thoughts, these are my opinions and feelings. We cling to all this self stuff as if it really meant something – as if our thoughts were really especially uniquely ours alone.

Consciousness is a general condition – we all partake of it, and our thoughts and feelings are all shared. None is your special property, not even your most imtimate, private thought.

Mind Tattoo: Consciousness is the sea we all swim in, not your private pool.

Your good thoughts and your bad are no more good nor bad than anybody else’s. You may be able to combine existing patterns in a new way, and seemingly create something uniquely yours, but everybody does this. Creativity is just shuffling an existing deck into a different hand. That's what *YOUR NAME HERE - REQUIRED FIELD* is - another shuffled hand. Sick of metaphors? Tough. That's all language is.

owning up

The self is all about claiming things. That’s what the self does; it gathers things to it, invoking an illusory bond of ownership to enrich itself. The self is ownership. And not just in the sphere of mental activity, in “owning” thoughts or personalities. Ownership of any sort – of a house, a duck, a million dollars – is a magical pact with no basis in reality. In the natural, real world, there is no ownership. The notion of ownership, like money and time and measurement, is one of the spells we cast to make our terrible world go round. It’s supported by law and lawyers, of course, the Black Magicians with their leather-bound grimoires, and there is always the signed parchment to seal the spell. Money only has any value because of the trust and belief we invest in it. It is worthless in itself. We have to invest ourselves into the magic of money before we can invest money, and the keystone to this is the spell of ownership.

We identify ourselves with what we own to such an extent that what we own becomes part of us. We add it to our primal property (the Self) to make it stronger, more real. The meaning behind the lesson of the rich man having as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel passing through the eye of the needle is that the naked self, without any other possessions, cannot get into heaven. It is still too much, too rich. And those that cling to the things they believe they own are adding air buttresses to castles made of sand. You cannot take it with you - and why? Because it doesn't exist. Not the owner, nor the owned, nor the owning.

Your name here (required field). Selling your soul is actually a fair deal - you get a bunch of worthless crap for something that doesn't exist. It's a lose-lose situation!

Ownership is the original Faustian pact - the deal with the devil we make every day. We own cars. Own clothes. Own each other. Own ourselves. How can one mass of whirling electrons form a bond of ownership with another? Everything is changing, all the time. Coming to be, ceasing to be. Which is “your” body? The body of the newly-born baby? The body of the adolescent? The body of the old person? And who is doing the owning? What is your house but an instruction to be in that place? What is your television but an instruction to spend time watching it? What is your Self but an instruction to be like you?

Mind Tattoo: We own nothing. What we "own" owns us.

In the fall from general, shared consciousness to self-consciousness, we become only conscious of self, good old Number One, the non-number, the no-one, the un-owned. That strutting puppet, gathering what it can to itself while it still can.
The self goes. Like everything else, it does not endure. It is a flame, like any other flame, and does not burn forever. Consciousness, however, as distinct from self-consciousness with all its magical trappings, is the universal constant, beyond (or encompassing) coming to be, ceasing to be. That’s us. That’s you and me. And if we let go of this identity, this consciousness of self – and that’s quite a trick, given that it seems to be self letting go of self - what will become of us?

babel

Words have more than face value; correspondences between common terms can be illuminating. The word ruler means both a person invested with authority, like a king, and the straight edge divided into units of measurement. The word law has an Old Norse meaning of measure. Regulate is from the latin for straight edge. Regal has an etymological meaning of to move in a straight line. Property has an obvious link with proper (right). This is my property, this is my right.

The Latin root for law, lex, has its own roots in the Greek word for ... word. Literally, the word is the law. In the beginning was the word, and the word was law, and the law is a straight line walked by the King, the Rule Of Law.

Like Dali's "dreamscapes", like Brueghel's teeming hells, Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books are not imaginative fantasy but a revelation of the world as we make it, the Mad Kingdom as it really, really is. The Mad King not only lives in a house of cards (or a castle made of sand - and what else are castles to be made of?) but is nothing more than a playing card himself. Alice's denunciation of him is the same story as the little boy revealing the King's nakedness. It takes a child's honesty (before the Fall into the self-consciousness of adulthood) to pierce the veil we weave across the world. The king's madness is a shared madness - the king's subjects (his royal property - you and me) are as mad as he is. Individual liberty (for which you can read spiritual liberty) is absolutely identified with political liberty, with anarchy. This does not mean chaos, it means taking responsibility. For those "spiritual seekers after truth" who like to remove themselves from society, this is an uncomfortable truth at best. Nurturing your soul in a sylvan glade is a comforting thing, to be sure.

The correspondences between these key words isn't just coincidence. That these fundamental concepts of civilization should all come down to the measured straight line is revelatory. Because the straight line (and its division) is a mathematical abstraction that exists nowhere in the True World.

The True World is not ruled. The True World is free. The True World is, blissfully, lawless. The True World does not walk a straight line - the True World turns. And what is turning if not a dance? The True World is not owned, not paid for, not punching a time clock, not earning, not spending. Sounds a little like Paradise? A dream? This is the dream. You are the dream. Right now, reading these words, you are the dream.

Our dreaming world, full of Kings and Laws, full of empty words (sound and fury, in fact, signifying nothing). The word Babel, the tower of words and laws, means "the Gate of God". God speaks in tongues - babble. Baby talk.

Brueghel's nightmarish visions of civilization in ruins is, like Dali's, more than fantasy. This, like the depictions of Hell, is not a painting of a mythological, other-worldy scene. Imagination does not create, it reveals. We can invent (nor see) nothing that is not already real. Here, the Tower of Babel is our world - the hell we have made for ourselves to live in. Architecture, as Freemasons know, is the concrete expression of the Rule Of Law, the straight edge and the right angle (straight and right - getting the picture?). Our civilization is always in ruins - we build these vast, desperate, vain mausoleums of dust and mud (the Tomb of the King - or an office building), and from the moment the foundation stone is laid the tower is already crumbling. From womb to room to tomb, we carve out these caves because we're afraid of the outside. The outside is the True World, and we don't like to live there. That's where the poor and the mad live. The sane, the learned, the holy and the wealthy, meanwhile, live in the Tower of Babel, under the rule of law. The king is in the counting house ... here is the church, and here is the steeple ...

Truly we live in Babylon. Worse - we are dying there, in a dream of our own spinning, under the rule of kings of our own crowning, and the stern eye of gods of our own design.