"Buddha Nature"? Know Thyself!

Laura Murphy, Jordan Kramer (Against the Stream); Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)
What is our true nature or Siddhartha's for that matter? (Indiaaa.../Flickr.com).

Ever try to define your "true" nature? Can it differ in different contexts? If success is more lasting when it follows our natures, why do so many desert their talents?

I am? I am that I am? I'm basically good, naturally bad? These are the questions I ask.

Pema Chodron (Tibetan nun) on "Basic Goodness"

Then there is the issue of identity, I am...what? What is there to identify with? These passing mental states, this body, these feelings?

Descartes famously misspoke, "I think therefore I am." Surely, based on the evidence, all that could really be said as a foundational truth was "There's thinking so there's thinking."

Something's thinking, but it does not follow that it is some permanent, perfect, unchanging self. "Self" changes. It changes at every moment. It can identify with anything. What is it? The Buddha defined it as "materiality and mentality" or "form (body), feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness."

These are the Five Aggregates of Clinging. They cling to one another, and illusion clings to them. They are empty and impersonal in an ultimate sense.

In a conventional sense, here "I am" questioning what is "I," who is "self," what have I been, what will I be? The questions of fools who go on revolving in rebirth and suffering. Renewed becoming depends on this confusion. Rather than being mindful and fearlessly looking at the truth AND THEREBY BEING LIBERATED, we assume the answer and ponder in a hopeless circle.

Siddhartha sat in spite of all the inimical forces that it upset (WTPille/Flickr.com).

To be fully oneself, to embody one's potential, to utilize the talents brought over from countless past lives (or given as "gifts" at birth for no reason), to cultivate skills, to move beyond personal suffering and self-esteem issues... are a few angles to investigate.

To fathom the enigma of my "true" nature -- as Christian evil and fallen, or as essentially good with the potential to be a buddha -- is something any ancient Greek could agree on: KNOW THYSELF.

Watchers of Gilligan's Island already know, "To thine own self be true." That is important. But is that enough. What is the self "I am" being true to?

(ambergristoday.com)

The historical Buddha warned: Thinking won't get you there. If it did, he would have advocated philosophy and debating, voting for truthiness and creating consensus realities. There is a Truth beyond all that. And it is accessible. And the Buddha pointed the way. The pointer is not the way anymore than the reflection of the Moon is the Moon.

We talk about Truth. But Buddhism is a practice, not a dogma, not something to believe. "Come and see. Investigate," the Buddha bid others. You need not take anyone's word for it. "Relying on no one, depending on no other's truth, you will see." The Truth shall set us free.

Of course in our culture, this was hijacked. That famous Bible character became that Truth, that way, that beacon of light. Was that copied from the Buddha's title as the "Light of Asia"? The Buddha did not seek glory. The Truth cannot be hidden forever, whoever found it, rediscovered it, or pointed to it.

If only Western mystics had a way, a step by step way.

All thinking, none knowing
All speaking, none showing
All searching, none finding
Traveling roads that go on winding.
Seven (half remembered words scrawled on a philosophy class desk)

JORDAN: The Buddha never said the words, "Buddha Nature." Where did he say we are naturally or basically good? Before one again starts a sentence "I am...," it might be better to rephrase it: "For right now, it is this way..."

The mind is confused. The mind confuses. The mind, to keep itself a going concern, delights in illusion. It deceives itself. It drags us to suffering. And all the while that seems the thing it dreads. But there it is, standing in the way of Truth and freedom.

SEVEN: You know that saying, "If someone's in your way, and you kick him/her as hard as you can, your butt is going to hurt"? I identify with mind, which is changing at every moment, and stand in my own way. Maybe if I just was rather than imagining "I am this, I am that, I was this, I will be that," maybe if I followed the Buddha's advice and pondered four useful things, I could be free of all suffering.

LAURA: The solutions I come to are based on a thinking mind, which confuses me time and time again. Probably the best way to know is to go inward and experience the luminosity from within -- shining without, and actually see it and feel it, rather than thinking about it. I must pay close attention to this luminous expression, how it feels in my body, in all of my interactions with others, my actions and habits in day to day life. I think that's when -- well, there I go again!

I start to get a deeper understanding beyond mental discernment. It takes repetition -- catching the mind/myself/the Thinker is being mindful -- before this inner knowing starts to make sense, before it can be trusted, before I know that my very being is rooted in life and everyone and everything just as a tree is far larger when the roots are revealed.

It is so easy to become distracted, to forget, to lose direction, to fall off the wagon or get carried away. But I am learning to true my wheel, which can be as simple as coming back to my breath. That is the first and maybe only step in reevaluating my true nature.

I may be uprooted at times, which happens even to the healthiest of trees, so one aspect of my nature is impermanence. In the breath my true nature is revealed, and in feeling the unsatisfactory nature, in mind the impersonal nature... and in nirvana the boundless liberation free of all impermanence, suffering, and delusion.

(Dan Vetree/GR8quotes)

Change is the only Constant (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

The phenomenal world -- consisting exclusively of composite "things" -- is in constant flux. This transiency is, paradoxically, its only steady characteristic.



There is a beyond, which is utterly different and incomprehensible to a mind that has only known and taken this flux to be real. This "beyond" goes even beyond beyond and is called nirvana. It is peaceful and blissful. The shore we are on is called the "continued wandering on" (samsara). It is restless, painful, and impersonal.



It used to be that western minds, given to philosophizing about ideas rather than direct mystical experience, called the distinction phenomenal and noumenal. But this carries many connotations and assumptions that do not apply.



Words will never suffice. The words themselves have no meaning. And although we understand today, it is not because of the words that mark it. Those same words mean nothing to the person who does not understand it. Understanding transcends words.



Kwan Yin beheld from on high and saw that all conditional things are empty (impersonal). By "things" she meant those things closest to us -- our bodies, feeling, perceptions, volitions, and consciousness. Seeing them as they really are -- passing, unpleasant, and impersonal -- her heart was utterly freed by non-clinging (am P H O T O/flickr).



Why would we ever want to leave this pleasurable transient, unsatisfactory, impersonal world? There's pleasure here. It's true. There is. There's a greater peace, a greater bliss there, but we would have to renounce the lower for the higher, and few of us are will to lose a bird in the hand for more in the bush.



We want them both. It's the nature of experience here, marred as it is with greediness for what we like, aversion to what we do not, and confusion about neutral things we see neither value nor harm in.



Wise reflection on this impermanent aspect of the illusion here is liberating. But it may be unpleasant if we take it personally. If we view it mindfully, there is no pain and nothing personal about it. Viewing it in this way is liberating. "Not having been, they [things] come into being. But once having been, they cease." Why would we ever become attached if we directly knew that?



Passing, passing, passing. Nothing to grasp. Falling away, falling away, falling away, their dissolution is bliss because their coming together is unsatisfactory. We want it to be one way over an other. Far better it is to escape to reality.

Why do we exist? (Physics and Buddhism)

Matter and antimatter phenomenology (xenomorphic.co.uk)

A Step Closer to Explaining our Existence

John Roach (Cosmic Log, MSNBC)

Why are we here? It remains one of the most perplexing unexplained mysteries of the universe. But particle physicists are gaining more confidence in a result from an atom smashing experiment that could be a step toward providing an answer: We exist because the universe is full of matter and not the opposite, so-called antimatter. When the Big Bang occurred, equal parts of both should have been created and immediately annihilated each other, leaving nothing leftover to build the stars, planets, and us. More

During insight meditation the body becomes transparent and particles become visible in the mind door (Buddhist-images.co.uk)

Why do "we" exist? (Buddhism answers)
Dharmachari Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)
Of course, ultimately speaking, we do not. That is what it means to say all conditioned things are impersonal (not self, anatta). What are "conditioned things"? They are the constituents of being, of clinging, of the delusion that things are self, permanent, or able to bring lasting satisfaction. It should be more obvious that there is a self. But what is the nature of that self?

Self, soul, ego, personality, "I" all refer to five functionally integrated components -- the physical and the psychological. The physical or material components of the self are the four characteristics of matter (called the Great Elements, mahabhuta). They further break down to what is called derived materiality* that make the sense organs, which are just configurations of the Four Great Elements. All of this is referred to as one group labelled "form."

The other Five Aggregates feel closer -- sensations, perceptions, mental formations (such as volition), and consciousness. They cling to the illusion of a "self" independent of them, in possession of them, controlling them. The self originates dependent on them. The illusion of our actual existence arises dependently originated on the aggregation of these five groups of factors. That is the self (soul, atta, atman, I, me, mine)! But what is the nature of the self? Looked at closely -- in a particle physics lab (in the case of form and kalapas) or in a meditation hall after emerging from the four absorptions (in the case of consciousness and cittas) -- it becomes perfectly clear that they are:

• radically impermanent (arising, turning, passing)
• unsatisfactory (disappointing, distressing, unpleasant)
• impersonal (not subject to control, following their own nature, not able to be clung to, dependent on karma, not self, not me, not mine, devoid of an owner and in that sense "empty").
  

It is completely incorrect to say we are "nothing." What we call a "self" is composed of many things. However, as with all "things," the composite is not what it seems.

Buddhist phenomenology, the "Five Aggregates of Clinging" (khandha)

Under the penetrating analysis of meditation (for purifying concentration and analytical insight, jhana and vipassana), even form is revealed. In Buddhist physics, form is seen as kalapas ("particles of perception") as explained in the Abhidharma. In Buddhist psychology, the aggregates of self-awareness are called cittas (mind moments, processes, consciousnesses, which make the most sense to me as being comparable to neuronal impulses, bearing in mind that there are neurons in the heart and throughout the gut as well as the spine, nerves innervating the body, and concentrating in the brainstem and cavity of the skull but in no way limited to the skull).

Why?
What is impelling the process, what causes the "self" to re-arise after passing away? Karma. This is not a guess. It is revealed by the insight-meditation practice of Dependent Origination, tracing back this life through the chain of causation, which the mind discovers is not in this life. It is not the same self -- which is passing away all the time -- but a self dependent past causes and present conditions.

Meditation (virtue, concentration, insight) is the key to realization.

Moral of the Story
All of this is directly, personally verifiable. We don't own a large hadron collider; yet, it is possible for the mind to be collected and intensified (through optimal-concentration, samma-samadhi) to discern kalapas. None of this is to be taken on faith. None of this is dogma. It is all experiential. And this is sure: If one does not make the effort to realize the Truth (not "learn" it or "believe" but realize it for oneself), whatever the Truth is, one will not become enlightened or liberated from ignorance and illusion. Without liberation, disappointment is certain (not eventually but in every moment).

Particle Physics

• That wily Higgs boson is running out of places to hide
• New subatomic particle: real or anomaly?
• Aging U.S. particle accelerator gets more time
• Seven smashing atom smashers
• Night vision contact lenses?
  

Buddhist Physics

• The Nature of Materiality (Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw)
• Mindfulness and Four Elements Meditation
• *What is "derived materiality"?
• The "Ultimate Teaching" (Abhidharma) on materiality
• The "divine eye" knows and sees (direct knowing)