Insufficiency Delimitation: Action and Aspiration
Total space is immense. We describe total space as the sum of the measure of all time, space as well as potential. Imagine coming into being a billion years later. Now visualize a comet blazing a trail a billion years ago. All of this and every other possibility, manifest or unmanifest is within total space! However, despite the mind boggling magnitude, total space is still limitedness. Principally because it is the realm of measure. In terms of magnitude, what is beyond measure is even bigger. Simply put, the immeasurable is unparalleled vastness, including within, all possible measure. Why is this? Because the very extremes of measure tend to approach the absence of measure. From the inconceivably infinitesimal to the unimaginably vast, everything therefore is made up of and contained within the immeasurable. In the face of this order of magnitude, our presence is extreme limitedness, to put it mildly! All…
The Notion of Identity: Warranted or Misplaced?
The notion of identity is frequently debated in mental health circles. We feel that this is a misplaced emphasis. While designation might be important for functional reasons, underlining its importance for the individual likely creates more distortions than balance. If we were to ask ourselves about what is really important, what would we come up with? Would it be notions like freedom, compassion and commitment or would it be me, mine and myself? That in summary is why we feel that the notion of identity should be done away with. Early Buddhist psychology states that everything including the self is dependently arisen. This means that what we think is ‘me’ comes about from the arising of causes and conditions. If any of these conditions cease to arise, there would be no ‘me’. Therefore in terms of origin, we really have only conditions that could change and cease at any moment.…
The Question of Reality
We spend our lives with the firm conviction that each of us is set apart, existing, acting and thinking. The phenomenon that we are and the phenomena that we observe and are supposedly part of creates an edifice of concrete reality. Our senses seem to indicate that feeling is real, thoughts are real, that the cosmos we inhabit is real. This makes us think and act, for the benefit or the detriment of ourselves and others. The effects we have on ourselves, others and our environment reinforces the strength of such a view. If we examine closely, perturbation emerges as a given. Not uncertainty which gives rise to our hopes and fears but perturbation. This flux is the nature of both growth and decay. Perturbation is a hallmark of a system that is limited in some way. If there were complete freedom and unity, there would be no such flux…
To Be Immediately Free
Buddhist thought is very broad in scope. While there is the emphasis on preparing the path to truly understanding suffering and on learning to not rely on craving, there is also the description of the state of complete freedom. Within the Dzogchen tradition is the elaboration of what is understood to be the primordial ground, a natural perfection that is uncreated, ever present and eternal. Everything is part of this natural perfection, of a ground or a basic space that is the matrix of all that is expressed, manifest and known. All phenomena without exception are likened to rainbows on this sky like primordial ground. Practitioners of the Dzogchen way claim that no matter what we do, believe and perceive, they are this very ground. Within this tradition, all ideation is meditation and all endeavor is fruition! So we are actually unlimited, no matter what our ignorance seems to set…
Trapped in Action
Like it or not, our existence is in many ways a trap. Those who do not agree with this notion are usually ones who are carried away by momentary distractions, by apparently pleasurable sights, sounds and activities. Almost all of us, at sometime or the other believe that that there is something that is inherently stable, lastingly satisfying and ours to possess or control. The truth is, that there isn’t! We can do many things, build industrial empires, write great literature and visit distant planets but sooner or later we have to leave even the greatest accomplishment behind. Empires end, friends and enemies end and even though we know this, the longing for that permanently satisfying something never leaves us. So we continue endlessly to become and acquire, even nobly to create and build and often damage and destroy. Contemplating this, we realize that we cannot stop acting. And that…
Worth the Time
Seldom during the course of our day do we pause to ask whether what we are doing is truly important. Is it worth the time? What is worth the time? Planning a holiday? Wondering if we have enough of this or that? Being anxious over the challenges we have to face? Comparing, wandering, ruminating, judging? There is every likelihood that most of what we spend our time engaged in isn’t going to mean anything as time passes, not to mention as we near our end. Spending time in contemplative practice makes many things very clear. That we are eternally dissatisfied, always seeking and craving and mistaking momentary pleasure for permanent happiness. Being still, we come to see that everything that we can conceive of simply arises and ceases with no inherent, intrinsic nature. Nothing whatsoever can give true, lasting satisfaction, and that nothing is actually pleasurable or attractive or ever…
Sitting with Craving
Despite what considerations and engagements we might be occupied with, sitting contemplation and meditation is of immense benefit. We sit to generate stillness, calm and insight. When we sit to contemplate, we realize two things. One is how important it actually is to be still and the other how difficult it can be. Just sitting is immensely important. We come to see that when we sit to contemplate or meditate. A few moments and we see that all our time is spent in veritable frenzy. Flitting from one thing to the next, from one thought or feeling to the next, without reprieve. And our lives become crowded and noisy and we end up confused and trapped within a web of our own making. A web that has no breathing space, no room for freedom. No matter what tradition we follow, at first, sitting unmasks this noise. The momentum of our…