​BLACK SUN RISING

Making the darkness conscious

By James Portocarrero

** Please take your time to read through each line of this book
deliberately, allow yourself to drift away into meditation when the urge
arises, and only read when you are calm and focused.. **

I pray to you, whom Majughosha with his sword empowered And said,
"Cut off the tongues of evil speech That flicker like the jags of lightning
in the gloom of false beliefWith reason's blade more keen than weapons
of the gods!”

Chapter 1

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do

anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by
making the darkness conscious.” - Carl Jung

One day that distant childhood haze which caused you so much
pleasure, or pain, and all of the antecedent events which fill your
memory with meaning about ‘you’ and ‘your life’ will be completely
and utterly annihilated. Gone. Finished. Kaput. All of your fears and
hopes, dreams and nightmares, all of your great accomplishments and
colossal failures, all of them will be brought to ruin, as you slip into the
obscure blackness from whence you came, all alone, with no one to
accompany you on the journey of your life.
Who are we? Where are we going? What are
we doing? What is life? What is reality? If we don’t
spend any time inquiring about these fundamental
questions of existence all we will end up doing is
burning out the candle of that existence and having it
utterly annihilated. Nothing will be left of us. We are
nothing but prisoners to our bodily desires for food,
sex, sleep, et cetera, and mostly live a life of
obscurity spent cultivating these desires and
accumulating money to support the cultivation of these
desires. Even our higher yearning for achievement;
family life, liberal arts, fame and status; these are
also phantasmal desires which are fleeting and exist
only in our minds and achieve no real merit or lasting
benefit for anybody except our own selves, nor do they
provide any stable or trustworthy fulfillment. For in
the drop of a hat, spouses may turn on one another and
rip apart that family life, fads in art could change,
and fame and status could turn into infamy and
ostracization.
We live in a world which walks on a
razor’s edge between paradise and hell, white and black,
and either one could turn into the other at any given
moment. At almost any time we could fall into ruin when
we least expect it; get bitten by a snake on vacation or
while hiking, done, over with. Why are we running around
every day acting as if our making it alive through the
day is something that is so sure? We are so hardwired
and cemented into our cultural and biological
‘zeitgeist’, that we don’t even notice these things. We
walk about smelling the flowers, not realizing that this
flower, the smell, and my experience of myself is all
within, reflected in my own mind, and can’t be
experienced outside of it in any way, it is an utter
illusion performed very cleverly by means of electrical
signals transmitting information into our brain. We just
look at the flower, accept that that is the flower, it
exists really outside there as a set determinate
‘thing’, and in no ways is my mind involved in the
equation of what that experience is like to me. As I
begin to accept my own presumptions as being the same as
the actual thing which I presume to be witnessing, we
are not experiencing the actual thing, but actually a
‘simulacrum’ or a copy of the actual thing.
As time goes by, our simulacrum causes us to become blind to the great
majority of what is actually happening in reality within us and around
us. Some of us even begin to lose track of what is real or what isn’t,
and become schizophrenic, or in lighter cases egotistical maniacs, like
politicians, for example, and these type of people have the potential to
seriously screw up the world for those of us who are actually in tune
with what is and isn’t real and a priority. Instead of accepting these
things as being inherently real and existing forever, we need to be
shaken awake to see that they are NOT! Humanity are nothing but
characters in a dream-like play, but these actors are not aware that they
are playing characters. When this show is over, the person will not
know his true self, except that very temporary self which existed, and
then perished on the earth. It is a great tragedy, so many human beings
are living this dream-like actor existence, relishing in their role like a
fool who mistook their character for their self after the play is over.
They lust for more, and more, and then some more, never tiring from
accumulating materialistic toys which act only as an extension of its
egoic confusion and provide no real happiness or bliss which is
lasting. Even the ones who make it to the very top of the pyramid of
material success will come crashing down one day. When a President
of the United States is put into a box and lowered into the ground, he
leaves all of his acclaim and status behind him with him. He can take
any of his Presidential powers or Secret Service with him into the
afterlife. Likewise Joe Shmoe is laid bare and not able to take with him
any of the stuff that he doesn’t have in this life and certainly won’t be
having in the hereafter. All of it is gone, you are removed of your
corporeal form, and, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
reduced to the very subtle form which you experience in dreams. But
even that is not permanent, and if you have not cultivated your soul
above the body and mental reflection of the body there will be nothing
left for you, as you slowly start to slip into a very perilous, and hellish
indeed, psychological reality. The only option at that time will be to
give that form up and accept rebirth in a new form based upon your
karma (reincarnation is accepted in both Eastern and Western
traditions). Whether you end up as an animal, as a god, as a
netherworld creature, or another human being, you will still be trapped
in the cycle of the finite material existence, which is born, lives, and
dies. (The life of a god is even more depressing when it ends as one
could imagine!) Trapped in matter you will wander on endlessly until
you attain the means by which to snap yourself out of your self-imposed
dreamlike state. Sadly, this is the state of every being which is born
into this realm of continuous flowing of birth and death, with the
extremely rare exception of those ones such as Jesus, Buddha, who
come to us from the abode of what Ibn al-Arabi calls “The Real”.
Nearly 100% of the life forms that we observe in this material world
are trapped in this self-imposed simulacrum existence of creation,
preservation, and destruction. From the lowest worm in the dung pile to
the highest king with all his pomp, all are nothing but deluded souls
wandering from dream to dream, completely unaware of the fact that
they are wandering or that they are dreaming, but utterly lost to the
wandering and the dreaming. (Interestingly enough, from this angle,
actual dreams can be seen to give more insight into the real nature and
meaning behind such a person’s existence then their ‘real life’!) All of
them meet their fate just like everyone else, none is spared from the
gaping maw of death, which swallows up gods and devours universes;
so why do we think that we are going to be any different? By our
logical deduction we’ve seen that inquiring about these questions is
more important and priceless than all of the trappings of all the royalty
on all the worlds in all the universes combined. All of the priceless
gems in the entire universe combined could not equal the value of
simply inquiring about the nature of reality, and if we die without
inquiring thusly, on a planet in which great Masters of the Truth have
appeared and made the path blazingly obvious, we would have given
up a tremendous opportunity for gaining the most wonderful treasure
that ever could be gained; that which is transcendent to death, being
unborn, which is not limited by any object of the senses or encapsulated
by any object of the senses; existing outside of the capacity of any
created thing to totally encapsulate it of its own limited volition.

Chapter 2

The Roots of Suffering

Life in this world means to endure suffering.
This needn’t be interpreted in a traditionally
nihilistic sense, but there is no escaping it; your body
and therefore your comfort is not made to last forever,
your friends are not made to last forever, your wife or
husband is not made to last forever, all of the external
effects that you would label as your “LIFE” are not made
to last forever, up to and including the very planet
that you are currently occupying. None of it is made to
last forever, so at some point you will suffer the loss
of that which you were attached to for your well-being
and sense of identity. There is no escaping this, no
matter which way that you look at it.
But this is not how we like to think of
ourselves, we like to think of our lives as existing
forever. So we get really upset with people when they
‘betray’ our attachment to them and interrupt our static
image of how they should be behaving, and we lash out
violently at them to try to get them back in line.
Likewise with money, when farmers in India are unable to
pay their debts, they simply commit suicide. People
can’t handle the up and downs of life when they are
utterly attached to the ups and utterly averse to the
downs, and therefore all of the things in our life which
seem so stable and seem to comprise the everything of
our existence are actually only those things which cause
our continued delusion and wandering in the endless
cycle of birth and death.
Our transient life is comprised of nothing
but that which will one day be taken away, swallowed up
by the great gaping jaws of time. Death is closing in on
all sides, circling us all like a vulture, and yet we go
on like a big dumb animal just “trying to make the best
of things”. Is it any wonder why our world is the way it
is? Full of people who care about nothing except
satisfying their every urge, about pillaging the planet
until she is completely drained of resources, about
getting “yours” over the next guy? That this way of
behaving is destroying our environment alone should be
enough to shake us from our slumber to realize that we
are living an utterly self-destructive existence, both
inside and outside.
These effects of our ego have locked us
into a death march to hell, and the whole world is being
destroyed because of it. If you say that isn’t the case,
then you’re happy to be one of the lucky few who weren’t
born into the third world. Even our apparent advancement
in the West is built on the backs of exploiting others
and is completely unsustainable as we are now finding
out. That is because no civilization is sustainable
which is based around the ego’s every whim; a complete
attachment to that which is impermanent. As long as we
go on demanding to be provided cheap consumer crap and
endless streams of novel garbage to fill our otherwise
void-like existence, there will always be equally
endless streams of predatory merchants to feast like
sharks upon the bleeding carcasses of the consumers, and
of the planet’s resources. It will never end. Round and
round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.
This life was not made to last forever, and
as such we should not act on the basis that we will be
here forever. We should live with how much we need, not
more, not less, and stop exploiting people and resources
in the futile attachment to what can never last. As long
as we live in such a way that we believe that our sense
of self-identity and existence is permanent, we will go
on being a slave to the necessary involvement of that
self-identity in all of those apparently permanent
activities which mean so much to it. Again, please don’t
mistake this message for being nihilistic, the point is
that if you believe that this self-image and life is
permanent you are bound by the apparent realness of that
illusory mirage, which has practically already dissolved
back into the black abyss from whence it came. You lose
completely the connection with the true state of reality
and become instead absorbed into a false state of
dreams. In this state your life becomes more and more of
a cramped and stuffy room, and you try more and more
novel ways of letting in air, only to become
disappointed when it seems like the more you try to let
in the air, the more stuffy that it gets inside the
room. It seems at this state that a lot of people
develop mental diseases, addictions psychological and
physical, and a general discontentment with their life
and the way things are. They try to mask it in various
ways, and put on all sorts of various masks, but really
inside they are a stuffy room which just gets more and
more cramped until they become a dry cantankerous old
man or woman, lashing out at the drop of a hat and full
of wrath.
Even though they invent all kinds of novel ways
to bring joy into their lives, or may occupy themselves
with apparently attractive types of lifestyles, all they
are doing is chasing a carrot on a stick which they can
never catch up with. They accumulate more and more
karma, and through that karma arises more karma, and
continuously it goes on and on and on endlessly. They
can never reach the peaceful repose where the karma is
dried up called Nirvana. The attachment that we have to
ourselves and our image of reality (simulacrum),
combined with the endless reactions of karma arising
from previous actions in this life and before that, are
like the man with a carrot on a stick attached to his
head. He tries more and more to get that carrot, but
finds that with every push the carrot pulls away from
him, and with every pull the carrot pushes away further.
He’s chasing his own tail but can’t see it.
Attachment to our pleasures and aversion to
what displeases us is like the carrot on the stick which
is hanging in front of our heads. It’s through these
that poisons seep into our mind and contaminate the
purity of our innate nature with the stain of that which
is death and falsity. It is this which causes us to fall
into the trap of duality, caught in the net of delusion,
the real reality is covered by the dust of our own
conceptual thinking. We follow these conceptual patterns
like well-beaten trails in a forest, and so the only
parts of the forest which we see are those parts which
we always see, and on and on this goes. Sometimes we get
the urge to go off onto an offshoot of the trail and
explore some new territory, but we always return to our
well-beaten path. Over time, it sucks us in, draws us in
further and further into it with magnetic draw,
rendering us unconscious and under the firm grasp of
this dream-like film being played through our minds.

We completely lose the ability to actually be a real self; because we

have fully identified with that self which is completely impermanent
and cannot go on existing. The sooner that we let that dead non-self be
the dead non-self that it eternally is, the sooner we can escape the
limitations of being attached to our conceptions of that self, and the
sooner we can transcend those conceptions and touch the true nature of
what that self is made of. This non-self certainly has came into
existence at a certain point, and will certainly go out of existence at a
certain point. Because we find that it is comprised of things which are
only finite, as such it must have come into existence at some point from
a previous series of causes and conditions. This is the only explanation
for something which comes into existence, because if it comes into
existence it can’t come into existence from itself, as it can’t exist before
it existed. Even if we consider previous lives, still it makes no sense to
say that we could have existed before we existed; there is no end to the
previous lives required to give birth to more lives and more lives up
until the life we are presently living. Therefore, each and every one of
these lives are impermanent, phasing in and out like the cycles of the
moon. So what are we? If nothing about these lives lasts to identify
ourselves with them, this simply means that our self is not identified by
any one thing that we observe in our life. We are not the eye, or the
objects of the eye, not the ear or the objects of sound, and so on with all
of our senses, we are not thoughts, we are not white or black or brown
or purple, not the body, nor any other apparition of the clear light of
mind. We will cease chasing our attachments to the pleasures and
fleeing from that which we are averse when we cease identifying with
the non-existent existent things which arise from that clear light of mind
and start identifying with that Source. We will find the deathless nature
which is being reflected in the various lives, but not touching any
particular life at all, just like the Sun shines on what is seen but is not
touched by it. This doesn’t mean that we should ignore our lives, just
the opposite; we will cease limiting their potential when we cease
believing that they exist as things outside of that clear mind, as
substantially real in and of themselves, and defined by our very limited
conceptual thinking. Then we abide in the great Nirvana, free from our
limitations, experiencing reality in its purity, navigating life and self
with wisdom, reason, and detachment instead of prejudice and
ignorance which arise from attachment to that unreal conceptual truth.
Then when we see something in ourselves or in the environment, we
don’t just accept that it is what it appears to be at face value, but gain
the ability to discern illusion from the real, and perceive the true, real,
unborn nature within all things. Thus we see behind the fragmented,
illusion-like external nature of things into the cohesive unity of
conditions and causes which binds them together at their core. We no
longer experience ourselves and one another as concretely separate and
different things bumping up against one another and making conflict, but
rather everything becomes part of a divine synthesis. In this state we
can abide within this clear light at the very center of all things, the
unborn nature, the Nirvana, and cut off delusions from their very
source, before they give rise to further karma being generated. Thus we
cut off the tie to the realm of continuous flowing of birth and death at
the root, and gain the ability to use our mind as an extremely powerful
friend, rather than as the deadly foe that it had previously been. No
more does the mind generate attachments and aversions automatically
and unchecked, and become covered by previous attachments and
aversions, and then deluded by its own conceptualizing; after Nirvana,
one’s mind no longer gives rise to such kind of conceptual thinking
unchecked. That is not to say that you become some kind of lifeless
zombie, exactly the opposite, the lifeless zombie is one who can’t see
past what cannot and does not exist, namely the idea of the self and the
‘simulacrum’. The one whose mind has gone to Nirvana has been freed
from seeing things in the way that they are not, and therefore has found
the root of the way that things actually are. This is the beginning of
inquiring and finding the Way, and also finding your true Self, deathless
and free from delusion.

“The Tao (The Way) is infinite, eternal. Why is it eternal?

It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;

that is why he is ahead.
He is detached from all things;
that is why he is one with them.
Because he has let go of himself,
he is perfectly fulfilled.”

Chapter 3

At every turn of the road, we are confronted with an array of dualistic

choices. Whether we choose to indulge in copious amounts of food five
times a day, or whether we choose to fast during the day, whether we
choose to mock our friend when they fall down, or whether we choose
to help them get up, whether we get lost in the simulacrum of the
apparent reality of objects of our senses, or whether we absorb
ourselves in meditation and overcome attachment to these objects;
constantly we are presented with this situation, this double-edged
sword which cuts through our bare nature and divides it into
‘righteousness’ and ‘unrighteousness’. The choice is ours whether we
would respond to the call of the soul to righteousness or the call of the
ego to unrighteousness. The wise are not troubled by this life which is
like walking on a razor’s edge, because by abiding in the pure clear
mind, and not in the conceptual simulacrum of our personal pleasure
and prejudice, we are free to act and respond intelligently in a way
which is not simply reacting unconsciously. In this state we can
carefully navigate the various dualities of life in the way which is most
helpful to us, and start to develop a sense of of the drawbacks of
existing as an unconscious vegetable. That sense will guide us from the
dying, transient, suffering, nature of the dark polarity within us into the
deathless, eternal, blissful nature of the light polarity, and everything
around us will follow suit. Every experience and interaction will be
changed from a dull and dark affair to a magical touchstone which
transmutes dull and dark affairs into radiant enlightenment. Even people
around you who have no idea who you are will feel this transmutation
happening inside of them just from standing near you, this is the actual
power that we are dealing with, which is infinitely within and around
us all at all times.

“In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or
compete,
everybody will respect you.”

All of us have the experience of drawing this infinite power for

suffering from within us. Whenever we are deluded by our own unreal
prejudices and ignorance, we enter into a realm of unreal emotions and
feelings, which in turn tend to fuel and feed further prejudices and
ignorance. Where is all of this power coming from? Certainly these
conditions on our minds generated thusly stem from a power which is
dark, turbid, black, focused on death, greed, envy, and all of those
things which are the scourges of human nature. These dark demons
torment our souls with various types of tortures, both in this life and the
next, and seek to completely overwhelm or mind and senses and
deplete our existence until it is completely drained of all life force; this
is the nature of death, the jungian ‘anima’. But death is also liberation,
and when our mind is grounded in its own clear light rather than in
conceptual dogmas of thought, these effects of death can actually
produce great transformative changes to the positive, but only when we
are unwaveringly grounded in the truth and not the lie. The dark demons
will be seen and feared due to memories of previous suffering and
death inflicted by them; therefore these dark demons of the egoic non-
self become great allies on the path of transcending them. With this in
mind, there is nothing to fear from these dark demons, because they
only will serve to further your determination to stay on the path when
you remember firmly through experience the suffering that they cause.
Not only do these poisons of the dark nature within us produce
meaningless suffering, which causes us endless torment for no reason at
all, other than ignorance, they strengthen the ignorant reactions of the
mindless simulacrum programming, and we become further entrenched
in self-delusion which veils the true reality, and our own selves, from
us. More and more we partake of the nature of the world, and veil
ourselves from ourselves with the corruption of sin and excess. Our
self-respect and self-worth takes a back burner as we prostitute out our
souls to the whore of worldliness. From this angle, we are under
control of the dark, with brief moments of the light popping up as a kind
of inverse reactionary process whereby the overwhelming
pointlessness of our existence causes us to question it periodically.
However even though we might question this darkness from time to
time (or we may not!), we are so overcome by it that we very rarely
make any progress towards the actual goodness in ourselves and in
reality. We think that we are so in control of our lives, that we are
living such a personal existence which is of our own making, but this is
just our utter absorption into illusion and lies. In reality we are being
controlled by powerful forces of inversion and darkness, forces which
we are completely helpless to and which govern our lives and
ourselves with an iron fist and take no prisoners. We are thinking that
we exercise so much autonomy and independence, when in actuality we
can’t bear the thought of being away from the TV or our cell phones for
half a second. We can’t even sit in a room by ourselves quietly for
more than 10 minutes without having a complete anxiety attack. We are
utterly dependent on satisfying the urges of our body and ego, addicted
to chasing the carrot that can never satiate the cravings we constantly
feel to reach out and touch life, to touch the Real. Only when we stop
reaching out for the real and realize the one doing the reaching is
actually being reached to by the Real itself from the other direction, we
will experience the inverse of the inverse, everlasting life out of
neverending death. When we turn the tables on the apparent reality that
we have heretofore accepted as being an eternally existing static
matrix, it will become what it truly is, impermanent, dead, unreal. Once
it becomes like this, then it becomes permanent, alive, and real,
because these truths are unchanging. We experience reality then as it is,
impermanent, as well as the unchanging truth which underlies it,
deathless and unstained by the delusion of believing our conceptual
thinking to be ultimate. Rather than passing from one conceptual
fragmented dualistic mode to another, searching for fulfillment,
experiencing our life as a choppy series of messy strewn together
endeavors, we will experience life, reality, and self as the perfect
harmonious motion between all extremes. The impermanent will be
obvious to us, and we will not choose to indulge in needless wastes of
the peace and serene energy of our innate clear mind and being.
Dwelling yet not dwelling in the deathless, we can perceive the
impermanent and beyond the impermanent, and therefore, perceiving
both impermanent and permanent side by side, we perceive that our
nature is a middling between all dualistic extremes which transcends
and unifies them all into itself. With this universal ‘skeleton key’ in
hand, this universal unifying harmony which underlies all of reality will
be at your fingertips, and not separate from your own nature. Freed
from the trappings of pleasure and pain, from fame and infamy, one
abides within and beyond them all and therefore neither within or
beyond or both or neither. We are free to express our individual
qualities which are good and blissful, and yet not be bound by
conceptualizing them in an objectified way; they exist as a continuum, a
motion, a process, a state, not an object. For we’ve seen that objects
cannot exist by creating itself from nothing, but is generated through a
process of interdependent conditions. They can’t exist before they exist,
so therefore that which gives rise to them is not other objects but a
process which is deathless and bornless and dwells within the unity of
polarities. Experiencing the deathless amidst the impermanent, one is
beyond the range of either of these, utterly transcendent. The deathless
nectar of the absolute reality is experienced in a non-conceptual state
which both unifies extremes and transcends them. We are qualified by
those unspeakable qualities which dwell within the soul of man, in a
way which is alive, not conceptual or dead but fully living and
synthesizing the whole of the blissful enlightened nature into itself. This
is experienced as an expansion to wholeness, to totality, which
becomes like a blazing, superconscious light filling all of space. This
light is alive and flickering with luminous wisdom which stems from
the pure experience of reality as it actually is, rather than as the
fragmented conceptual thing that we had experienced before. From this
state we begin to discard our bad qualities which are connected to
desire for what is impermanent and unreal. Gradually becoming aware
of things as they are, one by one our attachments to the side of nature
which is affiliated with that which is death and suffering begin to fade
away, and yield to that inverse of the inverse, that which is full of life
and bliss, without being attached to or conceptualizing that bliss in a
dualistic way.

“Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original
oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their
course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?”

Pride gives way to humility, anger gives way to compassion, greed to

generosity, as we gain the clear light mind’s perspective of duality and
observe vividly the suffering that is caused from the ego’s narrow
conceptual reality, which was forged around objects of death and
which will resolve into objects of death. The clear light of wisdom
perceives the futility of such a narrow and dogmatically conceptualized
way of existence, sees how it merely causes one to choke on one’s own
poisons, as it ruts around like a wild hog or like a child throwing a
temper tantrum. Utterly pointless, nobody cares about the concerns of
this childish ego except its own self, and so it inflates itself to an apt
level of illusory self-importance to compensate for the fact that it has
absolutely no justification for going on like it does. Slowly, being
detached from the tantrum through knowledge of it’s unreality, we take
the energy away from this temper tantrum process and make it go away
completely, resolve it into the blissful clear peace of the pure
primordial mind beyond all dualities. Gradually we gain a foothold on
the soul from the ego, and slowly the scales are tilted from the side of
the dark over the light to the side of the light over the dark. The dark
side of our self and reality becomes not a source of suffering but a
source of bliss, by illustrating to us the principles of conditional
existence and causing us to see the innate deathless nature which is
their opposite. Our resolve is only strengthened by our delusions at this
point, rather than the opposite. Each time we see darkness within
ourselves it tells us of another knot in our psyche which remains to be
untied, to leave the affinity with the eternal non-conceptual deathless
process-like totality as it is, and not bound to conceptual perception.
Gradually the dark qualities of our ego are lessened, and the bright
qualities of our soul are strengthened. At this point one doesn’t need to
be told the difference between right and wrong, one doesn’t need to
understand morality as a conceptual thing, but one BECOMES morality
itself, the pure nature of the conscience as a living and breathing
experience, not just as a dead set of rules that nobody follows rotting
away in a book somewhere. You don’t need to have anybody tell you
what is and isn’t moral, but your moral compass will be of the very
nature of Wisdom and Justice as living realities.

“Vision of inner primordial wisdom, which knows correctly and knows

completely, is pure.“
Unbound by any conceptual morality whether dark or light, one
experiences naturally the pure essence of truth as morality, as a living,
flickering flame. This flame synthesizes all qualities of brightness into
itself, as these qualities are really expressions of the nature of the flame
of the luminous enlightened mind. Grasping at these qualities
conceptually right now will do nothing for you except create delusion
and arrogance, because, again, the absolute reality is not conceptual,
but living breathing Primordial Wisdom-Awareness which must be
gained through experience of realization and not simply imitated. It
can’t be faked, “fake it ‘till you make it”, only works in the world of
illusion and fakery, not in our lucid luminous world of the Real. This
can only be gained when the grasping at what is not real is dried up,
and one gathers one’s energy and consciousness into one’s self to be
used creatively rather than expelling it externally on pursuits of the ego
to be used destructively. Those are the two options on the table, to
expend this life force you were given destructively and pointlessly, or
to use this life constructively to conquer death and expand that life
force endlessly and infinitely. Both potentials for infinite decay and
infinite nourishment lie within us, like two streams veering apart from
one another around a common origin; the stream of mind. Nowhere is
not interpenetrated by these endless streams, and they course through
everywhere within and around us. When one stream is rushing, the
other is drying up, and while one is drying up, the other is rushing. You
can’t have darkness and brightness as equals occupying the same body.
Where there is one, the other is absent, and where there is the other, the
one is absent. We are really helpless in the matter of where we want to
go, one of the streams or the other is going to carry us away, our only
real choice is which of the streams we want to carry us away with it,
endless life or endless death. Gradually as we take energy away from
the stream of darkness it will naturally raise itself within the stream of
brightness, opening up a world of the clarity of the perfection of
wisdom.
Chapter 4

One who holds a concrete image of themselves based on fragmented,

finite, linear forms becomes themselves fragmented, linear, finite, and
engrossed in form. We become stubbornly “set in our ways”, in order to
“deal” with a shifting, fearful, and impermanent world. Habits of
dealing with this shifting reality form which then also become a
seemingly permanent part of a fragmented, objectified identity, but
which are really built on very shaky foundations. Due to never having
found the stable ground of perceiving emptiness, this identity forged in
a chaotic shifting existence becomes a ‘matrix’ for ourselves and we
become trapped in a twilight land of chasing ‘mental ghosts’,
‘emotional phantoms’, and physical ‘demons of desire’, caught between
yet another balancing act of duality between the depths of utter ruin and
despair and the heights of temporary pleasure and synthetic ego-joy.
This Seal of Solomon of dark and light is itself exactly the nature of the
earth and the realm of continuous flowing of birth and death.
Underneath us (the dark pole of any spectrum) are arrayed the armies of
darkness, ripping and raving like the goat Pan, smiting who they may,
and sowing chaos all around. Above us (the light pole of any spectrum)
are the angels of light, each endowed with a power of the Real, able to
defeat the dark demons, and grant blessings to the devout. Everywhere
on all sides, throughout every facet of our existence we can experience
these forces at play. This is why that the ancients conceived of the
absolute reality as a battle between forces of order and righteousness,
angels, gods, or devas, and forces of darkness and disorder, demons,
asuras, jinn. This means that within the garden, on the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, is a poisoned apple, an apple called sin,
which taints the pristine purity of the natural garden, namely, our
luminous enlightened mind. By cultivating the dark stream of our
existence, namely those actions and thoughts which are tied to matter
and selfish desire, we get drawn into the death nature of the dark and
become consumed, by the only cause to suffering that ever has or will
exist, the ultimate force of decay, ignorance. Under the sway of this
force, our very life force is warped and distorted and misshapen
beyond recognition until it depletes itself and reverts to a ‘panic button’
of seeking a new body to be born into. Even the ‘good’ things which we
seek out in life are more often than not simply a lighter shade of this
darkness, owing to the fact that our dualistic conception of good always
entails the opposite of evil and bad. Seeking after pleasure, being
averse to pain, all the while dwelling in our false conception of
ourselves, we are bounced back and forth on the waves of hope and
fear. Filled with the hope of expectation for selfish pleasure gained
through the various idle trappings of this life, which are either pursued
in the name of necessity or amusement, we cast a prejudiced gaze over
the world and its peoples and behave just like a tyrannical king or a
warring barbarian. Or just like a young child in a temper tantrum, our
minds throw fits and cry and complain in various sorts of ways when
things are out of step with our prejudiced dualistic desires, and become
confounded by further nescience and ignorance. Stomping our feet and
lashing out at whomever happens to be near us; we can’t handle it when
our internal objectified prejudiced image of reality, or simulacrum, is
out of step with our expectations. Whether it’s something that someone
says about us that defies our egoic self-image and elicits an arrogant
and ridiculous response by us, someone cutting in front of us and
stealing our parking space, or any number of effects which result from
the cause of the simulacrum, we will continue to exist in a persistent
state of dualistic tension between dark and light until the simulacrum is
transcended, and pure primordial awareness realized. The problem
with such a mind full of hope and fear, is, like that of a toddler or
adolescent’s mind, ignorance. As a child mistakes every shadow in his
room at night to be a monster lurking in the corner somewhere about to
get him; the nescient mind which swivels powerfully on its axis of hope
and fear mistakes what it can’t understand for a monster which is about
to devour it. No matter at which spectrum or situation we apply this
truth, our hopes and fears behave like scales obscuring our eyes with
the swinging weights of dualistic judgment. Instead of seeing things as
they are, things become divided into ‘absolute good’ and ‘absolute
evil’. Fenced in with a mind losing itself in conceptual thinking, we
provoke reactions in ourselves and in the reality around us from the
pure poison of ignorance, and all of space becomes infected with
darkness from our discordant vibrations. Both ‘good’ and ‘bad’
provoke negative reactions, whichever side of the poisonous polarity
of strictly dualistic thinking that our mind swings to, it only finds
suffering. The hope to hold on to fame or high status automatically
entails the creation of the fear of losing said fame or said status, for
example, and so on with all of the myriad impermanent things and
situations and people which we hope to enjoy permanently. Nowhere is
our mind safe when it is caught in the grasp of dualistic conceptual
thought, and nowhere can we hide from the reactions of the karma we
generate from acting upon these thoughts. Always we will be swung to
and fro in the dizzying play of opposites as our life is depleted in
chasing fleeting desires of the senses and fruitless material work. This
is the nature of the beings who live in the realm of the ceaseless
flowing of birth and death; birth entails the death, and death entails the
re-birth.

“Beginning with the manifestations of Spirit — of THE ALL — it will

be noticed that there is ever the Outpouring and the Indrawing; the
"Outbreathing and Inbreathing of Brahm," as the Brahmans word it.
Universes are created; reach their extreme low point of materiality; and
then begin their upward swing. Suns spring into being, and then their
height of power being reached, the process of retrogression begins, and
after aeons they become dead masses of matter, awaiting another
impulse which starts again their inner energies into activity and a new
solar life cycle is begun. And thus it is with all the worlds; they are
born, grow and die; only to be reborn. And thus it is with all the things
of shape and form; they swing from action to reaction; from birth to
death; from activity to inactivity and then back again. Thus it is with all
living things; they are born, grow, and die — and then are reborn. So it
is with all great movements, philosophies, creeds, fashions,
governments, nations, and all else — birth, growth, maturity,
decadence, death — and then new-birth. The swing of the pendulum is
ever in evidence.”

The one who holds these extreme dualistic views of ‘absolute good’
and ‘absolute evil’, as set-in-stone pre-defined dogmas, such as in the
case with fundamentalist religious sects, (although secularism too often
can itself be a type of fundamentalism) sends the mind on a
rollercoaster ride of expectation and guilt. The person tosses and turns
on the dualistic axis of the relative, conceptual right and wrong,
constantly manifesting their aversiveness to the perceived ‘wrong’, and
their fear of losing what is ‘right’. However, ‘right’, and, ‘wrong’, are
imputed by the mind upon reality, which is impartial, and so long as the
mind is wrapped up in conceptual absolutes of its own creation, it
plunges itself into dark and light shades of emotional and psychical
energy. This energetic reaction further substantiates the mind’s deluded
judgment, and re-enforces our mental judgement, which in turn
generates more karma in its direction, which in turn propels us on to
further situations of its kind. However dark and menacing a situation
may be, and however much we try to justify our emotional reaction to
it, the simple fact is that all of these reactions, both good and bad, are
temporary. Even the most horrible heinous crime that you can imagine
that would seem to necessitate a dark reaction, or the most wonderful
earthly pleasures that seem so real to us, exist only for a very finite
time, and then fade away. All of the people who are involved in said
actions, they all also fade away as the wheel of time grinds them to
smithereens. In the karma-bound world of continuous birth and death,
all is lost, and nothing lasts. Bhumaiva sukham, nalpe sukhamasti;

“Whatever verily is vast is delight, whatever is limited does not give

everlasting happiness.”

Therefore, its utterly nonsensical to attach ourselves to that which is

lost, that which can not last, that which does not truly exist. Doing so
we absorb ourselves more and more into the illusory energy of maya,
and maya absorbs herself more and more into us. Our judgments
become clouded, our reactions and lifestyles become more extreme,
everything we experience passes through the darkened prism of ego and
dogma, sapping it of its natural light. This darkened prism of our subtle
bodies draws us like a magnet to further darkened situations in the
world around us. This cycle may cause us to cling even more to the
things which give us hope, causing us to become neurotic and anxious,
or we may lose ourselves in the darkness manifesting around us and be
drawn into a snowball effect of black energy which destroys everything
‘good’ in our lives completely and renders us into a miserable wretch.
Even the narrow boundaries in which we define the ‘good’ in life, and
attempt to live up to that ‘good’, cause us to experience suffering and
‘bad’. These conceptual ‘good’ judgments about life are held up to be
the ineffable unalterable truth, again as in the case of fundamentalism,
and anything which arises from within or without which contradicts the
definition of the ‘good’ causes us to have a reaction which then is
automatically ‘bad’. Whatever responses that we have, again, cause us
to become either more neurotically holding on to the ‘good’, while
displaying increasingly violent outlashes against the ‘bad’, or more
corrupted by the ‘bad’ itself. The mind is like a television camera
pointed into the TV screen, it gives an infinitely recursive feedback
loop of reaction, when you focus it on a heavily dualistic judgment of
‘good’ vs. ‘bad’. We generally get the sense of ‘good vs. evil’ from our
parents, from our society, from our religion, and this extreme absolute
sense of ‘bad and good’, does serve a very important function in the
time and place which we currently find ourselves. It allows the nascent
mind of the human being to develop, re-enforce its sense of
individuality, and begin to fine tune itself to the nature of nature’s
design. It causes the nescient intelligence to spin and twirl two and fro
along the polarities, and ultimately within the neutral core of its being
to find equipoise between all extremes. The idea of good and bad on
their own are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves; the problem
lies in our not being grounded in the clear light of the neutrality of
mind, and being sucked into a mental and emotional tailspin of grasping
for the ‘good’, and running from the ‘bad’, and the styling of our lives
around this dichotomy. This relative idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for the
most part, (besides some phony instructions in morality we receive as a
child from our parents or society or religion, that cause even further
dualistic tension), essentially boils down to pleasure vs. pain. That
which causes us pain generally we define as ‘bad’, and try to avoid,
and that which gives us pleasure generally we define as ‘good’, and
seek out. Although we may not see any harm in seeking our own
pleasure, this is all that our life ends up becoming. The seeking for
pleasure becomes a consistent karma which repeats over and over, and
each time it repeats we become entrenched further into the seeking, and
further away from the pleasure, which only becomes more and more
fleeting due to its illusory nature. This is when something which
formerly was fun and pleasurable becomes a vice or addiction. Family
life becomes a burden, relationships strain, habits turn into addictions,
etc. We are all familiar with the cycle.

Chapter 5

While appearing to turn on a polar axis, to swing constantly back and

forth, up and down, left and right, in and out, the mind itself remains
neutral and unattached, just like a gyroscope. Remaining in itself
neutral, the swiveling mind sends us into dualistic states derived of our
attachment to what we like, and aversion to what we don’t. When in
this weakened state, not able to rest within its foundation, namely,
neutrality, the mind is easily sent into a tailspin by the slightest
headwind. If a little breeze hits the weakened mind, in a spot which is
sensitive to the kinetic energy, it begins to spin, and spin, and spin itself
into various impermanent and shifting negative and positive mental and
emotional states. As previously noted, these mental and emotional
states then serve to reinforce our habits, and an onslaught of sticky
karmic attachment is the result. Clogged up by these ‘impressions’
which are scratched on to the mind, like writing on chalkboard by the
oscillations of our thoughts, all of our mental processes are tinged with
the poisons of ignorance. Our entire reality is projected out from the
state of ignorance and dis-ease in our minds; whether it be a mental,
emotional, or physical state. Our mental habits become tinged by
attachment and aversion, causing some to assert their egoic pride,
others to back off and become antisocial. Thought becomes filtered
through the cracked lens of polarity-mind, and we find ourselves
naturally gravitating towards people to whom we are ‘like-minded’,
around whom our polarized mental condition is able to interact more
smoothly, as energy tends to naturally follow the line of least
resistance. If this polarized cracked lens were to implant itself into a
situation which is foreign to it, physically, emotionally, or mentally, the
mind will swing itself to the polarity of aversion, and while doing so
would also be indicating the counter-swing to the pole of attachment,
and create a corresponding effect in the fields of emotion and action.
Emotion reinforces our ignorant judgment, and action is carried out to
remove us from the situation, adjust it in a way which we deem
appropriate, or react negatively from our discomfort. This also in turn
reinforces our mental and emotional conditions. In this way our self and
our life becomes extremely limited, narrowly confined in small
boundaries which only repeat previous patterns. Attachment to the
pleasurable turns into attachment for the familiar, and aversion to the
displeasurable becomes aversion to the unfamiliar. At this point, the
phantoms that we are chasing turn into phantoms which chase us!
Illusions which we absorb ourselves into begin to absorb themselves
into us! Identity is lost, and ‘following the line of least resistance’, is
seen to be the same thing as ‘following the brainwashing of pop
culture’. Ego holds a carrot dangling over our own heads, but the carrot
is never really reached. Even if someone does manage to get everything
one wants, one is never satisfied, and there is the persistent aversion of
losing grip of what we are attached to. What we think of as pleasure
contains within it the opposite, always. Being enticed on, to party and
go to clubs or bars, to use an example appropriate to our generation,
may seem like only a pleasurable experience, and that nothing bad can
come from it. However, we will find that we crave for more and more
outlandish parties and alcohol and drug taking in order to satisfy the
craving for a pleasure which can never be kept for long. After a night of
pleasure partying, one appropriately experiences a morning of
displeasure being hungover and sick. Additionally, the next party will
need to be even more exciting, otherwise we get bored with it and are
unable to exact the pleasure to which we are so neurotically and
unhealthily attached. We try to repeat the process over and over again,
but every time our experience of it is more and more dulled, unless we
crank up the intensity each time. If that we do crank up the intensity
each time, we will find that our hangovers are more intense also, and
we begin to run the risk of getting into some dangerous karmic territory
and experiencing something violent such as a car crash, or a bad injury
during a drunken brawl. These type of violent events which happen are
cent-percent related to previous karmic cycles; because nowhere in this
universe is there an action without a reaction. So we will find our
normal non-partying life also adversely affected, as slowly we become
an old washed up burnout who has wasted their lives in pointless
drunken revelry.
“Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world

but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.”

Worse than pointless, chasing after such pleasure-attachments causes a

significant worsening of our position karmically, which can either
serve as a catalyst for transmutation into the good, or an anchor which
sinks us even further into the bad. Usually, even the most dense of
people begin to learn from the constant swing back and forth that the
process of chasing after these phantoms is destructive. They start to
develop some detachment with regard to their former attachments, and
lessening of aversiveness to their former aversions. This is the
resolution of poles into their neutral core, into a depth corresponding to
the depth of the poles themselves. The gyroscope of our being is
constantly being re-calibrated, depending on hard-headedness, in such
a way that we are thrown further into our delusions through ignorance,
or freed from delusions into the perfect harmony of neutrality through
wisdom. The being thrown into ignorance is divided into aversion and
attachment, which in turn feeds back into the clear light of our mind and
produce further reactions and dualistic divisions based on further
aversion and attachment. The gyroscope spins and spins to and fro upon
its axis, becoming further subdivided and further complicated, in such a
way that it carries the potential for delusion or insight. Depending on
the frequency and modality of the way in which we engage the reality
within and without (whether making many connections, or few, and
whether we are acting and thinking consciously or unconsciously), we
will experience currents of ascension or descension (ascending within
descending, descending within ascending, etc.). Choosing to be close-
minded, and lacking curiosity, our internal processes suffer from
stagnation. Ignorance breeds all of the attachment and aversion that
become the snares which bind our mind in Samsara. Without keeping an
open-mind, and flowing within the current of curiosity and mental
exploration, we tread on the static path of that which is material and
dense. That which is born and dies, is created, and is destroyed, hopes,
and fears, is not that unborn clear light of mind which resides in
equipoise in the middle of and beyond all opposites. This clear light
which is your true being, the absolute reality, full of infinite potential of
the resolution of all extremes, is that awareness which is the basis of
the two poles. The awareness becomes lost in the knots created by that
illusory tapestry displaying the story of the wrong view of the self.
Woven with the needle and thread of attachment and aversion, by the
hand of ignorance, this static and seldom-changing scene of our self and
life perpetuates its own story and drags the pure awareness along with
it into its tangled fabric. Seldom does anything become manifest other
than a continuation of what has come before. Even the novel things
which people do are more often than not nothing but things which they
have seen others of like polarized-mind do and are replicating
unconsciously. Unconscious is really the key word to describe this
condition. The part of the awareness which is underneath, bound up
with attachment and aversion, becomes the strongest motivating factor
within the mind, emotions, speech, and actions. The whole pattern of
life is submerged into the unconscious of unconsciousness, no different
than an apparition appearing in a dream. Yet awareness does not
disappear, it is merely bound up within the dream. If there is complete
and utter static mind, than we have reached the state of animal
consciousness, and we abide in our animal desires and not much else.
Only a fluid and dynamic mind, which is observant, and curious to
discover and learn, will not victimize itself with self-imposed
limitations. Then we will be able to use the mind, and not be used by it,
and attain that shining primordial tranquility which neutralizes all
opposite extremes.

“For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends;
but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain the greatest
enemy. For one who has conquered the mind, the Supersoul is already
reached, for he has attained tranquillity. To such a man happiness and
distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same.”

By being covered with the static forms and unable to properly perceive
higher interconnected dynamic truths, ignorance, attachment, and
aversion ensue. But by being detached from the transient static forms
one can perceive the higher truths at play, and not being caught in any
one side or the other, resolve any situation, and enjoy living
consciously and riding a natural harmonic flow. Everything naturally
resolves itself and one sees the order and finely tuned balance inherent
in all reality. By distancing one’s self from the dualistic conceptual
framework of seeing things, true and primordial wisdom naturally
develops. Things are seen as they are, void of any ignorant distortion
on our part, and one need only maintain the balance within this
neutrality to flow with all of the swings of the gyroscope and resolve
them before they become uncontrolled and carry us away into creating
further karma and samskaras (engraven images in the mind). The latent
psychic and emotional energy that was frozen up being misused in
keeping alive the phantasmagorical illusionary tapestry of our self, is
freed and transforms into the bliss of our natural mental state.
Detachment from that which is perceived clearly to be impermanent
naturally arises, as thread by thread the tapestry of attachment to the
unreal is unwoven. The unrealness begins to cease fogging the mind,
and pristine wisdom of perceiving all interconnected truths united
together within emptiness arises. Gradually the strength of the swing of
polarity is taken away from these uncontrollable mental oscillations,
freeing us from the bondage of attachment to impermanent pleasure and
pain based on the objects of our mind and senses. For, if all objects of
the mind and senses, are perceived, with wisdom, as they are truly, not
existing independently and permanently as objects with ‘own-being’ of
their own, as the conditioned mind perceives, then the mind will cease
to depend on and obsess over these mental objects and senses as if they
were substantial things which lasted forever. Indeed, for who would
there be to crave, and what to be craved? One cannot expect to extract
pleasure from the same husband or wife forever, someday they will
depart their bodies, and all of that pleasure will turn into unbearable
pain. This attachment will be brought to naught sooner or later, no
matter how hard we kick and scream. Drugs, alcohol, food, or other
addictions only hide and cover our malaise with a temporary pleasure
that requires a higher dose of substance each time round. Chasing after
the rush of these substances only causes one to become further
entrenched in the swamp of karmic action and reaction, staining our
pure mind and polarizing it into increasingly extreme oscillations,
which in turn lead to more and more divisions of dualistic extremes.
Violence and struggle to attain the addiction, shame and guilt of
becoming pathetically disempowered, these effects of the dark polarity
are clearly undesirable whether you have faith in transcendence or not.
Work and social life provide a temporary distraction from our hollow
meaningless existence, but excess attachment to or indulgence in these
things also leads to their own plethora of dualistic extremes and
prevents them from being enjoyable. Likewise any of the multifarious
novelties that people occupy their lives with in order to escape from
the uneasiness they feel with their existences. You can spend as much
time as you like playing the polarity game of attachment and aversion,
but in the end you will have realized that you have really only been
going around and around and around in circles all your life.
Afterwards, when that life is over, all of the pleasure and pain,
attachment and aversion, love and hate, etc. is dissolved by death, the
great equalizer, death. All of these impermanent things which
previously appeared to be the ‘all-in-all’ of our self, reality, our total
existence, are revealed to be the non-existent voidness that they truly
are. Where then has gone all of those weighty, heavy burdens which we
thought of as being so objectively real? Where is our wife or husband?
Our job? Our kids? Where is our country? Our world? Where has it
gone? If it is seen that all of these things which we previously thought
of as being so objectively real and permanent are reduced to non-
existence upon death, then it must be concluded that these things were
always void-like from the very beginning, existing like phantoms within
the mind. Something which is truly objectively real and permanent
cannot cease to exist, but we find that all things in the material world
including our very selves are constantly ceasing to exist. Therefore,
while in existence, the forms and feelings and thoughts were nothing
more than the voidness of the pure mind. Voidness being a complete
lack of objective self-existence in the way that we typically think of it.
Just as clouds float through the sky, but do not stain the sky, so forms,
feelings, and thoughts float through the void of the mind, but do not stain
the mind itself. The mind projects the illusion of dualistic extremes, and
is caught up in the oscillations back and forth, identifying with them and
forming concrete identities from them, but the whole time, the forms
and feelings and thoughts of our material life were no different than
those experienced while in a dream. Believing that the phantasms thus
experienced form part of an eternal, objectively existing self-nature, the
pure mind exacts dogmatic rules and overbearing limitations upon its
own infinite nature, and is lost in the tides of the world of continuous
birth and death that it asserts itself into with this process. That same
mind, when released from the entanglements of duality, swings itself
from the oscillations of aversion and attachment, and resides in the pure
equanimous bliss of the sameness of all phenomena.
“Think of neither existence nor nonexistence, neither progress nor
regress. Think of neither front nor back, neither left nor right. Think of
neither nonexistence nor existence, neither far nor near. Think of neither
pain nor itch, neither hunger nor thirst. Think of neither cold nor hot,
neither pain nor pleasure. Think of neither birth nor old age, neither
illness nor death. Think of neither body nor life, nor longevity. Think of
neither wealth nor poverty, neither nobility nor lowliness. Think of
neither sense objects nor desires. Think of neither large nor small,
neither long nor short. Think of neither beauty nor ugliness.
Think of neither evil nor good, neither anger nor delight. Think of
neither rising nor sitting, neither proceeding nor stopping. Think of
neither the sūtras nor the Dharma. Think of neither right nor wrong,
neither grasping nor abandoning. Think of neither perception nor
consciousness. Think of neither cessation nor continuation. Think of
neither emptiness nor true reality. Think of neither heavy nor light,
neither hard nor easy. Think of neither deep nor shallow, neither broad
nor narrow. Think of neither father nor mother, neither wife nor
children. Think of neither friends nor acquaintances, neither love nor
hatred. Think of neither gain nor loss, neither success nor failure. Think
of neither clarity nor turbidity.”

Everything is recognized as not existing on its own, but existing through

the one stream of mind which flows through all space, the same stream
of mind which is realized as the neutral clear light of your own
awareness. The temporary manifestations of form, feeling, thought,
which were previously imputed to be objective, and permanently
existing of their ‘own-being’, recognized as voidness in the end and
voidness at the beginning, are seen clearly to be non-different from the
empty clarity of our own minds. “Emptiness does not differ from form,
form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is
form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and
consciousness.” Recognizing all things as having the mark of non-being,
the restful equipoise in which we dwell is able to relate to all things,
people, and effects of this life as belonging to ourselves, belonging to
non-being. The walls of separation and isolation which were imputed
upon the infinite and clear nature of mind transform into sort of
instantaneous and shifting guidelines for our thought and expression,
rather than a strict, real and permanent ‘self-nature’, that we feel
obligated to maintain. Shifting and twisting and changing shape, the
gyroscope-like ‘wheel’ of our mind tears down old structures where
they are not needed, and refines and sharpens the ones which are
needed. In reality, there never was a concrete ‘set in stone’ identity, but
what there was was a pattern of mental oscillations, ‘samskaras’,
which were repeated over and over and over again and embedded onto
the memory. Mistaking this pattern which has arisen like a light over
empty space for something which is substantial and real, all sorts of
suffering derived from attachment and aversion arose. The patterns
flickering in the mind and memory however are nothing but a streaming
movement of mind’s energies, in the same way that a current of
electricity powers the light of a light bulb, or like the little devices
which are made with a LED light which moves back and forth
repeatedly to give the illusion of a picture or a phrase. In that same
way, our mind is flashing like lightning moment to moment, re-creating
and building upon what has came before it. When things are seen as
they really are, and our minds become free of attachment and aversion,
all of the ‘rough parts’ of our minds and emotions become smoothed
over with the peace of equipoised neutrality. Wisdom, compassion, and
all good qualities are allowed to be drawn out naturally, in equanimity
as opposed to related to perceived dualistic absolutes. This forms into
a healthy and flexible stream of ‘identity-non-identity’, which is an
entirely different process, free and unlimited instead of trapped and
bounded. Freed from grasping at the flickering instantaneous image, that
which is impermanent is entirely transcended, and with it ignorance.
With this sword of perfect wisdom, all of the roots of delusion and
suffering are severed from the mind, leaving the crystal clarity of itself,
shining like a well-sharpened blade made of the hardest diamond. This
diamond-bladed mind of perfect wisdom and clarity cuts through all
illusory dream-like perceptions. It is called diamond-like because it
overcomes all weaker substances like diamond penetrating glass with
its hardness, and yet at the same time there is nothing which can
overcome it. This is the neutral state of mind, returned to it’s
primordial, primeval, original spotlessly pure condition, tempered with
the wisdom of the opposites and their resolution in harmonious
neutrality.

Chapter 6 - middle way/emptiness

Perceived through the cracked lens of ignorance, forms, feelings, and

thoughts appear to exist from their own side as real, substantial,
objectifiable entities, in and of themselves. But if this objectified
substantial form, feeling, or thought, is imputed to exist as such, than
this ‘it’ must arise at some point, from previous causes and conditions
which give rise to it, for a thing which exists cannot give rise to itself,
because it would have had to exist before it existed, which is
impossible, and we do not experience that forms, feelings, thoughts etc.
remain forever unchanging. If this is the case, judging from the purview
of our cracked lens which objectifies impermanently existing
phenomena in a way which makes them appear to be existing in and of
themselves, we would presume that there would be a previous
‘thinker’, ‘feeler’, and ‘seer’, etc. to give rise to and experience the
thoughts, feelings, and forms. But, then, how can an impermanent
phenomena such as thought, or feeling, or form arise from an
objectified, permanent, and unchanging thinker, feeler, or seer? If the
objective seer, thinker etc. is unchanging, described as such, then it
follows that it’s impossible for something that is changing such as an
impermanent sensory phenomenon to penetrate its unchanging sphere.
No independent thing can exist, in an objectifiable sense, that is
unchanging. The two objects, ‘seer’, and ‘seen’, cannot penetrate one
another, or interact with one another, seeing as they are unchanging,
static, and independent. If it were changing, then it would follow that
this seer thinker etc. couldn’t exist as a permanent and objectified
independent phenomena capable of being called a ‘seer’, ‘thinker’,
‘feeler’, etc. It makes no sense to say that this objectifiable
independent, ‘it’, is both changing and unchanging, because the one
cancels out the other.

"The nature of the mind is absent from nonmental things. How then
could self-cognizing consciousness Know other things? For you have
said
That known and knower are two different entities”

Therefore these objects of mind and senses, the ‘things’, we objectify,

are seen to be empty of any sort of objective essence or, ‘own-being’
which can be appropriately described as such. Things cannot possibly
arise from more things, because you could never reach the beginning of
things arising out of other things. Yet, things appear to arise, and we
can’t say that nothing exists either.

“Neither from itself, nor from another, Nor from both,

Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.”

The ‘things’ which arise are not ‘things’, and when perceptions of
‘things’ as ‘things’ cease, in place of perceiving ‘things’ as ‘arising’,
we will, with perfect wisdom, perceive the non-arising nature of that
which is erroneously perceived to arise when viewed as an objectified
phenomena from the purview of the relative dualistic extremes.
“When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises.
When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of
this, that ceases.”

If a thing which arises were to have objective existence, then it must

have arisen certainly from another thing which gave rise to it, for as
mentioned earlier, a thing which arises cannot give rise to itself. So it
certainly must be established that things which arise must arise from
other things, because something cannot arise from nothing. But if this is
the case, what gave rise to the thing which gave rise to the thing which
arose? It must be imputed that the thing which produced the thing which
arose has to exist eternally, externally, and independent of those things
which arise, in and of itself, because otherwise it must be that things
arise from other things in an infinite regress, and nothing could ever
arise to give rise to the thing which arose. However, logically, a thing
which exists and gives rise to another thing cannot exist eternally and
unchanged as an independent thing, because then, being unchangeable, it
would have to be independent of the experience of that thing which has
arisen in the sphere of the changeable and transient. Either it is co-
dependent upon the arising thing, affects it, and is affected by it, or it is
independent of it, and is incapable of changing to accommodate the
shifting experience necessary to give rise to a thing which exists in the
world of the changeable and transient. If it were possible to change that
which is unchanged, then why refer to it as an objective self-existing
and independent ‘thing’?

From the angle of perception of the things which are seen to arise from
other things do we perceive a limited experience of arising things. But
from the angle of that non-perception-perception, they are seen as
having the nature of non-arising. Seeing as it is not possible for things
to arise from other things, nor to arise from themselves, nor to arise
from a non-thing, it must be concluded that there can be no
independently objectifiable entity which arises and then ceases to arise.

"Contemplate empty space, attain to non-perception, non-distinction,

the elusive, beyond being and not-being: reach non-space."

All phenomena are like flashes of lightning, possessing no objectifiable

essence in and of themselves. Like the illusions of a magician, or light
reflected onto a mirror, they are essenceless, empty, illusory
phenomena. The light is not within the mirror, nor is it not not within
the mirror. The mirror and the light are empty of objectness; they are
none.

“If things did not exist

Without essence,
The phrase, ‘When this exists, so this will be,’ Would not be
acceptable.”

Likewise, the phenomena exist, but not at all in the way in which they
initially appear.

When the idea of a self and independent and permanent ‘own-being’

arise, it does so in relation to the conditional dualistic ‘subject-object’,
reaction to the objects of the mind and senses, perceiving them as
independent and substantially existing from their own side, rather than
merely as imputations in the mind. Therefore “With the arising of this,
that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be.” With the
arising of an object of dualistic objectification, arises the whole
gammut of interdependent conditions which appear to exist as dualistic
objects, with the cessation of the dualistic objectification, the whole
gammut of interdependent conditions ceases to exist as anything more
than an illusory conceptual imputation of the truth, and are seen to be
empty of real ‘own-being’.
When we see that the dualistic self has no true essence, the perceived
independently existing phenomena will also be seen as essenceless. All
of the conditions which arise from the object-based perception cease to
be perceived solely as separated objectified events, choppy like a boat
tossed back and forth on the ocean, but appear as they are, mutually
interdependent, smooth like a wave, essenceless like a dream in their
own independent natures. With the perception of the phenomena as
lacking essence, of the nature of the void, no longer does the illusory
dualistic subject-object perception arise as it had previously, but the
underlying sameness of all things is experienced. Our attachments and
aversions to the senses and their objects, and the experience of things
as separate phenomena which condition and appear to give rise to one
another, are cut off from the pristine, primordial mind at their root,
ignorant attachment to falsely perceived self-natures.

All objectifiable things are seen without essence, being perceived co-
dependently in relation to one another, having a nature empty of self-
being. The label which was imputed onto the apparent mental or
sensory object is nothing more than an illusion of our mind, as the way
in which we presume objects and things to exist has been proven to be
impossible.

With the cessation of ignorance, comes the cessation of the view of

‘things’ as arising, and therefore the cessation of falling prey to the
illusory web of conditions which covers our perception with dualism
of subject and object. With the cessation of that which is created,
comes the cessation of that which is destroyed. With the cessation of
that which can be created or destroyed, is the cessation of fear, and
hope, arising from clinging to attachment and aversion. With the
cessation of clinging to attachment and aversion, is Nirvana, the
cessation of suffering. Nor can ‘things’ ever cease.
“Here, O Sariputra,
Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form ; emptiness does not
differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is
emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions,
impulses, and consciousness. Here, O Sariputra,
all dharmas are marked with emptiness ; they are not produced or
stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse,
nor consciousness ; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms,
sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ
element, and so forth, until we come to : No mind-consciousness
element ; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so
forth, until we come to : There is no decay and death, no extinction of
decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no
path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.
Therefore, O Sariputra,
it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva, through
having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-
coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to
tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to
Nirvana. All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time
fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they
have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom. Therefore one should know
the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the
utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth -- for
what could go wrong ? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been
delivered. It runs like this : gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi
svaha. ( Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an
awakening, all-hail ! -- ) This completes the Heart of Perfect Wisdom.

Chapter 7
Perceiving with perfect wisdom, the whole chain of conceptualizations
arising out of the notion of the impermanent self as being permanent
seems to evaporate, to fade away like a shadow before the rising sun.
The strangest thing happens, the fog of our self-imposed ignorance
disperses, or is absorbed, and as such the numerous things to which our
false ego was attached or averse to, no longer seem to move us in the
same way as they did before. Indeed, who would they move? The one
who is capable of being born, is not the one that is capable of
overcoming death, while the one who resides in the extinction of the
view of themselves as the body, or objectified as an image based on the
body has already conquered all that is connected to the polarized
phenomena of birth and death. The one who can become angry and
averse cannot truly exist, only being perceived in relation to the
interdependent connections of attachment and aversion between the
falsely seen external objects and the imputation of a separate internal
subjective ego. When awareness absorbed within only the impermanent
ceases due to perfect wisdom, the attachments and aversions are cut
from their root of ignorance which has perceived them as objectively
real and existing from their own side. Only in relation to the perception
of the externalities and internalities existing in and of themselves is the
realm of continuous birth and death encountered at all.

***
Besides that, what is perceived and experienced is the deathless
Nirvana. However, one in perfect wisdom does not only abide in
Nirvana, nor does one only abide in the realm of continuous birth and
death, existing free of essential being or non-being.

“The real sky is (knowing) that samsara and nirvana are merely an
illusory display”

If the wrong view in regards to the essence of the ‘stuff’, perceived in

the mind in relation to its objects, is transcended, then the
interdependent inner and outer conditions which affect and give rise a
concretely objective ‘self’ will not arise. The ‘stuff’ is seen to be
without objectifiable existence, and the ‘self’ is seen to be without
objectifiable existence, and so what, per se, will affect what, and how?
If the things perceived through the purview of dualistic extremes truly
existed as objective permanent entities, then why would they not
squelch out their opposites entirely? If one opposite were to be
substantially and permanently real, it would follow that the other
opposite could not exist whatsoever! Therefore opposites can never
exist in the way in which the dualistic mind perceives them, canceling
each other out before they could come into being.

In the same way, all of the ignorant views of dualistic extremes ‘self’
vs. ‘other’, ‘here’, vs. ‘there’, etc. are held in a tenuous balance when
perceived from the perspective of the relative, but completely cease to
exist ‘as such’, when the absolute truth of the matter is perceived. The
momentary phenomena of the dualistic extremes may then seem to arise
along with the relative finite perspectives, but in actuality they never
existed from the beginning in and of themselves, and were an all
imputed by the mind. These phenomena are empty of being in and of
themselves, flashing instantaneously like lightning in relation to the
other imputed interdependent conditions. Pure awareness naturally
gives rise to these magical displays. This is why that the mind rushes to
and fro between the dualistic extremes; when they appear to be
substantial, they are actually empty, and therefore, it becomes possible
for the substantial polarity to shift and change to the implied opposite
substantially existing polarity. All along these polarities were created
only by our conscious awareness and had no existence in and of
themselves, as has been deducted. Being checked against the
gyroscopic swivel of memories of previous polarized perceptions, the
mind then, using the memories as a background, makes a choice to enact
an illusory attachment to one of the imagined extremes, while at the
same time becoming averse to its opposite. Thus is an identity formed
out of nothing more than our conscious awareness perceiving that
which cannot exist as actually existing, and becoming lost in dreams
and fantasies of our own creation. All along nothing existed
substantially, but all appears to exist in that way to our mind due to the
perceived interdependent relationships of things. That mind, swiveling
to and fro, to and fro, checks itself, is drawn upward or downward
from ignorance to wisdom, and in the end transcends all or falls back
into further cycles of birth and death. The apparent substantial existence
of the dualistic things provides our mind with the ‘food’ it needs in
order to expand to perceive the essence of its own nature. This empty
mind, though pure from the beginning, had become covered by the
illusory thought-coverings. Expanding beyond objectification, it
transcends the illusory limitations which were imputed on it in
ignorance; or, lost in the objects, it becomes weighed down and falls.
Either way, one is required to pass through a labyrinth of attachment
and aversion which has formed out of our beginningless karma, from
this life and previous ones. When one fails to recognize the nature of
things, and instead clings to its erroneous attachment to objectifying
essenceless phenomena as permanently existing, falls into all of the
associated fears and hopes of the dualistic existence. The more that the
apparent self, or ego, asserts its own attachments and aversions in the
field of experience, the more it becomes an automatic unconscious
behavior. The more this unconscious behavior goes on, the more
strongly we react, along the lines of our dualistic extremes, to what
enters our awareness from the environment. This can cause even more
entanglement in the world of continuous birth and death, as the
reactions to our actions gather more and more weight, for with the
arising of a polarized judgment or perception of phenomena, always
arises its opposite. The person who thus exists in their own little
illusory bubble of permanently objectified phenomena is unable to
recognize their errors and change. Like attracts like and they may be
trapped in an ever-increasing downward spiral. Those who are willing
and able to see ‘beyond themselves’, however may use the swinging
polarities to recognize flaws in one’s self, and make adjustments. To
this person, the one who exposes a negative reaction in themselves is a
great teacher, worthy of veneration! As long as one is not, quite
literally, ‘wrapped up’, in the tangled web of one’s own extreme
absolutist prejudices based on attachment and aversion, one can be free
of the exhausting cycle of wheels spinning back and forth between
aversiveness and attachment. This does not necessarily entail that by
perceiving in a way is free from the ignorance of believing the finite
and unreal to be real that we will no longer care to interact with the
world, and perceive all of our relationships as being meaningless
nothingness. This is a common nihilistic mistake for those who attempt
to understand what is called ‘the Perfection of Wisdom’. It’s not such
that the apparently internal or external objects that we perceive are
necessarily not real and don’t exist in any sense at all; but being that
they are perceived in relation to the other finite phenomena that we
objectify as having an ‘own-being’, when the perception based on those
finite impermanent phenomena ceases, the internal and external objects
defined as such are seen to cease to exist as objective phenomena. They
are seen as a self-created, self-liberating magical display, and as such
one is free from being tyrannized by the creation of one’s own mind.

Freed from the self-created maze of polarity connections which

governed one’s perceptions, feelings, reactions, etc. of/to the internal
and external, spontaneous wisdom is seen to naturally arise that
perceives from a total field of awareness. Not perceiving any essential
difference between one’s self and others, or the environment, one sees
all beings and one’s self as space-like, free, appearing as self-begotten
mirages of mental forces. Thus, seeing things as they actually are, one
is never a victim to ignorance. Never being a victim to ignorance, one
does not generate the further actions and reactions that accumulate
within the attachment to name and form. For one who has no essence,
how is it possible for them to remain attached to ‘karma’? Whom
would the karma attach to? Being freed from karma, one is liberated
from one’s sins entirely and attains causeless non-dual peace and
equanimity. Perceiving the nature of the essenceless self to be thus, one
comprehends the Buddha-nature within all things. Any ‘thing’, or ‘self’,
which could be described as such must not be the fully enlightened one,
and yet, the fully enlightened one contains the ‘things’ and ‘selves’.
Thus it is only ignorance that veils all beings from their true nature.
This wisdom is the nature without a nature, the completeness, the
Logos, the Buddha.

“Whatever is dependent on another entity, Its selfhood is not

appropriate.
It is not tenable that what lacks a self, Could be a Tathagata.”
(Tathagata means one gone to
or come from the realm of suchness)

Through the realization of the emptiness of forms, feelings, perceptions,

etc. the attachments and aversions which have formed the web of your
conditional ‘ego’, that which has been the ignorant noxious fog
clouding your pristine awareness will fade away, as if a clear cool
breeze has blown through and purified the air entirely. It’s not that the
forms, or feelings disappear, but the separated, choppy sort of dualistic
experience of them will cease, as the swing of endless action and
reaction is seen to lose its grip along with its essence. Arising without
essence, the forms and feelings are then seen as they are, and gradually
one is able to shift from the ignorant view to the wise.

“The wise who know that in phenomena there is no self, Become

accustomed to this absence of intrinsic nature. And thus they
effortlessly spurn
Defilement arising from mistaken thought.”

Rather than walking with one’s head down, staring at the ground, or
staring into the space ahead of you blankly, being lost in thought or lost
in your music or your cell phone, one perceives all that is happening in
the field of the senses in the highest and clearest way possible, free
from any distraction or illusion. Free from the dirtiness of conceptual
thought, the mind perceives in a way that touches the very suchness of
essenceless reality as the instantaneous and miraculous play of all-
creating, beautiful, luminous wisdom.

“Freedom is the basic condition for you to touch life, to touch the blue
sky, the trees, the birds, the tea, and the other person."

As expressed in the quote above, when freed from the chains of purely
conceptual thought, the naked mind absorbs the pure essenceless sense
and mental objects as spontaneous expressions of highest joy.

“Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when
they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves
them.”

Free from attachment and aversion, the primordial blissful nature of

reality shines through unhindered.

“There is something which as long as left unknown Results in life’s

three planes of vicious circle. Beyond all doubt, it dwells in every
being. To the Dharmadhatu [Truth-Element] I devoutly bow.

When that which forms the cause for all samsara Is purified along the
stages of the path, This purity itself is nirvana;
Precisely this, the Dharmakaya [Truth-Body], too.
As butter, though inherent in the milk, Is mixed with it and hence does
not appear, Just so the Dharmadhatu is not seen
As long as it is mixed together with afflictions.

And just as the inherent butter essence When the milk is purified is no
more disguised, When afflictions have been completely purified, The
Dharmadhatu will be without any stain at all.

But as we are born into this polarized state by our karma, and grow and
form matrices of judgment, attachment, and aversion, the pure element
of reality (Dharmadhatu) is covered by our internal and external
habitual tendencies, and its light is obscured from shining.

Chapter 8

Whether one born into this world is raised in a nurturing environment in

which one is not overindulged, or over-disciplined, but kept in a
middle way between extremes, raised in a nurturing environment that
still provokes extreme patterns, or in an abusive environment, etc. will
determine how the ‘field of polarization’ is structured within one’s
psyche. As has been discovered by psychology, it’s at the crucial time
of childhood when the core structures of personality are put into place.
Structures which, although manifesting in this life, are only the
continued momentum of beginningless karma. Beginningless because it
is ignorance. The insecurities we feel, the judgments we make of
others, all of our attachments and aversions formed from past lives and
carried over into the beginning formative experiences of this life, tangle
themselves into a deep psychological ‘framework’ which acts as the
screen for our experience; a noxious cloud of ugliness when darkened
by ignorance, and a luminous field of essenceless wisdom when
enlightened by right knowing.

“One who feels punctured must have been a bubble.”

The ‘one’ who feels as though they have gone through this abuse and
neglect, or lack of love as a child themselves, or other traumas have
nourished this illusion of the self being a punctured one, a victim of
extraneous conditions which left it in its present dissatisfied condition.
However, were that ‘one’ have been truly existing from its own side as
a permanent phenomena, how could it have been ‘punctured’? Only if
the phenomena itself were an illusion would it be possible to feel as
though it were punctured by the lack of love or abuse it experienced,
and thereby develop personality faults and hard, entrenched
psychological disorders based on it; all of which exist as phantoms or
illusions inside of the mind, reinforced by the ‘ping-ponging’
polarizing. If the ‘one’ had been real, permanent, objectively existing it
would not have been capable of being made to change its state of being
by something which has arisen from outside of it. Believing it to be
real, the dualistic reactions of desire to be loved, or to have been
treated other than we had been, whatever plethora of mental formations
it may have been, have worn in dualistic attachments and aversions into
our psyche. These evolve into insecurities, personality disorders,
psychological dysfunctions, etc. This is especially so in the relatively
extreme cases of abuse, neglect, or other trauma which most of us at
present currently experience so often we become numb to it and forget
we are even experiencing trauma. The patterns in which those
relatively rare people who did not experience such unnerving unstable
shifting extremes and had a stable upbringing, in most cases, still form
over time into constrictive limitations and prejudices of aversion and
attachment, from the other side of the pole. However the aversion and
attachment is positively formed, and therefore based on slightly more
stable foundations, but still the attachments and aversions always tend
to entail the opposites of themselves within them, and they are full of
desires, making for an unsatisfied kind of unbalanced existence. For
those who are not observant, and do not seek to struggle towards the
righteous and truthful expansion in all spheres, the idle limitations and
curiosities may degenerate into stiff and unchanging habits which cause
us to become cantankerous old fogeys who will react negatively and
hostile to those who don’t support our narrow ways of doing and seeing
things. Because, the gyroscopic mind behaves like a vitalizing current,
it doesn’t rest but continues to animate and create its magical creations.
So whether the stream is flowing down, towards that which is
impermanent and dualistic, or up, to that which is real and non-dual,
will determine whether it moves within the real and true wisdom, or
illusory impermanent dualistic extremes, and experiencing all of the
resulting effects of either path. However, it’s going to keep moving,
restructuring itself, because ‘it’ is an instantaneous phenomena with no
real essence, like a reflection, dependent upon its objects and senses.
This movement of mind has gone on from the beginning, has never
ceased, and will never cease. Without it nothing would exist. It’s
swinging and polarizing and giving life to what is unreal grounds the
ignorant cloud of karmic knots formed into a temporarily existing thing
we call a person within a self-imposed dream-like but necessary
fantasy, without which it could know nothing. It’s forced into this
reflexive action due to a grasping at that which is not real in ignorance.
None who are born into this world are free of its power, nor should
they be, as its this process which yields the potential for a karma-bound
being to overcome that very same bad karma by dint of seeing first hand
how bad it is, and eventually to realize the voidness in the material side
of things. But until this process is transcended, it remains the one
driving force in our lives, consuming us whole, and defining who we
are for us into narrow limited constraints. This has gone on endlessly,
the term in sanskrit is ‘anadi karma’ meaning beginningless karma,
implying that because it is dependent on our ignorance, and not on a set
beginning time, it has no temporal beginning. As long as our ignorance
is in place, this karma will continue reverberating throughout the aeons,
as this is from where the aeons themselves arise. This causal web of
action and reaction is linked interdependently with ignorance, and the
more we can overcome that dimness and cease acting and thinking
based on that ignorance, which takes the unreal to be real and loses
itself in a net of mental formations, the more that we can overcome that
web of karma. Overcoming this web of connections, that which is not
real no longer automatically guides and directs our actions and thoughts
and forces them into the repeated patterns which caused us to arrive in
the suffering state of continuous birth and death in the first place.
Believing the sense and mental objects to be fundamentally real, ones
pure nature becomes covered by webs of illusion based on dualistic
clinging. This is what we call the ‘psyche’, the ‘self’, ‘our life’. This
‘house’, in which we think that we dwell cannot live forever. Forever
is an awfully long time, and so it doesn’t exist in any way at all forever,
outside of our illusory attachment to believing that it does exist and
causing it to rise into being instantaneously along with ignorance. If the
‘house’ which we identified as our self and life were to go on forever,
unchanging, it would follow that we ourselves would go on unchanging
forever. But if we were unchanging forever, how is it that we could
become old, get sick, and die? How would it be that we experience
new things and grow and change and learn in response to what we see
in the changing environment? If our ‘house’ were a totally independent
and objectified phenomena, it would be impossible to change and
interact with other changeables. Therefore, our ‘house’ does not exist
as an object, but is an interdependent web of parts which arises and
ceases to be perceived as such along with our ignorance rising and
ceasing. In actuality all of these things are without essence and are
phantasmagorical displays, as in a dream. The obsessing with forms
and objects and ‘having things our way’ is nothing less than the
pointless asserting of an illusory fiction by a blind character of some
random dream with an inverted truth. The character, the dream, the
whole fiction is a self-created manifestation of mind in every way. So
we really have nobody to blame for our good or bad upbringings,
which have given rise to this particular ‘house’, in which we are
struggling to live, and having a perfectly normal childhood is not
necessarily a perfect thing in terms of realizing the truth and
overcoming illusion. Sometimes, those rough swings of the pendulum
through the dark turbulent areas of life serve to unnerve our sense of
comfort and cause us to question our existence in a productive way,
sometimes they push us further to down the pole towards doing so
eventually. Seeing the lows of the low, one has much more appreciation
for the suffering of this world, whereas one who has sat comfortable all
their life not seeing the suffering is certainly in a worse position,
paradoxically. For example, the foremost disciple of the Buddha was
not found amongst the ranks of his elite Brahmin Sakya family converts,
who had been dulled by their privileged existences, but in Upali, the
slave-boy who insisted to become a disciple of the Buddha in spite of
his society’s prejudices against those of his lower caste. Because Upali
had been a slave, he was more humble than the Shakyas, because he
hadn’t any wealth, he was more eager for the treasure of the Buddha’s
teaching, because he had been abused and mistreated himself, he knew
the pain of abusing and mistreating others. Likewise those of us who
come from very humble beginnings, or even moderately abusive
beginnings, in all likelihood have an advantage over those who didn’t,
at least when it comes to abandoning that which is worldly, and seeing
the darker sides of the realm of continuous birth and death. If one has
come from impoverished beginnings however, conversely, one might
feel bitter and commit crimes and violence in order to achieve their
desires for stability and wealth. Anything at any time can become
switched in the realm of the dualistic and relative. That is important to
understand; one thing always entails the opposite, which is again, only
possible if the opposites are essence-less, as seen with perfect
wisdom. One who is raised in a nice household with a lot of money and
material comforts might have had the good karma to be also blessed
with an aptitude for the truth and take to it easily, never having to have
experienced many violent swings of the pendulum, but when goodness
ends and the good karma is used up and if that one has not attained
complete Nirvana, the ending of that satisfying life will result in us to
be born into a much lower one. Thus is the predicament of those higher
godly beings who are born into dimensions above this one which have
much more material comfort and sense pleasures than this one. Losing
everything we are attached to and having to leave it all behind forever
does not sit well with that person who is comfortable with the worldly.
Either path that is trodden, rich or poor, prince or pauper, or either way
that both are trodden together in the same life, the actions and reactions
that arise carry with them our ignorance and attachments from countless
aeons. How much that we can balance ignorance with wisdom will be
determined by the development of a certain introspectiveness, a
sensitivity, a curiosity, humility, and eagerness towards the truth at all
cost. No matter how firmly our egoic attachments and aversions may
appear to push back, and no matter how long it takes, if we can develop
this sincerity, with regards to the truth both within and without, we will
be making byways into overcoming ignorance and attaining to perfect
wisdom.

Chapter 9

The perfect system of polar balance, that magnetic, swinging mind,

tends to auto-correct by checking itself against its memories and ideals
of truth that it has retained from observing the surround and ‘reflecting’.
At any point it may swivel between dark or light reflections of
pain/pleasure, attachment/aversion, love/hate etc., and reflections
within reflections, and connections within connections. A mind which
is unaware of the power of its own volition and going about its
existence unconsciously is potentially very dangerous, because there
are no limits to the knots and unfolding webs of karma which one can
find oneself entangled in, or the highs and lows which can toss one
about. It will go on fumbling and bumbling in ignorance, attachment
feeding action, and action in turn feeding into attachment and aversion
all over again. Each time which we allow our materialistic habits of
thought and action, based in the ignorant objectification of the inner and
outer reality as a substantial, static, and independent objects, to take
over our consciousness, a chain of causality is nourished which has
caused us to be bound in this world from time immemorial, and which
will cause us to continue to be bound in this world forever. Therefore
to accept ignorance and cultivate it is the same as cultivating death and
rebirth in the world of suffering from taking illusions to be real. As
previously explained, our ignorance and tendencies of behavior good
or bad are all inherited from previous lives, and so there is an ocean of
former action which is to be overcome. The people, situations,
lifestyles which we attract and cultivate are little more than carry-overs
from previous people, lifestyles, and situations which we have
attracted and cultivated. These ‘karmic seeds’ are carried from
previous lives and embed themselves into the present, and, being
watered by our attention, begin to sprout into great trees of attachment.

“Qi follows Yi, where attention goes, energy flows.”

As attention goes towards our attachments, energy flows towards the

crystallization of their essence into patterns and habits. The thought
being cultivated having to do with desire, that idea which we are
desiring carries a lot of energetic weight in our consciousness and
lives. Being of the nature of desire the idea or pattern always creates a
yearning which is observed to steadily increase. Being of the nature of
duality, the attachment is always connected to its opposite of aversion.
For example, the desire for prestige, wealth, and sex seem to be
universal amongst the dim, pitiable people in our fallen age. When one
cultivates the thought pattern, “I desire for prestige, wealth, sex”, one is
cultivating the notion that one does not have these things, and so a type
of stress or tension then ensues between the wanting and the having and
the fear and aversion of not having. If one, having attained the prestige,
wealth, or sex, cultivates the thought “I have attained such and such”,
begins to develop a steady crassness and pride in the attainment, which
may be viewed positively or negatively by others, and which inflates
our illusory ego to try to hang on and identify itself with the holding on
to that which we are attached. This leads to an even further ‘shell-
game’ of self-inflation and grasping at these attachments both mentally
and physically. Grasping at that which is capable of being taken away
leads to more fear of losing, and gives rise to avariciousness which
wants to hang on to that which is needed to sustain the inflation of the
ego amongst the swell of the rising dualistic tide; hence the situation of
the world today. When that person loses what they were so greedily
attached to forcefully due to death, disease, or disaster, it will not be a
pretty scene to say the least. There is no way to sustain the rising tide of
our ambitions in a shaky unpredictable world, like there is no way
empty water from a boat with a hole in the bottom. Wealth, prestige,
having sex with many different partners etc. appear attractive to the
ignorant who have no experiential knowledge of what these dreams are
like when lived practically. Wealth generates more attachment to this
world, if it is not purified by charity. With it, one knows no restraint in
the world of continuous birth and death. One is able to indulge every
idle desire of one’s ego without any restraint, and living an extravagant
and flamboyant existence, forgets the simple and basic things about life.
That one’s life becomes some kind of fantasy which is far away from
the hard truths which can free one from such delusion and attachment.
The wealthy one has no need to rely on anything or anyone to live their
life, because of course money can always solve every problem, and so
comes to take everything for granted and live in a sheltered cloistered
existence that is far off from the lives of those poor people on whom
the wealth was built. Far away from seeing the dependence on others
for one’s being, one’s ego becomes that much more hard and resilient,
and one’s discipline and sharpness becomes dulled. That egoic bubble
becomes bloated and static, and desires ever more extravagance in
order to amuse itself. This is a self-generated cycle which creates more
and more desires, which are less and less satisfying, and generate more
and more tension.

“When I was a kid, I loved seeing how “rich people” lived. Now that
I’m older, I know a lot of high net worth individuals. I know guys worth
over $500 million that wear t-shirts everyday and drink beer from a
can. I also know a lot of entrepreneurs who have sold companies, some
for over $100 million. Guess how they feel when they “retire”? Bored,
restless and unfulfilled. Their early days of scrapping it up with little
money and long hours are some of their best memories. Sitting on a
beach and checking your bank balance gets old quickly.”

All the while that wealthy one is corrupted by indulgence in sense

pleasures and the arrogance of his perceived position in relation to the
‘common people’. The swiveling mind is raised into octaves of
haughtiness and disingenuous pride. This goes to show the hollow
nature of this kind of lifestyle; it’s perpetuated by a constant sense of
lack, and disenchantment that paradoxically is another reverse symptom
of its apparent utter abundance and enchantment. If one has all this
wealth with which one is enchanted, that implies a limitless array of
desires which one will then feel compelled to act out, and a limitless
uneasiness of desiring new things and being averse to losing them. This
is due to the fact that we are the ones all along creating the illusion of
requiring wealth, being wealthy, desiring extravagance, living
extravagantly, being averse to poverty, etc.

“Suppose we are now sitting in the shade for too long. We feel cold, so
we move out into the sun. We seem to feel happy for a while, but this is
not happiness. If it were, it would be like suffering: the more we
encounter, the more it would increase. If going out into the sun were
happiness, no matter how long we sat there, our happiness must grow
the more, not become unhappiness. This is not what happens, we suffer
again a little later and have to go back into the shade. Our suffering has
gradually risen above its threshold, although this is not in fact
obvious.”

Seeking to alleviate suffering momentarily with a pleasure which never

lasts long because it’s not really pleasure but just a momentary
alleviation of our suffering. Like a dog chasing one’s own tail, the low
comes into being along with the high, and one can never escape that
cycle, because the desire for the highs and aversion for the lows, never
objectively exist independently and were formed originally in duality,
and were maintained in duality, and duality never entails the possibility
for true peace without it’s opposite.

“King Mabhavata ruled over the four continents and the celestial
regions, yet he was still dissatisfied. Eventually his merit ran out; he
fell to the continent of Jambudvipa and breathed his last. Desires do not
satisfy, and there can be no greater fault than this. If you ruled one land
you would think, “If only I ruled over two!” You would not be satisfied,
no matter how many you ruled. No matter how much wealth you get you
still wonder if you can get more, and you are prepared to wear yourself
out to achieve this. If you lack contentment, no matter how much wealth
or how many possessions you have acquired, you will be no different
from a beggar. Once in India, Surata the beggar found a priceless jewel
and said he must give it to another beggar. He gave it to King
Prasenajit, saying, ‘Oh king, you lack contentment, and so are the
poorest!’”

In the end, it all comes crashing down anyway, in the rare case that one
is even able to hold on to one’s wealth without it being taken or lost.
Eventually the good fortune is going to run out sooner or later, and we
are going to experience the reverse, and therefore all living beings
experience suffering. All along that we thought we were the richest
man, we were actually the greatest beggar. Our riches were all in our
dreams, and, placing them externally outside of ourselves, we became
the most needy indeed of those phantasms which have no real true
existence. Craving after that which is not real, “Your attachment to the
objects of the senses increased, leaving you discontented; you then
accumulated sins for the sake of those things, and went from lower
realm to lower realm.”

With more wealth one acquires more problems and people trying to
take advantage of one’s situation. With more problems and people
trying to take advantage of one, comes more fears and anxieties of
being taken advantage of, and more paranoia and sinful greed
concerning one’s assets. A proposition which initially was supposed to
free us and give us an easy and happy life has rapidly degenerated into
the sticky desire quicksand of attachment and aversion; it’s like the
story of the fisherman on the beach in Mexico.

A rich businessman was on holiday by the beach in Mexico when a

small fishing boat docked nearby with just one man on board. Inside the
boat were several large tasty-looking fish. "That's quite a fine catch,"
noted the businessman. "How long did it take you to pull those in?"
"Only a little while," said the fisherman. "So why don't you stay out
fishing longer and catch more fish?" said the rich man. "This is enough
to take care of the needs of my family," replied the fisherman. "But
what do you do with all the rest of your time?" asked the businessman.
The fisherman said, "I sleep late, I fish a little, I spend time with my
wife and play with my children. Then I rest in the afternoon. In the
evening, I visit the rest of my family or stroll into the village where I
have a drink with my friends. I have a full and busy life." The rich man
scoffed. "I have a business degree from one of the best universities in
the world. I can help you. If you spent more time fishing, you could buy
a bigger boat with the profits you make. With the profits from the bigger
boat you could buy several more boats until eventually you would own
a whole fleet of fishing boats. Then instead of selling the fish to a
middleman you could sell the fish directly to the processor and
increase your profit margin. Eventually, you could open up your own
canning factory and become a wealthy business owner. Of course, you
would have to leave this village by the sea where you live and move to
the capital and maybe even later to another country to manage your
business." "How long would all of that take?" the fisherman wanted to
know. "Oh, at least 15 years," replied the businessman. "But what
then?" asked the humble fisherman. The businessman laughed and said,
"That's the best part. When the time is right, you can sell your company.
You would become rich. You could make millions." "Millions!"
exclaimed the fisherman. "Then what?" "Then you could retire to a
little village by the sea," said the businessman, "where you could sleep
late, you could fish a little, spend time with your wife, play with your
kids, then rest in the afternoon. In the evening, you could stroll into the
village and have a drink with your friends. You see how wonderful
things would be!"

Prestige is as much a curse as a blessing, especially in the present era.

Many celebrities say that they wish they never would have become
famous because they have become sacrificial lambs to the raving
zombified masses who obsess over them. Being well-known also
invites ridicule from all sides so if you and your life is not perfectly in
order, fame can become infamy very quickly, as we see happening over
and over again. Likewise sex or any other indulgence or trapping of this
material world is full of associated problems, and only leads to a
snowball effect of more desire evolving out of more desire, our
satisfaction being reliant on increasingly hard to maintain
circumstances, sinful qualities such as overly indulged lust, avarice,
spite, and pride being conditioned into us, and the exhaustion of our
good karma from previous lives until we sink back into a pit of
darkness in some hellish place whether in this life or in the next or
both.

"In the high rebirths you spent much time in pleasure, Caressing the
breasts and waists of women; Then in hell, you felt instruments of
torture That crushed, cut and tore you -
What constant and intolerable pain!"

As long as ignorance goes on unchecked, as it does in all four corners

of this world, there can be no ending to our hard work, our burning
unfulfilled desires, our frustration and our dissatisfaction.

“Desires do not satisfy, and there can be no greater fault than this”

We project our own state onto the world around us, and so give rise to
cravings and attachments that are based often on nothing more than our
own sense of lack and dissatisfaction, and which augment our state
further along those lines of desire, and infect the world with our
disease. None of this provides any lasting happiness or real pleasure,
but is just a temporary reprieve from our suffering. There is no ending
of the constant cat and mouse game of chasing these non-pleasures in a
land without any meaning in sight. This is the state of everyone in the
world of contintuous birth and death. Struggling in quicksand pools of
action and reaction, chasing after phantoms and never finding real
happiness, losing themselves in activity towards the light and the dark
and being tossed around on waves of their own attachments and
aversions. This will go on forever, and ever, and ever, as those karma
bound entities are causing these worlds to come into being over, and
over, and over again. As long as the illusory desires which are based in
lack and ignorance are cultivated there will be infinite amounts of
worlds filled with life which is trapped in self-imposed dreams and
nightmares. Like a character in a dream, it will be impossible to wake
that person, until they begin to suspect that they are dreaming, by
noticing something is not quite right. This world being like a great field
of experience which goes both up and down, down-down, down-up,
up-up, up-down, and everything in between, and there are plenty of
opportunities for our lives to be shaken up and our minds to be shaken
awake; but unless wisdom is given to the person to understand what is
what, all that shaking will only cause us to feel shaken up. Always
there is the opportunity for transcendence, we’re never far cut off from
it and all of the effects of our life are carefully arranged in such a way
that one by one they can cause us to realize our ignorance as we
overcome the attachments which have given rise to them. The only way
to do this though is to exercise detachment and have the right insight to
discern the real from the illusory. As has been previously explained,
that which is co-dependent upon something else can not accurately be
described to be a truly real and independently existing entity, and so
thoughts, forms, feelings, and perceptions all partake of the nature of a
magical illusion. Instantaneously arising with perception, these
manifestations such as thoughts and feelings appear to be hard and
substantial, but they arise just as quickly as they cease, like flashes.
Therefor being void of ‘own-being’, their power as real and objective
things ruling our lives is taken away once it is seen that it is impossible
for them to be really existing with their own essences. With this
diamond sword of perfect wisdom, the sticky tentacles of attachment
are cut one by one, and a sort of alchemizing effect naturally occurs to
purify one of their influence and establish one in a peaceful equipoise
beyond duality which is not an illusion at all. Not bound by the
constantly shifting poles of the attachments anymore, true peace is
established in the mind that one has never before dreamed possible.
Desires fade away, and actions become expressions of spontaneous joy
rather than need, lack, and suffering, and therefore one begins to have
compassion for those people who are stuck in the cycle that one has
become freed from. Not suffering automatic feedback in the mind due to
the previous basing of one’s existence on shaky dualistic foundations,
one’s decisions, actions, reactions, and the like all descend from the
pure plane of primordial wisdom-compassion-mind. If the things of this
world, riches etc. matter not to one, than there is no pride or arrogance
which can manifest, and one is freed from the delusions which arise
from the viewing of one’s self and others through the lens of material
value, no hankering, no craving, no insecurity or anxiety. Nothing and
nobody can stir one from one’s equipoise, and everything which one
encounters is transmuted, as if one where the very philosopher’s stone.
In such a state can one move about in the world external and internal
and not suffer from becoming lost in it, and even go on to do a true and
real great good for one’s self and others. There is no way to sustain the
rising bubble of affliction of greedy desire, so why not abandon it from
the get go and instead seek to transcend all suffering for the sake of
one’s self and for all living beings? These mundane desires we have
for this life are not so meaningful that they should be thought of as the
be all and end all of our existences. No, you don’t only live once, and
no, you don’t have to act like a fool in this life. Those pursuits which
are so important to everyone in this world don’t weigh out to even one
tiny grain of sand amongst the dusts of infinite time, and those pursuits
which are not important to the world actually outweigh millions of such
achievements which this world believes are so valuable and
worthwhile.

Chapter 10

With a sense being developed for what is real and right and what is not,
it’s possible to adjust the wheel of our minds in the proper way and
calibrate it to the truth and away from the lies. This sense, conscience,
insight, what-have-you, can open the door to the immaculate wisdom of
seeing things as they actually are. Re-adjusting bit by bit, attachments
based in ignorance become experiential knowledge gained through
wisdom. Like a meal, the resolution of ignorance is digested and
processed as essenceless nutrients which feed our insight and
consciousness.

"I consume concepts of duality as my diet."

Our karma arising internally and externally reflects back to us exactly

those mental states within ourselves which are in turn reflecting that
particular ignorance which remains to be transmuted. Whether from
within or without, negative states and events magically transform into
positive ones, with the touchstone of perfect wisdom. Guiding us away
from negative tendencies, displaying to us our own false beliefs and
actions, all of the apparent negatives which manifest themselves to us
contain within them them each a seed knowledge which we need to
overcome our ignorance. Like a snake eating its own tail, the way in
which this interdependent and interconnected reality works is a
repeating cycle of its own feedback; as has been explained. Nothing
that we experience is not the feedback of previous actions in this life
and others. Therefore, whatever it is that comes to us in this life are
like reflexive reactions to movements and patterns of our mind and
body which are expressing simultaneously that which has trapped us in
death and rebirth, and that which has the possibility to liberate us from
death and rebirth. For each person, place, or event which comes our
way there is the potential for a ‘push’ or a ‘pull’ of force, away or
towards the view arising out of ignorance. Either way, we have nobody
to blame for the status of our life and our being but ourselves. Reality is
going to keep reflecting us back to ourselves until we either find the
resolution to our suffering and attain to nirvana, or that we succumb to
our suffering and ignorance. We’re not capable of changing this
process, however we are capable of changing our reaction to it, and
using it instead of being used by it.

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you,
and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is
in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

This is the same injunction that Matthew records Jesus as giving; when
we perceive ‘enemies’, we are really perceiving our own prejudices.
Even those who perpetrate the most vile and grotesque evils
imaginable are worthy of our compassion. They are bound to
experience the dark karmic reactions to their evil deeds, and this is
why Jesus has said “pray for them who despitefully use you, and
persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven,” because if you instead allow those who are a really only a test
to you in this illusionary world of karma to embroil you in malice you
will be dragged down and not born as a child of the Father, Immaculate
Wisdom and of the Mother, the Ultimate Sphere of Reality. Knowing the
truth about the fate that awaits one who is a persecutor, that that one
will experience his karma, or the retribution for his sins, whether in
this life or the next, we should have compassion on everyone who we
hate; especially the ones that we really hate. The more hate, or
aversion, (and we should really look at it as a byproduct of the
opposite side of attachment) that we have towards people, events, etc.
the more that we should examine what we it is that we are attached to
which is producing this effect. For instance, someone insults us and we
think, “how dare them, how dare they insult ME!”, puffing ourselves up
into the atmosphere, following the dualistic reaction to whatever
heights that we are willing to take it, based on the vertical axis of
ignorance and wisdom. Instead, we should bypass this redundant
counterproductive madness and use the circumstance to train ourselves
in overcoming this tendency in ourselves, by humility, sincerity, that is
to say, good old fashioned strength of character. One will find that they
are untying all sorts of knots in the ignorant areas of their ego, and
opening up blissful wisdom which transcends all subject/object
differentiation and reaches into the very heart of immaculate non-dual
truth; the sun which rises on the good and the bad. In doing so, we will
transcend our bad karma bit by bit, digesting and growing from the
nutrients of this ‘psychic food’, into a ‘larger person’ with stronger
bones of character! The idea of the other person and your own self are
completely essencelesss anyway, the whole going back and forth
between comparing ‘them’ vs. ‘others’, or ‘self’, is complete ignorance
and superstition. Our image of our self is superstition, and our image of
the other is superstition, and usually in the heat of the moment of a
vitriolic exchange, whether extreme or subtle, we lose site even more
of the nature of people and see only in small narrow ways. People are
much more than what we are even capable of thinking about them,
anything that we can impute conceptually is not the thing which touches
the true essence of the heart and mind of any living being. There is a
beautiful saying which seems to echo a similar sentiment, it’s said that
Ananta Shesha, who is depicted as a serpent with thousands of heads,
with all of his thousands of mouths, cannot finish speaking the glories
of the Supreme Soul even if he were to speak for thousands of aeons.
This is the nature of those small labels which we apply to others, there
is no way to fully describe everyone, in a satisfactory manner, which
encompasses their entire essence. So when we break ourselves and
others down into small blocky bits and then fling them around at each
other it ends up making a mess, and then we have to search and pick the
pieces back up and put them together. None of this strikes at the real
truth of the matter, but merely is the reflex of karma working nearly
automatically like clockwork. In the times we live in, it’s important to
keep remembering this, because people are becoming more and more
shallow and fickle and prone to arrogance and avarice and all the rest
of the so-called ‘deadly sins’. The dark side of the moon is shining
intensely on the Earth now, which means that not only is it a dangerous
environment, it’s also a very potentially rich environment for
transformation; as they say, ‘fortune favors the bold’, and if it is that
noble souls who are predisposed to hearing the message of this text do
indeed choose to come here during this time, they are quite bold
indeed. The influence of this dark moon is coloring all aspects of the
world with a darkly-aspected shade; and at the same time is giving rise
to an interesting contrast in the other side of the spectrum, when it is
that the ‘wisdom-light’ is allowed to penetrate the thick veil of
ignorance and poke its head out. The darker that it gets, however, the
more powerful that a light appears. Just by radiating this light and
choosing not to succumb to the darkness, you will be healing yourself,
inspiring others, and resolving the issues which must be resolved if
you, and the world, are to attain true and lasting peace. This doesn’t
mean to try to impose artificially some image of morality or
righteousness, but to try to ‘make the darkness conscious’, by realizing
it exactly as it is.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by

making the darkness conscious.”

Realizations will lead to expansions of our nature past the limitations

which bound us in ignorance and attachment, fear and aversion. Our
desire and aversion for objects of the mind and senses decreases, and
we will find ourselves becoming less reactive to situations that we
formerly would have reacted to in a harmful manner. The poison is
removed from the river of our mindstream, and what is left is pure
clear refreshing water. Each poison being purified, leaves a nectar in
its wake, each nectar which flows forth is capable of remedying
another poison, both in ourselves and others. Our actions, becoming
less reactive, generate less karmas, and the karmas that we have from
before also influence us less. That is why that the masters of the past
have spoken of “instantaneous realization”, happening all in a flash.
The more that we can persist in this “instantaneous realization”, of the
non-dual, within the sphere of the relative, in a constructive way which
tends towards experiential wisdom and not merely dryly refuting
everything as being unreal, the more that this instantaneous realization
can manifest fully and completely. Situations, places, people, events
will all come in turn, and through this intuitive wisdom, one is guided
along the straight path from the crooked one. Negative karmic situations
which we formerly found ourselves in will be transforming,
empowering situations, causing us to ascend from the ashes of our
former self like the phoenix, the ancient symbol of immortality. When
we get a degree of this ‘reflexive action’ of ‘non-reflexive action’, the
ignorance which has bound us in the land of continuous birth and death
is cut off from its root, by the ever-sharpened sword of intrinsically
pure wisdom.

“Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself? The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
he is present, and can welcome all things.”

Peace is tasted at last, a pure peace which is deathless and birthless

and knows no bounds, a peace which is then spread to every living
being that it encounters because it touches to the very core of every
living being. Abiding in this peace, the possibility of the destruction of
the false bubble-ego is transcended, and pure equanimity beyond all
conceptual boundaries is attained. Nor is the peace abided in, because
it is essenceless and pure, and we still accept the reality of the world
as existing but also without essence. In this way we begin to exhibit
qualities which are not formed in relation to anything in the mundane
world of illusion and impermanent things, seen through the improperly
objectifying mind, but in relation to a deathless eternal blissful reality
that transcends all description. The world of continuous birth and
death, and the world of the eternal, merge as one phenomena which is
beyond both, somehow even while still in this body. This is called the
“Buddha-nature”. One’s whole array of motivations, sense of
responsibility, perceptions of what is and isn’t important, changes
drastically. Instead of thinking and acting and having allegiances only to
the illusory idols of our own devices, namely our ego, our allegiance
changes to the universal truth, the real ‘ego’ or ‘self’, and that ‘spirit of
truth’ manifests through us in every sphere. Free of desire, what could
draw my mindstream towards the dark material world? Free of
aversion, what in the material world could block the progress of my
path to full enlightenment? Clear on the straight path to Nirvana, no
ignorance can stop the force of your wisdom and action. Seeing the
suffering of your fellow living beings, and containing within yourself
the medicines to allay their suffering, you feel like a mother cat nursing
its poor injured kitten. The remedies to allay their suffering jump out of
the soul surrendered to the Spirit of Truth. That Spirit is a balance and
a scale to harmonize every aspect of the mind, speech, and actions.
This is the ‘intuitive wisdom’ that is referred to as ‘The Perfection of
Wisdom’ in Buddhism, which is also the name of the key sutra
associated with the doctrine of emptiness, the Perfection of Wisdom of
the Heart Sutra. Because it exists outside of the confines of the grasping
at that which is impermanent, it is a spontaneous wisdom formed in the
transcendental unborn reality, and because it is not not confined by
grasping at impermanent things, it transcends even the unborn, to seeing
the whole diversity of creation exactly as it is. It in itself is like a great
reflexive upward moving momentum, which consumes concepts of
duality for rocket fuel, and spreading out into an expansive matrix of
harmonized truths, reflecting the truth of the universe back to itself.
While wielding this perfect thunderbolt of truth, illusion is overcome in
the end, and a reality of infinite blissful quality pours out through you
into the world. Nobody can perfect this thunderbolt which comes to be
held in your hand for you, but only by holding yourself to the truth,
listening to the ‘conscience’, the voice of intuitive wisdom, the ‘inner
guru’, can you perfect it. Seek after the truth always for the highest good
of your self and others, and nothing will be able to stop you on the path.

Chapter 11

Societies soar into the sky, and crumble and fall, what matters is not the
affairs of this world, but how you conducted them. This world is
nothing but an illusion in our collective minds, it’s forged of nothing but
dreams, somewhere along the line though, the dreamers began dreaming
dualistically and falling under the influence of their own illusions.
Trapped in endless cycles of birth and death, travelling through
millions of species of life, self-propelled ignorance can last for
trillions and trillions of years. Almost everything in our material world
has this kind of history, and yet paradoxically this history has no own-
being whatsoever, yet we believe it into existence with our minds,
when apparently reified objects appear to form composite phenomena.
Only by cutting off the power of these self-propelled illusions at their
source, by the proper realization of the emptiness of their apparent own
being due to the way in which all ‘things’ are posited to originate
dependently upon one another, will we be able to find the deathless
unborn peace. It will become reflexive to abide in this peace, and yet
one will continuously enter into the sphere of duality, working to
overcome the karma that has accumulated over time both in one’s self
and in the world. One is not fettered, either by nirvana or by the
illusions of the material world, one walks perfectly in the middle of the
path, acting for the greatest benefit of self and others, while at the same
time recognizing them to be without essence in a relative sense. Their
essence is recognized as the same non-essential ‘Buddha-Nature’, that
one has recognized in one’s own self.

“See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.”

As such, everything arranges itself naturally without much input from

our former ‘controlling’ ego. One feels more in tune with the natural
earthly and celestial cycles as they occur, and becomes like a ‘wish-
fulfilling tree’ to serve the best needs of all humanity, with compassion
for their suffering and identification with them as being intrinsically the
same as yourself. Instead of a dull and grey, flatlined existence, one
perceives the beautiful shades of dark and light cascading through our
society, and in ourselves, and is able to make more powerful
transmutations from one into the other for the benefit of all. The things
that formerly captured your attention no longer interest you in the same
way as they did, when formerly your life was a game of hot potato
between various ‘escapes’ from our suffering. We feel more simple and
satisfied with little rather than complicated and never satisfied with
anything. Nevertheless, you act in whichever way is the best for the
benefit of all, because one perceives naught but the primordially pure
enlightened nature all around one, covered for no good reason at all by
pointless ignorance and needless suffering. To see living beings
trapped in illusions of their own device, and suffering greatly, to the
extent of even wanting to take their own lives, creates a frustration in
you that can only be quelled by taking action to help others. Nor does
one perceive any living beings.

“O Subhûti, no one is to be called a Bodhisattva, for whom there

should exist the idea of a being, the idea of a living being, or the idea of
a person.”

Yet one perceives the intrinsic enlightened nature covered by

ignorance, and merely makes the connections between our own state
and the person suffering in ignorance, hoping to bring the person into
closer proximity to the one truth nature. There are many ways to do this,
and for various situations they will become apparent naturally and
spontaneously to one who is surrendered to this truth nature. That is
why that it’s said that such a person is compared to a ‘wish-fulfilling
tree’, a tree which grows fruit based on the desire of the person who
plucks it. The truth nature is not different from the universe and all
things, as has been demonstrated, and so the universe and all things
flow along with the truth nature like leaves down a stream, only they
are oblivious to the fact that there even is a stream, and some try to
flow up the stream with their own will instead of allowing the stream
to carry them naturally. The only reason you will have to hate or be
averse to situations or people will be that they are flowing against their
own nature, and even then that hate or aversion is a positive force for
self and others, and will be seen to have no substantial basis. People
who are trapped in believing in the permanent objectification of
impermanent things make statements such as “He is so awful”, “I don’t
like this person”, etc. and proceed to impute illusory permanent natures
on illusory permanent natures, and so become even more lost in
confusion and separated from one another and from reality. This is
exactly the current which feeds into the cycle of continuing birth and
death in the material world. Subject and object are perceived to be
objectified entities, separate from one another, and so the pristine
experience of reality as it is is lost in a mental maze of increasingly
complicated polar opposites, which make us distanced from ‘external’
reality and the ‘other’. The material world is an external reflection of
this mental maze, full of confused creatures living the destiny of their
dualistic karma. We will find that these objectifications that we make
exist merely as transient phenomena in our mind and have no static
‘own being’ of their own. Moment to moment our mind is reformed and
reshaped and moment to moment everything returns to nothing. The
mind’s eye twitches, and a faint twinkle issues forth from it, summoning
into being concrete memories and abstract ideas which whirl around
the aura like a dust storm. Whatever arises in the present does so in
relation to the gaze of this eye. Prejudices or praises, hate and love
exist merely as thoughts, when we recognize them for what they are, we
can have no ground for hating or loving people based on what we judge
of their apparent objective identity. Instead our hatred or love for them
arises in relation to the higher noble experience which lies beyond the
veil of words, and is never a hatred or love that intrudes on the
intrinsic experience of one’s unity with all life, but is seen as the
ephemeral temporary phenomena that it is, subservient to that which is
permanent. The false duality of objective, apparently permanent
aversion and attachment is made subservient to the experience of things
as they are, non-dual and devoid of subject and object essence; some
have called this God, some Buddha-nature, or Brahman. This is merely
reality as it actually is, and duality as it actually is, as seen from the
perspective of the Real beyond the relative, rather than just the
perspective of the relative. The ‘Third Eye’ opens, weaving subjective
experience itself into an intrinsic absolute unity with each moment. This
is what it means to cease worshiping idols, and submit one’s self to the
One Reality. Peoples’ idols are their separate attachments and
aversions which cause them to seek out an existence apart from the
True Reality. Endless is the ignorance of such idol-worshipers, until
they come to recognize the intrinsic truth of all things. At that point all
idols are put to use to describe the face of the Lord, the one primordial
eternal truth and reality.

"My goal in the idol-temple is the image and beauty of Your face.”

The idols of our former dualistic experience are put to use to embellish
the beauty and truth of our intuitive wisdom, the ‘face of God’. With the
overcoming of each poison a nectar flows forth, until one is a garden of
various nectarine remedies that cure one’s body and heart-mind of
disease. Like the churning of Mount Mandara by the Hindu Gods and
Anti-Gods, the amrit nectar of immortality is produced along with the
halahala poison. The higher forces of enlightenment win out over the
lower forces of decay, and one is established in the Heaven of those
Gods. Overcoming suffering with the peace and security of the
realization, one has sympathy for those who suffer, likewise for
overcoming ignorance, and all other poisons of the material world. So
contradistinctively with being established in a higher blissful reality,
one is inspired deeply by one’s own transformative process to
compassion towards the infinite sea of suffering people in the realm of
continuous birth and death, while at the same time knowing that the
people and the suffering are like the misty phantasms of a dream.
Transcending both being and non-being, one can always find the middle
way in life, never being trapped in destructive dead ends along the
path, but always navigating perfectly with the blessed intuitive wisdom
of self-revelation. Not only does this help one to avoid the chaos of
ignorant thoughts and actions, but by this process our core experience
of reality, the mind, is broken up and expanded over and over again,
opening up our inner and outer lives to more evolved and
comprehensive potentials. Who we are can grow and change in this
way, leading us to discovering the hidden transcendental essence within
ourselves and all things.

“Empty your mind of all thoughts.

Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe

returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you
are ready.”

This experiential wisdom must be gained through practice and

application, it can’t just be imputed conceptually and then copied. Take
the knowledge in hand, and put it to use; you will light up the world
with the warm glow of your black sun rising.