Expert: Joe McSorley - 12/22/2006

Question
Wow!  Where do I begin??  I agree with success/materialism being abominations of religious thought. (There's a reason they're called 'protestants')  But it seems these (your) philosophical reasonings are the result of scientific reductionism.  Quantum physics reduced sounds just like what you say.  Example:  It is conceivable for all of the molecules of a coffee table or countertop or microwave oven to all align in such a way that if it was struck by your hand that your hand could pass through or even get stuck in the middle and join the item.  It would beg the question,"When did the coffee table end and the hand begin?"  But there are also elements of circular logic.  There is reality.  It is EVEN possible for an individual collection of oceanic molecules to obliterate a country. (tsunami)  The Ocean was there every day, but it was the tsunamit that wrought distruction.  (yes, due to a particular cause, but that doesn't negate the naming or the reality, or the difference from the one that preceded it)
Similarly, there is probability and physics and mechanics that says it is highly UNLIKELY----improbable that the molecules (of coffee table, etc.)to so align due to there particular predicable behavior. (form/matter)
I believe that there IS a me.  I am distinct.  I don't need to leave a mark on the world or achieve success or be rich to be HERE.  I am here.  I can smell a flower.  It IS a flower.  I am a person.  My senses assess the reality around me and it is there too.  There are unpleasantnesses in the world.  Selfishness, greed, evil.  We so agree on the approaches.  Monasticism is remarkable similar across religious (whattya' call 'em---disciplines?).  TRUTH is funny like that.  I also believe that TRUTH and BEAUTY are very closely linked, and are both very real.

I have definite responsibilities to behave in a certain way.  The same way you believe.  I'm not sure the rest of it is TRUTH though.  Well, I've lost the remainder of that train of thought, but I put some stuff out there though........


Thanks so much for your repsonse.  I enjoy the dialogue.


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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
If I understand that attachment is the problem to the question, "wouldn't you run out of souls if they eventually all progressed to a state of Nirvana?", then how do I adequately respond?  From when or where do these karma afflicted states of being originate? (And) do they (we) officially cease to BE at this destination(nirvana)? Are they replaced? (by newly available to be affected states of being (that others might call souls) IF they are not "replaced" (attachment problem, I know) would there eventually be no more available subjects for the effects of Karma?
I am also unclear on whether Nirvana is a conscious state.
(And would hoping that it was even more clearly represent an attachment problem?)

And isn't it a natural state to aspire?  Isn't hope a human condition?  Why if there isn't a specific cause for states of natural being would we try to counter their effects? (Good or bad) Wouldn't one be fighting oneself in the "hope" of achieving a more 'enlightened' state? Does attempting this represent a desire for attachment to said 'enlightened' state?
-----Answer-----
Dear Renee,
You bring up very good and valid points that many do not think about. There is definitely a ‘spiritual’ attachment in the religious quest and it contradicts the quest in itself.  By seeking enlightenment we are actually creating the rift with enlightenment.  Masao Abe (pronounced ah-bay) talked about his first time going to the monastery.  He had given up his life and caused quite a problem with his family in doing so.  When he got to the gate of the monastery there was an inscription that read “To seek enlightenment is itself hell creating dharma”.  He said this caused him great despair.  There is definitely this problem of  ‘who’ it is that becomes enlightened.  If the self is ultimately empty, as Buddhism teaches than what can become enlightened and what can seek enlightenment?  We are the problem.  We are not a soul with a problem or an ego with a problem, the actual I is the problem.  When I say I the problem arises because this ‘I’ has no real substance.  It’s not a soul or any other thing.  It is a conglomeration of conditions that says “I am but I don’t know who I am”.  There is a famous Buddhist story that goes like this: a man comes to study with the historical Buddha and is having a difficult time understanding its ideas.  The Buddha welcomes him but does not face his questions rather he asks him about his journey to meet him.  The Buddha asks ‘how did you get here’ and the man replies ‘ on a chariot’, the Buddha then says ‘I’m sorry but I don’t know what a chariot is, can you describe it to me?’ The fellow proceeds to tell him how a chariot is constructed and its layout from axel, wheels, buckboard, shroud to harness and horses.  The Buddha takes this in and says ‘ so all of these things together make a chariot?  When is it no longer a chariot?  When you take away the wheels is it no longer a chariot or the buckboard or the axel?  At what point does it become or not become a chariot?  This is a conglomeration of things you call a chariot but what really is the chariot?’  The man is puzzled by this and ponders it but the Buddha says ‘who are you are you your thoughts, desires, senses or  memories?  Remove what and you are no longer you?’   When do you become you or not you by this composite of aggregates?’  Now this plunges the man into a deep inquiry of who the self really is.
 It is this false sense of self that thinks it’s the ‘I’ but it’s not really the I.  This thinking cognitive creature is not the self, it is a reflection of the self.  Since this is the only way we know ourselves we cling to it with everything for to lose this is to die.  We are the act of separation.  D.T. Suzuki has the analogy of a wave on the ocean as symbolic of man’s sense of self.  A wave arises on the ocean and looks down and sees the ocean all around.  It says, “ I am know that I am because I am not the ocean nor am I all the other individual waves, I exist separate from them”.  It has separated itself from the ocean to know itself as an individual wave.  This separation actually creates the ‘self’, it is both an act and a fact of this separation.  Now it makes all its judgments as a separated self.  In this act it is also separated from itself, it knows that it is but not who it really is.  Now it tries to go outward to find itself but it cannot.  When it goes inward it is also problematic, why, because the act of going inward is still the act of separating from the ocean to be able to go inward.  So this wave is alienated from itself, it’s surroundings and the ocean.  But the fact of the matter is, who is the wave fundamentally?  Is it the individual wave?  No, there’s really no such thing.  So who is looking for this awakening?  The fact is that the wave is really just a manifestation of the ocean, it never was separated in reality but only knew itself when it separated itself.  It has to stop the ego process, the act of separating, in the hope that the ocean can rise up to see itself as both the wave and the ocean.  It is one hundred percent wave and one hundred percent ocean, not at any point ever separated.  The wave seeking the ocean/enlightenment/nirvana is the ocean seeking the wave.  When the breakthrough occurs it is not new or just starting but a realization of what always really was.  This is a non-dual duality.  Both itself as wave and ocean.  Pure non-dualism would have just been the ocean with a wave never arising.  We rise out of nature and now ourselves as separate from it but in fact we are nature in search of itself.  
 So it is not that we cease to be at awakening but more that we realize being as it is and not as separate.  The word ‘nirvana’ means extinction, not heaven or bliss, but extinction of the illusion of self and the awakening to pure reality.  In this state it is natural to want to grow and flourish, it is dynamic and vital.  From this standpoint we can move about life unfettered by the feckless wanderings of thought and be fully alive and vital in the moment as a complete expression of nature in this form.  Nature was not born with the form nor does it die with it, it is the illusion of self that arises and falls, nature goes on.
 I think it is a huge problem of today’s so called spiritualism to have these huge attachments to success and other things.  They teach that if you lead a ‘spiritual life’ or follow ‘karmic law’ that you will be successful.  I find this an abomination of religious thought, it is selfish, arrogant and completely ego- centric.  It ignores the plight of all those suffering in the world in places like Dafur, the abused child and those wracked with disease.  In Buddhism samsara and nirvana are not separate and awakening encompasses both.  One cannot become awakened because the one that seeks is the problem itself.  It is only by overcoming the self by what is known as the ‘great death’ that one awakens to true reality.  You don’t get a door prize and a Mercedes and speaking engagements with this.
 Karma should really be understood as cause and effect only and not as a matter of reincarnation or anything else.  Karma has come to mean causation in regards to reincarnation but I have trouble with this.  If you hang out with thugs you will eventually end up in trouble, if you eat the wrong foods you will eventually get sick.  If you only develop your mind you will have a weak body and if you only develop your body you will have a weak mind. It tries to explain the causal relationship between things whether it be pure physics or mental states; there is still a cause and effect.   Most of us follow the same thought patterns over and over, do things the same way but expect different results.  We ignore our karma by doing so.  If you have been raised in an exceptionally disruptive household you will have learned to do things and to reason in a faulty manner.  It is the cause and effect of one’s upbringing.  What one needs to do is to recognize their karma, what ever that be, and break through it, to free oneself from the confines of their own egotistical view of reality and to see a more complete reality.  
  I hope this has helped you.  Take care,
        Joe


Answer
Dear Renee,
 The logic I give you is not some scientific reductionism but Buddhist and Vedic thought that predates science.  You say there is reality but from what standpoint do you say this?  Your view of reality is not someone else’s or an insects, it is contingent on who you think you are and what forms your worldview.  On this point we are all very chauvinistic in both a human sense and an individual sense.  You can say ‘I am’ but who is saying I am?  You can say the flower is but you are saying that from not being the flower.   Buddhism says that life is impermanent, that things are always in flux and changing.  Quantum physics also sees this, they are not incompatible, there is not one static state of being.  What we see as the flower is the flower and yet is also all of nature as a particular expression; the flower cannot exist without the rest of nature nor can you.  The table in front of you appears to be static but it is not.  Who you think you are changes over the years, what is the core of you?
 When you say you are here and you are you, what is proclaiming that?  If you were to wake up one day in a hospital bed unable to move or to see your body how would you know how much of you is still there?  You could have had multiple amputations and not know it so your sense of self would not change.  The question is, when removing what you think to be you, when are you no longer you?  If your face were removed are you still you?  If you lose your memory are you still you, a person, a self?  At what point are you not you?  If those things don’t define whom the individual you is then what makes you who you are?  Can you gradually whittle away parts and be less you?  Someone who has no memory due to injury still clings to their life just as much as anyone who has a rich collection of memories.
 Truth and beauty are as relative as anything else. What is good for cancer is bad for us, what is beautiful to a dung beetle is repulsive to us.  It is all relative realities.  Some people come to a point where they realize the limits of their own reflective consciousness, their worldview.  They realize that they see a reality that is confined to their conflicted dualistic consciousness (I only know what something is in contradistinction to what it is not) and it becomes untenable for them.  They want to know who it is that says ‘I”. Most people never have this occur to them but for those who do it becomes a huge existential problem.  The historical Buddha found that neither hedonism nor asceticism worked for him and finally sat under the Bodhi tree to face this dilemma.  He awakened to self as other and other as self.  This is what I was talking about with wave scenario; it is not wave as opposed to land in your tsunami idea.  The wave does exist, has form but it is still the ocean, it cannot exist without the ocean, we cannot exist without the rest of nature.  What makes the wave an individual is what makes us an individual; the ability to separate and reflect; yet that which is separating is ultimately the ocean.  Are you, you at birth or did your sense of self arise at another time?  For some people this is a very real question and they must answer it; for others faith suffices.  Zen wants to deal with those who have a real problem with this and not some simply philosophical or intellectual curiosity about it.  This is why Zen does not really teach the religion of Buddhism but tries to direct the individual to face who they are in the present and solve the problem existentially.
  Take care,
        Joe