Obscuration and Blindness

Essay #4 of Samsara the Goddess

Samsara is not a place, she is a Goddess and you are her!

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.