Verse 2.5 — deity practice revisited

What are deities, mantras, and absorptions meant to do?

I am not a wakefulness that comes from practice.

In these two lines, Jigmé Lingpa seeks to wean the reader away from the idea that the wakefulness (buddha) he is describing is something that we control, not to mention the superstition and magical thinking that surrounds deity practice. 

I’m reminded of the Zen story of the monk who was sitting in the courtyard. When his teacher saw the monk, he asked, “What are you doing?” 

“I am meditating to attain enlightenment,” the monk replied.

The teacher sat down beside him, picked up a stone and started to rub it with his robe.

After several hours, the monk turned to his teacher and asked him, “What are you doing?”

“I’m polishing this stone to make a tile,” was the reply.

“You can’t make a tile by polishing a stone,” said the monk.

“Nor can you attain enlightenment by meditating,” said the teacher.

Jigmé Lingpa does not see wakefulness (buddha) as something that can be made, that can be conjured into experience or generated by energy transformation practice.  The wakefulness that Ever-present Good represents does not come about through methods aimed at control or transcendence. It is just there.

Does this mean that such the deity practices of vajrayana are pointless? Not at all, at least, not in my own experience.

I found deity practice more than a little difficult. The approaches and methods described in the texts didn’t work very well for me, so what follows isn’t in any way authoritative. It’s just how I work with these practices. 

When I imagine myself as a deity, be it Chenrezi, Tara, or any of the many other deities that I’ve practiced, my efforts to visualize the form clearly usually leave me with a headache. I find it works better to feel as deeply as possible that I am the embodiment of the awakened principle the deity embodies, e.g., compassion in the case of Chenrezi or the power to destroy emotional disturbances in the case of Hayagriva. As I rest in that feeling, a sense of the form of the deity arises, and also what the form expresses through its symbolism. I don’t think much about the form or the symbolism, for thinking just leads to distraction. I keep a sense of the deity present in my mind. In other words, the feeling of being the deity is a place for me to come back to, and I let that feeling grow and evolve on its own. The symbolism, which I have usually learnt from study, begins to speak in its own language, directly, bypassing the intellect.

Mantra works a little differently. As it says in the texts, you recite mantra when you have run out of juice for deity practice. It’s a way of resting and refreshing your energy. While I repeat the mantra, thoughts come up and distract my attention. When I recognize what has happened, I go back to the mantra. Gradually, the mantra replaces the subconscious gossip (to use Trungpa Rinpoche’s phrase) that is the basis of distraction. When the mantra has completely replaced the subconscious gossip and repeats itself, my mind is quiet and the mantra just echoes on its own.

For samadhi or absorption, I bring attention to the personality of the deity, feeling what it’s like to be the deity not just in form but how that would be in the world, in interacting with others. The method of practice (sadhana) for the deity provides a way of acting that out. Again, I don’t think about it. I just feel it as I go through the various dramatic elements of the practice. Parts of me resonate with being the embodiment of compassion — the infinite strength, ability and resilience to help others. Those parts wake up and come to life. Other parts are relieved and relax. And other parts, those that have a problem with that way of being, go into rebellion. Practice consists of coming back again and again to the sense of just being the deity and seeing and appreciating that all those different parts are also expressions of the deity. In doing so, I meet my own emotional material over and over again, not as something to oppose or possess but as something to experience as completely as possible. Approached this way, it can be experienced it in all its intensity or banality without my being carried away by it. 

When you experience emotional reactions without being carried away by them, the energy of those reactions is transformed and becomes available as a higher level of attention. This transformation is not something you notice happening. It’s not something you do. It just happens.

As all that confusion, the nagging, sulking, furious, outraged, relieved, frightened, critical, joyful, proud, angry, open, confident, greedy voices seize and squabble over the microphone, along with their associated bodily sensations and all the confused thinking and projections that arise, I keep coming back to being the deity, in form, mantra and presence, and gradually find a way to be in the whole mess. 

Bit by bit, it becomes clear that everything that I experience —everything, the deity, the symbolism, the emotional confusion, etc. — is mind. At the same time, it is clear that there is nothing that is mind, nothing whatsoever. 

Jamgön Kongtrul, the great 19th century master, put it this way:

When the deity’s form is clear, the clear appearance is your own mind.

Acceptance that it is not clear is your own mind.

While you want it to be clear, what works at meditation is your own mind.

Your mind is also timeless awareness, guru and deity.

Everything is the arising of mind, yet mind itself is not something made.

The beauty of this crucial point of the two phases is how conclusive it is:

No matter how many different creation phase practices you do,

If you make awareness clear and just keep it from wandering,

Clarity arises as clarity-emptiness and disturbance arises as disturbance-emptiness. 

(You can find these verses in Creation and Completion, pg. 49. The above is my own translation. See this note to for a brief explanation of the two phases.)

In other words, you discover how to be awake right in your own experience. This wakefulness is completely different from the idea of wakefulness as the ability to observe thoughts and feelings come and go without being caught by them. That wakefulness is like a person sitting on the banks of a river, watching the water tumble over rocks, swell in waves and swirl in eddies. The wakefulness Jigmé Lingpa is pointing to is more like a person in a kayak, right in the river, tumbling over the rapids, pausing for a split second here or there to balance and set direction, then back into the flow, the swirling eddies and swelling waves, moving in and with the water but not swept away or capsized.

Vajrayana practice is about being awake in the thick of life, which is why it is so challenging and so intriguing.

An overview of vajrayana

Here is a somewhat non-traditional overview of vajrayana based on what I’ve come to understand through my own study and practice.

The origins of vajrayana are far from clear. My own view is that it originated in esoteric cults in early medieval India, as I describe here. Practitioners in these cults were not concerned with conventional lives. They followed the Indian renunciate tradition, lived apart from society and sought powers and transcendent experiences through the practice of sorcery and energy transformation. 

Many of these practitioners felt that the deity, itself, was the source of power. They invoked their deities through ritual and supplication, praying to the deity to exercise its power on their behalf. Spells (mantras) composed of sacred syllables were also held to embody power and were used to invoke the deity, to protect the practitioner and those close to him or her, to heal, to exercise magical powers and to destroy enemies. They also felt that power came through high levels of attention (samadhi). One reads about sorcerers entering a water samadhi, say, and bringing about rain, floods, hail or drought. The practice of sorcery was fueled by devotion and intense loyalty to both the teacher and the deity. These were, after all, secret cults.

Over time practitioners applied these methods to spiritual attainments, seeking to develop spiritual insights and qualities through the same sorcery techniques. Their whole approach was based on the premise that we can control what happens in our lives and we can control what arises in our experience. That changed when direct awareness methods (which probably came from central Asia) entered the mix.

Vajrayana has three components that have no a priori connection but were brilliantly crafted together by the practitioners of early medieval esoteric Buddhism in India. Outside the mainstream of monastic and conventional Buddhism, in typical Indian fashion, these practitioners assembled bits and pieces from a vast range of practices, forging them into systems of practice that matured over hundreds of years into such collections as The Eight Deities, The Five Tantric Deities, The Six Yogas of Naropa, etc., and culminated in such elaborate systems as the Kalacakra tantra.

First, there are all the deity practices, which are largely derived from sorcery cults. In sorcery, focused attention and creative imagination are used to charge objects or people with energy. This energy in turn is used to generate transcendent or shamanic experiences, develop special power and abilities or to heal or manipulate others. When you perform the sometimes very elaborate rituals associated with deities and protectors, the sorcery elements are very clear. You invite the deity, invoke his or her power, and generate powers (siddhis) in yourself — using spells (mantras), visualization, empowerments, fire ceremonies and other rituals to focus the energies and realize their potential. The essence of sorcery is the ability to transform energy to the point that you experience the world differently and are able to induce similar experiences in others. 

This component forms the basis for creation phase practice in vajrayana, a set of practices in which you aim to experience yourself and the world as the expression of an aspect of timeless awareness. In effect, you are substituting a transcendent identity for an ordinary identity. This replacement loosens up the hold of your conventional identity and conditioning and opens up other possibilities.

The second component consists of a set of high level energy transformation practices. Some are based on or derived from kundalini-type practices. In all these practices, you transform basic energies — the energy in sensory experience, the energy in breathing, sexual energy, emotional energy, etc. — into higher levels of energy and attention. In the sorcery cults, these abilities were first used to enhance the basic sorcery abilities.

Many of the practices view the body as a basis for energy transformation, using natural energies (prana), energy centers (cakra) and the channels through which energy flows. The transformed energy and attention can be used to generate powerful experiences, similitudes of timeless awareness, intense bliss, and profound clarity, including lucid dreaming and other experiences. At first, different practices were associated with different deities, but over the centuries, they were combined into groups of more or less related practices.The possibly unintended consequence was that the solidity of the transcendent identity developed in creation phase is necessarily called into question, and with it, the solidity of ordinary identity. I imagine that the early practitioners were surprised, intrigued and possibly frightened by the possibilities that then opened up. 

This component is called completion phase because you complete the experiences generated by creation phase by letting them go.

Both creation and completion phase practices, because they involve explicit energy transformation, are inherently dangerous, like any powerful tool such as a scalpel, chain saw, or car, etc. If the energies developed are not in balance, you become ill and ordinary medical treatment will not help. In particular, if you are unwilling, unable or don’t know how to experience what arises as conventional conditioning opens up and starts to fall apart, the energies you develop flow into old patterns of conditioning and you fall into obsessions with food, sex, power or money. If you are unwilling, unable or don’t know how to let go of identity, then you become a megalomaniac, convinced that you have transcended ordinary human experience and are no longer bound by social conventions or biology. The warnings for energy practice traditionally include death, paralysis or insanity. Sadly, I have seen all three. 

The dissolution of identity opens up completely new possibilities that differ from the aims of conventional sorcery and transcendent experiences. Those new possibilities led naturally to the incorporation of creation and completion phase practices with the third component, direct awareness methods. Placed in the context of Mahayana Buddhism, the experience and understanding of compassion is similarly enhanced. Awareness came to be viewed as a unity of three aspects: empty in essence, clear in nature and compassionate in its unrestricted expression.

Mahamudra and dzogchen are the best known of these practices, but there are a number of others in the Tibetan tradition. These practices consist of letting your mind (your way of experiencing life) resolve itself. You establish a base of relaxed open undistracted attention, and then you let things take care of themselves. This requires great resolve, great trust, great determination and great patience. Through all this, one develops a quiet resting mind that is able to see (shamatha and vipashyana, to use the Sanskrit terms). One of the differences in vajrayana practice is that shamatha and vipashyana are results, not methods, as they are in mahayana practice.

The higher levels of attention and energy developed in creation and completion phase practices increase your capacity to experience the often conflicting and intense experiences locked up in biological, psychological and social conditioning. They can also be used to deepen and extend the experience of not being a thing, of freedom, of peace or of timeless awareness in a number of ways. However, they are not absolutely necessary. You can practice direct awareness methods without creation and completion phase practices. The path may be longer and less dramatic, but it is a lot safer.

Verse 2.4 — freedom from karma

Because I am free from the thinking that distorts experience,
The evolution of good and evil ends completely.

Karma describes how good and evil actions (thoughts, words and deeds) evolve into experienced results. Part of the Indian cultural influence on Buddhism was that you stopped creating karma when you were free from the cycle (samsara) of endless birth and rebirth. From this point of view, it was reasonable to consider that enlightened beings are free of karma or, at least have a different relationship with it. This notion has been an important theological question and source of confusion and debate for Buddhists for thousands of years.  Hyakujo and a Fox or The Fox Koan  confronts this confusion head on. The fact that it is the second koan in The Gateless Gate indicates that this was an important topic.

In modern times, this notion, like most bad ideas, has generated more than a little suffering -- from harm and abuse that has arisen in teacher-student relationships, for example. On the one hand, some teachers claim that their actions should not be judged by ordinary standards because they are beyond karma. On the other hand, some students hold their teachers in such high esteem that a student sees the teacher's behavior as beyond karma and acts accordingly. The combination has created situations in which teacher or student or both are unable to acknowledge or accept that biological, psychological or social conditioning simply took over.

To claim that one is free of karma is equivalent to the claim that one is free of gravity. In outer space, perhaps, but on this planet, if you step off a building, you hit the ground hard. As long as you are alive in this world, your thoughts, words and deeds shape how you experience yourself, the world and life, no matter who you are or what you may have experienced.

Karma is not some magical force. It is the way earlier cultures described the process of growth and evolution of patterns of behavior. It is not cause and effect, at least not in the ordinary Western sense of these terms. My own teacher always used the metaphor of a tree. A seed doesn't cause a tree. A seed grows and matures into a tree, which then bears fruit. In Wake Up to Your Life, I describe how this metaphor applies to reactive patterns, using contemporary lines of thinking from the theory of evolution and complex adaptive systems. See  WUTYL pg. 173ff and 176ff and these podcast-transcripts.

What then, are we to make of Jigmé Lingpa's statement "The evolution of good and evil ends completely"?

Here are two thoughts on this.

First, if you look at The Fox Koan, one of the turning points is when the Hyakujō says, "Be one with karma." Other translations simply give "Do not ignore karma".

While I don't know Japanese or Chinese, I find the first rendering more useful. To me, it means to live precisely in balance with the forces and processes that shape the world we live in, becoming aware of imbalance as it arises and moving in the direction of balance. To be one with karma is to know and respond to the different pulls and pushes we experience in our lives, moment to moment. It is an intimate dance and we evolve, but we cease to evolve as a separate entity. We certainly do not ignore the evolution of action and result that is the essence of karma.

The second thought is similar, but in different words. We consistently want things to be different from what they are and we attempt to control, manipulate or ignore what is problematic for us. This oppositional stance constantly reinforces the sense of being a separate entity. From there, it’s a short step to the development of the concepts of good and evil. When we are free of the thinking that distorts experience, attraction, aversion and indifference lose their influence. We simply experience what arises and let go of wanting it to be different. We do what is possible and accept what is not. Good and evil as concepts don’t arise, and we are able to experience life as it unfolds in all it’s wondrous complexity.

Verse 2.3 — you can't wake up a person who is pretending to sleep

To say “it is not” does not make it empty.

To say “it is” does not make it solid.

It is a realm beyond mind — natural, nothing held, nothing dispelled.

It is space free from the complications of thought and object.

You can’t wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. I can’t remember when I first came across this Navajo proverb, but it has served me well as a constant reminder that you can’t make something into what it already is.

Here Jigmé Lingpa goes into more detail about awakening mind, which he described in the last verse. Again, I want to emphasize that he is describing experience. To read these lines as philosophy will tie you up into knots. My perspective here is probably due to the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein as I have found that way of approaching life tremendously helpful in translation, in my work with students and in my own practice. Rather than view words as representations of reality, Wittgenstein proposes that the meaning of a word simply lies in its use, so it is important to pay attention to how words are used (or misused).

In this spirit, Jigmé Lingpa begins by making clear that the experience of awakening mind cannot be reduced to any philosophical category.

When you fall into a profound experience of groundlessness, you are naturally inclined to say, “There is nothing there.” But those words don’t carry any meaning if they are regarded as representing something, emptiness, say. You don’t make something empty just by saying there is nothing there. On the other hand, when you say, “There is nothing there,” using these words to give expression to your experience (note: when you say them to give expression to your experience, you will use a very different tone in your voice), they come alive and the experience comes alive in others. In the same way, when you are stunned by the extraordinary clarity and vividness of life, you might say, “It's just there!” but you aren’t making anything into a thing, either. (And if someone asked you, “What is there?”, you’d be hard put to answer.)

The experience of awakening mind, groundless and vivid, is beyond words, beyond description, beyond conceptualization.

Don't try to understand what Jigmé Lingpa is describing here. Any such effort is not only fruitless but counterproductive. Understanding is like quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink (into conceptual thinking).

A person I met recently in Europe suggested that to enter or engage the unknown, you have to be very precise in your method, and use that method to enter the unknown. The conversation was about the creative process in art, but it makes sense to me in this context, too. Here, we need a method, a practice, that brings us right into what we are experiencing, neither holding onto what arises not trying to dispel it. That’s tough! And that's why meditation instruction is often so very explicit. We need to be precise in our efforts.

In the end, it comes down to what Suzuki Roshi said about Zen practice: absolute confidence in our fundamental nature. Like Jigmé Lingpa, Suzuki Roshi is not making philosophical statements about the existence of a fundamental nature. Rather, he is expressing in poetical language how to practice.

Meet what arises, open to it completely, look into it until you see and receive what is there. Do this without any thought of anything else. And then do it again, and again, and again, until you know, yourself, what Jigmé Lingpa is pointing to.

Verse 2.2 — awakening mind

Awakening mind is the nature of all experience.

Awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.

Awakening mind is the life-force of all beings.

Awakening mind has no apparent or ultimate.

What is awakening mind? It is an experience of such clarity and vitality that all conceptual interpretations of experience fall by the wayside. You are left with the utter absence of any ground to life, despite all its richness. Yet this groundless peace takes expression in the most heartfelt yearning that others know the same freedom. These two do not stand in opposition to each other. Rather, they are not separate, not in the slightest, and this is one aspect of the mystery of being.

This verse is pure poetry, a celebration of awakening mind (Skt. bodhicitta, Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་). The best way to read these lines is to put aside the philosophical implications and focus on what effect each line has on me as I read it. Trying to understand it is like trying to fly with my feet stuck in clay. It’s poetry, and the aim of poetry is to move, so I try to let it move me.

Awakening mind is the nature of all experience. 

When I read this sentence, there’s a shift. I move from a preoccupation with whatever I happen to be experiencing to the fact that everything I experience arises in some kind of space, though I would be hard put to say what that space is. The shift reminds me of Idries Shah’s The Book of the Book. It includes a short story in which a person says, “When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.” 

What is the container for human experience? When I ask myself that question, everything stops.

(Unfortunately The Book of the Book is now out of print. You can pick up a copy on Amazon for about $100, but do so at your own risk: this is a book like no other.)

Awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.

Perhaps I’m being too punctilious in my efforts to render this poem in English. “Awakened ones”, of course, are buddhas, but I wanted to avoid the preconceptions that come with that word. When I read this line, it reminds me that without compassion, all the insight or wisdom in the world is useless. Again, it brings to mind what Jamgön Kongtrül wrote at the beginning of The Great Path of Awakening, “Even when you attain buddhahood, there is nothing to do but work for the welfare of beings with non-referential compassion.” In other words, compassion is the core of the whole enterprise. I value these blunt reminders because it is so easy to get lost in the descriptions of insight, awareness, wisdom, etc.

Awakening mind is the life-force of all beings.

Another potent reminder. This is probably the one article of faith in Buddhism, namely, that, at bottom, we care about each other. Numerous philosophers and theologians, biologists and neuroscientists, psychologists and sociologists have sought to prove through the logic of their respective disciplines that, despite the atrocities of which humanity is all too capable, our being is fundamentally based in compassion. I have always had a problem with such “proofs”. They seek to impose an ontological certainty, a straight-jacket, on human experience. 

Human experience is too varied, too diverse. Far more moving and inspiring is that even John Le Carré, as disillusioned an author as you are likely to find, makes the same point in The Secret Pilgrim when he puts these words into the mouth of the master spy George Smiley, “If you allow this institution, or any other, to steal your compassion away, wait and see what you become.” 

The implication is that absent compassion we cease to be human.

These lines are not laying out a philosophy or an argument. It’s a mistake, I feel, to read them as categorical statements. Rather, they are an expression of Jigmé Lingpa’s joy and awe in the possibilities that are opened up by the experience called awakening mind. What possibilities does it open up?

Awakening mind has no apparent or ultimate.

A hint is contained in this last line.  When we see through the confusion of life, on the one hand, we know viscerally the utter groundlessness of experience. On the other, we are awed to the point of overwhelm at the fullness of life. There is no way to put into words this dichotomy which is not a dichotomy,.

These two aspects evolved or calcified into the notion of the two truths: what is ultimately true and what is apparently true (also translated as absolute truth and relative truth). Jigmé Lingpa, however, is not fooled by such formulations. He simply points out that in the actual experience of awakening mind, such notions don’t even begin to arise. They are after-the-fact interpretations as I discussed in an earlier newsletter.

Again, rather than try to understand this last line, just read it and let it go to work in you. See how everything falls away, if only for a moment, and then rest in that moment. 

The two truths are not truths

Imagine you are looking at a tree on a windy day. You feel the gusts against your cheeks. You see the leaves shaking and flashing as they twist and turn. You see the branches swaying back and forth. You hear the leaves rustling and the tree creaking. And you are so clear and open that there is no movement, not inside, not outside, not anywhere. Nothing moves.

Case 29 from The Gateless Gate:

Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. 
One said to the other, "The flag is moving."
The other replied, "The wind is moving."
Over-hearing this exchange, Hui-neng said, "Neither flag nor wind is moving; mind is moving."

But Hui-neng is wrong here. Nothing moves.

Now imagine that you could experience your thoughts and feelings the same way. They come and they go, but for you there is no movement, none at all. It doesn't matter what arises - love, anger, need, pride, grief, joy - you experience it, you experience it all, you know it, and yet, nothing moves, nothing whatsoever.

It is possible to experience life this way and when you do, words are utterly useless. This way of experiencing is indivisibly immediate, unfathomably profound, unthinkably simple, and unimaginably ennobling. It must be true!

And thus is born the notion of ultimate truth.

Stay with that experience for a few moments. Inside you are as quiet as a pond that lies in the center of a deep forest, a pond that, protected by the trees around it, has been undisturbed by even the slightest breeze for a thousand years. Feel the stillness, the infinitely deep stillness, within you.

Because of that stillness, you hear everything. You hear the cry of a baby when it first comes into the world. You hear a young woman's gasp of disbelief and despair when her boyfriend breaks things off. You hear the sobs of fear of a woman stricken by breast cancer. And you hear the rasping breath of those whose time in the world has come to an end. You hear the sufferings and struggles of those brought low by misfortune, bad luck or their own folly. You hear the cries of pain and hurt of those who are oppressed, exploited or abused. You hear the pain in the voices of those who have to oppress, exploit or abuse others. You hear the suffering of the world.

You see and hear others struggle, locked in beliefs, flooded by emotions, or burnt to ashes by their worries, their concerns, their obsessions. And it's all so unnecessary. They don't know that there is another way. You see that and know that. It must be true!

And thus is born the notion of relative truth.

Profound, transformative, and liberating experiences are frequently recast as higher or deeper truths. As human beings, we struggle with life, and when we find a way of experiencing life that ends all struggle and suffering, we grasp, we hold, we cling. Nothing is more important. We now know that something else is possible. We are different because of it. We want others to know it, too. But how do you tell them?

You put your experience into words, whatever words you can. You come up with ways to explain why this is possible, how it comes about, why it is so important. But these words, these explanations, are, in the end, as relevant as proofs of the existence of God. You can debate and argue all you want -- and people have for centuries -- but these explanations, these systematic conceptualizations, are beside the point. If they don't help to bring out something of that experience in others, they are, at best, a waste of time, and, at worst, a rope with which people tie themselves into knots.

There is no ultimate truth. There is no relative truth. These are just notions, ideas. You have not touched cosmic consciousness, the one true reality, the ultimate, the infinite, the totality pure. Those words don't refer to anything. They are poetry, but people forget that. You've experienced something, something profound, and it has changed you.

Good!

But for heaven's sake, don't make a religion out of it.

Line 6: Complete -- all guidelines end in no do's or don't's.

In the same way that all paths of practice end in making no effort, all guidelines for behavior end in no do’s or don’t’s. However, this journey takes place in the richness and messiness of daily life. For that reason, it’s a bit more difficult than meditation practice.

Guidelines for behavior inevitably bring us into the domain of morality. In the Tao Te Ching, stanza 18 (from Addis and Lombardo's translation) reads:

Great Tao rejected:

Benevolence and righteousness appear.

Learning and knowledge professed:

Great hypocrites spring up.

Family relations forgotten:

Filial piety and affection arise.

The nation disordered:

Patriots come forth.

From this perspective, moral guidelines are expressions of a disconnection from the mystery and immediacy of life. They arise to counter imbalances, but they generate imbalances of their own.

Right and Wrong

Gone are the days of traditional societies, at least in most parts of the world, when everyone held the same over-arching worldview and consensus about right and wrong. Many people in modern societies would like to return to an absolute standard, a wish that often takes expression in various forms of fundamentalism, in set beliefs or in what are claimed to be universal truths. In a pluralist society, we rely on our own personal values. Our sense of right and wrong are frequently defined by context and perspective. Ironically, we are more likely to be dogmatic and strident in the advocacy and defense of these personal values than we are of generally accepted values. We seek to validate our stance and persuade (if not coerce) others to adopt it.

Group Cohesion

This leads to a second function of morality: it provides groups with cohesion - a set of shared values and priorities that determine with whom we do or do not connect. This function is also intimately connected with reputation, with what other people think of us. In the world of social interaction and especially in the worlds of social media, our reputation, our “personal brand,” determines to a large extent which groups we belong to and which deem us worthy of consideration or respect. The cohesive function inevitably leads members of a given group to diminish (or dismiss) the values and priorities of other groups. Conflicting ideas about right and wrong and about what is true become the seeds of tension and conflict - conflicts that are resolved or fought out in the political, economic and social spheres. Hence, as the Korean monk Manhae wrote in Everything Yearned For:

Yes, I understand ethics, morality, law

are nothing but the smoke worshipping the sword and gold.

This function of morality with its attendant concern for belonging and reputation is in stark contrast to the morality and ethics of, say, Mahayana Buddhism, in which we find such guidelines as this one from Mind Training in Eight Verses:

When scorn and insult become my lot,

Expressions of some jealousy,

I alone accept defeat

And award the other victory.

Expression of Practice

This and similar guidelines serve a third and very different function. They describe how the qualities and understandings one is seeking to develop through practice take expression in life. They are descriptions, not prescriptions. They are not about right and wrong per se, though they are often interpreted that way. Nor are they about the values of a group or community, though they have often been corrupted for that purpose.

In the context of direct awareness, this third function inevitably takes the form of “no do’s or don’t’s”.

Most of what I say and do is shaped by emotional and biological conditioning. Like the tectonic plates that make up the surface of the world, reactive patterns shift and move inside me in ways that I can neither control nor predict. These movements may open fissures in my personality into which I tumble out of control. They may cause massive earthquakes that shake me to my core as different patterns collide and fracture. The notion that “I” exist as a seamlessly integrated personality is a Platonic pipe dream.

When I follow my teacher’s favorite pith instruction, “Just recognize and rest,” a clarity arises. I cannot say what that clarity is. It is not something that I can point to and say, “It is this.” That clarity is, simultaneously, a knowing. My effort in life consists in living that knowing. I do not know where it leads, and it has led to some very difficult, painful and dark places. Despite the difficulties, there was always a sense of where the balance might be and I found a way through. I have also learned that when I depart from that knowing, problems arise and things go seriously wrong. (This leads quite naturally into the role of protectors and protector practice, a topic that I will take up later.)

Thus, my effort in life is simply to keep moving in the direction of balance. Any other aim seems arbitrary, contrived and self-serving.

In this approach to life, I cannot ignore what arises or what I encounter, nor can I shut out what is inconvenient. I cannot manipulate what I experience nor control what happens or doesn't happen. All I can do is meet what does arise, open and stand in not knowing until a way is clear. There is no guarantee that things won't turn out badly. When they do, I learn, and I learn at a level that makes a similar occurrence unlikely.

If I adopt or accept a set of guidelines that tells me what to do, I’m no longer living that clarity. I’m just following guidelines.

Why do I choose to live this way? Rilke, perhaps, said it best in Letters to a Young Poet: it’s not a matter of choice.