I was propelled by things beyond my control to try to understand the world in which I found myself. I had come to realize that this world was dangerous and chaotic, and I knew I had to understand it better, first just in order to survive and then to find a way to make it better if I could.

Against my will I was sitting in church one day not really listening to the preacher preach to me that I should believe in something that I did not understand, and I wondered what he meant by that.

Even at that age I understood that to believe that something is true meant I do not know that it is true and so I should instead, for my own good, just assume, imagine, and pretend that it is true. And I should put effort into that believing.

To believe in something, seemed to mean that not only should I believe that something was true, trust that belief, and work hard to believe it, I had to do that without really knowing what it is that I am supposed to believe or believe in, or whatever.

I heard it something like this: The preacher was saying, “You must believe in divine grace.” Everyone near me would quietly reply, “I believe in divine grace.”

I did not understand what they were talking about apart from the explanation that if I come to believe in grace as they do, then good and wonderful things may happen for me in life; or at least they will certainly happen for me soon after my life has ended. Of course, there was plenty of explaining how and why this was so, and with that came many kind words of reassurance. But it all seemed to boil down to that promise, or to another very similar promise.

Now, if my experience with these ideas of believing-that and believing-in seems confused or difficult to understand, well then, that is exactly how I felt. Part of the problem was that when I asked people about it and looked them in the eye as they told me what they believed and believed in, what I saw in their eyes was not comfort and certainty; it was fear and hope.

Instead of that, here is what I asked myself that day, not about church and promises but about life:

• What is this place?

• Why is it here?

• How did it get here?

• What is it made of?

I thought to myself, “Whatever this place (this world, this universe) is made of, then it must be perfectly obvious what that is since after all I am always looking right at it.” But of course, I couldn’t see what it was made of. So, I reasoned, “It must be too obvious to see. I must be overlooking it. It has to be here in everything I see, but just too common and too simple to notice because there is nothing else to compare it to.”

I thought, for example, how do I see light itself when everything is visible only in colors? What makes light different from the colors of it? If someone points a finger at light, and if I do not already know what light is, then how could I imagine that it is the light to which they point and not the colorful thing?

That is what was going through my mind while I sat there that day, ten years old, while the preacher preached his sermon to us.

Fifteen years later,

… in a life still focused on those questions, I remembered the answer to them in a brief three seconds of the most peaceful clarity. Remembered, and not discovered, mind you! I had been correct in my approach, not about light but about the world. The answer, after all the years, was to me the most obvious thing of all and the very meaning of the word and idea of simplicity.

The story, Ocean of Light, is a fictionalized account of this search. It is accurate in substance and memory but softened a little in language:

In two more years,

… when I was twenty-seven, something else happened. I suddenly remembered quite clearly how I knew that same answer in the very first breath I took. That story is fictionalized in Memory of Being Born, which is probably close enough in substance and memory, given that I knew no words at all at that time:

A personal answer, in only a few words as words are always inadequate:

• What is this place? This is only what I appear to be.

• Why is it here? To know what it is like to be in such a place as this.

• How did it get here? I allow it to appear, and I treasure its being here.

• What is it made of? Everything that I might be.

• Then, what am I? Everything that can ever be.

  ---

June 12

Container and Content

Carefully consider each of the following criteria that might be used to select things from a box; do these make sense to you?

• Invisible things.

• Colors.

• Spaces.

• Things with names.

• Things that do not belong there.

• Things without shape.

• Useless things.

• Nothing.

• Things on top of other things.

• Only one thing (just choose it).

Transcendence

Consider these relationships; do these not make sense to you?

• Reality contains everything, real or unreal.

• Being contains everything that can in any way be said to exist, even hypothetically.

• Awareness contains all that can be experienced in any way at any time.

June 14

Intuiting

We cannot experience intuition because experience cannot represent intuition. Awareness is real; intuition is awareness that is self-aware of its absolute reality.

Intuition exposes the unreal world of experience and lays it bare, a mere shadow on a wall, an illusion, a fantasy, like a magic trick or a captivating performance.

Many people imagine intuition to be mysterious but it is not; intuition is always here patiently waiting until distraction subsides.

We imagine that we experience things.

We intuit reality.

June 15

Seeing the world through discrimination and dualism is like seeing one’s reflection in a mirror, or seeing one’s shadow, or seeing the moon reflected in water. To depend upon discrimination and dualism is like grasping at reflections and shadows — people become attached to this grasping behavior. To grasp at the products of discrimination and dualism and to become attached to them is to lose tranquility, to lose the Oneness from which the highest and most peaceful states arise.

June 15

Set aside judgement the way a child would set aside a toy that is no longer interesting.

June 15

At some point along the way, perhaps at a time when effort and hope are both exhausted, the world of ordinary things dissolves before your gaze. If your attention does not waver in this moment, then what remains within awareness is for a few seconds a perfectly calm and clear intuition of reality, something completely beyond name and form, something so simple and obvious that it can never be mistaken for an illusion or a passing fantasy.

June 15

Reality is the universal context.

Even in the most demanding or traumatic experiences, there is context within context within context in all possible dimensions of experience. We are nearly always focused on experiencing something, on minimizing attention to peripheral content, and on ignoring content that is irrelevant to our immediate interest.

Can you expand your attention all the way out to the universal context? Can you reduce your attention to virtually nothing, so that the universal context is completely evident?

June 15

You are not different from what Eihei Dogen referred to as The Time Being:

“The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time. Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way. Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time.”

June 16

The world arises within undivided awareness and not the other way around; so, where is there a place in the world for a separate awareness?

We are aware of what we experience, but we habitually confuse awareness with the experiences that arise within awareness. We habitually project an idea of awareness onto unreal objects that we experience, and we think there must be some real awareness within these objects. This is habitual confusion born of word-repetitions learned from childhood. The illusion of an awareness arising within the object is an attractive illusion.

The reality is that all objects arise within experience, experience arises within awareness, and awareness is reality.

June 17

Just imagine …

All alone and in a lonely place, by means of your innate and transcendent intelligence, your mind unfolds by perceiving, thinking, meditating, and concentrating until you suddenly turn inside-out at the source at the deepest core of your being.

Thereafter, you will lead a life of excellent deeds. Your mind will concentrate on what you are truly become. You will be thoroughly conversant in the absolute truth of this self-realization. You will be a perfect master of your own mind. You will be like a gem that radiates every color, you will transform through every different form and every different life, you will enter into the minds of all beings to help them realize the same.

You will be the perfect and transcendent intelligence of all who preceded you and all who will follow you, as every being must, each in a different way.

You are the one in whom all this comes to be, the perfect state of no self-image, The here and where of all that is, the all-awakening, all-keeping divine mind which in its pure essence is patience and tranquility forever.

June 17

Not really about the day, … today or whatever, … more like the years, … like the months and days all strung together in one:

Not Getting Up. – Vintage Noir Jazz for Quiet Mornings

(from only a month or so ago, 3 hours of it)

June 19

The best criticism I have ever received was from people who delivered it in a thorough and kindly manner with sensitivity to the art of learning rather than to an outcome of subordination.

June 19

Expectations of love’s affections are the most painful thing of all when they are broken. But never love itself, never.

June 21

We live on the surface of the advancing past.

When we are gone, we have all of every past in which to roam and play.

Such is universal memory, of which all things are made.

June 23

Some say there is no self, while others say self is one in all. And there are many who say the self is many in many different ways. See all these as the same understanding only named in different ways.

This is the essence of simplicity and surely the most obvious thing of all. It is too obvious for words. Words, thoughts, and ideas never reflect what cannot be described.

June 25

After a moment, another moment. The self is time itself.

June 28

The whole can know the parts in a way the parts cannot know the whole.

It is the two directions of knowledge, the outgoing and the returning paths (or the breathing out and breathing in of the universe).

Those who through insight are returning to the beginning, remember the price of reaching for all the marvelous things.

While those going outward in that grasping way, imagine they cannot imagine it any other way.

June 30

Knowing our true nature is unconditional.

This knowing is exactly what it seems to be, while other knowledge is never quite what it seems to be but instead is only representation of other representations, like the word “blue” is said to represent the color of the sky.

This cannot be conveyed from one to another, because there is no other.

So, what do you truly and unconditionally know that you can never explain?

It is here right now as you read. The simplest and most obvious thing of all. The last place where you will ever think to look.

July 1

All illusions are real.

They really are illusions, and you are their reality.

You are reality itself.

What you see is only what you appear to be.

July 2

As I understand it the ancient meaning of the word, “sacrifice,” was “to return something borrowed.” As in, “the farmer sacrificed some of his harvest to plant again next year.”

In this sense, it is said in the Vedas that Vishnu (The All-Pervasive One) sacrificed himself in fire in order to justly sustain the world and everything that is in it.

The fire of desire? The sacrifices you make can never hold you back.

It seems to me that there are at least two senses of “meaning” itself: the objective separate thing to which the word refers, and the felt subjective value of that thing.

On one hand, the meaning of life refers to what “life” seems to name: whether it is my individual life at the moment, everything in my life over the whole of it, or even all of every life everywhere in every time. To me, the strongest objective explanation of the meaning of life is life itself, the whole of it and all the different worlds of experiences that are possible.

On the other hand, the meaning of life also refers to the subjective value of what “life” seems to name: whether it is the feelings in the current moment, all of my different feelings about my life thus far (with or without an imagined future), or even my thoughts and feelings about all the lives that can ever be lived.

--

Considering only the current moment, my mind may struggle to find practical solutions to problems such as finding shelter from a storm. From a wider awareness, I may instead cling gently to simply accepting and loving my situation exactly as it is as though I am meant to live this in this moment – this is something I learned when in extreme physical pain when I knew that by focusing on accepting the pain, I could reduce or eliminate the misery of the moment as long as I was not too strongly interrupted in the work.

Considering my life thus far, I accept that it did seem to happen as it seemed to happen and that every part of it was only temporary and not the same as what I am which is only the awareness of it. This place (or ethereal space) where everything happened has never changed, never been harmed, and never even been disturbed. The things gone by were only what was happening here in this place (in this space) in all these times.

Considering the whole of life in all its forms everywhere, I realize that all this appears within me and not I within it. From that view, life in all its complexity, from the most peaceful and pleasing to the most violent and horrific, appears to me as only the endless stream of possibilities, vivid moments of everything that I can ever imagine or experience in any way at all in any place in any time. And as such, it is unimaginably beautiful, this bright flow of sensations and ideas that fills the place I call reality, the place that I am.

--

Most people do not see life in this way. And so, I grant that people who are caught up in distress or misery will indeed search for something to cling to, some hope or promise that the suffering will not last forever but will someday ease and become at least better if not something truly wonderful.

Clinging is part of the whole of life; but I, you, and every individual are the one and whole being where every world and every universe comes and goes. When we remember this, we see in the deepest core of being that we truly love every part and every possibility; we always have and we always will, even the powerful, frightening, and ever-changing hallucination of separation from our limitless whole.

I cannot answer for another person whether they should cling to this hope or that promise, or some other well-tried idea. The simplest fact of the matter is that all beings are already the limitless indescribable, already the perfect reality of everything. Every path and every life leads to and is resolved in remembering the self-nature of our all-pervasive being.

Cling if you will to this or that, but the answer you seek comes not with clinging but with letting go of clinging, just as we hear in so many confessions by those who have known and then let go of both the worst and the best that the stream had brought to them. Sooner or later we each let go of it all just as they have done, and once again we will come to remember again what we all already know.

--

It is the nature of meaning, that meanings just come and go. It is the nature of meaning, that every meaning derives entirely from other meanings. The whole draws meaning from every part, and every part draws meaning from recalling the whole and why and how the whole conceives the parts.

The meaning of life means letting go, forever allowing life to unfold exactly as it always has and truly always will.

Seeing

Do you believe that in some way you sense the reality of other beings and these other beings possess their own separate awareness?

It is like looking into a magical mirror wherein you are made to experience your life as only one among others. In the mirror, you cling to the idea that you are a separate living thing who senses being. To do so, you ignore the reality of your own being and cling to the unreality of separate existences.

Reality is undivided. So, being and awareness are undivided. It is only from within illusion that we can imagine reality as somehow divided.

Look to the deepest level of your own being. Reality is not just another thing to be experienced.

• reality and unreality,

• being and existence,

• awareness and experience,

• intuition and universe.

What do these words mean to you? How are the meanings related?

-- Universe and World.

Representing

Experiences define one another in the same way that words define one another in dictionaries.

Representation occurs when one thing re‑presents or refers to other things that are not present in the immediate experience.

• Reality, being, and awareness cannot be experienced.

• Unreality cannot represent reality.

• Existence cannot represent being.

• Experience cannot represent awareness.

• Being and awareness are the reality of the universe.

Your reality can never be re-presented to you.

Is this a puzzle? Is it really not possible to represent your reality, being, or awareness in words, symbols, gestures, and so forth?

Seek direct knowledge of reality, not indirect experience of mere ideas about such things. Know the truth directly.

See though the endless puzzles of unreality.

Depend upon words only to help you grasp the failure of all words in the light of your reality—even these words, here, in this text.

Why are there any paths at all?

How far away is your reality?

What do The Five Paths represent?

-- Experiencing and Representing (and the five paths).

Ideas

All ideas about truth, no matter how precise and logical they may seem, arise in relation to an infinite complexity of meaning and interpretation.

Truth appears to be a simple idea, but relative truth is not at all simple because of the complexity and misunderstanding within which it appears.

Reality is absolute and genuine.

Unreality is relativity and illusion.

Beliefs can be either-or, or they can be a matter of degree. Most beliefs are in the form of statements about something, while intuition and insight are often beyond words.

List the things you completely believe or believe in.

List the things you strongly believe.

List the things you believe but cannot explain.

List the things you believe but cannot describe.

List the things you believe but cannot even name.

-- Relative Truth and Relative Context.

Experimenting

Replying to Jens W. Pedersen: Good advice, Jens! Here is a similar experiment:

Read something that irritates or disturbs you. Notice how that feels. How big is your awareness?

Read it again without any without anticipating, selecting, verbalizing, or judging what you read. Notice how that feels. How big is your awareness?

Example: Questions Children Ask (read, then follow the instructions at the end) —

-- Anticipating, Selecting, and Recognizing.

Intuiting

We cannot experience intuition because experience cannot represent intuition. Awareness is real; intuition is awareness that is self-aware of its absolute reality.

Intuition exposes the unreal world of experience and lays it bare, a mere shadow on a wall, an illusion, a fantasy, like a magic trick or a captivating performance.

Many people imagine intuition to be mysterious, but it is not; intuition is always here, patiently waiting until distraction subsides.

We imagine that we experience things.

We intuit reality.

-- Knowing and Intuiting.

Words

Words are useful and meaningful things, more for defining the puzzle than for solving it.

Look to where the words are pointing and not to the words themselves.

Definitions, suggestions, questions, arguments, and ideas are the fabric of the puzzle; but you cannot find the answer without intuition.

• Intuition of awareness is self-awareness.

• Intuition of being is self-knowledge of being.

• Intuition of reality is self-realization.

Key Words

REALITY is not subject to coming and going, nor to existing or not existing, nor to birth and death. But individual things are all subject to those limits. Reality is where everything happens; it is where time and space appear; it is like a theater wherein ILLUSION and UNREALITY appears.

BEING is the self-knowledge of reality; it is both the reality of knowing and the way that reality knows. EXISTENCE and NON-EXISTENCE refer to all the unreal things being perceives, feels, thinks, and imagines. This allows us to talk about being as the subjective knowledge of things like sensations, perceptions, dreams, ideas, and self-awareness.

AWARENESS is the direct knowledge of EXPERIENCE and INTUITION. Being is aware of and knows experience; although in reality, experiences are only made of countless other experiences from other places and other times. Through intuition, being is aware of its limitless reality.

— On Reality and Being.

Invoking the right frame of mind

Intuition beyond questions

Seeing beyond words

Knowing beyond thoughts

Being beyond limits

Remembering

It cannot be that we recognize something because “it is already a memory,” because all moments of recognition are unique. But the recognition of a thing (and therefore the newly forming memory of it) is entirely composed of memories rearranging and constantly transforming into every new experience.

You can verify this for yourself with a moderately difficult experiment in your own awareness of how you recognize things. You can see it happening, if you only take the time and effort to notice the way it happens.

Here are some instructions.

Knowing

Do not second-guess your motives, your thoughts, or your actions. Learn from everything that happens. Take responsibility for what you do. Reflect on your life. Know that you have always done the best you could, no matter how good or bad the result.

Knowledge of reality and knowledge of unreality arise together within being. It is like seeing an entertainer twirl a firebrand, causing the appearance of a circle of fire: the circle of fire is not real. The awareness of the circle of fire is real because awareness is reality; but the thing that seems to appear is not what it appears to be.

It is like a tree, a living thing that we can see, touch, hear in the wind, and explore. The reality is in the awareness and not in the things within awareness. The shape and form of the tree have no reality of their own; shapes and forms are only ideas thinly projected onto other experiences just as the idea of a circle of fire is projected onto the experience of the firebrand. Neither can reality be found in the elements of which the tree is made; these, too, are only ideas. Where, then, is the tree?

The things of this world are not real, yet awareness of these things is real.

You are real. You are perfectly, unchangingly real at the deepest level of your being and your awareness. Your experience of this world is in real awareness. The world that you experience in your awareness is unreal, apart from the fact that your awareness of this world is perfectly real. Your world is a real experience of unreal things made mostly of name, form (or characteristics), and habit.

We become entranced by our experiences, and we ignore the significance of our reality; but because reality underlies unreality, we do know and understand reality at the deepest level of our being whether we recognize it or not.

Direct your attention to the deepest level of your being. What do you find there?

-- Reality and Unreality

Sharing

I wonder how people ever communicate at all with each other.

For decades I sat in rooms and listened to how people said what they needed and wanted, and what all the problems were. I cannot recall a time when I thought any one of them really understood any other. It was my job to create something that satisfied them all, whether or not anyone ever understood what it was that I created and gave to them as a result of all those words. And it was only one thing that I put together, only one thing they all took and used and shared with each other. So, I wonder how that happened.

I write about words and how no two people can ever share between them the same meaning of any word, no matter now how they respond to each other’s words; that is what I observed and came to understand.

I wonder about words I use, when I realize that no word ever means exactly the same thing to me as it did the last time I used or read it. I watched very carefully, and that is what I noticed.

And yet here I am writing and there you are reading. I wonder how that is possible when our worlds are so different and so far apart.

And yet here we are, and I say to myself I understand your words, and I find in myself similar descriptions and situations, and perhaps similar emotions and reactions and actions.

Is this one world divided among us? Is it many separate worlds colliding in some ethereal space and sharing something we cannot yet fathom?

Or is it one world separately seen by each of us, where each is only the one of us seeing it in different times and places with different faces?

— Recalling the memory of remembering.

Realizing

We are the infinite and the eternal, and it always has been so.

Everything that ever happens, happens within our being and our awareness, even the ideas that we are individual things experiencing individual lives — such illusions as these are only beautiful clouds and flowers in our limitless sky.

After Trauma

It is a terrible thing when the left-over story of terror seems an impenetrable thing that never changes. It just blocks the way to who knows where.

Even when you find where it is in you and approach it that way, it remains impenetrable, impassable. “This far and no further.”

The story is a false story that hides what really happened, but it is bad enough to frighten people away. “That” memory behind the wall stays hidden from you, indescribable.

Only when you find the way through does the story begin to change and soften just like all other memories that drift with remembering.

Only then can you visit inside, hover above as though on wings, probe the feelings felt all around, watch the play, and finally grasp what happened …

… and upon all this you bestow your love and your blessing.

And so the years go by. Older and kinder memories arise from the opened space.

You begin to see within to what lies beyond all this.

The gift of the wounded child.

Contradictions

The idea of contradiction comes from the notion of ‘contrary (or opposing) words.’ The idea has only to do with statements, whether expressed or implied.

The meaning and truth of a statement is determined by context. Without context, a statement cannot be assessed for meaning or truth because we cannot understand what the words mean without context as in, for example, English diction, Greek history, arithmetic, facts, and so forth. (From Reality and Being Ch. 17 – Casual Truth and Casual Context.)

Every contradiction can be resolved by discovering a greater context that includes and resolves the otherwise separate contexts of the mutually contradictory statements.

This new context will be defined and understood under different assumptions than were used to define and understand the separate contexts of the separate but contradictory statements. (Following Hegel’s sense of dialectical inquiry.)

This process of continually expanding the context can be used to resolve any and all contradictions, but only as long as you are willing to examine all of your assumptions along the way; and it will take time and effort.

The process will eventually reach a definite end in what I refer to as the Universal Context or as reality itself. (Ch. 18 - Universal Truth and Universal Context, and also, Ch. 19 – Thing and Context.)

In reality (in the Universal Context, which is the Universal Truth) there are no contradictions.

Universal Context allows and contains the appearance of unreality, illusion, error, and contradiction. (Ch. 20 – Relative Truth and Relative Context.)

Universal truth does not contradict the universe of illusions, birth and death, existence-and-non-existence, or infinitely many experiences; it allows and contains all of these as what makes up this universe in which you may, if you wish, falsely believe that you temporarily appear.

But in reality, the universe appears within you, and not you with it, as all these mere appearances. When you see this from the perspective of Universal Truth (and it is certain that one day you will remember it again), it will be absolutely obvious why and how the world appears as it does. (Ch. 21 – Absolute and relative.)

Focus your mind:

Can you expand your attention all the way out to the universal context?

Can you reduce your attention to virtually nothing, so that the universal context is completely evident?

In reality, there is nothing at all for you to achieve or attain:

Even right now as you read or hear these words, you are the limitless context of everything, which is exactly the same as the simple truth of being reality itself.

The entire universe appears within you, and all possible experiences of any and every kind arise and subside within you, including the awareness of time and place and different views.

You are not different from what Eihei Dogen referred to as The Time Being:

Thank you to those who subscribe, follow, or just drop by to read now and then.

The text favored by Bodhidharma. The Mind-Only school of thought. An instructor’s guide to meditation?

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — Discrimination

Introduction.
The realization of Noble Wisdom.
Why some are attached to discrimination and some are not.

Chapter 2 — False-Imagination and Knowledge of Appearances

Erroneous views.
Four forms of assertion regarding things that do not exist.
Regarding word-discrimination.
Regarding words and assertions.
The nature of causation.
False-imagination, in discrimination and in thought.
Error — is it an (existing) entity or not?
Injunction regarding false-imagination.

Chapter 3 — Right Knowledge, or Knowledge of Relations

The being and non-being of all things.
All things are empty, unborn, and have no self-nature.
Causation and the arising of things.
Injunction regarding no-birth.

Chapter 4 — Perfect Knowledge, or Knowledge of Reality

The five Dharmas.
Things, ideas, and Reality — in relation to the five Dharmas.
Four kinds of knowledge.
Injunction regarding Perfect-knowledge.

Chapter 5 — The Mind System

The nature of the mind.
Ego-personality and its relationship to the mind-system.
Universal Mind and its relation to the lower mind-system.
The cessation of the mind-system.
Injunction regarding the “turning-about.”

Chapter 6 — Transcendental Intelligence

The nature of Transcendental Intelligence.
Four things to remember.
The Womb of Tathagatahood.

Chapter 7 — Self-Realization

The nature of self-realization — attaining Transcendental Intelligence.
The understandings that lead to self-realization.
The characteristics of deep attachments to existence, and how to become detached from existence.
The One Vehicle.
The steps that lead one toward self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Chapter 8 — The Attainment of Self-Realization

The state of self-realization.
Purification of the evil out-flowings of the mind.

Chapter 9 — The Fruit of Self-Realization

Self-realization of Noble Wisdom.
The sustaining power of the Tathagatas.
Buddhahood is realized by fulfilling the six Paramitas.
The nature of the Astral Body.

Chapter 10 — Discipleship — Lineage of the Arhats

The different kinds of disciple.

Chapter 11 — Bodhisattvahood and Its Stages

Bodhisattvas.

Chapter 12 — Tathagatahood Which Is Noble Wisdom

The Tathagata is not a non-entity, and neither is he an entity.
The self-nature of the Tathagatas.
The Tathagatas are neither permanent nor impermanent.
The Tathagata has uttered no word, nor ever will utter a word.
Dharmata-Buddha, Nishyanda-Buddha, and Nirmana-Buddha.
The Dharmakaya.

Chapter 13 — Nirvana

What Nirvana is.
The Nirvana of the Bodhisattvas.

Download a PDF of the Outline (originally written c. 1993):

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Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought. (An instructor’s guide to meditation?)

PDF version

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation as found in his book, A Buddhist Bible.

At about 25,000 words, the outline is quite detailed and includes two Tables of Contents plus an Index. One TOC is brief, while the other is very detailed. PDF page size is Letter 8.5”x 11”.

Goddard’s translation is relatively free of confusing Sanskrit terminology; so, both the Sutra and the outline are fairly easy to read and understand. I added some notes and clarifications in (parentheses) or [brackets].

If you have read very much of my writing, you will easily notice how much this Sutra has influenced me.

The outline below is only the first chapter of the Sutra to give you a feel for what the rest might be like. The outline itself is 60 pages, while the Title, TOCs, and Index add another 22.

Note: the PDF “outline” format is quite different from the Substack “news” format!

Click here to preview the PDF online and then download it if it suits you. When connecting from Email, you might need to open the link in a new tab or a new window.

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Chapter 1 — Discrimination

Introduction

At the castle of Lanka, on the summit of Mount Malaya in the midst of the Great Ocean, where the wise gather to talk about the Truth (Noble Wisdom) that is beyond reasoning and ordinary understanding, and is realizable only in the inmost consciousness.

The nature of Truth (1) — preparation

In the world of appearances there is neither effort nor action.

It is like a dream or a projected image.

Those who see it thus see the truth of it.

Those who see it otherwise depend upon discrimination and dualism.

Seeing the world through discrimination and dualism is like seeing one’s reflection in a mirror, or seeing one’s shadow, or seeing the moon reflected in water.

To depend upon discrimination and dualism is like grasping at reflections and shadows — people become attached to this grasping behavior.

To grasp at the products of discrimination and dualism and to become attached to them is to lose tranquility, to lose the Oneness from which the highest and most peaceful states arise.

Tranquility and peace can be regained in the Noble Wisdom that is realizable only within one’s inmost consciousness.

The nature of Truth (2) — assessment

The world, when viewed with perfect intelligence and compassion, is like an ethereal flower; it is neither born nor destroyed — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

In perfect intelligence and compassion, the world is like a dream; it is neither permanent nor destructible — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

With perfect intelligence and compassion, all the things of the world seem like visions that are beyond the reach of the human mind — because the terms “being” and “non-being” do not apply to it.

With perfect intelligence and compassion that are beyond all limit, one realizes the egoless-ness of things and persons [the twofold egoless-ness], and is free of the hindrances of passion, learning, and egoism.

One does not vanish into Nirvana and Nirvana is not to be found within one, because Nirvana transcends all duality of knowing and known, and of being and non-being.

Those who see that within their inmost consciousness they are serene and beyond conception, will see that they are free of attachment and defilement, free in this world and in every world (and in the spiritual world beyond).

In this dream-like world there is a place for praise and blame, but the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya is beyond the senses, and beyond the discriminating-mind.

The realization of Noble Wisdom

Which in general…

Is beyond philosophy.

Is devoid of all predicates such as being and non-being, oneness and otherness, both-ness and not-both-ness, existence and non-existence, eternity and no-eternity.

Has nothing to do with individuality and generality, with false-imagination, or with illusions that arise from the mind itself.

Is the Truth of highest Reality.

There are those who do not realize that the world is only something seen of the mind itself

They cling to the multiplicity of external objects and to the multiplicities of discriminations

• They think they have a self-nature of their own,

• All of this arises from the discriminations of the mind and is perpetuated by habit-energy,

• As a result, these people are given over to false-imagination and they grasp at the products of their imaginations.

They are tormented by greed, anger, and folly; and they are delighted by the world of multiplicity and form.

• They are obsessed with ideas of birth, growth, and destruction,

• They do not understand what existence and non-existence mean.

They do not realize that discrimination and speculation have existed since beginningless time, and so they fall into the habit of grasping at things and becoming attached to them.

People grasp at imaginary things

These imaginary things appear to them because of attachment to the memories of things that have appeared before.

• Speculations, errors, and all sorts of doctrines have been accumulating in memory since beginningless time, and people get attached to ideas of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, and so on,

• It is like waking up from an elaborate dream, and then lying half awake recounting the unreal things that happened in the dream.

In the same way, these people do not recognize the dream-like nature of the ideas that they have become attached to, and that these ideas have originated in the mind itself.

So they remain attached to their ideas, which are in Truth only like the images seen on a painter’s canvas.

They criticize those who recognize the Truth

They falsely claim that the doctrine of no-birth — which is free of the dualism of being and non-being — is nihilistic; and so, they bring destruction upon themselves [by conceiving themselves to be destructible].

They are addicted to their discriminations and false views, and cling to a “realistic” view of being and non-being,

• But, the world they see is like a revolving firebrand which is not truly a wheel but only imagined to be so, and at the same time is not not-a-wheel in that it does appear as such,

• It is like a mirror that reflects images impartially,

• It is like a desert mirage of moving water.

In the same way, the mind of one who is attached to his discriminations is stirred by the [imagined] winds of birth, growth, and destruction, and he becomes thoroughly devoted to those discriminations.

Why some are attached to discrimination and some are not

Because there are some who are attached to names, signs, and ideas

They grasp at the multiplicity of objects and form the notion of an ego-soul that has certain characteristics of its own.

They discriminate good and bad appearances, cherishing the good and avoiding the bad.

The more they are attached, the more they are ignorant of the Truth.

Karma accumulates and they become imprisoned in their discriminations — especially in their discriminations of birth and death.

These people do not understand that all things are like Maya, or like the reflection of the moon in water

There is no self-substance, and no ego-soul with its own characteristics.

Their definitive ideas arise from false discrimination of what exists, yet all this is only what is seen of the mind itself.

In Truth things have nothing to do with qualifying and being qualified, nor with birth, growth, and destruction, but these people assert that they were, in some manner, born.

Those who discriminate are caught up in the stream of appearances, but this is not true of the wise.

….

TOC – Next: Ch. 2

Erroneous views

Philosophical errors

Not recognizing that the objective world arises from the mind itself.

Not understanding that the whole mind-system arises from the mind itself.

Depending upon the supposed reality of what arises, and discriminating it.

Clinging to the dualisms of this and that, and being and non-being.

Ignorance of the fact that there is only one common Essence.

Correct teaching

To recognize that the objective world is a manifestation of the mind itself, like a vision.

To end ignorance, desire, deed, and causality.

To end suffering that arises from discrimination.

Examples of incorrect teaching

Creation of something from nothing

With a Substance that is bound up with causation and time.

That the elements of personality and its environment (the external world) are created, exist, and pass away (suffer birth, growth, and destruction) according to causation.

Nihilism

That there are no such things as continuation, activity, breaking-up, existence, Nirvana, the Path, karma, fruition, and Truth.

These incorrect views are asserted …

… without intuitive understanding of Truth, and without clear insight into the fundamentals of things.

Actually, the elements of personality and its environment are not capable of uninterrupted change.

So, these incorrect views are based on erroneous discrimination rather than on true conception.

It is not true that something can be created from nothing.

• If something (the personality) can be created from nothing, then the same can be said for any non-existent thing; therefore, concepts of deed, work, and cause are of no use to explain how things arise.

• If something arises from a combination of effect-producing causes, then something comes out of something, and not out of nothing.

• If relativity is asserted, then so must an ever-recurring chain of causation, and therefore no thing could ever end or cease (or begin).*

There are four forms of assertion regarding things that do not exist

1. About individual marks that do not exist

Such as are perceived by the organs of sense (eye, ear, etc.).

That indicate individuality and generality in the elements of personality and its environment.

People take these marks for reality and become attached to them.

Then they habitually affirm that things are “just so and not otherwise.”

2. About objects that do not exist

Which arises from attachment to the associated marks of individuality and generality.

In themselves, the objects are neither existent nor non-existent, and are without the duality of being and non-being.

Objects-in-themselves are as unreal as anything that has never existed (e.g., the child of a barren woman).

They are discriminated according to (false) assertion and negation, without realization that there is nothing but what is seen of the mind itself.

3. About a cause that does not exist

Which assumes an uncaused first cause of the mind-system that only later comes to have [or, comes to appear to have] a Maya-like non-existence.

That an originally un-born mind-system begins to function under the conditions of sensation and memory.

That this mind-system functions for a time and then ceases.

4. Philosophical views that are in error

Assertions about [the self-nature of] the elements that make up personality and its environment.

Assuming the non-existence of [the self-natures of the elements that make up] personality and its environment; or the existence of an ego, being, soul, living being, “nourisher,” spirit, etc. (any or all of which are supposed to arise from a combinations of discriminations of imaginary marks of individuality and generality).

Naming these marks, and becoming attached to them and their names as objects, by habit-energy.

All of which is based in false-imagination.

Regarding word-discrimination

Word-discrimination takes place by the coordination of the brain and the various physical organs involved (i.e., chest, lips, etc.).

Words are neither different nor non-different from discrimination.

• They arise from discrimination, which is their cause.

• If they were different from discrimination, they could not have discrimination as their cause.

• If they were not different from discrimination, they could not carry or express meaning.

• Words are caused, are mutually conditioning, and are continually shifting in meaning; and they are subject to birth and death.

Regarding words and assertions

There are four kinds of word-discrimination, all of which are unreal.

1. Words indicating individual marks

Which arise from discriminating forms and signs as being real in themselves, and becoming attached to them.

2. Memory words

Which arise from the unreal surroundings that come up before the mind when it recalls some experience.

3. Words that grow out of attachment to distinctions and speculations about mental processes

4. Words that arise out of the inherited prejudices of habit-energy

Habit-energy that has accumulated since beginningless time, or which had its origin in long forgotten false imaginations and speculations.

There are words that have no corresponding object

For example, the son of a barren woman.

Words are artificial

There are worlds where there are no words, where meaning is communicated by gazing, with gestures, by laughing, by clearing the throat, by trembling, etc.

Even in this world there are many beings who communicate without words — ants and bees, e.g.

Words have other things associated with them

1. Syllable-body — by which words and sentences are indicated.

2. Name-body — the object that gives a word its significance, the ”substance” of the word.

3. Sentence-body — a parallel for which is the tracks left in the road by people and animals who pass by.

Words (etc.) can never exactly express meaning

They are only sounds.

They are arbitrarily chosen to represent things.

They are not the [represented] things in themselves.

Even the things that words represent are only manifestations of the mind itself.

Discrimination of meaning is based upon the false-imagination that words represent and are dependent upon self-existent things.

Words, sentences, etc., are caused and are mutually conditioning — and so they cannot express the highest Reality.

In highest Reality there are no differentiations to be discriminated, and there is nothing to be predicated in regard to it — it is an exalted state of bliss that cannot be entered into by means of word-discrimination but only through self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

The nature of causation

To be examined so that one may no more discriminate the gradual or simultaneous arising of things.

There are two factors of causation ...

... by which things (the elements of personality and its environment) seem to come into existence — in reality, these elements are not individual and distinct things, but in ignorance they are discriminated as such.

1. External factors — such as clay, water, and the person who works them together into a pot.

2. Internal factors — such as ignorance, desire, and purpose.

There are six elements of causation ...

... (or, causation may be divided into six elements).

1. Indifference-cause

The presence or absence of discrimination, without which there can be no combination; when discrimination ends, combination dissolves.

2. Dependence-cause

Dependence upon the presence of the elements that are combined.

3. Possibility-cause

Dependence upon external and internal conditions (factors).

4. Agency-cause

The (apparent) presence and action of an agent or authority, just as a sovereign king issuing decrees.

5. Objectivity-cause

The presence and continuing activity of the mind-system [that discriminates “objectivity”].

6. Manifesting-cause

By which the discriminating activity of the mind-system reveals marks of individuality (and generality), just as forms are illuminated by a lamp.

Causes are the outcome of discrimination carried on in ignorance

Therefore, there is no such thing as “arising of existence,” whether gradual or simultaneous

Gradual arising is not possible because there is no basic substance to which the marks of individuality and generality belong.

Simultaneous arising is not possible because then there is no (real) distinction between cause and effect, and no way to characterize any cause [or effect] as such.

Some people argue that things are born and there are things that give birth, and that this happens by a combination of factors such as cause, substance, continuity, etc.

From this they argue a gradual arising of existences.

But this argument rests upon a prior notion of a self-nature of individual things, and these people have become attached to this false idea.

Some people believe that there is an external world that is perceived under aspects of individuality and generality

But these aspects of individuality and generality are not real, and so there can be no arising of things.

They arise from discrimination of and dependence on certain ideas of body-property-and-abode.

But they are only what is conceived by the mind itself, and it is only when the mind-system is active and discriminating that they seem to arise.

False-imagination, in discrimination and in thought

People who do not understand the true nature of the objective world fall into dualistic views

They imagine the multiplicity of objects to be real.

They become attached to these objects, and their attachments are perpetuated by habit-energy.

Their system of thought — the mind-system, or “the mind and what belongs to it” — is discriminated and thought of as real.

They assert the existence of an ego-soul and what belongs to it, and so the mind-system is perpetuated.

Attaching themselves to dualism, they accept the distinctions of being and non-being, existence and non-existence, etc.

And so, we say that false-imagination evolves.

But, discrimination neither evolves nor gets put away, ...

... because when the world is seen as it truly is, there can be no discrimination of being and non-being, etc.

It is only for the sake of those who are addicted to discrimination of things that it is said that discrimination arises .

We say that it arises from attachment to the multiplicity that is characteristic of the appearance of objects which are not real but are in reality only what is seen the mind itself.

We say this in order to help people….

• To understand that there is only what is seen of the mind itself.

• To gain insight into the true nature of mind.

• To free themselves from wrong conceptions of cause and effect.

• To attain a ”turning-about” in the deepest seat of their consciousness.

• To attain inner realization of Noble Wisdom which transcends the whole idea of discriminated Reality.

Because emancipation comes from understanding the meaning of Reality.

False-imagination arises from consideration of appearances

Things get discriminated as to form, sign, and shape; and as to color, warmth, fluidity, motility, and rigidity (solidity). [cf. Surangama Sutra].

It consists in becoming attached to these appearances and to their names.

By “attachment to things” (or to “objects”) is meant attachment to inner and outer things as though they were real.

By “attachment to names” is meant the recognition of characteristic marks of individuation and generality in these inner and outer things, and to regard these marks as belonging to the names of the objects (i.e., their name-body).

False-imagination teaches that all things can be understood under the aspects of individuality and generality

This because of the belief that all things are bound up with causation, instead of the realization that the external world is of the mind itself.

In false-imagination the multitude of appearances are imagined to be real, while they are actually imaginary.

• As children are sometimes convinced that the forms created by magicians are actually living beings, while in reality they are only wood and straw.

• Similarly, based upon the notion of relativity, people imagine a variety of appearances which the discriminating-mind objectifies, names, and becomes attached to, thus perpetuating memory and habit-energy.*

And this is the ”self-nature” of false-imagination.

The (14) features of false-imagination, as regards to …

1. Words

Becoming attached to sounds that carry familiar meaning.

2. Meaning

Imagining that words arise from and depend upon the self-existent subjects that they “express” [or represent].

3. Individual marks

Imagining that words (can) denote what is true regarding individual marks, clinging to these words (and marks), and discriminating various categories of existence according to them [by using them].

E.g., color, warmth, fluidity, motility, and rigidity [cf. Surangama Sutra].

4. Property

Desiring a state of wealth. E.g., gold, silver, real estate, etc.

5. Self-nature

Taking a thing to be what it is in and of itself. (Believing that otherwise it cannot “be”).

6. Cause

In reference to being and non-being, also believing that there are such things as “cause-signs” [or, “specifically indicated causal factors”].

7. Philosophical views

Believing and becoming attached to the dualisms of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, both-ness and not-both-ness, existence and non-existence, etc.

8. Reasoning

Believing there is an ego-substance (or ego-soul) to which belongs [or, which has] the power of reasoning.

9. Birth

Being attached to the idea that things come into existence and pass out of existence according to causation.

10. No-birth

Believing in causeless substances. I.e., independently existing substances which did not come into existence by reason of causation. [E.g., matter-as-a-substance, mind-as-a-substance].

11. Dependence

E.g., the mutual dependence of a substance and [a] form. E.g., gold and a gold filament.

12. Bondage

Imagining that there is something bound, simply because there is binding.

13. Emancipation

Imagining that there is something emancipated, simply because there is emancipating.

— Also, —

14. Relativity *

Being attached to the notion of the multiplicity of things that arise from the false-imagination.

Like seeing the variety of objects that depend upon Maya, and then variously discriminating them as something other than Maya itself.

But, Maya and the varieties of objects are neither different nor non-different.

If they were different they could not have Maya as their (common) characteristic.

If they were not different there would be no distinction between them.

Since there is a distinction between Maya and objects, they are neither different nor non-different, because they are the same thing.

Error — is it an (existing) entity or not?

Error has no character in it to be attached to

If it did, liberation from attachment to its existence would not be possible, and the chain of origination would then only be understood in the causal sense of creation-from-nothing.

Error is like Maya — Maya is incapable of producing other Maya, and error in itself cannot produce error.

Maya (error) has no power of discrimination in itself — discrimination and attachment produce error in the sense that error arises when invoked, or in the same manner that illusions arise when one is charmed by a magician.

Error has no habit-energy in itself — habit-energy only arises from discrimination and attachment.

Error has no faults in itself — faults are the result of discrimination of an ego-soul and its mind.

Maya (error) is, however, not an unreality even though it has only the appearance of reality

All things have the nature of Maya.

It is not because things are clung to that they have the nature of Maya, but because they [Maya and things] are both unreal, appearing and disappearing quickly.

The teaching that all things are characterized by the self-nature of Maya is intended only to free people from the belief [the false-imagination] that things have a self-nature.

False-imagination teaches dualistic discrimination

E.g., light and dark, long and short, etc.

But these are terms of relation (relativity*) and not of Reality.

• As such these terms are not independent of one another, and also not mutually exclusive of one another.

• They (as a duality) are not two but one — even the “duality” of Samsara and Nirvana are only two aspects of the same thing [the same for the duality of life and death].

• All duality is falsely imagined.

  ---

Injunction regarding false-imagination

Discipline yourself in the realization and patient acceptance of the emptiness, un-born-ness, no self-nature-ness, and non-duality of all things

But, even though this is widely taught and widely presented to meet different needs, this is not the Truth itself.

This teaching is only a finger pointing toward Noble Wisdom.

Teachings are like a mirage with springs of water which people and animals take to be real — all teachings are alike in this, even these.

Truth can only be self-realized within one’s deepest consciousness.

Seek the self-realization of Noble Wisdom, and do not be captivated by word-teaching.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

* -Regarding ‘words’ and ‘relativity’- For those of you who read other things I post, The Lankavatara along with works by Willard Quine and Jacques Derrida form the basis of some important themes in my book, Reality And Being, in particular, the following sections and topics:

Ch.1 - Words (How to read this book).

Ch.11 - Experiencing and Representing (especially the notion of representing; but I differ from these three sources on the idea of relativity, where I defer instead to more modern ideas from Theodore Stcherbatsky and Hegel).

Ch.15-21 on Truth and Relativity (in the same manner as as introduced in Ch.11).

What this might mean to those Professional Thinkers who read in search of ideas they might criticize, is that for the purpose at hand —i.e., ‘Art’— I use a notion (not a doctrine) of two kinds of truth, Absolute and Relative, on the basis of how I view words; and in doing so, I equate Nirvana (the universe of all possible experience) with a modern idea of Absolute Relativity, which I consider to be one of the more significant Western philosophical concepts of the last four centuries.

TOC – Next: Ch. 3 – Prev: Ch. 1

The being and non-being of all things

Generally speaking, people’s thinking depends upon one of two ideas

1. Being — whereby they seek pleasure in Realism.

Believing the actually existing and becoming world arises from really existing causes.

And that it does not arise from causes that are non-existent.

2. Non-being — whereby they seek pleasure in Nihilism.

Admitting the existence of such inner things as greed, anger, and folly, while denying the existence of the things that produce (cause) greed, anger, and folly.

As though greed, anger, and folly are more real than “things” even though they have neither substance nor individual marks.

In either case these people imagine emancipation where there is none.

Where there is bondage, there is binding and means for binding, but where there is emancipation, there is neither bondage, binding, nor any means for binding.

This is because in emancipation there is no belief in (the dualism of) being and non-being.

Those who cling to being and non-being see things as transient, as arising from cause, as passing away from cause, as dividing, as recombining into the elements which make up personality and its environment.

Therefore, they suffer from the changes that follow one after another.

All things are empty, unborn, and have no self-nature

Emptiness is a term whose very self-nature is false-imagination.

But because of attachment to false-imagination, there is a need to speak of emptiness, no-birth, and self-nature.

Seven kinds of emptiness

1. Emptiness of mutuality — which is non-existence.

Meaning that when a thing is missing, the place is empty of it, as a forest is empty of dry sand but not of trees.

Not meaning that the forest is empty of its own characteristics, nor are the trees empty of their own character.

Referring to things under the [presumed] aspects of individuality and generality.

Assuming this mutuality [of individuality and generality, which themselves are empty], it is true that some things do not exist somewhere.

This is the lowest form of emptiness, and it must be thoroughly put away.

2. Emptiness of individual marks.

Meaning that things have no distinguishing marks of individuality and generality.

Because of mutuality (mutual relationship and interaction), things are superficially discriminated under their [presumed] aspects of individuality and generality.

But when things are more carefully examined, they are seen to be non-existent, so the marks of individuality and generality cannot be predicated of them.

When the marks are no longer seen, ideas of self, otherness and both-ness, etc., no longer apply.

3. Emptiness of self-nature.

Meaning that things are in their self-nature un-born and are therefore empty as to self-nature.

4. Emptiness of no-work.

Meaning that the aggregate of elements that make up personality and its environment is Nirvana itself, and there is no activity in them.

5. Emptiness of work.

Meaning that because there is no ego in them the aggregate of elements that make up personality and its environment go on functioning automatically through mutual conjunctions of causes and conditions.

6. Emptiness of all things in that they are unpredictable.

Meaning that the nature of false-imagination is inexpressible, and therefore things are unpredictable.

7. Emptiness in the highest sense of Ultimate Reality.

Meaning that in the attainment of inner realization of Noble Wisdom there is no trace of habit-energy generated by erroneous conception [false-imagination].

Things are eternal because of their non-eternality

When examined carefully, things have no marks of individuality and generality, and so they have no self-nature.

Things are not eternal, because the [supposed] marks of individuality appear and disappear.

Marks of individuality and generality are seen as existing and yet known not to exist, and they are seen as going out and yet known not to be going out, and so things are never annihilated.

Things are eternal in a deep sense, because they are un-born and only mind-made.

Relatively speaking there is a constant stream of becoming — a momentary and uninterrupted change from one state of appearance to another

All things are empty of substance and of self-nature.

All things are un-born — not in the superficial sense of common birth, but in the deep sense of being born [existing] in and of themselves.

When it is recognized that what appears as the world is no more than a manifestation of mind …

Birth is seen as no-birth.

All existing objects are seen as non-existent, and un-born.

All things are seen as devoid of agent and action, and un-born.

Things are not born of being and non-being

They are only manifestations of mind itself.

They have no reality [in and of themselves].

Therefore, they have no self-nature.

People become attached to birth and death

Birth and death appear [falsely] to be fundamental and rooted in the very nature of the mind itself.

Based on the discrimination of birth and death, people discriminate the multiplicity of things [appearances] and become attached to them.

Two kinds of attachment

1. Attachment to objects as having self-nature.

From not recognizing that the world is only a manifestation of mind itself.

2. Attachment to words as having self-nature.

From clinging to names by reason of habit-energy.

These arise together.

From the belief that the birth of all things necessarily follows from the concept of being and non-being.

And from failure to recognize that this belief is itself caused by attachment to the discrimination of what arises from the mind.

When it is recognized that nothing is born and nothing passes away, the mind becomes quiet.

Causation and the arising of things

Common [erroneous] arguments regarding causation and arising.

1. Regarding causation.

The assertion that the world arises in conformity to causation.

That causation is un-born and cannot be annihilated.

And that the (nine primary) elements involved are such as creator, creation, atoms, etc. [which has been called “realism”].

2. Regarding the [apparent] arising of things.

The assertion that all things are un-born and appear to arise in conformity to (something like) causation.

And that the elements involved are such as ignorance, discrimination, attachment, deed, etc. [which has been called “nihilism”].

The correct view is that the multiplicity of objects have no reality in themselves, but are only what is seen of the mind itself.

This view transcends all concept of being and non-being, has nothing to do with birth, abiding, and destruction, and has nothing to do with existence and non-existence.

In the two arguments regarding causation and arising, the characteristic of no-birth is ascribed to the self-nature of all things, but this leads to the dualism of being and non-being.

In one sense things [or their marks] are graspable, and in another sense they are not graspable; but even so, things do not carry [show] any signs of any inherent self-nature (and in that sense they are said to be non-existent) — these supposed signs of self-nature are not seen but are only imagined.

Ignorant people cherish a kind of no-birth, …

… but that is not the view that is being presented here, which is the un-born-ness of the un-born Essence of all things.

That, nothing is made, nothing is un-made.

There is nothing in this view that has any connection with birth and death, except [recognition that there are] falsely-imagined notions about the external world.

So long as things are not seen as they truly are there is discrimination of and attachment to being and non-being, to an individualized self-nature, to explanations according to (supposed) laws of causation, and to explanations that depend upon some imagined first cause or some other un-caused first element or combination of elements [such as atoms, etc.].

Injunction regarding no-birth

When the entire universe is regarded as concatenation and as nothing else but concatenation, the mind, by its patient acceptance of the truth that all things are un-born, gains tranquility.

Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought.

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

TOC – Next: Ch. 4 – Prev: Ch. 2

When awakening is actually remembering.

Awakening is nothing new; it is only a letting-go of temporary habits. What you remember in awakening might be that you have awakened like this countless times before across unimaginable time, a broad memory of that ‘final approach’ when letting go really took hold and in seconds you noticed once again the reality of what you are.

But there is a more specific memory for many people: remembering a specific time in your life when you had awakened and noticed the exact same reality. These memories of other times are difficult to willfully recall because they have no good handles with which to call them up — no words, no images, no associations; and at the same time, they permeate the memory almost absolutely, like the cosmic background noise but too simple and too obvious to care about.

Sometimes, people recall the moment they took their first breath when they were delivered from the womb. I remember it quite clearly. It was an explosive realization that I was none of the things that had ever happened to me and also nothing that ever would happen to me.

Instead, I was only the place where all these things happened all around and in me. I was the continuity of everything and not really the content! It was hard to recall that, but later events in my life during my 20s gave me a model awareness of a possibility for which I could look. And there it was, the simplest of all memories all throughout me!

Since then, I have also been able to recall many times when I let go just spontaneously but failed to notice the significance of the view. “How silly,” I thought to myself while recalling those many moments of clarity when I just ignored or dismissed it on account of ‘more pressing business.’ But such realizations were easy to dismiss when I realized this has always been there waiting patiently for me to return, and will always be there.

Believing - Mar 9, 2026

Beliefs can be either-or, or they can be a matter of degree. Most beliefs are in the form of statements about something, while intuition and insight are often beyond words.

List the things you completely believe or believe in.

List the things you strongly believe.

List the things you believe but cannot explain.

List the things you believe but cannot describe.

List the things you believe but cannot even name.

What does belief have to do with truth and context?

What does belief have to do with relativity?

Cui bono - Mar 10, 2026

Why do schools today teach children about ‘Freedoms’ rather than about ‘Freedom’ as though it is suddenly become a collection of things that can be managed individually?

Seems to me that the meaning of the word, “Consciousness,” is a modern tower of Babel, meant to keep people from learning more about the subject. The self-appointed controllers of us all do not wish us to become more ‘conscious’ of our situation.

I noted not long ago that my 1979 dictionary lists as a definition for “Reality”, that it refers to what is permanent and unchangeable. That definition seems to have disappeared since then.

Who benefits from the rest of us having no word for what might be permanent and unchangeable about ourselves? Freedom, Reality, and Consciousness are related to one another. Cui Bono?

Story - Mar 18, 2026

It is like reaching out with your two hands and taking hold of a piece of empty nothing, a thing with no place, time or ideas in it. Taking hold of that and pulling it apart into two, these two are created out of each other. Pure, absolute relativity.

Each is made entirely out of not being the other. Now look at the flower. It is made entirely out of not being any other thing that is ever possible in any way at all. In this way, the whole universe is enfolded into it. Pure, absolute relativity.

Everything is made of everything else that it is not, and each is made of all of them. In this way, you are the empty nothing. You are the one with no place, time or ideas of your own. You are where the universe unfolds. All these things are made of you.

* Written in reply to the wonderful story,
What was pressed into you? by Sylvie Muir.

Perspective - Mar 17, 2026

Can you imagine that every life ever lived is worth living, from the best to the worst as we judge life these days?

It seems to me that in order to understand life, we must get to that point where we not only see all lives as worth living, but we also see each life and the whole of life as unimaginably beautiful, even if only in retrospect. And with that vision we must be willing to live and love every life ever lived and ever possible to live.

Granted, it may take a certain change in perspective to get there. But maybe such a perspective is not only possible but inevitable for us all.

What remains - Mar 20, 2026

“Surrender is what remains when interference ends.”

And reality is what remains when illusion ends.

And light is what remains when darkness ends.

Image

Reality And Being was completed in November 2024 and published in April 2025. In May 2025 I published the story-puzzles separately on Substack. In the past weeks I have been adding images to the individually published stories:

Ancient Chinese Puzzle [2]

Reality is hiding in plain sight; just look at it.

Being Dreams Forgetting [3]

Practice makes perfect.

Seeing a Tree [5]

How is it even possible? What is perception? What is seeing?

The Flowering of a Wonderful Law [6]

The self is nowhere to be found in any world.

The Seer and the Seen [8]

Exploring the universe of all possible experience.

We Always Do the Best We Can [9]

The wordless, thoughtless memory of limitless being.

The Magician’s Trick [10]

Allow the universe to unfold as it truly will.

The Five Paths [11]

Why are there any paths at all? How far away is reality?

Questions Children Ask [12]

You must read this twice in order to get the point!

Skill? - March 22, 2026

There was a study many years ago comparing the problem-solving skills of human and chimpanzee children. (From memory:…)

100 on each side. Each was given a Chinese puzzle of opaque drawers and sliding panels and such, in which there was a treat to be found. Both sides were shown how to solve it. From that, all 200 could solve it again for another treat.

Then a new puzzle was given, identical in appearance except this time the drawers and panels were all transparent and the treat was in a different drawer that could simply be opened directly for the treat. All 100 Chimps picked the puzzle up, examined it, and then opened the correct drawer and ate the treat. All 100 human children tried the same elaborate solution they had previously learned, and I think only 2 humans actually got to the treat after considerable frustration.

The scientific conclusion was that this proved humans were more intelligent than Chimpanzees, because humans as a collective are more skilled at mimicking than Chimpanzees are. (Note “skilled” rather than “persistent.”)

I think this illuminating study might still be on YouTube somewhere.

Thank you to those who subscribe, follow, or just drop by to read now and then.

Chapter 4 — Perfect Knowledge, or Knowledge of Reality

The five Dharmas

*{i.e., the five kinds of things that support or admit of knowledge}

1. Appearance

That which reveals itself to the (five) senses and to the discriminating-mind — i.e., [e.g.,] form, sound, odor (smell), taste, and touch [cf. Surangama Sutra]

Out of which ideas form: clay, water, jar, etc. [ideas which, in effect, bridge the gap between appearance and mere name]

2. Name

By which one says that this thing is this thing and not some other thing

3. Discrimination

Which arises by comparing and contrasting appearances and names: e.g., in saying, “This is mind (or, ‘the mind’), and these are its characteristics (or, ‘what belongs to it’)”

4. Right-Knowledge

Which consists, at least in part, in recognizing that appearance, name, and discrimination are all mutually conditioning

Recognizing that all things are empty of self-substance and un-born, and that they are only what is seen of the mind itself

5. Reality

When appearance and name are put away, and when discrimination ceases, what remains is the true and essential nature of things

But as Truth and Essence (which are the same) have no characteristics [i.e., nothing can be predicated as to their nature], they are called the “Suchness” (Tathata) of Reality

“Suchness” is the only Reality, but it is also called Truth, Mind-essence, Transcendental Intelligence, Noble Wisdom, etc.

This Dharma [or, truth] of the imageless-ness of the Essence-nature of Ultimate Reality is the (one) Dharma [or, one truth] proclaimed by all who have awakened to the true nature of Reality (i.e., all of the Buddhas)

When one understands “Suchness,” one has Perfect-knowledge and is near to attaining the Transcendental Intelligence of the Tathagatas [those who are “Such-as-they-are,” “Thus-come,” or “Thus-gone”]

Things, ideas, and Reality — in relation to the five Dharmas

The three self-natures (things, ideas, and reality), the eightfold mind-system [the five senses plus the mental — cf. Surangama Sutra — plus right-knowledge, plus Reality], and the twofold egoless-ness (of things [elements] and of persons [aggregates]) are all included in the five Dharmas

• Things, ideas, and the sixfold mind-system correspond to appearance, name, and discrimination
  *{the sixfold mind-system: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and the mind}

• The self-nature of Universal Mind and Reality (which are the same thing) correspond to right-knowledge and “Suchness”

Habit-energy is manifest in the mind-system [and consists in…]

• Discrimination of what is seen of the mind itself

• Attachment to what is discriminated

• The discrimination of [a] personality [ego-soul] and its environment [an external, objective world]

• Wherein discrimination, attachment, and the notion of an ego-soul all arise simultaneously like the sun and its light

Twofold egoless-ness — in reference to the aggregates of elements that make up personality and its environment, the (apparently) external and objective world

• The egoless-ness of things : The elements themselves all have the character of Maya — i.e., they are without ego-substance, are un-born, and have no self-nature

• The egoless-ness of persons : The aggregates of elements also all have the character of Maya in the same way as their elements

The mind-system is (held to be) the most characteristic mark of personality

• But it originates in ignorance, discrimination, desire, and deed

• Its activities are perpetuated by perceiving, grasping, and attachment

• The memory of these discriminations, desires, attachments, and deeds is stored in Universal Mind (Alaya-vijnana [— “mind-basis-of-all,” or “seed-consciousness”]) since beginningless time

• These memories are still being accumulated; they condition the appearance of personality and its environment; they bring about [apparent] change and destruction from moment to moment

• These manifestations are [as a whole] like a river, a seed, a lamp, a cloud, the wind

The Universal Mind that stores up everything

• It is like a monkey that is never at rest, a voracious fly in search of food, a fire that is never satisfied, a water wheel that never stops

• Defiled by habit-energy, it is like a magician that causes phantoms to appear and move around

Four kinds of knowledge

1. Appearance-knowledge

Which belongs to those who are addicted to the notion of being and non-being and who are frightened at the thought of being un-born

Which is produced by the concordance of the triple-combination [object, organ, and perception, in regard to the (five) senses and the mind (the sixth sense) that perceives them — cf. Surangama Sutra

It attaches itself to the multiplicity of objects

It is characterized by attainability and accumulation

It is subject to birth and destruction

It is the “knowledge” of words and discrimination

2. Relative-knowledge

Which arises from the mind’s ability to consider relations between and among appearances and words

And from the mind’s ability to arrange, combine, and analyze

And from the mind’s discursive powers of logic and imagination

It is the “knowledge” of philosophy, etc., by which the mind examines the (apparent) meaning and significance of things

3. Perfect-knowledge (Jnana)

Which arises from recognizing that all things are only what is seen of the mind itself

And from recognizing the emptiness, un-born-ness, and egoless-ness of all things

It arises in those who understand the five Dharmas, the twofold egoless-ness, and the truth of the imageless-ness of Ultimate Reality

[Yet,] Perfect-knowledge [still] differentiates the Bodhisattva stages [the stages of the “path” followed by those “beings” who have committed themselves to “attaining” Perfect-knowledge for the sake of all (sentient) beings]

It is (held to be) the pathway and entrance into the state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom

It is the “knowledge” of those

• … who are free from the dualisms of being and non-being, etc.,

• … who are also free from the dualism of no-birth and no-annihilation

• … who are free from all assertion and negation

• … who have by self-realization gained insight into the truths of egoless-ness and imageless-ness

• … who no longer discriminate the world as subject to causation

• … who regard the world as a vision and a dream, like the birth and death of a barren woman’s child, wherein there is nothing evolving and nothing disappearing

4. Transcendental-knowledge

First, there are three classes of people who cherish Perfect-knowledge

• Disciples — who differ from Masters in that they continue to cherish the notion of individuality and generality

• Masters — who no longer cherish individuality and generality, but who differ from Arhats in that they continue to cherish the notion of an ego-soul, according to which they go off by themselves into retirement and solitude

• Arhats — who arise when the error of discrimination is realized; Arhats have turned error into Truth by the ”turning-about” that takes place within the deepest consciousness [and yet they still cling to some forms of discrimination]

Thus, if one asserts that there is such a thing as Noble Wisdom, it no longer holds because any thing which is subject to predication is also subject to birth and destruction

The very assertion, “All things are un-born,” destroys the truthfulness of it, and when it is said that “all things are like a dream and a vision,” it means that in one way things are perceived and in another way they are not perceived: in ignorance they are perceived but in Perfect-knowledge they are not perceived

Injunction regarding Perfect-knowledge

All assertions and negations are thought-constructions and are un-born

Even the assertion that, “Universal Mind and Noble Wisdom are Ultimate Reality,” is a thought-construction and is un-born

As “things” there is no Universal Mind, there is no Noble Wisdom, and there is no Ultimate Reality

Thus, the insight and solitude of the wise is pure — all “things” are wiped away and even the state of imageless-ness ceases to exist

Download the complete outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The format of this PDF is different from this Substack format; it is more “outline-like.”

TOC – Next: Ch. 5 – Prev: Ch. 3

The nature of the mind

All the things in the world may be divided into [i.e., spoken of as being divided into] two classes

1. Evil out-flowings.

• The five aggregates (skandas) of elements that make up personality: form, sensation, perception, discrimination, and consciousness.

• These are variously imagined to be good or bad.

• They arise from the habit-energy of the mind-system.

2. Non out-flowing good.

• Spiritual attainments, the joys of the Samadhis (states of meditative bliss), and the fruits of the Samapattis (meditative attainments).

• These come through self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• They culminate in return to and participation in the relative world.

The nature of the mind-system

It is the source of the evil out-flowings.

It consists of the five sense-organs and their accompanying sense-minds (vijnanas) which are unified in the discriminating-mind (manovijnana) [cf. Surangama Sutra].

The discriminating-mind (also called the thinking-mind, or the intellectual-mind) combines, discriminates, and passes judgment upon the unending succession of sense-concepts that flow into it.

This discriminating process results in aversion to and desire for the various things discriminated.

Which in turn results in attachment and [the discrimination or appearance of] deed.

And thus the entire mind-system moves on continuously, with all its elements tightly bound together.

But it fails to understand that what it sees is only a manifestation of its own activity.

So, it goes on discriminating and does not remain quiet.

The activity of the mind-system —

… the three modes of activity (that can be distinguished).

1. Sense-minds functioning in their original nature.

• Grasping appropriate elements of their external world.

• Whereby sensation and perception arise everywhere and in every way.

• By which the whole field [of appearances] is apprehended like a mirror, without realization that the objects apprehended are only manifestations of the mind itself.

2. Sense-minds (as) producing effects.

• Meaning the way in which sensations [or sense-concepts] act upon the discriminating-mind to produce perceptions, attractions, aversions, grasping, deed, and habit.

3. Sense-minds (as) evolving.

• Having to do with the growth, development, and passing of the mind-system.

• Meaning that the mind-system is subject to its own habit-energy — e.g., (the arising, over time, of) the “eye-ness” of the eye with its predisposition to grasp at and become attached to form.

• In this way, the activities of the mind stir up “waves of objectivity on the face of Universal Mind”.

• Universal Mind, in turn, conditions the activities and evolution of the mind-system.

• In this manner, habit-energy builds up (between the sense-minds and the discriminating-mind), “defiles” the face of Universal Mind, and gives rise to the mind-system and [the appearance of] the whole physical body.

• As a mirror reflect forms, the senses perceive appearances which the mind gathers together, discriminates, names, and becomes attached to.

• There is no difference between sense-minds and the discriminating-mind, and yet at the same time they are mutually conditioning.

• The senses grasp at their objects, and in doing so the structure of the senses [and the sense-organs] changes through the mind’s continuous activity.

The activity of the mind-system —

… three divisions of its mental activity or “mentation” (that can be distinguished).

1. In connection with attachment to [individual] objects and ideas.

• Attachment derived from discrimination, particularly the discrimination of the mind from its mental processes, the acceptance of [specific, or apparently “clear”] ideas as being real, and attachment to those ideas.

• Thus arriving at a variety of false judgments regarding multiplicity, individuality, value, etc.

• And grasping at these ideas, etc., and perpetuating its habit-energy.

2. In connection with general ideas.

• Such as (color,) warmth, fluidity, motility, and solidity (cf. Surangama Sutra), as characterizing things.

• Holding on to these ideas, etc..

• Giving rise to proposition, reason, definition, illustration, etc.

• Thus leading to the assertion of relative-knowledge, and confidence in the ideas of birth, self-nature, and an ego-soul.

3. In examining the validity of these general ideas.

• Meaning the intellectual act of examining conclusions about general ideas in regard to their validity, significance, and truth.

• This faculty leads to understanding and right-knowledge, and points the way to self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Ego-personality and its relationship to the mind-system

First, the (presumed) self-nature of the five grasping aggregates ...

... of elements that make up personality — (which are empty, unborn, and without self-nature).

1. Form.

• Belonging to whatever is made of the so-called primary elements, whatever they may be.

• The other four aggregates are without form or marks, and ought properly not to be considered as distinct from one another in that they merge together imperceptibly.

• They are like space (itself) which cannot be divided except in imagination; and unlike things (which have the appearance of being, marks, perceivability, abode, work, etc.).

• These four are beyond reason and beyond the dualism of existence and non-existence.

• Together, they constitute what is called the mortal-mind, and are even more Maya-like and dream-like than things, and they (attachment to them) are obstacles to self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

2. Sensation.

3. Perception.

4. Discrimination.

5. Consciousness.

These five are the basis for the ego-soul and the ground of its desires and self-interests, …

… and they should be given up in favor of the truth of imageless-ness and solitude.

Universal Mind and its relation to the lower mind-system

The lower-mind …

… is composed of the sense-minds and their centralized discriminating-mind.

The external world is a manifestation of this lower-mind, and the lower-mind is given over to perceiving, discriminating, grasping at, and attachment to the Maya-like appearance of the external world.

Universal Mind …

… is pure in its essential nature, unchanged, free from impermanence, undisturbed by egoism, and unruffled by distinctions, desires, and aversions [judgments]

It is like a Great Ocean whose surface is ruffled, but whose depths are unmoved.

In itself, it is devoid of personality and all its characteristics, but because of its superficial defilement it takes a variety of appearances.

Among its variety of appearances there appears mutual functioning and conditioning, from which the mind-system arises.

Within this mutually conditioning and mutually functioning mind-system the principle of intellection becomes divided [discriminated].

The mind, the functions of mind, and the evil out-flowings of mind all take on individuation; and thus, the seven-fold gradation of mind appears, with all their interactions:

1. Intuitive self-realization [intuitive-mind].

2. Thinking-desiring-discriminating [the discriminating-mind].

3. Seeing.

4. Hearing.

5. Tasting.

6. Smelling.

7. Touching. [the five sense-minds].

But, between this (individual) discriminating-mind and Universal Mind there is the intuitive-mind (Manas)

The intuitive-mind depends upon Universal Mind for its cause and its support, and it is one with it.

• It partakes of its universality and shares in its purity.

• It also is above form and momentariness (intuition is formless and is not momentary).

• Through it the good non out-flowings emerge, are manifested, and are realized.

• It is one with Universal Mind by its participation in Transcendental Intelligence (Arya-jnana).

But it enters into relations with both the Universal Mind and the lower discriminating-mind, and it is also one with the discriminating-mind.

• It shares the experiences of the discriminating-mind and reflects upon its activities.

• It is one with the mind-system by its comprehension of differentiated knowledge (vijnana).

Intuitive-mind has no body of its own, nor any marks by which it can be differentiated (by the discriminating-mind).

While Universal Mind is its cause and support, intuitive-mind is evolved along with the notion of an ego and its characteristics, to which it clings and upon which it reflects.

Through intuitive-mind (the faculty of intuition, which involves both identity and perception), the wisdom of Universal Mind is revealed and made realizable, and like Universal Mind, (true) intuition cannot be a source of error.

The three “minds” contrasted

Discriminating-mind — is a dancer and a magician with the objective world as his stage.

Intuitive-mind — is the wise jester who travels with the magician and reflects upon his emptiness and transiency.

Universal Mind — keeps the record and knows what must be and what may be.

It is because of the activity of the discriminating-mind that error arises, the objective world evolves, and the notion of an ego-soul gets established — when it is gotten rid of the whole mind-system ceases and Universal Mind alone will remain, because getting rid of the discriminating-mind removes the cause of all error.

The cessation of the mind-system

The five sense-minds and the discriminating-mind (of the lower-mind) arise and completely end from moment to moment.

• Discrimination is the cause of their arising.

• Form and appearance are, together, the condition of their arising.

• They are created by the will-to-live and ignorance.

• The setting up of name and form produces false-imagination as to pleasure and pain which increases greed (all of which blocks the way to emancipation).

• But the lower mind-system does not really suffer pleasure and pain — these are only [falsely] imagined reactions to an imaginary objective world.

Two ways in which the mind-system may cease

1. In regard to form.

• By breaking the contact in the (chain of) interaction of form, contact, and grasping.

2. In regard to continuation.

• When the contact (in “form, contact, and grasping”) ceases, there is no continuation of the five sense-minds.

• When the five sense-minds cease, discrimination, grasping, and attachment cease.

• When discrimination, etc. cease, act, deed, and habit-energy cease, and the accumulation of karma-defilement on the face of Universal Mind ceases.

But there is no cessation of Universal Mind (or, Divine Mind), …

… which is the abode of Reality and the Womb of Truth, and which is not the cause of mortal-mind.

The perceiving function of the sense-minds does not cease —

… it is the cessation of their discriminating and naming activities which are centralized in the discriminating-mind.

And so, as a whole this is the cessation of discrimination and attachment, and the clearing away of defilements.

Cessation of the continuation aspect of the mind-system as a whole, occurs with the cessation of the discriminating-mind that supports it.

When the mortal-mind ceases, the entire world of Maya disappears, and desire disappears with it.

And this is Nirvana.

Injunction regarding the “turning-about”

Cessation of discrimination takes place with the “turning-about” that takes place in the deepest seat of consciousness.

• This entails giving up the mental habit of looking outward upon an external objective world.

• A new “habit” must be established, of becoming one with Truth itself through intuitive self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• The way is opened to this intuitive self-realization when there is true insight into the five Dharmas, the three self-natures (that they are empty, un-born, and without self-nature), and the twofold egoless-ness (of things and of persons).

• With this will come the end of pleasure and pain, of conflicting ideas, and of the disturbing interests of egoism.

• A state of tranquilization will occur, and the truths of emancipation will be fully understood, and there will be no further evil out-flowings.

  ---

Lankavatara: Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom

The text favored by Bodhidharma. Of the Mind-Only school of thought.

This outline follows Dwight Goddard’s 1938 arrangement and translation.

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” and much easier to browse.

TOC – Next: Ch. 6 – Prev: Ch. 4

The selective and personal forms of love

are unlike the greater love that is the root and meaning of our reality.

--

So there! It is a lesson to me again and again

how beautiful these things can seem. These misadventures have I known,

such love for only this or only that and only because, … only because.

Although, I knew to just let go. I knew to give up what I imagined it to be

when every attachment was addiction, if not to the present then to expectations,

where every end was always something broken, another terrible message left unspoken.

--

Return with me here to where everything comes and goes,

to remember the light in every shape and form,

to recall what we have always known.

The past is now

Everything that has ever been exists as this one moment now,

this now that has no dimension of its own.

Dimension exists within now, and not now within dimensions.

Everything that exists is the past existing now.

The present, every present, is only an echo of all past, seen anew selectively.

The present, this individuality present in the whole, is now.

‘I Am’ is time itself, your time, the meaning of now.

‘I Am’ is now, and now is the surface of the past.

—

We are echoes not in time but of time

endlessly echoed within itself as now.

Infinity of infinities, each of us and all of us.

We are the same ‘I’ seeing itself in every moment.

In every now, you see yourself seeing yourselves as now.

Infinity of infinities! All the past is here and now, is this now, is now itself.

For everything I see, I see that I am that. I see that that is me.

Everything we see is what we are.

Each is now, now is everything. And no things now, ... no numbers now.

—

All the eyes and hearts and minds, all the ideas and feelings and sensations!

All these and everything is only each and all of us as what we are,

each as all, the infinities endlessly self-reflecting ourselves within us,

echoing across us, dimensionless,

reflecting every dimension of the advancing past that forever is.

Grains of sand and the stars in the sky,

and the whole idea of gravity and light,

and every word and the many meanings of ‘word.’

—

You, this now! Now is infinite, you are infinite, and so are we all.

As you can see if you only will, there is an infinity of us in each of us.

Is this not the best constantly getting better, more perfect in every way

as every now converges both to one and to none alone

as all that is possible in any and every way.

Allow this. Intend this.

Embrace this. Become this.

—

What do you see around you?

Do you see the light that lights your mind?

The light is now. The light is you. The light engulfs you

scattered and not scattered in each and every other

in the same now, echoes of echoes of light.

You see the light. The light sees you.

You recognize every other as you, reflected as one and two and more,

reflecting across the infinity of infinities of now the past.

Say hello to the light that you are. Feel this light say hello to you.

—

Now! Look!

See yourself in every single thing as every moment in time,

as now, as endless reflections of all that can be.

Imagine now – imagine all that can ever be.

Know now – know that this is what you are.

The future is now

The future is pure being, purely infinite possibility,

the empty theater where all else comes and goes,

where all else remains forever as past,

a past reforming and reflecting itself here

as this forever now.

--

The future is pure awareness.

Step back from all you see and know and feel.

See the world without its drifting names and forms,

without its habits and its hollow words.

Empty it is, without individuality of any kind, but

it is not a void. It is the perfection of possibility,

the inevitability of every way and every kind.

--

Look now, pure being, pure awareness that you are.

Look now at the infinite past through the lens of now.

Be the infinite possibility. Be the infinity of past.

Be now forever. Be the reality of every time.

Some people used to ask me, “How do you think about things; how do you solve problems and such”? My standard answer has been, “I just kind of stare at a blank wall inside of me until I see the answer.”

But now I think that this particular video is a much better depiction of how I think. Not with as much color, music, and animation, of course, but just the feeling of it, the movement, the endless fluid transitions caught only in glimpses, with quiet answers drifting slowly by in imaginary time.

Before we begin ….

Compared to the previous posts on Chapters 1 and 4 of this sutra, Chapter 6 may be a little more difficult to follow, even for readers who are already well-versed in non-duality. It is just my personal opinion, but I do not often see the more contemplative idea of ‘transcendental intelligence’ being discussed under non-duality which seems the inherently more practical and more gradual approach.

On the other hand, I assure you that the subject actually is present in non-duality teaching; it is just phrased differently from the way it is in the Lankavatara where the intended audience is more monastic or more rigorously trained in this kind of language. (I.e., it can take a while to get used to the Lankavatara and understand the point of it.)

So, at the end of this chapter under the heading, “Womb of Tathagatahood,” you will encounter some very strong assertions about the nature of “He who by the path of knowledge has come at the real essentials of things.” These assertions may seem idealistic and exaggerated if not fanciful at times.

These are to be understood from the perspective of those who are already well-acquainted with the concept of transcendental intelligence; and they do not (necessarily) reflect the expectations of those who just seek basic understanding of the idea. If you do not understand these unusual assertions, then for the time-being simply take them as euphemism or metaphor. In that way, with a little imagination you might find them very interesting after all. Just try to imagine yourself seeing your world in this way, perhaps focusing on your own understanding of non-duality or spirituality. But do not try to imagine seeing someone else in the world about whom you would say such things as these!

Chapter 6 — Transcendental Intelligence

The nature of Transcendental Intelligence

It is the inner state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom

*{Noble Wisdom: the Truth that is beyond reasoning and ordinary understanding, and is realizable only in the inmost sense of being and awareness}

It is realized suddenly and intuitively, as the “turning-about” that takes place in the deepest seat of consciousness.

It neither enters nor goes out, like the moon seen in water.

It is not subject to birth or destruction, has nothing to do with combination or concordance, is devoid of attachment and accumulation, and transcends all dualism.

Four things to remember

Words

Employed to express meaning.

Dependent upon discrimination and memory as their cause.

Dependent upon the use of sounds, letters, etc. by which meanings are transferred.

Which are only symbols that may or may not clearly, fully, or sufficiently express intended meaning.

Which may be understood differently than intended.

Which are neither different nor non-different from meaning.

Meanings

Which are neither different nor non-different from words.

Which are illuminated by words as things are by a lamp — i.e., through word-discrimination.

But through which Bodhisattvas can enter into the meaning of the teachings of the Tathagatas, and through that meaning enter into self-realization of Noble Wisdom, which is free from word-discrimination.

*{Bodhisattbas: seekers of Noble Wisdom.}
*{Tathagata: “the one thus come,” “He who by the path of knowledge has come at the real essentials of things.”}

Therefore, in order to “attain” Noble Wisdom, literal meaning of words is to be avoided, as is the belief that words and meanings agree, especially in regard to such matters as Nirvana, un-born-ness, the five Dharmas, etc.

*{Dharma: What supports or admits of knowing; cf. Chapter 13, The five Dharmas.}

Else, one becomes (deeper) entangled in assertions and refutations that go on multiplying.

Teachings

That meaning is not different from words or else words could not express meaning.

That meaning is different from words in that words are subject to birth and death and are dependent upon letters and meaning, while meaning is apart from existence and non-existence, has no substratum, and is un-born.

So, Truth (which has meaning) is beyond words.

Yet words can and sometimes do conform to meaning and Truth.

Words are subject to interpretation by individual minds, but meaning and Truth are not; so, one must not become attached to words, because even the best of words are subject to imperfect functioning of the discriminating-mind.

One must not become attached to the pointing finger, nor to those who are clever with words, nor to those who display “much learning.”

Noble Wisdom

Which does not belong to materialism and is not reached by philosophical knowledge; e.g., it is not reached by imagining things which are of merely worldly interest and enjoyment, which appear in the aggregates of personality, and which give rise to suffering; e.g., ….

• The coming and going of the mind-system,

• Vanishing and appearing,

• Solicitation,

• Attachment,

• Intense affection,

• Hypotheses and theories [assertions and refutations],

• An abode,

• A sense-concept,

• Atomic attraction,

• Organism,

• Growth,

• Thirst, grasping.

Where nothing remains but the solitude of Reality.

Where the true egoless-ness of things [and persons] is understood, and where discrimination ceases to assert itself.

Which is the Dharma and is Transcendental Intelligence, transcending all discrimination, reasoning, and dualism.

The Womb of Tathagatahood

*{Tathagatahood: Buddhahood, of “the one thus come,”  the character of one who by the path of knowledge has come at the essential nature of things.}

Which is not the same as the Divine Atman [‘True Self’] which is also claimed to be eternal, inscrutable, unchanging, and imperishable.

But which is Tathagatahood in the sense of Dharmakaya, Ultimate Oneness, Nirvana, emptiness, un-bornness, un-qualified-ness, and devoid of will-effort.

*{Dharmakaya: the unmanifested, "inconceivable" (acintya) aspect of a Buddha out of which Buddhas arise and to which they return after their dissolution; reality in and of itself.}
*{Nirvana: emptiness (of own-reality and own-being); mutually-dependent origination; absolute relativity.}

This doctrine of Tathagatahood is taught in order to help those who seek Noble Wisdom (i.e., the Bodhisattvas) to lay aside their fears regarding egoless-ness, non-discrimination, and imageless-ness, and to awaken them from their clinging to notions of transcendental personality as being something self-existent.

One who seeks Noble Wisdom (a Bodhisattva) is said to have grasped the teachings when, all alone and in a lonely place, by means of his Transcendental Intelligence, his mind unfolds by perceiving, thinking, meditating, and abiding in the practice of concentration until he attains the “turning-about” at the source of habit-energy [i.e., in the deepest seat of consciousness].

• Thereafter, he will lead a life of excellent deeds,

• His mind will concentrate on the state of Buddhahood,

• He will become thoroughly conversant with the Noble Truth of self-realization,

• He will become a perfect master of his own mind,

• He will be like a gem radiating many colors,

• He will assume bodies of transformation,

• He will enter into the minds of all to help them,

• He will become established in the perfect Transcendental Intelligence of the Tathagatas.

Transcendental Intelligence (Arya-jnana) is not Noble Wisdom (Arya-prajna) itself, but only an intuitive awareness of it.

• Noble Wisdom is a perfect state of imageless-ness,

• It is the womb of “Suchness,”

• It is the all-conserving Divine Mind (Alaya-vijnana) which in its pure Essence forever abides in perfect patience and undisturbed tranquility.

  ---

Thank you to all who have subscribed to my articles, and to those who follow my notes and comments.

Thank you also to those who just stop by occasionally to read something.

You are why I am here.

— —

Download a PDF of the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra.

TOC – Next: Ch. 7 – Prev: Ch. 5

The nature of self-realization — attaining Transcendental Intelligence

Transcendental Intelligence arises when the intellectual-mind reaches its limit

I.e., when the processes of mentation (based on particularity, discrimination, and judgment) are transcended by appeal to a higher faculty of cognition.

I.e., if there is such a higher faculty.

And there is such a faculty in the intuitive-mind (Manas), which is the link between the intellectual-mind and Universal Mind [cf. Chapter 5].

The intuitive-mind

Is not individualized, as is the intellectual-mind.

It has direct dependence upon Universal Mind.

It does not give information that can be analyzed and discriminated.

It gives self-realization through identification.

The “understandings” that lead to self-realization

These [it would seem] are necessary but not sufficient in themselves [because there remains the necessity for a “turning-about” in the deepest seat of consciousness, which is different from “understanding”].

1. Understanding that all things are only manifestations of the mind itself

That this world is only a complex of mental activities.

That it is devoid of selfness and its belongings.

That there are no strivings, comings, or goings.

That it is manifested and imagined as real only by habit-energy that has been accumulating from beginningless time, through memory, false-imagination, false-reasoning, and attachment to the multiplicity of objects, all in relation to ideas of body-property-and-abode [i.e., body, that which belongs to it, and that it appears to “abide in” an external world].

2. Discarding the notions of birth, abiding, and disappearance (destruction)

Recognizing that all things are as forms seen in a vision and a dream.

That all things are empty of substance, un-born, and without self-nature.

That all things exist only because of a complex network of causation that arises from discrimination and attachment, and from which arises the mind-system and all its belongings and evolvements.

3. Understanding the egoless-ness of things and persons

That one’s own mind and personality are also mind-constructed.

That these are also empty of substance, un-born, and egoless.

And thereby, to enter into the truth of imageless-ness.

4. Having a true conception of what constitutes self-realization of Noble Wisdom

That it is not comparable to sense-mind perceptions.

Neither is it comparable to any cognition of the discriminating intellectual-mind [nor to its apparent functioning as a whole].

• Sense-mind and intellectual-mind presuppose a difference between self and not-self; therefore, the knowledge that they present is characterized by [discrimination of the supposed marks of] individuality and generality.

It is based on identity and Oneness.

And there is nothing to be discriminated or predicated concerning it.

To enter into it, one must be free of all presuppositions about and attachments to things, ideas, and selfness.

The characteristics of deep attachments to existence, and how to become detached from existence.

In trying to understand the significance of things by means of words and discrimination, there arise deep-seated attachments to existence

E.g., to signs of individuality, causation, being and non-being, birth and death, and doing and not-doing, and to the habit of discrimination.

Greed, anger, and infatuation are especially deep-seated attachments

They are based on lust, fear, and pride.

Which are in turn based on discrimination and desire, which is procreative.

Discrimination and desire are accompanied by excitement, avariciousness, love of comfort, and desire for eternal life.

From these there arises the succession of rebirths and the continuation of attachments.

But, because these attachments are based on things that are non-existent, they can be broken off such that no sign of them remains

[This is the same as recognizing the truth.]

The mind-system depends upon and attaches itself ...

... to [its own discrimination of] the triple-combination [of object, organ, and perception], with which it works in unison (or in concordance).

And so, it functions incessantly.

It is the cause of a deeply-felt and continuous assertion of the will-to live.

But, when the triple-combination ceases to exist, there is a triple emancipation and no further arising of any combination.

When the existence and non-existence of the external world are recognized as arising from the mind itself, this is (for the Bodhisattva) ….

• To be prepared to enter into the state of imageless-ness.

• To see therein the emptiness that characterizes all discrimination and all attachments that result from discrimination; and to see therein, no signs of attachment nor of detachment.

• To see no one in bondage nor in emancipation, except those who cherish bondage and emancipation.

• And to see that in all things there is no ”substance” to be taken hold of.

Those who cherish discriminations attach themselves to their discriminations, enwrap themselves and others in them, and become charmed by them.

But from the view-point of [the] solitude [of Reality] all things are seen as abiding in solitude, there are no signs of attachment or detachment, and there is no evolving of discrimination

To understand the [significance of the] distinction between attachment and detachment ...

... is to have the skillful means necessary to avoid attachment (e.g., to words).

And accordingly, to grasp the meaning behind words.

And, being free from attachment to words, to establish oneself where there will be a ”turning-about” in the deepest seat of consciousness by means of which one will attain self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

There are two ways to consider self-realization

1. The teachings about it.

• Which are there for those who are so inclined.

• Which make use of skillful means and expedients.

• Which are intended to awaken a true perception of the Dharma that sustains things [cf. Chapter 1 The five Dharmas].

2. The realization of it.

• Which is with the inner consciousness.

• Which is an inner experience with no connection to the lower-mind and its discriminations.

• Which shines with its own clear light to reveal the error of mind-constructed teachings and to guide one to the realm of good non out-flowings.

  ---

The One Vehicle

Which has been said to characterize the attainment of inner self-realization of Noble Wisdom [cf. Lotus Sutra]

Still, those (the Bodhisattvas) who seek Noble Wisdom should retire to a secluded place and exert themselves without relying upon anyone else

This solitude is the characteristic feature of the inner attainment of self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

It is also called the One Vehicle, not because it is the One Vehicle, but because it is only in solitude that one is able to recognize and realize the path of the One Vehicle.

As long as the mind is distracted there can be no culmination as regards the various vehicles; and it is only when the mind is alone and quiet that it can forsake discrimination (of the outer world) and seek realization of an inner realm where there is no vehicle and no one who rides in it.

Talk of three vehicles is only to carry the ignorant — [here] there is no [or little] talk of the One Vehicle because there is no way by which earnest disciples and masters [who conceive themselves to be of the “lesser vehicles”] can reach Nirvana unaided [i.e., without the sustaining power of the Tathagatas].

• They must [first] be trained in [that] meditation which is necessary to realize emancipation.

• Their habit-energy of karma, and the hindrances of discriminative knowledge and human passion [the “twofold hindrance”] often prevent them from accepting the twofold egoless-ness (of things [elements] and of persons [aggregates]) and the inconceivable transformation-death.

• When all habit-energy is gone and when the twofold egoless-ness is realized, then there will be no intoxication from the Samadhis [the blissful meditations] and there will be an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings.

• When there is an awakening into the super-realm of the good non out-flowings, one is able to gather up all the requisites for attainment of the self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• And so, the triple vehicle is taught, not the One Vehicle [in order to appeal to those who conceive themselves to be in the triple vehicle — cf. Lotus Sutra].

But in reality there are no vehicles at all, and therefore one speaks of the One Vehicle.

• And the full recognition of the One Vehicle has never been attained by either earnest disciples or by masters, or even by the great Brahma, but only by the Tathagatas themselves. [I.e., By “The ones thus-come or thus-gone.”]

• This is why it is known as the One Vehicle [— because there is only the Ultimate Reality of Oneness].

  ---

The steps that lead one toward self-realization of Noble Wisdom

One must begin by recognizing that the external world is only a manifestation of the activities of the mind itself, ...

... and that the mind grasps these activities as an external world only because of the habit of discrimination and false-reasoning.

So, get into the habit of looking at things truthfully.

Recognize that the world has no self-nature, that it is un-born, that it is like a vision and a dream, like the moon reflected in water, a cloud, a wheel seen in the motion of a revolving firebrand, an imaginary castle.

Realize that mind in its Essence-nature has nothing to do with discrimination or causation.

Do not listen to talk based on imaginary terms and qualifications.

Understand that Universal Mind in its pure Essence is a state of imageless-ness.

• It is only because of the accumulation of defilements upon the face of Universal Mind that body-property-and-abode appear to be its manifestations.

• But in its pure nature it is unaffected by and does not affect such changes as rising, abiding, and destruction.

• These things come and go with the awakening of the notion of an ego-soul and its conscious mind.

Desist from all discrimination and erroneous reasoning about such notions as the elements that make up the aggregates of personality and its sense-world, or about such ideas as causation, rising, abiding, and destruction.

Exercise yourself in the discipline of meditation (dhyana) that leads to the self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

Regarding meditation (dhyana)

Retire to a quiet and solitary place and remember that life-long habits of discrimination cannot be easily or quickly ended.

There are four kinds of meditation (dhyana)

1. As practiced by the ignorant.

• Following the example of others, but not understanding the purpose.

• “Still-sitting” with a vacant mind.

• Or, despising the body and seeing it as full of suffering and impurity yet still clinging to the notion of an ego, and seeking emancipation merely by ceasing to think.

2. Examination of meaning.

• Perceiving the error in ideas such as self, other, and both.

• Realizing the twofold egoless-ness.

• Devoting one’s meditation to examining the significance of egoless-ness and to the differentiations of the Bodhisattva stages.

3. Taking “Suchness” (Tathata) as its object.

• Or, taking Oneness or the Divine Name as its object.

• Fully recognizing the twofold egoless-ness and the imageless-ness of Tathata [“thus-ness”].

• Yet, still clinging to the notion of an ultimate Tathata.

4. The meditation of the Tathagatas.

• Entering the stage of Tathagatahood.

• Abiding in the triple bliss that characterizes self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

• Devoting oneself to the accomplishment of incomprehensible works for the sake of the emancipation of all beings.

• Transcending and forgetting all lesser things and ideas.

• A perfect state of imageless-ness where Tathagata and Tathata are merged in perfect Oneness.

• Where the Buddhas from all the Buddha-lands come together to rest shining hands upon one’s forehead to welcome a new Tathagata.

Thank you to all who have subscribed to my articles, and to those who follow my notes and comments. Thank you also to those who just stop by occasionally to read something.

— —

Download a PDF of this Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra.

Download a PDF of Reality and Being (the preferred format), or read it here on Substack.

* In regard to the intuitive-mind (Manas), you might find it interesting to compare this to Reality and Being, Chapter 13 - Knowing and Intuiting. Many of he ideas in Reality and Being were inspired by this Sutra.

TOC – Next: Ch. 8 – Prev: Ch. 6

It happened one afternoon near the sea, that for a moment I was only an ocean of light.

I was the light, a place, thingless and nameless without form or forms. An ocean rippled-through with faint threads among color, sound, and simple sensation. Into this ocean there slowly poured the memories of what I’d known before, now recognizing the things that I know again and will remember again some other day.

In retelling it this way, it is only an “I” playing with words the way words play with “me.”

Karma

Karma is the desire to know and remember all the consequences of attachment. It is by this desire that being calls forth all experiences. It is how the universe infinitely multiplies what it knows of itself: as everything that has ever been and that can ever be.

In myth, “this world is on fire; it burns with the fire of desire.”

In this, there is a place called Kurukshetra, a level plain upon the earth. One day before the days of Iron when this was first told, you were playing among many others and there was a little contest among us. We played the game of who could perform the best sacrifice: who among us could return the most of what we have been given to the ocean from which we came?

You were the one called ‘All Pervasive’ (Vishnu). You won that ancient contest. You set yourself on fire with pure desire. To all who read this: Know that this fire is every desire that burns within you, even right now as you search among these words.

This was your desire: To know and remember all the consequences of every attachment; to know and remember all possible experiences in every life in every place and every time. To know and to love.

You are me and I am you. You and I created both of us by Karma, by attachment to the word and idea of ‘individual’ (separated). You and I are separated by attachment to this notion of individuality and to notions of Time and Place, a consequence of which is that it will seem that we are not the same one.

Yes, it looks far more complex and final than that! But appearances are not what they appear to be (and neither are they anything else).

Who do you believe you are? What do you think you are you? Do you imagine yourself to be an independent individual? You are never what you think you are.

Individuals

Are we each endlessly re-incarnate into new individualities so that Karmic desires can be reconciled through mere reward and punishment?

Look within yourself. There is no need for such rough sleight of hand.

You are being itself, entering into the world of individuality by your desire to know and remember all possible experiences of being. Can you remember when you wanted to remember everything?

Question your thinking mind. Individuality is only another ephemeral experience.

Deep within yourself at the seat of your pure awareness, you already know that all these illusions of individuality will in time dissolve. Is it not divinely ironic that these things called “individuals” are products of only feigned division?

You are neither divided nor undivided. The words “divided” and “undivided” simply do not apply to you. These oppositions of You and I and One or Many, arise naturally within the universe solely by their relation to one another as opposites in a scheme. You attach yourself to this scheme by habitual repetition of childhood words and other gestures. But in reality, you are far, far beyond this scheme. You are more than the scheme, you are the place, Kurukshetra, where schemes unfold.

But how would you know this?

No Individuals

The truth can become clear by simply recalling it within you. I remember it and therefore so can you, because I am you and you are me. This is truly what you really are: the self-aware reality of everything that can ever be.

This distinction between you and me is only another thing to which we can be attached, because the wider distinction between the knower and the known is also only a thing to which we can be attached.

Here in this same mythical Kurukshetra, you, the All Pervasive, appeared to Arjuna on the spiritual battlefield in the form of the avatar, Krishna. There, you explained to Arjuna in his moral suffering, how he and you appeared both different and also not different, using simple words already inscribed in your shared heart:

I and you are one, one within two, and two within one. In this light, the truth of Karma becomes transparently clear. We desired this to be so, because we wanted to know and remember all of this in every possible way.

—

* Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita by Krishna Prem (The Internet Archive): Ch. XIII the Yoga of distinction between the field and the knower of the field (source page)

Love

I talk about universal love, by which I simply mean pure love, in the way being knows itself as the self of reality and the limitless awareness. The all-pervasive light purely loves absolutely everything exactly the way it is and the way it unfolds. I would defer to Dante, Paradiso and the last few cantos of Purgatorio. I read those while in Florence. I remember what it was about and what the point of it was; but from the time I read it until today, I cannot remember what he wrote, other than it was the divine love of all things everywhere.

As for parent-child love, I think of that as unconditional love, by which I mean that there are no conditions on that love, but also that it does not necessarily extend to many other beings; it is also a restricted kind of love, in that while the child or parent may love unconditionally in one way, they may also hate and attack aspects of the other in another way. So, this is a material form of love rather than divine or universal.

Personal love is different from those in some ways and similar in others. It is not universal; it is selective. Nor is it necessarily unconditional, although it is more like parental love in that today I continue to love unconditionally some people in my life to whom I was very close, but who deceived me or cut me off from them in a very harsh way. Likewise, I still unconditionally love people whom I cut off from my life, sometimes harshly because I thought I had to do it that way. The difference here is that the commitment to them is not the same anymore, because it seemed things had to be changed.

There is a lot of each of these three kinds in each of the others, and each may occur with any other.

Parental love and personal love can be ended in many ways, and ending it is often painful, more painful in my memory than birth, physical injury, or addiction.

But the only pain from universal love is to forget, deny or ignore it, and that is instantly forgiven simply by recognizing it again.

Comment peut-on aimer une personne que nous n’aimons pas? C’est la différence entre l’amour dans l’absolu et celui dans le relatif.

[How can we love a person we don’t love? This is the difference between love in the absolute and love in the relative.] — a comment from Martine Castonguay

Yes, this is the difference: absolute / relative.

I remember times past when I felt I hated someone, a time when I treated them badly or they treated me badly. In retrospect, now more awake to the nature of reality, I see that I was both the hater and the hated. It was all relative, all a consequence of desire and habit.

That time is now past, and here I am now, still the same now, while those feelings are no more except in memory. Now the past is beautiful beyond all description and all reasoning. In that, because the present is made entirely of the past, the present becomes beautiful again beyond all description and reasoning.

Absolute relativity: at the deepest core of our being, we are reality itself, neither one nor many but absolutely what is; and everything ever experienced is only the many forms of what that means in relation to each other and to the absolute.

“When Pain is taken as Failure” — a post by Heloisa Moura

I have been in immense pain a few times, but I knew what it was and did not suffer. On the other hand I have suffered horribly sometimes in ways I thought beyond enduring when I could find no pain at all except the awareness of broken love. But in the end, looking back, everything is unimaginably beautiful.

“Creation and awareness are one act.” — Anonymous

The endless memories of colors and forms of things flow out into the light to lay down in the mind’s eye the simple perception of this one sky.

“Who Am I in the Dream?” Am I only a dream of a sleeping dreamer? What is my desire if not to dream all this, to know all this, to live all this?

Is it not to remember and love every moment of every possible life?

Words

“You say a priestess and a witch, these are supposed to mean opposite things. But I understand you.

The words we use, their meanings are now blurred. But I understand you.

Can’t you see, sensitive creative humans, We’re already communicating outside the words…” — Marwa Mabrouk

A very insightful and significant observation. How does communication happen? Words, tone, and gesture cannot possibly be enough to support what we feel is happening.

Is it a mechanism among us? Or is it a oneness containing us all?

Two very different questions:

How do people agree on what is true and what is not true?

How do people discover what is true and what is not true?

Two ways of knowing: Knowing-What and Knowing-That. With The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Two ways of experiencing: Experiencing and Representing. With Universal Truth and Universal Context.

“The Myth of Karmic Justice -- Why growth doesn’t require a moral universe.” — Archetype Alchemy

From the perspective of being in and of itself, I view Karma as the desire to experience all the consequences of attachment.

Thus, if I harm someone, then I am also the one who is harmed, because I am exactly the same I in every being.

“To attach is to bind oneself to consequence, to consent—often unknowingly—to feel every reverberation of that bond. Karma, then, is not moral bookkeeping but experiential inevitability: the universe honoring desire by allowing it to exhaust itself through lived result.” — AA

Yes. Not only is there the way that individuals attach to things, but there is also the attachment to individuality (and many other forms of attachment).

Life is being in and of itself, desiring to know individuality in all its forms.

Thank you to all my subscribers and followers, and also to others who sometimes stop by to read. You are why I write.

Jan 21 2026

If you want to, you can remember being born. It isn’t easy to do until you remember there are no words or other ‘handles’ with which to pull up the memory. It is more pervasive than that, more subtle because of the impact it had at the time. Because you have lived with it for so long, you are well-practiced in ignoring it. But the clues are there. Once you notice, you will see how easy it is after all.

Then the problem is to remember time before you were born and then time even before that time, up to before time.

Jan 27 2026

When we see the body from the inside out, attuned only to the senses and not to the mind,

then there is no recognizing, no silent pronouncements, no seeing things, no things to be seen out there;

scarce difference among the senses, no concerns, no anticipation, no moods.

…. for about three seconds. …

And then all that recognizing and such fills in between the near invisible lines in the colored light.

Memories populate the attention, now with words again.

Words, … “now I remember,” ... “of course,”

as the mind tries to take credit for it all, but a lot more humbly this time.

Jan 27 2026

Jesus was misinterpreted. Instead of “Thy will be done” implying some future moment - what he really meant was “thy will is being done.” In each moment. Unconditionally. – Shiv Sengupta

--

Perhaps Similar to “believe in me” in the same sense as “I just believe in me.” (John Lennon, i.e., that ‘I Am’).

“Created in God’s Image” in the sense that God has within him an image of the world, and your image of yourself is a part of that image.”

“The knowledge of Good and Evil” in the sense of habitually discriminating between what is relatively good and relatively bad, as opposed to directly knowing the absolute goodness of limitless being.

Jan 27 2026

Peace. If you had true peace, would that not be enough? -- Krishnamurti

Jan 27 2026

“One flower, all the beauty we can bear.” – Sophia Schweitzer

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It is characteristic of awakening that the world now is unimaginably beautiful and impossible not to love in every respect and every detail, no matter how good or bad things may have seemed in the past. This is impossible to grasp until you notice for yourself that it has always been so, that it will always be so, and that this is what you truly are. Part of this beauty and love is the awareness that sooner or later everyone remembers this simple and obvious truth.

Jan 27 2026

I know this impulse: “to escape.” There was once a terrible time when I could not escape, could not fight, and could not play dead. But in that moment I remembered something about myself and about my being there. I remembered that “I” was not the one who was there, I was the place where all this was happening. And with that, I survived.

Ultimately I made it OK that it happened as it did. Today, this memory reminds me of a particular bird. His name is Nesbit.

Nesbit is (or perhaps was) a Peregrine Falcon who was said to have an extraordinary personality. Gentle, intelligent, cooperating, but also firm in his demands and requirements. In some ways he is the embodiment of inability to escape, to fight, or to play dead in a stressful situation. In similar but traumatic situations, this results in injury to the Sympathetic Nervous system.

Nesbit donated one drop of blood and one feather to the creation of the Homeopathic remedy, Falco Pregrinus, that is often used today to treat such traumatic stress injuries to the nervous system. Today, nearly all doses of this remedy are made from that donation.

Jan 28 2026

I prefer not to use the word, “consciousness,” because it has so many different and often incompatible, or at least quite vague, meanings. There is a confusion in its use, between the content and the container or field of that content; and it is not clear in that confusion what “unconscious(ness)” refers to if anything at all.

I prefer instead, “Awareness,” referring to the place where Experiences occur. I equate awareness with being in and of itself; and I also equate it with reality as the place where the universe appears and not just “enduring things” that arise within the universe.

So, now I have a way to say this to people: “You are awareness itself at the deepest core of your being; you are reality itself, wherein all worlds come and go.”

Jan 28 2026

Time has for me been one of the most interesting puzzles since my earliest years. Only slowly (but in steps) did I realize that everything everywhere is made of memories. Then, in one of those moments in which the past once again reorganized and inverted inside-out, time became timeless.

Jan 28 2026

“Art is not born from perfection, but from the need to transmit. Not to impress, but to touch. Not to prove skill, but to share inner truths.” -- Klea

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Some have said that art is truly valued to the extent in which it exhibits or indicates intrinsic value. Reality, Being, Awareness: Aren’t these where intrinsic value truly is?

I think of reality, being, awareness, and some other ideas and words as different words for the same thing, each simply naming different aspects of that thing, like naming different facets of one jewel. I think of art as an attempt to indicate or point out that thing. This idea of intrinsic value and art is borrowed from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement.

You ask if the value of art is tied to reality etc. that art allows us to experience. Yes, but I also see it a little differently. It seems to me that the best art points out to us that we (you) are the reality, the being, and the awareness. And when we see this clearly, we see that the universe of all experiences arises within us and not we within it.

Awareness, for example, is intrinsically valuable, and at the deepest level of your being, you are awareness itself, timeless, the reality of the universe of all possible experiences.

Jan 28 2026

Krishnamurti said that he had met only two people that understood what he was saying; and he met really a lot of people. His work did not attract me to sign up to anything, but instead it just surprised me that I thought I knew what he was doing. It was similar to what I had already learned in my own way from my own life even before I thought there were such teachers and books. It wasn’t the ideas, it was the way the words were used to indicate a direction toward something that he actually did very little to describe, except for the idea of peacefulness.

One of the first things that struck me after a significant moment of clarity in my own life, was that what I learned in that moment was by its nature impossible to describe or convey to any other person in any way. Simply impossible. That impossibility is very significant. People who want something to enlighten them are misguided. They can only do it on their own, even though they will find valuable clues almost everywhere in the world.

I don’t blame people for not understanding him; and also I do not blame him for not convincing them. I think there are degrees of understanding, and I also think that no one can be made to finally understand. You can lead some people right up to the truth in certain ways, certain practices, techniques, and so forth, if they are willing to try those; but no one can make them recognize it when they are not willing to do so.

‘Never underestimate the power of denial.’ It is like some Zen people have said: It is absolutely the last thing that you would ever think to consider, no matter how obvious it is.

Jan 29 2026

From the perspective of being in and of itself, I view Karma as the desire to experience all the consequences of attachment. Thus, if I harm someone, then I am also the one who is harmed, because I am exactly the same I in every being.

Thank you for subscribing, following, or just stopping by to read something now and then. You are why I write.

Absolute Relativity

It is like looking into a clear magic jewel of infinitely many facets. The universe is this jewel. Every facet of this jewel is a different experience, a different idea, a different world-view, or a different individual life. Each experience, no matter how simple or complex, is a single facet of this jewel. This jewel is entirely composed of only these facets, each of which exists only relatively in relation to all other facets endlessly reflected in each other all throughout this clear jewel. Each facet is a different way of experiencing, in part, the entirety of all these reflections.

Jan 11 2026

It is very interesting how memories are made of other memories. How a thought remembers another thought long past. So many painful things that happened, that in retrospect are so beautiful to possess.

Jan 11 2026

“The deeper I look at This present moment, the more I realize I have no idea what This actually is.” -- Without Name

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When things in your vision are neither recognized nor named; when all this is not out there somewhere: this is how you know yourself, when the vision is what you are.

Jan 13 2026

“Can I feel the texture of what I’m wearing without evaluating it?

Can I taste something without deciding if I should be eating it?

Can I let my body be witnessed - by me - without criticism?

Can I be in this moment without already leaving it?

Can I let pleasure be ordinary - not a reward, not a performance, not something I have to optimize or post about?” -- Ailey Jolie

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Can you see a stop sign on the road and not silently say the word, “Stop”? Can you notice a familiar face without saying anything to yourself in recognition of that face? Can you anticipate a problem without inwardly discussing it with yourself? Of course you can.

Anticipation, selection, recognition, and ideation are habits; notice what they are, what they do, and what they do not do.

Jan 14 2026

“Waiting Is the Real Prison” – The Quiet Knowing

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In the Divine Comedy, Dante was deeply affected on the Fifth Terrace in his climb of Mt. Purgatory. This was where the Slothful, the souls who delayed their spiritual growth and acceptance of divine grace, must wait one year for every day they failed to act.

Jan 15 2026

In the Vedas, Vishnu sacrificed himself in fire and the fire is still burning. Vishnu is responsible for justly sustaining this world. This burning fire is the fire of desire that burns in our hearts. But we are not the fire, we are instead the limitless place where the fire burns.

Jan 15 2026

In order to be free from endless cycles of miseries and delusions, of comings and goings, of births and deaths, you must be willing to live every life ever to be lived, from the miserable to the peaceful, from the hideous to the beautiful, from the evil to the good. You must be willing to live every life, human or not: every plant, animal, mineral, star, field, or ether; every electrical, visible, invisible, or imaginary thing.

Jan 15 2026

It does seem that everything is made of memories. Nothing else. Just memories of memories.

Can you see or think of anything at all, in regard to which you have no memories?

By what knowledge do you recognize a thing?

Jan 17 2026

Allow this. Your world will continue on and will take care of itself, and you will remember the true meaning of the universe: …

When you wake up to the dream, existence no longer unfolds to you, it unfolds as you. The character continues. Choices are made, work gets done, but the weight of personal destiny has lifted. There is no longer someone trying to steer the dream because the dream steers itself, and you are the field in which it moves. -- anomymous

Jan 17 2026

Expand your awareness beyond the confines of habitual labels and illusions.

Allowing is the intentional quality of being and reality.

How do you allow there to be no individual choice, no freedom of choice? By realizing that all your actions unfold according to universal factors.

Simply allow.

Do not choose to allow, simply allow.

Allowing is real.

Choice and rejection do not apply to allowing.

“Freedom of choice” is a habitual word phrase that represents only illusion.

When by intuition you are aware of the reality of illusion, you are aware of the true meaning of the universe of all possible experiences.

Jan 17 2026

We discriminate between what we want to have and what we want to avoid, and we judge these things according to value, cost, risk, and so forth.

We discriminate among decisions we have made in the past and judge these decisions on how well we decided, all according to present-day values, preferences, and so forth.

We discriminate in regard to our perceived self-worth and judge our actions and thoughts accordingly; but we also judge ourselves as a whole, entirely to our own misery one way or another.

We discriminate between choice and no choice and judge whether or not we have some form of freedom of choice; but in reality, the only possibility is to allow the world to unfold as it certainly will.

Jan 16 2026

What if the honest truth came not from the thinking mind, a relativistic playing field, but came instead from the deepest core of your awareness and your being?

What if this truth that you apprehend in that way neither contradicts nor confirms the opinion of mind, but instead obviates the mind itself, renders the content of mind ephemeral fantasy (albeit incredibly attractive fantasy, and also the only game in town)?

What if this vision of awareness itself (both what awareness is and what it is aware of) is obviously, infinitely more substantial and real than mere ideas and other mind-forms?

What if this were so surprising to you, even though you realize you have known this all along, that you now will have great difficulty reconciling the meaning of it with the workings of your thinking and social mind?

This is the sort of truth that has been discussed for thousands of years in some of the world’s greatest literature, mostly from the East. Inexpressible, simple, obvious, undeniable, … so it is said.

Reality and Being

Key Words

REALITY is not subject to coming and going, nor to existing or not existing, nor to birth and death. But individual things are all subject to those limits. Reality is where everything happens; it is where time and space appear; it is like a theater wherein ILLUSION and UNREALITY appears.

BEING is the self-knowledge of reality; it is both the reality of knowing and the way that reality knows. EXISTENCE and NON-EXISTENCE refer to all the unreal things being perceives, feels, thinks, and imagines. This allows us to talk about being as the subjective knowledge of things like sensations, perceptions, dreams, ideas, and self-awareness.

AWARENESS is the direct knowledge of EXPERIENCE and INTUITION. Being is aware of and knows experience; although in reality, experiences are only made of countless other experiences from other places and other times. Through intuition, being is aware of its limitless reality.

Thank you to all my subscribers, followers, and others who stop by to read. You are why I am here.

The state of self-realization

There are two aspects to living the life of an earnest disciple

1. The state of attachment to the discrimination of self and other [“self” and its field of consciousness]

Attachment to discrimination of the self-natures of things, ideas, and self-hood.

Which is accompanied by emotions of pleasure and aversion, whether according to experience or according to what is asserted in logic books.

Which is met with by conforming oneself to the egoless-ness of things, by holding back wrong views as to one’s own ego, and by abandoning ego [both in things and in persons].

2. The state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom [and its “attainment”]

[Attainment by discipline in] A state of mental concentration in which one seeks to identify with Noble Wisdom.

In which one seeks to annihilate notions of the externality of things, of individuality and generality, and of suffering and impermanence; and to cultivate (ideas of) egoless-ness, emptiness, and imageless-ness; thus attaining a realization of Truth that is free from passion and is ever serene.

When this active effort to attain self-realization is successful it is followed by a more passive and receptive state of Samadhi in which one will enter into (the blissful abode of) Noble Wisdom and will experience its consummation in the transformations of Samapatti (deep concentration).

This experience is the earnest disciple’s first experience of the exalted state of self-realization, but as yet there is no discarding of habit-energy, nor escape from the transformation of death.

Having attained this [first] exalted state of self-realization, the Bodhisattva must not give himself up to the enjoyment of its bliss, because to do so would mean cessation

Rather, one should think compassionately of other beings, and of one’s vows. {*Cessation: in this context means disappearance from the world.}

And one should neither rest in nor exert oneself in the bliss of the Samadhis.

In trying to advance along the path to self-realization, be aware of this one danger ...

The mind-system goes on functioning, more or less unconsciously, for as long as one lives.

One cannot expedite the goal of attaining tranquilization by suppressing the activities of the mind-system.

Even if these activities are suppressed, the mind goes on functioning because the seeds of habit-energy remain in it.

An appearance of extinction is actually only the non-functioning of the mind’s external world to which one is no longer attached.

The goal of tranquilization cannot be reached by suppressing all mind activity, but only by getting rid of discriminations and attachments.

There are those who seek Nirvana merely to avoid the suffering due to the discrimination of life and death

They see that all things subject to discrimination have no reality.

So, they imagine that Nirvana consists in the annihilation of the senses and their fields of sensation.

They fail to see that birth-and-death and Nirvana are not separate from one another.

They do not know that Nirvana is Universal Mind in its purity.

They believe that Nirvana is a world by itself that is outside what is seen by the mind [and thus they are caught up in their discrimination of the world and birth-and-death].

But, when they experience the “turning-about” in the deepest consciousness, which brings self-realization of Noble Wisdom, then they understand the Truth [cf. Ch. 5 re. “turning-about”].

The functioning of the mind is very subtle and difficult to understand

Even masters with all their powers of right-knowledge and Samadhis often find it baffling.

Only the Tathagatas, and those Bodhisattvas who are firmly established on the seventh stage, can understand its workings.

The only way to understand the workings of the mind is to realize that the objects of discrimination are only what is seen of the mind itself, and to always seek to see things truly as they are (yathabhutam) and without the limits of differentiations.

Follow these guidelines to understanding the mind-system (through right-knowledge)

Avoid turmoil, social excitement, and sleepiness.

Avoid worldly philosophies and avoid the rituals and ceremonies of professional priestcraft.

Retire to a secluded place in the forest and there devote yourself to the practice of spiritual disciplines.

Only by doing these will you be capable of attaining, in this world of multiplicities, true insight into the workings of Universal Mind and its Essence.

There, surrounded by the Buddhas, you become capable of understanding the significance of the mind-system and its place as a mediating agent between the external world and Universal Mind; and then you become capable of crossing the ocean of birth-and-death which arises from ignorance, desire, and deed.

After gaining a thorough understanding of the mind-system, ...

... [i.e.,] an understanding of the three self-natures (that they are empty, un-born, and without self-nature) and the twofold egoless-ness (of things and of persons), and after establishing oneself in the measure of self-realization that goes with that attainment, ...

Abandon the understanding of mind which has been gained by right-knowledge

Such knowledge means little in the light Noble Wisdom.

Discipline yourself in Noble Wisdom according to these three aspects

1. Imageless-ness — through mastery of all things belonging to discipleship, mastership, and philosophy.

2. Power — added to all the Buddhas by reason of their original vows, including the identification of their lives and the sharing of their merit with all sentient lives.

3. Perfect Realization — perfection of that which has thus far been attained only in measure by.

• Detaching yourself from viewing all things, including your own [imagined] ego-ness, in their phenomenality.

• Realizing the meditative states of Samadhi and Samapatti whereby you survey the world as a vision and a dream.

• Being sustained by the Buddhas.

Thus, pass on to full attainment of the Tathagata stage that is Noble Wisdom itself, furnished with this triplicity of the noble life by which the perfect self-realization of Noble Wisdom has been attained.

Purification of the evil out-flowings of the mind

(These out-flowings arise from clinging to notions of an objective world and an empirical soul.)

There are three characteristic out-flows of the mind

1. Out-flowings that arise from thirst, grasping, and attachment

• I.e., from recognizing an external world and becoming attached to it, even though it is only a manifestation of mind.

• These are purified gradually, not instantaneously.

• Because good behavior comes only by restraint and effort.

• Like pot-making, which is done gradually, with attention and effort — also like good comedy, music-making, writing, and any other art — it must be acquired gradually and laboriously.

• The reward is a clearing insight into the emptiness and transiency of all things.

2. Out-flowings that arise from the illusions of the mind, and from the infatuations of ego

• Which concern the mental life more directly [than those arising from thirst, etc.,] and are such things [or emotions] as fear, anger, hatred, and pride.

• These are purified gradually, not instantaneously.

• They are purified slowly through study and meditation — like ripening fruit; like grass, shrubs, and trees that grow gradually.

• Each must follow the path of study and meditation by himself, gradually and with effort, and with zeal and patience — though anyone following this path is not without aid, owing to the original vows of all the Bodhisattvas and Tathagatas [and to the sustaining power of the Tathagatas].

• The reward is the gradual understanding of the twofold egoless-ness, and its patient acceptance.

3. Good non out-flowings that arise from Noble Wisdom

• Self-realization of Noble Wisdom comes instantaneously, by the grace of the Tathagatas.

• It is like a mirror reflecting all forms and images instantaneously and without discrimination.

• It is like the sun or the moon revealing forms instantaneously and illuminating them dispassionately with its light.

• It is the instantaneous clearing away of all the habit-energy and karma that have been accumulating since beginningless time because of attachment to erroneous views regarding an ego-soul and its external world.

  • The realm of Transcendental Intelligence that belongs to Buddhahood is revealed instantaneously.

• Just as Universal Mind defiled by accumulation of habit-energy and karma reveals multiplicities of ego-souls and their external worlds of false-imagination, so Universal Mind cleared of defilement (through gradual purification of the evil out-flowings by effort, study, and meditation, and by gradual self-realization of Noble Wisdom) shines forth instantaneously like the Dharmata-Buddha with rays that issue from its pure Self-nature. {*Dharmata-Buddha: Buddhahood in its self-nature of perfect oneness in whom absolute tranquility prevails.}

Thus, the mentality of all Bodhisattvas is matured instantaneously, and they find themselves spontaneously radiating (the) spiritual abundance of the Akanistha heavens

TOC – Next: Ch. 9 – Prev: Ch. 7

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” with extensive Tables of Content and an Index, and it is much easier to browse.

Self-realization of Noble Wisdom

Consisting of ...

1. A clearing insight into the meaning and significance of things.

2. Then, an unfolding insight into the significance of spiritual ideals (Paramitas) [cf. Diamond Sutra].

By reason of which a Bodhisattva enters more deeply into the abode of imageless-ness, experiences the higher Samadhis (meditative states of bliss), and gradually passes through the higher stages of Bodhisattvahood.

After experiencing the “turning-about” in the deepest seat of consciousness …

They experience the highest Samadhis, even to the highest Vajravimbopama which belongs to the Tathagatas and their transformations. {Vajravimbopama: A Samadhi in which a Bodhisattva will be endowed with supernatural powers and faculties.}

They enter into the realm of consciousness that lies beyond the consciousness of the mind-system — the consciousness of Tathagatahood [one thus-come].

They become endowed with all the powers, psychic faculties, self-mastery, loving compassion, skillful means, and ability to enter into other Buddha-lands.

They find themselves reacting spontaneously to the impulses of a great and compassionate heart that is endowed with skillful and boundless means and sincerity, and they become wholly devoted to the emancipation of all beings.

The sustaining power of the Tathagatas

The power by which Bodhisattvas are aided to attain self-realization of Noble Wisdom. [— and without which, earnest disciples and masters will not.]

There are two kinds of sustaining power, both of which issue from the Tathagatas and are at the service of the Bodhisattvas

1. The Bodhisattvas’ own adoration and faith in the Buddhas, by reason of which the Buddhas are able to manifest themselves, render aid, and by their own hands ordain them.

2. The power radiating from the Tathagatas that enables Bodhisattvas to attain and pass through the various Samadhis and Samapattis (meditative attainments) without becoming intoxicated by their bliss.

Thus sustained by the power of the Buddhas ...

Bodhisattvas at the first stage attain the Samadhi known as the Light of Mahayana, wherein they become conscious of the presence of the Tathagatas who come (from the ten quarters) to impart their sustaining power.

• E.g., the Bodhisattva Vajragarbha was so sustained.

The disciple’s faith and the Tathagata’s merit are two aspects of the same sustaining power.

By this power alone, the Bodhisattvas are enabled to become one with the company of the Buddhas.

The Samadhis, psychic powers, and teachings realized by the Bodhisattva are made possible only by the sustaining power of the Buddhas

Otherwise, the ignorant and simple minded would attain them.

Note that wherever the Tathagatas enter with their sustaining power, there is music, even among grass, shrubs, and trees, and everywhere in the hearts of the sentient, regardless of [apparent] other deficiencies.

By the bestowal of this sustaining power, the Bodhisattvas are enabled to avoid evil, to transcend the meditation (dhyana) of beginners, and to advance in experience and truth

They are able to demonstrate the Paramitas (ideals).

They advance to Tathagatahood.

And were it not for this sustaining power they would relapse and fall short of the highest attainment.

Buddhahood is realized by fulfilling the six Paramitas

The Paramitas are ideals of spiritual perfection that guide Bodhisattvas on the path to self-realization [cf. Diamond Sutra].

There are six of them, but they are to be considered in three different ways according to one’s progress

1. As ideals for the worldly life

Where one still holds to the notions of an ego-soul and its environment, and to discriminations of dualism (even if only for worldly benefits).

Where one should cherish the six ideals of charity, good behavior, patience, zeal, thoughtfulness, and wisdom.

Even in worldly life, these virtues will bring rewards of happiness and success.

2. As ideals for the mental life

I.e., in the mind-world of earnest disciples and masters.

Practicing these ideals will bring joys of emancipation, enlightenment, and peace of mind.

This is because the Paramitas are grounded on right-knowledge and lead to thoughts of Nirvana (even if these thoughts are of Nirvana for oneself).

Here, these ideals become even more ideal and more sympathetic.

Charity — is more than the giving of impersonal gifts, but calls for gifts of sympathy and understanding.

Good Behavior — is more than outward conformity to precepts, but calls for the practice of humility, simplicity, restraint, and self-giving.

Patience — is more than forbearance with external circumstances and with the temperaments of other people, but calls for patience with one’s self.

Zeal — is more than industry and an outward show of earnestness, but calls for more self-control in the task of following the Noble Path and in manifesting the Dharma in one’s own life. {Dharma: what supports or admits of knowing. Cf. Ch. 5.}

Thoughtfulness — is more than mere consideration, but calls for mindfulness wherein discriminated meanings, logical deductions, and rationalizations give way to intuitions of significance and spirit.

Wisdom — is more than pragmatic wisdom and erudition, but reveals itself in its true perfectness of All-Inclusive Truth which is Love.

3. As ideals of the spiritual and unitive life

This third aspect can only be understood by Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas who are devoted to the highest spiritual discipline, and who have fully understood that there is nothing to be seen of the world but that which issues from the mind itself. {Bodhisattva-Mahasattva: a noble being dedicated to achieving enlightenment not only for themselves but also for the sake of all sentient beings.}

In whose minds the discrimination of dualities has ceased to function.

In whom seizing and clinging [attachment] have become non-existent.

Thus freed from all attachment to individual objects, their minds are free to consider ways of benefiting and giving happiness to all others.

Charity — is shown in the self-yielding of the Tathagata’s hope of Nirvana, that all may enjoy it together.

Good Behavior — is shown in relations with an objective world, wherein there is no rising of discriminations in the minds of the Tathagatas between the interests of self and the interests of others, or between good and evil — there is just the spontaneity and effortless actuality of perfect behavior.

Patience — is practiced with the full knowledge of this and that, and of grasp and grasping, but with no thought of discrimination or attachment.

Zeal — is to exert oneself from the first part of the night until its end in conformity with the disciplinary measures, with no rising of discrimination as to comfort or discomfort.

Mindfulness [Thoughtfulness] — is not to discriminate between self and others in thoughts of Nirvana, but to keep the mind fixed on Nirvana.

Wisdom — … there is nothing to be predicated of it [except to say that] when (in Samadhi) the mind ceases to discriminate and there is only perfect and love-filled imageless-ness, then an inscrutable “turning-about” will take place in the inmost consciousness and one will have attained self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

The nature of the Astral Body

Referred to as a “mind-vision-body” (manomayakaya) which Bodhisattvas are able to assume as one of the fruits of self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

There are three kinds of Astral Body [or, transcendental personality].

1. In relation to the Samadhis and Samapattis:

The one in which the Bodhisattva attains enjoyment of the Samadhis and Samapattis

Which comes with the third, fourth, and fifth stages as the mentations of the mind-system become quiet, and as waves of consciousness are no longer stirred on the face of Universal Mind. {Stages: cf. Ch. 13 re. The Ten Stages Sutra.}

Where the conscious mind is still aware, in a measure, of the bliss being experienced by this cessation of the mind’s activities.

2. In relation to the work of the Tathagatas:

The one which is assumed by the Tathagatas according to the class of being to be sustained, and which achieves and perfects spontaneously with no attachment and no effort.

I.e., these are assumed by Bodhisattvas and Tathagatas as bodies of transformation by which they demonstrate their original vows in the work of achieving and perfecting.

Which comes with the eighth stage.

With a thorough penetration into the Maya-like nature of things, with the understanding of the Dharma of imageless-ness, and then with the “turning-about” in his deepest consciousness, he will be able to experience the highest Samadhis.

By entering into these Samadhis he attains a personality that transcends the conscious-mind, and thereby obtains supernatural powers of self-mastery and activity by which he moves as he wishes, as quickly as a dream changes and as quickly as an image changes in a mirror.

This body is not a product of the elements, and there is nothing in it analogous to what is [can be] so produced.

It is furnished with all the differences appertaining to the world, but without their limitations.

With this “mind-vision-body” he is able to be present in all the assemblages in all the Buddha-lands.

Just as his thoughts move without hindrance over walls, rivers, trees, and mountains, and just as in memory he recalls and visits the places of his past experiences, so [and just as] while his mind keeps functioning in the body, his thoughts may be very far away.

[—] In the same manner the transcendental personality that experiences the Samadhi Vajravimbopama will be endowed with supernatural powers, psychic faculties, and self-mastery, by reason of which he will be able to follow the noble paths that lead to the assemblages of the Buddhas, moving about [as] freely as he may wish.

But his wishes will no longer be self-centered nor tainted by discrimination and attachment, because this transcendental personality is not his old body but is the transcendental embodiment of his original vows of self-yielding in order to bring all beings to maturity.

3. In relation to the Tathagatas’ intuition of Dharmakaya:

The one in which the Tathagatas receive their intuition of Dharmakaya. {Dharmakaya: the “truth body” or “reality body” of a Buddha, representing the unmanifested aspect from which Buddhas arise and to which they return.}

This is so ineffable that it is able to attain intuitions of the Dharmakaya – i.e., it attains intuitions of the boundless and inscrutable cognition of Universal Mind.

As the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas attain the highest stages and become conversant with all the treasures to be realized in Noble Wisdom, they will attain this inconceivable transformation-body which is the true nature of all the Tathagatas past, present, and future, and they will participate in the blissful peace that pervades the Dharma of all the Buddhas.

Comment:
There was much discussion here about the special powers and appearances of one who attains Noble Wisdom. I suggest you not try to think of these as what you might observe in another being and think instead of how your whole world might appear to you and how you might appear to yourself if you and your world were in some way exactly the same thing. Also refer to Ch. 6, on this point. —B.E.

TOC – Next: Ch. 10 – Prev: Ch. 8

Download the complete Outline of the Lankavatara Sutra. The PDF format is different from this Substack format: it is more “outline-like” with extensive Tables of Content and an Index, and it is much easier to browse.

It is like someone who has never experienced it saying, “Prove to me that water feels wet!” Or, “Prove to me that the sky is blue.” Drawing diagrams and citing finely honed Studies just misses the point.

January 2 2026

Words by their nature are indirect, representational, and referring. And so, words are never what they appear to be.

I am directly aware of words, concepts, and ideas, and I am aware that all of these are indirections; such endless indirection can never express what I am.

Awareness, being, reality, and truth are all words for the same thing.

Words such as these cannot convey to me what I am; but I know what they mean to me, and I know that I am.

November 20 2025

Who am I?

I am the seer and I am the seen. I am the writer and I am the reader.

I am the source of all that is ever known.

I am what is, I am what appears, and I am the witness to what I am and to what I appear to be, all within myself.

I know all worlds and all lives; I know all of these within me.

In your life, I am you and you are me. I live your life because there is no difference between you and me.

Within you, I know what you know and I experience what you experience from the best to the worst without exception.

I feel what you feel just as you feel it. I hear what you hear just as you hear it. I think what you think just as you think it.

I live your life as I have lived all lives before you and will live all lives after you. I live your life because I am what life is.

I hear every word and thought; I see every sight; I hear every sound; I feel every feeling; I taste every flavor; I smell every aroma; I notice every idea; I know every joy and misery.

All things arise and subside within me, and I know all these things from every view in every dimension, because I am the presence, the knowledge, and the awareness of all things.

I do every deed, and every deed is done to me. I am the eater that eats the food, and I am the food that is eaten. And yet, nothing in me is ever created or destroyed.

I am all things everywhere across all time, and this has always been so.­­

I do not exist in time or place; but instead, time, place, and existence appear within me. Time and place, and existing or not existing: these do not apply to me.

I am neither one nor many, neither dual nor non-dual, and neither divided nor not-divided. Number and no-number do not apply to me.

Can you not see within yourself who I am and who you really are?

I became you simply by letting go of what I am. And you return to me simply by letting go of what you imagine.

I never ignore you, your thoughts, your pains, or your miseries. I do not ignore anything.

Ignoring arises and subsides within me to its own purpose; but ignoring and not-ignoring do not apply to me. Neither do they apply to you.

Where there is ignoring, you forget that you are me and I am you, and you imagine you are separated from others. But where there is no-ignoring, you know that you are me and I know that I am you. There is no other.

Do you imagine you do not know me?

Soon you will remember again the plain, simple, and obvious truth that you are me, you have always been me, and you will always be me.

You have within you the infinite knowledge of all things; and you will realize again the limitless peace and joy of what you truly are.

This will happen because it is already done; I am already what you are, and you are already what I am.

How would you know this?

Your memory of returning to me is not hidden.

Your memory of returning to me saturates the universe just as the light of the sun saturates the image of the sun.

Your memory of returning to me is the peace and joy of recalling memory upon memory upon memory of always remembering before that you are reality itself beyond which no other is conceivable.

This memory is everywhere in you, patiently waiting for you to remember once again.

Deep within yourself, you already know this.

January 8 2026

“The universe does not only expand outward. Sometimes it presses inward. Astronauts meet it through a window. Meditators meet it through closed eyes. The clinically dead meet it when the body lets go.” — AstroMD

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The Lotus Sutra - The Flowering of a Wonderful Law:

This is the Law: Every being in the universe will attain perfect wisdom and understanding, and will be completely saved from all suffering and misery.

This is the Corollary to the Law: No being can ever be led by another to the attainment of perfect wisdom or understanding, nor can any being ever be saved by another being.

The Lotus explains this as the end-result of multiple lifetimes. But it appears to me that all beings attain perfect wisdom and understanding in this, their current lifetime; most of them remember this in the moments around their death, or more accurately, in a death-like experience of some kind.

Being saved from suffering and misery does not necessarily mean that suffering and misery disappear, just as being saved from drowning does not mean that drowning disappears. It means that suffering and misery, and birth and death, do not really apply to you.

So, indeed, when the experience occurs early in one’s lifetime, it can be very difficult to adjust to. The thinking word-mind may shriek in horror to learn emphatically that it is not so important after all; or it may bow down in devotion to the reality in which it temporarily appears. In the end, these problems are not as important as they once seemed to be.

January 7 2026

“Sometimes the recognition arrives suddenly, triggered by nothing in particular. You’re walking, reading, listening, and then—click. The world inverts. What was outside is now inside, what was distant is intimate, the dream recognizes itself mid-dream, and for a heartbeat everything pauses in self-wonder. For others, the shift is gradual, a slow dawn rather than a lightning flash. The sense of separation thins over time, like fog lifting from a valley.” —

— —

The structure of my mind and thinking was turned inside out. There was for a few seconds a peaceful vision in which all the sights, sounds, and sensations were there but were merged together, with nothing recognized nor recognizable except only as fine wavelets crisscrossing the light. Nothing in me changed apart from the meaning of everything. When all the ten thousand things reappeared, every one of them and every piece of every one of them was made of memories. Nothing else. Just memories. Beautiful far beyond imagining. —B.E.

Reality And Being: The Structure of The Book

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In Ch. 1-6

I introduce the main ideas. I am not tied to these meanings, as will become evident in subsequent chapters. They are hypotheticals. I clearly am asking the reader to assume, imagine, and play what-if. But it is essential that the reader read the book with the meanings I give them. If a reader says right from the start, “No, that is not the right definition,” or “No I don’t believe that,” then the book is not for them and they will quickly be frustrated with it. In this regard, it is no different from any other philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, or similar book you might read in high school or college.

In Ch. 7-13

I merge those basic ideas together in a way that begins to dissolve the individual meanings of the words. I do this by 1- using the original words and ideas to explain ordinary processes like judging, allowing, intuiting and such; and 2- repeatedly using the original words from Ch 1-6 in many different ways and sentence structures that deliberately create new meanings, replacing simple definitions with a way of seeing relationships rather than a way of just reading and talking automatically about one thing or another. There are a lot of linguistic tricks in these chapters that I use to accomplish this blurring and blending while still keeping the reader’s attention focused on the broad topic of REALITY vs. ILLUSION and keeping their attention on the evolving ideas.

In Ch. 14-20

I remove the idea that ANY of these words, ideas, or meanings are in any way true, accurate, or believable in their own right. I do this by referring all perception, experience, belief, and meaning to pure relativity, just as I introduced it in Ch 11. By the end of Ch 20, a sincere reader will begin to feel like nothing in the world is “true” in and of itself. In fact, that is the whole point of the story about the Mystery of the Ordinary.

In Ch. 21

I explain absolute relativity in simple terms and examples, terms prepared for by the preceding 20 chapters. YOU the READER are reality itself. ALL APPEARANCES appear within you by simple relativity of meaning. These are simple images, with my own translation of the very focused Heart Sutra, a directed meditation on Absolute Relativity as way to know yourself as reality itself.

In Ch. 22

I discuss how focusing attention on solving problems such as those I presented in the text can lead to significant intuition and insight (but only if you are looking for it). ALL of this process was planned and written word by word for only this purpose. It only works for readers who will play the game with me, adhere to the definitions and instructions that I give them, and read every sentence in the book. Every phrase is designed to have an emotional and cognitive effect.

So, I did not write to nail down the meanings of some words to what I wanted them to be. I wrote to use specific words and meanings to destroy the meanings of words, while at the same time expanding the awareness of the reader through many different ideas about life. I want the diligent and careful reader to look up from the book at the end and see the world of things around them dissolve into the luminous field of their own being, if only just for only a few seconds of time. And I want the reader to recognize immediately what this vision means about their own reality.

Thank you to those who have subscribed. Thank you also to those who are following my comments. And thank you to those who just drop by to read something now and then.

You are why I am here.