Get the self out of the Way

 

A friend shared the vow of his Buddhist group which sounds a bit like mission impossible: the Buddha role is unattainable, yet we vow to attain it! Spirituality is pretty easy, open your heart, open your eyes—that’s how we become aware of our own conditioning and agenda, and that’s also the way to open up to the higher prevailing energies (the Way after the Tao Te Ching). Many practice this form of spirituality, often even without thinking of themselves as particularly spiritual. Yet, how should we advice someone who strives to become the next Buddha or Christ?

 

Every quest we undertake is tainted in some way or the other. How is the new age mantra to not be an ego (that what “edges God out”) any different from the old Judeo-Christian golden rule to love your neighbor as yourself. Heart-centered love doesn’t require an inner voice choosing love over hate. Same with the Indian practice of “not, this, not that”. The chooser who acts for the Buddha nature is the same illusionary agent that stands in the way of Oneness. Tenacious meditation to quiet the mind also doesn’t work. It’s like pushing a basketball under water. It’s bound to pop back up.

 

J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm summed up our problem statement beautifully (1975 dialogues, talk 7 out of 12, available on YouTube) when they concluded that thought and conditioning once defined a center conveniently defined as self, and then forgot that thought created it in the first place, yet, using every pleasurable thought of this illusionary entity to strengthen it, and every painful experience as further reasoning to defend it. How to crack it open? It takes vast honesty and sensitivity to get to the root cause of this illusionary center and help dissolving it.

 

The seeker is the sought-after! It’s not about giving up the elusive quest, it’s about the insight that Truth is a pathless land and that the quest itself is illusionary. It’s not that hard to see without a center, that’s what the Zen tradition is all about. I lose the center when I get lost in the view of swaying trees or see beautiful people. It’s not hard to open up to heart-centered energy either—feel the love and the mind quiets down naturally. As far as the still mind is concerned, downloads do that, just as much as being one with workings of the Way. Being a Buddha is hard, losing the self not so much.