Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Virgin Territory

I have one jewel shining bright,
Long buried it was underneath worldly worries;
This morning the dusty veil is off, and restored is its luster,
Illumining rivers and mountains and ten thousand things.


That verse is just one of hundreds of verses written about Satori or enlightenment. Iku, a disciple of Yogi, who was the founder of the Yogi branch of the Rinzai School, wrote that one in the 11th century. Satori is a new world of value where the old way of believing is abandoned and previous knowledge is immersed in a pool of oblivion. It seems our own desires and intent plays a role in this awakening. Inventors may receive Satori from the future and an archeologist may receive it from the past. Inner knowledge merges smoothly with the present so we seldom recognize the point where it originates.

We all have access to this inner data. Awareness never comes exclusively from exterior circumstances. The psyche experiments with probable actions in the dream state and mass dreams provide an inner vehicle for global actions. We all know intuitively that our experiences matter, and there is meaning in them regardless of their obvious obscurity. Each of us senses a private purpose, but those thoughts are filled with frustration because our inner goal is not clearly known.

We all have a history before birth just like the earth has a history before we were born and there is a voice within all of us that continually says “I am important and have a purpose even though I don’t know what it is.” We don’t know what it is because we look outwardly to find it, but the inner validity of the psyche or soul cannot be found there. We only see the effects not the cause.

Satori brings us back to the land of the psyche, which is the virgin territory within all of us. No territory is the same, but there is inner commerce between territories. They are a plethora of environments in this inner no-space that takes various shapes. Different portions of the psyche have their own “laws” and their own geography. Time is squeezed out of shape so we carry our own time on this inner journey, which can run backwards as well as faster or slower as the psyche tunes into other realities than are hidden from our corporal biological structure.

The reality of our own being can only be defined by the “me” that exist in a state of Satori, but that definition is only a reference point; it is not a complete definition. The specialists and gurus can only explain your psyche to you when they forget they are specialists and deal directly with the private psyche where all specializations come from. The psyche is not a thing. It has no beginning or end and it can’t be touched or seen. Trying to describe it is useless with a language that identifies physical experiences rather than nonphysical ones.

The psyche is a group of shinning jewels that are buried under unnecessary worldly worries, and Satori is the discovery of one of those jewels.


Thursday, August 25, 2011

Stream of Perceptions

Life delineates itself on the canvas called time; and time never repeats: once gone, forever gone; and so is an act: once done it is never undone. Life is a sumiye-painting which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil painting that can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied.

With a sumiye-painting, any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have once committed to deeds; nay, what has once passed through consciousness can never be rubbed out. Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going on, neither before or after.


D.T.Suzuki in his 1924 essay,Practical Methods of Zen Instruction explains something we all know. Physical life works just the way Suzuki describes it. We can’t change time and we certainly can’t change our experiences. Of course we only see less than half of our entity so the part of us that is living outside of the limits of time and space are able to change the sumiye-painting we call life, but that fact is not validated by the ego.

We paint life with perceptions that change the activity of atoms. Each particle in the atom is perceptively aware of all the other particles and they respond to the stimuli they receive from other atoms. In the entire act of perception there is oneness between the perceiver and the objectively perceived event so the entire act has its own electromagnet reality and the event becomes electromagnetic motion.

During the initial process of perception the ego takes a back seat as the inner self reaches into the pool of consciousness and a reshuffling takes place. Impulses that create thought are received by the ego, which dilutes them in a bath of beliefs. Those thoughts become physical perceptions, but a psychological bridge is constructed between the inner self that exists without the limitations of time and space.

Our personalities are not static concepts. Our entity is eternal, but it does grow and change as we perceive. It makes decisions and it uses the physical body for some development, so we are always becoming. We are all portions of an event that is taking place in the universe. Our consciousness mixes with other portions of consciousness and portions of our perceptions become their perceptions. Our identity is part of other identities that function in their own fashion.

Each of us operates as a particleized being which in itself is inviolate, but on another hand is ever-changing in a stream of perceptions. Consciousness or Zen is caught when the ego stops making arbitrary designations of necessity in that stream. The ego wants to be an independent structure, but it is part of a greater whole that knows itself.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Shallowness of Character

Our ordinary life only touches the fringe of personality; it does not cause a commotion in the deepest parts of the soul. Even when religious consciousness is awakened, most of us lightly pass over it so as to leave no marks of a bitter fighting on the soul. We are thus made to live on the superficiality of things. We may be clever, bright and all that, but what we produce lacks depth, sincerity, and does not appeal to the inmost feelings. Some are utterly unable to create anything except makeshifts or imitations betraying their shallowness of character and want of spiritual experience.

D.T.Suzuki wrote those thoughts in the introduction of his 1924 work Essays in Zen Buddhism. We are a quality of consciousness living in a self-created reality of limitations in order to know the fringe as well as the whole of consciousness, but we don’t remember what consciousness is so we continue to ignore the gestalt formations and manifestations that percolate within us. Consciousness forms patterns of identity and they move faster than the speed of light.

These patterns act as psychological particles or they can operate as freewheeling identities that act as waves that flow through other identities. They form endless combinations and psychological gestalts that function as psychological particles in time and space while other portions function outside time and space. These elements of consciousness represent the unconscious aspects of the species, which become particleized in physical existence.

There is a psychological atmosphere that surrounds the earth, and our mental and psychic journeys move through this medium. There are rhythmic waves in the atmosphere that are more intense at certain times so the ordinary meets the extraordinary in a rhythmic dance of unity. We might call this experience an awakening or a religious experience depending on our perception of that inner sense. All consciousness has aspects that communicate with all realities. We are just becoming aware there is more to us because the psychological atmosphere is opening up and our egos are putting the shallowness of character aside and creating an image of self that has more depth and sincerity. This self is a blend of several other aspects of consciousness that moves through different psychological planes.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Liberated Moment


In liberated moment, we know that a new picture of life and duty is already possible; the elements already exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of life which shall transcend any written record we have. The new statement will comprise the skepticisms as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as it must include the oldest beliefs.

William James in his 1844 essay Experience makes us stop and think about our old beliefs, rituals, and ceremonies. The old belief that we are victims of the Fall of Man is breaking up as we realize the true nature of the self. We are creators of our physical experience. We can flow with the stream of positive energy that vibrates through our cells or we can sit on the bank of that stream and resist that energy.

The conscious mind is aware of the integrity of its identity, and gradually it is pulling the ego out of the antiquated mud of sin and into the fresh clear water of knowing. Our reality is changing because our desire to know the self is changing.

New beliefs change our perception. The ego perceives what the conscious mind believes. New beliefs fit together in patterns. New patterns of thought are exposing distorted rules and controlling doctrines. The slightest change in our perception alters every cell in the body. With each change we sense the growth of our own creativity. We begin to feel the liberated moment in every moment of our self created reality.

Friday, August 12, 2011

A Passion For Connection

Our different purposes are at war with each other. When one can’t crush the other out, they compromise; and the result is again different from what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand.

William James shines a light on our conscious mind in his 1907 essay, The One and the Many. There is an innate purpose in all of us and within all of us there are specific values to be fulfilled. That purpose is usually hidden under the garbage of religious, scientific and political beliefs. We place a great deal of faith in our conscious mind and let our unconscious mind function like a special ops agent. We resist our own energy because we are trained to resist what we don't understand. The unconscious mind is the most misunderstood aspect of the self.

But, some of us have a passion for connecting with the unconscious side of the mind. Some folks deny their sensual life and speak out against the desire to feel all things physical. They immerse themselves in a cosmic pool and massage their psyche until they sense the excitement of being non-physical. The unconscious pool is a hot tub that washes all the impurities of individuality as well as creativity away in the bubbles of bliss.

We are here to feel our physical experiences through our beliefs. Thank God that some sort of God managed to diversify and create millions of different forms of physical consciousness that explode and multiply from the inside out and from the outside in. Thank God that some sort of God had enough love for its own individuality to impress the greatest and the smallest and least and the most with its own unique being. The God of all religions knows itself through this flesh regardless of how that flesh is designed.

Our flesh is a our physical soul. Without the ability to express our soul physically, consciousness would not expand. Individuality is the badge of Godhood. We should all wear it with purpose, and experience it immersed in a physical as well as non-physical sense of unity.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

New Vista

There is no real separation of the qualities and their subject; for fire cannot be conceived apart from its form and heat. Before the body there will be nothing embodied, so the qualities there will be no subject; how, if it was originally free, could the soul ever become bound?

The body-knower (the soul), which is unembodied, must be either knowing or unknowing; if it is knowing there must be some object to be known, and if there is this object it is not liberated. Or if the soul be declared to be unknowing, then what use to you is this imagined soul? I maintain that the absolute attainment of our end can only be found by transcending the dualism of soul and body of subject and object of that which knows and which is known. There must be a certain turning away in one’s ordinary course of life; there must be an opening up of a new vista in one’s spiritual outlook.


D.T.Suzuki wrote those thoughts in his 1927 essay, Enlightenment and Ignorance. Suzuki was a Professor of Buddhist Philosophy and the 20th century’s leading authority on Zen thought. He was not a monk or priest; he was a scholar, and was honored in every temple in Japan. Suzuki lectured on consciousness more that he lectured on Buddhism. Consciousness, which can be called Zen, engulfs all religions. Suzuki understood that. Zen and consciousness are one just like the body and soul are one in knowing the spiritual multiplicity that exists within all of us.

We are wave formations and within the waves there are several identities that function freely, just like water molecules that form ocean waves. We are all religions and all cultures in our wave of multiple realities, but we focus on one in order to fulfill our desire for value fulfillment. Our souls are also fulfilling value using our other identities that have different beliefs. The force of our wave is the combined force of all identities that function in several realities. When we turn our focus away from this reality we are able to sense the new vista Suzuki talks about.

Within this structure, our entity organizes these personalities and at times directs their activities, but each one never relinquishes its free will. Each identity has its own self-conscious part that knows its origin. We actually attain our end before we pursue it. There is no separation between the qualities that exist within our inner world and the ‘me’ that is the physical subject, but our dualistic reality expresses separation in order to expand the wave.

We can experience more of the wave, but in order to sense the more we must see the self as an independent structure that gives the wave its foaming energy and the desire to be part of the overall action of this energy instead of perceiving only portions of it that seem reasonable and limited.

Monday, August 1, 2011

A Corner of One Reality

Things exist in kinds, there are many species in each kind and what the ‘kind’ implies for one specimen, it applies also for every other specimen of that kind. We can easily conceive that every fact in the world might be singular, that is, unlike any other fact and sole of its kind. In such a world of singulars out logic would be useless, for logic works by predicting of the single instance what is true of all its kind. With no two things alike in the world, we should be unable to reason from our past experiences to our future ones. The existence of so much generic unity of things is thus perhaps the most momentous pragmatic specification of what it may mean to say ‘the world is one.’

William James in his 1907 essay The One and the Many sprinkles a little magical mental dust on our thoughts about the nature of unity. Wisdom has the innate ability to show us what is inside of facts so some sense of being within our species can be translated into a reality. Some facts can lead us away from true knowledge, and as history shows us that is certainly the case when it comes to our beliefs about unity.

There is no such thing as non-living matter. There is simply the identification of characteristics that we consider life or what we call conditions of living. Consciousness through its intent explodes into matter and that matter expresses its own creativity. Unity can be expressed by saying the creator is within its creations they become another aspect of consciousness that are gifted through innate creativity. The environment, which is another element of consciousness, can form a species and species can form the environment. Life as we know it began spontaneously in a number of species at the same time.

Electromagnetic energy units exist within all units of consciousness. They exist below the range of physical matter and they respond to emotional intensity. These units eventually form physical objects. We know ourselves through our creations. We live in a corner of one reality where the spirit meets the flesh and we form a bond of unity through our diversity. Diversity is the badge of our individual consciousness or godhood. We are constantly creating and we strive for value fulfillment by experiencing our own creations. That value fulfillment is attained by accepting the wisdom and experience within the flesh rather than denying it. Unity recognizes as well as creates the diversity within all species.