Expert: Joe McSorley - 9/22/2008

Question
You responded to another question recently as follows:

"The problem is that when New Age people talk about energy it suddenly becomes ‘their’ energy.  A minute ago they say they didn’t exist and now they talk about ‘their energy’ or God/spirit energy coming through them.  That’s another contradiction, they don’t exist ultimately so how can the energy come through them?"

This confuses me a bit.  I guess I thought we are part of a unifying energy and that we should work to allow it to pass through us to nourish ourselves and others.

I agree we cannot truly exist in a definitive form because of impermanence but our being a manifestation of some sort of energy seems to make sense.  I'm not trying to make this energy mine but perhaps we are all just different facets of energy (?God).

Your response above makes me think I'm way off base.  Please clarify thanks.

Chuck


Answer
Hi Chuck,
  From the Zen standpoint as soon as you say ‘allow the energy to pass through us’ you are immediately creating a separation; the you that the energy passes through and the energy itself.  What is this ‘you’ the energy passes through?  What separates the two?  This is the problem for Buddhism, to know that I am I must separate to do the knowing.  When I separate to know who I am then I immediately do not know who I am because I separated from myself.   This act of separation is an illusion, we are not a separate thing that the energy passes through it is our minds that create this separation.  How do you know anything?  If you want to know a flower, to have an idea or concept of what a flower is you need to separate from it to see this objective form, this object we call a flower.  By the very act of doing this we can never know the flower because it is now an object of our consciousness and not the flower itself.  We do the same thing with ourselves.  We want to know who we are so we have an objective idea of who we are by our desires, likes and dislikes, memories, looks, physical attributes or whatever.  We look in a mirror and see ourselves but that is just a concept, an object of our consciousness.  
 We take it a step further by positing the idea of a soul, it’s not me who is living, it’s my soul.  Really? So whom we know ourselves to be sickens and dies but the soul goes on, so how does that help me when I only know myself to be this temporal mass?  It’s just another objectification of who we are.  We see the shadow we cast and want to know who casts it so we step back to see, and step back, and back.  We will never see who casts the shadow.  To know things in normal human consciousness is to step back from them to define them as something other than self and we don’t even know who this self is we are defining them apart from.
  So when we talk about energy and ourselves we are instantly setting up a dichotomy that does not exist in reality.  What defines energy or God but that which is not energy or God? If we are the energy then we are the energy and this isn’t a self, it’s all energy at all times and since matter and energy are completely intertwined then we are also all matter. What separates us?  The drop talks about itself as though it is not the ocean but part of the ocean and the ocean passes through it. There is no ocean without the drop no drop without the ocean, they are both illusions.
  I hope this helps you.  Take care,
        Joe