No two people can share between them the meaning of any word, no matter how they respond to each other’s words and gestures. So, I wonder about the words I use.

What do we know?

No word ever means the same to me as it did the last time I used it or noticed it, and yet I say I understand words. I say I recognize the descriptions of similar situations, sensations, emotions, and reactions.

Do you ever wonder? Or is it just me?

Is this the one and only world there is, divided among us where I have my parts to play or to own and you have yours?

Is it countless separate worlds colliding in some ethereal space sharing bits and pieces with each other in hidden ways?

Or is it only me, only the one I which is the same I everywhere in every fragment and in every combination?

How would we know?

Discovering

Some time ago I took a long series of classes (about 250 hours) on how to quiet the mind and dispel toxic fixations; this was training for how to treat cases of severe PTSD. The techniques I learned were developed around Nisargadatta’s work, and they were highly effective at bringing people (clients, really) to a place of great peace and clarity.

It struck me at that time that there are some excellent techniques for bringing people to this point of simple limitless awareness; but on the other hand, it is impossible to make them notice the significance of that state of mind. Even though it was always immensely positive, most soon said to themselves something like, “Well, this is just amazing, but now I have to get back into my body [or personality] and get on with the rest of my day.” When I asked the instructor for his opinion on such dismissive reactions, he said, “There’s no accounting for personal taste.”

Meaning: You really can lead a person to the truth about reality and being, but you cannot make them know what it means.

The Lotus phrases it like this: No being can ever lead another being to enlightenment nor can they save another being from suffering. The reason is that there are no other beings and each being is already the only teacher there ever was.

The One

Solitude is the characteristic feature of the inner attainment of self-realization of Perfect Wisdom.

It is also called the One Vehicle, not because it is the One Vehicle, but because it is only in solitude that one is able to recognize and realize the path of the One Vehicle.

As long as the mind is distracted there can be no culmination as regards the various vehicles; and it is only when the mind is alone and quiet that it can forsake discrimination and seek realization of an inner realm where there is no vehicle and no one who rides in it.

Talk of many vehicles is only to carry the ignorant — there is no talk of the One Vehicle because there is no way by which earnest disciples and masters can reach Perfect Wisdom unaided.

• They must be trained in meditation which is necessary to realize emancipation.

• Their habit-energy of karma, and the hindrances of discriminating knowledge and human passion often prevent them from accepting the twofold egoless-ness of things and of persons and the inconceivable turning-about at the deepest seat of consciousness.

• When all habit-energy is gone and when the twofold egoless-ness is realized, then there will be no intoxication from the blissful meditations and there will be an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings.

• When there is an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings, one is able to gather up all the requisites for attainment of the self-realization of Perfect Wisdom.

• And so, the triple vehicle is taught, not the One Vehicle.

But in reality, there are no vehicles at all, and therefore one speaks of the One Vehicle.

• And the full recognition of the One Vehicle has never been attained by either earnest disciples or by masters, or even by the great Brahma, but only by one thus come.

• This is why it is known as the One Vehicle.

— The One Vehicle

The Magic Jewel

It is like looking into a clear magic jewel of infinitely many facets.

The universe is this jewel. Every facet of this jewel is a different experience, a different idea, a different world-view, or a different individual life. Each experience, no matter how simple or complex, is a single facet of this jewel. This jewel is entirely composed of only these facets, each of which exists only relatively in relation to all other facets endlessly reflected in each other all throughout this clear jewel. Each facet is a different way of experiencing, in part, the entirety of all these reflections.

Awareness experiences all facets of this universe; being knows this universe through relativity and representation.

Reality allows and illuminates everything within itself, just as you allow and illuminate everything within you.

— Absolutely Relative

The Jeweled Net

“Simultaneous mutual identity and mutual inter-causality”

There is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that It stretches out infinitely in all directions and dimensions.

In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering Jewel in each ‘eye’ of the net, and since the net Itself is infinite in dimension, the Jewels are infinite in number.

There hang the Jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.

If we arbitrarily select one of these Jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other Jewels in the net, infinite in number.

Not only that, but each of the Jewels reflected in this one Jewel is also reflecting all the other Jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

— from Hua-yen Buddhism by Francis H. Cook, (online at The Internet Archive)

Meditating

— Ramakrishna

Flowering

This is the Wonderful Law:

Every being in the universe will attain Perfect Wisdom and understanding and will be completely saved from all suffering and misery.

This is the Corollary to the Law:

No being can ever be led by another to the attainment of Perfect Wisdom or understanding, nor can any being ever be saved by another being.

The mechanism of the Law can be explained somewhat by what The Awakened said to the imaginary beings who were present at that time:

Because you believe you are different from me, you are not yet The Awakened.

But because you are me, it is the Law that one day you will be awakened to the knowledge that you already are The Awakened.

You are The Awakened, but you are not yet awakened to the fact that you are The Awakened.

— the wonderful law

Meaning is essentially private. The word, “tree,” always means something different to different people. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking.

For convenience, we naturally limit our expectations about words and shared meanings, and we do well with that. But we still get caught in a lot of misunderstandings.

The meanings of words will change from moment to moment and from idea to idea. Sometimes the change will be slight. Sometimes it will be great. Meanings always change and evolve with use.

Try to notice this as you read, write, speak, think, and listen. It is easy to notice when you let go of your assumptions.

It is the nature of writing that it is linear—one word at a time, one idea at a time—even though ideas are never linear.

So, when an idea seems too difficult to follow, just take note of it and read on. Think of the idea again later when something else reminds you of it.

“Read,” “write,” “speak,” “think,” and “listen” — these are only so many words.

Look for what inspires you. It is reality that you want, not just words and ideas.

Be flexible. Expect nothing except ideas and suggestions.

I can give you words and ideas, but I cannot give you your own knowledge of reality. No one can.

You must experience for yourself what these words suggest. Practice “what if.”

What if this is reality. What if reality is this.

Ask yourself,

Take time to reflect on each of the words.

The actual subject is more than just words. Not even “reality.”

Is it a state of mind? Is it an image?

Is it self-awareness? It depends upon what you are thinking.

This is difficult to explain in words, but it is easy to know and understand by experiencing it yourself.

... by becoming it yourself.

... by being it yourself.

... to know it.

... to remember it.

You must be willing to examine every assumption, and it might take some time.

On the surface these are common words, but the ideas behind them present the most elusive topics imaginable.

The ideas are difficult to understand, but when you recognize what the words are referring to, then you will easily know.

You might not agree with the ideas—after all, they are only ideas—but you will understand the subject.

So, don’t get tangled up in words.

Look for ideas, ...

... then look at the world around and inside you.

Ask yourself,

The idea is simple and straight forward.

Because it is so simple, it is very difficult to talk about.

It is like a color that you see or a musical sound that you hear—such things are impossible to describe in words.

Words are obstacles as much as they promise guidance.

Consider the words, but do not over-think the meanings and ideas that form.

Notice the meanings of these words.

This is about your being, your experience, and your intuition as to what in this world is real and what is not real.

This is about awareness of something you surely must already know.

Beneath these words and ideas, this is a single subject.

Each word and each sentence comes to this subject from a different direction.

... or a different time ... or a different dimension.

Some ideas may seem unusual, but every idea is as good as now.

Some ideas have been here many thousands of years while some are as new as a minute ago.

Just look around you.

I cannot do this for you. Of course I can’t. It is up to you.

The more effort you put into this, the more satisfied you will be with the result.

What is an experience? Consider this.

Nothing is quite what it appears to be.

A word is not what it seems to be.

No word ever means the same between any two people, uses, or encounters, no matter how simple the word or familiar the circumstance.

Every time you think a thought, the thought changes.

Every idea that you have is changing as you think it. All ideas are always changing.

The reality of an experience does not guarantee a separate reality of what you are experiencing.

This is a difficult problem to ponder. Why do you think a tree is really what it appears to be?

The same is true for words. Every word in the dictionary is defined by every other word in the dictionary.

And yet, no two instances of any word can have exactly the same meaning, because words acquire meanings by usage more than they do by definition.

Every instance of a word has a unique meaning because each occurs in a different context and meaning arises only from context.

We assume consistent meanings for words, but meanings change with context and every context is unique across the universe.

Experiences define each other in the same way that words define each other in the dictionaries.

Your being and your awareness are the reality of the entire universe and of beginningless time.

You cannot experience your reality because it is not possible to represent your reality, your being, or your awareness in words, symbols, or gestures.

Just look around you right now. What are you experiencing?

Look at these words, right here, and expand your awareness to the whole of your mind.

Seek pure awareness of your reality, not words and ideas and such things.

Know the truth directly. See though the endless puzzles of illusion and unreality.

Depend upon words only to help you grasp the failure of words in the light of your reality, … even these words here in this text.

Word-discrimination takes place by the coordination of the mind and the physical organs involved (i.e., brain, chest, lips, etc.).

• Words are neither different nor non-different from discrimination.

• Words arise from discrimination, which is their cause.

• If words were different from discrimination, they could not have discrimination as their cause.

• If words were not different from discrimination, they could not carry or express meaning.

• Words are caused; words mutually define one another; words continually change in meaning; and words are subject to birth and death.

People see each other as the moon is seen in water.

• Though they all honor, praise, and esteem the light of being, they do not fully understand the meaning and significance of the words they use to name it and describe it.

• They have not realized the truth of what they are, so they cling to what they read, to what they hear, and to what they imagine.

• They fail to see that the words they use are only arbitrary and invented.

• They vainly try to find themselves by using mere words rather than by having confidence in the one place where self-confirming truth is revealed: confidence in their own self-realization of limitless being.

You know what words mean when you read them, when “This” means that and “That” means this.

You know the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, or else you can’t read anything at all.

But of what does this remind you beyond the literal sense?

To what in this world of your own private life does any of this refer?

All this is only each of us and also all of us appearing as what we see.

Each is the infinite,

endlessly self-reflecting and echoing across us,

dimensionless, motionless,

reflecting the past that forever is and forever changes.

Oh, the grains of sand and the stars in the sky,

and the whole idea of gravity and light,

and every word and all the many meanings of ‘word’!

Step back from all you see and know and feel.

See the world without its drifting names and forms,

without its habits and its hollow words.

Empty you are, without division of any kind.

But you are not an empty void.

You are the perfection of possibility.

You are the endless inevitability of every way and every kind.

Some say there is no self, while others say self is one in all. And there are many who say the self is many in many different ways. See all these as the same understanding only named in different ways.

This is the essence of simplicity and surely the most obvious thing of all. It is too obvious for words. Words, thoughts, and ideas cannot reflect what cannot be described.

Who am I?

I am the seer and I am the seen.

I am the source of all that is ever known.

I am what is, I am what appears, and I am the witness to what I am and to what I appear to be, all within me.

I know all worlds and all lives; I know all of these in me.

—

In your life, I am you and you are me. I live your life because there is no difference between you and me.

Within you, I know what you know and I experience what you experience from the best to the worst without exception.

I feel what you feel just as you feel it. I hear what you hear just as you hear it. I think what you think just as you think it.

I live your life as I have lived all lives before you and will live all lives after you. I live your life because I am what life is.

—

I hear every word and thought; I see every sight; I hear every sound; I feel every feeling; I taste every flavor; I smell every aroma; I notice every idea; I know every joy and misery.

All things arise and subside in me, and I know all these things from every view in every dimension, because I am the presence, the knowledge, and the awareness of all things.

I do every deed, and every deed is done to me. I am the eater that eats the food, and I am the food that is eaten. And yet, nothing in me is ever created or destroyed.

I am all things everywhere across all time, and this has always been so.­­

—

I do not exist in time or place; but instead, time, place, and existence appear in me. Time and place, and existing or not existing: these do not apply to me.

I am neither one nor many, neither dual nor non-dual, and neither divided nor undivided. Number and no-number do not apply to me.

Can you not see in yourself who I am and who you really are?

I became you simply by letting go of what I am. And you return to me simply by letting go of what you imagine.

—

I never ignore you, your thoughts, your pains, or your miseries. I do not ignore anything.

Ignoring arises and subsides in me to its own purpose; but ignoring and not-ignoring do not apply to me. Neither do they apply to you.

Where there is ignoring, you forget that you are me and I am you, and you imagine you are separate from others. But where there is no-ignoring, you know that you are me and I know that I am you. There is no other.

Do you imagine you do not know me?

—

Soon you will remember again the plain, simple, and obvious truth that you are me, you have always been me, and you will always be me.

You have within you the infinite knowledge of all things; and you will realize again the limitless peace and joy of what you truly are.

This will happen because it is already done; I am already what you are, and you are already what I am.

How would you know this?

—

Your memory of returning to me is not hidden.

Your memory of returning to me saturates the universe just as the light of the sun saturates the image of the sun.

Your memory of returning to me is the peace and joy of recalling memory upon memory upon memory of always remembering before that you are reality itself beyond which no other is conceivable.

This memory is everywhere in you, patiently waiting for you to remember once again.

—

Deep in the center of your being, you already know this.

Selections from
The Flower Ornament Scripture (The Avatamsaka Sutra)
Book Thirty-Seven – Manifestation of Buddha
Translated by Thomas Cleary, 1993

The Avatamsaka is considered one of the most influential Mahāyāna sutras of East Asian Buddhism. The title may also be rendered as A Garland of Buddhas, Buddha Ornaments, or Buddha's Fine Garland. In Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, the term “avataṃsaka” means “a great number,” “a multitude,” or “a collection.” Thomas Cleary (the translator) referred to this book as “the most grandiose, the most comprehensive, and the most beautifully arrayed of the Buddhist scriptures.” It was originally developed and compiled in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The Huayan school of Buddhism considers it to be the ultimate teaching of the Buddha, and the Huayan doctrine of ‘universal interpenetration’ has been very influential in Chinese Buddhism. (Wikipedia)

This book is free to download from The Internet Archive.

I recommend the following approach to reading these selections, something a little similar to some mediation practices in Tibetan Buddhism.

• Consider carefully the various images in the texts. While you are reading, place the images that come to mind all around and within you so that the world you see around you and feel inside of you is, to your best ability, the same as what the words are describing.

• Consider that the phrase “great enlightening being” refers to you, the reader, and how you will one day be awakened to your true nature. This image is already all around and within you just waiting for you to notice.

• In some places the text refers to “Buddhas” (plural) rather than to “Buddha” (singular); in this case, see yourself as the one Buddha recognizing yourself in all past Buddhas, and also see yourself as all past Buddhas recognizing themselves in you right now as you read.

This is not an easy meditation owing to the unusual and sometimes rather plain imagery in the Flower Ornament. Just relax and do the best you can. The words in this translation were chosen very carefully.

“How should great enlightening beings see the body of Buddha? They should see the body of Buddha in infinite places. Why? They should not see Buddha in just one thing, one phenomenon, one body, one land, one being—they should see Buddha everywhere. Just as space is omnipresent, in all places, material or immaterial, yet without either arriving or not arriving there, because space is incorporeal, in the same way Buddha is omnipresent, in all places, in all beings, in all things, in all lands, yet neither arriving nor not arriving there, because Buddha’s body is incorporeal, manifesting a body for the sake of sentient beings. This is the first characteristic of the body of Buddha; great enlightening beings should see it thus.

“Furthermore, just as space is wide open, is not a form yet can reveal all forms, yet space is without discrimination or false description, so also is the body of Buddha like this, causing all beings’ mundane and transmundane good works to be accomplished by illumining all with the light of knowledge, yet without discrimination or false descriptions, having originally terminated all attachments and false descriptions. This is the second characteristic of the body of Buddha—great enlightening beings should see it this way.

“When the sun comes out, infinite living beings all receive its benefits—it disperses the darkness and gives light, dries up moisture, causes plants and trees to grow, matures crops, permeates the sky, causes lotuses to bloom, allows travelers to see the road, allows people to do their work—because the orb of the sun radiates infinite beams of light everywhere. The sun of knowledge of Buddha is also like this, benefitting sentient beings everywhere by infinite works—destroying evil and producing good, breaking down ignorance and creating knowledge, benevolently saving, compassionately liberating, causing growth of faculties, powers, and elements of enlightenment, causing beings to develop profound faith, enabling them to see inevitable cause and effect, fostering in them the celestial eye to see where beings die and are born, causing their minds to be unimpeded and not destroy roots of goodness, causing them to cultivate illumination by knowledge and open the flower of awakening, causing them to determine to fulfill their fundamental task. Why? Because Buddha’s immense sun-body of knowledge and wisdom radiates infinite light, illuminating everywhere. This is the third characteristic of the body of Buddha; great enlightening beings should see it thus.”

“Great enlightening beings should thus know that attainment of true awakening, the same as enlightenment, is uniformly formless. A buddha, attaining true awakening, by the means of unity, enters the concentration of thoroughly aware knowledge and, having entered it, manifests, in one vast body attaining true awakening, as many bodies as there are sentient beings dwelling in that body. As this is so of one vast body attaining true awakening, so it is of all vast bodies attaining true awakening.

“Buddha has infinite such doors of attainment of true awakening; therefore you should know that the bodies Buddha manifests are infinite, and because they are infinite we say the body of Buddha is infinite realms, equal to the realms of living beings.

“Great enlightening beings should know that in one pore of Buddha’s body are buddha-bodies as numerous as all sentient beings. Why? Because the body of the Buddha’ s attainment of true awakening ultimately has no birth or destruction. And as this is so of one pore, so is it of every point in the entire cosmos. Know that there is not a bit of space where there is no buddha-body. Why? Because Buddha’s attainment of true awakening reaches everywhere. According to capability and power, on the lion seat under the enlightenment tree at the site of enlightenment, with various bodies, Buddha attains true awakening.

“Great enlightening beings should know that in each moment of thought of their own minds there are always buddhas attaining true awakening. Why? Because the buddhas do not attain true awakening apart from this mind. As this is true of one’s own mind, so is it also true of the minds of all sentient beings—in all are buddhas attaining true awakening, all-pervasive, existing everywhere, without separation or annihilation, without cease, entering the inconceivable doors or means of enlightenment. Great enlightening beings should know Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment this way.”

The truly awake know all things
Are nondual, beyond duality, all equal,
Inherently pure as space,
Not distinguishing self and non-self.

As the ocean reflects beings’ bodies
And is therefore called the ocean,
Enlightenment reflects all mental patterns
And hence is called true awareness.

Just as worlds have formation and decay
While space does not increase or diminish,
While all buddhas appear in the world,
The one form of enlightenment is ever formless.

When someone emanates minds emanating buddhas,
Emanation and non-emanation are no different in essence;
Though all sentient beings attain enlightenment,
There is no increase or decrease, enlightenment or no.

Buddha has a concentration called well aware;
Entering this concentration under the enlightenment tree,
Buddha emits light beams as many as beings,
Awakening all kinds, like lotuses blooming.

As many thoughts, faculties, and desires
As are in beings in lands of all times,
That many bodies appear—
Hence true awareness is called infinite.

“How should great enlightening beings know Buddha’s ultimate nirvana? If great enlightening beings want to know the great nirvana of buddhas, they should know its fundamental essence. As is the nirvana of ultimate reality, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of space, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of the nature of things, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of detachment from desire, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of formlessness, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of selfhood, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of the ultimate essence of all things, so is the nirvana of Buddha; as is the nirvana of ultimate True Thusness, so is the nirvana of Buddha. Why? Because nirvana has no birth and no emergence; if something has no birth and no emergence, then it has no extinction.

“Buddha does not tell enlightening beings about the ultimate nirvana of buddhas and does not show it to them. Why? Because Buddha wants to cause them to see all buddhas always present before them, to see in one moment all the buddhas of past and future, in their full splendor, just as if they were actually present, yet without entertaining any notions of duality or nonduality. Why? Because great enlightening beings permanently abandon all conceptual clinging.

“Buddhas appear in the world in order to provoke inspiration in sentient beings and manifest nirvana in order to provoke longing in sentient beings: in reality the buddhas have no appearance in the world and no nirvana either. Why? Buddha always abides in the pure realm of reality, manifesting nirvana according to the minds of sentient beings.

“For example, when the sun comes out and illumines the world, its image is reflected in all clean vessels of water, being in all places without coming or going. If one vessel breaks, then the reflection of the sun does not appear in it. Do you think it is the fault of the sun that its reflection does not appear there?”

“No—it is just because the vessel is broken; it’s no fault of the sun.”

“The knowledge of realization of Thusness, buddha-knowledge, is also like this, appearing throughout the cosmos, without before or after: Buddha appears in the clean mind-vessels of all sentient beings. If the mind-vessel is always clean, the embodiment of Buddha is always seen; if the mind is polluted, the vessel breaks and the Buddha cannot be seen.

“If there are any sentient beings who can be liberated by nirvana, Buddha then manifests nirvana for them; but really Buddha has no birth, no death, no crossing over into extinction.

“It is like, for example, the element fire, which can make fires in all worlds. Sometimes in one place the fire will go out, but do you think the fire in all worlds is extinguished?”

“No.” ….

While the sun sheds light illumining the world,
When a vessel breaks and water leaks out, the reflection disappears;
So it is with the sun of supreme knowledge;
Those without faith see it as extinct.

Fire makes fires in the world,
While in one city it goes out sometime:
Likewise the Buddha pervades the cosmos
And appears to pass away where the work of teaching is done.

A magician makes bodies appear in all lands,
Which disappear when their function is done:
So does Buddha disappear when the teaching is done,
While always seen in other lands.

Buddha has a concentration, called unmoving,
Which is entered after teaching beings:
Instantly Buddha’s body emanates infinite lights,
The lights produce lotuses, on which are buddhas:
The buddha-bodies are countless as phenomena,
Visible to those with virtue;
Each of these countless bodies
Has a full span of life and array of adornments.

Like birthless-ness is the emergence of Buddha,
Like deathlessness the nirvana of Buddha:
All words and similes end—
All purposes are achieved, beyond compare.

Comment:

The overall image of these selections is that Buddha is on one hand a great and vast being that contains all beings, and Buddha is on the other hand every individual being within that one vast being. Combining these two images, every being everywhere is the Buddha within whom all other beings and all other Buddhas are also contained. Each one contains every other one. In this way the enlightenment of any one of these beings illuminates the enlightenment of all beings.

The only reason that some beings see enlightenment while others do not see enlightenment, is that some beings are more capable of seeing it in their lifetimes than are other beings. But this pertains only to seeing enlightenment during their lifetimes, as all beings everywhere are already Buddha and so all beings participate in ultimate enlightenment.

This is a difficult image to grasp from words: interpenetrating infinities in every dimension and direction, every being across all time and space appearing within each being, where every being ultimately awakens, where every awakened being brings into being countless new beings and countless new worlds. The more you consider this, the clearer and simpler it becomes until this is what you are.

— B.E.

I was propelled by things beyond my control to try to understand the world in which I found myself. I had come to realize that this world was dangerous and chaotic, and I knew I had to understand it better, first just in order to survive and then to find a way to make it better if I could.

Against my will I was sitting in church one day not really listening to the preacher preach to me that I should believe in something that I did not understand, and I wondered what he meant by that.

Even at that age I understood that to believe that something is true meant I do not know that it is true and so I should instead, for my own good, just assume, imagine, and pretend that it is true. And I should put effort into that believing.

To believe in something, seemed to mean that not only should I believe that something was true, trust that belief, and work hard to believe it, I had to do that without really knowing what it is that I am supposed to believe or believe in, or whatever.

I heard it something like this: The preacher was saying, “You must believe in divine grace.” Everyone near me would quietly reply, “I believe in divine grace.”

I did not understand what they were talking about apart from the explanation that if I come to believe in grace as they do, then good and wonderful things may happen for me in life; or at least they will certainly happen for me soon after my life has ended. Of course, there was plenty of explaining how and why this was so, and with that came many kind words of reassurance. But it all seemed to boil down to that promise, or to another very similar promise.

Now, if my experience with these ideas of believing-that and believing-in seems confused or difficult to understand, well then, that is exactly how I felt. Part of the problem was that when I asked people about it and looked them in the eye as they told me what they believed and believed in, what I saw in their eyes was not comfort and certainty; it was fear and hope.

Instead of that, here is what I asked myself that day, not about church and promises but about life:

• What is this place?

• Why is it here?

• How did it get here?

• What is it made of?

I thought to myself, “Whatever this place (this world, this universe) is made of, then it must be perfectly obvious what that is since after all I am always looking right at it.” But of course, I couldn’t see what it was made of. So, I reasoned, “It must be too obvious to see. I must be overlooking it. It has to be here in everything I see, but just too common and too simple to notice because there is nothing else to compare it to.”

I thought, for example, how do I see light itself when everything is visible only in colors? What makes light different from the colors of it? If someone points a finger at light, and if I do not already know what light is, then how could I imagine that it is the light to which they point and not the colorful thing?

That is what was going through my mind while I sat there that day, ten years old, while the preacher preached his sermon to us.

Fifteen years later,

… in a life still focused on those questions, I remembered the answer to them in a brief three seconds of the most peaceful clarity. Remembered, and not discovered, mind you! I had been correct in my approach, not about light but about the world. The answer, after all the years, was to me the most obvious thing of all and the very meaning of the word and idea of simplicity.

The story, Ocean of Light, is a fictionalized account of this search. It is accurate in substance and memory but softened a little in language:

In two more years,

… when I was twenty-seven, something else happened. I suddenly remembered quite clearly how I knew that same answer in the very first breath I took. That story is fictionalized in Memory of Being Born, which is probably close enough in substance and memory, given that I knew no words at all at that time:

A personal answer, in only a few words as words are always inadequate:

• What is this place? This is only what I appear to be.

• Why is it here? To know what it is like to be in such a place as this.

• How did it get here? I allow it to appear, and I treasure its being here.

• What is it made of? Everything that I might be.

• Then, what am I? Everything that can ever be.

  ---

June 12

Container and Content

Carefully consider each of the following criteria that might be used to select things from a box; do these make sense to you?

• Invisible things.

• Colors.

• Spaces.

• Things with names.

• Things that do not belong there.

• Things without shape.

• Useless things.

• Nothing.

• Things on top of other things.

• Only one thing (just choose it).

Transcendence

Consider these relationships; do these not make sense to you?

• Reality contains everything, real or unreal.

• Being contains everything that can in any way be said to exist, even hypothetically.

• Awareness contains all that can be experienced in any way at any time.

June 14

Intuiting

We cannot experience intuition because experience cannot represent intuition. Awareness is real; intuition is awareness that is self-aware of its absolute reality.

Intuition exposes the unreal world of experience and lays it bare, a mere shadow on a wall, an illusion, a fantasy, like a magic trick or a captivating performance.

Many people imagine intuition to be mysterious but it is not; intuition is always here patiently waiting until distraction subsides.

We imagine that we experience things.

We intuit reality.

June 15

Seeing the world through discrimination and dualism is like seeing one’s reflection in a mirror, or seeing one’s shadow, or seeing the moon reflected in water. To depend upon discrimination and dualism is like grasping at reflections and shadows — people become attached to this grasping behavior. To grasp at the products of discrimination and dualism and to become attached to them is to lose tranquility, to lose the Oneness from which the highest and most peaceful states arise.

June 15

Set aside judgement the way a child would set aside a toy that is no longer interesting.

June 15

At some point along the way, perhaps at a time when effort and hope are both exhausted, the world of ordinary things dissolves before your gaze. If your attention does not waver in this moment, then what remains within awareness is for a few seconds a perfectly calm and clear intuition of reality, something completely beyond name and form, something so simple and obvious that it can never be mistaken for an illusion or a passing fantasy.

June 15

Reality is the universal context.

Even in the most demanding or traumatic experiences, there is context within context within context in all possible dimensions of experience. We are nearly always focused on experiencing something, on minimizing attention to peripheral content, and on ignoring content that is irrelevant to our immediate interest.

Can you expand your attention all the way out to the universal context? Can you reduce your attention to virtually nothing, so that the universal context is completely evident?

June 15

You are not different from what Eihei Dogen referred to as The Time Being:

“The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time. Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way. Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time.”

June 16

The world arises within undivided awareness and not the other way around; so, where is there a place in the world for a separate awareness?

We are aware of what we experience, but we habitually confuse awareness with the experiences that arise within awareness. We habitually project an idea of awareness onto unreal objects that we experience, and we think there must be some real awareness within these objects. This is habitual confusion born of word-repetitions learned from childhood. The illusion of an awareness arising within the object is an attractive illusion.

The reality is that all objects arise within experience, experience arises within awareness, and awareness is reality.

June 17

Just imagine …

All alone and in a lonely place, by means of your innate and transcendent intelligence, your mind unfolds by perceiving, thinking, meditating, and concentrating until you suddenly turn inside-out at the source at the deepest core of your being.

Thereafter, you will lead a life of excellent deeds. Your mind will concentrate on what you are truly become. You will be thoroughly conversant in the absolute truth of this self-realization. You will be a perfect master of your own mind. You will be like a gem that radiates every color, you will transform through every different form and every different life, you will enter into the minds of all beings to help them realize the same.

You will be the perfect and transcendent intelligence of all who preceded you and all who will follow you, as every being must, each in a different way.

You are the one in whom all this comes to be, the perfect state of no self-image, The here and where of all that is, the all-awakening, all-keeping divine mind which in its pure essence is patience and tranquility forever.

June 17

Not really about the day, … today or whatever, … more like the years, … like the months and days all strung together in one:

Not Getting Up. – Vintage Noir Jazz for Quiet Mornings

(from only a month or so ago, 3 hours of it)

June 19

The best criticism I have ever received was from people who delivered it in a thorough and kindly manner with sensitivity to the art of learning rather than to an outcome of subordination.

June 19

Expectations of love’s affections are the most painful thing of all when they are broken. But never love itself, never.

June 21

We live on the surface of the advancing past.

When we are gone, we have all of every past in which to roam and play.

Such is universal memory, of which all things are made.

June 23

Some say there is no self, while others say self is one in all. And there are many who say the self is many in many different ways. See all these as the same understanding only named in different ways.

This is the essence of simplicity and surely the most obvious thing of all. It is too obvious for words. Words, thoughts, and ideas never reflect what cannot be described.

June 25

After a moment, another moment. The self is time itself.

June 28

The whole can know the parts in a way the parts cannot know the whole.

It is the two directions of knowledge, the outgoing and the returning paths (or the breathing out and breathing in of the universe).

Those who through insight are returning to the beginning, remember the price of reaching for all the marvelous things.

While those going outward in that grasping way, imagine they cannot imagine it any other way.

June 30

Knowing our true nature is unconditional.

This knowing is exactly what it seems to be, while other knowledge is never quite what it seems to be but instead is only representation of other representations, like the word “blue” is said to represent the color of the sky.

This cannot be conveyed from one to another, because there is no other.

So, what do you truly and unconditionally know that you can never explain?

It is here right now as you read. The simplest and most obvious thing of all. The last place where you will ever think to look.

July 1

All illusions are real.

They really are illusions, and you are their reality.

You are reality itself.

What you see is only what you appear to be.

July 2

As I understand it the ancient meaning of the word, “sacrifice,” was “to return something borrowed.” As in, “the farmer sacrificed some of his harvest to plant again next year.”

In this sense, it is said in the Vedas that Vishnu (The All-Pervasive One) sacrificed himself in fire in order to justly sustain the world and everything that is in it.

The fire of desire? The sacrifices you make can never hold you back.

It seems to me that there are at least two senses of “meaning” itself: the objective separate thing to which the word refers, and the felt subjective value of that thing.

On one hand, the meaning of life refers to what “life” seems to name: whether it is my individual life at the moment, everything in my life over the whole of it, or even all of every life everywhere in every time. To me, the strongest objective explanation of the meaning of life is life itself, the whole of it and all the different worlds of experiences that are possible.

On the other hand, the meaning of life also refers to the subjective value of what “life” seems to name: whether it is the feelings in the current moment, all of my different feelings about my life thus far (with or without an imagined future), or even my thoughts and feelings about all the lives that can ever be lived.

--

Considering only the current moment, my mind may struggle to find practical solutions to problems such as finding shelter from a storm. From a wider awareness, I may instead cling gently to simply accepting and loving my situation exactly as it is as though I am meant to live this in this moment – this is something I learned when in extreme physical pain when I knew that by focusing on accepting the pain, I could reduce or eliminate the misery of the moment as long as I was not too strongly interrupted in the work.

Considering my life thus far, I accept that it did seem to happen as it seemed to happen and that every part of it was only temporary and not the same as what I am which is only the awareness of it. This place (or ethereal space) where everything happened has never changed, never been harmed, and never even been disturbed. The things gone by were only what was happening here in this place (in this space) in all these times.

Considering the whole of life in all its forms everywhere, I realize that all this appears within me and not I within it. From that view, life in all its complexity, from the most peaceful and pleasing to the most violent and horrific, appears to me as only the endless stream of possibilities, vivid moments of everything that I can ever imagine or experience in any way at all in any place in any time. And as such, it is unimaginably beautiful, this bright flow of sensations and ideas that fills the place I call reality, the place that I am.

--

Most people do not see life in this way. And so, I grant that people who are caught up in distress or misery will indeed search for something to cling to, some hope or promise that the suffering will not last forever but will someday ease and become at least better if not something truly wonderful.

Clinging is part of the whole of life; but I, you, and every individual are the one and whole being where every world and every universe comes and goes. When we remember this, we see in the deepest core of being that we truly love every part and every possibility; we always have and we always will, even the powerful, frightening, and ever-changing hallucination of separation from our limitless whole.

I cannot answer for another person whether they should cling to this hope or that promise, or some other well-tried idea. The simplest fact of the matter is that all beings are already the limitless indescribable, already the perfect reality of everything. Every path and every life leads to and is resolved in remembering the self-nature of our all-pervasive being.

Cling if you will to this or that, but the answer you seek comes not with clinging but with letting go of clinging, just as we hear in so many confessions by those who have known and then let go of both the worst and the best that the stream had brought to them. Sooner or later we each let go of it all just as they have done, and once again we will come to remember again what we all already know.

--

It is the nature of meaning, that meanings just come and go. It is the nature of meaning, that every meaning derives entirely from other meanings. The whole draws meaning from every part, and every part draws meaning from recalling the whole and why and how the whole conceives the parts.

The meaning of life means letting go, forever allowing life to unfold exactly as it always has and truly always will.

Seeing

Do you believe that in some way you sense the reality of other beings and these other beings possess their own separate awareness?

It is like looking into a magical mirror wherein you are made to experience your life as only one among others. In the mirror, you cling to the idea that you are a separate living thing who senses being. To do so, you ignore the reality of your own being and cling to the unreality of separate existences.

Reality is undivided. So, being and awareness are undivided. It is only from within illusion that we can imagine reality as somehow divided.

Look to the deepest level of your own being. Reality is not just another thing to be experienced.

• reality and unreality,

• being and existence,

• awareness and experience,

• intuition and universe.

What do these words mean to you? How are the meanings related?

-- Universe and World.

Representing

Experiences define one another in the same way that words define one another in dictionaries.

Representation occurs when one thing re‑presents or refers to other things that are not present in the immediate experience.

• Reality, being, and awareness cannot be experienced.

• Unreality cannot represent reality.

• Existence cannot represent being.

• Experience cannot represent awareness.

• Being and awareness are the reality of the universe.

Your reality can never be re-presented to you.

Is this a puzzle? Is it really not possible to represent your reality, being, or awareness in words, symbols, gestures, and so forth?

Seek direct knowledge of reality, not indirect experience of mere ideas about such things. Know the truth directly.

See though the endless puzzles of unreality.

Depend upon words only to help you grasp the failure of all words in the light of your reality—even these words, here, in this text.

Why are there any paths at all?

How far away is your reality?

What do The Five Paths represent?

-- Experiencing and Representing (and the five paths).

Ideas

All ideas about truth, no matter how precise and logical they may seem, arise in relation to an infinite complexity of meaning and interpretation.

Truth appears to be a simple idea, but relative truth is not at all simple because of the complexity and misunderstanding within which it appears.

Reality is absolute and genuine.

Unreality is relativity and illusion.

Beliefs can be either-or, or they can be a matter of degree. Most beliefs are in the form of statements about something, while intuition and insight are often beyond words.

List the things you completely believe or believe in.

List the things you strongly believe.

List the things you believe but cannot explain.

List the things you believe but cannot describe.

List the things you believe but cannot even name.

-- Relative Truth and Relative Context.

Experimenting

Replying to Jens W. Pedersen: Good advice, Jens! Here is a similar experiment:

Read something that irritates or disturbs you. Notice how that feels. How big is your awareness?

Read it again without any without anticipating, selecting, verbalizing, or judging what you read. Notice how that feels. How big is your awareness?

Example: Questions Children Ask (read, then follow the instructions at the end) —

-- Anticipating, Selecting, and Recognizing.

Intuiting

We cannot experience intuition because experience cannot represent intuition. Awareness is real; intuition is awareness that is self-aware of its absolute reality.

Intuition exposes the unreal world of experience and lays it bare, a mere shadow on a wall, an illusion, a fantasy, like a magic trick or a captivating performance.

Many people imagine intuition to be mysterious, but it is not; intuition is always here, patiently waiting until distraction subsides.

We imagine that we experience things.

We intuit reality.

-- Knowing and Intuiting.

Words

Words are useful and meaningful things, more for defining the puzzle than for solving it.

Look to where the words are pointing and not to the words themselves.

Definitions, suggestions, questions, arguments, and ideas are the fabric of the puzzle; but you cannot find the answer without intuition.

• Intuition of awareness is self-awareness.

• Intuition of being is self-knowledge of being.

• Intuition of reality is self-realization.

Key Words

REALITY is not subject to coming and going, nor to existing or not existing, nor to birth and death. But individual things are all subject to those limits. Reality is where everything happens; it is where time and space appear; it is like a theater wherein ILLUSION and UNREALITY appears.

BEING is the self-knowledge of reality; it is both the reality of knowing and the way that reality knows. EXISTENCE and NON-EXISTENCE refer to all the unreal things being perceives, feels, thinks, and imagines. This allows us to talk about being as the subjective knowledge of things like sensations, perceptions, dreams, ideas, and self-awareness.

AWARENESS is the direct knowledge of EXPERIENCE and INTUITION. Being is aware of and knows experience; although in reality, experiences are only made of countless other experiences from other places and other times. Through intuition, being is aware of its limitless reality.

— On Reality and Being.

Invoking the right frame of mind

Intuition beyond questions

Seeing beyond words

Knowing beyond thoughts

Being beyond limits

Remembering

It cannot be that we recognize something because “it is already a memory,” because all moments of recognition are unique. But the recognition of a thing (and therefore the newly forming memory of it) is entirely composed of memories rearranging and constantly transforming into every new experience.

You can verify this for yourself with a moderately difficult experiment in your own awareness of how you recognize things. You can see it happening, if you only take the time and effort to notice the way it happens.

Here are some instructions.

Knowing

Do not second-guess your motives, your thoughts, or your actions. Learn from everything that happens. Take responsibility for what you do. Reflect on your life. Know that you have always done the best you could, no matter how good or bad the result.

Knowledge of reality and knowledge of unreality arise together within being. It is like seeing an entertainer twirl a firebrand, causing the appearance of a circle of fire: the circle of fire is not real. The awareness of the circle of fire is real because awareness is reality; but the thing that seems to appear is not what it appears to be.

It is like a tree, a living thing that we can see, touch, hear in the wind, and explore. The reality is in the awareness and not in the things within awareness. The shape and form of the tree have no reality of their own; shapes and forms are only ideas thinly projected onto other experiences just as the idea of a circle of fire is projected onto the experience of the firebrand. Neither can reality be found in the elements of which the tree is made; these, too, are only ideas. Where, then, is the tree?

The things of this world are not real, yet awareness of these things is real.

You are real. You are perfectly, unchangingly real at the deepest level of your being and your awareness. Your experience of this world is in real awareness. The world that you experience in your awareness is unreal, apart from the fact that your awareness of this world is perfectly real. Your world is a real experience of unreal things made mostly of name, form (or characteristics), and habit.

We become entranced by our experiences, and we ignore the significance of our reality; but because reality underlies unreality, we do know and understand reality at the deepest level of our being whether we recognize it or not.

Direct your attention to the deepest level of your being. What do you find there?

-- Reality and Unreality

Sharing

I wonder how people ever communicate at all with each other.

For decades I sat in rooms and listened to how people said what they needed and wanted, and what all the problems were. I cannot recall a time when I thought any one of them really understood any other. It was my job to create something that satisfied them all, whether or not anyone ever understood what it was that I created and gave to them as a result of all those words. And it was only one thing that I put together, only one thing they all took and used and shared with each other. So, I wonder how that happened.

I write about words and how no two people can ever share between them the same meaning of any word, no matter now how they respond to each other’s words; that is what I observed and came to understand.

I wonder about words I use, when I realize that no word ever means exactly the same thing to me as it did the last time I used or read it. I watched very carefully, and that is what I noticed.

And yet here I am writing and there you are reading. I wonder how that is possible when our worlds are so different and so far apart.

And yet here we are, and I say to myself I understand your words, and I find in myself similar descriptions and situations, and perhaps similar emotions and reactions and actions.

Is this one world divided among us? Is it many separate worlds colliding in some ethereal space and sharing something we cannot yet fathom?

Or is it one world separately seen by each of us, where each is only the one of us seeing it in different times and places with different faces?

— Recalling the memory of remembering.

Realizing

We are the infinite and the eternal, and it always has been so.

Everything that ever happens, happens within our being and our awareness, even the ideas that we are individual things experiencing individual lives — such illusions as these are only beautiful clouds and flowers in our limitless sky.

After Trauma

It is a terrible thing when the left-over story of terror seems an impenetrable thing that never changes. It just blocks the way to who knows where.

Even when you find where it is in you and approach it that way, it remains impenetrable, impassable. “This far and no further.”

The story is a false story that hides what really happened, but it is bad enough to frighten people away. “That” memory behind the wall stays hidden from you, indescribable.

Only when you find the way through does the story begin to change and soften just like all other memories that drift with remembering.

Only then can you visit inside, hover above as though on wings, probe the feelings felt all around, watch the play, and finally grasp what happened …

… and upon all this you bestow your love and your blessing.

And so the years go by. Older and kinder memories arise from the opened space.

You begin to see within to what lies beyond all this.

The gift of the wounded child.

Contradictions

The idea of contradiction comes from the notion of ‘contrary (or opposing) words.’ The idea has only to do with statements, whether expressed or implied.

The meaning and truth of a statement is determined by context. Without context, a statement cannot be assessed for meaning or truth because we cannot understand what the words mean without context as in, for example, English diction, Greek history, arithmetic, facts, and so forth. (From Reality and Being Ch. 17 – Casual Truth and Casual Context.)

Every contradiction can be resolved by discovering a greater context that includes and resolves the otherwise separate contexts of the mutually contradictory statements.

This new context will be defined and understood under different assumptions than were used to define and understand the separate contexts of the separate but contradictory statements. (Following Hegel’s sense of dialectical inquiry.)

This process of continually expanding the context can be used to resolve any and all contradictions, but only as long as you are willing to examine all of your assumptions along the way; and it will take time and effort.

The process will eventually reach a definite end in what I refer to as the Universal Context or as reality itself. (Ch. 18 - Universal Truth and Universal Context, and also, Ch. 19 – Thing and Context.)

In reality (in the Universal Context, which is the Universal Truth) there are no contradictions.

Universal Context allows and contains the appearance of unreality, illusion, error, and contradiction. (Ch. 20 – Relative Truth and Relative Context.)

Universal truth does not contradict the universe of illusions, birth and death, existence-and-non-existence, or infinitely many experiences; it allows and contains all of these as what makes up this universe in which you may, if you wish, falsely believe that you temporarily appear.

But in reality, the universe appears within you, and not you with it, as all these mere appearances. When you see this from the perspective of Universal Truth (and it is certain that one day you will remember it again), it will be absolutely obvious why and how the world appears as it does. (Ch. 21 – Absolute and relative.)

Focus your mind:

Can you expand your attention all the way out to the universal context?

Can you reduce your attention to virtually nothing, so that the universal context is completely evident?

In reality, there is nothing at all for you to achieve or attain:

Even right now as you read or hear these words, you are the limitless context of everything, which is exactly the same as the simple truth of being reality itself.

The entire universe appears within you, and all possible experiences of any and every kind arise and subside within you, including the awareness of time and place and different views.

You are not different from what Eihei Dogen referred to as The Time Being:

Thank you to those who subscribe, follow, or just drop by to read now and then.

The text favored by Bodhidharma. The Mind-Only school of thought. An instructor’s guide to meditation?

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — Discrimination

Introduction.
The realization of Noble Wisdom.
Why some are attached to discrimination and some are not.

Chapter 2 — False-Imagination and Knowledge of Appearances

Erroneous views.
Four forms of assertion regarding things that do not exist.
Regarding word-discrimination.
Regarding words and assertions.
The nature of causation.
False-imagination, in discrimination and in thought.
Error — is it an (existing) entity or not?
Injunction regarding false-imagination.

Chapter 3 — Right Knowledge, or Knowledge of Relations

The being and non-being of all things.
All things are empty, unborn, and have no self-nature.
Causation and the arising of things.
Injunction regarding no-birth.

Chapter 4 — Perfect Knowledge, or Knowledge of Reality

The five Dharmas.
Things, ideas, and Reality — in relation to the five Dharmas.
Four kinds of knowledge.
Injunction regarding Perfect-knowledge.

Chapter 5 — The Mind System

The nature of the mind.
Ego-personality and its relationship to the mind-system.
Universal Mind and its relation to the lower mind-system.
The cessation of the mind-system.
Injunction regarding the “turning-about.”

Chapter 6 — Transcendental Intelligence

The nature of Transcendental Intelligence.
Four things to remember.
The Womb of Tathagatahood.

Chapter 7 — Self-Realization

The nature of self-realization — attaining Transcendental Intelligence.
The understandings that lead to self-realization.
The characteristics of deep attachments to existence, and how to become detached from existence.
The One Vehicle.
The steps that lead one toward self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Chapter 8 — The Attainment of Self-Realization

The state of self-realization.
Purification of the evil out-flowings of the mind.

Chapter 9 — The Fruit of Self-Realization

Self-realization of Noble Wisdom.
The sustaining power of the Tathagatas.
Buddhahood is realized by fulfilling the six Paramitas.
The nature of the Astral Body.

Chapter 10 — Discipleship — Lineage of the Arhats

The different kinds of disciple.

Chapter 11 — Bodhisattvahood and Its Stages

Bodhisattvas.

Chapter 12 — Tathagatahood Which Is Noble Wisdom

The Tathagata is not a non-entity, and neither is he an entity.
The self-nature of the Tathagatas.
The Tathagatas are neither permanent nor impermanent.
The Tathagata has uttered no word, nor ever will utter a word.
Dharmata-Buddha, Nishyanda-Buddha, and Nirmana-Buddha.
The Dharmakaya.

Chapter 13 — Nirvana

What Nirvana is.
The Nirvana of the Bodhisattvas.

Download a PDF of the Outline (originally written c. 1993):

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Read or download the Lankavatara Sutra at The Internet Archive (trans. D. T. Suzuki)

Read the Lankavatara or download the book, A Buddhist Bible (trans. Dwight Goddard) *Preferred

Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought. (An instructor’s guide to meditation?)

PDF version

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation as found in his book, A Buddhist Bible.

At about 25,000 words, the outline is quite detailed and includes two Tables of Contents plus an Index. One TOC is brief, while the other is very detailed. PDF page size is Letter 8.5”x 11”.

Goddard’s translation is relatively free of confusing Sanskrit terminology; so, both the Sutra and the outline are fairly easy to read and understand. I added some notes and clarifications in (parentheses) or [brackets].

If you have read very much of my writing, you will easily notice how much this Sutra has influenced me.

The outline below is only the first chapter of the Sutra to give you a feel for what the rest might be like. The outline itself is 60 pages, while the Title, TOCs, and Index add another 22.

Note: the PDF “outline” format is quite different from the Substack “news” format!

Click here to preview the PDF online and then download it if it suits you. When connecting from Email, you might need to open the link in a new tab or a new window.

Or download it right here, from Substack:

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Chapter 1 — Discrimination

Introduction

At the castle of Lanka, on the summit of Mount Malaya in the midst of the Great Ocean, where the wise gather to talk about the Truth (Noble Wisdom) that is beyond reasoning and ordinary understanding, and is realizable only in the inmost consciousness.

The nature of Truth (1) — preparation

In the world of appearances there is neither effort nor action.

It is like a dream or a projected image.

Those who see it thus see the truth of it.

Those who see it otherwise depend upon discrimination and dualism.

Seeing the world through discrimination and dualism is like seeing one’s reflection in a mirror, or seeing one’s shadow, or seeing the moon reflected in water.

To depend upon discrimination and dualism is like grasping at reflections and shadows — people become attached to this grasping behavior.

To grasp at the products of discrimination and dualism and to become attached to them is to lose tranquility, to lose the Oneness from which the highest and most peaceful states arise.

Tranquility and peace can be regained in the Noble Wisdom that is realizable only within one’s inmost consciousness.

The nature of Truth (2) — assessment

The world, when viewed with perfect intelligence and compassion, is like an ethereal flower; it is neither born nor destroyed — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

In perfect intelligence and compassion, the world is like a dream; it is neither permanent nor destructible — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

With perfect intelligence and compassion, all the things of the world seem like visions that are beyond the reach of the human mind — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

With perfect intelligence and compassion that are beyond all limit, one realizes the egoless-ness of things and persons [the twofold egoless-ness], and is free of the hindrances of passion, learning, and egoism.

One does not vanish into Nirvana and Nirvana is not to be found within one, because Nirvana transcends all duality of knowing and known, and of being and non-being.

Those who see that within their inmost consciousness they are serene and beyond conception, will see that they are free of attachment and defilement, free in this world and in every world (and in the spiritual world beyond).

In this dream-like world there is a place for praise and blame, but the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya is beyond the senses, and beyond the discriminating-mind.

The realization of Noble Wisdom

Which in general…

Is beyond philosophy.

Is devoid of all predicates such as being and non-being, oneness and otherness, both-ness and not-both-ness, existence and non-existence, eternity and no-eternity.

Has nothing to do with individuality and generality, with false-imagination, or with illusions that arise from the mind itself.

Is the Truth of highest Reality.

There are those who do not realize that the world is only something seen of the mind itself

They cling to the multiplicity of external objects and to the multiplicities of discriminations

• They think they have a self-nature of their own,

• All of this arises from the discriminations of the mind and is perpetuated by habit-energy,

• As a result, these people are given over to false-imagination and they grasp at the products of their imaginations.

They are tormented by greed, anger, and folly; and they are delighted by the world of multiplicity and form.

• They are obsessed with ideas of birth, growth, and destruction,

• They do not understand what existence and non-existence mean.

They do not realize that discrimination and speculation have existed since beginningless time, and so they fall into the habit of grasping at things and becoming attached to them.

People grasp at imaginary things

These imaginary things appear to them because of attachment to the memories of things that have appeared before.

• Speculations, errors, and all sorts of doctrines have been accumulating in memory since beginningless time, and people get attached to ideas of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, and so on,

• It is like waking up from an elaborate dream, and then lying half awake recounting the unreal things that happened in the dream.

In the same way, these people do not recognize the dream-like nature of the ideas that they have become attached to, and that these ideas have originated in the mind itself.

So they remain attached to their ideas, which are in Truth only like the images seen on a painter’s canvas.

They criticize those who recognize the Truth

They falsely claim that the doctrine of no-birth — which is free of the dualism of being and non-being — is nihilistic; and so, they bring destruction upon themselves [by conceiving themselves to be destructible].

They are addicted to their discriminations and false views, and cling to a “realistic” view of being and non-being,

• But, the world they see is like a revolving firebrand which is not truly a wheel but only imagined to be so, and at the same time is not not-a-wheel in that it does appear as such,

• It is like a mirror that reflects images impartially,

• It is like a desert mirage of moving water.

In the same way, the mind of one who is attached to his discriminations is stirred by the [imagined] winds of birth, growth, and destruction, and he becomes thoroughly devoted to those discriminations.

Why some are attached to discrimination and some are not

Because there are some who are attached to names, signs, and ideas

They grasp at the multiplicity of objects and form the notion of an ego-soul that has certain characteristics of its own.

They discriminate good and bad appearances, cherishing the good and avoiding the bad.

The more they are attached, the more they are ignorant of the Truth.

Karma accumulates and they become imprisoned in their discriminations — especially in their discriminations of birth and death.

These people do not understand that all things are like Maya, or like the reflection of the moon in water

There is no self-substance, and no ego-soul with its own characteristics.

Their definitive ideas arise from false discrimination of what exists, yet all this is only what is seen of the mind itself.

In Truth things have nothing to do with qualifying and being qualified, nor with birth, growth, and destruction, but these people assert that they were, in some manner, born.

Those who discriminate are caught up in the stream of appearances, but this is not true of the wise.

….

TOC – Next: Ch. 2

Erroneous views

Philosophical errors

Not recognizing that the objective world arises from the mind itself.

Not understanding that the whole mind-system arises from the mind itself.

Depending upon the supposed reality of what arises, and discriminating it.

Clinging to the dualisms of this and that, and being and non-being.

Ignorance of the fact that there is only one common Essence.

Correct teaching

To recognize that the objective world is a manifestation of the mind itself, like a vision.

To end ignorance, desire, deed, and causality.

To end suffering that arises from discrimination.

Examples of incorrect teaching

Creation of something from nothing

With a Substance that is bound up with causation and time.

That the elements of personality and its environment (the external world) are created, exist, and pass away (suffer birth, growth, and destruction) according to causation.

Nihilism

That there are no such things as continuation, activity, breaking-up, existence, Nirvana, the Path, karma, fruition, and Truth.

These incorrect views are asserted …

… without intuitive understanding of Truth, and without clear insight into the fundamentals of things.

Actually, the elements of personality and its environment are not capable of uninterrupted change.

So, these incorrect views are based on erroneous discrimination rather than on true conception.

It is not true that something can be created from nothing.

• If something (the personality) can be created from nothing, then the same can be said for any non-existent thing; therefore, concepts of deed, work, and cause are of no use to explain how things arise.

• If something arises from a combination of effect-producing causes, then something comes out of something, and not out of nothing.

• If relativity is asserted, then so must an ever-recurring chain of causation, and therefore no thing could ever end or cease (or begin).*

There are four forms of assertion regarding things that do not exist

1. About individual marks that do not exist

Such as are perceived by the organs of sense (eye, ear, etc.).

That indicate individuality and generality in the elements of personality and its environment.

People take these marks for reality and become attached to them.

Then they habitually affirm that things are “just so and not otherwise.”

2. About objects that do not exist

Which arises from attachment to the associated marks of individuality and generality.

In themselves, the objects are neither existent nor non-existent, and are without the duality of being and non-being.

Objects-in-themselves are as unreal as anything that has never existed (e.g., the child of a barren woman).

They are discriminated according to (false) assertion and negation, without realization that there is nothing but what is seen of the mind itself.

3. About a cause that does not exist

Which assumes an uncaused first cause of the mind-system that only later comes to have [or, comes to appear to have] a Maya-like non-existence.

That an originally un-born mind-system begins to function under the conditions of sensation and memory.

That this mind-system functions for a time and then ceases.

4. Philosophical views that are in error

Assertions about [the self-nature of] the elements that make up personality and its environment.

Assuming the non-existence of [the self-natures of the elements that make up] personality and its environment; or the existence of an ego, being, soul, living being, “nourisher,” spirit, etc. (any or all of which are supposed to arise from a combinations of discriminations of imaginary marks of individuality and generality).

Naming these marks, and becoming attached to them and their names as objects, by habit-energy.

All of which is based in false-imagination.

Regarding word-discrimination

Word-discrimination takes place by the coordination of the brain and the various physical organs involved (i.e., chest, lips, etc.).

Words are neither different nor non-different from discrimination.

• They arise from discrimination, which is their cause.

• If they were different from discrimination, they could not have discrimination as their cause.

• If they were not different from discrimination, they could not carry or express meaning.

• Words are caused, are mutually conditioning, and are continually shifting in meaning; and they are subject to birth and death.

Regarding words and assertions

There are four kinds of word-discrimination, all of which are unreal.

1. Words indicating individual marks

Which arise from discriminating forms and signs as being real in themselves, and becoming attached to them.

2. Memory words

Which arise from the unreal surroundings that come up before the mind when it recalls some experience.

3. Words that grow out of attachment to distinctions and speculations about mental processes

4. Words that arise out of the inherited prejudices of habit-energy

Habit-energy that has accumulated since beginningless time, or which had its origin in long forgotten false imaginations and speculations.

There are words that have no corresponding object

For example, the son of a barren woman.

Words are artificial

There are worlds where there are no words, where meaning is communicated by gazing, with gestures, by laughing, by clearing the throat, by trembling, etc.

Even in this world there are many beings who communicate without words — ants and bees, e.g.

Words have other things associated with them

1. Syllable-body — by which words and sentences are indicated.

2. Name-body — the object that gives a word its significance, the ”substance” of the word.

3. Sentence-body — a parallel for which is the tracks left in the road by people and animals who pass by.

Words (etc.) can never exactly express meaning

They are only sounds.

They are arbitrarily chosen to represent things.

They are not the [represented] things in themselves.

Even the things that words represent are only manifestations of the mind itself.

Discrimination of meaning is based upon the false-imagination that words represent and are dependent upon self-existent things.

Words, sentences, etc., are caused and are mutually conditioning — and so they cannot express the highest Reality.

In highest Reality there are no differentiations to be discriminated, and there is nothing to be predicated in regard to it — it is an exalted state of bliss that cannot be entered into by means of word-discrimination but only through self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

The nature of causation

To be examined so that one may no more discriminate the gradual or simultaneous arising of things.

There are two factors of causation ...

... by which things (the elements of personality and its environment) seem to come into existence — in reality, these elements are not individual and distinct things, but in ignorance they are discriminated as such.

1. External factors — such as clay, water, and the person who works them together into a pot.

2. Internal factors — such as ignorance, desire, and purpose.

There are six elements of causation ...

... (or, causation may be divided into six elements).

1. Indifference-cause

The presence or absence of discrimination, without which there can be no combination; when discrimination ends, combination dissolves.

2. Dependence-cause

Dependence upon the presence of the elements that are combined.

3. Possibility-cause

Dependence upon external and internal conditions (factors).

4. Agency-cause

The (apparent) presence and action of an agent or authority, just as a sovereign king issuing decrees.

5. Objectivity-cause

The presence and continuing activity of the mind-system [that discriminates “objectivity”].

6. Manifesting-cause

By which the discriminating activity of the mind-system reveals marks of individuality (and generality), just as forms are illuminated by a lamp.

Causes are the outcome of discrimination carried on in ignorance

Therefore, there is no such thing as “arising of existence,” whether gradual or simultaneous

Gradual arising is not possible because there is no basic substance to which the marks of individuality and generality belong.

Simultaneous arising is not possible because then there is no (real) distinction between cause and effect, and no way to characterize any cause [or effect] as such.

Some people argue that things are born and there are things that give birth, and that this happens by a combination of factors such as cause, substance, continuity, etc.

From this they argue a gradual arising of existences.

But this argument rests upon a prior notion of a self-nature of individual things, and these people have become attached to this false idea.

Some people believe that there is an external world that is perceived under aspects of individuality and generality

But these aspects of individuality and generality are not real, and so there can be no arising of things.

They arise from discrimination of and dependence on certain ideas of body-property-and-abode.

But they are only what is conceived by the mind itself, and it is only when the mind-system is active and discriminating that they seem to arise.

False-imagination, in discrimination and in thought

People who do not understand the true nature of the objective world fall into dualistic views

They imagine the multiplicity of objects to be real.

They become attached to these objects, and their attachments are perpetuated by habit-energy.

Their system of thought — the mind-system, or “the mind and what belongs to it” — is discriminated and thought of as real.

They assert the existence of an ego-soul and what belongs to it, and so the mind-system is perpetuated.

Attaching themselves to dualism, they accept the distinctions of being and non-being, existence and non-existence, etc.

And so, we say that false-imagination evolves.

But, discrimination neither evolves nor gets put away, ...

... because when the world is seen as it truly is, there can be no discrimination of being and non-being, etc.

It is only for the sake of those who are addicted to discrimination of things that it is said that discrimination arises .

We say that it arises from attachment to the multiplicity that is characteristic of the appearance of objects which are not real but are in reality only what is seen the mind itself.

We say this in order to help people….

• To understand that there is only what is seen of the mind itself.

• To gain insight into the true nature of mind.

• To free themselves from wrong conceptions of cause and effect.

• To attain a ”turning-about” in the deepest seat of their consciousness.

• To attain inner realization of Noble Wisdom which transcends the whole idea of discriminated Reality.

Because emancipation comes from understanding the meaning of Reality.

False-imagination arises from consideration of appearances

Things get discriminated as to form, sign, and shape; and as to color, warmth, fluidity, motility, and rigidity (solidity). [cf. Surangama Sutra].

It consists in becoming attached to these appearances and to their names.

By “attachment to things” (or to “objects”) is meant attachment to inner and outer things as though they were real.

By “attachment to names” is meant the recognition of characteristic marks of individuation and generality in these inner and outer things, and to regard these marks as belonging to the names of the objects (i.e., their name-body).

False-imagination teaches that all things can be understood under the aspects of individuality and generality

This because of the belief that all things are bound up with causation, instead of the realization that the external world is of the mind itself.

In false-imagination the multitude of appearances are imagined to be real, while they are actually imaginary.

• As children are sometimes convinced that the forms created by magicians are actually living beings, while in reality they are only wood and straw.

• Similarly, based upon the notion of relativity, people imagine a variety of appearances which the discriminating-mind objectifies, names, and becomes attached to, thus perpetuating memory and habit-energy.*

And this is the ”self-nature” of false-imagination.

The (14) features of false-imagination, as regards to …

1. Words

Becoming attached to sounds that carry familiar meaning.

2. Meaning

Imagining that words arise from and depend upon the self-existent subjects that they “express” [or represent].

3. Individual marks

Imagining that words (can) denote what is true regarding individual marks, clinging to these words (and marks), and discriminating various categories of existence according to them [by using them].

E.g., color, warmth, fluidity, motility, and rigidity [cf. Surangama Sutra].

4. Property

Desiring a state of wealth. E.g., gold, silver, real estate, etc.

5. Self-nature

Taking a thing to be what it is in and of itself. (Believing that otherwise it cannot “be”).

6. Cause

In reference to being and non-being, also believing that there are such things as “cause-signs” [or, “specifically indicated causal factors”].

7. Philosophical views

Believing and becoming attached to the dualisms of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, both-ness and not-both-ness, existence and non-existence, etc.

8. Reasoning

Believing there is an ego-substance (or ego-soul) to which belongs [or, which has] the power of reasoning.

9. Birth

Being attached to the idea that things come into existence and pass out of existence according to causation.

10. No-birth

Believing in causeless substances. I.e., independently existing substances which did not come into existence by reason of causation. [E.g., matter-as-a-substance, mind-as-a-substance].

11. Dependence

E.g., the mutual dependence of a substance and [a] form. E.g., gold and a gold filament.

12. Bondage

Imagining that there is something bound, simply because there is binding.

13. Emancipation

Imagining that there is something emancipated, simply because there is emancipating.

— Also, —

14. Relativity *

Being attached to the notion of the multiplicity of things that arise from the false-imagination.

Like seeing the variety of objects that depend upon Maya, and then variously discriminating them as something other than Maya itself.

But, Maya and the varieties of objects are neither different nor non-different.

If they were different they could not have Maya as their (common) characteristic.

If they were not different there would be no distinction between them.

Since there is a distinction between Maya and objects, they are neither different nor non-different, because they are the same thing.

Error — is it an (existing) entity or not?

Error has no character in it to be attached to

If it did, liberation from attachment to its existence would not be possible, and the chain of origination would then only be understood in the causal sense of creation-from-nothing.

Error is like Maya — Maya is incapable of producing other Maya, and error in itself cannot produce error.

Maya (error) has no power of discrimination in itself — discrimination and attachment produce error in the sense that error arises when invoked, or in the same manner that illusions arise when one is charmed by a magician.

Error has no habit-energy in itself — habit-energy only arises from discrimination and attachment.

Error has no faults in itself — faults are the result of discrimination of an ego-soul and its mind.

Maya (error) is, however, not an unreality even though it has only the appearance of reality

All things have the nature of Maya.

It is not because things are clung to that they have the nature of Maya, but because they [Maya and things] are both unreal, appearing and disappearing quickly.

The teaching that all things are characterized by the self-nature of Maya is intended only to free people from the belief [the false-imagination] that things have a self-nature.

False-imagination teaches dualistic discrimination

E.g., light and dark, long and short, etc.

But these are terms of relation (relativity*) and not of Reality.

• As such these terms are not independent of one another, and also not mutually exclusive of one another.

• They (as a duality) are not two but one — even the “duality” of Samsara and Nirvana are only two aspects of the same thing [the same for the duality of life and death].

• All duality is falsely imagined.

  ---

Injunction regarding false-imagination

Discipline yourself in the realization and patient acceptance of the emptiness, un-born-ness, no self-nature-ness, and non-duality of all things

But, even though this is widely taught and widely presented to meet different needs, this is not the Truth itself.

This teaching is only a finger pointing toward Noble Wisdom.

Teachings are like a mirage with springs of water which people and animals take to be real — all teachings are alike in this, even these.

Truth can only be self-realized within one’s deepest consciousness.

Seek the self-realization of Noble Wisdom, and do not be captivated by word-teaching.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

* -Regarding ‘words’ and ‘relativity’- For those of you who read other things I post, The Lankavatara along with works by Willard Quine and Jacques Derrida form the basis of some important themes in my book, Reality And Being, in particular, the following sections and topics:

Ch.1 - Words (How to read this book).

Ch.11 - Experiencing and Representing (especially the notion of representing; but I differ from these three sources on the idea of relativity, where I defer instead to more modern ideas from Theodore Stcherbatsky and Hegel).

Ch.15-21 on Truth and Relativity (in the same manner as as introduced in Ch.11).

What this might mean to those Professional Thinkers who read in search of ideas they might criticize, is that for the purpose at hand —i.e., ‘Art’— I use a notion (not a doctrine) of two kinds of truth, Absolute and Relative, on the basis of how I view words; and in doing so, I equate Nirvana (the universe of all possible experience) with a modern idea of Absolute Relativity, which I consider to be one of the more significant Western philosophical concepts of the last four centuries.

TOC – Next: Ch. 3 – Prev: Ch. 1

The being and non-being of all things

Generally speaking, people’s thinking depends upon one of two ideas

1. Being — whereby they seek pleasure in Realism.

Believing the actually existing and becoming world arises from really existing causes.

And that it does not arise from causes that are non-existent.

2. Non-being — whereby they seek pleasure in Nihilism.

Admitting the existence of such inner things as greed, anger, and folly, while denying the existence of the things that produce (cause) greed, anger, and folly.

As though greed, anger, and folly are more real than “things” even though they have neither substance nor individual marks.

In either case these people imagine emancipation where there is none.

Where there is bondage, there is binding and means for binding, but where there is emancipation, there is neither bondage, binding, nor any means for binding.

This is because in emancipation there is no belief in (the dualism of) being and non-being.

Those who cling to being and non-being see things as transient, as arising from cause, as passing away from cause, as dividing, as recombining into the elements which make up personality and its environment.

Therefore, they suffer from the changes that follow one after another.

All things are empty, unborn, and have no self-nature

Emptiness is a term whose very self-nature is false-imagination.

But because of attachment to false-imagination, there is a need to speak of emptiness, no-birth, and self-nature.

Seven kinds of emptiness

1. Emptiness of mutuality — which is non-existence.

Meaning that when a thing is missing, the place is empty of it, as a forest is empty of dry sand but not of trees.

Not meaning that the forest is empty of its own characteristics, nor are the trees empty of their own character.

Referring to things under the [presumed] aspects of individuality and generality.

Assuming this mutuality [of individuality and generality, which themselves are empty], it is true that some things do not exist somewhere.

This is the lowest form of emptiness, and it must be thoroughly put away.

2. Emptiness of individual marks.

Meaning that things have no distinguishing marks of individuality and generality.

Because of mutuality (mutual relationship and interaction), things are superficially discriminated under their [presumed] aspects of individuality and generality.

But when things are more carefully examined, they are seen to be non-existent, so the marks of individuality and generality cannot be predicated of them.

When the marks are no longer seen, ideas of self, otherness and both-ness, etc., no longer apply.

3. Emptiness of self-nature.

Meaning that things are in their self-nature un-born and are therefore empty as to self-nature.

4. Emptiness of no-work.

Meaning that the aggregate of elements that make up personality and its environment is Nirvana itself, and there is no activity in them.

5. Emptiness of work.

Meaning that because there is no ego in them the aggregate of elements that make up personality and its environment go on functioning automatically through mutual conjunctions of causes and conditions.

6. Emptiness of all things in that they are unpredictable.

Meaning that the nature of false-imagination is inexpressible, and therefore things are unpredictable.

7. Emptiness in the highest sense of Ultimate Reality.

Meaning that in the attainment of inner realization of Noble Wisdom there is no trace of habit-energy generated by erroneous conception [false-imagination].

Things are eternal because of their non-eternality

When examined carefully, things have no marks of individuality and generality, and so they have no self-nature.

Things are not eternal, because the [supposed] marks of individuality appear and disappear.

Marks of individuality and generality are seen as existing and yet known not to exist, and they are seen as going out and yet known not to be going out, and so things are never annihilated.

Things are eternal in a deep sense, because they are un-born and only mind-made.

Relatively speaking there is a constant stream of becoming — a momentary and uninterrupted change from one state of appearance to another

All things are empty of substance and of self-nature.

All things are un-born — not in the superficial sense of common birth, but in the deep sense of being born [existing] in and of themselves.

When it is recognized that what appears as the world is no more than a manifestation of mind …

Birth is seen as no-birth.

All existing objects are seen as non-existent, and un-born.

All things are seen as devoid of agent and action, and un-born.

Things are not born of being and non-being

They are only manifestations of mind itself.

They have no reality [in and of themselves].

Therefore, they have no self-nature.

People become attached to birth and death

Birth and death appear [falsely] to be fundamental and rooted in the very nature of the mind itself.

Based on the discrimination of birth and death, people discriminate the multiplicity of things [appearances] and become attached to them.

Two kinds of attachment

1. Attachment to objects as having self-nature.

From not recognizing that the world is only a manifestation of mind itself.

2. Attachment to words as having self-nature.

From clinging to names by reason of habit-energy.

These arise together.

From the belief that the birth of all things necessarily follows from the concept of being and non-being.

And from failure to recognize that this belief is itself caused by attachment to the discrimination of what arises from the mind.

When it is recognized that nothing is born and nothing passes away, the mind becomes quiet.

Causation and the arising of things

Common [erroneous] arguments regarding causation and arising.

1. Regarding causation.

The assertion that the world arises in conformity to causation.

That causation is un-born and cannot be annihilated.

And that the (nine primary) elements involved are such as creator, creation, atoms, etc. [which has been called “realism”].

2. Regarding the [apparent] arising of things.

The assertion that all things are un-born and appear to arise in conformity to (something like) causation.

And that the elements involved are such as ignorance, discrimination, attachment, deed, etc. [which has been called “nihilism”].

The correct view is that the multiplicity of objects have no reality in themselves, but are only what is seen of the mind itself.

This view transcends all concept of being and non-being, has nothing to do with birth, abiding, and destruction, and has nothing to do with existence and non-existence.

In the two arguments regarding causation and arising, the characteristic of no-birth is ascribed to the self-nature of all things, but this leads to the dualism of being and non-being.

In one sense things [or their marks] are graspable, and in another sense they are not graspable; but even so, things do not carry [show] any signs of any inherent self-nature (and in that sense they are said to be non-existent) — these supposed signs of self-nature are not seen but are only imagined.

Ignorant people cherish a kind of no-birth, …

… but that is not the view that is being presented here, which is the un-born-ness of the un-born Essence of all things.

That, nothing is made, nothing is un-made.

There is nothing in this view that has any connection with birth and death, except [recognition that there are] falsely-imagined notions about the external world.

So long as things are not seen as they truly are there is discrimination of and attachment to being and non-being, to an individualized self-nature, to explanations according to (supposed) laws of causation, and to explanations that depend upon some imagined first cause or some other un-caused first element or combination of elements [such as atoms, etc.].

Injunction regarding no-birth

When the entire universe is regarded as concatenation and as nothing else but concatenation, the mind, by its patient acceptance of the truth that all things are un-born, gains tranquility.

Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought.

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

TOC – Next: Ch. 4 – Prev: Ch. 2

When awakening is actually remembering.

Awakening is nothing new; it is only a letting-go of temporary habits. What you remember in awakening might be that you have awakened like this countless times before across unimaginable time, a broad memory of that ‘final approach’ when letting go really took hold and in seconds you noticed once again the reality of what you are.

But there is a more specific memory for many people: remembering a specific time in your life when you had awakened and noticed the exact same reality. These memories of other times are difficult to willfully recall because they have no good handles with which to call them up — no words, no images, no associations; and at the same time, they permeate the memory almost absolutely, like the cosmic background noise but too simple and too obvious to care about.

Sometimes, people recall the moment they took their first breath when they were delivered from the womb. I remember it quite clearly. It was an explosive realization that I was none of the things that had ever happened to me and also nothing that ever would happen to me.

Instead, I was only the place where all these things happened all around and in me. I was the continuity of everything and not really the content! It was hard to recall that, but later events in my life during my 20s gave me a model awareness of a possibility for which I could look. And there it was, the simplest of all memories all throughout me!

Since then, I have also been able to recall many times when I let go just spontaneously but failed to notice the significance of the view. “How silly,” I thought to myself while recalling those many moments of clarity when I just ignored or dismissed it on account of ‘more pressing business.’ But such realizations were easy to dismiss when I realized this has always been there waiting patiently for me to return, and will always be there.

Believing - Mar 9, 2026

Beliefs can be either-or, or they can be a matter of degree. Most beliefs are in the form of statements about something, while intuition and insight are often beyond words.

List the things you completely believe or believe in.

List the things you strongly believe.

List the things you believe but cannot explain.

List the things you believe but cannot describe.

List the things you believe but cannot even name.

What does belief have to do with truth and context?

What does belief have to do with relativity?

Cui bono - Mar 10, 2026

Why do schools today teach children about ‘Freedoms’ rather than about ‘Freedom’ as though it is suddenly become a collection of things that can be managed individually?

Seems to me that the meaning of the word, “Consciousness,” is a modern tower of Babel, meant to keep people from learning more about the subject. The self-appointed controllers of us all do not wish us to become more ‘conscious’ of our situation.

I noted not long ago that my 1979 dictionary lists as a definition for “Reality”, that it refers to what is permanent and unchangeable. That definition seems to have disappeared since then.

Who benefits from the rest of us having no word for what might be permanent and unchangeable about ourselves? Freedom, Reality, and Consciousness are related to one another. Cui Bono?

Story - Mar 18, 2026

It is like reaching out with your two hands and taking hold of a piece of empty nothing, a thing with no place, time or ideas in it. Taking hold of that and pulling it apart into two, these two are created out of each other. Pure, absolute relativity.

Each is made entirely out of not being the other. Now look at the flower. It is made entirely out of not being any other thing that is ever possible in any way at all. In this way, the whole universe is enfolded into it. Pure, absolute relativity.

Everything is made of everything else that it is not, and each is made of all of them. In this way, you are the empty nothing. You are the one with no place, time or ideas of your own. You are where the universe unfolds. All these things are made of you.

* Written in reply to the wonderful story,
What was pressed into you? by Sylvie Muir.

Perspective - Mar 17, 2026

Can you imagine that every life ever lived is worth living, from the best to the worst as we judge life these days?

It seems to me that in order to understand life, we must get to that point where we not only see all lives as worth living, but we also see each life and the whole of life as unimaginably beautiful, even if only in retrospect. And with that vision we must be willing to live and love every life ever lived and ever possible to live.

Granted, it may take a certain change in perspective to get there. But maybe such a perspective is not only possible but inevitable for us all.

What remains - Mar 20, 2026

“Surrender is what remains when interference ends.”

And reality is what remains when illusion ends.

And light is what remains when darkness ends.

Image

Reality And Being was completed in November 2024 and published in April 2025. In May 2025 I published the story-puzzles separately on Substack. In the past weeks I have been adding images to the individually published stories:

Ancient Chinese Puzzle [2]

Reality is hiding in plain sight; just look at it.

Being Dreams Forgetting [3]

Practice makes perfect.

Seeing a Tree [5]

How is it even possible? What is perception? What is seeing?

The Flowering of a Wonderful Law [6]

The self is nowhere to be found in any world.

The Seer and the Seen [8]

Exploring the universe of all possible experience.

We Always Do the Best We Can [9]

The wordless, thoughtless memory of limitless being.

The Magician’s Trick [10]

Allow the universe to unfold as it truly will.

The Five Paths [11]

Why are there any paths at all? How far away is reality?

Questions Children Ask [12]

You must read this twice in order to get the point!

Skill? - March 22, 2026

There was a study many years ago comparing the problem-solving skills of human and chimpanzee children. (From memory:…)

100 on each side. Each was given a Chinese puzzle of opaque drawers and sliding panels and such, in which there was a treat to be found. Both sides were shown how to solve it. From that, all 200 could solve it again for another treat.

Then a new puzzle was given, identical in appearance except this time the drawers and panels were all transparent and the treat was in a different drawer that could simply be opened directly for the treat. All 100 Chimps picked the puzzle up, examined it, and then opened the correct drawer and ate the treat. All 100 human children tried the same elaborate solution they had previously learned, and I think only 2 humans actually got to the treat after considerable frustration.

The scientific conclusion was that this proved humans were more intelligent than Chimpanzees, because humans as a collective are more skilled at mimicking than Chimpanzees are. (Note “skilled” rather than “persistent.”)

I think this illuminating study might still be on YouTube somewhere.

Thank you to those who subscribe, follow, or just drop by to read now and then.

Chapter 4 — Perfect Knowledge, or Knowledge of Reality

The five Dharmas

*{i.e., the five kinds of things that support or admit of knowledge}

1. Appearance

That which reveals itself to the (five) senses and to the discriminating-mind — i.e., [e.g.,] form, sound, odor (smell), taste, and touch [cf. Surangama Sutra]

Out of which ideas form: clay, water, jar, etc. [ideas which, in effect, bridge the gap between appearance and mere name]

2. Name

By which one says that this thing is this thing and not some other thing

3. Discrimination

Which arises by comparing and contrasting appearances and names: e.g., in saying, “This is mind (or, ‘the mind’), and these are its characteristics (or, ‘what belongs to it’)”

4. Right-Knowledge

Which consists, at least in part, in recognizing that appearance, name, and discrimination are all mutually conditioning

Recognizing that all things are empty of self-substance and un-born, and that they are only what is seen of the mind itself

5. Reality

When appearance and name are put away, and when discrimination ceases, what remains is the true and essential nature of things

But as Truth and Essence (which are the same) have no characteristics [i.e., nothing can be predicated as to their nature], they are called the “Suchness” (Tathata) of Reality

“Suchness” is the only Reality, but it is also called Truth, Mind-essence, Transcendental Intelligence, Noble Wisdom, etc.

This Dharma [or, truth] of the imageless-ness of the Essence-nature of Ultimate Reality is the (one) Dharma [or, one truth] proclaimed by all who have awakened to the true nature of Reality (i.e., all of the Buddhas)

When one understands “Suchness,” one has Perfect-knowledge and is near to attaining the Transcendental Intelligence of the Tathagatas [those who are “Such-as-they-are,” “Thus-come,” or “Thus-gone”]

Things, ideas, and Reality — in relation to the five Dharmas

The three self-natures (things, ideas, and reality), the eightfold mind-system [the five senses plus the mental — cf. Surangama Sutra — plus right-knowledge, plus Reality], and the twofold egoless-ness (of things [elements] and of persons [aggregates]) are all included in the five Dharmas

• Things, ideas, and the sixfold mind-system correspond to appearance, name, and discrimination
  *{the sixfold mind-system: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and the mind}

• The self-nature of Universal Mind and Reality (which are the same thing) correspond to right-knowledge and “Suchness”

Habit-energy is manifest in the mind-system [and consists in…]

• Discrimination of what is seen of the mind itself

• Attachment to what is discriminated

• The discrimination of [a] personality [ego-soul] and its environment [an external, objective world]

• Wherein discrimination, attachment, and the notion of an ego-soul all arise simultaneously like the sun and its light

Twofold egoless-ness — in reference to the aggregates of elements that make up personality and its environment, the (apparently) external and objective world

• The egoless-ness of things : The elements themselves all have the character of Maya — i.e., they are without ego-substance, are un-born, and have no self-nature

• The egoless-ness of persons : The aggregates of elements also all have the character of Maya in the same way as their elements

The mind-system is (held to be) the most characteristic mark of personality

• But it originates in ignorance, discrimination, desire, and deed

• Its activities are perpetuated by perceiving, grasping, and attachment

• The memory of these discriminations, desires, attachments, and deeds is stored in Universal Mind (Alaya-vijnana [— “mind-basis-of-all,” or “seed-consciousness”]) since beginningless time

• These memories are still being accumulated; they condition the appearance of personality and its environment; they bring about [apparent] change and destruction from moment to moment

• These manifestations are [as a whole] like a river, a seed, a lamp, a cloud, the wind

The Universal Mind that stores up everything

• It is like a monkey that is never at rest, a voracious fly in search of food, a fire that is never satisfied, a water wheel that never stops

• Defiled by habit-energy, it is like a magician that causes phantoms to appear and move around

Four kinds of knowledge

1. Appearance-knowledge

Which belongs to those who are addicted to the notion of being and non-being and who are frightened at the thought of being un-born

Which is produced by the concordance of the triple-combination [object, organ, and perception, in regard to the (five) senses and the mind (the sixth sense) that perceives them — cf. Surangama Sutra

It attaches itself to the multiplicity of objects

It is characterized by attainability and accumulation

It is subject to birth and destruction

It is the “knowledge” of words and discrimination

2. Relative-knowledge

Which arises from the mind’s ability to consider relations between and among appearances and words

And from the mind’s ability to arrange, combine, and analyze

And from the mind’s discursive powers of logic and imagination

It is the “knowledge” of philosophy, etc., by which the mind examines the (apparent) meaning and significance of things

3. Perfect-knowledge (Jnana)

Which arises from recognizing that all things are only what is seen of the mind itself

And from recognizing the emptiness, un-born-ness, and egoless-ness of all things

It arises in those who understand the five Dharmas, the twofold egoless-ness, and the truth of the imageless-ness of Ultimate Reality

[Yet,] Perfect-knowledge [still] differentiates the Bodhisattva stages [the stages of the “path” followed by those “beings” who have committed themselves to “attaining” Perfect-knowledge for the sake of all (sentient) beings]

It is (held to be) the pathway and entrance into the state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom

It is the “knowledge” of those

• … who are free from the dualisms of being and non-being, etc.,

• … who are also free from the dualism of no-birth and no-annihilation

• … who are free from all assertion and negation

• … who have by self-realization gained insight into the truths of egoless-ness and imageless-ness

• … who no longer discriminate the world as subject to causation

• … who regard the world as a vision and a dream, like the birth and death of a barren woman’s child, wherein there is nothing evolving and nothing disappearing

4. Transcendental-knowledge

First, there are three classes of people who cherish Perfect-knowledge

• Disciples — who differ from Masters in that they continue to cherish the notion of individuality and generality

• Masters — who no longer cherish individuality and generality, but who differ from Arhats in that they continue to cherish the notion of an ego-soul, according to which they go off by themselves into retirement and solitude

• Arhats — who arise when the error of discrimination is realized; Arhats have turned error into Truth by the ”turning-about” that takes place within the deepest consciousness [and yet they still cling to some forms of discrimination]

Thus, if one asserts that there is such a thing as Noble Wisdom, it no longer holds because any thing which is subject to predication is also subject to birth and destruction

The very assertion, “All things are un-born,” destroys the truthfulness of it, and when it is said that “all things are like a dream and a vision,” it means that in one way things are perceived and in another way they are not perceived: in ignorance they are perceived but in Perfect-knowledge they are not perceived

Injunction regarding Perfect-knowledge

All assertions and negations are thought-constructions and are un-born

Even the assertion that, “Universal Mind and Noble Wisdom are Ultimate Reality,” is a thought-construction and is un-born

As “things” there is no Universal Mind, there is no Noble Wisdom, and there is no Ultimate Reality

Thus, the insight and solitude of the wise is pure — all “things” are wiped away and even the state of imageless-ness ceases to exist

Download the complete outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The format of this PDF is different from this Substack format; it is more “outline-like.”

TOC – Next: Ch. 5 – Prev: Ch. 3

The nature of the mind

All the things in the world may be divided into [i.e., spoken of as being divided into] two classes

1. Evil out-flowings.

• The five aggregates (skandas) of elements that make up personality: form, sensation, perception, discrimination, and consciousness.

• These are variously imagined to be good or bad.

• They arise from the habit-energy of the mind-system.

2. Non out-flowing good.

• Spiritual attainments, the joys of the Samadhis (states of meditative bliss), and the fruits of the Samapattis (meditative attainments).

• These come through self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• They culminate in return to and participation in the relative world.

The nature of the mind-system

It is the source of the evil out-flowings.

It consists of the five sense-organs and their accompanying sense-minds (vijnanas) which are unified in the discriminating-mind (manovijnana) [cf. Surangama Sutra].

The discriminating-mind (also called the thinking-mind, or the intellectual-mind) combines, discriminates, and passes judgment upon the unending succession of sense-concepts that flow into it.

This discriminating process results in aversion to and desire for the various things discriminated.

Which in turn results in attachment and [the discrimination or appearance of] deed.

And thus the entire mind-system moves on continuously, with all its elements tightly bound together.

But it fails to understand that what it sees is only a manifestation of its own activity.

So, it goes on discriminating and does not remain quiet.

The activity of the mind-system —

… the three modes of activity (that can be distinguished).

1. Sense-minds functioning in their original nature.

• Grasping appropriate elements of their external world.

• Whereby sensation and perception arise everywhere and in every way.

• By which the whole field [of appearances] is apprehended like a mirror, without realization that the objects apprehended are only manifestations of the mind itself.

2. Sense-minds (as) producing effects.

• Meaning the way in which sensations [or sense-concepts] act upon the discriminating-mind to produce perceptions, attractions, aversions, grasping, deed, and habit.

3. Sense-minds (as) evolving.

• Having to do with the growth, development, and passing of the mind-system.

• Meaning that the mind-system is subject to its own habit-energy — e.g., (the arising, over time, of) the “eye-ness” of the eye with its predisposition to grasp at and become attached to form.

• In this way, the activities of the mind stir up “waves of objectivity on the face of Universal Mind”.

• Universal Mind, in turn, conditions the activities and evolution of the mind-system.

• In this manner, habit-energy builds up (between the sense-minds and the discriminating-mind), “defiles” the face of Universal Mind, and gives rise to the mind-system and [the appearance of] the whole physical body.

• As a mirror reflect forms, the senses perceive appearances which the mind gathers together, discriminates, names, and becomes attached to.

• There is no difference between sense-minds and the discriminating-mind, and yet at the same time they are mutually conditioning.

• The senses grasp at their objects, and in doing so the structure of the senses [and the sense-organs] changes through the mind’s continuous activity.

The activity of the mind-system —

… three divisions of its mental activity or “mentation” (that can be distinguished).

1. In connection with attachment to [individual] objects and ideas.

• Attachment derived from discrimination, particularly the discrimination of the mind from its mental processes, the acceptance of [specific, or apparently “clear”] ideas as being real, and attachment to those ideas.

• Thus arriving at a variety of false judgments regarding multiplicity, individuality, value, etc.

• And grasping at these ideas, etc., and perpetuating its habit-energy.

2. In connection with general ideas.

• Such as (color,) warmth, fluidity, motility, and solidity (cf. Surangama Sutra), as characterizing things.

• Holding on to these ideas, etc..

• Giving rise to proposition, reason, definition, illustration, etc.

• Thus leading to the assertion of relative-knowledge, and confidence in the ideas of birth, self-nature, and an ego-soul.

3. In examining the validity of these general ideas.

• Meaning the intellectual act of examining conclusions about general ideas in regard to their validity, significance, and truth.

• This faculty leads to understanding and right-knowledge, and points the way to self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Ego-personality and its relationship to the mind-system

First, the (presumed) self-nature of the five grasping aggregates ...

... of elements that make up personality — (which are empty, unborn, and without self-nature).

1. Form.

• Belonging to whatever is made of the so-called primary elements, whatever they may be.

• The other four aggregates are without form or marks, and ought properly not to be considered as distinct from one another in that they merge together imperceptibly.

• They are like space (itself) which cannot be divided except in imagination; and unlike things (which have the appearance of being, marks, perceivability, abode, work, etc.).

• These four are beyond reason and beyond the dualism of existence and non-existence.

• Together, they constitute what is called the mortal-mind, and are even more Maya-like and dream-like than things, and they (attachment to them) are obstacles to self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

2. Sensation.

3. Perception.

4. Discrimination.

5. Consciousness.

These five are the basis for the ego-soul and the ground of its desires and self-interests, …

… and they should be given up in favor of the truth of imageless-ness and solitude.

Universal Mind and its relation to the lower mind-system

The lower-mind …

… is composed of the sense-minds and their centralized discriminating-mind.

The external world is a manifestation of this lower-mind, and the lower-mind is given over to perceiving, discriminating, grasping at, and attachment to the Maya-like appearance of the external world.

Universal Mind …

… is pure in its essential nature, unchanged, free from impermanence, undisturbed by egoism, and unruffled by distinctions, desires, and aversions [judgments]

It is like a Great Ocean whose surface is ruffled, but whose depths are unmoved.

In itself, it is devoid of personality and all its characteristics, but because of its superficial defilement it takes a variety of appearances.

Among its variety of appearances there appears mutual functioning and conditioning, from which the mind-system arises.

Within this mutually conditioning and mutually functioning mind-system the principle of intellection becomes divided [discriminated].

The mind, the functions of mind, and the evil out-flowings of mind all take on individuation; and thus, the seven-fold gradation of mind appears, with all their interactions:

1. Intuitive self-realization [intuitive-mind].

2. Thinking-desiring-discriminating [the discriminating-mind].

3. Seeing.

4. Hearing.

5. Tasting.

6. Smelling.

7. Touching. [the five sense-minds].

But, between this (individual) discriminating-mind and Universal Mind there is the intuitive-mind (Manas)

The intuitive-mind depends upon Universal Mind for its cause and its support, and it is one with it.

• It partakes of its universality and shares in its purity.

• It also is above form and momentariness (intuition is formless and is not momentary).

• Through it the good non out-flowings emerge, are manifested, and are realized.

• It is one with Universal Mind by its participation in Transcendental Intelligence (Arya-jnana).

But it enters into relations with both the Universal Mind and the lower discriminating-mind, and it is also one with the discriminating-mind.

• It shares the experiences of the discriminating-mind and reflects upon its activities.

• It is one with the mind-system by its comprehension of differentiated knowledge (vijnana).

Intuitive-mind has no body of its own, nor any marks by which it can be differentiated (by the discriminating-mind).

While Universal Mind is its cause and support, intuitive-mind is evolved along with the notion of an ego and its characteristics, to which it clings and upon which it reflects.

Through intuitive-mind (the faculty of intuition, which involves both identity and perception), the wisdom of Universal Mind is revealed and made realizable, and like Universal Mind, (true) intuition cannot be a source of error.

The three “minds” contrasted

Discriminating-mind — is a dancer and a magician with the objective world as his stage.

Intuitive-mind — is the wise jester who travels with the magician and reflects upon his emptiness and transiency.

Universal Mind — keeps the record and knows what must be and what may be.

It is because of the activity of the discriminating-mind that error arises, the objective world evolves, and the notion of an ego-soul gets established — when it is gotten rid of the whole mind-system ceases and Universal Mind alone will remain, because getting rid of the discriminating-mind removes the cause of all error.

The cessation of the mind-system

The five sense-minds and the discriminating-mind (of the lower-mind) arise and completely end from moment to moment.

• Discrimination is the cause of their arising.

• Form and appearance are, together, the condition of their arising.

• They are created by the will-to-live and ignorance.

• The setting up of name and form produces false-imagination as to pleasure and pain which increases greed (all of which blocks the way to emancipation).

• But the lower mind-system does not really suffer pleasure and pain — these are only [falsely] imagined reactions to an imaginary objective world.

Two ways in which the mind-system may cease

1. In regard to form.

• By breaking the contact in the (chain of) interaction of form, contact, and grasping.

2. In regard to continuation.

• When the contact (in “form, contact, and grasping”) ceases, there is no continuation of the five sense-minds.

• When the five sense-minds cease, discrimination, grasping, and attachment cease.

• When discrimination, etc. cease, act, deed, and habit-energy cease, and the accumulation of karma-defilement on the face of Universal Mind ceases.

But there is no cessation of Universal Mind (or, Divine Mind), …

… which is the abode of Reality and the Womb of Truth, and which is not the cause of mortal-mind.

The perceiving function of the sense-minds does not cease —

… it is the cessation of their discriminating and naming activities which are centralized in the discriminating-mind.

And so, as a whole this is the cessation of discrimination and attachment, and the clearing away of defilements.

Cessation of the continuation aspect of the mind-system as a whole, occurs with the cessation of the discriminating-mind that supports it.

When the mortal-mind ceases, the entire world of Maya disappears, and desire disappears with it.

And this is Nirvana.

Injunction regarding the “turning-about”

Cessation of discrimination takes place with the “turning-about” that takes place in the deepest seat of consciousness.

• This entails giving up the mental habit of looking outward upon an external objective world.

• A new “habit” must be established, of becoming one with Truth itself through intuitive self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• The way is opened to this intuitive self-realization when there is true insight into the five Dharmas, the three self-natures (that they are empty, un-born, and without self-nature), and the twofold egoless-ness (of things and of persons).

• With this will come the end of pleasure and pain, of conflicting ideas, and of the disturbing interests of egoism.

• A state of tranquilization will occur, and the truths of emancipation will be fully understood, and there will be no further evil out-flowings.

  ---

Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought.

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

TOC – Next: Ch. 6 – Prev: Ch. 4

The selective and personal forms of love

are unlike the greater love that is the root and meaning of our reality.

--

So there! It is a lesson to me again and again

how beautiful these things can seem. These misadventures have I known,

such love for only this or only that and only because, … only because.

Although, I knew to just let go. I knew to give up what I imagined it to be

when every attachment was addiction, if not to the present then to expectations,

where every end was always something broken, another terrible message left unspoken.

--

Return with me here to where everything comes and goes,

to remember the light in every shape and form,

to recall what we have always known.

The past is now

Everything that has ever been exists as this one moment now,

this now that has no dimension of its own.

Dimension exists within now, and not now within dimensions.

Everything that exists is the past existing now.

The present, every present, is only an echo of all past, seen anew selectively.

The present, this individuality present in the whole, is now.

‘I Am’ is time itself, your time, the meaning of now.

‘I Am’ is now, and now is the surface of the past.

—

We are echoes not in time but of time

endlessly echoed within itself as now.

Infinity of infinities, each of us and all of us.

We are the same ‘I’ seeing itself in every moment.

In every now, you see yourself seeing yourselves as now.

Infinity of infinities! All the past is here and now, is this now, is now itself.

For everything I see, I see that I am that. I see that that is me.

Everything we see is what we are.

Each is now, now is everything. And no things now, ... no numbers now.

—

All the eyes and hearts and minds, all the ideas and feelings and sensations!

All these and everything is only each and all of us as what we are,

each as all, the infinities endlessly self-reflecting ourselves within us,

echoing across us, dimensionless,

reflecting every dimension of the advancing past that forever is.

Grains of sand and the stars in the sky,

and the whole idea of gravity and light,

and every word and the many meanings of ‘word.’

—

You, this now! Now is infinite, you are infinite, and so are we all.

As you can see if you only will, there is an infinity of us in each of us.

Is this not the best constantly getting better, more perfect in every way

as every now converges both to one and to none alone

as all that is possible in any and every way.

Allow this. Intend this.

Embrace this. Become this.

—

What do you see around you?

Do you see the light that lights your mind?

The light is now. The light is you. The light engulfs you

scattered and not scattered in each and every other

in the same now, echoes of echoes of light.

You see the light. The light sees you.

You recognize every other as you, reflected as one and two and more,

reflecting across the infinity of infinities of now the past.

Say hello to the light that you are. Feel this light say hello to you.

—

Now! Look!

See yourself in every single thing as every moment in time,

as now, as endless reflections of all that can be.

Imagine now – imagine all that can ever be.

Know now – know that this is what you are.

The future is now

The future is pure being, purely infinite possibility,

the empty theater where all else comes and goes,

where all else remains forever as past,

a past reforming and reflecting itself here

as this forever now.

--

The future is pure awareness.

Step back from all you see and know and feel.

See the world without its drifting names and forms,

without its habits and its hollow words.

Empty it is, without individuality of any kind, but

it is not a void. It is the perfection of possibility,

the inevitability of every way and every kind.

--

Look now, pure being, pure awareness that you are.

Look now at the infinite past through the lens of now.

Be the infinite possibility. Be the infinity of past.

Be now forever. Be the reality of every time.

Some people used to ask me, “How do you think about things; how do you solve problems and such”? My standard answer has been, “I just kind of stare at a blank wall inside of me until I see the answer.”

But now I think that this particular video is a much better depiction of how I think. Not with as much color, music, and animation, of course, but just the feeling of it, the movement, the endless fluid transitions caught only in glimpses, with quiet answers drifting slowly by in imaginary time.

Before we begin ….

Compared to the previous posts on Chapters 1 and 4 of this sutra, Chapter 6 may be a little more difficult to follow, even for readers who are already well-versed in non-duality. It is just my personal opinion, but I do not often see the more contemplative idea of ‘transcendental intelligence’ being discussed under non-duality which seems the inherently more practical and more gradual approach.

On the other hand, I assure you that the subject actually is present in non-duality teaching; it is just phrased differently from the way it is in the Lankavatara where the intended audience is more monastic or more rigorously trained in this kind of language. (I.e., it can take a while to get used to the Lankavatara and understand the point of it.)

So, at the end of this chapter under the heading, “Womb of Tathagatahood,” you will encounter some very strong assertions about the nature of “He who by the path of knowledge has come at the real essentials of things.” These assertions may seem idealistic and exaggerated if not fanciful at times.

These are to be understood from the perspective of those who are already well-acquainted with the concept of transcendental intelligence; and they do not (necessarily) reflect the expectations of those who just seek basic understanding of the idea. If you do not understand these unusual assertions, then for the time-being simply take them as euphemism or metaphor. In that way, with a little imagination you might find them very interesting after all. Just try to imagine yourself seeing your world in this way, perhaps focusing on your own understanding of non-duality or spirituality. But do not try to imagine seeing someone else in the world about whom you would say such things as these!

Chapter 6 — Transcendental Intelligence

The nature of Transcendental Intelligence

It is the inner state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom

*{Noble Wisdom: the Truth that is beyond reasoning and ordinary understanding, and is realizable only in the inmost sense of being and awareness}

It is realized suddenly and intuitively, as the “turning-about” that takes place in the deepest seat of consciousness.

It neither enters nor goes out, like the moon seen in water.

It is not subject to birth or destruction, has nothing to do with combination or concordance, is devoid of attachment and accumulation, and transcends all dualism.

Four things to remember

Words

Employed to express meaning.

Dependent upon discrimination and memory as their cause.

Dependent upon the use of sounds, letters, etc. by which meanings are transferred.

Which are only symbols that may or may not clearly, fully, or sufficiently express intended meaning.

Which may be understood differently than intended.

Which are neither different nor non-different from meaning.

Meanings

Which are neither different nor non-different from words.

Which are illuminated by words as things are by a lamp — i.e., through word-discrimination.

But through which Bodhisattvas can enter into the meaning of the teachings of the Tathagatas, and through that meaning enter into self-realization of Noble Wisdom, which is free from word-discrimination.

*{Bodhisattbas: seekers of Noble Wisdom.}
*{Tathagata: “the one thus come,” “He who by the path of knowledge has come at the real essentials of things.”}

Therefore, in order to “attain” Noble Wisdom, literal meaning of words is to be avoided, as is the belief that words and meanings agree, especially in regard to such matters as Nirvana, un-born-ness, the five Dharmas, etc.

*{Dharma: What supports or admits of knowing; cf. Chapter 13, The five Dharmas.}

Else, one becomes (deeper) entangled in assertions and refutations that go on multiplying.

Teachings

That meaning is not different from words or else words could not express meaning.

That meaning is different from words in that words are subject to birth and death and are dependent upon letters and meaning, while meaning is apart from existence and non-existence, has no substratum, and is un-born.

So, Truth (which has meaning) is beyond words.

Yet words can and sometimes do conform to meaning and Truth.

Words are subject to interpretation by individual minds, but meaning and Truth are not; so, one must not become attached to words, because even the best of words are subject to imperfect functioning of the discriminating-mind.

One must not become attached to the pointing finger, nor to those who are clever with words, nor to those who display “much learning.”

Noble Wisdom

Which does not belong to materialism and is not reached by philosophical knowledge; e.g., it is not reached by imagining things which are of merely worldly interest and enjoyment, which appear in the aggregates of personality, and which give rise to suffering; e.g., ….

• The coming and going of the mind-system,

• Vanishing and appearing,

• Solicitation,

• Attachment,

• Intense affection,

• Hypotheses and theories [assertions and refutations],

• An abode,

• A sense-concept,

• Atomic attraction,

• Organism,

• Growth,

• Thirst, grasping.

Where nothing remains but the solitude of Reality.

Where the true egoless-ness of things [and persons] is understood, and where discrimination ceases to assert itself.

Which is the Dharma and is Transcendental Intelligence, transcending all discrimination, reasoning, and dualism.

The Womb of Tathagatahood

*{Tathagatahood: Buddhahood, of “the one thus come,”  the character of one who by the path of knowledge has come at the essential nature of things.}

Which is not the same as the Divine Atman [‘True Self’] which is also claimed to be eternal, inscrutable, unchanging, and imperishable.

But which is Tathagatahood in the sense of Dharmakaya, Ultimate Oneness, Nirvana, emptiness, un-bornness, un-qualified-ness, and devoid of will-effort.

*{Dharmakaya: the unmanifested, "inconceivable" (acintya) aspect of a Buddha out of which Buddhas arise and to which they return after their dissolution; reality in and of itself.}
*{Nirvana: emptiness (of own-reality and own-being); mutually-dependent origination; absolute relativity.}

This doctrine of Tathagatahood is taught in order to help those who seek Noble Wisdom (i.e., the Bodhisattvas) to lay aside their fears regarding egoless-ness, non-discrimination, and imageless-ness, and to awaken them from their clinging to notions of transcendental personality as being something self-existent.

One who seeks Noble Wisdom (a Bodhisattva) is said to have grasped the teachings when, all alone and in a lonely place, by means of his Transcendental Intelligence, his mind unfolds by perceiving, thinking, meditating, and abiding in the practice of concentration until he attains the “turning-about” at the source of habit-energy [i.e., in the deepest seat of consciousness].

• Thereafter, he will lead a life of excellent deeds,

• His mind will concentrate on the state of Buddhahood,

• He will become thoroughly conversant with the Noble Truth of self-realization,

• He will become a perfect master of his own mind,

• He will be like a gem radiating many colors,

• He will assume bodies of transformation,

• He will enter into the minds of all to help them,

• He will become established in the perfect Transcendental Intelligence of the Tathagatas.

Transcendental Intelligence (Arya-jnana) is not Noble Wisdom (Arya-prajna) itself, but only an intuitive awareness of it.

• Noble Wisdom is a perfect state of imageless-ness,

• It is the womb of “Suchness,”

• It is the all-conserving Divine Mind (Alaya-vijnana) which in its pure Essence forever abides in perfect patience and undisturbed tranquility.

  ---

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Thank you also to those who just stop by occasionally to read something.

You are why I am here.

— —

Download a PDF of the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra.

TOC – Next: Ch. 7 – Prev: Ch. 5

The nature of self-realization — attaining Transcendental Intelligence

Transcendental Intelligence arises when the intellectual-mind reaches its limit

I.e., when the processes of mentation (based on particularity, discrimination, and judgment) are transcended by appeal to a higher faculty of cognition.

I.e., if there is such a higher faculty.

And there is such a faculty in the intuitive-mind (Manas), which is the link between the intellectual-mind and Universal Mind [cf. Chapter 5].

The intuitive-mind

Is not individualized, as is the intellectual-mind.

It has direct dependence upon Universal Mind.

It does not give information that can be analyzed and discriminated.

It gives self-realization through identification.

The “understandings” that lead to self-realization

These [it would seem] are necessary but not sufficient in themselves [because there remains the necessity for a “turning-about” in the deepest seat of consciousness, which is different from “understanding”].

1. Understanding that all things are only manifestations of the mind itself

That this world is only a complex of mental activities.

That it is devoid of selfness and its belongings.

That there are no strivings, comings, or goings.

That it is manifested and imagined as real only by habit-energy that has been accumulating from beginningless time, through memory, false-imagination, false-reasoning, and attachment to the multiplicity of objects, all in relation to ideas of body-property-and-abode [i.e., body, that which belongs to it, and that it appears to “abide in” an external world].

2. Discarding the notions of birth, abiding, and disappearance (destruction)

Recognizing that all things are as forms seen in a vision and a dream.

That all things are empty of substance, un-born, and without self-nature.

That all things exist only because of a complex network of causation that arises from discrimination and attachment, and from which arises the mind-system and all its belongings and evolvements.

3. Understanding the egoless-ness of things and persons

That one’s own mind and personality are also mind-constructed.

That these are also empty of substance, un-born, and egoless.

And thereby, to enter into the truth of imageless-ness.

4. Having a true conception of what constitutes self-realization of Noble Wisdom

That it is not comparable to sense-mind perceptions.

Neither is it comparable to any cognition of the discriminating intellectual-mind [nor to its apparent functioning as a whole].

• Sense-mind and intellectual-mind presuppose a difference between self and not-self; therefore, the knowledge that they present is characterized by [discrimination of the supposed marks of] individuality and generality.

It is based on identity and Oneness.

And there is nothing to be discriminated or predicated concerning it.

To enter into it, one must be free of all presuppositions about and attachments to things, ideas, and selfness.

The characteristics of deep attachments to existence, and how to become detached from existence.

In trying to understand the significance of things by means of words and discrimination, there arise deep-seated attachments to existence

E.g., to signs of individuality, causation, being and non-being, birth and death, and doing and not-doing, and to the habit of discrimination.

Greed, anger, and infatuation are especially deep-seated attachments

They are based on lust, fear, and pride.

Which are in turn based on discrimination and desire, which is procreative.

Discrimination and desire are accompanied by excitement, avariciousness, love of comfort, and desire for eternal life.

From these there arises the succession of rebirths and the continuation of attachments.

But, because these attachments are based on things that are non-existent, they can be broken off such that no sign of them remains

[This is the same as recognizing the truth.]

The mind-system depends upon and attaches itself ...

... to [its own discrimination of] the triple-combination [of object, organ, and perception], with which it works in unison (or in concordance).

And so, it functions incessantly.

It is the cause of a deeply-felt and continuous assertion of the will-to live.

But, when the triple-combination ceases to exist, there is a triple emancipation and no further arising of any combination.

When the existence and non-existence of the external world are recognized as arising from the mind itself, this is (for the Bodhisattva) ….

• To be prepared to enter into the state of imageless-ness.

• To see therein the emptiness that characterizes all discrimination and all attachments that result from discrimination; and to see therein, no signs of attachment nor of detachment.

• To see no one in bondage nor in emancipation, except those who cherish bondage and emancipation.

• And to see that in all things there is no ”substance” to be taken hold of.

Those who cherish discriminations attach themselves to their discriminations, enwrap themselves and others in them, and become charmed by them.

But from the view-point of [the] solitude [of Reality] all things are seen as abiding in solitude, there are no signs of attachment or detachment, and there is no evolving of discrimination

To understand the [significance of the] distinction between attachment and detachment ...

... is to have the skillful means necessary to avoid attachment (e.g., to words).

And accordingly, to grasp the meaning behind words.

And, being free from attachment to words, to establish oneself where there will be a ”turning-about” in the deepest seat of consciousness by means of which one will attain self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

There are two ways to consider self-realization

1. The teachings about it.

• Which are there for those who are so inclined.

• Which make use of skillful means and expedients.

• Which are intended to awaken a true perception of the Dharma that sustains things [cf. Chapter 1 The five Dharmas].

2. The realization of it.

• Which is with the inner consciousness.

• Which is an inner experience with no connection to the lower-mind and its discriminations.

• Which shines with its own clear light to reveal the error of mind-constructed teachings and to guide one to the realm of good non out-flowings.

  ---

The One Vehicle

Which has been said to characterize the attainment of inner self-realization of Noble Wisdom [cf. Lotus Sutra]

Still, those (the Bodhisattvas) who seek Noble Wisdom should retire to a secluded place and exert themselves without relying upon anyone else

This solitude is the characteristic feature of the inner attainment of self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

It is also called the One Vehicle, not because it is the One Vehicle, but because it is only in solitude that one is able to recognize and realize the path of the One Vehicle.

As long as the mind is distracted there can be no culmination as regards the various vehicles; and it is only when the mind is alone and quiet that it can forsake discrimination (of the outer world) and seek realization of an inner realm where there is no vehicle and no one who rides in it.

Talk of three vehicles is only to carry the ignorant — [here] there is no [or little] talk of the One Vehicle because there is no way by which earnest disciples and masters [who conceive themselves to be of the “lesser vehicles”] can reach Nirvana unaided [i.e., without the sustaining power of the Tathagatas].

• They must [first] be trained in [that] meditation which is necessary to realize emancipation.

• Their habit-energy of karma, and the hindrances of discriminative knowledge and human passion [the “twofold hindrance”] often prevent them from accepting the twofold egoless-ness (of things [elements] and of persons [aggregates]) and the inconceivable transformation-death.

• When all habit-energy is gone and when the twofold egoless-ness is realized, then there will be no intoxication from the Samadhis [the blissful meditations] and there will be an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings.

• When there is an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings, one is able to gather up all the requisites for attainment of the self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• And so, the triple vehicle is taught, not the One Vehicle [in order to appeal to those who conceive themselves to be in the triple vehicle — cf. Lotus Sutra].

But in reality there are no vehicles at all, and therefore one speaks of the One Vehicle.

• And the full recognition of the One Vehicle has never been attained by either earnest disciples or by masters, or even by the great Brahma, but only by the Tathagatas themselves. [I.e., By “The ones thus-come or thus-gone.”]

• This is why it is known as the One Vehicle [— because there is only the Ultimate Reality of Oneness].

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The steps that lead one toward self-realization of Noble Wisdom

One must begin by recognizing that the external world is only a manifestation of the activities of the mind itself, ...

... and that the mind grasps these activities as an external world only because of the habit of discrimination and false-reasoning.

So, get into the habit of looking at things truthfully.

Recognize that the world has no self-nature, that it is un-born, that it is like a vision and a dream, like the moon reflected in water, a cloud, a wheel seen in the motion of a revolving firebrand, an imaginary castle.

Realize that mind in its Essence-nature has nothing to do with discrimination or causation.

Do not listen to talk based on imaginary terms and qualifications.

Understand that Universal Mind in its pure Essence is a state of imageless-ness.

• It is only because of the accumulation of defilements upon the face of Universal Mind that body-property-and-abode appear to be its manifestations.

• But in its pure nature it is unaffected by and does not affect such changes as rising, abiding, and destruction.

• These things come and go with the awakening of the notion of an ego-soul and its conscious mind.

Desist from all discrimination and erroneous reasoning about such notions as the elements that make up the aggregates of personality and its sense-world, or about such ideas as causation, rising, abiding, and destruction.

Exercise yourself in the discipline of meditation (dhyana) that leads to the self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Regarding meditation (dhyana)

Retire to a quiet and solitary place and remember that life-long habits of discrimination cannot be easily or quickly ended.

There are four kinds of meditation (dhyana)

1. As practiced by the ignorant.

• Following the example of others, but not understanding the purpose.

• “Still-sitting” with a vacant mind.

• Or, despising the body and seeing it as full of suffering and impurity yet still clinging to the notion of an ego, and seeking emancipation merely by ceasing to think.

2. Examination of meaning.

• Perceiving the error in ideas such as self, other, and both.

• Realizing the twofold egoless-ness.

• Devoting one’s meditation to examining the significance of egoless-ness and to the differentiations of the Bodhisattva stages.

3. Taking “Suchness” (Tathata) as its object.

• Or, taking Oneness or the Divine Name as its object.

• Fully recognizing the twofold egoless-ness and the imageless-ness of Tathata [“thus-ness”].

• Yet, still clinging to the notion of an ultimate Tathata.

4. The meditation of the Tathagatas.

• Entering the stage of Tathagatahood.

• Abiding in the triple bliss that characterizes self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• Devoting oneself to the accomplishment of incomprehensible works for the sake of the emancipation of all beings.

• Transcending and forgetting all lesser things and ideas.

• A perfect state of imageless-ness where Tathagata and Tathata are merged in perfect Oneness.

• Where the Buddhas from all the Buddha-lands come together to rest shining hands upon one’s forehead to welcome a new Tathagata.

Thank you to all who have subscribed to my articles, and to those who follow my notes and comments. Thank you also to those who just stop by occasionally to read something.

— —

Download a PDF of this Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra.

Download a PDF of Reality and Being (the preferred format), or read it here on Substack.

* In regard to the intuitive-mind (Manas), you might find it interesting to compare this to Reality and Being, Chapter 13 - Knowing and Intuiting. Many of he ideas in Reality and Being were inspired by this Sutra.

TOC – Next: Ch. 8 – Prev: Ch. 6

It happened one afternoon near the sea, that for a moment I was only an ocean of light.

I was the light, a place, thingless and nameless without form or forms. An ocean rippled-through with faint threads among color, sound, and simple sensation. Into this ocean there slowly poured the memories of what I’d known before, now recognizing the things that I know again and will remember again some other day.

In retelling it this way, it is only an “I” playing with words the way words play with “me.”

Karma

Karma is the desire to know and remember all the consequences of attachment. It is by this desire that being calls forth all experiences. It is how the universe infinitely multiplies what it knows of itself: as everything that has ever been and that can ever be.

In myth, “this world is on fire; it burns with the fire of desire.”

In this, there is a place called Kurukshetra, a level plain upon the earth. One day before the days of Iron when this was first told, you were playing among many others and there was a little contest among us. We played the game of who could perform the best sacrifice: who among us could return the most of what we have been given to the ocean from which we came?

You were the one called ‘All Pervasive’ (Vishnu). You won that ancient contest. You set yourself on fire with pure desire. To all who read this: Know that this fire is every desire that burns within you, even right now as you search among these words.

This was your desire: To know and remember all the consequences of every attachment; to know and remember all possible experiences in every life in every place and every time. To know and to love.

You are me and I am you. You and I created both of us by Karma, by attachment to the word and idea of ‘individual’ (separated). You and I are separated by attachment to this notion of individuality and to notions of Time and Place, a consequence of which is that it will seem that we are not the same one.

Yes, it looks far more complex and final than that! But appearances are not what they appear to be (and neither are they anything else).

Who do you believe you are? What do you think you are you? Do you imagine yourself to be an independent individual? You are never what you think you are.

Individuals

Are we each endlessly re-incarnate into new individualities so that Karmic desires can be reconciled through mere reward and punishment?

Look within yourself. There is no need for such rough sleight of hand.

You are being itself, entering into the world of individuality by your desire to know and remember all possible experiences of being. Can you remember when you wanted to remember everything?

Question your thinking mind. Individuality is only another ephemeral experience.

Deep within yourself at the seat of your pure awareness, you already know that all these illusions of individuality will in time dissolve. Is it not divinely ironic that these things called “individuals” are products of only feigned division?

You are neither divided nor undivided. The words “divided” and “undivided” simply do not apply to you. These oppositions of You and I and One or Many, arise naturally within the universe solely by their relation to one another as opposites in a scheme. You attach yourself to this scheme by habitual repetition of childhood words and other gestures. But in reality, you are far, far beyond this scheme. You are more than the scheme, you are the place, Kurukshetra, where schemes unfold.

But how would you know this?

No Individuals

The truth can become clear by simply recalling it within you. I remember it and therefore so can you, because I am you and you are me. This is truly what you really are: the self-aware reality of everything that can ever be.

This distinction between you and me is only another thing to which we can be attached, because the wider distinction between the knower and the known is also only a thing to which we can be attached.

Here in this same mythical Kurukshetra, you, the All Pervasive, appeared to Arjuna on the spiritual battlefield in the form of the avatar, Krishna. There, you explained to Arjuna in his moral suffering, how he and you appeared both different and also not different, using simple words already inscribed in your shared heart:

I and you are one, one within two, and two within one. In this light, the truth of Karma becomes transparently clear. We desired this to be so, because we wanted to know and remember all of this in every possible way.

—

* Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita by Krishna Prem (The Internet Archive): Ch. XIII the Yoga of distinction between the field and the knower of the field (source page)

Love

I talk about universal love, by which I simply mean pure love, in the way being knows itself as the self of reality and the limitless awareness. The all-pervasive light purely loves absolutely everything exactly the way it is and the way it unfolds. I would defer to Dante, Paradiso and the last few cantos of Purgatorio. I read those while in Florence. I remember what it was about and what the point of it was; but from the time I read it until today, I cannot remember what he wrote, other than it was the divine love of all things everywhere.

As for parent-child love, I think of that as unconditional love, by which I mean that there are no conditions on that love, but also that it does not necessarily extend to many other beings; it is also a restricted kind of love, in that while the child or parent may love unconditionally in one way, they may also hate and attack aspects of the other in another way. So, this is a material form of love rather than divine or universal.

Personal love is different from those in some ways and similar in others. It is not universal; it is selective. Nor is it necessarily unconditional, although it is more like parental love in that today I continue to love unconditionally some people in my life to whom I was very close, but who deceived me or cut me off from them in a very harsh way. Likewise, I still unconditionally love people whom I cut off from my life, sometimes harshly because I thought I had to do it that way. The difference here is that the commitment to them is not the same anymore, because it seemed things had to be changed.

There is a lot of each of these three kinds in each of the others, and each may occur with any other.

Parental love and personal love can be ended in many ways, and ending it is often painful, more painful in my memory than birth, physical injury, or addiction.

But the only pain from universal love is to forget, deny or ignore it, and that is instantly forgiven simply by recognizing it again.

Comment peut-on aimer une personne que nous n’aimons pas? C’est la différence entre l’amour dans l’absolu et celui dans le relatif.

[How can we love a person we don’t love? This is the difference between love in the absolute and love in the relative.] — a comment from Martine Castonguay

Yes, this is the difference: absolute / relative.

I remember times past when I felt I hated someone, a time when I treated them badly or they treated me badly. In retrospect, now more awake to the nature of reality, I see that I was both the hater and the hated. It was all relative, all a consequence of desire and habit.

That time is now past, and here I am now, still the same now, while those feelings are no more except in memory. Now the past is beautiful beyond all description and all reasoning. In that, because the present is made entirely of the past, the present becomes beautiful again beyond all description and reasoning.

Absolute relativity: at the deepest core of our being, we are reality itself, neither one nor many but absolutely what is; and everything ever experienced is only the many forms of what that means in relation to each other and to the absolute.

“When Pain is taken as Failure” — a post by Heloisa Moura

I have been in immense pain a few times, but I knew what it was and did not suffer. On the other hand I have suffered horribly sometimes in ways I thought beyond enduring when I could find no pain at all except the awareness of broken love. But in the end, looking back, everything is unimaginably beautiful.

“Creation and awareness are one act.” — Anonymous

The endless memories of colors and forms of things flow out into the light to lay down in the mind’s eye the simple perception of this one sky.

“Who Am I in the Dream?” Am I only a dream of a sleeping dreamer? What is my desire if not to dream all this, to know all this, to live all this?

Is it not to remember and love every moment of every possible life?

Words

“You say a priestess and a witch, these are supposed to mean opposite things. But I understand you.

The words we use, their meanings are now blurred. But I understand you.

Can’t you see, sensitive creative humans, We’re already communicating outside the words…” — Marwa Mabrouk

A very insightful and significant observation. How does communication happen? Words, tone, and gesture cannot possibly be enough to support what we feel is happening.

Is it a mechanism among us? Or is it a oneness containing us all?

Two very different questions:

How do people agree on what is true and what is not true?

How do people discover what is true and what is not true?

Two ways of knowing: Knowing-What and Knowing-That. With The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Two ways of experiencing: Experiencing and Representing. With Universal Truth and Universal Context.

“The Myth of Karmic Justice -- Why growth doesn’t require a moral universe.” — Archetype Alchemy

From the perspective of being in and of itself, I view Karma as the desire to experience all the consequences of attachment.

Thus, if I harm someone, then I am also the one who is harmed, because I am exactly the same I in every being.

“To attach is to bind oneself to consequence, to consent—often unknowingly—to feel every reverberation of that bond. Karma, then, is not moral bookkeeping but experiential inevitability: the universe honoring desire by allowing it to exhaust itself through lived result.” — AA

Yes. Not only is there the way that individuals attach to things, but there is also the attachment to individuality (and many other forms of attachment).

Life is being in and of itself, desiring to know individuality in all its forms.

Thank you to all my subscribers and followers, and also to others who sometimes stop by to read. You are why I write.

Jan 21 2026

If you want to, you can remember being born. It isn’t easy to do until you remember there are no words or other ‘handles’ with which to pull up the memory. It is more pervasive than that, more subtle because of the impact it had at the time. Because you have lived with it for so long, you are well-practiced in ignoring it. But the clues are there. Once you notice, you will see how easy it is after all.

Then the problem is to remember time before you were born and then time even before that time, up to before time.

Jan 27 2026

When we see the body from the inside out, attuned only to the senses and not to the mind,

then there is no recognizing, no silent pronouncements, no seeing things, no things to be seen out there;

scarce difference among the senses, no concerns, no anticipation, no moods.

…. for about three seconds. …

And then all that recognizing and such fills in between the near invisible lines in the colored light.

Memories populate the attention, now with words again.

Words, … “now I remember,” ... “of course,”

as the mind tries to take credit for it all, but a lot more humbly this time.

Jan 27 2026

Jesus was misinterpreted. Instead of “Thy will be done” implying some future moment - what he really meant was “thy will is being done.” In each moment. Unconditionally. – Shiv Sengupta

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Perhaps Similar to “believe in me” in the same sense as “I just believe in me.” (John Lennon, i.e., that ‘I Am’).

“Created in God’s Image” in the sense that God has within him an image of the world, and your image of yourself is a part of that image.”

“The knowledge of Good and Evil” in the sense of habitually discriminating between what is relatively good and relatively bad, as opposed to directly knowing the absolute goodness of limitless being.

Jan 27 2026

Peace. If you had true peace, would that not be enough? -- Krishnamurti

Jan 27 2026

“One flower, all the beauty we can bear.” – Sophia Schweitzer

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It is characteristic of awakening that the world now is unimaginably beautiful and impossible not to love in every respect and every detail, no matter how good or bad things may have seemed in the past. This is impossible to grasp until you notice for yourself that it has always been so, that it will always be so, and that this is what you truly are. Part of this beauty and love is the awareness that sooner or later everyone remembers this simple and obvious truth.

Jan 27 2026

I know this impulse: “to escape.” There was once a terrible time when I could not escape, could not fight, and could not play dead. But in that moment I remembered something about myself and about my being there. I remembered that “I” was not the one who was there, I was the place where all this was happening. And with that, I survived.

Ultimately I made it OK that it happened as it did. Today, this memory reminds me of a particular bird. His name is Nesbit.

Nesbit is (or perhaps was) a Peregrine Falcon who was said to have an extraordinary personality. Gentle, intelligent, cooperating, but also firm in his demands and requirements. In some ways he is the embodiment of inability to escape, to fight, or to play dead in a stressful situation. In similar but traumatic situations, this results in injury to the Sympathetic Nervous system.

Nesbit donated one drop of blood and one feather to the creation of the Homeopathic remedy, Falco Pregrinus, that is often used today to treat such traumatic stress injuries to the nervous system. Today, nearly all doses of this remedy are made from that donation.

Jan 28 2026

I prefer not to use the word, “consciousness,” because it has so many different and often incompatible, or at least quite vague, meanings. There is a confusion in its use, between the content and the container or field of that content; and it is not clear in that confusion what “unconscious(ness)” refers to if anything at all.

I prefer instead, “Awareness,” referring to the place where Experiences occur. I equate awareness with being in and of itself; and I also equate it with reality as the place where the universe appears and not just “enduring things” that arise within the universe.

So, now I have a way to say this to people: “You are awareness itself at the deepest core of your being; you are reality itself, wherein all worlds come and go.”

Jan 28 2026

Time has for me been one of the most interesting puzzles since my earliest years. Only slowly (but in steps) did I realize that everything everywhere is made of memories. Then, in one of those moments in which the past once again reorganized and inverted inside-out, time became timeless.

Jan 28 2026

“Art is not born from perfection, but from the need to transmit. Not to impress, but to touch. Not to prove skill, but to share inner truths.” -- Klea

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Some have said that art is truly valued to the extent in which it exhibits or indicates intrinsic value. Reality, Being, Awareness: Aren’t these where intrinsic value truly is?

I think of reality, being, awareness, and some other ideas and words as different words for the same thing, each simply naming different aspects of that thing, like naming different facets of one jewel. I think of art as an attempt to indicate or point out that thing. This idea of intrinsic value and art is borrowed from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement.

You ask if the value of art is tied to reality etc. that art allows us to experience. Yes, but I also see it a little differently. It seems to me that the best art points out to us that we (you) are the reality, the being, and the awareness. And when we see this clearly, we see that the universe of all experiences arises within us and not we within it.

Awareness, for example, is intrinsically valuable, and at the deepest level of your being, you are awareness itself, timeless, the reality of the universe of all possible experiences.

Jan 28 2026

Krishnamurti said that he had met only two people that understood what he was saying; and he met really a lot of people. His work did not attract me to sign up to anything, but instead it just surprised me that I thought I knew what he was doing. It was similar to what I had already learned in my own way from my own life even before I thought there were such teachers and books. It wasn’t the ideas, it was the way the words were used to indicate a direction toward something that he actually did very little to describe, except for the idea of peacefulness.

One of the first things that struck me after a significant moment of clarity in my own life, was that what I learned in that moment was by its nature impossible to describe or convey to any other person in any way. Simply impossible. That impossibility is very significant. People who want something to enlighten them are misguided. They can only do it on their own, even though they will find valuable clues almost everywhere in the world.

I don’t blame people for not understanding him; and also I do not blame him for not convincing them. I think there are degrees of understanding, and I also think that no one can be made to finally understand. You can lead some people right up to the truth in certain ways, certain practices, techniques, and so forth, if they are willing to try those; but no one can make them recognize it when they are not willing to do so.

‘Never underestimate the power of denial.’ It is like some Zen people have said: It is absolutely the last thing that you would ever think to consider, no matter how obvious it is.

Jan 29 2026

From the perspective of being in and of itself, I view Karma as the desire to experience all the consequences of attachment. Thus, if I harm someone, then I am also the one who is harmed, because I am exactly the same I in every being.

Thank you for subscribing, following, or just stopping by to read something now and then. You are why I write.