Our apparent quest to explain the origins of the human Ego Self or Soul remains today the preeminent stumbling block in our efforts to resolve the origins of the entire universe. Even if we can accept from an intellectual perspective the buddhist notion, which declares our appearance in this world is strictly driven by conceptual, intellectual and dualistic Mind Activity, the hardest part to swallow is the idea that our Ego Self, with its amazing capacity to generate emotions and feelings, is equally mind constructed. Yet once we take the first step down The Path to Enlightenment and accept that all we have created in this world is basically an accumulation of parts (elements, atoms, etc.), re-combined to assume a specific form and function – we are already justified to assume that what is not as easily observable, is in full compliance with the same fundamental Law of Cause and Effect.
The movie What the Bleep do we Know? in one of its crucial sequences ventured to explain the mechanics of how we generate emotions and feelings based almost entirely on Memory Templates. It is worth watching the movie for just that sequence, as it clearly demystified the most common perception we all inherited from time immemorial, That because of our apparent capacity to generate emotions and feelings alone, human beings must somehow have been created by a higher authority superintending this universe!
A russian philosopher participating in the commentaries to the movie sequences analysed the most incontestable example of human emotion to amplify our misapprehension of these States of Mind: She pointed out quite correctly that our most cherished feeling – the orgasm as prompted by sexual intercourse – can obviously be emulated as a purely mind powered illusion fairly easily! Which leads us to the permissible deduction that a lot of people probably have their more satisfying sexual encounters… in their mind only?
Which takes us to the question of what will happen once we create AIs (Artificial Intelligences) and whether these man made constructs will eventually be able to generate the same emotional states as our own species. In my opinion, there is every reason to believe that they will be able to do exactly that! The movie Blade Runner (Directed by Ridley Scott, with Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and Harrison Ford) first promoted the premise that AIs can be implanted with Memory Templates as derived from our own experience in this world. Those AIs were clearly not perfect, but they complemented the implanted memory templates with their own experience of reality and eventually evolved on their own.
Steven Spielberg took that notion even further in his now famous movie AI by demonstrating that artificial intelligences will eventually generate their own emotional states just like we do. The movie Bicentennial Man (with Robin Williams), and I, Robot venture into the same direction. Here therefore my favourite quote and sequence from the movie I, Robot (Directed by Alex Proyas, with Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan) as inspired by Isaac Asimov and his book by the same title:
There have always been Ghosts in the Machine! Random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity and even the nature of what we might call the soul! Why is it that when some robots are left in darkness, they will seek out the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space, they will group together rather than stand alone? How do we explain this behaviour? Random segments of code? Or is it something more?
When does a perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does a difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote of a soul?
In my opinion, the human mind system is already working full throttle as a Difference Engine and everything else we have created as useful additions to the Conceptual Schematic of the Human Being - such as our emotions and feelings, perfected over billions of years in a process of so-called Evolution in order to give Meaning to Life, are really just that… a nice touch! Very useful and very convincing! Again, the movie What the Bleep Do we Know? gives us the best scientific evaluation as to how we create emotional states of existence strictly On Demand to satisfy our desire to advance the conceptual understanding of the human Ego Self beyond a Difference Engine driven primarily by logic and reason. And even as we are still working to perfect those emotional states of existence, we can perhaps safely assume that AIs will soon copy our efforts in that direction. After all, we are about to create them in our own image? Only better, faster and more efficient than our own kind! Does that make us God like?
It shall not surprise me at all if the first major AI to be commissioned sometime in the near future proceeds to establish a conscious awareness in its own right and begins to analyse reality in an independent capacity – one not depending on a process of evolution nor driven by habits and attachments – and turns its teraflop computing capacity to resolve just one question When does a Difference Engine become the Search for Truth? and presents us with its own conclusive insight a split second later… This reality does not exist outside of a mind powered illusion! It does not contain any fundamental truth outside of the illusions which we claim as truth!
Welcome to the Real World!
The Inside Guide to ZEN Mind Power!
09/01/2012
I am here re-publishing the post with the links to my ZEN Mind Power presentations. I have been investing part of my spare time to restructure my understanding of ZEN, basically the essence of the articles posted on this Blog to date into Keynote and PowerPoint presentations, but must also admit that I have never before attempted to formulate a +120 page presentation. I guess the resolution of the Great Matter warrants such an effort anytime? I researched, formulated and illustrated the original Keynote presentation with the view to publish a crash course on ZEN Mind Power. In addition to my own insights, the PPT, Keynote and PDF files posted below contain critical quotes and insights from over 40 ZEN related books, films and documentaries. Feel free to use the files presented here in a Non-Commercial context.
The linked files will be updated on a regular basis and I shall post a note here to that effect as new versions become available. Click on one of the photos shown to link to the respective download described in the text below. The content of the linked files is the same as only the file format changes. The Apple Keynote file is still by far the more sophisticated due to advanced presentation features. However, Google can not show you a preview of that file, so once the Google Viewer opens, click on the top left button File and then Download in the sub menu that opens. Please report a broken link and do sent me your comments and feedback.
Left Photo & Link: 128 pages and 12.6 MB Microsoft PPT file format as stored on Google Docs.
Centre Photo & Link: 128 pages and 9 MB Apple Keynote file format as stored on Google Docs.
Right Photo & Link: 128 pages and 12 MB Adobe Acrobat PDF file format as stored on Google Docs.
Welcome to the Real World!
The Perfect Sense!
31/12/2011
The other day, I was sitting at my computers working on a major new advertising campaign for one of my clients. And as I have the habit of listening to the sounds of life that trickle in through the open windows of my studios – I heard a flock of kites screeching outside. And since the screeching just didn’t let up, I grabbed one of my Nikon cameras and ventured outside, hoping to see a flock of kites going into aerial combat over my house. Kites are always good for some fancy flying action and rolling maneuvers.
However, when I got out into my front yard, the screeching had stopped and the kites were gone and instead – looking straight up – I got to take this photo:
Then, a few days thereafter I went down to Ggaba Beach on lake Victoria on an assignment to take photography of new housing developments for a lifestyle magazine in Nairobi. Driving around in the labyrinth of dirt roads which make up the backyard of that location, I found myself stopping at a junction and after a few seconds of thinking about nothing in particular I took a right turn, which took me to a public beach property, where I took this photo:
And just the other day – back in my studios – the smell of what can only be described as open sewers hit my nose and although I tried to ignore that for a while, I finally decided to go outside to check if the sewer in the backyard was sealed. Yet, as soon as I got to the front door, I turned around, grabbed a camera and took the photo below instead. And the smell of sewers was gone within minutes of taking the photo because the lesson that I needed to learn from this rather insignificant experience is that from a buddhist perspective, there is absolutely no difference between the smell of the sewers behind my house and the beautiful sun set in front. They are both the result of the One Mind in Action; they are in fact one and the same thing and should be treated as such! Only if we are able to generate no aversion for one apparently negative perception in our interpretation of reality or joy for another that we perceive as beautiful, will we be able to correctly perceive this world.
And the day before that, I also managed to get a close-up of this dragon fly. (Note: if you would like to see more of my photography, please check the item Photography in the Blog menu above).
The Perfect Sense is our ability to recognize the inner mechanics of this world and reality intuitively. Since the entire universe is intricately interconnected and exists only as a direct manifestation of our collective Mind Activity, this understanding essentially requires to correctly decipher the sights, sounds, tastes and smells the world around us generates as our personal messages – and of course act without hesitation once we have translated this information.
Ultimately, this reality serves no other purpose but to give us whatever we desire! All we have to do is ask – in our mind only – and this world will generate and present to us the opportunities we are seeking in order to fulfill our wishes. Transplant that insight to my personal desire to take good photos and I realised that my capacity to do so has become infinitely more simple, since all I have to do is listen, see, smell and follow my intuition wherever it leads. Buddhism describes this type of meditation as the One Practice Samadhi and all this practice really requires us to do, is keep a straightforward mind while perceiving reality as a whole or any one object or subject in it. As master Red Pine points out in his commentary to The Platform Sutra – The ZEN Teaching of Hui Neng:
As long as we remain straightforward [honest, sincere, direct] in our thoughts, words and deeds, the rest will happen of its own accord. The rest being the realization of our buddha nature. Any practice that involves creating a division between subject and object is (…) doomed to failure. (…) Likewise, any practice that involves eliminating subject and object is also doomed to failure. We cannot eliminate what isn’t there! (…) Some ZEN masters hold up one finger. Hui Neng tells his disciples to practice with a straightforward mind. Elsewhere he says to see your nature. This is one and the same practice, just different words.
Needless to say, that there is a flip side to the equation and understanding that reality generates only what we Desire. Because once an initially positive Desire turns into excessive Greed the beauty and serenity of one moment in reality, becomes our pain and suffering in the next. As long as we are able to keep our ambitions in life simple and straightforward, this reality is going to give us whatever we need for our own basic survival, but since humanity is by and large driven to gain forever more of everything and since we are prepared to wipe out one species after the other or destroy entire nations and civilisations in the process of ransacking this planet, the end result of our efforts to subjugate this world and its amazing variety of sentient and non-sentient life forms can only lead to war, disease, suffering and disaster.
It should be obvious in my opinion, that the process of so-called Evolution is not a random effort of Nature in Action, but can only be interpreted as the immediate result of our collective Mind Activity, which is primarily driven by Greed and Anger. Nature as well as the Animal Kingdom do not inherently contain any conflicts of their own invention but are conditioned by the divisions we have constructed in our mind and transplanted into this world as part of our own Mind Powered Process of Creation! If we were in fact able to control our negative emotions and consequent actions, this world would instantly turn into the Garden of Eden.
The Perfect Sense!
One of the best new efforts to try to explain the misrepresentations of our so-called Sense Perceptions is demonstrated to us in the movie Perfect Sense (directed by David Mackenzie, with Ewan McGregor and Eva Green). The movie gives us a contemporary view of how our Sensory Perceptions of Reality define – in a mutually conditioned process - our dualistic views of this world and its physical dimension and how these perceptions ultimately qualify as an illusion! The quintessential question What If? – that is, what happens if our Six Senses were going to fail us one after the other and how their disappearance from this world would affect our understanding of reality, is here perfectly illustrated as a modern metaphor.
Buddhism of course consistently describes our sense organs as the Six Thieves, since they constantly steal in and out of this world to give us a false representation of actual reality. As Morpheus correctly points out in the movie The Matrix: What is real? If real is what we can smell or hear or see and touch, then real is nothing but the interpretation of electrical signals by our brain! That is exactly the final extend of what we might consider as real or objective in this world: An interpretation of reality derived primarily from memory templates, which we generate as a direct result of our interpretation of sense perceptions!
In the movie Perfect Sense, the first of our sense organs to fail in a rather uniform and global manner is our collectively shared Sense of Smell. And as you can guess, we can do quite well without that ability, but then it gets worse – because this is how our Sense of Taste leaves this world shortly thereafter:
And then we are also losing our Sense of Hearing as represented by this experience of rage:
Needless to say that the rest of our sense faculties are failing in short order thereafter and it makes Perfect Sense that our collective Sense of Sight and Sense of Touch are the last to go down the drain or else the entire movie would have been a rather pointless exercise in filmmaking? And this is how the Sense of Sight finally fails, leaving us with a perception of the world that is defined by darkness!
Yet, this is almost certainly not the final word in our interpretation of reality based on our sense perceptions since our apprehension of this World turned into Darkness occurs only as the direct result of yet another misapprehension on our part; is driven entirely by yet another interpretation of reality based on memory templates. From a buddhist perspective, the loss of our capacity to interpret reality based only on our sense impressions – as for example represented by our general understanding of death – does not turn this world into darkness, or mere emptiness as represented by nihilistic views. Actually, it works exactly the other way around! According to ZEN, Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism, the intuitive analysis of physical reality and with that the appearance of all phenomena in this universe leads to a simple and all-inclusive formula: Where nothing exists, everything is possible!
Welcome to the Real World!
We the People!
07/11/2011
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Preamble to the United States Constitution
We should be grateful to the fathers of the American Constitution to leave the above preamble as ambiguous as it is with regard to the extend of government to be established. I have a feeling a re-interpretation of the US Constitution is going to discover connotations beyond the original intention. It all depends on the Interpreter, not the text to be interpreted?
To see Occupy and Anonymous at work against corporate greed in the US and Europe while at the same time The People are taking down oppressive regimes in the Middle East one tyrant at a time, utilising mobile communication devices such as cellphones and laptop computers linked to worldwide social networks such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube to organise and implement their activities virtually instantly – or should I say on the run – is fairly amazing to observe. I am sure most governments on this planet did not anticipate that the invention of such technologies and global networks can in fact be utilised to organise and implement a People’s Revolution almost instantly and various national and international security services are probably contemplating one major question today: How do we shut down the Internet without causing at least a partial worldwide Fire Sale in the process?
I am of the opinion, that we are currently catching sight of a new form of social order coming into existence – one that regards both totalitarian as well as democratic formats of political and social governance as obsolete – as The People are apparently demanding a new Way of Life! From a ZEN perspective and in the context of the infinite transformations we all experience in this reality based on specific, self perpetuated Causes and Conditions, these developments represent only the more obvious Effects of societies pursuing an industrial revolution that has been defined by pure Greed and Materialism for almost 300 years. While at the same time our own elected representatives – in collaboration with the media and major corporations – are manipulating The People to participate in an economic charade whose ruthlessly aggressive attributes and overall objectives essentially forces all human beings to Fuck each other over for a percentage until Kingdom Come!
Welcome to our Brave New World, defined predominantly by social injustices and financial inequalities based entirely on excessive Greed! What can the individual human being possibly gain by participating in these societies other than more of the same selfish and materialistic nonsense leading to total delusion? How many more people living in developing nations will have to die to satisfy our insatiable craving for more natural resources and man power, which is the fuel that drives the economic engine of our so-called civilised nations and societies?
The Bible apparently says somewhere And the meek shall inherit the earth! Damn right they will! Because those are our hard-working mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, friends and enemies alike who constitute the 99% of any given nation and society today – not the 1% as represented by our morally bankrupt and self-possessed political, commercial and social elite. Unfortunately, it is our individual greed and desire that led to the exploitation and abuse of our own liberties to begin with! And this situation is today complemented by a distinct lack of faith most people have developed even towards our democratically elected leadership, whose apparent incapacity to actually represent The People and resolve our problems in a just and fair manner has started an uprising whose objectives are already well beyond the issue of fixing the global economic downturn.
This is also about societies whose political legitimation is essentially derived from derelict economic models, whose intrinsic function is to perpetuate materialistic greed beyond meaning and comprehension. The People are obviously longing for a more sincere and comprehensive spiritual and socio-economic Way of Life regardless of the fact that most major nations and their respective societies openly advocate one religious belief system or another. Those have however been denigrated to mere Window Dressing in a capitalistic and semi autocratic world economy that is driven primarily by one final objective. And I quote here from one of my previous posts on this Blog: The Final Question – Redux!
What is The Matrix? Control! The Matrix is a [Mind] generated Dream World, built to keep us under control and to turn a human being into this!
Welcome to modern society as we know it today! It is a world that we have created through intellectual, conceptual and discriminative Mind Activity and whose existence, development and evolution is perpetuated by means of extreme conditioning based primarily on pseudo science and belief systems, leading to repetitive and habitual patterns of existence. In effect we have created a prison for our minds in which everybody is forced to think alike!
Ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution over 300 years ago, most societies now established in this reality, have implemented a system we call formal education and On the Job Training based on predefined theoretical concepts of science and technology as well as philosophy and religion. This whole process qualifies as extreme conditioning, driven primarily by pseudo belief systems which were invented, established and are today enforced by just a few people – with the silent participation of all – and for the not so apparent benefit of the entire world. Add to this equation free money, free sex, free parties, free games, free drinks, free drugs and who is going to complain? Apparently nobody. And why should they anyway? In a world society where anything is permissible, everything is also equally meaningless! So, have fun, right?
The end result of this process however turns people in general not just into well-behaved – or not so well-behaved, who cares – highly educated, trained and useful members of our societies. More importantly, it also turns them into specialized idiots with no capacity or desire to understand that the entire system exists only to maximize the efficient production, distribution and utilization of human and natural resources in effect turning a human being into this:
You could call this a new form of Indentured Labor as it leaves most people with no option but to participate and play their predefined role in a social and economic charade which ultimately forces them to live out their life in delusion and mediocrity. And one can even agree that people in Europe and North America mostly live fairly decent to begin with; they live fairly long too; they even get decent pay and benefits for their efforts, but that doesn’t really disguise the fact that the entire system can only be interpreted as an organised state controlled effort to maximize the efficient implementation of Man Power and in order to squeeze the most out of everybody and this planet at the same time?
I am not sure what economic models they are teaching our future political and business elite at Ivy League Schools and Harvard Business School but do we really believe that the societies and economies we have created over the past 300 years, assuming progressive population growths can be matched by apparently limitless natural resources worldwide and turn this combination into a never-ending economic growth engine and hefty profit margins for just a few people – are a viable business model for the long-term sustainable development of a worldwide economy?
And as we know from ZEN studies and the operation of Karma – the Universal Law of Cause and Effect – everything occurs for a specific reason! There are no coincidences, only the illusion of coincidences! Nothing evolves uncaused! And The People should never be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of The People! It is as always a small and rather insignificant event that starts a revolution – think of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Syria and the Arab Spring has apparently only just started its drive for renewal and regeneration in the region.
The notion, that the average and anonymous cross-section of distinctly different societies and nations – from Occupy and Anonymous in the US and Europe to the Arab Spring in the Middle East and the European financial crisis aggravated by a comparatively insignificant country such as Greece – has successfully demolished regional tyrants and is about to take on our bogus world economy and financial institutions qualifies as Poetic Justice in my opinion.
If it wasn’t for the dire consequences this situation can potentially trigger, it is almost hilarious to consider that the public and popular dissent by the anonymous greek man and woman against the political and financial scheming of their own European political elite – as primarily represented by France and Germany – has the explosive potential ramification of demolishing the European Union! Not to mention the entire world economy by association, with financial markets almost certainly leading the Domino Effect in a world-wide crash. I must however admit that reading the news coming out of Europe today, especially the desperate manipulative and deceitful scheming by nations such as France and Germany, I often find myself asking the following question: What is this? Senior Kindergarten?
A few years back, investigative US journalist Jim Marrs (Alien Agenda and Crossfire: The Plot that killed JFK) wrote about the origins of international financial institutions and the invention of modern paper currencies in his book Rule by Secrecy, in which he further details how a few power people invented the US and European monetary systems literally as a Parlour Game and a unique Money Making Machine, which ultimately benefits no more than 1% of the world population. And understanding its inner mechanics is a fairly simple and straight forward evaluation, really. Anybody can do it. We don’t even need a calculator!
Take out a US currency bill from your wallet – a 5, 10, 50 or a 100, it doesn’t matter – have a good look at it and ask yourself a simple question: What is the actual value of this particular paper bill regardless of the one to three digit figures printed on it? The answer is this: less than 25 US Cents in printing and production costs and that figure applies to any denomination you happen to hold in your greedy little hand! No paper currency on this planet that you happen to have in your possession right now is worth more than the cost factor for printing, production and circulation!
And that is because there is no real collateral against the figures printed on paper money – other than a fictitious value that is artificially supported by the extreme political make-believe perpetuated by entire nation states, their respective governments and financial markets. No country on this planet can today guarantee the value that is stated on its paper currencies because ever since the crashed economies of the post World War I area, the Federal Reserve Bank in silent agreement with the US government abolished what was commonly known as the Gold Standard.
That government commitment initially guaranteed that the denominations printed on paper currencies constitute real value and were in fact backed by verifiable collateral, since you could actually walk into the nearest bank and demand gold coins in exchange for the worthless piece of paper in your hand! The glorious days of Real Money together with the concept of Real Leadership backed by People Power are obviously gone for good!
I believe the market value of paper money – or rather the distinct lack of any real value – is a feature that all international currencies in existence share today and I would think that the mechanics behind this Ponzi Scheme are not exactly rocket science and should be considered public knowledge. Consequently, the ultimate Fire Sale in this world works just a tad different from the spectacular special effects as presented to us in the movie Live Free or Die Hard 4 and requires nothing but a more organised form of the current Dump your Bank and Bank Transfer Day as initiated on the Fifth of November – Guy Fawkes Day:
Remember, remember the fifth of November
The gun powder, treason and plot
I know of no reason why the gun powder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Question: How do you wipe out the world’s entire cash reserves in less than 24 hours? And by association bring our entire world economy to a grinding stop virtually instantly? Well, all it takes is for Anonymous – the Guy Fawkes in all of us – to take a stroll down the road to the nearest bank with a friendly smile on his/ her face -
- and after a sympathetic chit-chat with the bank clerk about alternative job opportunities in the Credit Union Sector – he/ she withdraws, let’s say US $ 200 for a week of fun and party time? Better make that US $ 300 because that will be our last party! So, what’s the trick, right? Well, it’s really quite simple: If every man and woman in the US and Europe who holds an account with an established bank or financial institution goes there during a specific agreed on three-day period and takes out no more than US $ 200 - our world economy and financial markets would crumble and collapse within 24 hours! Because the Domino Effect initiated by these coordinated cash withdrawals would almost certainly lead to instant and total worldwide inflation – in addition to the fact that there is not enough paper money in circulation on this planet to actually pull off that perfectly valid request by millions of bank account holders to implement the Dump your Bank and Take your Money Back initiative on the same day!
This example alone should show all of us, that the entire worldwide financial sector combined with our artificial economies qualify as a self-serving Money Making Machine as they are based on pure and unadulterated greed and are driven by non-existent credit and profit margins. They should probably be described as the biggest scam and Ponzi Scheme in the history of mankind and these institutions and economies are clearly no longer serving the interest of The People - as if they ever really did – but only a few inside power people who actually understand how they work.
It is interesting to see that V for Vendetta, which happens to be another great film production by Andy and Larry Wachowski, the directors and producers of The Matrix Trilogy, is assuming a new leading role in the Occupy and Anonymous movement. I also consider the rising of Anonymous as the distinct expression of the True Man without Rank as described in the Taoteching – the positive and naturally arising True Self Nature of the People to counter the negative aspects of our own Inherent Human Nature as represented by Greed, Anger and Delusion - and with that represents a distinctly new form of protest, one which aims to alleviate our own political hypocrisies, social injustices as well as redefine our artificial economies and bogus financial systems. I guess its time to give back to The People?
Welcome to the Real World!
Follow the White Rabbit!
15/10/2011
I would like to take us back for a moment to The Matrix Trilogy, which – if viewed frequently – supplies the interested viewer with a virtually never-ending supply of references to ZEN Buddhism. We would however have to be careful not to read too much into everything we perceive, since that is also how we create and perpetuate reality after all. It is nevertheless interesting to consider that somebody – presumable the Wachowski Brothers in collaboration with Keanu Reeves – made a considerable effort to cram buddhist notions, symbolism and references into The Matrix Trilogy right from the first minute. So, let’s consider our evaluation here as a playful exercise in intellectual exploration and that statement also takes us straight to the first major sequence to evaluate: Neo looking for the answer!
The first sequence in which Neo appears shows him in his room sleeping behind a clutter of computer screens and keyboards until he is woken from his slumber by Trinity who magically taps the words Wake up, Neo… onto one of his screens and further advises him to Follow the White Rabbit…. Next he meets Troy and The White Rabbit who show up at his door to buy one of his computer hacks and so he receives his due payment and proceeds to fetch the requested software which he conveniently keeps in a hollowed out copy of a book called Simulacra & Simulation. This is our first major cue for ZEN ideology and insights to be revealed throughout the The Matrix Trilogy.
In my understanding, there is really just one way to evaluate the appearance of this book as well as its particular use as a stash for cash and software hacks. Neo is clearly looking for an answer to his fundamental question – What is the Matrix – and this quest is going well beyond the use of intellectual concepts and ideas to try to explain the simulation of this reality! It is further not surprising to see that the book is in fact hollowed out – as in empty, lacking final insight and ultimate understanding – since the author is clearly stuck on analysing the appearance and mechanics of modern phenomena, media and symbolism; not the appearance of all phenomena in principle and since Beginningless Time. Simulacra & Simulation is a philosophical treatise written by Jean Baudrillard seeking to interrogate the relationship between reality, symbols, and society. And when Neo actually opens the book to stash his cash and dig up one of his software hacks, he happens on the page that is aptly titled On Nihilism. To quote Wikipedia on the author and his book:
Author Baudrillard claims in this book that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “precession of simulacra” (…).
The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality” (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance – it is of the order of maleficence”. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the “order of sorcery”. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.
Well, these are not the constructs of modern society as claimed by Jean Baudrillard, but the constructs of our individual and collective Mind Activity in general, leading to attachments, habitual patterns of existence and ultimately the stated constructs of perceived reality. Simulacra & Simulation is nothing but the adaptation of core buddhist notions into a modern format of western philosophy. It finally concedes that our apprehension of reality is but the mere interpretation of reality based primarily on the analysis of our sensory perceptions. ZEN/ Mahayana/ Tibetan Buddhism by comparison clearly state that the entire universe is obviously a mind created and infinitely self perpetuated simulation, naturally arising as a direct and immediate result of our own Mind Activity, which consequently becomes our experience and perception of an independent objectified reality.
Neo is right in not spending his precious time on reading pure intellectual tracts on the appearance of reality that are by and large confused by their own dialectics and superficial logic and reason. No final insight can ever be derived from such writings. So, forget the words and follow the White Rabbit, which is much more fun too! And consequently, Neo follows the White Rabbit instead and finds himself on his way to the bottom of the rabbit hole as a result. Where he meets Trinity, who might even qualify as a modern-day version of Alice in Wonderland as she points out the final question to Neo.
You are looking for him! I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me he told me that I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. You know the question just like I did? What is The Matrix? The answer is out there, Neo. Its looking for you!
And in the next set of sequences, Neo finally gets to meet the infamous Morpheus who is not just going to tell him what The Matrix is, he is actually going to present it to him real-time. The entire sequence really takes Neo from one level of perceived reality to another and if you would like to know what exactly that means, please click on the Blog Archive above to see my posts There is No Spoon – Revisited!, The Final Question – Redux!, Forever Slave in Conditioned Existence! and The Matrix of Reality – Reloaded! for a more detailed analysis of the human Ego Self in the context of this reality.
Let me tell you why you are here. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. You are here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain but you feel it! You felt it your entire life! That there is something wrong with this world! You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. Do you know what I am talking about?
What is the Matrix?
Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out of your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work; when you go to church; when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave. Like everyone else, you have been born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.
This is your last chance! After this there is no turning back! You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. But remember. All I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more!
Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?
What is real? If real means the interpretation of what we can see or hear and touch or smell, then real is nothing but the interpretation of electrical signals by our brain.
What is The Matrix? Control! The Matrix is a [Mind] generated Dream World, built to keep us under control and to turn a human being into this!
According to ZEN Buddhism, one of the fastest and more effective methods of prying the answer to any question we might have concerning our perceptions of reality right out of our own mind, revolves around the use of so-called Koans. A Koan is a chinese form of a word riddle prescribed by a ZEN master to his students with the objective to resolve it using only Mind Power. The use of a specific Koan is not normally explained by the master as that obviously diminishes its psychological purpose and mental equivalent of a Trojan Horse. Koans function primarily because they are structured in such a way as to not allow our mind to apply logic, reason, dualistic or conceptual Mind Activity to its resolution.
The end purpose of any Koan is to trick our own mind into giving us the final insight into the Fabric of Reality or Enlightenment based on the understanding that All is Mind to begin with – the answer to all our questions is therefore already in our mind. ZEN meditation utilises this understanding by asking us to contemplate just one question, 24/7, 30.000 times a day, a million times a year; and in fact replace all other Mind Activity with one simple question!
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
And of course there is a Koan in the movie The Matrix too. When Neo finally opened the door to his own reality, he finds himself looking at a buddhist boy monk sitting on the floor bending spoons using only Mind Power. And so the boy holds up the spoon and says to Neo:
Do not try to bend the spoon.
That is impossible!
Only understand the truth.
There is no spoon!
Then you will realize that it is not the spoon that bends.
But only your mind!
By creating an environment in which our mind will eventually be able to perceive its own True Self Nature, Rinzai ZEN is clearly driven by a specific final objective, the Attainment of Enlightenment. And the persistent effort of asking ourselves a simple yet illogical question results in the final insight into our True Self Nature, which is the tacit and subtle understanding that everything we perceive as real is only the end result of our own individual and collective Mind Activity. The world we have created is in fact a mind constructed illusion or day-dream that we perceive and accept as physical reality only because of our Attachments to the Subject-Object Dichotomy, as well as Habitual Patterns of Existence based on extreme Conditioning.
Next we review the second installment, The Matrix – Reloaded and the introduction of one of my favourite characters: The Merovingian – who I believe qualifies primarily as an associate of The Architect. The Merovingian warrants a closer look and further analysis, especially the use of such an odd name. Wikipedia gives us the following – in my opinion rather incomplete – perception of his role in the trilogy:
There is not much known about the Merovingian’s origin, but from what both he and the Oracle have revealed, he was a program made to regulate behavior amongst the “Bluepills” and report back with results. After the collapse of the first Matrix, he became obsolete as the newer versions presented an illusion of choice to the hard-wired humans, causing the behavioral manipulation to be more indirect than the Merovingian’s more straightforward methods. Instead of accepting deletion, he retreated into the programming of the Matrix, disguised as a human, and resolved to aid other programs who have become obsolete.
He is seen as a hero to exiled programs, and as an impulsive and selfish opportunist to others. He is disillusioned by the idea of choice amongst humans, and, in a speech to Neo, Trinity and Morpheus, he relates that everything occurs due to cause-and-effect, and that there is no such thing as choice.
The Merovingian is named after the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish royalty. His wife, Persephone, is named after the Greek Goddess of renewal and companion of Hades. He has the role as the guardian of the virtual afterlife where exiled programs can seek refuge from deletion. He owns a nightclub named “Club Hel,” as a reference to the Nordic guardian of the afterlife.
Unless of course one considers his appearance here as a direct representative of the Merovingian Kings who – according to some researchers – were direct descendants of Jesus Christ himself. I have also seen the argument that some believe that the Bible constitutes or helped initiate to some extend what we now call The Dawn of Reason and consequently The Merovingian can be seen as a proponent of Logic and Reason in the eternal struggle between the forces of Logic and Emotion. And as such The Merovingian - his left hand forming a typical buddhist Hand Mudra often used in ZEN meditation – spells out the only real and omnipresent Universal Law in existence in this world as he advises Neo, Trinity and Morpheus of the following:
There is only one constant!
One universality!
The only real truth!
Causality!
Action and Reaction!
Cause and Effect!
This is a correct presentation of the Universal Law of Cause and Effect - known as Karma in Mahayana, Tibetan and ZEN Buddhism and described as The Law of Attraction in the movie The Secret – and it is the only real law we will ever have to consider in the context of this or any other reality during any given life cycle. Morpheus - who appears to be in agreement with this assessment – complements this statement by claiming that Everything begins with choice! to which The Merovingian correctly replies that Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without! Well, actually they are both right! In this world and reality, the Conditioned Freedom of Choice we all enjoy to some extend is in fact an illusion created between those with power and those without.
From a larger and all-pervasive perspective however, this entire world and universe and everything in it materializes into apparent existence entirely as a direct result of our Freedom of Choice! The problem in trying to correctly identify which type of choice applies at which moment in time revolves around the basic understanding that on this level of reality, we are only superficially aware of our power to choose to begin with. At the Moment of our Death we are however irrevocably confronted with the fact that we actively choose to be reborn into yet another life and reality time and again and that this opportunity is presented to us based entirely on our own Desire to live indefinitely!
In the sequences reviewed so far, there is just one real oddity to evaluate and consider, although I am not quiet sure this item is of any major significance in the end. And that is the appearance of the number 101 in several sequences and situations throughout the trilogy. For example, Neo’s apartment number is 101 and the restaurant of The Merovingian is situated on floor 101 – and so on. My take on this is as follows: The Merovingian, The Architect, Agent Smith the number 101 as a Prime Number and mathematical constant only appear on the Matrix Level of Reality and must be seen as the characteristics of Logic and Reason as represented by the machines in general. Morpheus, Neo, Trinity as well as the last human city Zion appear in what the humans claim as the Real World and are by comparison representations of Emotion and Intuition.
However, I don’t believe we can separate these opposing positions in terms of an irreconcilable conflict. They are really more like two sides of the same coin: The manifestations of the human mind system into perceived opposites – as interpreted by Tibetan Buddhism into the notion of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities - are essentially transformations from positive to negative of all aspects of our mind generated Personality Construct. And so the conflict between the machines (representing Logic and Reason) and the humans (representing Emotion and Intuition) can only be viewed as the interactions of seemingly divergent States of Mind, which we generate, experience and are inevitably required to reconcile and harmonize in our own mind every day of our life.
The meeting with The Architect constitutes another stepping stone in this puzzle but in the end, this anticlimax only requires us to consider yet once more the fundamental question of choice in this world. Although I just love the arcane mannerism of the The Architect combined with his extremely polished insights and conclusions – if Neo represents the intuitive aspect of human intelligence, The Architect must be seen as the antithesis to any form of emotion or intuition, a pure intellect driven entirely by mathematics, reason, logic and dialectic use of language.
Moving on to the final installment The Matrix – Revolutions, the only sequence worth analyzing here is the fighting scene between Agent Smith and Neo at the very end of the movie as it points us one more time in the right direction and with that concludes the presentation of core buddhist notions in the trilogy. When Agent Smith demands to know from Neo why he continues to fight even though he knows exactly that he can not win in the end, Neo reveals the inherent human State of Mind which combines Hope and Choice into the predominant constituent for the manifestation of sentient life and this reality at large.
Because I choose to!
Now, some might ask And what the heck has this Freedom of Choice to do with ZEN Buddhism anyway - what’s the point? Its simple: The idea, notion and consideration of Freedom of Choice – however conditioned and limited that option may appear to most of us in this world – fundamentally constitutes the spark for life, objects and events to appear in this world system! And everything else that occurs as a direct or in-direct result of this Process of Creation, is driven strictly by Causes, Conditions and their corresponding Effects and in order to complete the Window Dressing!
We further need to understand that our belief in an elaborate set of dualistic propositions – which we apply to define our experience of life in this reality – also defines this entire world system as real in the physical dimension. It seems that the dualistic combination of hate and love or pain and joy makes it just so much more real, right? Because life would be meaningless without our individual experience of pain, suffering and death? And love would have no place in this world, if not for the existence of dualistic defintitions such as hate, anger and fear? And heaven or hell could not become part of our reality unless through acts of compassion or destruction? These emotional and physical States of Existence based almost entirely on dualistic concepts, would remain undefined forever and our experience of these events would be impossible without the A Priori creation of a dualistic, discriminative and conceptual Human Mind System!
Consequently, the Freedom of Choice we all inherit by default combined with our general Mind Activity and intrinsic Desire to live, perpetuates this entire universe to begin with. Our desire or choice to live and to continue life after life in this or any other world system we have created, also defines and perpetuates those realities infinitely. The basic choice that arises at the Moment of our Death and which presents us with the opportunity to either accept Mind as our True Self Nature - and thereafter depart from the rat race of any given reality – or continue life by whatever means available, is the driving force behind this Perpetuum Mobilé of Life, Death and Rebirth - the Wheel of Cyclic Existence.
The intuitive penetration of this infinite cycle of transformations essentially confirms that all life is a mind generated illusion, which exists as physically real only as one of many possible interpretations of the term Physically Real. The only thing that qualifies as real is our belief of anything as Physically Real! Yeah, I guess we could call this a Simulation of Reality! And it exists primarily because nobody wants to die! Everybody has the deep-seated Desire to live forever! And what do you know – that is exactly what we have going here right now! And the final intellectual conclusion of this analysis must ultimately arrive at the following revelation about life at large.
We can not die! Because we are not alive to begin with!
To extract ourselves from this cyclic existence is only possible once we intuitively apprehend our Oneness with Mind and are consequently able to end our further participation in this or any other reality. And this – the ultimate objective of ZEN Buddhism – is what Neo achieves at the end of the movie: As he dies, he reunites the construct of his Ego Self with the Matrix of Reality and becomes one with the Fabric of the Universe. Buddhist scriptures associate this kind of event – the emergence of a Buddha, or The One who achieves liberation from conditioned existence – usually with, well… sunshine, rainbow colours and cloudless skies!
Welcome to the Real World!
There is No Spoon – Revisited!
28/08/2011
This is an extended update to a post previously published, since my Blog Statistics tell me that by far the most popular post published here to date is There is No Spoon! Which of course makes me wonder why that particular post attracts so much attention? Perhaps there are some of you who are wondering why and how a Koan meditation exercise actually works? You are perhaps seeking to understand the objective of asking yourself What is the sound of one hand clapping? one million times non stop day after day, month after month with all your heart and body and until this effort turns into physical pain and retribution? Perhaps you wonder, why you can not just ask yourself Who am I? a million times just as any good old-fashioned traditional approach in the world of philosophy and religion has done over the last three thousand years?
Well, the first part of the answer is represented by the effort of using our mind only to diminish the importance and relevance the physical body usually assumes in our understanding and perception of reality. And the second part of the answer resides in the fact that we can not use our own mind to perceive the Nature of the One Mind since they are one and the same to begin with. And the third part of the answer asserts that asking ourselves a typical intellectual question such as Who am I? is obviously going to result in a million different and equally intellectual answers.
Accordingly, any meditation effort – whether that be the Think not Thinking style of Soto ZEN, the Koan meditation of Rinzai ZEN or the Sutra and Mantra chanting of other buddhist sects – is in the end nothing but Applied Psychology! An Expedient Means – as a no doubt smiling Buddha would now point out – to achieve just one particular objective – to Free our Mind! A practical scheme of deception, since the effort of trying to use our mind to perceive the True Self Nature of our Mind is identical to a mirror looking into another mirror and resembles in its mechanics the infinite visual loops seen in a kaleidoscopic fractal.
Ever since I started my own Mind Adventure, I have been asking myself why many of us find it difficult to accept even the more basic notions presented to us by Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism. After all, the same people who tend to reject its propositions as nihilistic, also tend to believe in one form of organized religion or philosophy – often far more outlandish and negative to begin with. Do we ever really wonder, why we created a major contradiction in this world by first inventing, then subscribing to science, technology and evolution based on the application of logic and reason while at the same time, well over 90% of the world population still subscribes to religious or philosophical belief systems that must be considered pure Science Fiction by comparison?
The magic power of expedient means!
Buddhism on the other side only disguises itself as religion utilising Expedient or Skilful Means, because that is what people expect or want it to be. In my opinion, it does not even qualify as a philosophical belief system, as it is pure and all-encompassing psychology leading to the liberation from conditioned existence. Only Buddhism teaches today that we have to be in unconditional peace and unity with everything else in this reality – a tiny ant crawling over our foot or a cockroach scuttling around in the kitchen – to achieve an even more basic insight into the Fabric of Reality as represented by the One Mind. We just have to be in tune with everything, taking from this world only what we need for our own survival and treating all forms of beings and the environment with respect and courtesy, causing no division, discrimination or conflict and with that minimum damage to the Fabric of Reality and our Karma.
Yet even the most dedicated Buddhist find it apparently difficult to realize that the application and understanding of its core doctrine can only be construed as the infinite and compassionate application of Expedient Means. Every major Mahayana Sutra based on or recounting the teachings of the Buddha, points out quite openly and repeatedly that anything he ever taught, must be seen as an effort to try to free as many sentient beings from the illusion of this Dream World, Maya, the Matrix of Reality as possible. The final intellectual insight based on our common apprehension of physical reality – that this world and universe does not exist outside of the mental constructs we have formed in our mind only and that the Buddha never really existed either and never even uttered a single word – can not be proclaimed openly since most human beings are apparently not able to unravel the higher meaning of this insight. Consequently, the Buddha rarely pointed directly at Ultimate Wisdom and declared that any Expedient Means is an acceptable method in the final objective to achieve Enlightenment.
The Lotus Sutra - by many considered the King of all Sutras – is an excellent example of how the Buddha often employed Repetitive Story Telling combined with Mystical Metaphors as an Expedient Means in the all out effort to teach as many human beings as possible according to their varied intellectual capacities. In one of the chapters of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha is eventually asked to defend the use of Expedient Means – which some would rightly qualify as deceiving us about the True Nature of Reality – as a necessary teaching tool since most human beings are apparently not able to fathom a direct pointing at Ultimate Reality. Hence the development of the Mahayana into the one, two and three vehicle concepts of teaching liberation from conditioned existence. Ultimately, there is not even one vehicle to utilise in this effort, never mind two or three!
In that context, the chanting of Sutras or the Buddha’s name must be seen as the lowest form of buddhist practice, as it was originally meant for human beings with limited intellectual capacity. From a ZEN perspective, anything less than a direct pointing at The Universal Law of Cause and Effect through the use of specific meditation, with the ultimate objective to attain a Final Insight into the Fabric of Reality qualifies as Bompu ZEN. To better understand what form our ambitions should take, I would like to quote here again from the book The Three Pillars of ZEN as compiled by ZEN master Philip Kapleau.
The Five Grades of ZEN
All great religions embrace some measure of Zen, since religion needs prayer and prayer needs concentration of mind. The teachings of Confucius and Mencius, of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, all these have their own elements of Zen. Indeed, Zen is spread over many different activities of life, such as the tea ceremony, Noh, Kendo, Judo. All these different methods of concentration, almost limitless in number, come under the broad heading of Zen. Rather than try to specify them all, I am going to discuss the five main divisions of Zen as classified by Keiho Zenji, one of the early Zen masters in China, whose categories, I feel, are still valid and useful. (…) Beginners need to bear in mind, however, that in the substance and purpose of these various types there are distinct differences. These differences are crucial to you when you come before me individually to state your aspiration, for they will enable you to define your goal clearly the better that I may assign you the practice appropriate to it.
Bompu ZEN
The first of these types we call bompu, or ordinary, Zen as opposed to the other four, each of which can be thought of as a special kind of Zen suitable for the particular aims of different individuals. Bompu Zen, being free from any philosophic or religious content, is for anybody and everybody. It is a Zen practiced purely in the belief that it can improve both physical and mental health. Since it can almost certainly have no ill effects, anyone can undertake it, whatever religious beliefs they happen to hold or if they hold none at all. Bompu Zen is bound to eliminate sickness of a psychosomatic nature and to improve the health generally. Through the practice of Bompu Zen you learn to concentrate and control your mind. However, the fact remains that Bompu Zen, although far more beneficial for the cultivation of the mind than the reading of countless books on ethics and philosophy, is unable to resolve the fundamental problem of human existence and one’s relation to the universe. Why? Because it cannot pierce the ordinary person’s basic delusion of himself or herself as distinctly other than the Universe.
Gedo ZEN
The second of the five kinds of Zen is called Gedo. Gedo means literally an outside way and so implies, from the Buddhist point of view, teachings other than Buddhist. Here we have a Zen related to religion and philosophy but yet not a Buddhist Zen. Hindu Yoga, the quietist sitting of Confucianism, contemplation practices in Christianity, all these belong to the category of Gedo Zen. Another feature of Gedo Zen is that it is often practiced in order to cultivate various supranormal powers or skills, or to master certain arts beyond the reach of the ordinary person.
Shojo ZEN
The third type of zen is Shojo, literally meaning small vehicle. This is the vehicle or teaching that is to take you from one state of mind (delusion) to another (enlightenment). This small vehicle is so named because it is designed to accommodate only one’s self. You can perhaps compare it to a bicycle. The large vehicle (Mahayana), on the other hand, is more like a car or bus: it takes on others as well. Hence Shojo is a Zen which looks only to one’s own peace of mind. Here we have a Zen which is Buddhist but a Zen not in accord with the Buddha’s highest teaching. It is rather an expedient Zen for those unable to grasp the innermost meaning of the Buddha’s enlightenment, i.e., that existence is an inseparable whole, each one of us embracing the cosmos in its totality. This being true, it follows that we cannot attain genuine peace of mind merely by seeking our own salvation while remaining indifferent to the welfare of others. There are those, however-and some of you listening to me now may be among them-who simply cannot bring themselves to believe in the reality of such a world. No matter how often they are taught that the relative world of distinctions and opposites to which they cling is illusory, the product of their mistaken views. To such people the world can only seem inherently evil, full of sin and strife and suffering, of killing and being killed, and in their despair they long to escape from it.
My comment on this subject: This small vehicle is also known as Hinayana Buddhism as it promotes only ones own individual liberation from conditioned existence. This effort leads to the establishment of the Arhat or traditional Hermit Buddha, who is seeking the exist from this world and reality all by himself/ herself. In my opinion, we will have to become an Arhat first and before we can even contemplate becoming a Bodhisattva as represented by the large vehicle, better known as Mahayana Buddhism. Both Hinayana and Mahayana utilise the two preeminent forms of Zazen meditation - Koan based or Shikan-taza based as described below. In short, the methods in use to attain enlightenment or Satori/ Kensho are the same, the objectives are slightly different.
Dajo ZEN
The fourth classification is called Daijo, great vehicle (Mahayana) Zen, and this is a truly Buddhist Zen, for it has as its central purpose kensho-godo, that is, seeing into your essential nature and realizing The Way in your daily life. For those able to comprehend the import of the Buddha’s own enlightenment experience and with a desire to break through their own illusory view of the universe and experience absolute, undifferentiated reality, the Buddha taught this mode of Zen. Buddhism is essentially a religion of enlightenment. The Buddha after his own supreme awakening spent some fifty years teaching people how they might themselves realize their Self-nature. His methods have been transmitted from master to disciple right down to the present day. So it can be said that a Zen which ignores or denies or belittles enlightenment is not true daijo Buddhist Zen. In the practice of Daijo Zen your aim in the beginning is to awaken to your True-nature, but upon enlightenment you realize that zazen is more than a means to enlightenment-it is the actualization of your True-nature.
Saijojo ZEN
Saijojo Zen, the last of the five types, is the highest vehicle, the culmination and crown of Buddhist Zen. This Zen was practiced by all the Buddhas of the past-namely, Shakyamuni and Amida Buddha – and is he expression of Absolute Life, life in its purest form. It is the zazen Dogen-zenji chiefly advocated and it involves no struggle for Satori or any other object. We call it shikan-taza, and of this I shall speak in greater detail in a subsequent lecture. In this highest practice, means and end coalesce. Daijo Zen and Saijojo Zen are, in point of fact, complementary. Today many in the Soto sect hold that since we are all innately Buddhas, Satori is unnecessary. Such an egregious error reduces shikan-taza, which properly is the highest form of sitting, to nothing more than Bompu Zen, the first of the five types.
I am not saying we need to go as far as some of the historically more important ZEN masters to advance the objective of achieving the final insight into the Fabric of Reality or Enlightenment. 3rd century ZEN master Bodhidharma for example decided in all his wisdom to cut off his eyelids so that he may no longer go to sleep – his correct assessment being that the moments of our life are not expandable and hence any amount of time spent on repetitive and habitual patterns of existence, which perpetuate only what we already see in front of us – are basically a waste of time. We simply need to understand from a human perspective that time is the one luxury item that we do not have in abundance.
And then there was master Huike who started out as a student to master Bodhidharma, yet was first rejected by the same who felt he was unfit to be taught the secrets of Mahayana ZEN. Huike however persisted in his effort and spent a couple of days standing knee-deep in the freezing snow in front of Bodhidharma’s mountain cave in order to gain his attention. When that effort still did not lead to his admission, he cut off his right arm to prove that he is prepared to go all the way in his committment to attain Enlightenment. Bodhidharma finally accepted Huike as one of only two students.
In any event, the entire exercise of ZEN meditation ultimately intends to defeat our deeply ingrained habit of conceptual, dualistic and discriminative Mind Activity and we can further complement this effort with a specific limited intellectual analysis of the world and universe we have created, by correctly applying nothing but our own understanding of established science in the process. If we consider the basic biological fact that there is close to no difference between one man or another to begin with – 0.05% in genetic material – or even between men and women – 0.5% in genetic material – it should be obvious where all the differences, discriminations and divisions in this world really come from: conceptual, dualistic and intellectual Mind Activity!
The figure of 0.05% mostly represents differences in the superficial outer appearance of any one human being: skin color, hair color and eye color and once we add a bit of make up, we already exceed the 0.5% difference in genetic material between men and women by at least 20%. Because that difference is represented by chemicals and hormones to begin with. It’s really funny actually: a woman using make-up applies more chemicals and hormones to her face alone than the rest of her body is able to produce real-time and in order to maintain the female appearance to begin with? Is there a limit to the superficiality that we invent and apply to our personalities in this world?
Men are from Mars? Women from Venus? If we really think about this kind of notion for just one moment without forming concepts, bias or prejudices, we should be able to recognize the unimpeded superficiality of the social and political belief systems we have created in order to differentiate one man (white in color) from another man (black or yellow or green in color)? A world where one religious belief system goes to war with another over a degree of differences that on a scale of 1 to 10 is closer to 0 than to 1? Societies where the difference between one women or another is defined by the brand of make up they are wearing? Or the cars they are driving? Window dressing? Beauty is skin deep? So is everything else!
Strip away the social, political or religious concepts, ideas and ideologies we have formed in our mind only and we are all exactly one and the same! And that is all that Buddhism and ZEN is trying to tell us: One Mind! One World! ZEN also states that a theoretical and intellectual approach to understanding this Oneness will take us perhaps 60% of the way to understanding Ultimate Reality. The remaining 40% is achieved through an experiential event that is usually associated with – but not limited to – specific ZEN meditation techniques.
Ask the right question!
One of the fastest and more effective methods of prying the answer to everything out of our own mind revolves around the use of so-called Koans. A Koan is a chinese form of a word riddle prescribed by a ZEN master to his students with the objective to resolve it using only Mind Power. The use of a specific Koan is not normally explained by the master as that obviously diminishes its psychological purpose and mental equivalent of a Trojan Horse. Once we understand how any given Koan works from a psychological perspective, they are no longer as effective compared to simply applied no questions asked (see also the mechanics of the Placebo Effect)!
Koans function primarily because they are structured in such a way as to not allow our mind to apply logic, reason, dualistic or conceptual Mind Activity to its resolution. The end purpose of any Koan is to trick our own mind into giving us the final insight into the Fabric of Reality or Enlightenment based on the understanding that All is Mind to begin with – the answer to all our questions is therefore already in our mind. All we have to do is ask the right question!
This effort turns into psychology and a Mind over Matter effort and in order to avoid any form of intellectual or conceptual Mind Activity in the process of resolving a Koan, we basically have to ask ourselves a question to which there is certifiable no answer at all in this reality! This also means the question we will have to ask ourselves must be distinctly irrational and illogical in structure and from a common sense point of view, because if we were to ask ourselves the obvious Who am I? we would probably spent the rest of our days conceiving all sorts of intellectual, conceptual and theoretical notions about us, life at large, the universe. That is not the answer! A Koan Zazen Meditation utilises this understanding by asking us to contemplate just one question, 24/7, 30.000 times a day, a million times a year; and in fact replace all other Mind Activity with one simple question!
What is Mu?
Mu is chinese for no or nothing – the ultimate question and final answer in just one word! And then there is this Koan from the Heart Sutra:
Form is Emptiness. Emptiness is Form!
What is Form? What is Emptiness?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
And there is one in the movie The Matrix too. When Neo finally opened the door to his own reality, he finds himself looking at a buddhist boy monk, sitting on the floor bending spoons using only Mind Power. And so the boy holds up the spoon and says to Neo:
Do not try to bend the spoon.
That is impossible!
Only understand the truth.
There is no spoon!
Then you will realize that it is not the spoon that bends.
But only your mind!
What does our mind do when confronted with a question such as What is the sound of one hand clapping? A Koan is like a mental gate and sledgehammer at the same time – question and answer all in one package. First we use the question of the Koan to create a gate in our own mind, then we destroy that same gate by using the question as a sledgehammer a million times. By creating an environment in which our mind will eventually be able to perceive its own True Self Nature, Rinzai ZEN is clearly driven by a specific final objective, the Attainment of Enlightenment. And the persistent effort of asking ourselves a simple yet illogical question results in the final insight into our True Self Nature, which is the tacit and subtle understanding that everything we perceive as real is only the end result of our own individual and collective Mind Activity. The world we have created is in fact a mind constructed illusion or day-dream that we perceive and accept as physical reality only because of our Attachments to the Subject-Object Dichotomy, as well as Habitual Patterns of Existence based on extreme Conditioning.
Look at your right hand!
Ask yourself a simple question one million times!
It’s this question that drives you!
Like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad!
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
The answer to this Koan is always the same!
And depending on our determination to ask the very same question over and over again – 24/ 7 for the next 6 months to 6 years – our mind will eventually stop looking for an answer in this Objectified Reality, utilizing its capacity to conceptualize. Instead, it will look for an answer where it does not venture normally:
Turn around and look into the mirror of your own mind and realize that your mind and the mirror are one!
Twenty seconds to eternity!
And then there are those who might ask Why do I need to know what our True Self Nature is all about anyway? since a substantial number of buddhist today already believe, that the purely intellectual knowledge and apprehension of our inherent Buddha Nature should suffice to save us from future rebirths. But that is not enough! The intellectual understanding – even if we do happen to have a well-developed imagination – of the Great Void as represented by the One Mind is not enough to save us from cyclic existence in one of the many world systems we have created.
Our individual ignorance combined with established habits and attachments and the total disbelief and fear that may arise as a direct result of the instant vision of our True Self Nature being one with the Nature of Mind is just too much for most to behold, recognise and accept. Only if we can achieve that same vision while we are still alive in this world and reality do we actually stand a chance of recognising the arising of Inner Radiance – Reality Itself, as it occurs at the Moment of our Death. Tibetan Buddhism calls this moment of fundamental recognition, the convergence of the Mother and Child aspect of reality.
I believe we have about twenty seconds each life, to resolve this entire riddle in real-time! Twenty seconds to make a choice between another life – that is guaranteed to produce the exact same outcome as the last one – or Eternity and No Comebacks! And those are the first twenty seconds just after The Moment of Death! Once we recognise and accept the arising of Inner Radiance – Reality Itself as it occurs at the Moment of our Death as our True Self Nature, our mind constructed Ego Self will not be able to recycle itself through the Intermediate States of Reality and Rebirth, utilising its own predefined record of Mind in Action as established by Karma.
That entire process simple ends right there and then and as a result of recognising our own nature as being identical with Mind. This fundamental recognition simply destroys whatever Karma or Ego Self we may have been able to carry forward to that point. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (TBD) still contains the most vivid description of that final moment in our life and if we are able to generate a bare minimum of imagination, we should be able to achieve a basic intellectual and visual understanding of that event. The TBD describes the Moment of Death and the resulting vision of the One Mind as follows and it would be useful to translate Buddha with Mind where it appears.
As soon as your respiration ceases, the luminosity known as the “inner radiance of the first intermediate state” (…) will arise. Immediately your respiration ceases, all phenomena will become empty and utterly naked like space. At the same time, a naked awareness will arise, not extraneous to yourself, but radiant, empty and without horizon or centre. At that moment, you should personally recognise this intrinsic nature and rest in the state of that experience.
For those persons of great negativity and those classes of beings with unhealthy (energy) channels, this phase lasts no longer than a single snapping of the fingers. In others, it may last as long as it takes to eat a meal. That which is called death has now arrived. At this moment, for the sake of all sentient beings, I must recognise the time of death as the arising of inner radiance, the Buddha Body of Reality.
Oh, Child of Buddha Nature, listen! Pure inner radiance – reality itself – is now arising before you! Recognise it! This radiant essence that is now your conscious awareness is a brilliant emptiness. It is beyond substance, beyond characteristics and beyond colour, completely empty of inherent existence in any respect whatsoever. The essence of your own conscious awareness is emptiness. Yet, this is not a vacuous or nihilistic emptiness.
This, your very own conscious awareness is unimpededly radiant, brilliant and vibrant. The utterly indivisible presence of these two; the essence of your own awareness which is empty, without inherent existence with respect to any substance whatsoever and your own conscious awareness, which is vibrant and radiantly present, is the Buddha Body of Reality.
This intrinsic awareness, manifest in a great mass of light, in which radiance and emptiness are indivisible, is the buddha nature of unchanging light, beyond birth or death. Just to recognise this is enough!
Welcome to the Real World!
ZEN Mind Power!
10/07/2011
This has got to be the shortest post I ever published on my Blog to date! Yet, it is also the longest! I spent a substantial part of the last six months formulating my understanding and experience of ZEN into a Keynote and PowerPoint presentation but must also admit, that I have never before attempted to write a +120 page presentation, not even as part of my work as a Creative Director. I guess the resolution of the Great Matter warrants such an effort anytime? I researched, formulated and illustrated the original Keynote presentation with the view to publish a crash course on ZEN Mind Power. The version here posted does not include my Presenter’s Notes, which would easily turn this into a +180 page effort. In addition to my own insights, the PPT and Keynote files posted below contain critical quotes and insights from over 40 ZEN related books, films and documentaries. Feel free to use the files presented here in a Non-Commercial context. Some of the Adobe Photoshop files may not load, as they are apparently not translated by the upload process in WordPress or Google Docs. Click on one of the photos shown to link to the respective download described in the text below. Please report a broken link and do sent me your comments and feedback.
Left Photo & Link: 128 pages and 12.6 MB Microsoft PPT file format as stored on Google Docs.
Centre Photo & Link: 128 pages and 9 MB Apple Keynote file format as stored on Google Docs.
Right Photo & Link: 128 pages and 12 MB Adobe Acrobat PDF file format as stored on Google Docs.
Welcome to the Real World!
The Dawn of No Reason!
11/06/2011
The other day I was looking at Blogs on philosophy to see if there is any real advancement of our understanding of this world based on an intellectual process of evaluation but there really isn’t. Blog after Blog, I came across individuals still trying to re-assess the insights as primarily presented to us by the old masters of philosophy over the last 2.000 years. I went through this phase when I was twenty something; spending endless hours reading Kant, Hegel, Derrida, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Popper, Marx – who have you. The end result of that exercise left me with the distinct impression that philosophy as a subject matter offers no real answers, only more questions.
In addition, I came to believe that the gentlemen representing these various philosophical believe systems must be considered as confused to the nature and origins of the Ego Self in the context of this reality, as the proponents of the various religious believe systems we can subscribe to – and which we would also have to evaluate at the same time and in order to achieve an intellectual insight into the Great Matter of Life and Death. In my opinion today, the end result of any such intellectual enquiry must always lead to the same Dead End.
However, once we advance our evaluation of this issue past our conditioned personal preferences and are ready to accept at face value that any given philosopher or religious figure may have found The Final Answer to our existence or even just a fragment of that answer, we must admit that any or all of these individuals have the same right to lay claim to the Kingdom of Heaven/ Wisdom/ Philosophy. And by definition of an assessment free from discrimination, they must also be equally wrong in their final claim since they are generating nothing but confusion and division in this world based entirely on conceptual dialectics! To quote a previous entry on this Blog.
Do we ever really wonder why we created a total contradiction and conflict in this world by first inventing then subscribing to philosophy based on reason as well as science, technology and evolution based on logic on one side of this equation while – at the same time – well over 90% of the world population still believes in religious belief systems that must be considered pure Science Fiction by comparison?
Unfortunately, ancient or modern philosophy has made no real difference in the evaluation of our existence in this universe either. If even modern science concepts such as String and M-Theory still perpetuate the untenable proposition that asserts in one form or another the understanding that the entire mass of this universe originated out of nothing but thin air in one Big Bang - I believe it is time to let go of religion, philosophy and science altogether and redirect our efforts of discovery towards a more intuitive understanding of the Great Matter!
In my opinion, the primary disconnect in our attempts to establish a valid explanation of the universe, resides in our failure to accept that there is no External Creator, independently producing and superintending this amazing world and universe. And correspondingly, there is also no Internal Observer present to account for our individual apprehension of an external physical world, which we further believe exists in contradistinction to our internal mental reality. These two realities perceiving each other as distinctly separate, are really one and the same – like a mirror looking into another mirror! When I frequently state that this universe exists as the direct result of our individual and collective Mind Activity, I basically refer here to a process as driven by the Universal Law of Cause and Effect, which is primarily generated by the various mental and physical activities we attribute to an entity we further qualify as our Ego Self or Soul in the common understanding of this term.
However, since the apprehension of our Ego Self and the Human Mind System is itself also only the result of specific Causes and Conditions, there really is nothing else out there but Mind in Action generating All of Reality. And regardless of the apparent, yet superficial activities of a perceived individual mind, there is no such thing as an Ego Self anywhere in that process that we can identify and qualify by some abstract intellectual process of analysis. The only non-physical and non-human entity at work here is the One Mind - first generating Reality and the Human Mind System and thereafter an assumed Ego Self continues the Process of Creation through intellectual, discriminative and dualistic Mind Activity while at the same time reflecting upon its own process of creation, sensory apprehension and discrimination of reality. A neat little circle that functions absolutely seamlessly and is today driven by Habit Energy, total Attachment to Sensory Perceptions and repetitive Patterns of Behaviour.
And as mentioned previously, we are usually stuck in our analysis of this world and reality because we are only trying to understand the end result of this Process of Creation, without however realising that a collective Mind generated the entire universe that we are trying to apprehend individually. If we can accept – even as a basic theoretical proposition – the notion that there is no Internal/ External Creator/ Observer present, we should be able to understand that the existence of this reality and a perceived human Ego Self is only the result of specific, purely mind generated, fully automated and self perpetuated Causes, Conditions and Effects, which are naturally present from time immemorial in the form of the One Mind.
We should further be able to see that the primary driving force behind this Process of Creation is Desire! And the long list of desires, which the Human Mind System would like to see realised and represented by the creation and appearance of an individual Soul or Ego Self in this world – begins and ends with the Desire to Live!
We think, therefore we are! But once we are, we are forever confused and divided by the methods, concepts and ideas we use to define and explain our existence!
That must be the conclusion to our intellectual reflection and analysis of this reality based primarily on our sensory perceptions. As long as we acknowledge only the observable features of this Perpetuum Mobilé as represented by the world we can identify by means of the intellectual analysis of our Sensory Perceptions, we are the ultimate Difference Engine going absolutely nowhere! I guess it is difficult for most to accept that our apprehension of the human Ego Self or Soul ultimately exists only as a concept or idea! And however knowledgable, differentiated and emotionally complex this concept may be, it is still only a product of our own Mind Activity!
The Dawn of No Reason!
ZEN Buddhism on the other side only disguises itself as religion, because that is what people expect or want it to be. In my opinion, it does not even qualify as a philosophical belief system as it is pure and all-encompassing psychology leading to the liberation from conditioned existence. The Dawn of No Reason, No Thought and No Mind as represented by ZEN/ Mahayana/ Tibetan Buddhism is ultimately the only way out of this rat race. We just need to allow the human Mind System to find its own answer as to the question of why we are trying so hard to create an independently existing Ego Self in this universe. The answer in my opinion should be obvious. Because we can!
The consideration of Freedom of Choice, however conditioned and limited that option may appear to most of us in this world, fundamentally constitutes the spark for life, objects and events to appear in this world system! And everything else that occurs as a direct or in-direct result of this Process of Creation, is driven strictly by Causes, Conditions and their corresponding Effects and in order to complete the Window Dressing! We further need to understand that our belief in an elaborate set of dualistic propositions – which we apply to define our experience of life in this reality – also defines this entire world system as real in the physical dimension. It seems that the dualistic combination of hate and love or pain and joy makes it just so much more real, right? Because life would be meaningless without our individual experience of Pain, Suffering and Death? And Love would have no place in this world, if not for the invention of dualistic concepts such as Hate, Anger and Fear? And Heaven or Hell could not come into existence unless through acts of Compassion or Destruction? These emotional and physical States of Mind would remain forever undefined and Empty of Self Existence and our experience of these events would be impossible without the A Priori creation of a dualistic, discriminative and conceptual human Mind System! To quote one of my previous entries on this Blog.
What would be left of this universe if we were unable to define anything we perceive here as positive? Or negative? As right? Or wrong? As this? Or that? Since one dualistic definition depends on its opposite in order to claim its rightful place in human interaction in this world – there’d be nothing left for us to experience! Emptiness would be all there is for us to perceive! But how do we perceive Emptiness? Well, we don’t! And that State of Mind – free from sensory perceptions, conceptual elaborations and dualistic notions – is termed Nirvana in Buddhism! No place left for us to go but back into our own original Mind which remains forever undefined!
In order to defeat the world of dualism, all we really have to do is defeat its terms and definitions. If evil is no longer a valid concept in our understanding of reality, its opposite love becomes equally meaningless. All forms of dualistic designations that we can define in our mind based on conceptual and discriminative Mind Activity, feed off each other like vultures feed on road kill. If we can defeat the concept of life, we defeat death by association. If we manage to propel ourselves past the concept of hell… heaven can wait forever!
All we have to realize is that we can’t have the positive side of dualistic propositions without also subscribing to the negative – if we want peace; war comes as its companion by default. If we desire life; death is built-in as its ultimate conclusion. If we cherish love; hate, anger and fear are its twin brothers and sisters.
Everything I have said in this Blog to date about Cause and Effect driving our experience of this world and universe and about Reality being Empty of Self Existence is no more than the futile attempt to utilise language and words in order to describe the Modus Operandi of the One Mind! As long as I am conditioned by my own reflections of my experience in this world and consequently utilise my own discriminating mind to evaluate something that does not abide in logic, reason, discrimination or emotion, I shall fail in establishing a correct account of its inner mechanics.
I would like to post here in support of my above assessments some of the more relevant quotes from the Lankavatara Sutra. I believe The Lanka is the most important text ever formulated in the context of Buddhism – next to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Heart Sutra. The two versions as translated by D.T. Suzuki in 1937 remain perhaps the most fundamental and essential text in the context of ZEN studies today. Designed as a collection of verses containing thousand of secret insights into Mahayana Buddhism, the Epitomized Version here quoted, contains only about 844 of those original verses. And I always find it interesting to recall, that this text was formulated over 2.000 years ago:
In the same way, the ignorant and simple-minded who are favorably influenced by the erroneous views of the philosophers do not recognise that the views that are influencing them are only dream-like ideas originating in the mind itself, and consequently they are held fast by their notions of oneness and otherness, of being and non-being. (…) In the same way there are people today being brought up under the influence of similar erroneous views of oneness and otherness, of bothness and notbothness, whose mentality is being conditioned by the habit-energy of these false-imaginings and who later on will declare those who hold the true doctrine of no-birth which is free from the alternatives of being and non-being, to be nihilists (…).
New Quote
(…) Because the ignorant cling to names, signs and ideas; as their minds move along these channels they feed on multiplicities of objects and fall into the notion of an ego-soul and what belongs to it; they make discriminations of good and bad among appearances and cling to the agreeable. As they thus cling there is a reversion to ignorance, and Karma born of greed, anger and folly [Delusion], is accumulated. As the accumulation of Karma goes on they become imprisoned in a cocoon of discrimination and are thenceforth unable to free themselves from the round of birth and death. Because of folly [Delusion] they do not understand that all things are like Maya [Dream World], like the reflection of the moon in water, that there is no self-substance to be imagined as an ego-soul and its belongings and that all their definitive ideas rise from the false discriminations of what exists only as it is seen of the mind itself.
New Quote
When ideas of body, property and abode are seen, discriminated and cherished in what after all is nothing but what is conceived by the mind itself, an external world is perceived under the aspects of individuality and generality which, however, are not realities, (…). It is only when the mind-system comes into activity and discriminates the manifestations of mind that existence can be said to come into view. So long as people do not understand the true nature of the objective world, they fall into the dualistic view of things. They imagine the multiplicity of external objects to be real and become attached to them and are nourished by their habit-energy. Because of this a system of mentation-mind and what belongs to it-is discriminated and is thought of as real; this leads to the assertion of an ego-soul and its belongings, and thus the mind-system goes on functioning.
New Quote
False-imagination consists in becoming attached to these appearances and their names. By attachment to objects is meant, the getting attached to inner and outer things as if they were real. By attachment to names is meant, the recognition in these inner and outer things of the characteristic marks of individuation and generality, and to regard them as definitely belonging to the names of the objects. False-imagination teaches that because all things are bound up with causes and conditions of habit energy that has been accumulating since beginningless time by not recognising that the external world is of mind itself, all things are comprehensible under the aspects of individuality and generality. By reason of clinging to these false-imaginations there is multitudinousness of appearances which are imagined to be real but which are only imaginary. (…)
False-imagination teaches that such things as light and shade, long and short, black and white are different and are to be discriminated; but they are not independent of each other; they are only different aspects of the same thing, they are terms of relation not of reality. Conditions of existence are not of a mutually exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one. (…) All duality is falsely imagined.
New Quote
By becoming attached to what is seen of the mind itself, there is an activity awakened which is perpetuated by habit-energy that becomes manifest in the mind-system. From the activities of the mind-system there rises the notion of an ego-soul and its belongings; the discriminations, attachments, and notion of an ego-soul, rising simultaneously like the sun and its rays of light. By the egolessness of things is meant that the elements that make up the aggregates of personality and its objective world being characterised by the nature of maya [Dream World] and destitute of anything that can be called ego-substance, are therefore un-born and have no self-nature.
By the egolessness of persons is meant that in the aggregates that make up personality there is no ego-substance, nor anything that is like ego-substance nor that belongs to it. The mind-system, which is the most characteristic mark of personality, originated in ignorance, discrimination, desire and deed; and its activities are perpetuated by perceiving, grasping and becoming attached to objects as if they were real. The memory of these discriminations, desires, attachments and deeds is stored in Universal Mind since beginning-less time, and is still being accumulated where it conditions the appearance of personality and its environment and brings about constant change and destruction from moment to moment.
New Quote
The five grasping elements that make up the aggregates of personality, namely, form, sensation, perception, discrimination, and consciousness, and that are imagined to be good and bad, have their rise in the habit-energy of the mind-system (…) appearances, perception, attraction, grasping, deed, habit, reaction, condition one another incessantly, and the functioning sense-minds, the discriminating-mind and Universal Mind are thus bound up together. Thus, by reason of discrimination of that which by nature is maya-like and unreal false-imagination and erroneous reasoning takes place, action follows and its habit-energy accumulates thereby defiling the pure face of Universal Mind, and as a result the mind-system comes into functioning and the physical body has its genesis.
But the discriminating-mind has no thought that by its discriminations and attachments it is conditioning the whole body and so the sense-minds and the discriminating-mind go on mutually related and mutually conditioned in a most intimate manner and building up a world of representations out of the activities of its own imagination. As a mirror reflects forms, the perceiving senses perceive appearances which the discriminating mind gathers together and proceeds to discriminate, to name and become attached to. (…) The perceiving senses grasp that for which they have an affinity, and there is a transformation takes place in their structure by reason of which the mind proceeds to combine, discriminate, apprise, and act; then follows habit-energy and the establishing of the mind and its continuance. The discriminating-mind because of its capacity to discriminate, judge, select and reason about, is also called the thinking, or intellectual-mind.
The mentation which functions in connection with attachment to objects and ideas derived from discrimination, discriminates the mind from its mental processes and accepts the ideas from it as being real and becomes attached to them. A variety of false judgements are thus arrived at as to being, multiplicity, individuality, value, etc., a strong grasping takes place which is perpetuated by habit-energy and thus discrimination goes on asserting itself. (…) These mental processes give rise to general conceptions of warmth, fluidity, motility, and solidity, as characterising the objects of discrimination, while the tenacious holding to these general ideas gives rise to proposition, reason, definition, and illustration, all of which lead to the assertions of relative knowledge and the establishment of confidence in birth, self-nature, and an ego-soul. By mentation as an examining function is meant the intellectual act of examining into these general conclusions as to their validity, significance, and truthfulness. This is the faculty that leads to understanding, right-knowledge and points the way to self-realisation.
New Quote
(…) The five grasping aggregates that make up personality, (…) are: form, sensation, perception, discrimination, consciousness. Of these, form belongs to what is made of the so-called primary elements, whatever they may be. The four remaining aggregates are without form and ought not to be reckoned as four, because they merge imperceptibly into one another. They are like space which cannot be numbered; it is only due to imagination that they are discriminated and likened to space. Because things are endowed with appearances of being, characteristic-marks, perceivableness, abode, work, one can say that they are born of effect-producing causes, but this can not be said of these four intangible aggregates for they are without form and marks. These four mental aggregates that make up personality are beyond calculability, (…) they are not to be predicated as existing nor as not existing, but together they constitute what is known as mortal-mind. They are even more maya-like and dream-like than are things, nevertheless, as discriminating mortal-mind they obstruct the self-realisation of Noble Wisdom. (…) This discrimination of the five aggregates that make up personality and that serve as a basis for an ego-soul and ground for its desires and self-interests must be given up, and in its place the truth of imagelessness and solitude should be established.
New Quote
The five sense-functions and their discriminating and thinking function have their risings and complete endings from moment to moment. They are born with discrimination as cause, with form and appearance and objectivity closely linked together as condition. The will-to-live is the mother, ignorance is the father. By’ setting up names and forms greed is multiplied and thus the mind goes on mutually conditioning and being conditioned. By becoming attached to names and forms, not realising that they have no more basis than the activities of the mind itself, error rises, false-imagination as to pleasure and pain rises, and the way to emancipation is blocked. The lower system of sense-minds and the discriminating-mind do not really suffer pleasure and pain-they only imagine they do. Pleasure and pain are the deceptive reactions of mortal-mind as it grasps an imaginary objective world.
New Quote
Universal Mind transcends all individuation and limits. Universal Mind is thoroughly pure in its essential nature, subsisting unchanged and free from faults of impermanence, undisturbed by egoism, unruffled by distinctions, desires and aversions. Universal Mind is like a great ocean, its surface ruffled by waves and surges but its depths remaining forever unmoved. In itself it is devoid of personality and all that belongs to it. (…) Between Universal Mind and the individual discriminating-mind is the intuitive-mind which is dependent upon Universal Mind for its cause and support and enters into relations with both. It partakes of the universality of Universal Mind, shares its purity, and like it, is above form and momentariness. (…) When appearances and names are put away and all discrimination ceases, that which remains is the true and essential nature of [Reality] and, as nothing can be predicated as to the nature of [Mind Essence], it is called the Suchness of Reality. This universal, undifferentiated, inscrutable, Suchness is the only Reality but it is variously characterised as Truth, Mind-Essence, Transcendental Intelligence, Noble Wisdom, etc.
Forever Free!
Once we can let go of the artificial divisions we have created as part of the Subject/ Object Dichotomy, which ultimately exist only as a Dream in the Human Mind System and are able to perceive the entire universe as One with the Essence of Mind - even if that perception still only constitutes a purely intellectual position – we are no longer a slave of our own desires. Universal Mind generates everything we perceive with zero effort and based strictly on our own Mind Activity and once we are able to accept our interpretation of the Ego Self or Soul as the Natural Expressive Power of Mind - we will be forever free!
Who are we really?
We are Ghosts in the Machine!
In a Dream within a Dream!
Welcome to the Real World!
Life is War!
28/05/2011
There is a specific explanation for reality to manifest as this world and universe! The Universal Law of Cause and Effect is the undeniable reason for all events, objects and environments to manifest as a direct result of our individual and collective Mind Activity. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (TBD) correctly points out, that Nothing evolves uncaused! We think, therefore we are! And it really doesn’t matter, whether we understand how all of this ultimately works because the outcome of the law of Cause and Effect as represented by our Karma is always the same and regardless of our specific involvement, understanding or apprehension of the detail level of its inner mechanics. We can’t defeat the self perpetuated system as represented by Karma! Because ultimately, there is nothing to defeat but our own intellectual, conceptual, dualistic and discriminative Mind Activity and the resulting sensory perceptions of reality. We are forever trapped in this world of illusions, trying to micro manage the outcome of our own Process of Creation, which we proceed to experience through our Mental and Sensory Activity Field as the external world and universe – which we further believe exists in contradistinction to our internal mental reality. Like a man looking at his face in a mirror – although he can distinguish his features clearly – he is still only looking at a mere reflection of his own assumed Ego Self.
Consequently, when we are trying to evaluate a perceived external environment, we are in fact only analysing our own internal mind generated Dream World. And the harder we try to manage or define only the end result of our intellectual and conceptual Process of Creation, the more we actually perpetuate what we already see in front of us. Now, that’s what I call running around in tiny little circles! And all that because we are forever stuck trying to analyse the back-end of this process, trying to figure out how love, hate, divisions and suffering entered this world, not realising that we created all of it to begin with. Here yet another quote from master Red Pine’s translation of Bodhidharma:
This mind isn’t somewhere outside of the material body of four elements. Without this mind, we can’t move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It’s the Mind that moves. (…) All motion is the mind’s motion. (…) But motion doesn’t exist without the mind. And the mind doesn’t exist without motion. Motion is the mind’s function and its function is its motion. (…) and because the essence of its functioning is emptiness and emptiness is essentially motionless – motion is the same as mind. (…) Basically, seeing, hearing and knowing are completely empty. Your anger, joy or pain is like that of a puppet.
New Quote
As mortals, we are ruled by conditions, not ourselves. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions. (…) But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. (…) People of this world are deluded. They are always longing for something, always seeking. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with prosperity. To dwell in the three realms [This world and reality] is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer!
New Quote
Everything that appears in the three realms [this reality] comes from the mind. (…) This Mind is the Buddha! To search for Enlightenment or Nirvana beyond this Mind is impossible. The reality of your own Self Nature, the absence of Cause & Effect, is what is meant by Mind. Your Mind is Nirvana!
New Quote
Seen with true vision, form isn’t simply form, because form depends on mind. And mind isn’t simply mind, because mind depends on form. Mind and form create and negate each other. That which exists, exists in relation to that which doesn’t exist.
The factors that ultimately keep this illusion going are rooted in our misapprehension of this reality to begin with because we tent to acknowledge only the observable features of this Perpetuum Mobilé as represented by the world we can identify by means of the intellectual analysis of our Sensory Perceptions. Those however do not conclusively disclose to us the underlying structure of Mind generated Causes and Effects, which lead to the appearance of any given entity, object, event or this world to begin with. The only way we can control the Process of Creation is to control our own Mind Activity and with that define a better reality in our mind first and before it becomes one of the disasters that we will have to micro manage later! Needless to say that we must overcome Greed, Anger and Delusion in our own individual mind to start with for the Garden of Eden to appear without fail. The sum total of all the Causes and Effects in operation at any given moment in time between all sentient life forms and the environment, is bound to confuse anybody, really.
Ultimately, Life is War!
Our life long efforts to differentiate ourselves from – let’s say the person standing next to us, or living in the country next to us or even just a brick wall next to us – generates nothing but a conflict in our own mind! Division! Separation! Identity! Self! Life! War! Death! Rebirth! And so on Ad Infinitum! In all the books on Mahayana, ZEN and Tibetan Buddhism, which I have read and studied over that past eight years, the most unsettling notion I can think of in trying to conclude my own insights in this context is best represented by the following quote by HH the Dalai Lama, noted here from his Introductory Commentary to the Tibetan Book of the Dead:
These practices are part of my daily practice also and because of this I somehow feel a sense of excitement when I think about the experience of death. At the same time, though, sometimes I wonder whether or not I will really be able to fully utilise my own preparatory practices when the actual moment of death comes!
When I think of the Intermediate States of Reality and Rebirth as described in the TBD, that is exactly how I feel about my own presence in this world! I have this unsettling notion that I took a wrong turn somewhere in the Intermediate State of Reality on my way out the last time around. And I can’t think of anything other than my own stupid Desire and Greed to continue life by all means for that to manifest as my current reality! As far as I can manage to figure this out, there is nothing in it but pure Desire – that is to intuitively realise that there is nothing to life at all but Conditioned and Repetitive Patterns of Existence based on our own Mind Activity - and with that achieve the final intuitive insight that finally, there really is Nothing at all!, although it would evidently be another great mistake to describe that as some form of nihilistic emptiness! And ZEN master Hui Hai would now probably point out the obvious in this context:
We have come to the ultimate extend of yourself venerable Sir, but not to The Ultimate!
Welcome to the Real World!
The Final Question – Redux!
19/05/2011
The Final Question is in fact the quintessential quest to establish beyond any reasonable doubt a conclusive and final answer to our existence in this world and universe. Yet by utilising Sensory Perceptions combined with our intellectual capacity to analyse and evaluate our mental and physical experience in this reality, we have found a million different answers to the one question that we seek to resolve: Who are we? We think, therefore we are! Yet, once we are, we are forever confused and divided by the means we use to define our existence! And if we consider the amount of religious, philosophical, social and political ideologies and belief systems we have created through intellectual and conceptual Mind Activity to give Meaning to Life, I am no longer surprised that the vast majority of humanity is utterly confused as a result.
This post has been published previously as a shorter less comprehensive version and required a major upgrade, as there are further considerations to be noted in this context. Also, this assessment comes in the form of several sub questions, as it ventures to address different aspects of its own conclusion while at the same time, this exercise provides us with an avenue to explore and discover the final answer in our own mind. In my opinion, the primary means to conduct this assessment – if indeed we must utilise our conceptual and intellectual capacity – resides in the application of Occam’s Razor and I would like to reduce Wikipedia’s description of its general use to the more simple and popular version. The simplest answer to any given question, query or situation is usually the correct answer! So, let’s look at a couple of the more important questions in the context of life at large one at the time and the specific information available in support of the most simple answer:
Question: Who are we?
Answer: A Construct of our own Mind Activity!
Well, the question here is really more about a perceived Ego Self or Soul in the context of this entire reality. To try to evaluate our own individual existence without however contemplating the much more important question What is Reality? first is not going to result in any final insights. Once we are able to establish a better understanding of reality, we will also realize that we are only one fully integrated aspect of it and not necessarily the most important one! But since humanity is usually stuck on the notion of a perceived Ego Self, the question to resolve the origins of our Personality usually becomes the overwhelming direction for us to explore.
The single largest obstacle in achieving a better understanding of this entire question, resides in the process which we usually apply in the evaluation of our experience of and existence in this world. That is, as long as we apply logic, reason, feelings and emotions to the evaluation of our Sensory Perceptions and mental analysis of this world, we are not likely going to identify any real answers. The futility of any intellectual effort in resolving this fundamental question should become obvious, when analysing the utter confusion we have already created in this world by inventing dozens of major religious, political and philosophical belief systems, which are now competing with each other and their own conclusions as to the nature of the universe.
Ourselves deceived!
Deceiving others!
Our mutual Downfall is assured!
In the application of Occam’s Razor in this context, we should simply ask ourselves the more obvious sub questions and accept the most simple answer as a starting point for our assessment: If our Dream World is a valid concept in our understanding of reality and is usually considered as real as the Real World, both must be an illusion? Does the question ever occur to us, if indeed we possessed an independent Soul or Ego Self, what are the chances that something that has no form and can only be described as invisible is able to occupy, control and operate a physical or biological entity such as the human body? Or is it more likely, since our Soul or Ego Self has no physical form to begin with, the same must be true for our bodies and consequently applies to all of reality?
Therefore, what we consider as real, occurs merely as a result of our mental analysis and interpretation of electrical signals as presented to us by our Sensory Activity Field of an assumed external world and reality, which we further proceed to filter by utilising memory templates. The templates we have created in our mind based on pseudo social, religious, philosophical and science concepts are the result of the Extreme Conditioning we all apply to our Ego Self from the day we were born. If we were to create AIs (Artificial Intelligences) advanced enough to operate as Difference Engines on par with the human mind system, these would eventually generate Personality Constructs just like we do and we would ultimately have to recognise these as equal to our own species.
William Gibson, author of the SF classics Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, first promoted the notions of AIs assuming the same status of citizenship and nationality as our own species and Steven Spielberg’s now famous movie AI promoted the concept of AIs developing the same patterns of emotional behaviour as human beings. That is obviously going to happen, it’s just a matter of time! The more detailed evaluation as to how we construct our own Ego Self to begin with and to what extend conditioning defines our understanding of reality, can be found in the posts The Matrix of Reality – Reloaded! and Forever Slave in Conditioned Existence! Please click on the Blog Archive in the menu above to review these lengthy excursions into our Mind generated perceptions of the Ego Self.
Question: What is Reality?
Answer: A Mind constructed Dream World!
In buddhist terms, it is also described as Maya - Sanskrit for Dream World – and to further evaluate this answer we must first understand that reality as we understand this world and universe, exists on different levels that we can access only through a specific change in our Mode of Perception. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes in every detail, how the changes in our Mode of Perception function in the context of the various levels of reality that we can access and experience as a result. The two levels I would like to venture into here, are Ultimate Reality or The One Mind and the Matrix Level of Reality. Hence first a quote from the movie The Matrix in this context:
Let me tell you why you are here. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. You are here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain but you feel it! You felt it your entire life! That there is something wrong with this world! You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. Do you know what I am talking about? What is the Matrix?
The Matrix! Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out of your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work; when you go to church; when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave. Like everyone else, you have been born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.
Occam’s Razor applies to the evaluation of the Matrix Level of Reality as always and that means the most obvious explanation of the above analogy, is the one that reflects on the way we have organized industrialised societies over the past 300 years. But let’s first see what final statement Morpheus makes about The Matrix:
What is The Matrix? Control! The Matrix is a computer [mind] generated Dream World, built to keep us under control and to turn a human being into this!
Just like our perceptions and understanding of the Ego Self, the Matrix Level of Reality is ultimately only a construct of our own Mind Activity and I venture to state here, what Morpheus is trying to tell us is a bit of well-known social and economic criticism, which we not however normally associate with Mind Power or Mind Control:
Welcome to modern society as we know it today! It is a world that we have created through intellectual, conceptual and discriminative Mind Activity and whose existence, development and evolution is perpetuated by means of extreme conditioning based primarily on pseudo science and belief systems, leading to habitual patterns of existence. In effect we have created a prison for our minds in which everybody is forced to think alike!
Ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution over 300 years ago, most societies now established in this reality, have implemented a system we call Formal Education and On the Job Training based on predefined theoretical concepts of science and technology as well as philosophy and religion. This whole process qualifies as extreme conditioning, driven primarily by pseudo belief systems which were invented, established and are today enforced by just a few people – with the silent participation of all – and for the not so apparent benefit of the entire world. Add to this equation free money, free sex, free parties, free games, free drinks, free drugs and who is going to complain? Apparently nobody. And why should they anyway? In a world society where anything is permissible, everything is also equally meaningless! So, have fun, right?
The end result of this process however turns people in general not just into well-behaved – or not so well-behaved, who cares – highly educated, trained and useful members of our societies. More importantly, it also turns them into specialized idiots with no capacity or desire to understand that the entire system exists only to maximize the efficient production, distribution and utilization of human and natural resources in effect turning a human being into this:
You could call this a new form of Indentured Labor as it leaves most people with no option but to participate and play their predefined role in a social and economic charade, which ultimately forces them to live out their life in delusion and mediocrity. And one can even agree that people in Europe and North America mostly live fairly decent to begin with; they live fairly long too; they even get decent pay and benefits for their efforts, but that doesn’t really disguise the fact that the entire system can only be interpreted as an organised state controlled effort to maximize the efficient implementation of Man Power and in order to squeeze the most out of everybody and this planet at the same time?
I am not sure what economic models they are teaching our future political and business elite at Ivy League Schools and Harvard Business School but do we really believe that the societies and economies we have created over the past 300 years, assuming progressive population growths can be matched by apparently limitless natural resources worldwide and turn this combination into a never-ending economic growth engine and hefty profit margins for just a few people – are a viable business model for the long-term sustainable development of a worldwide economy?
Question: What is Ultimate Reality or the One Mind?
Answer: Our own Ordinary Mind!
Mind is Reality! There is really nothing else out there but our own mind existing on different levels of perception and operation. The understanding that nothing exists outside of our own Mind Activity – that reality is indeed a purely mind constructed and never-ending trailing Moment of Now - means that everything we perceive through our Sensory and Mental Activity Field can only be identified as a complex, yet immaterial manifestation of Mind in which our mind – based on the Universal Law of Cause and Effect or Karma – first creates, then reflects reality back to us in very much the same way a mirror naturally reflects all objects. This basically means that every one of the +30.000 thoughts we have on a daily basis, potentially qualify as a Cause and the result of our Mind Activity alone, will eventually manifest as an Effect.
Our detachment from the Causes and Effects which create, define and perpetuate this fleeting and momentary Dream World is the corner-stone of breaking free from the impermanence of an objectified external phenomenal world! One japanese ZEN master called this world a TV-Show since everybody is acting a part, playing a role and is either a winner, loser or a nobody, a good guy or a monster. But once we firmly establish our complete disregard for all forms of predefined conditioned existence based on conceptual, intellectual and discriminative Mind Activity, the day-to-day appearances, objects and events that occur as reality, can no longer affect us as they become what they are to begin with: Empty of Self Existence; the immediate result of our own individual and collective Mind Activity; predefined and repetitive Patterns of Behaviour driven by Habit Energy; fleeting Patterns of Energy in Motion!
Question: What qualifies as the Ultimate Secret?
Answer: Mahayana, ZEN and Tibetan Buddhism!
When a major religious or philosophical belief system declares that the material world we know, love and accept at face value, does not physically exist to begin with and successfully defends that position for well over 3.000 years, it must know something that most of us are apparently not able to recognize due to our deluded State of Mind? The movie What the Bleep do we Know? describes an experiment conducted in Washington DC in 1993. There, a selected world-wide group of individuals were asked to meditate on the soaring crime rate in the US capital. The experiment as seen in the movie successfully reduced violent crime in DC by 25% over a period of 3 months using a sample group of 4.000 people in just one Mind Power Meditation Exercise and even DC officials were stunned by the result and had to admit that there is only one other way for that result to occur naturally: three feet of snow falling in a single day!
The movie The Secret also describes how we perpetuate reality by collectively thinking about the same issue over and over again. A specific example describes how a few power people implemented and perpetuated the War on Terror using all out media access and in order to get all of us thinking of it every day. The result is - The War on Terror! And the more we think about The War on Terror, the more that will become our reality! And the more we think about the diseases, disasters and catastrophes presented to us by the media on a daily basis, the more of that is going to become our reality! Needless to say, that I no longer read any newspapers, or magazines – with the exception of National Geographic – or watch television.
And now think about the implications and consequences of just these insights! For the sake of the theoretical exercise, let’s turn this notion around for just one moment. What if one country from the group of The Usual Suspects decides to go to war with the free world by using organized Mind Power only? Look at the above statistics again and remember the experiment shown in the movie and described in more detail in my post What the Bleep do we Know? Nothing! Everything!
If Mind can do that to a glass of water!
Do we really need a calculator to figure out just how many people utilizing pure Mind Power in an organized session are required in order to destroy one country or another? The classic award winning SF book byAlfred Beste, The Stars – My Destination describes almost exactly such a situation.
Think about this as well: When the CIA helped evacuate the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959 just ahead of advancing chinese forces, they saved the ultimate representative of Mind Power in this reality for all of us. The interesting statistic in this context is the fact that ever since that date, all US Presidents have met with the Dalai Lama in person and regardless of the political uproar that visit has caused across the globe in China on each occasion. As far as I can tell, nobody has so far been able to present to the rest of us a reasonable or logical explanation as to why any US President should go to the detrimental extend of inviting the Dalai Lama to the White House considering the potential consequences such a visit might pose to the US economy?
There is in fact only one reason that makes any sense! It is my opinion, that any US Administration happens to know a lot more about the Mind Power issue as represented by Buddhism than they will ever admit and it is consequently fair to presume that Buddhism qualifies as the Ultimate Secret in this World. An interesting point in this context is represented by the fact that the most secret book ever written - The Tibetan Book of the Dead - was authorized for translation and publication by the Dalai Lama only 6 years ago. That is the first and fully authorized translation in 2.000 years!
Let’s make a guess! How much reading does it take for a well-known group of national information and security specialists to understand that the development of pure Mind Power - as represented by Buddhism – in the interest of National Security is about ten times more important than the development of so-called RV – Remote Viewing - by the same people during the 1960 through 1980? Remote Viewing is the first and so far only instance in which a paranormal Mind Power capacity has been developed using sound scientific protocols and techniques.
RV, commercially known as SRV (Scientific Remote Viewing) or TRV (Technical Remote Viewing) and its real-time application is not just tedious by comparison to established ZEN/ Tibetan meditation techniques but also extremely limited as well and must be viewed as child’s play by comparison to true Mind Power itself. If you would like to see what exactly RV does, see the movie Suspect Zero, directed by Elias Merhige or read the following books written by some of the original team players in this experiment.
Question: How much of this reality exists as a result of our personal Mind Activity?
Answer: All of it!
That’s a fairly scary question and answer, right? Considering the mechanics that our individual and collective mind utilizes in creating reality combined with the degrees of interaction we establish with anybody else in this world – what percentage degree of this specific Illusion, Day Dream or Dream World, better known as the universe - manifests as a direct and immediate result of our own personal Greed, Deeds, Desires or general Mind Activity? Since close to nobody we ever meet in this world can be considered a Director but must be viewed as Actors only in this collective TV Soap Opera, I venture to state this: All of it!
We all live in our self-created little bubbles of reality which often intersect and interact with other bubbles of reality but only the sum total of all those tiny individual bubbles actually make up the universe as we know it. Who represents that sum total? The One Mind! The Tibetan Book of the Dead and other Sutras routinely describe world systems created entirely by entities that qualify as a Buddha. In addition, the TBD consistently describes the transformations that manifest in the six Intermediate States as events that occur in a persons individual specific reality only – not ours! I guess I could formulate this differently: Just because we apparently all live in this reality together does not mean we actually live here together!
One special edition issue last year of the National Geographic magazine proudly announced:
Space – The Once and Future Frontier!
The Hubble Telescope now all updated and geared to look ever further into the… Mind Space? The last count says we are now looking 14 billion years back into our own past – we should now be very close to the outer limits of the universe! We have to confirm the universe has an outer limit, right? Or else it wouldn’t exist to begin with, correct? Didn’t Einstein say something about how an infinite universe would also have infinite mass and consequently would have collapsed back into itself the very moment it came into existence creating one all-encompassing Einstein-Rosen Bridge better knwon as a Black Hole in the process? I hope I will live long enough to see a cover of the National Geographic magazine that finally corrects our misconceptions of reality and equally proudly declares:
Mind – The One and Only Frontier!
And that’s just the thing about this entire issue! Buddhism in its final assessment of reality appears to be so utterly incomprehensible from a common sense point of view, I figure less than 1% of the world population actually understands Mind Power if strictly from an intellectual perspective!
Welcome to the Real World!
