This post builds on ideas from:
Essay #1, The Two Natures
Essay #2, The Superpowers of Samsara
Essay #3, The Tragedy of Samsara
Essay #4, Obscuration and Blindness
Essay #5, Brambles, Traps and Obstacles

A ridiculous conundrum

1. Our inner Goddess Samsara creates the real world of things and forms.

2. The real world of things and forms has flaws (way too much suffering).

3. We discover Dharma to correct these flaws.

4. We remember Dharma insights, as things and forms in the real world.

5. Go back to step 2.

Introduction

The Goddess Samsara deceives all sentient beings, but she saves her most devious delusions for Dharma students. Dharma students interfere with her vital work of creating the real world in order to meet Basic Human Needs. Plus, they have this insane suicidal notion of subduing her.

So naturally she defends herself. Watch out! Just when you think you’ve got her cornered — your clarity vanishes — your Dharma becomes discombobulated and nullified — suddenly you’re stumbling in the dark. And the worst part is, YOU DON’T EVEN REALIZE YOU GOT ZAPPED.

(A personal note: I’m losing my marbles. Maybe Mara’s minions are shooting me full of arrows. Maybe I’ve taken a wrong turn and this essay is bullshit. I’m sick of working on obscurations. Each editing pass drains more life energy. I hope this helps somebody.)

Boiler plate stuff →→

These essays present an understanding of Dharma tailored to Westerners and smartphone addicts. While this perspective does not contradict a traditional understanding, it omits two ideas that often mystify Westerners: reincarnation and karma. Instead, it approaches the Buddhist path through a framework of Basic Human Needs, inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications.

There are many understandings. This is just another one. Any understanding of Dharma that’s worth it’s salt leaves one calmly, firmly, on the doorstep of Practice. I hope to achieve that goal.

Why do I call the Goddess a vampire?

Calling her a vampire is pretty extreme. I call her that because:

1. Subduing her is the main challenge of the Dharma path.

2. She’s at the root of suffering.

3. She actively, purposely interferes with my Dharma progress.

4. She’s a double agent, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

5. She steals my ethics, my insights, my practice, my hopes and dreams, and uses them against me.

I can’t really blame a vampire for being a vampire; she’s just being her normal monstrous self. But us Dharma students, we get bitten and bleed. My feelings of frustration have reached the point where I’m wanting to call her ‘The Bitch’ but I’m going to try and avoid doing that. :(

A new list of needs and priorities

We inherited the Goddess and her to-do list of needs (and priorities), from billions of generations of sentient beings, all competing to survive.

Let’s refer to the Goddess’ list of needs as ‘samsaric’ needs. All sentient species from bugs to blue whales have their own list of samsaric needs, and each individual has a Goddess obsessed with fulfilling those needs.

Surprise! Surprise! As us sentient beings go about living, dying and reproducing, every once in a while, a NEW list arises. This list is similar to samsaric needs but the priorities have changed, and a mysterious new need appears. IT’S THE NEED FOR ENLIGHTENMENT! I refer to this new list of needs as ‘bodhisattva’ needs. Some would argue that bodhisattva needs are latent in all sentient beings.

So now we’ve got two lists: samsaric needs and bodhisattva needs. Sadly, samsaric and bodhisattva needs are incompatible. The Goddess Samsara seeks strategies for achieving material success in the real world. She’s in a hurry to get things done and inner peace is not a priority. Would she approve of spending a few years meditating alone in a cave? Nope.

Samsaric and bodhisattva needs have much in common. We’ve all got to survive. The most important need that they share, is the need to contribute to the wellbeing others. The Goddess is totally onboard with this. She just doesn’t like sitting around twiddling your thumbs and contemplating your navel.

How the Goddess sucks the blood out of Dharma

Samsara sees jewels emanating from Emptiness. She cannot resist stealing them in order to meet samsaric needs. The tiniest sparkle is fodder for her strategies and manipulations.

Our inner Goddess is obsessed with meeting samsaric needs. Our inner bodhisattva strives and aspires to meet bodhisattva needs. Here’s the weird thing. When samsaric needs conflict with bodhisattva needs, Samsara has the upper hand.

The Goddess devours ALL experience, including Dharma experience. She’s looking for anything that might help her to meet a samsaric need. And if she finds something that might help her meet a samsaric need, that is what she saves into the Inner Library. And that is what creates our real world. And that is what we remember.

(If this isn’t making sense please read the previous essays.)

Samsara — does not care — about precious Dharma insights. Our inner bodhisattva might work like crazy to invite a lovely Dharma insight. The Goddess examines the insight, finds way it might meet a samsaric need, and that is what she saves into the Inner Library. And that creates our real world. And that is what we remember and how we will think about the Dharma insight. Our Dharma experience which arose from meeting bodhisattva needs, is now remembered as a strategy for meeting SAMSARIC needs.

It sounds crazy. Our inner bodhisattva stumbles across a diamond, and then our inner Goddess transforms the diamond into a happy pill or a thing to impress people. She’s completely pulled the rug out from under Dharma. We have this vague recollection of the diamond, which we forget in the excitement of finding a pill which will get us attention and respect and relieve depression.

for example

(Trust me, knowing this craziness is happening does not stop it from happening. AND IT CAN HAPPEN IN SECONDS!!!)

First second: I’m on the porch practicing, and I’m flooded with the beauty of the junk in the yard.

Second second: My inner Goddess digests the experience. She thinks to herself, ‘That felt good. Let’s save it for a happy pill that we can take the next time we’re depressed.’

Third second: I turn to go back inside the house, feeling some sadness. My inner Goddess jams the new happy pill down my throat (just like with a pet). Does it work? NO!

Now we’ve got TWO Dharmas!

Yep. I call them ‘true Dharma’ and ‘delusional Dharma’. We experience true Dharma during practice. Samsara then digests the true Dharma with an eye to meeting samsaric needs, and poops out delusional Dharma.

True Dharma

True Dharma is our moment-to-moment struggle for Emptiness, Bodhicitta, Renunciation, and Enlightenment. Practicing! Concentration! Meditation! Visualization. Intense focus on the true nature of existence. Warm inexpressible sparkling Clear-light…

Delusional Dharma

Delusional Dharma consists of dharmic things and forms in the real world. Looking outward we see things like statues, gompas, monasteries, sanghas, gurus, rituals, lineages, organizations, views, books and so on. Looking inward we see things like memories of insights and practices, relationships with teachers and peers, retreat memories, hopes, plans, etc.

Delusional Dharma is vast and beautiful. It meets many samsaric needs: community, identity, status, connection, creative expression, leadership, CONTRIBUTION… It’s an excellent foundation for community and spirituality. It’s a Dharma that’s made to share. It’s a stepping stone or springboard into true Dharma. So much good stuff.

BUT IT’S A DELUSION. IT’S EMPTY. It ain’t the real deal. It’s a lovely story. And once you’re buried up to your eyeballs in it, it’s very hard to get out.

For me personally, no matter how far along the Path I travel, I always always always start, by craving, grasping, and clinging to delusional Dharma. I’m doing it now, as we speak. I may correct things later, but that’s how I always start. :(

Am I STUCK in delusional Dharma?

IT’S NOT OBVIOUS WHEN WE’RE STUCK THERE. We’re designed to be blind! (I don’t think the blindness goes away until we accept the fact that we are ALWAYS blind.) So how do we tell if we’re lost, blind and floundering in delusional Dharma?

1. We’ve given up on practice, or we never started.

2. Practices don’t deliver a payoff: no insights, no Clear-light.

3. Our Dharma is full of boredom, hopelessness or disappointment. Like what’s the point? Our Dharma is stuck in the mud; we keep spinning the wheels and get nowhere.

4. We have a DEEP craving for ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘progress’, or DEEP disgust for our very own Dharma stupidity.

5. We feel the buzz of power and success. Good work. Happy students. Veneration. Everything is a little too wonderful and happy. We’ve dipped our toe into the God Realm.

It’s easier for a newbie with a beginner’s mind. But if you’re advanced, or god forbid a teacher, well then you’re f**ked. By this point the Goddess has a death grip on your Dharma. Maybe do years of retreat, millions of prostrations, or sit down in a grove and either die or … Maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe not.

If you feel confident, if Dharma makes sense, if you understand the Right View and the Path from beginning to end, if you know what you’re after and what to avoid, in those cases — you are swimming in the real world of delusional Dharma. You’ve been scammed by that sneaky bitch Samsara. Ha!

We might as well laugh about it. We’re always having to go back to square one. And where is square one? Gibberish, poetry, play, curiosity, and innocent practice from the soul (offspring of that bodhisattva need for Enlightenment).

Suffering and delusional Dharma

Explanations and Views are Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

The Three Jewels, Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, Five Precepts, Five Aggregates, Twelve Links, Four Immeasurables, Six Perfections, Sutras, Realms... It’s such a beautiful landscape. It’s a vast map of thousands of stepping stones into true Dharma. We could join the legions of scholars who spend their lives studying, teaching and commenting on it. That would be a good thing.

I need a name for this enormous cosmic Buddhist map-thing-presentation. How about the Bodhi-verse.

true Dharma

Is the delusional Bodhi-verse a problem?

1. The size and complexity of the Bodhi-verse can crush the spirit. It squashes beginners into hopeless immobility.

2. Studying the Bodhi-verse masquerades as engaging with true Dharma.

3. The Bodhi-verse is like a thousands fingers pointing at true Dharma. Pretty soon we become students of pointing fingers.

4. True Dharma is uncomfortable because it destroys our conventional sense of the real world. It’s easier to float from finger to lovely finger in the Bodhi-verse than face that uncomfortable truth.

5. The essential lessons of the Bodhi-verse might well exist in your fingernail, or a salt shaker. The vastness and majesty of the Bodhi-verse blinds us to this possibility.

Explanations and Views are beautiful stories on the shelves of the Inner Library. They are EMPTY. They are nothing more than invitations to examine our experience. False explanations and Views are not heresy, just more invitations. Realizing that the false is false, is just as important as realizing the truth.

One can understand the truth until they are blue in the face. But you worship at the feet of the Goddess Samsara, until you fully, directly, non-verbally, engage with the elements of your understanding. (This is the meaning of stupidly misnamed ‘Analytical Meditation’. It ain’t analytical!)

When explanations and Views become real, true, permanent, correct, right and worthy of grasping, beware beware beware.

Language is Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

Words are slippery and Dharma words are super-slippery. Our inner Goddess transforms important words like Wisdom, Bodhicitta, Enlightenment, etc. into things we can crave and grasp. So sad.

I ask you, is Enlightenment Empty? In other words, is it a story, a made-up tale about some kind of heavenly light?

If your answer is ‘NO, Enlightenment is real; it is tangible; it is permanent (once you’ve got it); it is a goal and a solution AND I WANT IT!!!’ If this is your answer, than your inner Goddess has taken the wind, and cast it in concrete.

true Dharma

Dharma concepts are vague suggestions of experience arising from Buddha Nature. They are poetic guides for inspiration, exploration and practice, not well defined things and forms.

Enlightenment DOES — NOT — EXIST! Try defining it with parts, causes and conditions.

Perhaps it is impossible to speak or write the Dharma. Perhaps it is impossible to understand the Dharma.

Insights are Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

Your cool insight will bring on a blinding celebration. You’ll be dumb as a stump until the Samsara gets tired of partying.

Your hard-won insight will be transformed into a thing or form, in order that we can remember and repeat the insight, and use the insight to meet samsaric needs. This blinds our direct access to the insight. The destruction can happen within seconds of having the insight.

true Dharma

Insights are what it’s all about. But they are always born or reborn from the present moment. They can’t be dredged up from the past. I think about remembered insights like they were ribbons on the wall of a child athlete; they’re a reminder of what’s possible.

Practice is Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

I (the ‘me’ thing) is going to practice (do a practice thing) repeatedly, in order to move toward Wisdom (the Emptiness thing) or maybe I’m doing it to be a good Buddhist (one of them things).

1. We’ve have a tried and true plan, a schedule and an expected payoff. What could go wrong? Wait a minute. What happened to the present moment?

2. We try to re-create transcendent moments from a past practice. The memory comes from the Inner Library. That means Samsara has already infected it.

3. We have a well defined practice procedure. But we execute without awareness or curiosity. We’re just trying to get the thing done.

4. The Goddess doesn’t like doing the same thing over and over; it’s a waste of her energy. If you force her, she’ll try to run the repetitions on automatic. No matter how wonderful the practice, eventually she’ll turn it stale and ignorable.

I circumambulated a Stupa for 18 months. It was wonderful. Then suddenly my perception changed, in a way that nullified the Dharma benefit. It took two years to wear off and now I can occasionally go back.

true Dharma

1. A practice is a step, an intension, from the real world toward Wisdom and Enlightenment.

2. The same practice is always different. Every practice session is unique, and every repetition is unique. Always, by the law of impermanence.

3. Failing at a practice can be as enlightening as succeeding.

4. There are infinite ways to execute any practice. If you’re not moving toward Wisdom and Enlightenment, if you’re not getting a payoff in insight or ecstasy, try something a little different.

The Lineage is Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

Near the top of our Goddess’ list of samsaric needs, sits our need for leadership: the need be a leader, and the need to follow good leaders. In order to fulfill leadership needs the Goddess Samsara transforms our gurus and teachers into SUPERHEROES.

They do not obey the laws of physics. They have it all worked out. They can concentrate forever. They are telepathic, omniscient, and explode with bodhicitta. We hang on their every word and offer endless veneration.

Is this a problem?

true Dharma

You must become the Buddha. You must climb the mountain. You must sit on the cloud. Only you can see the truth. No one else can see it for you.

If we believe the Buddha because he was a superhero, we are lost.

(By the way, the idea of knowing and understanding everything, is a complete fairy tale.)

The Path is Corrupted

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

I’m a Buddhist. Yay! I seek Enlightenment. I’ve gained concentration skills; I’ve done retreats; I have a Guru(s); I’m studying advanced subjects. I intend to walk the Dharma Path until I die or until I become Enlightened. I’m on my way to the Bhumis.

true Dharma

The Heart Sutra sez: ‘The Path is Empty.’ What does this mean? (I don’t even know.) We’re always at square one.

If by many many practices 
And much much practicing, 
We dial back our awareness to near zero
We shrink our selves to less and less and less 
Until we are no longer bulls in a china shop. 
At that point a miracle occurs 
Which is incomprehensible to Western smartphone addicts
Like me.

Incomprehensible because it has no antecedents
Incomprehensible because it arises from zilch
Incomprehensible because although it is fundamental nature 
It is neither a particle or a wave
Incomprehensible because we are atheists 
And how could something rich and warm and sweet 
Arise from pure nothingness 
Unless it was the work of God?

Is this The Path? 
Is drowning a Path?
Is self-immolation a Path?
Is quiet immobility a Path?
Is a gigantic exhalation a Path?
A Path with no destination?
The Path of giving up the Path?

Bodhi-rapture hums softly under it’s breath 
Infant Clear-light barely opens it’s eyes 
(Were they both there all along?)

That’s why buddha statues are are so quiet.

A Thousand Years of Corruption

hijacked by the Goddess’ delusional Dharma

Our Goddess Samsara is obsessed with meeting samsaric needs. To that end, she fills her Inner Library with useful things and forms and strategies. She herself discovers many of them. Others are learned from our parents, teachers and peers.

In other words, the Goddesses share what they’ve learned with each other. This creates a sort of culture-wide meta-Goddess, a culture-wide Inner Library, and a culture-wide reality, which is passed from generation to generation.

Whatever we experience, Samsara’s ultimate goal is to organize it, classify it, understand it, and control it, so that she can use it to meet samsaric needs. When our culture-wide meta-Goddess encounters a great mystery, she will NEVER cease trying to turn it defined, organized, classified and understood. Never never never. This is most certainly true of our meta-Samsara’s millennia-long assault on mysterious Buddhism !!!!!!

True Dharma

The Dharma will always and forever be a mystery. It cannot be encompassed by words and understanding.

All Dharma is temporary. 
It will be destroyed. 
And who will destroy it? 
You, you will destroy it. 
And how will I destroy it? 
By clinging to it and understanding it. 
If possible, you will destroy it in a second. 
If it survives a second, then a minute will do, 
Or an hour or a week or a lifetime. 
If you alone fail to destroy it 
Your friends will help. 
If a lifetime is insufficient, 
Your culture and descendants 
Will continue the work for millennia.
 
Sooner or later 
What was Empty will become full. 
The unspeakable will be blabbed everywhere. 
The pure will degenerate. 
There is no other way. 
That is the nature of our Goddess Samsara. 
The Dharma, understood and remembered
Is the corrupted work of the Goddess. 
For this reason we must seek beyond 
The understood and remembered Dharma.

Conclusion

Enough of obscurations. Now it’s on to LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT!

Thanks for reading.

There are two titties
On which you may suckle 
Secret doors to Emptiness 
Hidden in plain sight 
All sentient beings know about them 
No training is required 
Only effort, like a baby

They are Death 
And the Present Moment 
Swollen and tender 
Waiting to be embraced
Offered to nurse and nurture 
Our journey 
Along the Dharma path

The Awareness of Death

What’s the goal?

To become familiar with one’s own death. To connect with it in an instinctual, natural and deep-rooted way. To be able to actually feel yourself dying, any time you choose.

Why?

Given that I’m going to die, is this how I choose to live?

The rewards are IMMENSE: Purification, Wisdom, Clarity, Guidance, and rocket powered energy. What’s more, it’s an anchor which holds us steady amidst the wild delusions. That’s why teachers keep lecturing us about it.

The trouble is, they use a script that’s 2000 years old. The script has nine steps and nobody pays attention. It needs to be updated. The awareness of our death is like a bowl of candy. You shouldn’t need to go on a retreat to grab a fistful of candy.

What on earth do you mean by ‘death’?

I have difficulty meditating on death because it’s too fuzzy and undefined. I have all these questions:

• When is it going to happen?

• What’s going to happen (from my perspective)?

• What will happen afterward?

• Is it the end of part of me, or all of me?

• If it’s only part of me that ends, which part?

• Plus, I can’t find the ‘me’ that’s dying, so what the heck are we talking about?

I realize that there’s an old Buddhist tome which has all the answers. But as a Western smartphone addict, if an old tome says something that I haven’t personally experienced, I don’t believe it. (Sad but true.)

(I suspect uncertainty around death was not a problem in the good-old-days, when sentient beings were always dying right in front of you. But now-a-days beings don’t even ‘die’. They ‘unalive’ or get put to ‘sleep’, or disappear into a hospital or lay down in a suicide pod and are never seen again. There’s not even a corpse, just scattered ashes, or even a tree.)

The spot of death

As a Western smartphone addict, it is possible to dodge all those questions, and go directly to the heart of the matter.

There’s a spot inside the body of every sentient being, where we completely realize and understand DEATH. That spot does not give a rat’s ass about uncertainties and explanations. It only knows about the cold hard dead-end of the self.

Imagine you’re speeding the wrong way up a freeway ramp staring into headlights. Imagine you took public transit and you’re getting stabbed by a maniac. Imagine prison guards are buckling you onto the lethal-injection gurney. Imagine a pride of lions is eating you. No philosophy, psychology, neuroscience or religion, just pure simple terrifying DEATH!!!!

Sentience implies a self and a world. If you have a self, somewhere in your body you understand what it means to lose that self. That’s Death. That’s what we’re trying to connect with.

What’s an EASY way to practice?

That spot in your body is just sitting there, waiting. It’s normally hidden but it’s happy to be discovered.

There’s a million ways to practice. There are so many that IT’S BEST TO MAKE UP YOUR OWN. I started out by saying ‘Death’ four times before I went to sleep. And it worked. Or repeat: ‘This is my death.’ Or ‘I am dead.’ Ask Death for advice. Draw a picture of it. Imagine being executed. Remember a near-death experience…

The point is to just keep doing it. All those benefits will slowly appear.

The Present Moment

The experience

This practice goes straight to the heart of Dharma, and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO DO IT! It’s as ordinary as blinking or tilting your head. Right now I’m sitting in a cafe sipping on the present moment, right along with my yerba mate.

Imagine you’re standing on a Himalayan peak. You can gaze off in every direction. That’s the present moment!

Now tell me. Is not the present moment the source of all things? Everything springs from there. No?

The benefits

The present moment is so mysterious and beneficial that I have difficulty expressing it.

• It’s an excellent purification method.

• It’s like plunging into an ice cold spring of impermanence.

• It erases inherent existence.

• I’m an old dude. Many folks around me are looking death square in the face. Being in the present moment NULLIFIES the horror of counting down — 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, … (I wonder why???)

• If you get good at it, you can actually watch your deluded mind CREATING IT’S DELUSIONS!!!

• Devote a week to the present moment, reaching for it whenever you have a second to spare. You’ll never be the same.

The practice

You already know how. Just do it a thousand times till it becomes a habit.

• Say: now now now now now …

• Focus on whatever is dancing in front of your eyeballs or babbling in your brain.

• Watch as the universe twists and turns and blossoms.

• Distractions are fine. Ride ‘em like a bucking bronco.

• Occasionally hold a funeral for the ‘second ago’ that just evaporated into a memory.

How the two practices work together

And this is slightly unexpected (I’m a guy). The two titties work as a team.

First, the present moment gets rather flighty. Everything is changing too fast. Death practice is grounding. It’s a pair of lead overshoes to keep one from being entirely blown away by impermanence. (The Middle Way!)

Second. Death (the impermanence of the self) invites us to the warmth and brilliance of the present moment, and then polishes and anchors that awareness. The impermanence of the present moment then invites us on to Emptiness and Bliss.

In some weird way, the two titties may actually be different faces of the same thing.

Thanks for reading.

This post builds on ideas from:
Essay #1, The Two Natures
Essay #2, The Superpowers of Samsara
Essay #3, The Tragedy of Samsara
Essay #4, Obscuration and Blindness

Introduction

The Dharma path is littered with obstacles. This essay is a grab bag of traps and hindrances that block the realization of Emptiness.

We’ll begin by looking at how we sabotage our own journey to bliss. As Gelug Mahayana practitioners we certainly are smarty-pants, so next we’ll explore how knowledge can bite us in the ass. Finally, we examine how subduing the Goddess is like going one-on-one with Godzilla.

For some reason I must list all the obstacles, before I get to the fun stuff about Emptiness and practice. I’m trying to finish ‘obstacles’ as quickly as possible. One more ‘obstacle’ essay is left after this one. I’m not really in control of the writing process. I pray it benefits some sentient beings.

Boiler plate stuff →→

These essays present an understanding of Dharma tailored to Westerners and smartphone addicts. While this perspective does not contradict a traditional understanding, it omits two ideas that often mystify Westerners: reincarnation and karma. Instead, it approaches the Buddhist path through a framework of Basic Human Needs, inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications.

There are many understandings. This is just another one. Any understanding of Dharma that’s worth it’s salt leaves one calmly, firmly, on the doorstep of Practice. I hope to achieve that goal.

1. Fooling Ourselves

Yep. It could happen.

Grasping for something we’ve already got

We want it so badly — Enlightenment! And the craving can blow our Dharma journey right out of the water.

Here’s how the Goddess Samsara sees Mahayana Dharma path: We’ll be super happy and all our Basic Human Needs will be met, if we work through thousands of Dharma steps and stages, over countless lifetimes. The Path includes mindfulness, Insights, preparatory practices, gurus, Perfections, books, empowerments, Bodhisattva vows, Sutra, Tantra, and bhumi after bhumi, on to Arhat-hood, finally arriving at Ultimate Bodhicitta and Buddhahood.

Sounds fun. Like an airport in the middle of Disney Land where you have to ride all the rides before getting on the plane.

Now, here’s how somebody else sees the Dharma path.

YOU ALREADY POSSESS BUDDHA NATURE. You’re already there!!! But, your Buddha Nature is obscured. So we practice, bit by bit removing the obscuration. There is no single goal or thing to grasp. (F**k Enlightenment. Yes.) As we practice, obscuration dims, fueling the radiance of Wisdom, Clear-light and Bodhicitta. Which radiance, by the way, shines all over the place, including on every sentient being in the vicinity.

Mistaking the memory for the jewel

It’s like we have two modes of action. One involves acting with an awareness of the present moment. The other involves acting in a mechanical, distracted manner (like ‘getting things done’). Let’s call the first mode ‘mindful action’, and the second mode ‘mindless action’.

The Goddess Samsara prefers mindless action. It enables her to quickly identify things by checking the Inner Library. You can practically do mindless action with your eyes closed, while thinking about something else. Getting into mindful action requires extra work, in the form of concentration or enduring some significant stress.

When a mindful action turns out be useful for meeting needs, Samsara saves the elements of the action in the Inner Library. Henceforth, that mindful action can be repeated, but as a mindless action. We turn mindful actions into mindless actions because they take way less attention and energy.

When, in the course of mindful action like meditation, we have a Dharma Insight, the Goddess goes “Hey, it was profound so it probably met some needs!” And she saves the real world elements into her Inner Library.

Later, if we want to repeat that Insight, Samsara retrieves the real world information she saved, and we attempt to repeat the Insight as a mindless action. We do this by arranging our real world, according to Samsara’s saved information: same place, same words, same feelings, same intention, etc.

Of course the process fails. The Insight was mindful and arose out of a long-gone present moment (from the past).

We respond to the failure by hammering away at arranging our real world according to ‘same place, same words, same intention’ etc. People waste YEARS YEARS YEARS trying to resurrect transcendental experiences in this way.

I wasted weeks trying to revive a cool Insight. Finally, I realized the mistake I was making. So instead of trying to recreate the Insight, I tried to recall how I approached that previous present moment, when the Insight happened.

That sort of worked. But it’s difficult. Suppose I had a previous insight into the Emptiness of suffering. Today I feel depressed so I think I’ll recreate that Insight. To do that I must let go of the memory, and focus mindfully on the present. That means becoming present to the feelings of depression. And that ain’t what I want to do. I want to escape those feelings. So no Insight.

I still find myself making this mistake, like all the time. I try and FAIL to resurrect some cool moment of practice. And the solution is always the same: forget the memory, and focus on the current present moment.

Which brings up an interesting question. Can you ever repeat a Dharma Insight? I don’t think so.

When we think someone else can do it for us

I can’t prove that you have to do it for yourself. In fact, you can’t do it for your self. But neither can anyone else (do it for you).

Enough gibberish. I’m 72 years old. I’ve wandered quite a bit. Many seekers have I met. Most make progress like flotsam bobbing around in the waves.

Not me. Why? Because I have chosen to accept TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY for my Dharma journey. Total. That means: if I meditate for an hour and have not detected even a scent of Insight, I CHANGE MY METHOD OF MEDITATION!!!!! I change it a little bit, or a lot. I try something different.

Same with books. Same with teachers. Same with practices.

For god’s sake. We’re swimming around in an ocean of that damn nectar (it’s thick and pink like Pepto-Bismol). If you’re not getting any, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Take the bull by the horns. Experiment! Explore! Try something different!

2. Knowledge Obscures Insight!!!

Knowledge is realm of things and forms in the Inner Library.

Insight is where we plunge briefly into the luminous void, and allow it to shape and color the stories we tell ourselves.

Knowledge Is NOT Insight; It’s like the difference between knowing all about pole vaulting, and actually launching yourself into the air on a pole. Insight arises from the present moment. Knowledge arises from the Inner Library. All the knowledge in world, in and of itself, it will not bring us Insight.

Here are three different scenarios where Knowledge actually obscures Insight:

When knowledge masquerades as Insight

Knowledge of the Dharma is so very beautiful. It covers millennia of selfless scholars, poets, artists and seekers, studying like crazy; trying to understand Enlightenment and map out pathways to Emptiness, Renunciation, and Bodhicitta.

Engaging with this knowledge through study and teaching, fulfills many Basic Human Needs. It meets needs for respect, community, appreciation, purpose, esteem, and recognition. Above all, these scholars make a fabulous contribution to humanity.

It seems obvious, that acquiring a deep knowledge of Dharma would propel one along the Dharma path. And it does, sort of.

Studying visual arts and the works of the masters, does not prepare an artist to create a masterpiece. How unfortunate. It doesn’t work that way.

Music students spend years to learning how Mozart created his transcendent compositions. After they’ve received their degrees, can the students write their own transcendent compositions? Generally no. If yes, it’s not because of their vast musical knowledge.

Do the scholars and masters of Dharma knowledge realize Emptiness and Ultimate Bodhicitta in their lifetime? Usually no. If yes, it’s not because of their Dharma knowledge. (Perhaps a bitter pill to swallow.)

The knowledge of Dharma is so beautiful. It seems like a perfect vehicle. It gives the impression that Enlightenment can be grasped, if we just study long enough and hard enough. Unfortunately, knowledge can only hint at true Insight. And the journey to knowledge can drain precious energy needed for the arduous, solitary, and deeply personal Dharma journey.

The mechanics of perception

The luminous void is always shifting and changing; it’s called Impermanence! Because of all the shifting and changing, it’s difficult for the Goddess to identify the things which surround her.

Say, we encounter a tree. That tree actually has a thousand different appearances: how it looks from every angle, every distance, every season, every weather condition, from sapling to ancient, not to mention every different specie. It’s a monumental task sorting through the possibilities and figuring out that it’s a tree.

As the Goddess labors trying to make sense of the luminous void, she desperately seeks to recognize known things from the Inner Library. It’s such a monumental task that unknown forms, like unrealized Nirvana, or the little alien sitting under the coffee table, get passed over unnoticed.

And it gets worse. As we mature, we learn more and more. Our Inner Library grows. So we can spend even more of our time meeting our needs with mindless actions. The result is that we dig ourselves into a rut of the things which we know. The rut gets deeper and deeper. Fabulous Insights may be all over the place, waiting to picked like berries, but we won’t see them.

I’ve described this process in terms of trees, but it works the same with Dharma knowledge. It’s easy and natural to get stuck in a knowledge rut (furthering mindless thinking) and it’s difficult to escape from it.

Moment to moment, in meditation

Here's the bottom line.
In concentrated meditation 
Knowledge and Insight sit side by side, 
Struggling, attempting to rule one another. 
Insight cries out for freedom and an end to suffering. 
Knowledge, reluctant and ruthless,
Tries to blindfold and gag Insight.
But Insight can't give up; that's impossible.
Pervasive suffering (usually hidden) becomes visible 
Like the sting of a fresh wound.
And the secret, kept even from ourselves? 
This is the reason practice is so difficult.

3. The Goddess of Steel

Samsara is more than a monkey on our back, she’s a 400 pound gorilla.

Her tools for motivation are irresistible.

When The Goddess says jump, we jump. That’s how we are wired. It’s very difficult to change that wiring.

We desire ‘good’ things, for a ‘good’ reason, which we believe will feel ‘good’. How could that be a delusion? I ask you, how could you possibly refuse?

We hate ‘bad’ things because ‘bad’ things are ‘bad’. What could be more virtuous than rejecting ‘bad’ things. If all ‘bad’ things were destroyed, we’d be in heaven, right?

We have a self. Period. You may not be able to find it, BUT IT’S THERE. Maybe it’s hiding in the bushes. If the Goddess says to do such and such or you might die, well, are you going to ignore this?

And finally, who in their right mind would EMBRACE suffering, or reject HAPPINESS. (Only me.)

Samsara’s motivations are reflexive, like your leg kicking when the doctor dings your knee. They’re as habitual as taking the next breath.

So maybe we ought to slow down and take a closer look, at judgments, self, and suffering. Maybe there’s something to notice, before we get washed away in a flood of reflexive behavior. STOP!

Nope. We’re like a zombies chasing brains. Are you, zombie, going to ask the doctor for a cure, or go for their brains? You know the answer.

Her delusions are impenetrable.

Buddhism says that I’m a delusion. And everything in the real world is a delusion. Do I care? No, because the real world is all there is. There’s nothing else. It’s not like we’re saying ‘blue’ is a delusion, it’s actually ‘green’. That I could deal with. What we’re saying is, forget about reality. Forget about existence. Come on!

Let’s get down to brass tacks here. Let’s discuss your wiener (or whatever). At some point during your childhood somebody pointed it out, or the Goddess figured out. And BOOM, suddenly there it was. And it worked. And you can grab it. It’s not some spiritual insight or logical conclusion. It’s real and it’s useful. Is that what Buddhism means by ‘delusion’?

When the Goddess learns or discovers a new thing, it instantly becomes part of the real world, and there - is - no - alternative. There’s no switch to turn it off. There’s no alternative to it’s existence. It IS! The real world is all we’ve got. There is literally nothing else. How can one possibly suggest it’s a delusion. That would be joke of the century.

Well, maybe there is a path through these brambles. At this point I’m just wanting to express the magnitude of the brambles.

I live under her spell. :(

Writing Dharma has been lovely and hellish. I can blab away about pie-in-the-sky bliss and Bodhicitta. But in reality, I’m dragging myself through a vacant lot littered with brambles, broken glass, puddles and rusty junk.

I have two reasons for writing. The first is to wake up from the dream of the real world. The second is to share that awakening. I have discovered that if one writes Dharma in order to wake up, the product shivers with that energy, and others can harvest it. If I write with any other motivation, it reads like cold leftovers.

Unfortunately, as I write, the Goddess Samsara rides on my back, like that 400 pound gorilla. She doesn’t give a crap about awakening or sharing. She demands that I write to achieve status, prestige, readers, appreciation, respect, etc.

I had hoped writing essays might save me from Samsara’s steel will. It turns out the essays only provide an arena where I must battle the Goddess. As I write I feel her will, blowing against me like a wind storm. In order to resist, I must restate my intentions over and over and over:

1. I am writing to awaken. Top priority!

2. I am writing to share and encourage Dharma. Next priority!

3. I am writing to receive appreciation and recognition from the community. Lowest priority.

The Goddess only cares about #3. She goads me with a stick to pursue #3, and then she beats me over the head if I refuse. I have to declare intensions #1 and #2 for every single damn paragraph, over and over. Each time, she hypnotizes me and it’s like trying to see through a drug-induced brain-fog.

In order to keep writing, I must become like a shadow. That’s the only way.

Conclusion

I have one more essay of obscurations to write before I get to the fun stuff. Stay tuned for ‘The Vampire Goddess’. It’s about when she happily feeds on Dharma blood.

Thanks for reading.

This post builds on ideas from:
Essay #1, The Two Natures
Essay #2, The Superpowers of Samsara
Essay #3, The Tragedy of Samsara

Introduction

These essays present an understanding of Dharma tailored to Westerners and smartphone addicts. While this perspective does not contradict a traditional understanding, it omits two ideas that often mystify Westerners: reincarnation and karma. Instead, it approaches the Buddhist path through a framework of Basic Human Needs, inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications.

There are many understandings. This is just another one. Any understanding of Dharma that’s worth it’s salt leaves one calmly, firmly, on the doorstep of Practice. I hope to achieve that goal.

The Goddess Samsara is on a mission to help us survive and prosper. In the last essay we looked at how her single-minded pursuit of that mission, causes us to suffer.

In this essay we look at how her single-minded pursuit of that mission, obscures our awareness of Buddha Nature (our bliss, our Wisdom, our Bodhicitta).

This essay has three parts:

1. Important ideas from previous essays

2. A language for talking about the obscuration of Buddha Nature.

3. Samsara’s most basic method for obscuring Buddha Nature, in which she captures and monopolizes our attention.

In future essays we’ll look at more subtle and formidable ways she obscures Buddha Nature. And we’ll look at her devious tricks for dealing with Dharma students who want to subdue her authority.

Previous Essays

We’ve covered a lot of ground. These is a very brief summation of important ideas from the first three essays. If any of them make no sense, you might want to go back and read through the series.

1. Perception, in sentient beings, has two natures: a Buddha Nature and a Samsara Nature. Samsara Nature is the source of the real world, and Buddha Nature is the source of life’s ever changing richness, emotional color, and Enlightenment experiences.

2. We usually think about Samsara as a place. It’s more powerful and sensible to think of Samsara as a being with agency. She creates the real world. Let’s refer to Samsara the being, as the Goddess Samsara.

3. The Goddess Samsara’s mission is to help us survive and prosper. To that end, she works single-mindedly and tirelessly to meet our Basic Human Needs.

4. She meets our Basic Human Needs by discovering useful things (forms). She uses them to devise and execute strategies which meet our needs. The Goddess saves and remembers every aspect of how a need was met in what I call, our Inner Library.

5. The things (forms) saved in our Inner Library define the real world, as we perceive and interact with it. As soon as Samsara saves information about a new thing into the Inner Library, that thing suddenly appears to us as real (it inherently exists from it’s own side).

6. It’s helpful to think about the information in the Inner Library which defines a thing, as a story. The shelves of our Inner Library are filled with stories. Every element of our real world is one of those stories. Your elbow is a story. A cloud is a story. Your eye is a story. Even YOU are a story.

The stories are everywhere, 
Like clouds of midges in ☀️ the Sunshine.

The stories ARE real. 
(In the way confused sentient beings perceive realness.) 
The realness we perceive, is nothing more than the story.

It is not ignorance. 
It’s Samsara’s nature and her machinations that help us to survive.

The stories ARE real. (”Emptiness is form.”) 
Their realness is their story. (”Form is Emptiness.”)

This was true last night. 
But it’s mid-afternoon and it may have turned to gobbledygook.

What is Obscuration?

You can’t understand Obscuration without also understanding Emptiness. That’s because Emptiness is what Obscuration obscures!

(A language note: Buddha Nature is luminous and formless. When I want to focus on those qualities of Buddha Nature, I’m going to call it ‘the luminous void‘. For example, instead of saying ‘Buddha Nature and Samsara Nature’, I might say, ‘the luminous void and stories from the Inner Library’.)

As we sit in our observer’s chair, in the real world, looking around at things:

1. Obscuration and Emptiness are different qualities of our perception.

2. Obscuration and Emptiness are opposites. As we observe a thing, the more we experience of one, the less we experience of the other (although neither ever completely disappears).

3. To understand Obscuration and Emptiness, we only need to examine a single thing. It’s like we have an Emptiness flashlight, which we can shine on whatever thing we want to examine.

So, we’re sitting in our observer’s chair, in the real world, looking at things. Ah! We see a thing. It might be a nose, our mother, a cloud, or a feeling, etc.

Now, where did that thing come from? Well, the recipe for perceiving a thing is simple: a pinch of luminous void mixed with a pinch of a story from the Inner Library. The Library provides the definition, the label, causes and conditions, etc. The luminous void (Buddha Nature) provides the essence and unspeakable light of the experience.

WE are amazing. As practicing Buddhists, WE can actually modify this recipe. We can change the size of those pinches! In other words, we can shift the ratio or balance between the amount of story and the amount of luminous void in the recipe. (Actually, this happens every time you meditate on a thing.)

Our ability to modify the recipe creates a strange little sliding scale. Story is at one end of the sliding scale, and luminous void is at the other end. ‘Obscuration’ means that we slide our seeing towards the story end of the scale, gradually losing sight of a thing’s Buddha Nature. ‘Emptiness’ means we slide our seeing towards the luminous void end of the scale, where Buddha Nature blossoms, but permanent inherent existence fades.

Remember, a thing can’t be ALL luminous void, that’s nihilism. And it can’t be ALL story, that’s a story about nothing, which is no story at all. So we can’t go all the way to either end of the scale.

What all this jibber-jabber actually means is: WE DON’T HAVE TO BECOME A FULL-BLOWN ASSHAT TO ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF EMPTINESS! We can start small, shining our flashlight and applying a little bit of Emptiness to just ONE single thing. And we will still get a mini-dose of benefits like bliss, equanimity and Bodhicitta.

Basic Blindness

The Goddess Samsara obscures our awareness of Buddha Nature. (Damn her.) If we’re suffering, and the Goddess is busy obscuring, it really helps to understand why she’s blocking our bliss.

Most of the time she’s not doing it on purpose. Samsara has a thousand important jobs to do. When she is busy, obsessed with meeting our needs, she thoughtlessly grabs and hijacks our attention. As long as she owns our attention we are utterly blind to Buddha Nature and bliss.

Have you ever bitten into a delicious treat, gotten distracted, and later realized that you swallowed it unaware, totally missing out on the taste. That’s the blindness I’m talking about.

When we acknowledge that Samsara has blocked our bliss, and we understand why she did it, it actually causes her to cool her jets a few degrees. It helps.

This morning while cooking breakfast, I was drowning in a river of negative emotions. It was the fault of the Goddess. (Damn her.) I managed to identify the reason for her behavior (and my blindness to bliss). She was obsessively working on my unmet need for emotional safety. Realizing this didn’t get me out of the river. But it sort of handed me a life preserver.

Here is a list of scenarios which cause Samsara to capture and monopolize our attention, leaving us blind to Buddha Nature.

We’re on a mission! 
Once Samsara picks a strategy and sends us on a mission, we’re mesmerized, tracking the plan and chasing the payoff. Mesmerized.

I need doo-dah ASAP, or the world is going to end. 
An urgent need arises. The Goddess must design a strategy to meet the need. While she works, we’re blind.

What’s happening? Where am I? What was that noise? 
Samsara wants a context. The Goddess doesn’t feel safe unless she knows where we are and what’s going on around us. Every few seconds (or when some unexpected event occurs) she takes a glimpse into the luminous void and goes to work reestablishing who, what, when, where… While she works, we’re blind.

I won. I did it. The prize is mine! 
When Samsara successfully meets a high-priority need she celebrates like crazy. During the party, we go blind. This is especially true after a Dharma insight.

Now is my chance. Quick, strike while the iron is hot. 
If Samsara spots an immediate opportunity to score, **she focuses like a cat ready to pounce. What pure focus and concentration. At that moment we're completely blind to everything else.

Damn. Almost. If it wasn’t for la-de-da I would have won the prize. 
When the Goddess’ strategy for meeting a high-priority need is blocked, she points her finger at the culprit, and goes crazy with negative emotions. It leaves us blind and lost in a bad dream.

I’ve walked by here a thousand times. 
Well then, what’s the point of paying attention? Blind. Blind. Blind.

Danger Danger Danger. Prepare to fight, or run! 
Could be physical or emotional danger, or danger to something with which we identify. We crave SAFETY ****and everything else fades away. (Maybe Squint your eyes and meditate instead? Only for Buddhas.)

This is my opportunity to get what I’ve always wanted, what I desire, what I crave. 
Prepare for action! (Why not just offer it up to the Lineage? Only for Buddhas.)

Bla bla bla bla bla monkey-mind bla bla bla… 
I’m so tired. I can’t stop it. Please! There are many possible dangers and opportunities. Samsara must rummage endlessly through the chaos to see what she can find.

Up and at ‘em. We’re burning daylight! 
Samsara loves the morning. It's full of energy. It’s a perfect for working on needs.

Conclusion

Stay tuned for Advanced Blindness, where Samsara kicks our ass and we poke ourselves in the eye.

Thanks for reading.

This post builds on ideas from:
Essay #1, The Two Natures
Essay #2, The Superpowers of Samsara

Introduction

These essays present an understanding of Dharma tailored to Westerners and smartphone addicts. While this perspective does not contradict a traditional understanding, it omits two ideas that often mystify Westerners: reincarnation and karma. Instead, it approaches the Buddhist path through a framework of Basic Human Needs, inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications.

I realize it may be a bit off-the-beaten-track. When I personally focus all my energy and intension on penetrating the damn fog of Ignorance, this is what I see. So take it for what it’s worth. It’s better that we not cling too tightly to understandings and explanations. After all, they are Empty. Maybe the best understanding is the one that inspires us to practice like our hair was on fire.

Our reality is a balance between our Buddha Nature and our Samsara Nature. Samsara Nature is a remarkable force which helps us to survive and prosper. Unfortunately, it gives rise to a vast ocean of suffering. This essay looks at that suffering, beyond simply defining the three types of suffering. It asks a deeper question: in what specific ways does our Samsara Nature cause us to suffer?

A brief review of the first two essays in the series

We humans have two natures, inseparable, like two sides of a coin.

Samsara Nature creates the real world (look around). Any thing with a name attached to it, that’s Samsara Nature. Samsara Nature is full of desires, aversions, judgments, needs, and suffering.

Buddha Nature on the other hand, is the source of life’s endlessly changing color and richness. It’s also the source of Enlightenment experiences like Bliss, Emptiness, and Bodhicitta.

I have discovered that it makes good sense to understand Samsara Nature as a being, with agency. I call her The Goddess Samsara. She behaves rationally, seeks to achieve goals, and has a tremendous impact on our lives.

The Goddess Samsara’s mission and purpose is to help us to survive and prosper. She does this by obsessively seeking to fulfill a particular list of physical and social needs, which are COMMON TO ALL HUMAN BEINGS. I refer to this list as our ‘Basic Human Needs’. The needs on this list include:

Shelter, Nourishment, Safety, Community, Sexual expression, Connection, To be heard and understood, Order, Status, Peace, Honesty, Respect, Fairness, Choice, Solitude, Play, The need to contribute to others, Hope, and many more.

The list is engraved in our genes. It defines what it means to be human. Whenever I write ‘needs’ in italics, I’m referring to the needs in this list. There’s a lot to be learned from examining the entire list, but I’ll save that for another essay.

How does she do it?

How does The Goddess Samsara go about meeting our ‘needs’?

Newborn babies work tirelessly to figure out how to get their needs met. Each time a need is fulfilled, whether by chance, intention, or someone’s care, they remember everything about the experience, so it can be repeated. All of this remembered information is saved in a special part of our brain. We can call that special part our Inner Library.

Let’s also give a name to the newborn intelligence which struggles to meet the infant’s needs. Let’s name it The Goddess Samsara.

The Goddess saves every aspect of how the need was met in her Inner Library. This includes things (what Buddhism might call ‘forms’) labels, parts, causes, and conditions. She also saves strategies, associations, judgments, and more.

The Goddess Samsara’s very reason for existence, lies in meeting our needs. Her instrument is the Inner Library. She uses this storehouse of knowledge to execute strategies that fulfill needs. She determines which needs take priority, brainstorms, experiments, designs and executes strategies, analyzes results, and saves everything she learns back into her Library.

(It’s really quite amazing.)

The twist

But here’s the twist. The things we see and interact with in the real world are nothing more that a reflection of the information Samsara has saved into the Inner Library.

I’m going to italicize ‘thing’ and ‘real world’’ to emphasize that they both arise from the information in the Inner Library.

In the course of meeting needs, Samsara discovers new things all the time. As soon as she saves the information about a new thing into the Inner Library, that thing suddenly appears to us as real (it inherently exists from it’s own side). When a baby discovers that a spoon can be a strategy for eating, SHAZAM!! Spoons now exist as a real and permanent element of the baby’s real world.

In short, the Inner Library contains saved information which our perception uses to embody the things in the real world.

It’s helpful to think about the Library information which defines a thing, as a story. Your elbow is a story. A cloud is a story. Your eye is a story. Even YOU are a story. Put simply, the shelves of our Inner Library are filled with stories. Every element of our real world is one of those stories. AND THAT’S ALL IT IS. Every element of our real world is a STORY that Samsara made up, to help her meet our needs, to help us to survive and prosper.

A River of Suffering

So there’s this thingamabob (so to speak), which is Samsara the Goddess together with her Inner Library. The thingamabob helps sentient beings survive and prosper. It works really well; our entire planet is seething and overflowing with sentient beings. Buddhism asserts that this thingamabob causes us tremendous suffering. The following sections detail ways in which this suffering unfolds:

The cluster-f***

(Sorry for the obscenity but I can’t find a more appropriate expression.) We spend our lives in the middle of one.

First, the Goddess chooses an unmet need (surely one of many). Then she discovers or remembers a strategy to meet that need. Next she MOTIVATES us to execute the strategy, by flooding us with desire, aversion, and other afflictive emotions. Finally, she analyses the results of our efforts, deals with snags and snafus, and saves whatever she has learned into the Inner Library.

And all that is for ONE need. She’s likely multitasking on seven or eight needs.

The suffering

Sometimes a strategy works without a hitch. Other times it’s like an anxious treasure hunt, a starving rat in a maze, or walking through a mine field. We ride a roller coaster of emotions: craving, fear, love, hate, hope, happiness, depression, joy, disappointment, and frustration. It feels rootless, complicated and confusing.

(If you want peace, go get an addiction.)

A personal note

I can feel her at this very moment pulling on me like a draft horse. Whenever I write an insightful paragraph, she instantly hijacks it to try and meet my needs for recognition and contribution. This totally undermines my efforts to learn and share Dharma.

Negative emotions

Samsara seems to prefer the negative. Why?

Negative emotions help us survive. Suppose Samsara is executing a strategy to meet a need, and that strategy gets blocked. If it gets blocked by some thing she can point her finger at, she associates negative emotions with that thing. The thing doing the blocking might be a person, a mistake, a locked door, and empty gas tank, or whatever.

Suddenly we’re overwhelmed with anger, fear, craving, hatred, disgust, rage…

As a result we get heightened focus and energy, super courage and strength. We’re ready for fight or flight. We revert to a cornered animal or a starving predator. If we ourselves made the mistake, we might actually physically attack ourselves.

The suffering

Negative emotions feel like crap, they’re not healthy, they may create more problems than they solve, and they spread a wave of suffering like a stone tossed in water. It’s no fun to suddenly go mad. (Though some people enjoy it.)

Never let go (Impermanence)

When a need arises in an unfamiliar situation, Samsara must discover a new method to satisfy the need. She’ll try out her new method a few times to make sure it works. If it gets good results it will become her go-to method for that particular need and situation.

The problem is, the Goddess clings very very tightly to her go-to methods. If a method works a few times, she figures we might as well depend on it for the rest of our lives.

Nope! Sooner or later impermanence comes along and her habitual go-to methods become less effective or fail.

The Goddess is a genius at discovering new methods, but terrible at getting rid of old broken ones. In some ways this is efficient. She doesn’t have to keep figuring out how to meet the same need every time it arises.

The suffering

BUT THE SUFFERING! We end up chained for life to relationships, identities, beliefs, habits, foods, loyalties... And if Samsara finally admits a method is failing and looks for an alternative — OMG, the trauma, the grief, and the gnashing of teeth.

She’s very conservative.

Happiness

Discussing ‘happiness’ is difficult because the word has so many definitions: bliss, ecstasy, inebriation, excitement, contentment, anticipation, relief, joy in others’ happiness, general well being, etc.

Happiness is a Basic Human Need. It offers us stress reduction, energy and relaxation. Socially, it facilitates connection and general good will. So it is on Samsara’s list of needs.

But sadly, it has a very low priority on that list. Deeply depressed people survive, prosper and even procreate. The Goddess mostly does not care if you’re hurting or depressed. SHE DOES NOT CARE.

What in the world is more important to Samsara than happiness? Money, family, contribution to community, loyalty, integrity, and how about dinner…

(This business of happiness being so all-fired important is a recent invention by Westerners and smart-phone addicts. Back in the old days nobody cared if you were happy. If you wanted to be happy, you got drunk.)

The suffering

No-happiness is like a wound that never heals. It’s a tragedy without hope. It’s a tunnel with no light a the end. Might as well get drunk.

Chasing the memory of the jewel instead of jewel

When we have a profound or peak experience, the Goddess saves all the elements of that experience into the Inner Library. It was ‘profound’ so it probably met some needs and we might want to repeat it.

Unfortunately, the actual experience can’t be saved. What can be saved are the things associated with the experience, like the setting, behaviors, thoughts, etc.

Later we want to repeat the experience. Samsara retrieves the information but it doesn’t work. We remember all the inside and outside details, but the profoundness is missing. Then we attempt to FAKE the experience with all our might. Nope! And then we give up.

Take something simple like going to the bathroom. Samsara remembers things: knocking, turning a doorknob, urinating, and pushing the flush lever. It’s easy to repeat.

But an intimate moment? A meditation insight? These have far less to do with things, and if one tries to repeat them by remembering things, it does not work. The original experience arose from a unique present moment (in the past), which is completely different from our current present moment (now).

The suffering

After hours of meditation I had a fabulous insight. It was gone in 20 minutes. I wasted months straining to remember it back into existence. Such frustration. We naturally feel a certain that past experiences can be remembered and repeated. Some experiences yes, but for transcendent moments it’s like banging your head against a wall.

Maintaining the illusion

Every few seconds Samsara asks: Where am I? What’s happening?

She’s trying to make sense out of the chaos of the present moment. How does she manage to answer those questions? She matches up the chaos of the moment, with the things and forms in the Inner Library.

Unfortunately, they never completely match up. This is because the present moment is always new and unique. The result is that she must FORCE the present moment to match the things and forms in the Library. It’s like smashing a square peg into a round hole.

And it hurts. Maintaining the illusion of the real world is like maintaining a house built on flowing sand dunes. It takes a vast amount of energy and the work never ends. No matter how tired we get, for as long as we live, Samsara demands that we create a coherent real world out of whatever is in front of our faces.

What’s worse, if we have some pressing unmet need, Samsara desperately tries to find a solution to meeting the need, within the real world being created. It’s almost like she tries to bludgeon the current moment into meeting the need.

The suffering

It’s like this endless tension headache. Sometimes, I think the exhaustion of maintaining Samsara’s illusion is what finally kills us.

(If you practice a lot at concentrating on real world objects, you can actually watch yourself re-creating and rebuilding the illusion.)

Living the lie

We actually realize, way down deep inside, that our permanent and inherently existing real world, is an illusion.

The suffering

No matter how happy or successful we get, we sense that there’s something slightly hollow or fake about it. Then Samsara cracks her whip, and we ignore the feelings. But they gnaw at us. True happiness must be out there somewhere, but where?

Monkey mind

When Samsara has a moment to spare, she begins to search for unmet needs, strategies, dangers, opportunities, etc.

If she lacks a strategy for meeting some important unmet need, she’ll fantasize about the situation over and over again, searching for a solution.

If past experience tells her that a danger may materialize (an unmet need for safety), she’ll worry about it and endlessly explore scenarios.

Buddhists call this troubleshooting and problem solving behavior, our ‘monkey mind.’

The suffering

Of course it is a LIFELONG HEADACHE. The Goddess does it because she cares desperately about our well being.

Sorry, I made a mistake

Samsara’s Inner Library, which we experience as the real world, is a work in progress. The Goddess makes many mistakes.

She starts building the Library as a clueless infant. Later lessons and strategies are built on top of earlier lessons and strategies, so a mistake can propagate forward and cause problems for the rest of our life.

In addition, she’s trying to hit a moving target; life is always shifting and changing.

Then there are Thinking Errors. Evolution is haphazard. Along with fabulous intelligence our minds evolved to make errors when thinking. (Do an internet search to see lists of 25 to 150 of them.)

And finally, as we noted, The Goddess is TERRIBLE at correcting her own mistakes.

The suffering

We’re in for a rocky ride.

Physical pain

Physical pain is a warning of an unmet need for safety. Samsara responds by setting off a blaring fire alarm of FEAR AND AVERSION. The pain is a problem but the fear and aversion drives most of us crazy.

That blaring fire alarm makes it very difficult to observe the pain experience. An easy way to see the process at work is using the cold. Just take off your jacket.

If we manage to subdue Samsara, does physical suffering disappear? I knew a yogi who claimed she did not feel physical pain. I’ve tried it once or twice and it seemed to work, a little bit.

The suffering

We all know what this feels like.

Existential Angst

When we live in a world focused on meeting needs, we imagine we’ll be happy when the needs are met.

The suffering

Nope! When happiness arrives for a brief moment, then evaporates, we’re stuck with hollow disappointment. We miss the joy of ordinary, present-moment pleasures. It starts to feel like contentment is always somewhere else, like just beyond the next hill.

Conclusion

This essay was long and complicated, and it introduced unfamiliar ideas. I would truly appreciate any feedback you might have—especially corrections, suggested additions or clarifications, mistakes, strong disagreements, or even strong emotional reactions. All perspectives are welcome; they would help me refine the ideas, and the way they’re expressed.

Stay tuned for “How Samsara Wrecks Dharma Study,” the fourth essay in the series.

Thanks for reading.

These are short practices to do when you’re too rushed, distracted, worried or freaked out, to meditate the way it says in the book. The time length spent on these practices is irrelevant. Even once second is fine. Even ONE SECOND is beneficial. The effects are cumulative. ‘Sitting’ is not required. If I fall down a cliff like the guy with the tiger and the strawberry, I’ll do one on the way down.

Do these practices: while walking from room to room, sitting on the toilet (or looking in the mirror), while driving, during a commercial, between freak-outs, over break time, just before you beat the crap out of yourself…

1. Discomfort and Suffering

This is number one. Always start here. Concentrate on the pure sensation of pain, ouch, ugh. Don’t tell me it’s not there because it is, even if it’s vague and subtle.

2. Simplified Mindfulness

Pick one thing and focus on it. Or pick two things, and alternate focus back and forth, like hands-feet hands-feet… Don’t worry about distractions. It’s OK to ride distractions off into the sunset.

3. ‘Now’

Say the word ‘now’ every time you step, or breathe, or whatever. As you speak the word, examine the present moment. Just keep saying it until your done.

4. Patience Practice

Slow down to infinitely-slow speed. It doesn’t matter how long you maintain infinitely-slow speed. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to do whatever you were doing. It doesn’t matter who thinks you’re a weirdo.

5. Follow Your Attention

Let your attention wander. Wherever it lands, concentrate on that. When it decides to wander again, and lands somewhere else, then concentrate on that. Repeat.

6. ‘This is my death.’

Do whatever you are doing, while repeating the words: ‘This is my death. This is my death…’ (Because it is.)

7. Blurry Silence

Squint your eyes a little bit, stop thinking, and …

8. Become Less

Shrink your ego. Become less for a moment. It doesn’t take but a second. Zap!

9. Make Them Less

Maybe they are not the same person, who you thought they were. ERASE memories of them, fear, expectations, and prejudice, just for a split second. Zap!

10. Take a Gander

Take a brief glance around your mind to see if you can find your Self anywhere.

I feel like sh#t. 
I’m a crappy Dharma student. 
I was zipping along the Path 
And now I’m going nowhere. 
Everyone understands more than I do. 
I’m lifetimes away from Enlightenment. 
What’s the point?

There is a cure for my feelings of anguish. The culprit, is my pain-in-the-ass deluded mind. My pain-in-the-ass deluded mind (also known simply as ‘I’) is thinking about the Dharma, as if Dharma were Samsara. And it’s not. In other words, I am thinking about mysterious Buddha Nature, like it was a thing, to craved and grasped, in the real world. Nope!

(Confused? It’s actually easier to fix the anguish than to understand it.)

So how do I know if I’m making this crazy mistake? What are the signs that my Dharma Path is stuck in Samsara, and is blind to true Buddha Nature?

1. I am Wrestling with Things, like ‘me’, ‘the Path’, ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Lifetimes’ and ‘Dharma students’.

2. I am Judging: ”I’m a crappy Dharma student.”

3. I am Craving: ”I want progress! I want Enlightenment!”

4. I am Suffering: ”I feel like sh#t.”

Yep, my perspective is stuck in Samsara. And what is the cure? (Hint: not more thinking about THINGS.)

1. Concentrate on my feelings of anguish.

2. Remind myself that Dharma insights (which we all crave) arise from LESS. Less craving. Less grasping, Less attachment. Less me-ness.

3. Then picture my ego, my sense of self, shrinking and shrinking. I imagine it as a dot that can shrink and disappear.

In practice, the process only takes a few seconds.

I’m a Dharma dumbass. Ouch! 
Whoops, I’ve turned Buddha Nature into a Thing, to be craved, grasped and hoarded. 
Time to shrink, become less, give stuff up. 
And then the anguish flees like milkweed seeds in the wind.

I do this all the time. I’m always beating the holy hell out of myself when it feels like my practice is stagnating.

The question arises, why learn all this stuff and do all these practices, if all we want is to do is become less, to shrink into selflessness? Yes!

This post builds on ideas from Essay #1 of Samsara the Goddess.

Let’s appreciate the profound miracle of our Samsara Nature. It’s stupendous, majestic, infinitely complex, beautiful, ugly, god-like and satanic. How big is Samsara Nature? It’s as big as the universe. How smart is Samsara Nature? It’s as smart as a thousand universities. Every painting, symphony, and story ever created, every language, every nation, every religion, every war; they’re all the work of Samsara Nature. (And THIS is what we’re going to try and subdue!)

Every single sentient being has one. But before taking a closer look at Samsara Nature, I’m going to give it life, just like Frankenstein!!! I’m going to give it free will because it is alive and it has free will. It has goals and strategies, and makes decisions. I’m going to christen this amazing force of our nature The Goddess Samsara. I call Samsara a goddess because she is unthinkably powerful. I call her a ‘her’, for her mother-like OBSSESSION with our survival. I describe her as a living being (not a place) because WE ARE HER.

So what does the Goddess Samsara want? What is her mission?

1. The first mission of the Goddess is to make sure that our basic physical and social needs are met. She has a fairly specific list of needs including water, food, shelter, safety, family, play, friendship, community, sexual expression, and so on. There’s a lot to be learned by examining that list. We’ll delve in to that list in a later essay.

2. The second mission of the Goddess is gathering knowledge to help her achieve her first mission. From birth until death she works night and day to discover and invent new ways to get your needs met. She builds a massive library of useful discriminations, things, ideas and strategies. Old lessons are never forgotten; new lessons are continuously learned.

3. She is a General. She rules. She has a specific LIST of your needs. Her mission is to meet the needs on her LIST. She enforces her authority by imbuing the things, ideas and strategies in her library, with pain or pleasure, good or bad, desire or aversion. Thus we carry out her strategies like rats in a maze. She is very smart (way smarter than you) devious and manipulative. You may be completely blind to her schemes even as she executes them. If we mutiny, she comes down on us like a ton of bricks. :)

4. Then The Goddess does a stupendous magic trick. She absolutely and utterly convinces us that instead of a library, her collection of things and ideas and strategies, is REAL and SOLID and PERMANENT. She deludes is into believing that instead of a store of information, her library is THE REAL WORLD.

5. Finally, The Goddess Samsara, our helicopter mother, our curse, and our savior, proceeds to yank us through life according to her whims, like a bull with a ring in its nose.

What an amazing feat. And every sentient being, down to a nematode with less than a thousand cells, has it’s own Goddess dancing around in its head. The Goddess Samsara is the ultimate magician. Look around. It’s all a magic trick. She dreamed it up, and we’ve been hypnotized to believe it’s real, permanent and solid as a rock.

Would you like to meet her and talk to her face-to-face? Then walk into the bathroom and look in the mirror.

YOU are the Goddess Samsara. YOU created her amazing delusion, which is the real world. Congratulations!

Warning: These Dharma essays are for Westerners and Smart-phone addicts. They don’t conflict with traditional understanding. They do leave out some of the traditional ideas that drive Westerners nuts, and they introduce a few modern ideas.

Having two separate natures is pretty mysterious. I’m going to try and unravel the mystery. To do that I need a word to be the counterpoint of ‘Buddha Nature’, so I’m going to use the term ‘Samsara Nature’.

Buddha Nature versus Samsara Nature, what the heck are we talking about?

Sentient beings have two corresponding natures: a Buddha Nature and a Samsara Nature. The natures are as different as night and day, but they’re joined at the hip. They’re like two sides of a coin. (Incomprehensible!)

Actually, it is difficult to talk about the two natures. Talking is at the very heart of Samsara Nature, but it's alien to Buddha Nature. Samsara Nature is all about words, and things, and MAKING SENSE. When we use words to try and make sense of Buddha Nature, the result is poetry, strange metaphors or gibberish.

Samsara Nature is where we eat, walk, talk, think and interact. It's the source of all things: both the things in the physical world, and also the things in our inner world, like feelings and thoughts.

Every single thing in existence has a name and a definition. Right? Samsara Nature keeps track of all those names and definitions in a gigantic dictionary, hidden in your brain. If you turn your head, and look around, Samsara Nature instantly tags every thing you see, with its name, its definition, associations, histories, judgements, and even more. (It’s quite amazing.)

Dictionaries are cool but they are very abstract. A dictionary is a collection of black and white squiggles. It is information; it’s not alive and tangible. If you burn up a dictionary it doesn't destroy the world. A dictionary full of squiggles doesn’t come to life until we illuminate it with our rich life-experience. That illumination is our other nature, our Buddha Nature.

• Imagine walking into a familiar room, in the dark. You know what's there, you could describe it, but it’s not alive and real until you flip on the light. That fire of color and light which explodes when we flip the light switch, is our Buddha Nature.

• Buddha Nature is all richness, ecstasy and radiance, but we can't interact or talk about Buddha Nature without using our Samsara Nature.

• The two natures work together; they can’t exist independently. Without Samsara Nature everything is meaningless glorious gibberish. Without Buddha Nature everything is lifeless information. Our perception automatically merges the two.

Here’s a cool practice for checking out Buddha Nature.

1. Touch a thing with your finger. Say a table.

2. Concentrate on your finger touching the table and the table touching your finger, back and forth.

3. Now close your eyes, and forget that there’s a table and a finger.

4. Concentrate on the rich formless and ever-changing essence of the sensation. That’s Buddha Nature.

(This practice is difficult to do with things you can see, but not touch. Eyesight is deeply bound to Samsara. Open your eyes, and Samsara grabs hold of your psyche. It's like when you wake up in the morning and the real world comes crashing down like a ton of bricks. Half-closing the eyes makes everything blurry, causing Samsara to loosen it’s grip.)

Samsara Nature is an evolutionary adaptation (at least according to my Western 'scientific' mind). It evolved millions of years ago in tiny bugs squirming around in the primordial ooze, craving food and procreation. We have inherited this adaptation. It helps us eat breakfast, avoid predators, turn door knobs, take off our pants and when having sex. (”Look, there’s a wiener, and a there’s a vag!”)

But as far as compassion, happiness and spirituality are concerned, Samsara Nature is a disaster. It’s antiquated, clunky, and makes mistakes which cause terrible suffering. And, to make matters worse, Samsara Nature naturally takes a big sh#t on the ecstasy and radiance of Buddha Nature. Yes, it does!

If the two natures are in balance it’s like Nirvana. If the two natures are out of balance, we SUFFER. And they ARE out of balance!

To be continued…

A Question

I get anxious whenever I hear the word ‘meditation’. Meditation is one of the deep roots of Dharma. And, it refers to many different practices. And, everyone seems to have their own personal definition of 'meditation'. When I say 'meditation', I have no confidence that the person I'm talking to gets what I mean. Half the time I don’t even get what I mean.

Here’s the question:

Is there a way to understand meditation, that’s simple, that makes complete and perfect sense, and that is an obvious pathway to Emptiness and Bliss?

An Answer

After MUCH reflection, I found one! I discovered an understanding of meditation which is simple, like common sense, and clearly leads to Bliss. My anxiety is cured.

Here’s my answer to that question:

For starters, I’m going to use the phrase ‘concentration on an object’, in place of the word ‘meditation’. ‘Concentration on an object’ is less confusing and more specific. It says what it means.

Sentient beings aren't born ‘concentrating on objects’. But they do dearly love to examine stuff. They might examine something external like a chair, or internal like a feeling. They examine a thing in order to discover it's nature. “That’s food, that’s a foot, that’s my mother…”. It happens ALL the time.

Now, can we transform the very ordinary act of examining things, into that super-powered ‘concentration on objects’ which leads to Bliss and Emptiness? Is that possible? How?

These are the skillful methods
Which transform a garden-variety sentient being
Who examines everything under the sun
Into a faster-then-a-speeding-bullet SUPER-HERO,
Racing along the path of 'concentration on objects' 
Toward Bliss and Emptiness

1. Keep your attention steady and undistracted, for as long as it takes to carefully and thoroughly examine the thing.

2. Examine the thing with a sense of curiosity. Try to discover the thing’s nature, but don’t stop with it’s familiar nature (it’s food, it’s a foot, it’s my mother). Maybe there is something deeper to be discovered.

3. Let go of any previous expectations you have about the thing. Otherwise you’re just going to see what you expect to see.

4. Let go of any desires, aversions or judgements you have around the thing. If you hate or love it, or you want to possess it or kill it, you’re not going to be able to see it clearly.

5. Avoid looking for what you are supposed to see, or what you’ve been taught to see. The important question is, ‘What do YOU actually see?’ (This can be tragically difficult for folks who’ve spent decades studying Dharma.)

6. Examine the thing as if you’re seeing it for the first time, even if you’ve already examined it a million times. (Maybe it’s changed since the last time you looked, or maybe you’ve changed!)

The heart of meditation is not obscure.
It’s common sense! It's simple! 
Concentrate on whatever is in front of your eyeballs
Using skillful methods
And go tripping off to Pureland.

Simple. All we’re trying to do is glimpse the truth. That’s all.

As concentration skills grow, weird sh*t may happen. That simple recipe of ‘YOU concentrating on an OBJECT’ may get fuzzy. ‘YOU’ may start to shift and fade, and not seem so clearly and definitely YOU. ‘OBJECT’ may also shift and fade. The whole thing may slow down like under water. This means you are subduing your damn delusional mind. Buddha Nature is rising up and introducing itself. BOOM!

Some Notes:

• 'Shamata' describes the experience of someone very highly skilled at concentration on objects, especially method #1 of maintaining calm steady undistracted attention.

• What about analytical meditation? First, I'm trying to keep it simple here. Second, in my experience, the goals of analytical meditation can also be achieved by concentrating on objects. You’re focusing on an object and Wham! Analytical realization.

• Practice:

  • Sit, walk, do housework, stand on your head… Whatever works for you.

  • Which object? Breath, Buddha painting, paper cup, depression, hum of window fan, foot cramp… Whatever works for you.

  • Concentrate on: one object, two objects (in-breath out-breath, left foot right foot), successive objects as they come to your attention, all objects at once… Whatever works for you.

The world is filled with little ego bombs. If we eat one, the ego explodes for a few seconds. If we eat a lot of them (then zip-zang-zoom) down the Dharma Path we go.

Bomb #1:

You cannot find your self.

You've probably heard this before and believe it's true. But believing is not enough. You must TRY to FIND your self, AGAIN AND AGAIN. Search everywhere. Each search attempt advances you 5 steps down the Dharma Path.

(If you're being a jerk, a dodo, a fool, a tool, a lunatic, etc., then go searching for your self. If you can't find it, then maybe you're NOT one.)

Bomb #2:

You cannot see your self seeing.

Try it. Try to see your self, seeing. Can you do it? Advance 5 steps along the Dharma Path for each attempt. If you can't see yourself SEEING, maybe you're NOT seeing. Maybe you're blind.

It is said that while one eye meditates, a second smaller eye works to keep the first eye from getting distracted. And maybe there's a third eye keeping tabs on the second eye. But where the heck are they? FIND THEM!

Bomb #3:

You cannot look to see what's happening in the present moment.

TRY IT! For real. Seriously. Again and again. Each attempt advances you 5 steps down the Path.

I chewed on this one all night long, in sleep and deep meditation. In the morning I couldn't remember the exact logic of the bomb. But I know it works!

And, last but not least, the next bomb isn't a normal little bomb. It's like one of those atomic bombs that Nicolas Cage has to diffuse before the end of the movie.

Bomb #4:

You cannot focus your meditative attention on the object of your choice (as in Mindfulness).

What? What? Millions of Buddhists are scratching and scrabbling around like starving ants, desperate to do exactly this. And it can't be done? Why not?

The reasons are below. But the important thing is to try it, and try it, again and again. Each try advances you 20 steps on the Dharma Path. You could conceivably advance all the way to Enlightenment just chewing on this bomb.

Reason1: The law of impermanence says everything is constantly changing. You are changing. The object of your meditation is changing. Your intention and motivation is changing. The nature of your noticing is changing. What a slippery mess.

Reason2: YOU are just a story (Empty); you don't have a permanent existence. Your meditative object is another story, no permanent existence. So during meditation on an object we're telling a story, about one story, concentrating on another story. What if you forget a line in one of the stories? What if you suddenly suspect the whole mess is Empty.

Yes it is very messy, but there's nothing tastier than an ego bomb. Eat them and eat them to advance quickly along the Dharma Path.