Welcome to the Grand Illusion

"Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening. Pay the price, get your tickets for the show." - Styx

 

All material existence is illusionistic in the sense that, what to all appearances seems independently real, in actuality, is generated by thought.

And when was the first thought?

There was no "first" thought, that is, thought or intention has always existed, independent of the human mind, as an organizing principle in the universe. It is the principle of action, or karma, which generates all activity, such as the stars with planets in synchronous orbit, and all other spontaneously arising phenomena.

All of which gives new meaning to the Dennis DeYoung lyric in the Styx song, "suddenly your heart is pounding, wishing secretly you were a star".

And so, human thought, equating movement and structure with a sense of self, imbues this activity with personality, calling it god or source energy. All well and good, as long as its understood as a symbolic overlay toward greater clarity. For the star continues to shine in the night sky, whether or not it is called by any name.

All these formations are indications of sentience, even down to the most minute level. Sentience is not limited to gods, or humans, or animals, but resonates at all levels throughout the universe. That is, all material things vibrate at various frequencies as a means toward self-organization, giving the appearance of solidity to what is mostly empty space.

The dense stone that we hold vibrates at a much slower wavelength than the air around us, yet it all is in flux, all always changing. And what of us humans? We are caught somewhere in between, materially composed yet with the potentiality for awareness of higher planes, of the immaterial.

So why? If an answer is needed, then perhaps why is to play the game, to participate in the grand illusion, yet to do so with full awareness. Whatever form our consciousness finds itself in, its first job is to become aware of itself, and then to move progressly upward and outward, to greater levels of awareness and interconnection.

For indeed, these skandhas, or heaps, of which we are formed, is just the stuff of the universe, animated by the prana, the life force, vibrating now at this level of organization, now at that, always moving on to other forms, all interrelated.

And that is what Nagarjuna meant by śūnyatā, or emptiness. Not that the world itself does not exist, but that our understanding of it is fundamentally obscured.
 That awareness, and indeed all experience is interrelated, none of it having an independent, unchanging essence.

And so by penetrating to the heart of experience we find that it is all the same awareness, manifesting in different material appearances, reality hiding in plain sight, a masquerade of the real hidden within the illusion.

So cue the synthesizer solo and sing along with me: "just remember that it's a Grand Illusion, and deep inside we're all the same".

All the same.

Deep Water, Open Heart

A strange thing happens somewhere along the path. As you head into deeper water spiritually, you begin to realize that you're really not so enlightened after all. As Bono says, "the more you see the less you know". Satori, insight, self-realization, all sound great in theory, but getting there can be pretty messy.

As you grow in the practice of awareness, all your faults and failures, locked away for so long in the depths of your psyche, begin to surface. You begin to learn that the practice of wisdom, discernment, non-attachment, whatever you want to call it, are an essential companion to awareness, for without it, the darkness can swallow you in its depth.

Recently, my own faults, and in particular the harm that I have visited on others, have visited me at transitional moments during the day. Particularly, during the quiet hours of the night they show up, transforming into the figurative wrathful deities of Tibetan lore, primal fear and anxiety staring me back in the face, mockingly. In truth, they are an aspect of my own face, my own projections, on which I am gazing.

Memories of other beings I have hurt along the way appear, scenes of the pain and suffering I have dealt, such that I can feel them vividly, as though seeing the experience through the eyes of the other. And, in truth, I am the other. Practice brings about the realization that the separation we experience is a lie, or at best an illusion, and that all existence is in truth, a seamless oneness.

So, perhaps what I am experiencing is insightful, in that I am learning to recognize the interconnection of all experiences. But it is also painful, as I recognize that the suffering I have laid on others, has in reality generated this load of karma for myself, which will have to be dissipated in some way to ever move beyond it.

I awake from turbulent dreams, wondering if I may have inflicted deep pain, or even death on others in previous incarnations. It is here that Pema Chodron says we must experience the feeling while letting go of the conditioned aspects of our response: "acknowledge the feeling, give it your full, compassionate, even welcoming attention, and even if it’s only for a few seconds, drop the story line".

This is not such an easy thing. The tendency toward self-punishment for our perceived failings is ultimately just another way of perpetuating the illusion of the ego body. Yes, I should recognize the reality of the pain and suffering I have inflicted, that I may identify with others, and not to increase my own suffering, but for the end goal of healing and transformation.

In the Mahayana (great vehicle) tradition, this is where compassion comes in. We recognize the suffering, but we also recognize the emptiness of all phenomena, and that clinging to it only generates more of the suffering that we want to be free of.

And so we begin to generate compassion. Compassion for those we have hurt, but also compassion for ourselves. And most profoundly in terms of healing, compassion must go with us into those memories to affect the dissipation of karma toward all involved.

The blissful, easy experiences are great, but as Ms. Chodron points out so eloquently, they are not primarily where our liberation is accomplished. It is by going into the darkness and fear and feeling it with an open, compassionate heart that we are able to integrate all experience, find healing and liberation.

Namasté.

Honky Tonk Dharma

Lately, I've been revisiting country music, a genre I haven't actively listened to since my childhood. As a boy, my dad would play country on the am radio as he worked on the car out in the driveway. I still remember the directness and lack of guile in those songs sung by Conway Twitty, George Jones, Tammy Wynette and the like.

Listening in now, I'm learning that the country music of today is much broader in scope, while still maintaining the simplicity of its past. It draws from other styles of American popular music that wouldn't be possible back in the day. Rap, hip hop, metal, and yes, even bubble gum pop up in the melange that constitutes modern country.

Jason Aldean, in one of many songs he's borrowed from talented fellow Georgia singer songwriter Brantley Gilbert, breaks out into a set of rap stanzas on Dirt Road Anthem. One live version of the song features Aldean in collaboration with rapper Ludacris.

And the aforementioned Gilbert, singing about backwoods partying, lays down some heavy metal in the song Kick It In The Sticks. Break dancers share the stage in Dierks Bentley's Sideways video, Kid Rock lifts a Warren Zevon melody in All Summer Long, and Toby Keith's Beers Ago sports a Cyndi Lauper inspired moog synth line.

But the crossover theme I find most intriguing, is also the one that operates on a more subtle level. It's an underlying Buddhist sensibility that informs many of the songs on country radio these days. I doubt it's intentional, as there aren't that many dharma practioners in country music.

More likely, its just the simplicity and directness inherent in the themes presented.

Zen's focus on being present and in the moment pop up frequently. As Easton Corbin sings on Roll With It, "baby we'll roll with it, won't think about it too much", he then goes on to list a whole sequence of those magic moments, the ones that come from mindful presence.

In Take a Back Road, Rodney Atkins echoes the zen road to nowhere, in his lines evoking "a curving, winding, twisting, dusty path to nowhere, with the wind blowing through my baby's hair". It's nothing so much as a twanged out Kerouac On the Road.

Vipassana, and its mindful attention to sensation and the moment are all over David Nail's Let It Rain. Singing about the emotions of a breakup, he invokes "let it rain, let it pour, she don't love me any more, let it come down on me". There's no avoiding the moment here, rather diving into it with all receptors open.

Vipaka, the ripening of karma, is the central theme of Dierks Bentley's late night adventure What Was I Thinking. "Becky was a beauty from south Alabama, her daddy had a heart like a nine pound hammer, I think he even did a little time in the slammer, what was I thinking?".

We pretty much already know this one by heart. He's seduced into a night of carousing with Becky, shadowed by dad and his twelve gauge shotgun, police sirens, badass barroom brawlers and the like. As he runs outside the bar "hood slidin' like Bo Duke", you feel like you're in the middle of a 1970s tv episode.

Closing the song with the line, "I know what I was feeling, but what was I thinking?", we have it all right there: the mind body split, the First Noble Truth, all is dukkha, dissatisfaction. Dierks knows the way out, whenever he's ready to engage it.

So tune in, and if so inclined, dive in to the moment, and sing along with me and Brantley Gilbert, "let's get this thing started, it's my kinda party". The magic of right here, right now, because this moment is all we truly have.

Dodging Potholes on the Middle Way

I can tell the U.S. presidential election is getting nearer by the frequency and increasingly shrill tone of postings on social media sites. Whether coming from the left or right, sharp, cutting messages from otherwise well balanced friends and family, stand out in contrast to the usual photos of kittens and sunsets. Epithets lobbed across the lines, some badges of honor, others of derision: 'teabagger', 'socialist', the 'war on women', 'traditional marriage', 'forcible rape', etc.

The main outcome of all of this rhetoric on both sides is to reinforce duality and a "right vs. wrong" line of thought. And we fall into it so easily, even those of us who know better. Caricatures only serve to reinforce divisions and preclude any possibility of finding concensus.

And yes, I've got my own causes that are near and dear to my heart, and have fallen into the same patterns. When I see protestors expressing themselves legally, beaten or abused by riot police, it turns my stomach. But then, the challenge becomes to see the "other" as human too, to see myself in my enemy.

To consider the possibility that there may be some truth in positions that I don't hold, or that, if I firmly believe in something, that I do it in a way that respects the humanity of those I strongly disagree with.

I like the approach of Thich Nhat Hanh, whose engaged Buddhism during the war in Vietnam got him kicked out of the country. His goal was to find the middle ground, and to work so that neither side would gain an advantage over the other, in order to bring some sort of peaceful coexistence to his homeland.

Maybe I am just naive and out of step with the times. Perhaps we really are in the age of Kali Yuga, as the Vaishnavists say, on the tail end of a degenerate age as it all crumbles, before being reborn, yet again. If so, then I think Neal Cassady had the best advice when he said, with only a hint of sarcasm, "enjoy it!".

Being in the middle of such things, it's really hard to know, kind of like an ant trying to see the world outside the ant hill. Even so, whatever the big picture, I will focus on staying balanced and avoiding extreme views in this situation, dodging the potholes in the road as the rhetoric of division swirls all around. And if I have to take a position, I'll try to do it with a little bit of perspective and, dare I hope, humor.

Even the Middle Way gets a little rocky.

Early Morning, Garbage Truck in My Head

"Momentary delusions and confusions obscure our true nature, including our luminous heart, the bodhichitta, the awakened heart-mind-body consciousness that is within us all." Lama Surya Dass

Here I am, sitting on the balcony this morning, enjoying the scene before me. The air is cool from last night's rain, birds chirp in the trees, and a squirrel runs along the telephone wires. Yet, all is not well in this idyllic plain.

The thoughts in my mind break in, rumbling through this scene like a loud, obnoxious garbage truck. Conflicts real and imagined, points of disagreement, disconnects and dissatisfactions, all rushing in to fill the beautiful empty space in my awareness with an early morning collision of dissonance.

And yet, as I raise my eyes up from the imaginary garbage truck on the landscape before me, I see the blue sky unfolding in all directions. It is a scene of deep and saturated blues punctuated by wispy clouds advancing steadily.

This is what is known in Tibetan Buddhism, and in their indigenous Bön tradition, as Dzogchen, or the "Great Perfection". The basic idea being that our true nature is that of spontaneous and vast emptiness, expanding to infinity.

Yet, with that comes the corresponding challenge of cutting through the clutter of our mental formations to recognize that clarity on a moment by moment basis. Thankfully, the sky did that for me this morning. It brought me the recollection that I am not the thoughts gathered ominously in my mind.

And so I let them rumble around in my head, watching them, and then before too long...they dissipate, they're gone. I don't know where, or exactly how, but it points out their illusionistic nature. Continually rising and falling, this is karma in both the positive and negative senses of the word: action. Processes acting and playing themselves out across the clear space of my awareness.

Looking up into the sky now, all of the clouds are gone. It is just a blue expanse of emptiness. I breathe in, then out, deeply and slowly.

Zhiné, ftw!

You know how a book can sit on your bookshelf for years, and suddenly you notice it like for the first time? That just happened with me and "Vipassana Meditation: as taught by S.N. Goenka", the very first book on the subject I ever read.

Six years ago, it kick started my lifelong interest in all things contemplative, giving me for the first time, an actual set of tools to dig deeper on my inquiry into the nature of things.

Through studying that book, and putting into practice its methodology, I learned how to follow my breath into my body and experience the sensations there on an increasingly subtle level, eventually beginning to recognize the emptiness of our seemingly concrete bodies, a space filled only by vibrations, made up of the continual rising and dissolution of experience within ourselves.

That was a nice start, and gave me a little bit of perspective. Stuff like not freaking out so much when I'm in pain. A couple of years after beginning Vipassana, late one night I got a splinter in my eye. I was alone, with no friends to call on, and no doctor I could get to, just me and the excruciating pain.

Remembering the practice, I decided to lie there in the dark, and focus on the sensation of the pain. When I did, it almost immediately became manageable. True, it still hurt like hell, but what happened is the conditioning in my mind, related to the experience of pain, began to fall away.

I discovered for myself the basic truth that my mind embellished the experience with its own level of imagination, i.e. karma 101. This helped me to cut through the amplified mental reaction, and experience the pain for what it really was, a signal to focus and send healing to the place that hurts.

Instead of pushing away the pain, I tried to embrace it and enter into the experience. As S.N. Goenka says, "once we start to investigate our true nature, the running away must stop. We must change the mental habit pattern and learn to remain with reality."

A specific practice that helps to focus the mind, so that it is not led away on the wild horses of the imagination, is known as samatha (Pali / Sanskrit), or zhiné (Tibetan). The term means "calm abiding", and the exercises teach you to concentrate and focus your mind.

The first level of calm abiding practice is to sit in the meditation posture and stare at an object. Whenever the attention wanders, which it does continually, bring it back to the object. I use the flame of a votive candle, or sometimes even the plumes of smoke from a cup of hot tea. Truly, anything you can look at without attachment will work.

In other words, images or objects that evoke strong reactions are probably not good candidates for developing zhiné. This beginning practice is known as "forceful" zhiné, because it requires effort to bring the mind back to the object.

Eventually you will get to the next level of practice, where your attention is focused in a more diffused manner, without the aid of an object. This is known in Tibetan practice as "natural" zhiné. But, I get ahead of myself.

Last night, I woke up midway through the night, and my mind almost immediately became filled with a jumble of thoughts, racing in all directions. At moments like that, I wonder what benefit these practices bring to me. But, just as quickly, I began to ride the thoughts, experiencing them as vibration, noticing them rise and fall, and see them for the immaterial phantoms they really are. That helped me to calm down, and eventually, fall back to a dream filled sleep.

And this is the end game of the whole practice, learning to recognize the impermanence and interconnectedness of all of our experiences, and to relax into that base of pure non-dual awareness which is always there, our true nature, or rigpa (Tibetan).

That sounds good to me, especially the part about cutting through the mental conditioning and reactions. I'm gonna keep on trying it: zhiné, for the win!

DIY and our Paleolithic roots

Hanging out the last couple of days in east Austin, I've really been noticing the small mom and pop stores, hand-painted signs and murals, and DIY aesthetic of the neighborhoods.

This has always attracted me, but I've never really analyzed it, just thinking it had something to do with growing up in a small town at the foot of the Ozark mountains, before WalMart and corporate America stamped out most of our individuality.

This morning, stepping out of Mr. Natural, a home grown natural food store, the girl behind the counter waved, and the realization hit me as to why I'm so into this. I had only been there twice, yet she already treated me like a neighbor.

It got me to thinking that the whole DIY aesthetic taps into something really deep in our veins: a sense of community, of self-reliance, of how Paleolithic humans lived prior to the rise of the city state. Small bands of like minded people acting with intelligence and intuitive awareness to improvise a way of life based on connectedness to the land, and each other.

With the mom and pop stores, you have people who spend their whole life cultivating personal relationships with their neighbors. They collaborate in very localized ways and develop systems of exchange based on these intimate relationships.

This stands in sharp contrast to the rise of corporatism, a system of impersonal, leveraged situations built on power that emanates from the top down. Some of the really successful corporate brands are really good at imitating the look and feel of aspects of the DIY experience, but make no mistake, they are large organizations who have these things in mind: market share, expansion, profitability. Think Starbucks, or Whole Foods.

True, many of these corporate giants started off as small companies, but their focus quickly turns from uniqueness and idiosyncracy into mass-produced stamped and cloned replicas of the original idea, with uniqueness being left at the side of the road.

Mom and pops, on the other hand, are based on ideas built from the ground up, ideas that come from an individual or small group, that direct themselves toward a local clientele, who give them direct feedback on the experience.

To me, that sounds a lot like the way early human community developed. Small groupings of individuals developing skill sets with an immediate response from the members of their local tribe.

Tribes have gotten a bad rap recently, as an example of small mindedness, or closed thinking, but truthfully, if we can learn to think with a global mindset, yet still act in ways that are specific to the people, place and time around us, we have the opportunity to create something special.

Imagine a world that is not stamped out of a corporate cookie cutter. Imagine neighborhoods with unique businesses that don't exist anywhere else. Imagine non-conformity and innovation springing from the ground up.

That is the world I want to live in. That is why I want to support mom and pop stores. That is why I believe in DIY.