What is the true purpose of human life? In this world where nothing but hardship is guaranteed, is there something really worth striving for, something worth staking your life on?

When Jesus of Nazareth delivered his message, the “Good News”, he offered a profound answer to these questions. He delivered this answer in the form of parables. This spoke directly to the people, but also veiled his words in mystery. So much so that he has been misunderstood, misrepresented, mistranslated even, to this day.

Here, we will look at Jesus’ parables through the lens of depth psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Without reducing Jesus’ teachings to psychology, we will nevertheless look at their psychological significance. That is, what they tell us about our inner life as individuals. As you’ll see, this will reveal a whole new dimension of Jesus’ message to the world.

We begin our journey at the end. The place Jesus points to again and again…

I. THE KINGDOM

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus delivers many parables concerning the “kingdom of heaven”. Let’s look at two which he tells back-to-back. As I read these, pay careful attention to the wording, and see if you can notice a subtle discrepancy between the two. Jesus says:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Matthew 13:44-46

On the face of it, the two parables use different images to say the same thing. Something like: “The kingdom of heaven is extremely valuable; when you discover it, you relinquish all other pursuits so you can fully devote yourself to attaining it.” But look closer…

Psychologist Fritz Kunkel notes that in the first parable, the kingdom is the treasure or that which is being discovered, while in the second, the kingdom is the merchant, the one who discovers the precious pearl. The discrepancy is so odd, so paradoxical, that the mind automatically corrects for it, reading the two parables as duplicates. But the language is very precise and intentional here.

The two parables clearly speak of a two-way relationship between us and the kingdom (whatever that is). The kingdom is the most precious possession for an individual, but an individual, too, appears to be priceless for the kingdom.

Unlike many Christian authors, Jesus is speaking quite encouragingly of human beings. First, he says, we are fully capable of recognizing that which is of the highest value and of attaining it. Second, we ourselves are of such value that the kingdom of heaven would sacrifice all to attain us. So here is a teaching on the intrinsic value of the individual, and of a two-way search. The same kind of search Rūmī means when he writes:

What you seek is seeking you.

Rūmī

In fact, the more time we spend with these two parables, the more we may suspect that Jesus is not talking about two separate things when he refers to the kingdom and the individual. We may also notice that the individual does not find the kingdom on a mountaintop or in some foreign land, but buried. Hidden right beneath his feet.

The kingdom Jesus is talking about seems to be something other than the popular image of a place among the clouds. To gain a different perspective on what he might mean, let’s arm ourselves with one of the most important insights of depth psychology.

II. BECOMING YOURSELF

For Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, what we call “I”, “me”, or “myself” is really only a tiny part of who and what we are. It is what he calls the “ego complex”, or “ego” for short. The ego is the collection of thoughts, memories, and other psychic content that fills our conscious experience. Since the ego processes literally all we are conscious of, it feels like our identity, like who we are. But in fact, it is only a fragment of our whole self. Jung writes:

[T]he ego is only the centre of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche … I therefore distinguish between the ego and the self, since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious.

C.G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche

We can imagine the ego like the visible part of an iceberg, exposed to sun, wind, and all things above water. The self is the entire iceberg, exposed to the whole environment above and beneath the water surface. For example, people go to hypnotherapy and suddenly remember a traumatic experience they had 30 years ago. But it is the ego, really, that “suddenly remembers”. By ‘self’, Jung means that greater, hidden personality that has contained the memory all along.

The self contains repressed and forgotten things, but more importantly, it also contains potential things. Every time we grow as individuals, and our understanding of life deepens, more of the self enters into the tiny vessel that is our ego. The two are in a symbiotic relationship: the ego needs the self in order to grow and develop, while the self needs the ego in order to find expression in the world.

We won’t go any further into this, as I explore Jung’s model along with the Buddha’s view of no-self, in another essay. I invite you to read that for a fascinating comparison.

In any case, for Jung, the purpose of human life is to establish and maintain a creative relationship between ego and self. He calls this “individuation” and, borrowing the phrase from Nietzsche, describes it as the process of “becoming yourself”. Jung sees this as the fundamental religious attitude, seeing religion as a state where:

… the life of the individual is not determined solely by the ego and its opinions or by social factors, but quite as much, if not more, by a transcendent authority…an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority…

C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

Let’s now take this psychological insight and see what new meanings it reveals in the sayings of Jesus.

III. ἐντός

There has been much debate and argument around these two verses from the Gospel of Luke:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

Luke 17:21

The English translators of the Bible have struggled with this immensely. Some render Jesus’ words as “the kingdom of God is among you”, others as “the kingdom of God is in your midst”. Both are viable, but more conscientious editions add a footnote which says the words can also be rendered as “the kingdom of God is within you”, as indeed they are in older translations.

The Ancient Greek word translated here, ἐντός (entós), literally means “inside”. To make his meaning clearer, Jesus explicitly says the kingdom is not something that can be observed here or there, meaning it is not an external thing. You can see how subversive this claim is, given that we are still struggling with it some 2000 years later.

So, what could it mean that the kingdom of God is within us? This may remind us of that strange claim in the Old Testament that human beings have been created in the image of God. It may also remind us of Jung’s insight that the ego–or our surface personality–though being only a fragment of our self, is also the carrier of this self in the world.

If we apply Jung’s model to Jesus’ parables, we may see the ego as he who must discover the kingdom within that is the self. Indeed, that is the true purpose of the ego: it is an imperfect image of the self that must continuously develop to allow more of the self into the world. It must bring the buried treasure out from within.

The problem is, the ego is often its own worst enemy. Its narcissism clogs it up, cutting it off from the self and stifling the growth of the personality. Consider this as we look at the following words of Jesus:

If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 16:24-25

In these two lines, Jesus says what takes Jung volumes to elaborate. That is, we must continually sacrifice our small, ego-centred personality if we are to keep uncovering our true individuality.

On the level of the ego, or who we think we are, this feels like death, like a loss of identity. This is why change and growth can be so difficult. Letting go of the person we’ve been so far, and of life as we’ve lived it, can be frightening, painful, and a loss… And yet this loss of who we are is what it takes to uncover more of who we could be.

Jesus is clearly saying that to follow him to the kingdom requires the sacrifice–nay, death–of who we are, and that whoever is unwilling to bear this sacrifice cannot receive the new kind of life that results from it. Or, as he says:

[N]o one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.

John 3:3

I don’t think Jesus is speaking only psychologically here. It would be wrong to reduce his words to Jung’s theory or to anyone else’s. But we may recognize that it is central to his teaching that we must grow as individuals through continual self-sacrifice. This growth has a paradoxical quality, as it is the greatest gain and yet comes only through loss. It requires sacrificing yourself of your own free will, and yet it leads to truly becoming yourself.

But the ego is not the only obstacle we face in our quest for the kingdom. There is another force continually opposing the growth of individuals.

IV. THE EASY ROAD

Let’s now look at another powerful image Jesus uses. He says:

Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.

For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 7:13-14

To get to the kingdom, it is not enough to relinquish our egoic interests. We must also depart from the easy road taken by the many. We must depart from the collective, leaving its security behind to embark on the solitary and difficult journey of self-understanding. Jung, too, has noted the necessity of this. He writes:

[T]he development of personality … is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd.

C.G. Jung, The Development of Personality

We can never attain an individual–and thus, authentic–attitude to life if we live according to the values and opinions of others. Whether it is our family, friends, coworkers, country, or church–it doesn’t matter. The more reliant we are on a group, the less we have to come up with our own answers to life’s challenges. We receive our ideas about right and wrong, about what is valuable and what is meaningful, from outside. Our life then is only vicarious, an echo of the collective. We are like the man possessed by a legion of spirits, only we are possessed by the thoughts of those around us.

Even living according to Christian values is against the teachings of Jesus if we have not arrived at these values through authentic conviction. Jesus says:

[U]nless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:20

The scribes and Pharisees, during the time of Jesus, were those most responsible for preserving the values of the Jewish community. He is not criticising the values themselves, as he clarifies:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

Matthew 5:17

Jesus is rather condemning the outer obedience to moral values as a mechanical gesture when it is disconnected from inner experience. In fact, he goes as far as to say to the Pharisees:

[T]ax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

Matthew 21:31

This proclamation may sound harsh, but in fact, it contains the most loving and life-affirming aspect of the “Good News” Jesus brings.

V. THE GOOD NEWS

The path Jesus is leading us on passes between two abysses–the ego and the collective–each ready to swallow us whole. And the path itself is “hard”, no less perilous than the danger it is leading away from. Finding our authentic stance on life requires moral experimentation that can easily turn us into villains. And the impulse to be free of our ego can easily degenerate into self-repression dressed as virtue. Whether we take the hard road or not, our souls are always in mortal danger. The only difference is the path Jesus takes us on offers the possibility of salvation.

Unfortunately, most, if not all, of us cannot find this path most of the time. It is not our fault, really… It is just that we are facing near-impossible odds in a world of confusion, apathy, and suffering. But here comes the good news. The one insight I would most like to leave with you.

Let’s read that reproach to the Pharisees again; this time, with a bit more context. Jesus addresses them:

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”

They said, “The first.”

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

Matthew 21:28-31

It is better to lose your way, Jesus is saying, better to deny God outright, if that is what it takes to one day “change your mind”, than it is to live with outer obedience but no inner conviction. In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say that those who lose their way only to find it again are of greater value to the kingdom than those who have never gotten lost in the first place:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

…

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Luke 15:4,7

Now this is really good news, for the fact is, each one of us is that lost sheep. This, to me, is what makes Jesus’ message truly universal and timeless. He is not preaching a certain doctrine you have to follow or elaborate rites you have to perform. He also doesn’t care whether you’re a pastor or a prostitute. (The latter, as we’ve seen, can be preferable.) All Jesus cares about is whether you are willing to “change your mind”. This core message has also become the victim of translation, as we’ve come to refer to it with the rather unwelcoming English word “repentance”.

VI. BORN ANEW

The word “repentance” comes with connotations of guilt and self-condemnation, which have sadly become a big part of the popular image of Christianity. In the original Gospels, Jesus uses the word μετάνοια (metanoia), which literally means a transformation of one’s understanding. A change in our way of being so profound that Jesus says:

[N]o one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.

John 3:3

“Being born anew”, like the caterpillar beginning a second life as a butterfly, is what Jesus is calling us to. This dramatic change is impossible when you are barricaded behind the ego or the collective, hardened with self-righteousness. So this is one part of the message: losing your way is no cause for despair; in fact, it is necessary.

One sure strategy to never discover the kingdom is to remain forever in the bubble of the ego or in the slumber of the collective. This is to remain forever in the womb of your small world, refusing to be born anew and become yourself.

There is another important point. Many Christians may imagine that this transformation Jesus is preaching is a one-off event, like our physical birth. But Jesus is preaching a spiritual kind of birth, a birth “from above”, as he calls it [John 3:3]. He is calling us not so much to the kingdom as a destination, but to the path to the kingdom as a journey.

Whether you hear Jesus’ words for the first or for the millionth time, whether you hear them as a prostitute or as a priest, they are never any less relevant. The butterfly is always needing to be born, in one aspect of our lives or another. This may be one reason why the Gospels refer to the soul by the Ancient Greek word ψυχή (psukhē), which also means “butterfly”. This is the origin of the word “psychology” as well.

As Jung points out, individuation, or becoming ourselves, is a never-ending process of emptying the ego and making more room for the riches of the self. This process makes us less egotistical but more individual, less beholden to social norms, and yet of greater value to the community. It connects us to a higher power that both transcends us and yet lives at our very core. Most importantly, both Jung and Jesus see this as the ultimate purpose and deepest realization of human life. It constitutes not only our discovery of the treasure, but our own transfiguration into treasure, into precious pearls for the kingdom within.

We’ve taken a psychological view of Jesus’ teachings here, which tells us a lot, but not all. For a mystical and no less profound take on how we enter the kingdom, I invite you to my essay on Meister Eckhart’s most famous sermon.

How real is reality, really? I mean, look around. How much of this world you are perceiving is really “out there” and how much of it is a mental creation, like a dream? You never question the reality of a dream until you wake up, so how are you so certain that what you are experiencing now is not just a different kind of dream? And if it is, what would it mean to wake up from it?

There is a fascinating tradition of Buddhist philosophy built around these questions. This tradition is called Yogācāra, and it is entirely dedicated to the study of mind and reality (or rather, mind as reality). Fifteen centuries before Freud and Jung, Yogācāra discussed the ego, the unconscious, complexes, and projections (using different terms, of course). But their study of the mind goes beyond the bounds of modern psychology, into a non-dual view of reality, where distinctions such as mind and matter, internal and external, observer and observed, no longer hold. Couple this with the Buddha’s teachings on karma, rebirth, and enlightenment, and you can imagine how interesting things get…

Here I will present the deepest and most transformative insights from Yogācāra Buddhism I have discovered, but I should mention one caveat before we begin. Yogācāra philosophy is vast; it has been evolving for centuries, and there are many different interpretations of it. At one end, you can read Yogācāra as saying that all we experience is subjective, coloured by our personal cognitive patterns–a pretty innocuous statement. At the other end, you can interpret Yogācāra as saying that nothing exists apart from consciousness, that the external world, objects, space, and time are only mental constructs. I personally lean towards the latter interpretation, as I do think the Yogācāra arguments inevitably take us there.

Yogācāra philosophy is commonly known as citta-mātra, meaning “mind-only” or “consciousness-only”. Citta-mātra studies the world, objects, our bodies, and all our experiences not as objectively “out there”, but as conscious appearances “in here”, within the mind. Citta-mātra is the result of empirical and rational observations by generations of meditators. So, for all its sophisticated theory, it is grounded in direct experience: in meditation. To immerse us in this experiential kind of exploration, I’ve divided this essay into two parts. Part One is something of a guided meditation, only I’ll do a bit more talking than is usual for a meditation guide. Here, we’ll discover the key Yogācāra insights into consciousness for ourselves by observing our own minds. Part Two is more theoretical and will show us how our meditation insights come together into a non-dual view of reality as the activity of consciousness.

Again, here I’ll lean towards one interpretation of Yogācāra, which you don’t have to agree with to benefit from reading this essay. By the time we are done, you’ll have a subtler and deeper understanding of your mind. You’ll also get an idea of what a non-dual, non-conceptual experience of reality might actually mean. Now, without further ado, I present to you citta-mātra, the Yogācāra view of mind-only.

Part One: The Guided Meditation

[To best experience the following section, you can play the video from this timestamp.]

The Six Sense-Consciousnesses

Let’s explore citta-mātra with a meditation object. Something simple, like this yellow circle. I invite you to rest your eyes on the circle now. Take a few breaths, and settle in. When you’re ready, gently shift your attention from the circle you are looking at to the experience of looking at that circle. What is this experience made of? Let’s peel back its layers one at a time.

First, there is the visual perception of the yellow circle. In Buddhism, this is called the “eye-consciousness”. The Buddha himself analyses consciousness down into separate channels of perception, one for each sense organ. So, there is ear-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, nose-consciousness, and so on. Right now, the yellow circle is a visual impression in your eye-consciousness. So far, so good.

But consider this: how do you know you are looking at a circle right now, and not a triangle, a square, or a squirrel? And how do you know the circle is yellow and not green or blue? “It’s obvious,” you may think… But how is it so obvious?

See, you are not simply perceiving a visual impression at the moment, but also a conceptual interpretation of that impression. This interpretation places the labels “circle”, “yellow”, “looking”, and so on, to translate visual data into a narrative, such as “I am looking at a yellow circle”. In Buddhism, this is called manovijñāna, meaning “mind-consciousness”. The Buddha includes the mind among our sense organs, treating it as that which perceives mental objects, such as thoughts, desires, feelings, and the like. But the mind is also a unique sense organ in that it interprets the information the other sense organs are feeding it.

Let me give you an example. If I put these twelve lines on the screen in a particular way, what do you see? You see a cube. The flat image in your eye-consciousness suddenly becomes three-dimensional in your mind-consciousness. Also, you can see the cube facing either up or down, again, depending on the mind’s interpretation. Observe just how much of your seeing is done not through the eyes, but through the mind’s interpretation of what the eyes are seeing. So it is with all the senses: the same smell may repulse you when you think it’s coming from your socks and make you salivate when you think it’s coming from a slice of blue cheese. We mostly don’t experience what we are experiencing, but our thoughts about what we are experiencing.

Now, back to our meditation. We’ve recognised that seeing this circle happens in both your eye-consciousness and your mind-consciousness. Speaking more broadly, we can say experience involves the six channels of consciousness, through which our sense organs feed us information about the world. This model is what the Buddha taught his earliest disciples. But Yogācāra takes things further. Let’s now peel back the next layer of experience…

The Object-Concept

Settle your attention again on the experience of seeing this yellow circle. We will now hone in on a subtle quality present in all conscious experience. Since this quality is always “on”, it is difficult to recognise it as a separate activity of the mind; Buddhist meditators took centuries to notice it, so don’t feel disheartened if it takes you some time as well. I am speaking of viṣaya-vijñapti, meaning “object-concept”.

Think of a dream you remember vividly. In that dream, you encountered people, objects, and places. You experienced these as external and separate from you. You interacted with them as if you were one entity and they another. Only upon waking did you realise all you had been experiencing happened within the mind. While dreaming, you took your own mental creations for real, external objects… How curious! Well, that sense that what you are experiencing is external to you–or objective–is what Yogācāra calls viṣaya-vijñapti, the object-concept.

Now let’s return to our yellow circle. You are not dreaming the circle; it is right here, before your eyes, cognised by your waking mind. But how do you know this circle is an object external to the mind perceiving it? Notice how automatic the assumption is that you are perceiving an external “thing” separate from consciousness. You make the same assumption when you are dreaming, and you never question it then, even though every time you wake up, you know you were only experiencing the activity of your own mind.

Notice the colour of the circle. This colour appears as something external to your mind, something independent from consciousness. Scientifically speaking, we know this is not the case. Colours do not exist outside of our perception. The screen you are reading this text on is emitting electromagnetic radiation with a certain wavelength; the colour yellow is simply how the mind visualises that wavelength. If I shorten the wavelength, you see green, but this green is, again, only a mental representation. As Yogācāra would say, it is citta-mātra, “mind-only”. Still, we see the colour, and we are convinced it is “out there”, in the objective world, not an activity of the mind. This automatic conviction in the objectivity of perceptions is what Yogācāra calls viṣaya-vijñapti.

Great, now let’s peel back the next layer of experience. This will take us to an even subtler activity of the mind, one responsible for most of what we do and most we suffer. The construction of a self.

Manas

The Buddha’s analysis of the self is probably his most powerful teaching. I explore this in depth in previous essays, which I invite you to read (or watch). Yogācāra, however, again takes things further. It distinguishes a dedicated mental structure that creates and sustains the sense of being a self. They call this function manas (not to be confused with manovijñāna, which is “mind-consciousness”). Let me read you the description of manas in the famous Thirty Verses on Mind-Only by the Yogācāra genius, Vasubandhu:

Its character and nature are that of thought. [Manas] is always associated with the four afflictions, which are delusion of a self, perception of a self, identity with a self, and love of a self, as well as mental contact and the others.

Vasubandhu, Triṃśikā Vijñaptimātratā

This can sound a bit technical, but it is a simple observation. When I say “Look at the yellow circle”, you know it is you I am talking to, you who must look at the circle, and you who sees it. What can be more obvious than the fact that you are the experiencer of experience?

But let’s do a simple experiment. Consider this: do you see your self? I don’t mean your hands or the reflection of your face on the screen, but your self, do you see it? Do you hear your self? And I don’t mean your heartbeat, breath, or other bodily functions, but your self – do you hear it? Or do you smell it? You may smell your perfume, clothes, sweat, or the like, but can you smell your self?

Your physical senses never come into contact with your self or with my self, or with any self for that matter. And yet, the self feels just as real as any physical object. It is a virtual entity the mind inserts into experience automatically – that is to say, unconsciously. Otherwise, we would all be able to drop our sense of self at will, and the Buddha would not have had to teach us how to do so.

As we’ve explored in previous essays, the sense of being a separate self has many evolutionary benefits. Indeed, if somebody lacks a stable sense of identity, this is usually pathological and requires treatment. The point of Buddhist practice and philosophy is not to abolish the self, but to see it for what it is. To see that the self is not the thinker of thoughts, but just a very persistent thought; not the one who is conscious, but an appearance within consciousness.

A few minutes ago, we explored how the mind applies the object-concept to experiences, interpreting them as external. Well, we can say that through manas, the mind also applies the subject-concept (or self) to counterbalance external experiences with an internal experiencer. Yogācāra calls this our “dualistic grasping”. This is the mind’s bifurcation into one part that is internal and experiencing, and another part that is external and being experienced. The line dividing experience into these two aspects, the external and the internal, or the subjective and the objective, exists within the mind only.

This is not a mystical or speculative claim. Observe your present experience. As you are reading this text, viṣaya-vijñapti is the conviction that the text is external to the mind, and manas sustains the sense of being the one inside the mind, reading this text. But both this text and the sense of being the one reading it are appearances within the mind; otherwise, you would not be conscious of them. These appearances do not, by themselves, belong within or without, to the self or not to the self. It is the mind that processes this field of thoughts and sense impressions into a binary picture.

We’re nearly done now with our meditation. We have only one final layer of experience to explore, and this is the greatest discovery the Yogācāra made. Something Freud thought he discovered a millennium later.

Ālayavijñāna

Consider what we’ve explored so far. Consider how you automatically see the yellow circle. Consider how you automatically recognise it as a circle in your mind. Consider how you automatically perceive the circle as external to your mind. And finally, consider how you automatically experience being the one who is seeing the circle. “Automatically” here is to say unconsciously. All this mental activity is somehow orchestrated without any conscious work. This begs the question: What is the origin of the mind’s activity?

Here, we arrive at the most famous Yogācāra term, the ālayavijñāna. Ālayavijñāna literally means “storehouse-consciousness”. It designates the deepest region of the mind, the origin and support of all conscious experience. In an earlier essay, I compared the ālayavijñāna with Carl Jung’s understanding of the “unconscious”. The similarities are fascinating, so I invite you to check out that video essay to learn more.

Yogācāra sees the storehouse-consciousness as a subliminal, ever-present stream of mental impressions. Whether we are awake, asleep, in deep meditation, or in a coma, the ālayavijñāna is always on, always absorbing experiences and storing them up as impressions. This store then serves as the material out of which future experiences arise.

Before getting too abstract with this, let’s explore it with a simple practice. Please close your eyes for a minute and listen to this sound.

Listen closely. Soak your attention with the sound, and see if anything emerges in consciousness. The mind may respond to the sound by bringing up images, thoughts, memories, feelings… It’s quite magical, really. Now, where did all this new content of consciousness come from? It wasn’t here a minute ago… And where will these impressions go once the sound fades and you focus on something else? You can open your eyes now.

The Yogācārins use a beautiful simile to explain this. They compare sense impressions with seeds and the storehouse-consciousness with the soil, where these seeds are stored. For example, taking a stroll along the beach plants seeds of sensory impressions in your ālayavijñāna. Once you leave the beach, you move on to other things. On the surface of the mind, the experience is gone, just like how you don’t see the seeds buried in the ground during winter. But one day, you hear the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Suddenly, you’re back on the beach; you can almost feel the cool water lapping at your feet, the salty wind, and the laughter of seagulls overhead. Like seeds sprouting in spring, past sense impressions burst out of the storehouse-consciousness. As Yogācāra says, they become reactualised.

But the ālayavijñāna doesn’t only store sense impressions. Much more importantly, it stores habit energy. Every intentional action leaves an imprint on the storehouse of the mind, creating the potential for a similar action or experience in the future. This is most obvious when we think about our habits, especially our bad ones. There, we can see how repetition ingrains certain patterns of behaviour in our being, sometimes so deeply that even conscious effort can’t break the vicious cycle. To extend the Yogācāra metaphor, you can’t plant peaches and expect apple trees.

We are done now with our guided meditation. Observing our experience, we discovered all the major elements of consciousness Yogācāra described: the six sense consciousnesses, the object-concept, manas, and the storehouse-consciousness. Now it’s time to go the other way. Let’s take what we’ve learned about consciousness and see how it comes together to produce the reality we think we are experiencing.

Part Two: The Theory of Mind-Only

The 3 Transformations

How does reality arise in the mind? Let’s begin with ignorance, even though there is no real beginning. The prima causa of this spectacle we call reality is the mind’s ignorance of itself: mind not recognising mind. With this ignorance as a condition, the mind carries out a series of automatic operations known as the Three Transformations of Consciousness. These operations arise simultaneously, but Yogācāra lists them starting with the most fundamental.

First Transformation: Ālayavijñāna

Ālayavijñāna, or the storehouse-consciousness, is the First Transformation of Consciousness. Here, mind manifests as a flow of impressions called vāsanās. These impressions include images, ideas, sensations, and so on, but most importantly, they include acts of volition. All these are the latent seeds that later flower into conscious experiences. The ālayavijñāna is not an entity, not a self, not a soul, but a flow of momentary impressions. It is not found within space or time, as space and time are impressions within it.

This can all sound very abstract, but it refers to our daily reality. For example, let’s do a quick body scan. See if you can hone in on any bodily sensation that you haven’t been paying attention to while reading this text. The sensation can be an itch, some extra pressure, discomfort, pain, pleasure… Whatever you discover, notice how you just became conscious of the sensation, even though it’s been there for a while. And once you shift your attention away from it again, you are no longer conscious of it, and yet it’s still there. But… still where? In the ālayavijñāna. The ālayavijñāna is that great expanse of impressions in which consciousness acts like a tiny mirror. A mirror shifting restlessly from one appearance to another, capturing fleeting images of the storehouse and trying to hold on to them. This takes us to the next step of how the mind constructs reality.

Second Transformation: Manas

Manas is the Second Transformation of Consciousness. Here, the mind acts as a mirror to itself. We can compare manas with the myth of Narcissus, where the boy sees his reflection in a pool, mistakes it for the face of a stranger, and starts clinging to it. Manas captures a subliminal impression from the ālayavijñāna like how a mirror captures an image and reflects it. But more importantly, manas reflects not only the content of the ālayavijñāna, but the ālayavijñāna itself. Of course, the ālayavijñāna is not an entity separate from its content, but it does appear as such in the reifying mirror of manas. So, if you’re wondering what the ālayavijñāna looks like, the best image the mind can have of it is simply your self. You are the reflection of the ālayavijñāna in the tiny mirror of manas.

Let’s return to our body scan. When you locate that bodily sensation, this is manas reflecting an impression within the ālayavijñāna. But your experience is not simply that of a bodily sensation, but of your bodily sensation. That itch is palpably your itch. When manas reflects an impression, it also reflects the space within which this impression arises, meaning the ālayavijñāna. The reflection of this space for mental appearances becomes the image to which manas clings as a self.

But manas does more than simply reflect the ālayavijñāna. It obsesses over its reflection. Manas literally means “thought” or “thinking”. Yogācāra has chosen this name to highlight the constant mental activity here aimed at reinforcing that sense of self. You don’t just cognise the itch as your itch; you also think, “Why do I have this itch?”, “Should I scratch this itch?”, “Maybe I should practice non-scratching.”, “But maybe I shouldn’t repress my desire for scratching...” Thus, manas immediately obscures direct experience with countless narratives, thoughts, and emotions concerning the imagined self…

Third Transformation: Viṣaya-Vijñapti (via the Six Sense-Consciousnesses)

To complete the picture of reality as we know it, the mind performs the Third Transformation of Consciousness. Here, mind takes the form of our six sense-consciousnesses as coloured by viṣaya-vijñapti, or the object-concept. So, once the mirror of manas reflects that bodily sensation within the ālayavijñāna, viṣaya-vijñapti (via the six sense consciousnesses) adds the icing on the cake, the conviction that your bodily sensation is something objectively “out there”, something perceived by the mind, not an activity of the mind. Consider the fact that over 80% of people with amputation still feel sensations in their missing limbs. This goes to show just how much the object-concept shapes our experience of the world–even when the object is obviously not there.

These, then, are the Three Transformations of Consciousness: the ālayavijñāna, manas, and viṣaya-vijñapti via the six sense consciousnesses. Their simultaneous activity arises due to the mind’s ignorance of its own nature. It creates the illusion of an external reality and an internal self experiencing that reality. This illusion, in turn, further confuses the mind, prevents self-realisation, and feeds the cyclical arising of experience we call birth, death, and rebirth. As one scholar puts it:

We are enwrapped like the silkworm in the cocoon [spun] by our own selves and transmigrate from one form of existence to another, from one world to another forever.

Chhote Lal Tripathi, The Nature of “Reality” in Yogācāra Buddhism

So this is how the mind creates the appearance of an external reality according to Yogācāra. Clearly, this view opens up at least as many questions as it seeks to answer. Let’s look at a few really important ones.

First, if reality is just a mental creation, how does the mind choose what experience to have? Why would we experience so much hardship and sorrow if the mind has the power to experience whatever it can imagine?

Second, what about our shared perceptions? If you share this essay with a friend (which I would appreciate), you will both be reading the same text. Doesn’t this prove that this text is an external object, independent of both of your minds?

And finally, what’s the point of all this theorising about the nature of mind and reality? The Buddha’s aim was always liberation from suffering, not philosophical diversion. Does the Yogācāra view of citta-mātra have any utility in helping us out of our everyday ignorance and suffering?

Consciousness & Karma

There is an important element of citta-mātra I haven’t mentioned. Now that we know about the Three Transformations of Consciousness, it is time we look at the force behind them, the law that directs the mind’s generation of experience. It’s time we talk about karma.

In the earliest sutras, the Buddha says:

Karma is what creates distinctions among beings…

Cula-Kammavibhanga Sutta, MN 135

He also says:

The [body-mind] is to be regarded as old karma, brought into existence and created by intention…

Kamma Sutta, SN 35.145

I have an in-depth essay about karma and rebirth. I invite you to read/watch that to see just how profound and elegant this teaching of the Buddha is. Here, I’ll only briefly mention the aspects most relevant to Yogācāra.

The Buddha teaches that all experience is the result of karma. Your karma includes all your intentional thoughts, words, and actions in this life, and in an infinite series of past lives. Everything you experience in life, the Buddha says, down to the most trivial detail, even down to reading this text, is literally what your past karma looks like. Your life is your karma objectified. For example, if you’ve spent years reacting to stress with anger, you’ll tend to find yourself in situations full of conflict and tension. If you’ve spent years practicing patience and kindness, you’ll tend to find yourself surrounded by more trust and goodwill. Different seeds, different “worlds.” Now, Yogācāra elaborates on this teaching with a profound psychological twist. To my understanding, Yogācāra says consciousness and karma are all you need to explain reality. Let me explain…

First, Yogācāra notes that the ālayavijñāna is what makes karma and rebirth possible. Only an unconscious storehouse of past experiences can explain how something you did a decade ago shapes your experience today. The intentional action of hurting or helping somebody leaves an impression in the ālayavijñāna, where it becomes the seed of a future experience. When the right conditions appear, that impression (or vāsanā) becomes reactualised, and you experience being hurt or helped by somebody. To give an extremely simplified example, if you punch the wall in a fit of anger today, your hand will hurt tomorrow. The Buddha has taught in detail how there is no self who punches the wall today, and there is no self whose hand is hurting tomorrow. But there is the punch, and there is the hurt. Yogācāra adds that it is the ālayavijñāna that provides the continuity between the two. The punch plants a seed in the ālayavijñāna, and that seed flowers into hurt. In the same way, the ālayavijñāna connects all moments of cognition in this life and across lives.

So, the ālayavijñāna allows karma to work. Karma, in turn, determines what experience the mind will form at any given moment. This text is how your past intentional actions appear to your eyes and mind at this moment. In turn, your choice to read this text (and thanks for that, by the way) informs what future experiences your mind will generate. The mind doesn’t choose what to experience; it simply responds to past karma and to the present causes and conditions. It is like the ocean, which doesn’t choose when to ebb and when to flow, but simply responds to the law of gravity and the movement of Earth, Moon, and Sun.

The Yogācārins say karma is also the reason why different beings seem to perceive the same external objects. For example, Elly, my fiancé, has a pair of red socks. When she looks at her red socks and when I look at the red socks, we both see the same thing: a pair of red socks. A Yogācārin would say Elly and I have a lot of shared karma, hence our similar body-minds, hence we both perceive a pair of red socks. Now Barney, our dog, has a different kind of body-mind, the result of different past karma. When Barney sees the red socks, I don’t know what he sees, but he goes crazy, he starts biting, licking, and tossing them around. Obviously, he is experiencing a very different kind of object.

Such differences in perceived reality exist between people, too. For example, this essay will seem fascinating to one reader, boring to another, and to another it will be blasphemy against the one true religion. Now, which is it? Is the essay fascinating, is it boring, or is it blasphemous? “That depends on your past karma,” Yogācāra would answer. In reality, there are no two people who will read the exact same text when they see this. For Barney, I doubt this essay even appears as an object in consciousness.

Still, to me, to you, and to pretty much every reader, this text is, well, a text. For Yogācāra, this is not an argument for the objective existence of this text outside our minds. It is simply a consequence of our shared karma. You and I, and pretty much every reader of this text, for all our differences, we are all human beings. This means we are experiencing many shared karmic patterns, which our limited human language represents as objects and events in a shared “external” world. In fact, says Yogācāra, we are each trapped in our own private mental simulation of reality. The question then is, how do we exit the simulation? How do we experience reality beyond mental constructs? How do we wake up?

Awakening

After all their sophisticated analysis, the Yogācārins end up back with the Buddha’s fundamental insight. Ignorance of the mind’s workings leads to craving and aversion for objects that are only as real as a dream. These craving and aversion lead to misguided intentional actions (or karma), which then fuel the vicious cycle of becoming, where ignorance and suffering propagate from one lifetime to another. You can compare this with the Buddha’s teaching of Dependent Origination, his most profound doctrine, which I explore at length in a previous essay.

In any case, to end the vicious cycle of suffering, one must end its root cause, which is ignorance; more specifically, ignorance of how your mind functions. So, how do we end ignorance? In short, first we learn citta-mātra—then we unlearn citta-mātra.

In his Thirty Verses on Mind-Only, Vasubandhu writes:

So long as one has not given rise to the mind which seeks to abide in the nature of mind-only, then regarding the two types of grasping dispositions, he is still not yet able to subdue and extinguish them.

Vasubandhu, Triṃśikā Vijñaptimātratā

In other words, so long as you have not started investigating the backstage of the mind, where experience is constructed, you remain caught in dualistic grasping to subject-and-object, self-and-other, internal-and-external. You are not experiencing reality, but your own private karmic dream. Noticing you are dreaming is the first crucial step. Still, it does not constitute waking up. Vasubandhu continues:

Setting up and establishing even something small and saying this is the nature of mind-only, because there is still something which is grasped, it is not truly abiding in Consciousness Only.

Vasubandhu, Triṃśikā Vijñaptimātratā

This is a profound and subtle warning. You see, waking up is not a matter of thinking about reality in a new way. If we return to our meditation object, the yellow circle, we may now see it as a creation of the Three Transformations of Consciousness. We’ve learned some new terminology, but are we any nearer to awakening? Have we not only substituted one concept with another? To go beyond the mind’s creations, we clearly need an approach other than conceptual thinking. Let me read you how Vasubandhu concludes his Thirty Verses:

Without grasping and not conceptualizing—this is the wisdom of the supramundane realm which abandons the coarseness of duality and naturally attains transformation of the basis.

This itself is the realm of no outflows, inconceivable, good, and eternal, the peaceful and blissful body of liberation, and what the [Buddha] called the Dharma.

Vasubandhu, Triṃśikā Vijñaptimātratā

This is the Yogācāra view of final awakening. The “transformation of the basis” occurs when ordinary consciousness (or vijñāna) becomes direct knowing (or jñāna). This is pure experiencing, devoid of subject-object duality, devoid of conceptual interpretation. We get a taste of this when we’re absorbed in music, or watching a sunset, and for a moment there’s just the colour and just the sound, no commentator in the background saying, “I like this” or “I should take a photo.” Just experiencing.

This may seem like a unique conclusion of the citta-mātra doctrine, but it is only a reformulation of the Buddha’s original teachings. When Bāhiya, a sage who was soon to die, asked the Buddha for a concise summary of the Dharma, the Buddha told him:

When for you there will be … only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognised in reference to the cognised, then, Bāhiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two.

This, just this, is the end of suffering.

Bāhiya Sutta; Ud 1.10

What the Buddha describes to Bāhiya is just that non-dual awareness that Yogācāra calls jñāna. Jñāna designates direct knowing, raw immediacy prior to the mind’s conceptual processing. The experiencing of suchness.

As we see, this conclusion of Yogācāra teaching does not belong to Yogācāra, but neither does it belong to the Buddha. I see it as a universal insight of non-dual traditions. For me, the person who communicates it most clearly is a modern sage who belongs to no tradition, Jiddu Krishnamurti. He says:

In the state of experiencing, there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. The tree, the dog and the evening star are not to be experienced by the experiencer; they are the very movement of experiencing. There is no gap between the observer and the observed… Thought is utterly absent, but there is being.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series 1

You can taste this in small ways. After reading this essay, when you’re washing a dish or walking to the next room, see if there can be only the sensation of water on your hands, only the sound of your footsteps, letting your train of thought dissolve into presence. That tiny shift is already a kind of awakening.

The Yogācārins, of course, being the hyper-analytic psychologists they are, have a technical vocabulary surrounding awakening. We could go into that, but I think it would defeat the purpose of what we’ve been talking about. After all, how many more mental models do we need before we are ready to experience reality beyond mental models?

I hope this essay has given you some new perspective on the workings of your mind and the nature of what you experience as an external reality. Please don’t take what I’ve presented here as a definitive introduction to Yogācāra, but as one possible reading. Citta-mātra is a profound and subtle view of reality, which even a lifetime of study cannot exhaust.

The question remains, how are we to actualise this non-conceptual mode of experiencing the Yogācārins call jñāna? How can we perceive reality beyond the constructs of the mind? Here, I would rather leave Yogācāra territory and direct you to the most lucid nondual teacher I know of, Krishnamurti. Coming into contact with his teachings has had a lasting impact on my mode of being in the world, and I present his insights in another essay. If you’d like to explore this non-conceptual way of living in more practical detail, I recommend reading/watching that next.

Thank you for reading, and remember: “What you seek is seeking you.”

A friend recently asked me why Jesus had to be crucified. Aren't Jesus’s moral teachings and the example He set enough? Why have that whole episode of humiliation, torture, and death on the cross? Why not just focus on what the Man taught and try to live good, wholesome lives?

I was unable to answer this question in any meaningful way. But, to my surprise, I felt compelled to insist on the crucifixion as the cornerstone, the very heart of Christ’s message. As I record this, I am no closer to a final answer for my friend, nor do I think a final answer is possible. But recent experiences have given me a new perspective on Jesus’s suffering and why it may be His greatest work for humanity. Here, I’ll share some personal reflections on this, being no theologian myself, no expert, only one who loves Christ.

So, why was Jesus crucified?

About a year ago, my cousin received the worst phone call of his life. There had been an accident. A driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel and had crashed into the car my cousin’s wife and daughter were in. It was bad, especially for the little girl, whose injuries were so disturbing that I would rather not describe them. It was unclear if she was going to make it. This remained unclear for months, as our country’s best surgeons kept trying to piece her back together, one surgery after another. It was during these months that my cousin started going to church.

So, why was Jesus crucified? Could it have something to do with my cousin in the hospital waiting room, praying his little one will live? I think it does.

Christ’s moral teachings, His parables, His mystical sayings… These are all profound and inspiring, like those of other great sages. But what good is all that in the face of your child’s suffering? What good is it on days when you “watch the things you gave your life to, broken”, days when you find yourself a plaything in the hands of fate, when the world’s indifference slaps you in the face?

Many of us have had such days, and should we live long enough, we are all bound to have them in the future. Like light, darkness too comes in different intensities, and there are depths of it no light seems to be able to reach: no meaning, no hope, no love... “Hell” is the word Christians use for it.

Faced by the full extent of evil and injustice, even Christ, the God-Man, reached His breaking point. Nailed to the cross by the ones He came to save, He cries:

There is no answer.

What greater image of despair do we have than that of the bleeding Saviour, tortured and forsaken by those He came to save, forsaken even by the One who sent Him? Betrayed into “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.

But why celebrate this ultimate despair? Why wallow in the gruesome details of Christ’s Passion? Why make the crucifix the central image of the tradition, fetishizing suffering as it were?

One answer is that each of us will one day face the equivalent of that phone call my cousin received. Each of us will one day be crucified, Christian, atheist, or otherwise. The measure of a religion, philosophy, or way of life, as I see it, is whether it can accompany us down the road to Hell, preserve us there, and guide us on the way back. This is a journey we all have to make in life, and more than once… I am sure you know what I mean.

I see Christ’s willing submission to evil, injustice, and despair as His greatest and most lasting work. It is also His most human work, for the hurt and vulnerability He took on. And Christ faced suffering not as a supernatural being, but as the Son of Man, as someone who could just as easily be my brother, or your brother, or our son. Remember His prayer:

What words better capture the tragedy that is human life?

Let me share another story. I was flying back to Bulgaria some years ago, and as we neared Sofia Airport, the plane started shaking violently. “We are experiencing mild turbulence”, the air hostess said, but that did nothing to calm the man sitting next to me, who was obviously nervous.

The plane started descending, but we were quickly gaining altitude again. The voice of the hostess, buzzing out of the onboard speakers, said, “Our landing attempt was unsuccessful due to the weather conditions. We will now circle the airport and make another approach.” I was trying to project calm, seeing how the man next to me was starting to panic, but I was also getting nervous myself.

Our second landing attempt was also unsuccessful, and the plane kept shaking. Then the strangest thing happened, like a scene from a movie. The man next to me, now sweating, his hands shaking, got out his wallet, pulled out the photo of a baby, and showed it to me. He looked straight into my eyes with such despair as I have never seen before or since in my life. Then, he started speaking quickly, like he was rushing to get the words out in time. He told me that was his newborn daughter in the photo. She had been born while he was working abroad, and now he was flying back home to see her for the first time. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.

I tried my best to keep my composure, and I told the man his daughter is beautiful. I told him not to worry, as we’ll be landing soon and he’ll be with her.

Our third landing attempt succeeded, and I never saw the man again. But I will never forget the way he looked at me, the way I could see his very soul behind his eyes, naked and afraid.

Why was Jesus crucified? Could it be so that that man, fearing he will never get to hold his daughter, doesn’t need to face the dark alone? Could it be so that none of us ever needs to face it alone?

I have no final understanding of Christ’s crucifixion. But the little life I have seen has shown me that to live is to be crucified. To live is to be exposed to cosmic forces of evil, injustice, and destruction, forces no individual can contend with. Yes, of course, life has great joys as well, but the very fact these joys coexist with, say, the genocide in Gaza, makes you wonder whether happiness is not fiddling while Rome burns.

Suffering and injustice do not constitute Hell. In the midst of them, one can live a meaningful and fulfilling life. Hell, I believe, is when suffering and injustice mold us into vessels for the dark. When our “rage against the dying of the light” turns into rage alone, and there is no longer light. Dostoevsky writes:

Theologians give different interpretations of what Christ, “the Saviour”, came to save us from. Original sin, temptation, death, etc. What I’ve found in my life is that Christ’s salvation is salvation from Hell.

Jesus of Nazareth, the story goes, the most good, true, and beautiful, suffered at the hands of those He loved and died forsaken by the Father Who had sent Him. What does this mean? One thing it means is we are never alone in the hurt we carry. Even when it feels the whole world is on our shoulders, we can know another has been here before us. What’s more, that other did not turn resentful, did not curse at the hands that betrayed Him, nor did He try to make His hurt known by hurting others. He accepted His total defeat, He cried out in despair, and He died. And He didn’t die for show, nor did He remain alive in some mystical, hocus-pocus way. He died. Kaput. Dead as my grandmother, dead as my grandfather, no longer here, swallowed “in the heart of the earth”, as Matthew writes.

And here is the miracle to top all miracles. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, in taking on suffering, injustice, and death, was not defeated. Or rather, His utter defeat became His complete victory. His mutilated, dead body, displayed for all to see on Golgotha, was not the sight of humiliation His enemies had planned. It was the sight of the ultimate human potential realized. The sight of an individual who had gone through the worst this world can offer, and had remained in light. In love.

Remember, Christ’s last plea to God was for the sake of His torturers:

To my understanding, this is why Jesus was crucified. To deliver the Good News. To walk the path of love all the way and back again. To preach love as the only true victory over the world, the ultimate rebellion and only shelter in the face of fate.

Christ went to the cross as a man, being mocked by His enemies:

But He did not come down from the cross, knowing the cross is where love must make its stand. Knowing that only by taking love into the heart of darkness can He prove love’s immortal light, light which can illuminate even the deepest descent into the dark. This, Jesus knew, is not something you teach through parables, but by living through it, suffering through it, and dying through it. The way we all must.

After countless surgeries, my cousin’s little girl was back on her feet. The wonders of modern medicine saved her from certain death, and Christ saved her father from Hell. To me, this is why Jesus went to His cross: to save us from “being unable to love”, from Hell. To show us the way, the truth, and the life. To teach us love as the only true victory and salvation.

Thank you for reading, my friend! To see Christ’s teaching on love in dialogue with the Buddha’s teaching on non-attachment, I invite you to my earlier essay on this. Remember: what you seek is seeking you.

See you next time!

How much hurt are you willing to carry?

We are born of hurt and into hurt. The hurt of ancestors, of our culture, our species… Hurt is thicker than blood; in it, we are all family. Hurt flows out of father into son, out of the mother into her daughter. Hurt is the dark stuff of which light is born, the weight under which wings grow, and it is the midwife of the soul. Hurt is our one great teacher, and the other is love. How much hurt are you willing to carry?

Hurt thrives in darkness, and so it is always hiding: in our bones, in our words, in our anger, and in our escapes. To run away from hurt is to run circles around it; to seek escape is to find only darkness. Light is not found apart from the dark. The dark is the only womb where light can be born. Light is the gift hurt bestows upon us when we bend down to carry shadow, when the heart opens, when the mind awakens. To love is to be baptised in hurt, and only in love is there life. So, how much hurt are you willing to carry?

To carry hurt is to carry a child, helpless and alone. To carry hurt is to shrink, to become nothing special, to eat dirt, to surrender. It is defeat, humiliation; it is crucifixion. To carry hurt is to take up the lowest position, where God abides. It is to join God in the work. It is to take on your shoulders what little life they can carry. How much hurt are you willing to carry?

You don’t need to seek hurt, as your feet wade in it on every path, within and without. The world would have long drowned in hurt if not for the miracle of the heart. The heart, God’s faithful servant, who gathers hurt as a nectar and works it into love. Perhaps this is the measure of a life… How much will you work into love? How much hurt are you willing to carry?

Ignorance has many forms, but it is always some form of escape. The escape routes are many, all paved with good intentions. Escape is society, escape is industry, and the economy; escape is politics, war, religion, and desire. Escape is the mirage we follow further into the desert. Escape is sold as cure for hurt, but it is the very activity of hurt unrecognized. The world would have long been lost to escape if not for the miracle of the mind. The mind, God’s only faithful image, which awakens darkness into light. Perhaps this is the measure of a life… How much will you awaken into light? How much hurt are you willing to carry?

Hurt is without an owner. It is a subterranean river, flowing out from body into body as we run in our frantic escapes. Or hurt is a fire spreading, where one wound opens many more without itself being diminished. Hurt is our one common tongue, and the other is love. Hurt shows us the other is not other. Hurt breaks our hearts, but it breaks them open. Hurt startles the mind, but it startles it awake. Hurt recognized, hurt that we carry, it ploughs and moistens, and warms up the soul. Hurt carried is the soil of the soul, and the seed, and the rain and sunshine, and the fruit is love. Hurt is the first noble truth, and the last is love. Love makes hurt noble, and hurt makes love true. Perhaps this is the measure of life... How much truth will you live? How much love? How much hurt are you willing to carry?

What is enlightenment, really? Is it something we must attain, something to discover, or something already present, here and now? And what happens once you “get enlightened”? What is the experience of enlightenment like?

There is a famous Zen teaching that offers profound answers to these questions. This teaching is not a scripture or some philosophical treatise, but a series of images. The “10 Oxherding Pictures”, these are called, or the “10 Bulls”, and they depict the Zen path in 10 stages of progressive awakening.

There are two major views on enlightenment in wisdom traditions. One view sees enlightenment as the culmination of a long journey of cultivating the body-mind. Through practice and discipline, we break down our conditioned patterns of behaviour and attune the mind to the subtler dimensions of experience. Through consistent effort, we turn the intellect and the organism into instruments of perceiving ultimate reality. Early Buddhism is a classic example of this view, and you can learn more about it in my essay on the Noble Eightfold Path.

The other view sees enlightenment as an absolute reality that is always and everywhere the case. Seeking enlightenment is as absurd as searching for space or waiting for time. Yes, we are usually unconscious of our enlightened nature, so we must learn to recognize it. But turning this recognition into some sort of goal or practice is a fundamental mistake, which further separates us from the truth of our being. Jiddu Krishnamurti offers the clearest teachings on this I know of and, again, I have an essay where you can learn more about Krishnamurti’s teachings.

So, which view of enlightenment is more accurate? More importantly, which one would better help you perceive your true nature, here and now? Enter Zen Buddhism and the 10 Oxherding Pictures…

Zen fully embraces the paradox of enlightenment. On the one hand, it says, we are always already enlightened; on the other hand, it takes great effort and dedication to realize our enlightenment. On the one hand, Zen depicts awakening as the most dramatic, transformative experience; on the other, it is the most ordinary fact of life.

Instead of trying to untangle such paradoxes intellectually, Zen navigates them through the use of stories and images. The great psychologist Carl Jung also spoke of the power of symbolic, figurative language to reconcile those deeper aspects of life which seem paradoxical to rational thinking.

In any case, let me present to you Zen’s answer to the paradox of enlightenment. The 10 Oxherding Pictures, with their accompanying verses and commentary. These images present the path of enlightenment, beginning with the state of ignorance and confusion, and ending with what Jung calls individuation and what Nietzsche calls becoming oneself. Enlightenment.

Exploring the 10 Oxherding Pictures can give us a map to orient ourselves on our own path of awakening. No two paths are identical, but there are universal patterns of experience, and it is helpful to be able to recognize them. The 10-step sequence we have here has guided generations of meditators, so it is a tried and tested map of awakening. Still, bear in mind your actual path will never be so linear. It will often skip over some stages, then backtrack, then disappear completely, only to reappear when you least expect it. If anything, this makes having a map even more useful.

So, let’s dive into Zen’s 10 Oxherding Pictures and let’s see what they have to teach us about the path and essence of enlightenment…

The 10 Oxherding Pictures

1. The Search

In the pasture of the world, / I endlessly push aside the tall / grasses in search of the Ox. / Following unnamed rivers, / lost upon the interpenetrating / paths of distant mountains, / My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the Ox.

The path of awakening begins with a sense of confusion, exhaustion, and anxiety. We may liken this to insight into the Buddha’s First Noble Truth, which is that life, as ordinarily lived, is full of dissatisfaction and disappointment. Our strength is failing, and we can no longer keep up the endless pursuit of fulfillment that never comes.

We also find ourselves in a “thicket of views”, as the Buddha put it. Our mind is full of conflicting ideas and opinions, what Bob Dylan calls “useless and pointless knowledge”. Today’s culture of mass-distraction makes this even more true than it was 9 centuries ago, when Zen master Kakuan wrote his Oxherding verses.

But this beginning stage of enlightenment is more than simply the state of confusion. It is the state of realizing you are confused. The insight that you are lost, that you are not aligned with your true nature, that you are seeking happiness and meaning in the wrong places… This is an insight.

In Zen, this stage is called “the Great Doubt”, and it represents the first stirrings of disenchantment with the ways of the world. This disenchantment is vital, as Carl Jung points out, as it shakes us awake from unconscious participation in the life of the herd.

This stage corresponds to the early Buddhist notion of saṃvega, which Thanissaro Bhikkhu defines as:

The oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Affirming the Truths of the Heart

As the first stage of the awakening journey, saṃvega, or the Great Doubt, is a common experience. Today, we may call it “depression”, “burnout”, or an “existential crisis”, and we will try to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Zen, however, depicts this stage as an important initiation. Many of us never develop the Great Doubt, but remain submerged in the collective, mistaking conformity and slavery for status and achievement.

2. The Footprints

Along the riverbank under the trees, / I discover footprints. / Even under the fragrant grass, / I see his prints. / Deep in remote mountains they are found. / These traces can no more be hidden / than one’s nose, looking heavenward.

The second stage of awakening corresponds to the Buddha’s Third Noble Truth. It is the insight that, although life is full of dissatisfaction, satisfaction is possible. Although the world is rife with ignorance, wisdom is attainable.

This might seem like a slight improvement over the first stage, but in fact, it is a revolution. Should we get stuck in the Great Doubt, we end up as cynics or nihilists. We become alienated critics of the world, unable to participate in life, mocking the very notions of meaning or the sacred.

Discovering the footprints, however, shows us that amidst life’s confusion, there is a narrow path to follow. We may discover pointers to that path in wisdom texts, works of art, or in the teachings of living masters. Pointers may also come from nature, from meaningful coincidences, and from our dreams. The unconscious, Jung has shown, naturally nudges us into the direction of psychological growth.

At this stage, we have an intimation of what direction to follow, but we are still confused. To proceed, we need to explore and experiment. The way forward requires initiative and dedication. As Christ says:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

3. Perceiving the Ox

I hear the song of the nightingale. / The sun is warm, the wind is mild, / willows are green along the shore – / Here no Ox can hide! / What artist can draw that massive head, / those majestic horns?

Our search finally yields true spiritual bounty. Our senses are open, and the ox can no longer hide. As the commentary goes:

As soon as the six senses merge, the gate is entered. Wherever one enters one sees the head of the bull! This unity is like salt in water, like color in dyestuff. The slightest thing is not apart from self.

Senzaki Nyogen, Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Our true nature, we find, is indistinguishable from sensory experience, like the saltiness of salt water. At the same time, our true nature is wholly other than experience, transcendent, something no artist can draw, and no words can describe.

Here is our first glimpse of ultimate reality, what Zen calls kenshō. It is a revolutionary discovery that opens new vistas of freedom, peace, and insight. The excitement of this makes it easy to get stuck at this stage, thinking you’ve done all the work, seen all there is to see. Our Zen map tells us, however, we haven’t even walked the path halfway.

In early Buddhism, there is a similar concept, called “stream entry”. Once we perceive the conditioned nature of experience and the unconditioned dimension of nirvana, we have entered the stream of awakening. Scripture says we are then guaranteed to realize nirvana within 7 lifetimes. But what is the difference between one who has entered the stream and a fully liberated arahant? Venerable Narada gives us the following simile in the Pali Canon:

It’s as if there were a well along a road in a desert, with neither rope nor water bucket. A man would come along overcome by heat… and thirsty. He would look into the well and would have knowledge of ‘water,’ but he would not dwell touching it with his body.

Kosambi Sutta; SN 12.68

So, we shouldn’t settle for just seeing the water. We must find a way to get to it.

Moving past this third stage is no longer a matter of experimenting and seeking. We have found the ox. We now need to capture it. Whether we use the metaphor of catching an ox or of drawing water from a well, one thing is certain: we need a rope.

4. Catching the Ox

I seize him with a terrific struggle. / His great will and power / are inexhaustible. / He charges to the high plateau / far above the cloud-mists, / Or in an impenetrable ravine he stands.

Here comes the great struggle. Some traditions see the notion of spiritual struggle as backwards. Jiddu Krishnamurti, for one, shows how spiritual effort is a fundamentally dualistic, ego-fueled notion. The act of striving, of self-discipline, builds up the very sense of self one is supposed to become free of.

Zen is infamous for its strict approach to meditation. But note that from all 10 stages of the path, only here does struggle play a role. As we’ll see, the road of enlightenment leads beyond effort to a state of complete harmony. In stage 4, however, we strain in body, mind, and spirit. What was a brief peak experience at stage 3 must now become our everyday reality.

Buddhism views the mind as originally pure, radiant, and awakened. Awakening, then, is not something to acquire, but something to uncover within oneself. The act of uncovering it consists of, essentially, paying attention. Paying attention to all the movements of the body-mind until the body-mind becomes transparent and reveals our “original face”, as Zen calls it. Our face before our parents were born… Before the world came into being.

You can think of spiritual effort like training wheels. When learning to ride a bike, we must adopt a whole new paradigm for movement, and this takes time. Using training wheels allows us to learn the basics slowly, giving the body-mind time to adjust. The day comes when we take off our training wheels and never need them again, and this is precisely because they have served their purpose.

The same must be our relationship to spiritual effort. To form any clinging to practices or habits here risks depriving us of the joy of riding the bike of enlightenment freely, without depending on any support.

5. Taming the Ox

The whip and rope are necessary, / Else he might stray off down / some dusty road. / Being well-trained, he becomes / naturally gentle. / Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

Midway on the path of enlightenment, our practice has settled; it has become effortless, free.

We still hold the whip and rope. Craving and ignorance are bound to show up now and again, and we must be ready. But the rope is loose, and the ox tame.

We have our back to the ox, too, no longer needing to keep a constant eye on him. We have begun to trust our naturally awakened state. The body-mind has grown restful, present, and compassionate.

Since this stage is such an improvement over our long period of struggle, it is easy to take it for the end of the path. We have successfully sought out and settled into awakening. We are in a constant relationship with our original face.

This is all well and good, but as long as there is a relationship, there is a distinction. As long as my true nature is something I experience, practice, or attain, then I am one and it another. The path forward reveals itself once we begin to surrender our ambitions of gaining and attaining. Once we put aside the rope and whip.

6. Riding the Ox Home

Mounting the Ox, slowly / I return homeward. / The voice of my flute intones / through the evening. / Measuring with hand-beats / the pulsating harmony, / I direct the endless rhythm. / Whoever hears this melody / will join me.

Finally, the day comes when we take off our training wheels and hop on the ox. “I return homeward”, says Kakuan’s poem. We are done now with seeking, catching, and taming. Even effortless practice is now too effortful for us. We no longer even lead the ox. We know he will take us where we need to be, when we need to be there.

Ox and ox-herder are now in perfect alignment. This results in spontaneous, creative expressions of awakening and a newfound sense of joy and freedom. Here we may become teachers to others. There is no distinction now between practice and play. We begin to become like little children.

Note here, it is easy to interpret the end of practice too literally. Seen from the outside, our practice may continue as usual. Within us, however, a great shift has occurred. We no longer sit to meditate with a certain technique or goal in mind. If we sit, it is no longer practice, but our way of being in the world, like eating, sleeping, or going to the toilet.

At this advanced stage, our spiritual and our everyday life are in perfect alignment… But alignment still means two separate things. Riding the ox, no matter how freely, is still a subtle form of domination and attachment. We have gained all there is to gain, and now we know gains are fetters too. Freedom, as long as it is dependent on anything, is no freedom at all.

7. The Ox Transcended

Astride the Ox, I reach home. / I am serene. The Ox too can rest. / The dawn has come. In blissful repose, / Within my thatched dwelling / I have abandoned the whip and ropes.

Finally, we are home; the time of wandering is over. The rope we once used to catch the ox now unravels into stillness. The ox, also, is no longer our property, but set free. Letting go of all attempts to acquire, we bask in the dawn of liberation.

We once learned that effort is an impediment to enlightenment. Now we learn that enlightenment, too, as an idea, is an impediment. We let go of all attempts to understand, imagine, or name our true nature. The mind stops producing images of the unconditioned, knowing all images are false idols.

Emptying the Mind

Inner and outer, conditioned and unconditioned, awakened and ignorant… these, we see, have been false dichotomies from the start. The conflict between them has ever only been a conflict of concepts, and concepts cannot touch the reality of what is, here and now. This insight finally uproots all desire and ends our search. We find ourselves at home, always and everywhere.

We are done now with the path… But the path is not done with us. Without meaning to, in our surrender, we have broken the final fetters on the mind. And as Meister Eckhart writes:

God must pour himself according to the whole of his capacity into all those who have abandoned themselves to the very ground of their being, and he must do so so completely that he can hold nothing back of all his life, all his being and nature, even of his divinity, which he must pour … into those who have abandoned themselves for God and have taken up the lowest position.

Meister Eckhar, Sermon 7

Here, at the lowest position, the body-mind finally becomes completely transparent. The world, too, becomes transparent, and our original face finally gazes on itself.

8. Both Self and Ox Transcended

Whip, rope, person, and Ox – / all merge in No Thing. / This heaven is so vast, / no message can stain it. / How may a snowflake exist / in a raging fire. / Here are the footprints of / the Ancestors.

I can give no better commentary on this stage than what Arvo Pärt says about it with his music:

9. Reaching the Source

Too many steps have been taken / returning to the root and the source. / Better to have been blind and deaf / from the beginning! / Dwelling in one’s true abode, / unconcerned with and without – / The river flows tranquilly on / and the flowers are red.

One would think that insight into the ground of all being is the end of the Zen path. Indeed, early versions of the Oxherding pictures ended with the realization of emptiness (or shunyata). I have an in-depth essay on what emptiness means in Buddhism, and you can read that to learn more.

Kakuan, however, in his wisdom, knew better than to depict emptiness as the completion of the path. The greatest Buddhist philosopher, Nagarjuna, once warned that those who cling to form can be healed through insight into emptiness, but those who cling to emptiness are beyond all help. Similarly, the Zen master Joshu was once asked, “When a man comes to you with nothing, what would you say to him?”. Joshu answered: “I would tell him to cast it away!”

So, Kakuan added two stages of awakening that follow the insight into emptiness. These final stages close the arc of enlightenment and show that the path is not about retreating from the world. Quite the contrary.

Here, then, in the 9th stage of awakening, we are back where we started. We are no longer home, as we were in the 7th stage, but out in the wild again. We have gone into that ultimate “homelessness” of which the Buddha spoke; we are no longer taking shelter in a sense of self. We no longer belong to this or that, nor does anything belong to us.

Where we once thought there was a self, our self, now we find the whole world. If we look at the 9th Oxherding picture, we see no person represented. There is only the spontaneous unfolding of nature, the flowing of the river, the redness of the flower, and the miraculous awareness of it all.

But for all this emptiness and homelessness, we are, as the poem tells us, “dwelling in [our] true abode”. That is to say, freedom. A freedom not gained or produced. A freedom we recognize has always been here, from the very moment we set out on the path.

Seeing this may make us wonder why we’ve spent so much time and effort just to return where we started. But this is more than simply a return. As Eliot writes:

We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

This, then, is what follows after the veil of form is lifted and we perceive the emptiness underneath it all. The veil falls again, but this time we know it has never been a veil. Form, we once discovered, is emptiness… but now we know also that emptiness is form. The absolute, we now know, is absolute; it is never not present in its entirety.

Our past mystical pursuits now seem completely misguided. The mystery of the infinite is always available, even in the most trivial, ordinary things. The quiet wonder of a river flowing is richer than any theory, doctrine, or concept. This insight, perhaps, is what drove Zen master Tokusan to burn all his scrolls of philosophy after his awakening.

Finally, we know there is no need to do anything, go anywhere, or become anyone to reach the source of reality. The source is, always has been, and always will be here and now.

10. Return to Society

Barefooted and naked of breast, / I mingle with the people of the world. / My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, / and I am ever blissful. / I use no magic to extend my life; / Now, before me, the dead trees / become alive.

The final fruit of enlightenment is us. A simple human life, free of all pretense, all striving, all repression, compulsion, and anxiety. A simple human life, fully present to the wonder of existence. This, Zen says, is the completion of the path.

Christ once reprimanded his followers with these words:

… unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:3

This sums up the Zen path. The final destination of the path is the kingdom of heaven, and by the time we return there, we have attained what is most difficult; we have become like little children. Simple.

It is difficult to explain or describe simplicity, as any such attempt breeds complexity. The intellect can be sharp or dull, slow or fast, wide or narrow, but it can never be simple. Simplicity is the harmony of one’s whole being, and it is not something we achieve through effort. It is the gift we arrive with as children, and the dream we pursue all our adult lives.

The Zen tradition is full of stories that give a taste of this simplicity. For example, one day a monk approached Joshu. The monk asked: “Master, I read in a sutra that all things return to the One, but where does this One return to?”

If somebody were to ask me that, I’d give them a lecture on interdependent co-arising; in fact, I have an hour-long video on that. But what was Joshu’s answer?

The master replied: “When I was in the province of Tsing I had a robe made which weighed seven chin”.

When is a non-answer the right answer?

Concerning the final stage of the path, Chögyam Trungpa writes:

[Here] is the fully awakened state of being in the world. Its action is like the moon reflecting in a hundred bowls of water. The moon has not desire to reflect, but that is its nature.

Chögyam Trungpa, Mudra

When we “become like little children”, we are no longer teaching anything, and yet everyone around us grows wiser. One may say it is life that now teaches through us, but this is too contrived a description. A fully enlightened being transcends all categories of thinking, being too simple for comprehension.

The fully-enlightened sage, the commentary says,

is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers, he and they are all converted into Buddhas.

As translated by D. T. Suzuki

When Dostoevsky wrote that “the soul is healed by being with children”, it is this he meant. I urge you to spend some time with a child, without checking the clock for a while, without thinking of your next task. This will give you a taste of what it is like to be converted into a Buddha.

The final fruit of enlightenment is us. We are born again as the most extraordinary miracle on earth: a simple human being. A child.

To learn more about Zen practice and philosophy, I invite you to my podcast with Zen master Henry Shukman. There, we discuss the paradoxes of awakening, the pitfalls of meditation, and the use of koans as guides to enlightenment:

Thank you for reading, and remember: What you seek is seeking you.

See you next time,

Simeon

Do you believe in God? If so, what do you mean by “God”?

The great psychologist Carl Jung was asked this question in an interview 2 years before his death. His answer shocked the world.

INTERVIEWER: Do you now believe in God?

C.G. JUNG: Now? Difficult to answer… I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.

Jung’s words caused such an uproar that he felt it necessary to explain himself in an open letter. There, he writes:

I did not say in the broadcast, “There is a God.” I said “I do not need to believe in God; I know.” Which does not mean: I do know a certain God … but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call ‘God’…

[God] is an apt name given to all overpowering emotions in my own psychical system subduing my conscious will and usurping control over myself.

C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960

By “God”, Jung means a force external to the ego that overpowers one’s will. This is an odd statement I’ve struggled to make sense of for years. Only recently have I begun to understand how profound it is.

You see, I’m writing this piece for very personal reasons. For over a month now, I’ve felt completely incapacitated, unable to do the work, live the life, and be the person I’ve been these past few years. I tried labeling my state as a “writer’s block”, “burnout”, or “depression”; I tried more romantic framings too, such as “existential crisis”, or even “dark night of the soul”… But none of these terms did justice to my lived experience. That is, sudden disenchantment with everything I’ve felt to be important so far; sudden awareness, also, of the hurt and ignorance rampant in the world, hurt and ignorance I myself am propagating.

This experience, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, has now held me transfixed for months. For all my study of Buddhism, I find myself returning to my Christian roots in trying to make sense of what I am going through. The only framing of my experience that’s made sense to me is to see it as an encounter with God. An encounter with God Who, for mysterious reasons, has brought my path to the edge of an abyss and asks me to gaze into that abyss, punishing all attempts to avert my eyes.

You see now why Jung’s words have started making sense to me. In his letter, he writes:

[God is] the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.

C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960

This, you will notice, is a first-person, experiential definition of God. It is free of theological, mythological, or Judaeo-Christian baggage. Jung stresses the psychological reality of God as an experience. This experience gets interpreted differently across different times and cultures, but is always present. He writes:

God is a psychic quantity which nothing can deprive of its reality, which does not insist on a definite name and which allows itself to be called reason, energy, matter, or even ego.

C.G. Jung, Forward to Fr Victor White’s God and the Unconscious

If …we say “God,” we give expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course of time… Our reason is sure only of one thing: that it manipulates images and ideas which are dependent on human imagination and its temporal and local conditions…

There is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all relate to a few basic principles or archetypes.

C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

The common patterns we find in different wisdom traditions suggest there is some common experience these traditions are trying to describe. An experience you too are likely to have had – even if you never dressed it up in religious language. But why does Jung describe that experience in such negative terms? Again, his definition of God is:

… all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly…

C.G. Jung, Letter to “The Listener”, January 21, 1960

Well, Jung’s definition actually agrees with numerous stories from world mythology. Stories that warn of the perils mortals are exposed to when encountering the Divine. Semele instantly perishes upon gazing at the true form of Zeus, Arjuna nearly loses his mind when Krishna reveals his true aspect, and Yahweh says to Moses:

You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.

Exodus 33:20

The world’s religions all warn us, one way or another, that

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…

Proverbs 9:10-12

To fear God may sound like an archaic, primitive spiritual attitude. Especially for a Christian to whom God is Love, or to a Buddhist, to whom the various gods are simply patterns of causal manifestation. But fear of God is the foundation of most organized religion. Religion, Jung insists, has not evolved to bring us closer to the Divine, but to protect us against a direct encounter. He writes:

Since the dawn of humanity there has been a marked tendency to limit [God’s] unruly and arbitrary “supernatural” influence by means of definite forms and laws… What is ordinarily called “religion” is a substitute [with] the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols tricked out with an organized dogma and ritual… people are effectively protected against immediate religious experience.

C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion

In short, religion acts like a psychological firewall between us and direct spiritual experience. Now, why have the stewards of religion felt the need to dilute the sacred, spoonfeeding us God, as it were, in manageable portions? Is this just a power move on the side of the priest class? Is it an attempt to control us by usurping our spiritual lives? It often is, I think. But could there also be some wisdom in “the fear of the Lord”?

I’ve personally never seen any wisdom in it – only outdated superstition. That is, until now, when I feel God’s grip on me and tremble.

Let’s explore what it means to encounter God with a story. But let’s avoid the obvious stories from the Bible. If God is a universal experience, all traditions should describe that experience, even supposedly atheistic ones, like Buddhism. Indeed, the legend of the Buddha himself relates the power of divine intervention.

When Buddha Met God

The story of how Prince Siddhartha left life in the palace in search of awakening is a well-known one. At the age of 29, the prince had known only comfort, pleasure, and abundance. Siddhartha’s father had arranged that his son never come face to face with old age, suffering, and death. The prince, he thought, must be kept away from all things that make people question the meaning of life. The prince must know only the pleasures and power of royalty.

One day, Siddhartha goes out into the city and meets a man dried up by old age. The prince had never seen anything like this before, and the sight of it disturbs him deeply. All the more so when his charioteer explains that old age afflicts all living things, including Siddhartha. Shortly after, the prince goes out into the city again. This time, he comes across a man overcome by sickness, and again learns that all living things eventually fall ill, as will he one day. On a following occasion, he sees a cremation and learns that his corpse too will one day be burned and his life will be no more. The prince falls into a deep depression at this sudden encounter with suffering and impermanence. Discovering his father’s deception makes his despair complete.

Now a broken man, Siddhartha goes out into the city for what will be the last time. Suffering is all he sees around him. That is, until he comes across a solitary man sitting cross-legged under a tree. Looking at that man fills the prince with a sense of peace he had never tasted before. Not the peace of momentary pleasure or ignorance; rather, peace that remains even in full awareness of suffering. Siddhartha then learns from his charioteer that the man he saw was a contemplative, one who had renounced the world in search of enlightenment.

These “Four Sights”, as they are called, an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a contemplative, turn Siddhartha’s life around. The prince, so carefully reared for royalty, steals away from the palace at night and sets off on a quest for that peace that passeth understanding.

This story does not figure in the Pali Canon, but that’s beyond the point here. We shouldn’t treat it as a historical account anyway. The story’s purpose is to describe a universal pattern of human experience. What Joseph Campbell calls “the hero’s journey”, what Jung calls “individuation”, and what I would describe as an encounter with God.

It’s curious that both the Theravada and the Mahayana versions of this story say Siddhartha’s Four Sights were arranged by the gods. In the Nidānakathā, we read:

The [gods] thought, “The time for young Siddhattha to attain Enlightenment is near, let us show him the Omens.”

The Nidānakathā, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids

Now, why would Buddhism, which teaches liberation through personal effort, depict the gods helping the Buddha? The story of the Four Sights is not an isolated case of this either. After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha is unsure whether to teach his insight. It then takes yet another divine intervention to convince him. This time, the Pali Canon tells us that. The Buddha thought to himself:

Enough now with teaching what only with difficulty I reached. This Dhamma is not easily realized by those overcome with aversion & passion.

Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1

Answering this hesitation, the god Brahma Sahampati manifests in front of the Buddha, kneels down, and speaks:

Lord, let the Blessed One teach the Dhamma! … There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are falling away because they do not hear the Dhamma. There will be those who will understand the Dhamma.

Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1

Again, why does a supposedly atheistic tradition talk about how the gods aided its founder? One reason for this is propaganda. We want to depict the old gods as serving our new master, kneeling down if possible. We must depict our tradition as superseding what came before it. Another reason for including the gods is the mythical thinking prevalent some 2500 years ago. The Buddha taught a rational path of practice, but he had to adapt his teachings for an audience that was still thinking mythically, even magically.

I think, however, a deeper factor has kept these stories alive and central to the tradition. Remember, Buddhism is not only rationalist, but also deeply psychological. Stories of divine intervention have their value in depicting those mysterious, irrational forces that act on consciousness from without. Forces that manifest in the coming together of meaningful coincidences, like the Four Sights. Or the force of love which overpowers pragmatic thinking, like when the Buddha decided to teach the Dhamma at no gain for himself. Such experiences can aptly be called encounters with God, and today, more than ever, we need to learn how to reconnect with them.

God Today

Over the door of his house, Jung had inscribed: ‘Whether summoned or not, God will be present‘. The authors of Buddhist scripture understood this, consciously or instinctively. They paid homage to the mysterious forces we call “gods” rather than reduce all human experience to rationality.

Today, such humility of the intellect is a rare thing. In the new, secular view, experience must either conform to our reasoning, or it must be rejected. By “mystery” we no longer mean “what cannot be known”, but “what is not yet known”. We take it for granted that, analyzed properly, all phenomena must make rational sense. The notion of spiritual forces acting in the world is now seen as a superstition… But what have we replaced it with? Jung writes:

The motto “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is the superstition of modern man…

He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His god and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses.

Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols

Perhaps the loss of the spiritual dimension today is a consequence of the failure of religion. Perhaps priests and theologians have been a bit too wise in their “fear of the Lord”. So much so that we have killed God, as Nietzsche cried, and now seek fulfillment in workaholism, mindless entertainment, and pornography.

But we have not killed God. We have killed the word, but not the spirit. Today, we have the same spiritual encounters we have always had, but we lack the framework for making sense of them. The gods show us the same Sights they showed the Buddha, but our culture does its best to distract us from them. Our father keeps us blissfully ignorant in his palace.

Jung’s psychology attempts to bridge ancient spirituality with today’s rationality. To do so, it uses the language of symbols. Symbolic interpretation, Jung suggests, allows us to extract the wisdom of ancient traditions without the associated dogma and superstition. We read:

[If] the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement…

Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

The purely symbolic approach is a compromise, to be sure. It fails to account for the fact that spiritual reality does sometimes manifest physically. But a compromise is better than losing our relationship with the transcendent altogether. It is this relationship, Jung writes, that is our deepest source of meaning in life:

[Religion is] the empirical awareness, the incontrovertible experience of an intensely personal, reciprocal relationship between man and an extramundane authority which acts as a counterpoise to the “world” and its “reason” …

The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.

Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

We become individuals, Jung says, only to the degree to which we are in a personal relationship to a transcendent reality. Whether we conceptualize this reality as God, as a pantheon of gods, or as an eternal principle like the Tao or Dhamma, is secondary. In fact, the deeper our experience, the less use we have for names and concepts.

Lacking a spiritual dimension of our life, we get indoctrinated into the narratives of the collective, of the times, seeing no higher authority. We fail to discover any deeper meaning to our lives than that of being well-oiled cogs in the global machine. We remain productive citizens, kept in line through propaganda, fearmongering, and the exploitation of our desires.

The Buddha would never have started on his path or completed it without the aid of the gods. If we take Jung’s advice and interpret this story symbolically, what does it tell us? It tells us God is the voice of adventure. God is the call to becoming oneself, to realizing one’s destiny. God uproots us from the community, forcing us to forge our own, individual attitude to life. And when we have discovered our unique place in the world, God brings us back to the collective so we may heal it.

In the Bible, God says:

[W]hoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

Matthew 16:25

Indeed, Siddhartha dies voluntarily so that the Buddha may be born. May we too have the courage to follow the call and take the leap. May we live in the world, but be not of it. Else, we remain prey for the worldly powers seeking always to use us for their advantage. Only an individual can act with true independence of the collective. And only one centered in Spirit, Jung tells us, becomes an individual. Such a person alone can stand on their own two feet and declare with the Buddha:

I do not argue with the world; it is the world that argues with me.

Pupphasutta, SN 22.94

Thank you for reading, and remember: What you seek is seeking you.

See you next time,

Simeon

What does it take to have no fear of dying? Is there some insight (or experience) that can set you free not only from the fear of death – but from death itself? What would it even mean to be “free of death”?

We find the Buddhist answer to this question in an ancient story from the Pali Canon. The story tells of an incident when bandits capture a wandering Buddhist monk. Little do the bandits know that they’ve captured an enlightened master, what the Buddhist tradition calls an arahant (Pali: अरहंत्). Confused by the monk’s composure in the face of death, his captors question him. His response changes their lives forever.

But before we get to the story, consider for a moment: What is your attitude toward death?

I know this is not the most inviting question – and you may have already clicked away from the essay, but if you’re still here – consider it for a moment. Have you ever truly confronted the reality of your death—not as an abstract idea, but as something inevitable, pressing closer with every moment?

For the Buddha, constant awareness of your mortality is key to setting your priorities straight – to making the best use of the life you have. He makes this point with a powerful simile, one I’d like to share with you before we get to the story about the bandits and the monk.

I. The All-Crushing Mountain

The most powerful teaching on death I know of comes, again, from the Pali Canon of Buddhist scripture.

One day, the Buddha is visited by the great King Pasenadi of Kosala. The Buddha is already a renowned sage by then, and the king visits him to share his woes and receive guidance. (Note how similar this setup is to our modern practice of psychotherapy.)

After the formal greetings, King Pasenadi sits by the Buddha’s side under the shade of a tree. Unsure how to speak to the great sage, the king cuts straight to the point. He says: ‘I have conquered a vast territory, Master Gautama, and I keep it well – but I am restless. I am obsessed with power and authority. I have access to every pleasure you can imagine – and more – but it’s never enough. How can I find some peace of mind?’

The Buddha, being a proper therapist, doesn’t answer the king directly. He suggests a thought experiment. ‘Imagine, great king’, the Buddha says, ‘that a trustworthy messenger arrives from the east, carrying grave news. He says he has seen a huge mountain rushing your way, crushing all creatures in its wake, and he asks you what is to be done.’

King Pasenadi looks at the Buddha, confused. Before he can answer, the Buddha continues: ‘Imagine, king, that just as this man delivers his news, another messenger rushes in from the west. That second man, too, says he has seen a huge mountain rushing your way, crushing everything in its path. He, too, asks you what is to be done. And while this second man speaks, another messenger rushes in from the north, and another from the south. These two men also report a great mountain closing in on you, crushing all life in its path. Having learned of this calamity, great King, of this impending doom – what will you do? What is the best course of action?’

King Pasenadi, known as a great strategist, considers the Buddha’s words for a minute. Finally, he answers: “Master Gautama, there is no beneficial course of action in such an event. All that’s left is to cultivate insight and wholesome actions. Should there be some existence after death, determined by my deeds in this life, I should act with wisdom and integrity while I still have time. This, at least, may be of some benefit.”

At these words, the Buddha turns to face the king. He puts his hand on the king’s shoulder and says: ‘I am your messenger from the east, Pasenadi, I am your messenger from the west, from the north, and the south. These are the news I bring you: old age and death are closing in on you from all sides. The all-consumer is approaching as we speak. What is the best course of action, Pasenadi?’

The king lowers his gaze, unable to meet the eyes of the Buddha. He replies: “It is just as I said, Master Gautama, in the face of death, the only beneficial course of action is to develop wisdom and wholesome deeds. My understanding and my actions are my last remaining resource.”

“You never have any other resource,” says the Buddha.

For some time, the king and the Buddha remain silent in the shade of the tree. Even in the heat of midday, the king feels cold, exposed. It is he who breaks the silence.

“Master Gautama,” the king says, “it is my pride and pleasure to engage in battles of elephants, cavalry, chariots, and infantry. I am known as a great conqueror, you see. But how silly my army and my strategies seem now in the face of death. And my wise counselors, too, with their sharp minds and cunning tongues, they cannot help me outsmart the all-consumer. My treasury is full of riches from around the world, looted from the ruins of my enemies. But what will all that buy me when death is at the door? How odd it is that now, speaking with you, I find no more valuable possessions than wisdom and integrity. And how odd it is that I, Lord Pasenadi, feel like a beggar before you, asking for alms. For you are the richest man I have ever come across, Master Gautama!”

So goes the story of when the Buddha discussed death with King Pasenadi. The Buddha’s simile here is particularly useful. Most of us never consider death, or when we do, we have an abstract or romantic notion about it.

“How will I be remembered when I die? Will they mourn me when I am gone? Will there be some sort of life after death?” Unable to face its limitations, the mind tries to reframe death as an experience we might get something out of. We rarely stop to consider the hard facts of death, which are that all our experience, as we know it, ceases; all our possessions remain ownerless, our personal life drama, our achievements and failures, our hopes and fears, our pain and pleasure – all these remain only as memories in the minds of people we have shared them with. But soon enough, these people too become all but memories and are then forgotten. The rest is silence.

By comparing death to a mountain rushing towards us, destroying all in its path, the Buddha reminds us it is not just our body-mind that falls apart at death. The entire world, as known by the body-mind, perishes. To those who survive you, it will be you who are gone, but to you, it will be all of existence.

The Buddha teaches the reality of rebirth according to the moral quality of our actions, according to karma. To learn about this in detail, you can read my essay on this:

Some criticize the teaching of rebirth as a sort of opiate for the masses, meant to justify present suffering and relieve death anxiety. Indeed, King Pasenadi looks for good karma to soften the blow of death. But rebirth, as the Buddha taught it, does not free us from death. It only ensures we meet death again and again, through countless lives and losses.

If this really is our predicament, if after one mountain crushes us, there follow countless more to crush us yet again – what is our best course of action? What would you have answered the Buddha if you were in King Pasenadi’s place? What is your answer to death? Do you have one?

A man called Mogharaja once asked the Buddha:

One who regards the world in what way isn’t seen by Death’s King?

Mogharajamanavapuccha; Sn 5.15

The Buddha did not hesitate to answer:

Always mindful, Mogharaja, regard the world as empty, having removed any view in terms of self. This way one is above and beyond death. One who regards the world in this way is not seen by Death’s King.

Mogharajamanavapuccha; Sn 5.15

The Buddha’s words here may seem cryptic. To see what he means by being “above and beyond death”, let’s go to that bandit story I teased at the beginning. While King Pasenadi trembles at death, another man—facing it directly—remains unmoved.

II. The Bandits & the Monk

One stormy night a band of cut-throats spots a traveler on an unguarded road. They surround the man and search him. The bandits’ dark mood turns into violence once they find the man is carrying no valuables, no possessions even, save for a wooden bowl. They drag the man into the woods and beat him up for sport, but there is no pleasure in it. Their victim neither begs for mercy nor resists. At last, the bandit chieftain unsheaths his sword. He presses the cold blade against the man’s neck, and stares into his eyes, searching for the look of fear. But there is no fear in his victim. In fact, the man looks like he is smiling.

After a moment of confusion, the chieftain steps back. He regards the man strangely and then says: “The lads and I have ended many men. Some we have killed for wealth, some out of spite, and some others out of boredom. All of them have trembled and babbled from fear. But you show no fear, not from my blade nor from my eyes… Are you some kind of lunatic? These are your last minutes, wretch, don’t you realize that?”

The man, who was no other than Venerable Adhimutta, an awakened disciple of the Buddha, replies: “There are no painful mind-states, chieftain, for one free of craving. Fear cannot arise in one who is no longer in chains. When phenomena are seen as they are, their arising and passing away recognized, death holds no fear.”

At these words, the thugs laugh and exchange sardonic looks. But the man continues. “I have lived well,” he says, “I have walked the path to where no paths remain. I have seen how false is the appeal of pleasure, and I have renounced temptation like poison spit out after it’s drunk. Death to me is like being released from a house on fire, chieftain.”

With a mocking smile, the bandits’ leader sheaths his blade. Only now does he recognize the robes his victim is wearing. He remembers the rumors of ascetics inhabiting the area. Followers of some great guru, people say.

The monk rises from the ground and says: “Whatever arises due to causes and conditions belongs to no one. So teaches the Awakened One. They who comprehend this, deeply, with both mind and heart, no longer cling to any experience. I have never been anybody, chieftain, nor will I ever be. Who is there to grieve for when this body-mind perishes? Once you see the impermanence of phenomena, delusions such as “I”, “me”, and “mine” can no longer arise. How can fear arise where there is nobody to be afraid?”

The monk looks at the gathered men and says: “Do with this body what you will – I will feel neither love nor hatred from it. It is you who will live with the consequences of your actions – and you who will die with them.”

The bandits, no longer laughing, look away as the monk addresses them. The youngest among them steps forward and asks, “How have you attained this wisdom, master? Or has somebody given it to you?”

“One can only walk the path for oneself,” Venerable Adhimutta says, “ and yet I was shown the way. The Great Seer is my master, the healer of all the world, Gautama the Awakened.”

Here the story ends, and we can’t tell what happened to Venerable Adhimmuta. As far as I know, he never shows up again in the scriptures, so it is unlikely the bandits spared him. But the text does tell us some of the bandits who heard him turned their backs on the life of crime. Some of those sought out the Buddha – and some of those dedicated themselves fully to liberation and realized it. Who knows, it may have been one of these bandits-turned-monks who passed on the last words of Venerable Adhimutta.

III. A Cloud Does Not Die

Consider our two stories side by side. King Pasenadi, reveling in power, achievement, and pleasure, is shaken at the mere mention of death. Venerable Adhimutta, on the other hand, possessing nothing, being nobody, is so indifferent to death that he gives a dhamma talk to his killers. And he tells them exactly what insight has freed him from fear:

There are no painful mind-states, chieftain, in one without longing… I have no ‘I was,’ no ‘I will be’…

For one who sees, as it actually is, the pure arising of phenomena, the pure seriality of fabrications, there’s no fear.

Adhimuttattheragāthā; Thag 16.1

Death, the Buddha teaches, is not overcome through hopes of a better future life, nor by forced indifference. Death is overcome through insight alone.

As the mind grows sensitive, patiently observing experience, what usually appear as separate phenomena are seen for what they are: impermanent constellations of causes and conditions. The world of “things” reveals itself as a flow of evolving relationships. Nowhere is there an independently existing object, person, or event.

We recognize this same emptiness in our personal experiences. We observe how thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and desires arise in response to causes and conditions. We see there is no owner of these experiences. We see the very sense of being their owner arises due to causes and conditions.

This careful observation – known as meditation – dissolves the delusion of separately existing “things” out there and of a separately existing “self” in here. In fact, the very distinction between “out there” and “in here” is seen through as a delusion.

But if we feel the insight of selflessness to be our own, if we feel like the permanent witness of impermanence, we have not yet attained the insight Venerable Adhimutta speaks of. The final dream we need to wake up from is the dream of waking up. True awakening occurs only upon discovering there is nobody to wake up. As the Buddha says:

Always mindful, Mogharaja, regard the world as empty, having removed any view in terms of self… One who regards the world in this way is not seen by Death’s King.

Mogharajamanavapuccha; Sn 5.15

Once experience is perceived as empty of any self whatsoever, there is nobody to be seen by Death’s King. The insight that frees us from death is the insight that death is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. An illusion.

Now, I can imagine what you’re thinking… Seeing death as an illusion may work for an ascetic dedicated to meditation. But most of us don’t live that life. Most of us return home to our partners, kids, parents, and pets. What good is the no-self teaching when we look those we love in the eyes and know we will someday lose them? Are we to deny the existence of our loved ones? Are we to label our life’s story as an illusion? If this is the price of having no fear of death, is it worth paying?

Remember, the Buddha’s no-self teaching addresses the misperception of existing separately from the world. Because this misperception is so deeply ingrained – and causes so much suffering – the Buddha emphasized the selfless nature of experience. This emphasis has confused some of his followers.

As we’ve seen in previous essays, the Buddha said the existence of the self and the non-existence of the self are equally wrong ways of viewing experience. Both notions are too static to represent the dynamic nature of reality. The Buddha explained reality is not composed of fixed “things” that either exist or not. It is composed of evolving relationships – of causes and conditions that change moment-to-moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh explains this beautifully:

We think that the person we loved came to us from somewhere and has now gone away somewhere. But our true nature is the nature of no coming, no going… When conditions are sufficient, we manifest. When conditions are no longer sufficient, we no longer manifest…

A wave may say… “I have been born and I have to die.”… But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water… Water is free from the birth and death of a wave…

Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. We do not have to go anywhere in order to touch our true nature. The wave does not have to look for water because she is water.

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

Our discussion of death brings us face-to-face with the ultimate nature of reality – with your ultimate nature. The Buddha’s technical term for this is “Dependent Origination”. This is his greatest teaching and I explore it in detail in my most in-depth essay. I invite you to read that to gain a new way of understanding your experience.

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Reality is NOT What You Think – Jiddu Krishnamurti

What if how you view reality is wrong? I don’t mean this abstractly, I mean how you view the world and yourself at this very moment. And if reality is not what you think, what happens when you see it as it is? Can you see reality “as it is”, and what would that even mean?

Many sages, the Buddha first among them, point to delusion as the root cause of human suffering. To explore the mind’s workings and errors is no mere intellectual exercise. It is the key to freedom from suffering; to what we have come to call “liberation”, “awakening”, “enlightenment”.

But here we won’t be focusing on the Buddha’s teachings per se. We will be exploring a fresh formulation of the same insights by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Reading Krishnamurti has transformed my experiencing of life; here I’ll attempt to convey his most powerful teachings.

Since we will be exploring the nature of mind and reality, I invite you to approach this video as a guided meditation or self-inquiry. We will not be investigating some concept or object “out there”, but the nature of your present experience. So, take my words as pointers and test them against what you see as you observe your mind here and now.

Ready?

Let’s begin with a simple visual prompt. What do you see on-screen now?

Your most likely answer is “I am seeing the color red”. Let’s go with that and investigate it.

“I am seeing the color red” is, first of all, a thought, and a sophisticated one. This thought implies the concept of a color and knowledge of what the color red is. It implies, also, an idea of what it means to see something. If you think this is all basic stuff, try explaining it to one born without sight.

Most importantly, the thought “I am seeing the color red” presents experience as composed of a subject (“I”) and an object (“the color red”). This subject-object duality is an axiom of our thinking and talking about reality.

Now, I admit, mine was a leading question. By asking “What are you seeing?”, I more or less dictate how you should answer. But then again, it is not I, but the very structure of language that dictates how we interpret experience. How many ways are there, after all, of asking somebody what they’re seeing?

Language forms as an extension of human thinking, but human thinking also arises as an extension of language. Language is the exterior and thought is the interior of one and the same phenomenon. That is, the mind’s activity of representing reality, what the Buddha calls nama, literally meaning ‘name’.

Nama is the whole complex of mental processes that interprets and represents reality. Nama is when you see this and think ‘I am seeing the color red’. Let’s explore how this naming of experience occurs.

What do you see now?

“A rose,” you will likely think. But is it you who think the thought “rose” or does the thought “rose” think itself? This may be an odd question but consider it for a moment.

Do you review all available names in your mind and pick the most appropriate one for the image on screen? Or does the name “rose” automatically arise as a conditioned response to the image? Can you see this image without automatically recognizing it as a rose?

Let’s try this again with a different image. Now rather than focusing on the image, observe how the mind reacts to it. Don’t force or suppress any reaction, just observe. Ready?

What do you see now?

Observe how the mind receives the image and automatically spits out a name, “chair” – a verbal or conceptual representation stored in memory. Do you find here a thinker who thinks the thought “chair”? Or is there just the algorithm of thought reacting automatically to stimuli?

Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. Even if you don’t manually select every thought, you do observe them all… right? The thinker, perhaps, is the one to whom thoughts appear. Let’s look into that.

Let’s return to our original prompt. What do you see?

The thought appears “I am seeing the color red” – we went over that. But now, who is observing that thought? As a matter of fact, who is seeing this red?

Pay attention now, this is a crucial point.

“It is I who experience, I who think, I who am!” Such is our core existential belief: “I think, therefore I am.” But what does this pronoun “I” refer to?

I can say I am Simeon Mihaylov. I can say I am a person, an individual, a subject, a self… But whatever I say I am, I am only substituting one representation (the pronoun “I”) with another. Now, all these representations, “I”, “self”, “person”, and so on – what are they representations of?

Upon analysis, all representations ultimately represent other representations. This is true about the pronoun “I” as much as it is about the adjective “red” or the noun “rose”. We try to make sense of reality through our thinking and language… But all we ever think is what can be thought, and all we say is what can be said.

What and where is that reality we are supposed to be thinking and speaking about? Is there such a reality? Can we encounter anything that is not the product of thinking and language? Asking this very question is a product of thinking and language….

If there is a “real” reality beyond mental representations, that reality must be, well, unrepresentable. The best we can do, perhaps, is remain silent about it, as Wittgenstein recommends, and accept our existence in a world of representations…

Well, not quite. Enter Jiddu Krishnamurti.

What IS

Krishnamurti asserts there is a reality beyond the naming activity of the mind. What’s more, this reality is immediately available here and now. It is not something you get to through philosophy, meditation, or effort. It is either perceived immediately, or it is not perceived at all.

For obvious reasons, Krishnamurti refers to this reality beyond language with the most ambivalent words. Depending on the context, he calls it “the nameless”, “the real”, “the true”, and so on… Most often, he simply calls it “what is”.

So, what is what is?

The moment we approach this question philosophically, logically, symbolically, or by using any other function of thought, we’re back in the virtual reality of representations. Even to say reality is unspeakable is still to speak about it, to think it is unthinkable is to think about it, and to imagine it as unimaginable is still to imagine it.

Every movement of the mind, no matter how subtle, creates ripples of representations. These overlay what is with the conditioned activity of the mind, and we end up caught up in that activity.

Krishnamurti says:

You may know the name of that flower, but do you thereby experience the flower? Experiencing comes first, and the naming only gives strength to the experience. The naming prevents further experiencing.

For the state of experiencing, must there not be freedom from naming, from association, from the process of memory?

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

The mind then must be still for what is to be perceived. But how is this to occur? When asked “How can one go beyond thought?”, Krishnamurti replies:

One cannot go beyond thought, for the “one”, the maker of effort, is the result of thought… There is no ending of thought through compulsion, through discipline…

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

The key to the stillness of the mind, Krishnamurti insists, is to not try to still the mind. Any attempt to end thought would only be the production of thought on a different level. Trying to think your way into what is is like trying to speak silence. You can say the word “silence”, but that is not silence; it is only a representation. The only way to “speak” silence is to not speak at all. Krishnamurti writes:

The mind cannot think about something which is not of itself; it cannot think of the unknown… There is no relationship between this imponderable silence and the activity of the mind…

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

If the thinking mind cannot experience what is, how then is what is to be perceived? Krishnamurti uses a striking metaphor to answer this question. He uses the image of “the flame” and “the smoke”.

By “the flame”, Krishnamurti refers to what is, the spontaneous, unrepresented state of Experiencing. By “the smoke”, he refers to the mind’s automatic representation of Experience.

Imagine looking at a sunset. Before your mind labels it as ‘beautiful’ or ‘orange sky’, there’s just pure seeing—the flame. But the moment you think about it, compare it to past sunsets, or try to describe it, the flame has become smoke.

“The flame” is always now. “The smoke”, whether representing past, present, or future, always relies on past impressions, on memory and conditioning. Hence, “the smoke” is always of the past. In fact, “past”, “present”, and “future”, exist only as categories of “the smoke”, only as representations. Time itself is an idea formed in “the smoke”. “The flame” is free of all reference to time. “The flame” simply is.

Before this gets too abstract, let’s bring it to our actual experience. Let’s return to our meditation objects.

Now keep your eyes on the screen and observe the mind’s production of names, images, associations… Do not pursue or push away any of these; simply observe. This is “the smoke”.

What’s more, the moment you recognize mental activity as “the smoke”, that’s just more mental activity, more smoke… Thought analyzing itself only creates more thought. We cannot dispel the smoke by blowing more smoke into it, so, again, how is the flame to arise?

Krishnamurti replies:

Find out; observe the smoke silently and patiently. You cannot dispel the smoke, for you are the smoke. As the smoke goes, the flame will come…

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

So, “observe the smoke silently and patiently”. Krishnamurti often calls this “choiceless awareness”, that is, awareness free of preference, free of desire. This, he maintains, is what clears the smoke, what stills the mind and allows for “the flame” to arise.

We’ve seen how thoughts arise automatically and how the sense of being the thinker or observer of these thoughts is also an automatic thought. To really understand what Krishnamurti means by “choiceless awareness”, and why it is the key to experiencing what is, we must explore the mind deeper. We must see what lies beneath thought.

Imagine the mind as an ocean. The surface of this ocean is constantly in motion, forming waves. This restless surface is the thinking mind with its representations. As Krishnamurti says:

The upper mind is only an instrument of communication…

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

But what’s behind this instrument? We’ve seen you cannot be the one producing thoughts, as you are just another thought. What then produces them? This is an existential question, you see, as the answer to it will tell us what creates the thought “I” – what creates you.

A stone, for all we know, doesn’t think thoughts. Why have we, humans, evolved the thinking function? Krishnamurti’s answer to this agrees with what the Buddha taught some 2500 years ago. That is, sensation leads to desire, desire leads to attachment, and attachment leads to the arising of thought (and hence, of the thinker). Thought has evolved with the purpose of acquiring and prolonging pleasant sensations while avoiding unpleasant ones. It has evolved as an instrument of desire. This is a lot to take in, so let’s go over it slowly…

A stone, for all we know, has no sensory experience. Whether you caress the stone or crush it to bits, it makes no difference to it. Not so with humans. Our nervous system and sense organs allow for all kinds of sensations to arise. These sensations feel either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral in degrees that run between bliss at one end and agony at the other.

Naturally, the organism seeks to acquire bliss and avoid agony. But this is a herculean task, as there is an infinite array of experiences you can have, and agony is always one slip away.

So, what does the organism do to increase its chances of bliss? It learns to remember what experiences bring pleasure and what bring pain. It develops memory. But to remember something is to store a mental image of it. Thus arises the representing function. The representing mind has to further differentiate between cause and effect – and so time develops as a category of thinking. Past, present, and future.

Finally, to make sense of its ever-changing perceptions, the mind develops the image of an unchanging entity separate from perceptions: the self. The entire process of thinking begins to orbit around this one image, what Jung calls the “ego complex”. Thus arises the sense of being an experiencer separate from experience, a thinker separate from thought.

This whole structure of the upper mind arises from the drive to move toward bliss and away from agony. Thought arises as an instrument of desire.

Let’s now return to our ocean simile. Beneath the waves on the surface, our thoughts, there is the undercurrent of desire. This undercurrent is what produces the surface activity of the mind with all its representations, including the ego, thought’s representation of itself. Krishnamurti writes:

We name not only to communicate, but also to give continuity and substance to an experience, to revive it and to repeat its sensations…

[C]onsciousness is a process of naming or terming Experience, and then storing or recording it. It is this process that gives nourishment and strength to the illusory entity, the experiencer as distinct and separate from the experience… Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency; for thoughts are always impermanent…

[What is] can come only with the absence of the desire for sensation; the naming, the terming must cease.

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

So, it is not resistance to thought that stills the mind, as resistance is just a negative expression of desire and thus produces more thought. Thinking ends only with the cessation of desire.

But actually, why should we end desire, and hence thought? Isn’t it, after all, completely natural to pursue joy and avoid suffering? And isn’t it just as natural to think about how to do so?

Of course, we would think desire is natural. Thought arises as a function of desire and a dog won’t bite the hand that feeds it. But more importantly, there is a blindspot in our thinking, an obvious and common-sense fact the mind overlooks. It is this fact the Buddha points to when he explains why desire is the root cause of suffering. And that fact is: impermanence.

Every source of joy we find in the world is on a trajectory of decay. Every pleasure, subtle or ecstatic, wholesome or decadent, passes before we know it. We ourselves are a stream of constantly changing perceptions. The mind tries to mask its own impermanence with the “self” construct, but soon enough the mind disintegrates, and so too does the imagined “self”. As Phra Khantipalo writes:

All compounds break down, all made things fall to pieces, all conditioned things pass away with the passing of those conditions… And we, living in the forest of desires, are entirely composed of the impermanent. Yet our desire impels us not to see this, though impermanence stares us in the face from every single thing around.

Phra Khantipalo, A Walk in the Woods

It is not in the best interest of desire to face its own futility and so it steers the mind away from reflecting on impermanence. Hence, we keep stumbling from one disappointment into another, seeking bliss in experiences, objects, and people that are forever changing, forever decaying and disappearing. You see now why freedom from desire is freedom from ignorance and suffering.

So, back to the question: How do we end desire? The answer both Krishnamurti and the Buddha give us, 2500 years apart, is the same: We don’t end desire. Desire simply fades as the clear recognition of its futility emerges. Desire is ignorance of the nature of reality; and just as light dispels darkness, so too insight dispels ignorance. The truth sets us free. Krishnamurti writes:

Awareness of the false as the false is the freedom of truth.

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

And the Buddha, centuries earlier, says:

Ignorance is the one thing with whose abandoning ignorance is abandoned and clear knowing arises.

Avijja Sutta; SN 35.80

These may sound like circular statements, but that’s exactly their point. There is no special technique through which insight arises. See the false as false. See the ignorance of ignorance. It is this simple to be free of desire and delusion… But oh, how difficult a thing the simple is!

Now we may better understand what Krishnamurti calls “choiceless awareness”. To be free of desire doesn’t mean to resist desire or to distract yourself from it. It doesn’t mean to think yourself out of desire with philosophy and logic. Freedom comes only with the awareness of desire as it arises, as it persists, and as it dissolves.

Let me now complete my imperfect simile. If the mind is an ocean, the restless water surface is the upper, thinking layer of the mind. This conscious activity is driven by the unconscious desire for bliss, the undercurrent beneath the waves. But if we sink deeper, we find the ocean bottom, the still, immovable foundation upon which everything rests. This base of the mind is what Krishnamurti calls “choiceless awareness”. It is the ever-present fact of aware experiencing here and now.

If the mind consisted only of desire and thought, there would be no escape from suffering and ignorance. But prior to thought and desire, there is the mind’s bedrock of pure experiencing. “Choiceless awareness” is not some mystical or transcendent reality. It is also not something you can see or experience, as it is the very fact of seeing and experiencing – here and now. Krishnamurti writes:

The mind and what is are not two separate processes, but naming separates them. When this naming ceases, there is a direct relationship…

Then the mind is only the state of experiencing, in which the experiencer and the experienced are not…

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

“Choiceless awareness” and what is are not two separate things. The former is not a technique for getting the latter. As Krishnamurti writes:

Nothing is essential for stillness but stillness itself… There are no means to silence; silence is when noise is not… See the truth of this, and there is silence.

J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living Series I

But if experiencing reality beyond thought is so simple and available, why is it so difficult for us? Well, it is difficult because it is so simple and available. It is too simple for understanding to understand, and too available for desire to desire.

What is is not something you can acquire and get pleasure from. In fact, when it is, you are not. Choiceless awareness is not a skill you can impress your friends with, nor is it an exciting experience. It does not make you rich, smart, good-looking, or famous.

About the only thing it does do is end ignorance and suffering. But we will justify our ignorance and suffering a million times before we’ve had enough of them.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Buddha, and Christ

Remember, all I’ve said here about what is, and all Krishnamurti, the Buddha, and others have said about it, is not what is.

Directly experiencing reality beyond our thoughts and desires happens only when… well, when we experience it directly. It is not something one person can give to another. What is can be pointed to, but all directions to it, if taken literally, are misdirections.

Humanity’s great teachers find fresh ways of guiding us to what is, but our instinct is to latch onto the guidance, the teaching, rather than pick up our cross and see what only our own eyes can show us.

When Christ proclaimed, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’ (John 14:6), I don’t think he was referring to himself as a historical individual. I think he was referring to the eternal way, truth, and life, which is to be found in the immediate “I am”. Breaking all rules of thought and language, Christ identified himself with that timeless reality, saying:

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

John 8:58

This is a revelation each one of us must arrive at by ourselves. The Buddha instructed his disciples on his deathbed:

Be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.

Maha-parinibbana Sutta; DN 16

Notice here how the Buddha equates being your own island with having the Dhamma (“the Way”) as an island. Like Christ, he is articulating that highest realization where there is no distinction between I and what is.

And how is one to experience this highest realization? The Buddha gives the same guidance as what Krishnamurti calls “choiceless awareness”. He says:

When he dwells contemplating the body in the body, … feelings in feelings, the mind in the mind, and mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world, then, truly, he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; having the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge.

Maha-parinibbana Sutta; DN 16

To see how the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart presents these same insights, I invite you to my video where I explore this at lentgh.

Thank you for reading and remember: what you seek is seeking you.

See you next time,

Simeon

Each of us is a battleground where light and darkness meet. But these two forces, so opposed, come from the same womb. They are siblings who either thrive together or perish in mutual destruction. The quality and depth of our lives hang on our ability to bring peace to the battleground and unite what has been torn apart – ourselves.

By ‘shadow’, Carl Jung termed everything we don’t want to admit is within us. It contains our nasty, ugly, immature traits that we hide from others – and from ourselves. But the shadow also holds our forgotten talents, buried dreams, and imprisoned energy.

Recognizing our shadow and how we repress it is key to inner growth. And by integrating the shadow into our personality, we tap into unsuspected reserves of peace, vitality, and understanding.

The 3 Steps of Shadow Integration

After reading about 50 authors on shadow work, I put together this short 3-step guide. The information here should be useful whether you’re just starting your shadow journey or have been on the road for a while.

Jung writes:

[Integrating the shadow] consists solely in an attitude.

First of all one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow.

Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions.

Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable.

C.G. Jung, personal letter from 1937

Here we will follow Jung’s 3-step model. In Part I, we will look at what the shadow is and how it forms. In Part II, we will explore the ego-shadow relationship and its main pitfalls. Part III outlines the stages of shadow integration. And in closing, we’ll look at how shadow work can transform our lives.

So, let us descend.

I. What is the Shadow?

… the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

When we are born, we arrive with all the mysterious, contradictory energies of life within us. These energies are the inheritance of our ancestors and eons of evolution. They come with the territory of life as a human being.

Wordsworth writes:

trailing clouds of glory do we come

William Wordsworth, Ode on Intimations of Immortality…

Our parents, however, want only some parts of the glory. They teach us to, say, stop fidgeting, be quiet, stop touching ourselves, to not get into fights, to not ask silly questions… Whatever the case, they encourage some parts of us and punish the rest. This is all necessary, of course, it’s their job. As we grow, our friends take over, then our teachers, colleagues, etc.

Being within society means learning what parts of ourselves we are allowed to express and how we are allowed to express them.

This learning begins long before we are self-aware or can think critically. So, when Mom and Dad say some part of us is bad, we take their word for it. Wanting their love, we chisel out of ourselves everything they don’t approve of.

Over time, we sculpt ourselves into the image our parents, friends, and society have taught us is good. This image is the masterwork of early life, the ego. Each one of us makes one, if all goes well, and we are so enamoured with it, we take it to be ourselves. All the pieces we have chiseled out, the ‘bad bits’, we lock in the basement and throw away the key.

Decades later, if ever, we discover that while we’ve been sculpting the ego, we have also created something else. We have crafted the ego’s inverted image, the shadow. This complementary opposite contains all feelings, thoughts, and desires we have tried to banish from our psyche.

Abrams and Zweig write:

The ego and the shadow … develop in tandem, creating each other out of the same life experience.

Jeremiah Abrams & Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow

Like yin and yang, ego and shadow complement each other through contrast. Their very opposition to one another is what unites them as inseparable parts of one and the same whole – our psyche.

Note here, what happens on the individual level also occurs collectively. It is not just people that develop shadows, but also families, countries, and our entire species. The collective also tends to identify with certain values while repressing their complementary opposites. Movements such as the Enlightenment, feminism, and climate activism are attempts at redeeming repressed values from the collective shadow.

But let’s stay focused on the individual. Things get even more interesting once the ego and the shadow have fully formed. Let’s explore their evolving relationship.

II. What Does the Shadow Want?

The shadow … becomes pathological only when we assume that we do not have it; because then it has us.

Edward C. Whitmont, The Evolution of The Shadow

The ego becomes the focal point of everyday consciousness, the main character of our psychic drama. It takes on the role of our true self and is terribly convincing at it, too. Let me demonstrate with a question.

Why are you reading this essay right now? What do you hope to gain from it?

Whatever your answer, observe it. This is the ego speaking. So what about the shadow?

Think about your hidden jealousies, sexual fantasies, your desires to dominate, to have the last laugh… Now, I’m sure you’re a wonderful person, but I am also sure you have plenty of those. We all do.

Just the thought of these lowly sentiments can make us uncomfortable. This is a taste of the energy trapped inside them. And energy only ever wants one thing: release.

Most of what we learn to repress are primitive impulses. Sexuality and violence top the list here. But we also learn to repress healthy traits. In some families, it is creativity that gets punished, or curiosity, or anger, or even affection.

A friend once told me she couldn’t remember a single time when her mother embraced her. Think about that for a minute.

Whatever the case, as we repress the unwanted parts of ourselves, we also trap the energy within them. This energy accumulates and is always ready to burst out into the open. Let’s look at how this affects our lives.

In vino veritas, say the ancients, ‘in wine lies the truth’. When we are drunk, be it on wine, anger, lust, or intense emotion, the ego loses its grip. We then end up saying and doing things we never would otherwise. Once our episode is over, the ego returns to clean up the mess. ‘I don’t know what came over me’, we say, or ‘I didn’t mean it’. But something within us did mean exactly what we did and said. That something is the shadow.

Shadow outbursts can be destructive, leading to reckless or even criminal behavior. But they can also reveal hidden strengths, like courage and vitality we didn’t know we had. Think of a kid who’s finally had enough and stands up to her bullies. She may get beaten up, but she may also see there’s more to her than a quiet girl. This could serve her for a lifetime.

Another way shadow energy escapes is through the unconscious mechanism of projection. Projection is when we see the disowned parts of ourselves in others, reacting to those traits without realizing why. Here’s an example.

Say my parents teach me sex is shameful. To earn their love, I repress all my sexual thoughts and urges. All that wild, primal energy goes into the basement.

When I grow up, this energy will be simmering under the surface of consciousness. My fight against my impulses may lead to depression, anxiety, perhaps even physical illness. I could try to cure these symptoms in myriad ways. I may take up journaling, exercise, or a spiritual practice. I may seek escape in work, drink, ideology, religion…

As Jung wrote:

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.

C.G. Jung

And here comes projection…

In society, I’ll meet people who haven’t repressed their sexuality. (They will have repressed something else, of course, but that’s another matter.) The ego will recognize these people as threats, and its defenses will flare up. Fear and aversion to my repressed impulses will now have an external target.

I will begin to see sexually relaxed people as inappropriate, dirty, perverted – dangerous, even. And the more I condemn their depravity, the more self-righteous I will feel. This is what makes projection so dangerous. It gives us the sweetest fruit – a clean conscience – but at a steep price: hatred for others.

The more I repress my shadow, the more elaborate will my projection be. I will have imaginary arguments with those I can’t stand, I will brood on their downfall, I’ll badmouth them in front of others…

Just as individuals project their shadows, entire groups can scapegoat others for qualities they can’t accept within themselves. This can escalate from intolerance to outright violence. The Inquisition, terrorism, and the Holocaust are textbook examples of this. So too are many present-day events, unfortunately.

Now, not every time we dislike somebody are we projecting our shadow. Negative reactions to certain people and behaviors are natural – and necessary. It is important to tell these apart from projection.

Reflect on how many people in your life have some negative traits. Chances are, all do. And yet, this is usually not a problem. The flaws of our close ones even endear them to us further. If they do cross a line, we react in the moment and then forget about it.

Projection, however, is marked by intolerance, exaggeration, and fixation. Whenever we find ourselves unable to stand somebody, chances are, they are living out our own repressed feelings.

At university, I used to be frustrated with a guy from my course for being such a know-it-all. It took me months to notice just how hard I was trying to appear smart to my professors. Suddenly, my annoyance at the guy turned into compassion. I recognized in him my own painful insecurities.

So, take a minute to reflect on this. Is there anyone you can’t stand? If so, what does that tell you about yourself?

Analyst Edward Whitmont writes:

[O]nly that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others.

Edward C. Whitmont, The Evolution of The Shadow

The key danger of projection is we’re unaware of it when it occurs. We have to be unaware of it for it to occur. Our mind has evolved to hallucinate external enemies that distract it from the real enemy within. Ourselves.

Today, we have a tool for putting an end to all enemies, internal and external alike. The world’s atomic arsenal. We may resort to this final solution if we don’t learn how to heal our psyches. To heal is to see the enemy outside is really within – and the enemy within is no enemy at all.

III. Integrating the Shadow

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Jesus Christ, Gospel of Thomas 70

How, then, does healing the split in the psyche look like? Let us begin with a reminder by the great psychologist James Hillman:

I use the term “cure of the shadow” to emphasize the importance of love.

If we approach ourselves to cure ourselves, putting “me” in the center, it too often degenerates into the aim of curing the ego—getting stronger, better, growing in accord with the ego’s goals, which are often mechanical copies of society’s goals.

But if we approach ourselves to cure [the shadow], we come up against the need for a new way of being altogether…

James Hillman, The Cure of The Shadow

Let’s see what this ‘new way of being’ consists of…

Recognition

The first step, as Jung says, is recognition. This may sound like a simple matter, but in fact it requires the utmost courage, vulnerability, and goodwill. Recognition means taking an unflinching look at everything petty, nasty, and immature in yourself. It means giving up the urge to deny, explain away, or blame. It means allowing the idealized self-image to die. And since you’ve always identified with that image, you experience that as your own death.

So here comes the first discovery. The self-image is dead, but you are still here. This means there is more to you than you realize. As Davies writes:

One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.

Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

Listening

Step two is listening. Once the shock of encountering our shadow passes, we must descend further. And we must bring offerings of humility, patience, and compassion. Knowledge of the shadow is not enough. We must cultivate a true understanding of our repressed thoughts and feelings. This we do by paying careful, unprejudiced attention to them. That is, we approach them with love.

Bly writes:

Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.

Robert Bly, The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us

The idea of loving our shameful impulses may sound absurd, even dangerous. But love is exactly what arises once we drop our judgment and let the shadow tell its story. The monster we thought we would find turns out to be a wounded child who was never allowed outside, never nurtured, never even looked at. Most importantly, nobody ever taught that child how to express their impulses. They were ever only punished.

Here comes the second discovery. What we thought was evil, turns out to be pain; what we thought wanted to destroy, in fact, only wants to be heard, to be seen… to be loved.

The third step of shadow integration is the most dangerous and is an art much more than a science. This final step, negotiation, is the beginning of true psychological maturity.

Negotiation

To negotiate with the shadow, we must reintroduce the ego. Having done so much shadow work already, we will find our ego has undergone a quiet transformation. And no, it will not have lost its power, quite the contrary.

Sanford says:

The ego is not really diminished in the process of integration; it simply becomes less rigid in its boundaries.

There’s a tremendous difference between a strong ego and an egocentric ego; the latter is always weak. Individuation, the attainment of one’s real potential, can’t take place without the strong ego…

John Sanford, What the Shadow Knows

So, shadow work makes the ego stronger but less egocentric. What does this mean?

The immature ego believes itself to be all of the psyche. It is the Charlie Sheen of Two and a Half Men or the Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. Such an ego recognizes no psychic authority other than itself and represses whatever it cannot control. This gives off the impression of strength but also generates endless internal conflict.

The mature ego, on the other hand, has recognized the other inhabitants of the psyche. This enables it to work with the rest of the psyche, rather than against it. So, the mature ego is a conscious, democratic leader who can rally unconscious drives to a common cause. This is its strength.

Shadow integration takes a strong ego able to stand its ground but also respect the unconscious. It takes a negotiating ego. Von Franz writes:

[The shadow] is exactly like any human being with whom one has to get along, sometimes by giving in, sometimes by resisting, sometimes by giving love—whatever the situation requires.

The shadow becomes hostile only when he [or she] is ignored or misunderstood.

Marie-Louise von Franz, The Realization of the Shadow in Dreams

Negotiation means establishing boundaries, making pacts, and dividing up the loot. This is what ego and shadow must learn to do in the last phase of integration. Whitmont writes:

The shadow has to have its place of legitimate expression somehow, sometime, somewhere.

By confronting it we have a choice of when, how and where we may allow expression to its tendencies in a constructive context.

Edward C. Whitmont, The Evolution of The Shadow

So, instead of having an affair, we spice up our relationship. Instead of getting into drunk fights, we become more assertive at work and at home.

Things, however, are rarely this simple. In this advanced stage of shadow work, giving our dark impulses too much credit is just as easy as it once was to repress them. But the thoughtless surrender of the ego must not be mistaken for integration. Liliane Frey-Rohn warns:

A message from the unconscious is not [automatically] the voice of God. It is always necessary to question whether the author of the message is God or the Devil.

Liliane Frey-Rohn, How to Deal with Evil

Integration, then, must be a balancing act between ego and shadow, where both get heard and both make compromises. There are no fixed rules for this, and one always learns the way by trial and error. Shadow integration is a rough journey, and part of it is accepting you will get hurt and you will hurt others on the way too. Whitmont writes:

[W]hen it is not possible to restrain the [shadow’s] negative side we may cushion its effect by a conscious effort to add a mitigating element or at least an apology.

Where we cannot or must not refrain from hurting we may at least try to do it kindly and be ready to bear the consequences.

Edward C. Whitmont, The Evolution of The Shadow

Integrating the shadow is a volatile process; success is never guaranteed, and collateral damage is inevitable. It is difficult to reconcile this work with spiritual ideals such as non-violence, non-attachment, and compassion. But sometimes these very ideals become the obstacles to our embracing life and ourselves as we are. Sometimes, the ideal of love becomes the obstacle to love.

There is one final key to integration. This will sound either absurd or obvious to you, depending on your shadow-work experience. And the key is: You (the ego reading this essay) must and will fail at integration.

The Buddha failed as an ascetic. Jesus died on the Cross. What do these stories tell us? Only the death of the ego ideal in earnest service to the psyche can yield transformation. And this transformation will not be achieved by the ego. It will arise from the psyche’s hidden reserves of wisdom as a response to the ego’s sacrifice.

Frey-Rohn writes:

If a person is successful in detaching himself from identification with specific opposites, he can often see, to his own astonishment, how nature intervenes to help him.

Everything depends upon the individual’s attitude. The freer he can keep himself of hard and fast principles and the readier he is to sacrifice his ego-will, the better are his chances of being emotionally grasped by something greater than himself.

He will then experience an inner liberation, a condition—to use Nietzsche’s phrase—“beyond good and evil.”

Liliane Frey-Rohn, How to Deal with Evil

Shadow work is genuine only when we are walking the path of love. This path alone, the path of surrendering our ideals, expectations, and desires, the path of vulnerability, openness, and acceptance, only this path yields true transformation.

IV. The Fruits of Shadow Work

Something we were withholding made us weak, Until we found it was ourselves.

Robert Frost, The Gift Outright

In closing, let’s consider why the difficult journey of shadow work is worth the trouble. Therapist and meditation teacher Connie Zweig writes:

My mother pointed out some twenty years ago, in the height of my spiritual grandiosity, that I was good at loving humanity but not so good at loving individual human beings.

With the gradual acceptance of the darker impulses within me, I feel a more genuine compassion growing in my soul. To be an ordinary human being, full of longing and contradiction, was once anathema to me. Today it is extraordinary.

Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow

Contrary to our fears, shadow integration makes us more compassionate, patient, and understanding, both towards ourselves and others. Being intimate with your darkness makes you less likely to blame it on others, or to shame others for their own.

But that’s not all. The shadow, remember, is a storehouse. Depending on what we’ve exiled there, it may hold our sexuality, creativity, assertiveness, sensitivity, or any other vital trait.

Sooner or later, we get stuck in life, and no amount of effort seems to move us forward. In such cases, life often requires of us something we have unconsciously denied ourselves. We may then retreat into quiet desperation… or face our shadow and reclaim our lost treasures.

By redeeming, healing, and empowering the shadow, we become redeemed, healed, and empowered by it. This process is a universal stage of human development. How consciously we go through it decides how much further we will be able to grow.

This brings me to my final point. Consider the following:

[I]n a showdown, God is always on the side of the shadow, not the ego.

Fritz Künkel, as quoted by D. Patrick Miller

The confrontation of one’s own evil can be a mortifying deathlike experience; but like death it points beyond the personal meaning of existence.

Edward C. Whitmont, The Evolution of The Shadow

[The shadow] is the keeper of the gate, the guardian of the threshold. The way to the self lies through him…

Erich Neumann, as quoted by Jeremiah Abrams & Connie Zweig

These authors suggest that shadow integration does more than heal our personal psyche. It brings us into deeper dimensions of the mind, beyond our individual lives. Into what Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’.

While it begins as personal therapy, shadow work evolves into something much greater. Gradually, it gives us a new perspective on our existence, on the timeless patterns of human life, and on the universals of good and evil, self and other, life and death.

For all the trials that shadow work entails, it is only the entry point into much deeper realms of experience and understanding.

To learn a powerful shadow work technique, join as a patron and access my exclusive video on Ken Wilber’s shadow exercise.

‘Santa Claus can’t possibly be real! There’s no way an oversized old man sneaks into our home on Christmas Eve—we don’t even have a chimney!’

Such were the hard words of 10-year-old Alexy when his mom and I recently mentioned Christmas. Halfway through my awkward attempt at a reply, Alexy interrupted with an even deadlier blow. He said:

‘Santa Claus is a fiction made up by parents to control their children!’

‘Wow there, Karl Marx!’ I thought, but of course didn’t say it out loud.

Our conversation conveniently got interrupted. Alexy walked away feeling initiated into the dull realities of life. A bittersweet victory indeed. I walked away feeling I had failed to point to what lies beyond life’s dull realities. But I was not ready to capitulate.

This essay is my public reply to Alexy’s central thesis, that is, and forgive me for quoting it in full, that:

Santa Claus isn’t real. Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

Alexy Yankov

Carl Jung & Buddha On The Nature Of Reality

Now, it’s beyond me to address this ontological claim on my own. So, I went searching through the writings of great minds East and West for wisdom that may save Alexy’s Christmas. I found what I was looking for in the teachings of two of the world’s greatest psychologists: Carl Jung and Siddhartha Gautama (also known as the Buddha).

I knew from the start Alexy’s thesis does not hinge on the specifics of Santa Claus. Anyone can look up the Saint Nikolaus origin story and the Coca-Cola commercialization of Santa. These are all surface details. The question of Santa Claus’ reality hinges on something much more fundamental. That is, the nature of what we call ‘reality’ and ‘existence’.

So, join me on this ontological quest to save Santa and help Alexy rediscover the magic of Christmas. I present to you my defense of the reality of Santa Claus.

I. Carl Jung on ‘Actuality’

It may seem odd that Jung, a psychologist, should have anything to say about the nature of reality. Isn’t psychology concerned with what goes on inside our heads? How can this have anything to do with the real world outside?

Well, it is this very distinction between the world outside and what is in our heads that Jung rejects. He writes:

Reality contains everything I can know, for everything that acts upon me is real and actual. If it does not act upon me, then I notice nothing and can, therefore, know nothing about it.

C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, V The Real and the Sureal

Jung rejects hardline distinctions between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, ‘true’ and ‘imagined’. He rather sees all phenomena that appear in the psyche as equally ‘actual’. It is only things that do not appear, and hence do not act upon my psyche that are not actual for me.

This seemingly trivial point can change our entire experience of reality should we pause to consider it.

Have you ever felt moved by a story, dream, or song? Has a book, movie, or belief ever changed how you see the world? If so, these things were ‘actual’ for you—even if you couldn’t touch them.

Trusting the Senses

Here Alexy will retort: ‘I get where you’re going with this. You’re going to say Santa is actual because he makes kids behave before Christmas. But this doesn’t make him any different from a lie kids are made to believe in! I don’t care about ‘actual’ lies, I care about real things you can see and touch! And Santa Claus is not that.’

Alexy’s got a point here. What is the difference, after all, between something the senses can’t verify and a lie?

Let me respond with another quotation from Jung:

[C]onsciousness has no direct relation to any material objects. We perceive nothing but images, transmitted to us indirectly by a complicated nervous apparatus. Between the nerve-endings of the sense-organs and the image that appears in consciousness, there is interpolated an unconscious process which transforms the physical fact of light, for example, into the psychic image “light.” …

[W]hat appears to us as immediate reality consists of carefully processed images … we live immediately only in a world of images…

Far, therefore, from being a material world, this is a psychic world… The psychic alone has immediate reality, and this includes all forms of the psychic, even “unreal” ideas and thoughts which refer to nothing “external.”

C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, V The Real and the Sureal

In short, there is no experience we can have that is not conditioned by the structure of our human body-mind. Even raw sense perception, even your seeing these words now, is the construct of countless unconscious algorithms operating in the psycho-physical system that is you.

The Actuality of All Experience

Distinctions such as physical and psychological, external and internal, fact and fiction, are only valid as conventions. In truth, these are all equally actual in our experience of reality. And the degree to which a phenomenon appears to the senses does not always correspond to the degree to which it acts upon us.

For example, if somebody throws a stone at you, your physical experience will be intense and it may take you weeks to recover from the injury. But if, on the other hand, the wrong person tells you the wrong words at the wrong time, you may be crippled for a lifetime. Words and their meaning are entirely non-physical, and yet they can act on people more powerfully than any physical experience. The tongue is, indeed, mightier than the sword.

So, think of a kid who spends weeks anticipating Santa’s arrival. She writes him a letter, decorates the Christmas tree, and leaves behind treats for him. Can we deny Santa’s actuality for her? What’s more, Santa influences not only her behaviour, but also that of her family, her city – her entire culture even. How actual is that!

But Alexy will not be swayed so quickly. He will say: ‘So the monster under my bed is just my imagination, but Santa is real because we believe in him? That’s a double standard!’

Now I’m in a tight spot… If I submit to a materialistic view of existence, I will rid Alexy of the monster under his bed, but I’ll also dull his senses to the subtler dimensions of reality. If, on the other hand, I propose a more inclusive view, every horror Alexy imagines in the dark will gain substance. What should I do?

Well, let’s go to another one of my great teachers, who is particularly good at finding the Middle Way between opposites. The Buddha.

II. The Buddha on Dependent Arising

The Buddha says:

[F]or one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world.

And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Kaccayanagotta Sutta; SN 12.15

Like how Jung rejects the real/unreal dichotomy, the Buddha rejects the distinction between existence and non-existence. Rather, whatever we say ‘exists’ is really the temporary result of causes and conditions; whatever we say ‘does not exist’ is simply the missing result of missing causes and conditions.

The Dependent Arising of All Phenomena

When we look around we see people, dogs, trees, the sky… but these are all low-resolution snapshots of reality. Our distracted minds cannot perceive the world at higher fidelity. Should you train the mind, the Buddha says, you see what you thought were different phenomena is really one interconnected flow of causes and conditions.

‘Great,’ Alexy will say, ‘more complicated philosophy words… What has this got to do with Santa Claus?’

Well, Santa is what the Buddha would call a dependently-arisen entity. The stories about St. Nicholas, Moore’s poem, Nast’s illustration, Coca-Cola’s marketing, and our celebration of Christmas are all causes and conditions for the arising of Santa Claus. We cannot say Santa does not exist.

‘Aha!’ says Alexy, ‘So he isn’t real after all! He’s just a made-up character we pretend is real. There, you said it!’

But no, the Buddha’s point is that everything in life is a dependently-arisen phenomenon, including (and most importantly) ourselves. The existence of Simeon, of Barney the dog, and even of Alexy, are all temporary phases of the causal continuum. This continuum is the chain of causes and conditions that connects all of spacetime.

The Buddha’s Non-Self Teaching

Our own existence is just as dependent on causes and conditions as Santa’s. Only, the causes and conditions that produce him are different to those that produce us, and so his existence is qualitatively different, but the same in essence. Just like steam and ice are both made of H₂O molecules, so too Santa and Barney are both made of causes and conditions, even if you can only touch one and not the other.

‘Okay…’ Alexy says, with a hint of existential dread in his voice, ‘but what about the monster under my bed? Does the Buddha say it too is as real as Barney?’

Well, as long as you believe in and fear that monster, it is ‘actual’ for you, as Jung says. The Buddha would say the monster acts as a cause and condition for how you feel, what you think, and how you act; in this sense, we cannot say it does not exist.

However, the Buddha would point out the activity of your own mind is the main cause and condition for the arising of the monster. The reason why your mom and I don’t see the monster is that our minds do not generate it; hence, it is not actual for us, we cannot say it exists. So, should you train your mind to not generate monsters in the dark, you will remove the main cause and condition for these monsters’ arising. As the Buddha says:

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhayasutta; SN 12.41

Why Believe?

So, both the monster and Santa arise due to causes and conditions in our minds. Here Alexy will ask: ‘Why should we train the mind to not believe in monsters, but encourage it to believe in Santa? Why have these double standards?’

Well, here I must drop all intellectualizing and give my human-all-too-human reply.

We encourage our minds to generate Santa because this makes us happy. By rekindling the Christmas spirit in ourselves each year, we feed the causal process that sustains Santa. In turn, Santa becomes actual for us and helps us let go of our daily strivings and enjoy time with our loved ones. By honoring Santa we allow what he embodies to enter into our lived experience and gain actuality. And what he embodies are things like generosity, joy, connection – love…

Yes, the Buddha could say here that even Santa must be let go of for the mind to perceive the true emptiness of the world. But I don’t think he would say this. I imagine he would be wearing a red hat, in fact. Each insight on the path of wisdom must come at its proper time and not a moment sooner. The Buddha always paced his teachings according to his audience.

So, enjoy your Christmas everyone, and remember: what you seek is seeking you.

See you next time

Among all the Buddha’s teachings, one stands out as the deepest and most difficult one. One teaching is the beating heart behind every doctrine, scripture, and practice. One insight is the source and destination of Buddhism. Dependent Origination.

The Buddha himself said:

Whoever sees Dependent Origination sees the Dhamma; whoever sees the Dhamma sees Dependent Origination.

Maha-hatthipadopama Sutta; MN 28

Dependent Origination maps the exact steps by which we arrive at suffering – and the steps we can take to become free of suffering forever. This teaching is the key to understanding not only our lives but the entire structure of reality.

Understanding Dependent Origination

At university, my professors only ever mentioned Dependent Origination in passing, without any discussion. Imagine not hearing about the Sun in a course on the Solar System. I found that strange back then… but these days, I see some wisdom in it. There is danger in encountering the teaching without due caution.

The Buddha’s closest disciple, Ānanda, once exclaimed:

It’s amazing, master … how deep this Dependent Origination is, and how deep its appearance, and yet to me it seems as clear as clear can be!

Maha-nidana Sutta; DN 15

But the Buddha reproached him:

Don’t say that, Ānanda … Deep is this Dependent Origination, and deep its appearance. It’s because of not understanding and not penetrating this teaching that this generation … does not go beyond [the rounds of rebirth].

Maha-nidana Sutta; DN 15

We must heed this warning. I invite you to take everything you read in this essay as provisional. The tradition holds only awakened beings can explain Dependent Origination correctly. But while the teaching is difficult, each of us can gain insight from it, should we approach it with humility.

Structure of this Essay

This essay has 4 parts. In Part 1, we’ll explore the principle at the heart of Dependent Origination. In Part 2, we’ll look at the 12 links that map human existence; an ancient Buddhist sutta will be our guide here. Part 3 will explain the logic behind the links and in Part 4, we’ll reflect on how the teaching changes our view of reality and ourselves. And I have left something special for the conclusion as well.

So, let’s make our approach gently. Our journey will take us through virtually everything the Buddha ever taught. By the end, hopefully, we will be one step closer to the insight that liberated the Buddha and put the wheel of the Dhamma in motion.

Part I. The Principle of Dependent Origination

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhayasutta; SN 12.41

All Buddhist teaching is a rephrasing or elaboration of these two lines. This is the formula that’s come to be known as Dependent Origination. And also Interdependent Arising. And Auspicious Coincidence. And Causal Interdependence… and about a dozen other names. In Pāli, it is called Paṭiccasamuppāda.

My point is, the words don’t matter. I invite you to not try to memorise any words or concepts throughout this essay. This will only get in the way of understanding the essence.

Dependent Origination is the Buddha’s insight that the world of experience is not a collection of objects or ‘things’, but a living network of relationships. Imagine a cosmic feedback loop composed of infinitely many smaller feedback loops, all feeding into one another.

Remember, the Buddha discouraged philosophy for philosophy’s sake. He maintained his only occupation was to reveal the nature of suffering and the path to ending suffering. His teaching of Dependent Origination returns always to the human condition and how to free it from endless sorrow.

The 12 Links of Dependent Origination

When we apply Dependent Origination to our life, we get a formula. This formula maps how we live, suffer, and how we can be liberated. The most famous version of this formula contains 12 links. And here they are:

It’s easy to get intimidated at the sight of this. But again, you don’t need to memorize lists, terms, or formulas. It is only vital to understand the principle underneath. The 12 links describe the nature of human experience. They describe you: what you are, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going.

Let me present these links to you with a fascinating early text called Avijjapaccaya Sutta. There, a monk challenges the Buddha’s non-self teaching, to which the Buddha replies with the 12 links of Paṭiccasamuppāda. What follows is a conversation that touches on pretty much every aspect of Buddhist philosophy and shows the underlying unity of it all.

You are about to hear a new framework for understanding your existence. Some of it might sound strange, even absurd at first. But I invite you to give it a chance. You may discover many new insights about the patterns of your life in this bizarre conversation.

Now let’s hear about Paṭiccasamuppāda in the Buddha’s original words.

Part II. The 12 Links Explained (Avijjapaccaya Sutta)

12. Old Age, Death, Suffering

Old age, death, and suffering. These comprise the final link of Dependent Origination. They are what the Buddha’s entire teaching is aimed at freeing us from.

One day, a distraught monk approaches the Buddha and asks him: ‘Master, you teach the non-self, but you also teach liberation from suffering, old age, and death. Now whose suffering, old age, and death are you talking about? And who is it that must get liberated?’

The Buddha answers: ‘‘Whose suffering, aging, and death?’ is not a valid question, monk. Rather, when there is birth as a condition, suffering, aging, and death follow.’

Instead of answering the monk’s question, the Buddha addresses the thinking behind it. The ‘Who’ is replaced by ‘How’. The notion of a self is replaced by the notion of dynamic relationship. Keep this in mind as we continue.

11. Birth

Birth is the 11th link of Paṭiccasamuppāda. When there is birth, there must of necessity be old age, death, and suffering. Later traditions sometimes interpret these links metaphorically as the arising and passing away of mental states. The early suttas, however, take birth and death literally. They ground us in the physical reality of existence and its inevitable sorrow.

The monk presses on: ‘Clearly, master, birth is the condition for death. But isn’t it a self that gets born? Or whose birth do you mean?’

‘‘Whose birth?’’, the Buddha replies, ‘is a misleading question. Rather, birth occurs when there is existence as a condition.’

10. Existence

Existence here refers to the 3 realms of Buddhist cosmology. The sense realm, the form realm, and the formless realm. These are the 3 planes on which karma generates sentient beings. Discussing these realms is a whole different rabbit hole, which we’ll leave for another time. The Buddha’s statement here is again quite matter-of-fact. For birth to occur, the fundamental parameters of existence must be in place. Existence is the 10th link of Dependent Origination.

‘But whose existence do you mean, master?’ the monk asks. ‘I exist while my imaginary brother does not. It is a self that exists or not, isn’t that so?’

The Buddha replies: ‘Your thinking is mistaken, monk. Rather, existence occurs when clinging is present as a condition.’

Here we enter the deep waters. It’s far from obvious why existence should have anything to do with clinging, let alone arise from it. Let’s pause on this strange statement.

9. Clinging

The Buddhist suttas list four kinds of clinging. There is clinging:

1. to sensuality,

2. to views,

3. to rules and practices, and

4. to a self-idea.

This is no random list. It brings out the four ways in which the human body-mind forms attachments.

The Pāli term for clinging, upādāna, literally means ‘fuel’. The suttas compare the unenlightened mind to fire in that it constantly needs fuel to keep going. The four kinds of clinging are the four ways in which deluded mind feeds. Let’s go through these one by one. As we do so, think about what type of clinging is most prevalent in your life.

Clinging to Sensuality

Most obviously, the mind feeds on the senses. Sensual stimulation alleviates, for a time, the mind’s craving for peace, and satisfaction. But this is an unreliable source of nutrition with diminishing returns. Our overstimulated culture, built on content addiction, fast food, and pornography, shows this. Sensual clinging requires ever-increasing doses of pleasure to silence the void inside us we’re avoiding.

Clinging to Views

On a subtler level, deluded mind feeds on views about the nature of the world. Opinions (and their seeming confirmation) can be even more addictive than sensuality. There is no shortage of ascetics abstaining from bodily pleasure only to have replaced it with an addiction to doctrines and narratives. In fact, the Buddha recognizes his own teaching as a potential object of clinging. As long as we are practicing the Dhamma according to opinion rather than direct insight, we are not practicing the Dhamma.

Clinging to Rules & Practices

This brings us to the next kind of clinging, which is the mind feeding on rules and practices. Here, attachment forms around maintaining a particular way of life. This can include our diet, our work routine, our family life, our spiritual practice… This is the mind seeking peace and satisfaction through activities. We seek the sense of being a good boy or a good girl, a productive citizen, living the proper life. Again, this is an attempt to cover up the constant background of stress and sorrow in our lives. And it works temporarily at best.

Clinging to a Self-Idea

The final kind of clinging is so subtle most people never realize it’s there. Attachment to a self-idea is the root and substance of all other kinds of attachment. The idea of being a separate self is the mind’s most treasured nutrient. It gives the mind a sense of shelter, belonging – reality even. It is the master narrative that makes sense of life. Ironically, it is also our key source of suffering.

On a basic level, clinging to a self-idea can be attachment to our social image, what Carl Jung termed ‘persona’. We may identify as a good mother, a faithful husband, a professor, an anarchist, and so on. Our times show we can cling to our gender too. Our bodies, feelings, perceptions, predispositions, and even the fact of our awareness can serve as targets for self-projection.

Clinging to a self-idea is the belief we are some independent entity, a ‘self’ separate from experience, or within experience, or even outside of experience. Mystical notions like the Cosmic Self are, for the Buddha, also forms of clinging. More food for deluded mind.

For more on this, you can check out my comparative video on Jung’s Self archetype and the Buddha’s non-self teaching.

Clinging Conditions Existence

The four kinds of clinging are the mind’s efforts at alleviating stress, suffering, and dissatisfaction. These efforts deserve our compassion, but they must be recognized as futile. The end of sorrow is a noble goal, and the Buddha says it is within reach. But it cannot be attained through clinging.

Now let’s return to the Buddha’s bizarre statement that ‘existence appears once clinging is present as a condition’.

If we think of a person addicted to sex, and another one addicted to religion, and another addicted to work, and another addicted to their looks – we picture four different kinds of life. Four different modes of existence. This is a simple example of how clinging shapes existence.

Clinging is like gravity. It pulls us into habitual orbits, shaping our lives and destinies, making us circle endlessly around objects of craving—whether sensual pleasures, ideas, activities, or our self-image.

But the Buddha goes further. He says clinging puts us on trajectories that go beyond our present life, directing our experience in countless cycles of rebirth. Whether in the material world or subtler realms, clinging shapes our existence. We’re not meant to take the Buddha’s word for this – that would be clinging to views. But we may as well keep an open mind about it.

So, think about what you most cling to in your life. Is it your work or your relationships? Is it achievement or status? What would happen if you let go of those, even for a moment? Clinging is the 9th link of Dependent Origination.

8. Craving

‘I see, master,’ the monk says, ‘but this only displaces my question. If a commoner clings to his possessions, it is he himself that clings, no? Or whose clinging do you mean?’

The Buddha refrains from pointing out the monk’s clinging to a self-idea. He replies: ‘‘Whose clinging?’ is not a valid question. Rather, when there is craving as a condition, clinging arises.’

Craving is the state of wanting your present experience to be different than what it is. It is having a preference for the contents of consciousness. The early suttas describe 6 classes of craving – one for each of the objects of our sense organs.

Remember, Buddhism recognizes 6 sense organs: eyes, ears, tongue, skin, and nose, plus the mind, which is our sense organ for mental objects. The human body-mind has these 6 channels through which reality is interpreted and enters into consciousness.

So, there is craving for images, craving for sounds, for tastes, tactile sensations, smells, and mental objects. This 6-fold division is, of course, only a teaching convention. Experience never arises so neatly classified. For one, mental objects such as memories and fantasies usually accompany all other sense experiences.

When the craving for some content of experience reaches a certain threshold, clinging arises. This is how addiction forms, in ways both subtle and tragic. Think about your own cravings here. How much of your thoughts, words, and actions revolve around pursuing pleasure or avoiding pain? How much of your life revolves around preference?

Craving is the 8th link of Dependent Origination.

7. Feeling

‘I see the truth in this,’ the monk says and bows. ‘But master, again I must ask, whose craving do you mean? A villager craves a woman, a nun craves the Dhamma. Are these not different selves craving different things?’

‘‘Whose craving?’ is not a valid question,’ the Buddha says. ‘Rather, when feeling is present as a condition, craving arises.’

‘Feeling’ is a technical term in Buddhism. It denotes the automatic interpretation of experience as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Note here, if I’m having blue cheese and it tastes like blue cheese, the experience will feel pleasant. If I’m having chocolate and it tastes like blue cheese, the experience will feel unpleasant. Feeling originates in the mind as a subjective interpretation of sensory data and is rooted in our desires, expectations, biology, and countless other factors.

When the feeling is pleasant, we crave more of the experience. When it is unpleasant, we crave less of the experience. When it is neutral, we usually crave for the experience to change into something more exciting. So, feeling is the 7th link of Dependent Origination.

6. Contact

The monk, his patience tested, raises his voice: ‘But master, when I feel frustrated at not understanding your words, it is I who feel this, and not Sāriputta. Whose is that feeling you speak of?’

‘‘Whose is that feeling?’ is a mistaken question,’ the Buddha replies. ‘Rather, when there is contact as a condition, feeling arises.’

‘Contact’ is another technical term. It denotes the conscious coming together of sense organs and their sense objects. The moment you hear my voice, this is ear-contact. The moment you grasp the meaning of what I am saying, this is mind-contact. The time between these moments of awareness is so short that the untrained mind confuses them as one and the same experience.

Now, if you fall asleep while listening to me, you will no longer consciously register my voice. While the sound of my voice will be reaching your eardrums, there will be no ear-contact. Contact requires consciousness. Would, however, your unconscious mind receive my voice? Can there be unconscious contact? This is an important question, and I haven’t found an answer to it in the early suttas.

In any case, understanding contact is of extreme importance for liberation.

Mindfulness of Contact

Remember, as sense data appears through contact, the body-mind applies a feeling tone to it. Usually, we can’t distinguish between the two. We say ‘I’m addicted to smoking’ or ‘I’m addicted to porn’ or ‘I’m anxiously attached to my partner’. But we’re not. It is the feeling we apply to contact with these objects that we crave, not the objects themselves.

Cultivating mindfulness allows us to perceive the space between contact and feeling. This gradually erodes the hold external objects have on us. Or rather, we begin to see this hold is nothing other than our own self-projections. This insight begins to disrupt the cycles of Dependent Origination… but it is not enough to end them.

Despite what some modern Buddhists teach, the Buddha never said mindfulness of contact leads to liberation. Only the complete cessation of the first link of the chain can end Dependent Origination and sorrow forever. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One more thing before we move on. Contact is the point where information enters into consciousness. So, the remaining links we will cover are mostly unconscious. This shows just how much of what we do to produce suffering happens unbeknownst to the thinking mind. Liberation then requires transformation on all layers of the body-mind. It’s not just about getting your thinking straight.

Contact is the 6th link of Paṭiccasamuppāda.

5. The 6 Sense Media

‘Yes, master Gautama,’ the monk says, ‘but there is my ear-contact and your eye-contact; there is his mind-contact and her skin-contact. It is the self that has contact!’

The Buddha replies: ‘To say ‘it is the self that has contact’ is misguided. Rather, when the 6 sense media are present as a condition, contact arises.’

The 6 sense media are, simply, our 6 sense organs. These are the gates through which reality becomes known by the body-mind. They are the 5th link of Dependent Origination.

4. The Body-Mind

‘But master,’ the monk exclaims, ‘my eye is different from your eye, and from the eye of Vacchagotta. I want to know what is the self that sense media belong to.’

‘‘What self do sense media belong to?’,’ the Buddha says, ‘is an invalid question. Rather, when there is the body-mind as a condition, there are the 6 sense media.’

Body-mind refers to the psycho-physical system we colloquially call ‘a person’. ‘Body’ refers to the physical elements that make up the organism. ‘Mind’ refers to the mental phenomena of feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention.

Note how consciousness is not included as a mental phenomenon. Rather, consciousness is the knowing of phenomena, mental and physical alike. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

Also, note the Buddha doesn’t say ‘a body and a mind’ or ‘a body with a mind’, or ‘a mind with a body’. He says ‘body-mind’, meaning one whole. For the purposes of analysis, we say this whole has a physical dimension and a mental dimension. But the body-mind is one continuous, dynamic process. Modern medicine is still catching up with this insight. Thank God for Gabor Maté.

The body-mind is the 4th link of Dependent Origination.

3 Consciousness

‘But master,’ the monk says, ‘this body-mind we call Siddhartha and that body-mind we call Ānanda. Is the body-mind the self or does it belong to the self? Or is the self something completely different from the body-mind?’

‘Your questions are off the mark, monk’ the Buddha replies. ‘Rather, when there is consciousness as a condition, the body-mind arises.’

We arrive at another crucial link here.

The traditional explanation is that, without consciousness, the body-mind could not maintain its development and vital functions. This is what the Buddha says in Mahanidana Sutta. But let me give you an additional interpretation.

The mainstream view today is that consciousness is somehow produced by the brain. Since we can see the physical correlates of states of consciousness, we assume consciousness is nothing but an activity of the brain. The Buddha, avoiding assumptions, sticks with the facts of experience. And those are that the body-mind only ever appears as content of consciousness.

Think about it.

Experience as a Video Game

Think of playing a first-person video game. Let’s take Skyrim, for example, one of my favourites. We play Skyrim on a screen. We don’t imagine our screen exists within our game character. We don’t imagine when our character, the dovahkiin, dies, our screen will disappear. We know our character, the game world, and all game activity exist as content of the screen.

But once we close the game, we fail to apply this same principle to our own experience. We assume our consciousness is somehow contained within our mind or body. We assume the breakup of the body-mind is the end of consciousness. And we keep failing to notice the obvious. That is, the body-mind only ever appears as content of consciousness.

Now, our intuition about the brain-consciousness relationship is not entirely wrong. Consciousness does seem to require some psychophysical system as support. The Buddha recognizes this too. He says:

Insofar as consciousness is conditioned by body-mind, body-mind is conditioned by consciousness…

DN.2.32

From all 12 links of Dependent Origination, only here does the Buddha explicitly speak of a two-way relationship. We can see here the germ of the non-dual insight that consciousness and its contents is a false division of one and the same reality. But the Yogācāra Buddhists will get here centuries after the death of the Buddha. You can learn more about them in my video on the Buddhist unconscious.

Consciousness as a Sunbeam

The Buddha himself left us with a mysterious simile. He compares consciousness to a sunbeam and the body-mind to that on which the sunbeam lands. We read:

“Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall having windows on the north, the south, or the east. When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?”

“On the western wall, lord.”

“And if there is no western wall, where does it land?”

“On the ground, lord.”

“And if there is no ground, where does it land?”

“On the water, lord.”

“And if there is no water, where does it land?”

“It does not land, lord.”

“In the same way, where there is no craving for nutriment … consciousness does not land there or increase [and] there is no alighting of body-mind.

Atthiraga Sutta; SN 12.64

This simile suggests that liberation from the endless cycles of rebirth does not consist of the end of consciousness. Rather, it is the setting free of consciousness from the confines of the body-mind.

What does this mean? I wish I could tell you…

Consciousness Feeding on Reality

And notice another detail. The Buddha says the liberation of consciousness comes when ‘there is no craving for nutriment’. This is worth taking a closer look at.

Our 6 sense organs are our 6 channels of feeding on reality. We feed on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and mental phenomena. The words we listen to, the work we do, the love we make, the books we read, the content we consume… These are all different ways of feeding on life.

And as they say, you are what you eat.

Feeding on junk experience, we create a sick, undisciplined, deluded body-mind. A decrepit shelter for consciousness. What’s more, this defiled body-mind is caught in a vicious cycle of seeking more of the quick-dopamine junk that poisons it.

On the other hand, feeding on wholesome experience creates a healthy, disciplined, awake body-mind. A beautiful abode for consciousness. And that body-mind will seek and create more wholesome experience in a positive feedback loop.

But while the Buddha recommends feeding on wholesome experience, even this must be transcended for liberation to occur. Liberation comes when the body-mind finally loses all appetite for experience, wholesome and unwholesome alike. When all preference ends.

When all of life is seen through as non-self, ephemeral, and unsatisfactory, no more feeding occurs. When there is no more feeding, there is no more karma. With the cessation of karma, no future rebirth occurs, no new body-mind is generated after death, and consciousness is set free as a sunbeam in empty space.

Consciousness is the 3rd link of Dependent Origination.

2. Karma Formations

‘But whose consciousness do you mean,’ the monk asks, determined to push his master as far as he can. ‘I have my consciousness and my mother has her consciousness. In fact, it seems to me we are nothing other than consciousness. The true self must be the pure being of awareness!’

‘You lose yourself in speculation,’ the Buddha replies. ‘When there are karma formations as a condition, consciousness arises.’

Here we arrive at an opaque term: karma formations. Your reading this essay now is a karma formation. Reading this essay, rather than doing something else, is the form your will has taken at this point in space-time. And thanks for that, by the way!

‘Karma formations’ means the will’s intentional production of karma.

There are 3 channels through which we create karma: body, speech, and mind. Through our actions, words, and thoughts, we produce karma that is bright, dark, or neither bright nor dark. This karma determines our future experiences in this life and subsequent ones.

This is a fascinating topic, and I invite you to my video on karma and rebirth to learn more.

But why would karma formations condition consciousness?

The Karmic Algorithm

The law of karma works like a social media algorithm. The more of a certain content type you consume, the more of that content type you get recommended. This is why people end up with such different feeds. And such different lives.

What you do, say, and think determines what you experience in the future.

Acting violently will land you in a violent life. Speaking kindly will fill your life with kindness. The Buddha teaches all we ever experience is the fruit of past karma. Your reading this essay now is literally what your past karma looks like. (Or some of it, at least.) It is not just your search engine algorithm that brought you here. A much greater algorithm, the law of karma, is responding to the thoughts, words, and actions you have willfully produced in the past. And here you are.

So take a moment to reflect: what kind of future are you shaping right now with the choices you’re making? What you think, say, and do today shapes what you experience tomorrow. Karma formations is the 2nd link of Dependent Origination.

1. Ignorance

‘But master,’ the monk hesitates, ‘karma formations too must have an owner, isn’t that so? I have my thoughts, you have your words, and the elephant has her actions. Surely, there must be a self who produces and owns their karma! How can I experience my past karma unless it is… well, my past karma?’

The Buddha remains silent for a moment. With great compassion, he looks deeply into the monk’s eyes. His voice then comes heavy but kind.

‘My karma and his karma’’ are misguided ideas, my friend. Rather, when there is ignorance as a condition, karma formations arise.’

In Buddhism, ignorance is another technical term. It is not ignorance of the Pythagorean theorem or Bulgarian grammar. By ignorance, the Buddha means the core existential delusion chaining beings to endless sorrow. That is, ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.

I have covered the Four Noble Truths in a past video, which I invite you to watch. But here is a short summary.

The Four Noble Truths

The First Noble Truth is that there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world. To exist is to be dissatisfied. All paths, the straight and the winding, the long and the short, the wide and the narrow, the easy and the rough, all of them lead to sorrow, disappointment, and pain.

The Second Noble Truth is that dissatisfaction arises due to craving. The very chasing of satisfaction in a world of dissatisfaction is the feedback loop that keeps the world running. And keeps beings in perpetual suffering.

The Third Noble Truth is that while there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world – final satisfaction is, in fact, possible. There is a way to become free of sorrow.

The Fourth and final Noble Truth is the pathless path leading to nirvāṇa. The Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhist practice, contemplation, and mind cultivation. You can learn about this in detail in my video on the Path.

Again, ignorance in Buddhism means not knowing the Four Noble Truths. And no, what you’ve just heard from me does not constitute knowing the Truths. Intellectual discussion has little to do with true insight. Only upon final awakening do the last remnants of ignorance burn away, and true wisdom emerges. But hey, one has to start somewhere.

The Ending of Karma Formations

Now, when there is insight into the Truths, no karma formations arise. But what could this mean? Do we simply stop acting, speaking, and thinking? Must we live a passive, disinterested life?

The Buddha doesn’t strike us as passive or disinterested. The man devoted his life to teaching and caring for others. He gave his last lecture literally while he was dying. Isn’t this karma formation? Didn’t he intentionally act, speak, and think to achieve his intentions? Does this mean the Buddha acted out of ignorance?

Well, perhaps the end of intentional action doesn’t mean inaction. Nor should it mean un-intentional action. I think what the Buddha means is simply action, with intention out of the picture.

When an apple tree is giving apple fruit, it is acting, but not intentionally. There is no dissociation between tree, fruit, and environment. There is only one single flow of causal events.

The environment nurtures the tree, the tree nurtures the fruit, the fruit nurtures the environment. And there is no environment, no tree, and no fruit really. These are only man-made words for different phases of one and the same causal continuum.

Dependent Origination.

No Buddha, no Dhamma, no Sangha

In the same way, the Buddha’s enlightened actions, words, and thoughts are simply the flow of Dhamma into the world. This flow of pure insight is possible because there is no dissociation between subject, object, and action.

There is no Buddha, no Dhamma, and no Sangha. Only the influx of insight. What we call ‘the Buddha’ is but the constellation of causes and conditions that allow for this insight to arise and be verbalized.

We see this same principle in Meister Eckhart’s teachings on spiritual poverty. Through being thoroughly empty of oneself, one realizes one’s identity with the unconditioned. You can have a look at my video on the Christian mystic to learn more.

When there is ignorance, reality experiences itself in a fragmented way. It sees itself as a subject encountering objects, as an isolated, vulnerable agent with goals and preferences. This fuels the whole process of Dependent Origination and the production of sorrow.

Ignorance is the 1st link of Dependent Origination. When there is ignorance as a condition, Dependent Origination occurs.

The monk remains silent after the Buddha tells him this. He doesn’t ask ‘Whose ignorance do you mean?’ or ‘Who is it that is ignorant?’.

The monk simply bows in gratitude for the teaching. This ending of the monk’s questions is, I feel, the most profound part of the sutta. But we’ll return here in a bit.

First, let’s take a step back. Let’s take a panoramic view of the 12 links and see how the parts work together.

Part III. Understanding The 12 Links

If we view Paṭiccasamuppāda as a linear process, the 12 links make little sense. I mean, how can the body-mind appear earlier in the chain than the actual birth of said body-mind? Also, while the relationship between contact and feeling is obvious, that between clinging and existence is tenuous at best. What’s all that about?

Well, to make sense of the links, we must understand 3 key aspects of Dependent Origination. I’ll get a bit technical for a minute, but bear with me; this will make things clearer.

2 Types of Causality in Dependent Origination

First, Dependent Origination describes two types of causality: linear and synchronic. Linear causality is like a domino effect—one event leads directly to the next. Synchronic causality happens simultaneously, like how having a front always implies a back, or having an up implies having a down. In the chain of Dependent Origination, these two types of causality are interwoven into a complex web of cause and effect.

You can see this in the original formula of the Buddha. There, he first describes the linear principle, and then the synchronic:

When this exists, that comes to be [LINEAR]; with the arising of this, that arises… [SYNCHRONIC]

Pañcaverabhayasutta; SN 12.41

This is why not all links follow the same logic. For example, feeling leading to craving is a linear relationship. Body-mind conditioning the 6 sense media is a synchronic relationship. It is important to understand Paṭiccasamuppāda transcends our everyday understanding of time. We’ll return to this in a minute.

The Links are INTER-Dependenent

A second key point is that each link interacts with all other links, not just with the preceding and the following one. The traditional order of the links describes the most significant relationships, but there are countless feedback loops running in the background.

For example, feeling doesn’t directly lead to craving. If it were so, enlightened beings, who do experience feeling, would also experience craving. But this would mean they are not enlightened beings. Rather, feeling in combination with ignorance leads to craving. Feeling without ignorance is simply feeling arising and feeling passing away.

Also, ignorance is the cause of karma formations, but karma formations also reinforce ignorance. When we act, speak, and think in delusion, we create more delusion for ourselves and for others.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

Each link in the chain… is both a cause and an effect of all the other links in the chain. The 12 Links inter-are…

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

Dependent Origination Works Across Space-Time

This leads us to a third key aspect of Paṭiccasamuppāda. That is, the principle works on multiple scales of space-time. For example, while contact may lead to feeling straight away, birth leads to old age and death in a matter of decades. Feeling may lead to craving immediately, or a decade of feeling may be necessary for craving to arise.

Cause and effect can happen simultaneously or they can be separated by lifetimes. A core implication of this is that nobody gets away with anything. Whatever the time horizon, causality keeps the records.

Some Buddhists claim the 12 links describe the moment-to-moment arising of conscious experience. Others believe the links describe human experience in a lifetime. Still others split the links between 3 lives – past, present, and future.

All 3 interpretations have their virtues, but I believe none of them does full justice to the teaching. We’ve seen how some links act momentarily and others across a lifetime. Let me briefly present the 3-lives interpretation.

The 3-Lifetimes Interpretation of Dependent Origination

According to this view, the first 2 links – ignorance and karma formations – belong to our past life. Back then, we produced bright and dark karma in our ignorance. This has conditioned the arising of consciousness in our present body-mind. The last two links – birth and old age and death – belong to our future life. Then we will be born once again, suffer once again, and once again die. The rest of the links in the middle present the dynamics of our present life.

This model is meant to broaden the context in which we understand ourselves and the world. It reveals the causes and consequences of our existence, which go beyond the life we live right now. It shouldn’t, however, blind us to the presence of all 12 links in every moment of awareness.

The Buddha’s Original Representation of Dependent Origination

The dynamic nature of Dependent Origination means every static representation of it will be inaccurate. Numbered lists just won’t do. The Tibetan wheel of life is also potentially misleading. One may surmise from it that the final link (old age and death) is the cause of the first link (ignorance). This is something the suttas never say.

The best simile for Paṭiccasamuppāda comes from the Buddha himself.

Here are his original words:

[Dependent Origination] is like when the heavens rain heavily on a mountain top, and the water flows downhill to fill the hollows, crevices, and creeks. As they become full, they fill up the pools. The pools fill up the lakes, the lakes fill up the streams, and the streams fill up the rivers. And as the rivers become full, they fill up the ocean.

Upanisa Sutta; SN 12:23

On another occasion, the Buddha completes the description:

Monks, the great ocean rising causes the large rivers to rise. The large rivers rising cause the little rivers to rise. The little rivers rising cause the large lakes to rise. The large lakes rising cause the little lakes to rise.

Upayanti Sutta; SN 12:69

The Buddha compares conditioned existence to the Earth’s water cycle. The 12 links are local phenomena like pools, rivers, and streams. But these local phenomena are part of a much larger, dynamic cycle. Any change in one place or at one moment affects all other places and moments. Micro feedback loops run within macro feedback loops, spanning all of space-time. The world, the Buddha tells us, is a fractal of relationships.

Many Perspectives on the Same Principle

Dependent Origination is not complicated, but it is endlessly complex. That’s why there are so many different explanations of it throughout Buddhist literature.

There is the 2-link version, which contains only cause and effect.

There is a 3-link version, with past, present, and future.

The 4-link version has ignorance, karma formations, birth, and old age and death.

The point is: we can divide existence into however many slices we want. A good division is one that serves our purposes. But in reality, all divisions are just conventions. There are no links of Dependent Origination, really. The links are just pixels we use in an attempt to build up a picture of what is. And what is is a dynamic process of conditional causation.

Let’s shift our attention to this universal principle.

Part IV. Understanding The Principle

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhaya Sutta; SN 12.41

This is the Dhamma. Every Buddhist doctrine, sutta, and commentary is a specific application of this universal insight. Let’s look at a few examples.

Dependent Origination & Non-Self

We’ve talked a lot about the Buddha’s non-self teaching on this channel. We’ve studied its nuances, and we’ve seen it doesn’t say the self does not exist.

Rather, the self, as a concept, is an inaccurate, conventional way of referring to the human condition. It doesn’t do justice to the many relationships that animate our experience and the constant change these relationships undergo.

But saying there is no self is just as inaccurate. This ignores the continuity of our past, present, and future. It doesn’t do justice to the integrated structure of human personality and our responsibility for our lives.

So, rather than teaching there is a self or no self, the Buddha teaches the Middle Way, Dependent Origination.

The mainstream self-view is useful for making sense of our daily existence. It focuses on the continuity of individual people’s behavior. Its usefulness for survival has made it the norm. You would prefer dinner with a friend over dinner with a serial killer, I presume.

The opposite no-self-view is useful in overcoming craving and attachment, and hence becoming free of psychological suffering. This makes it a powerful spiritual tool, and that’s why many novice practitioners cling to it.

Paṭiccasamuppāda shows how the flow of causes and conditions we call ‘a person’ transcends both self and no-self descriptions. The teaching embraces both these limited perspectives, allowing us to use whichever is most useful for our purposes.

The 12 links map the dance of the aggregates of human experience. They show us their mutual synchronization, which creates the illusion of a self, and also their conditioned nature, which creates the illusion of no-self. In reality, a person is neither a self nor no self. A person is a temporary phase of Dependent Origination.

This brings us to free will and karma.

Dependent Origination & Karma

Did you choose to read this essay as a free agent? Or is your reading it the product of past experiences, thoughts, words, and actions?

Are you fully responsible for the kind of life you have? Or is your life the product of circumstance, chance, and external conditions?

Do you produce karma or does karma produce you?

One view suggests you transcend reality and act independently of your experiences and environment. The other view suggests you have no say in the course of your life, but simply experience a predetermined chain of events. Neither perspective does justice to the full complexity of reality.

The Buddha again reconciles these extremes by taking the Middle Way, Dependent Origination.

The body-mind, karma formations, and the world of experience are caught in endless feedback loops. Our actions shape the world, the world shapes us, and we shape our actions; but our actions also shape us, and we also shape the world, and the world also shapes our actions, and so on…

Here is how Thich Nhat Hanh captures this cyclical nature of existence:

The egg is in the chicken, and the chicken is in the egg. Chicken and egg arise in mutual dependence. Neither is independent.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

The Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination later evolved into the Mahāyāna doctrine of emptiness. My most popular video explores this at length, and you can check it out to learn more:

Dependent Origination & Emptiness

In short, Mahāyāna emptiness concludes that since all things are conditioned, no thing has independent existence. There are no ‘things’ really; empty is the world.

Nāgārjuna, the father of this doctrine, warns us not to take it as meaning nothing exists, which would be absurd. He just means to show that to say anything does exist is just as absurd.

But how can we reconcile this pair of negations? How can things both not exist and also not not exist?

The resolution lies in the Middle Way, Dependent Origination.

The Buddha says:

[F]or one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world.

And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Kaccayanagotta Sutta; SN 12.15

In other words, experience arises, generated by causes and conditions. This, in our limited vocabulary, we call existence. When the causes and conditions change or disappear, the experience changes or disappears. This, in our limited vocabulary, we call non-existence.

The ecosystem of Dependent Origination goes through many cycles of arising and passing away, some short, some long. We mostly remain blind to these cycles and fixate on certain points along the slope, expecting them to remain as they are. But they never do. This clinging to what is of the nature to change is how we guarantee our continued suffering.

Dependent Origination & The 3 Marks of Existence

And this takes us to the famous 3 Marks of Existence: impermanence, non-self, and suffering.

By trying to hold on to the impermanent as if it is permanent, we produce suffering. By trying to satisfy our non-self as if it is a self, we produce suffering. By expecting to escape suffering in this world of suffering, we produce suffering. This is all a different formulation of Dependent Origination.

I can keep tracing Buddhist teachings back to Paṭiccasamuppāda, but this essay is long enough as it is. I invite you to reflect on other Buddhist doctrines you know and see how they all spring from the Buddha’s one core insight.

Let me close with one final point.

Dependent Origination & Ignorance

Remember the monk questioning the Buddha in the sutta we looked at? Why did he remain silent after the Buddha arrived at ignorance as the first link? Why didn’t the monk ask, ‘Whose ignorance do you mean?’?

I believe the monk understood that the very question ‘Whose ignorance?’ is the ignorance the Buddha was describing.

The very conviction that experience is happening to somebody, and that somebody is you, and you have likes and dislikes, and you need to pursue what you like and avoid what you dislike… this whole stance is the very fuel behind Dependent Origination. This is the rain filling up the ponds, gulleys, and creeks.

And here we arrive at the core point of Dependent Origination. As Professor Peter Harvey writes,

[Dependent Origination] is a process which can operate only in ignorance of itself.

Peter Harvey, The Conditioned Co-arising of Mental and Bodily Processes within Life and Between Lives

Ignorance is not a first cause; it is just as conditioned as any other phenomenon in existence. Ignorance is, however, the cornerstone of the conditioned world. Take away ignorance, and the whole structure collapses in on itself.

In other words, you and I, and Barney the dog, are different local cycles of Dependent Origination. Our body-minds and consciousness get regenerated in countless cycles according to karma. And all of this occurs because we are ignorant of its occurrence. Dependent Origination is like a nightmare in that it can only occur while we are asleep.

Dependent Origination & Liberation

The Buddha’s remembering of his past lives, his discovery of the Four Noble Truths, of the laws of karma, impermanence, and the illusory self all occurred simultaneously on the night of his awakening. That is, the night when he realized nirvāṇa. I believe all these discoveries and the realization of nirvāṇa are different names for the Buddha’s complete and final realization of Dependent Origination.

The local cycle of Dependent Origination that was Siddhartha Gautama finally saw through itself. It was this vision that ended bondage to conditioned existence. What looked from the outside as a person becoming enlightened was, in fact, reality waking up to its own nature.

And yet, this breaking up of Siddhartha Gautama’s Dependent Origination did not lead to his disappearance from the face of the Earth. On the contrary, the Buddha had his most productive years after awakening.

This is a reminder that the goal of liberation is not non-existence. It is something much subtler and greater.

Beyond Being & Non-Being

In his first Dharma talk, the Buddha cautioned his disciples not to be attached to either… being or nonbeing, because [they] are just constructs of the mind… If you say that the purpose of the practice is to destroy being in order to arrive at nonbeing, this is entirely incorrect.

With nonattachment, we see both being and nonbeing as creations of our mind, and we ride the wave of birth and death.

We don’t mind birth. We don’t mind death. If we have to be born again to continue the work of helping, that is okay…

We know that there is birth, old age, and death, but we also know that these are only waves on which bodhisattvas ride. Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

So, what are the actual effects of liberation? The Buddha is reported to have suffered from backaches on several occasions. Does this mean he did not, after all, achieve freedom from suffering?

The answer may lie in a simile he gives us:

[I]n the case of a well-taught noble disciple, O monks, when he is touched by a painful feeling, he will not worry nor grieve and lament… It is one kind of feeling he experiences, a bodily one, but not a mental feeling.

It is as if a man were pierced by a dart, but was not hit by a second dart following the first one. So this person experiences feelings caused by a single dart only.

Sallatha Sutta; SN 36.6

A Fire Blown Out

In other words, at liberation, one does not become supernaturally invincible. It is psychological suffering that ends, and with it, the whole chain of Dependent Origination begins to break. There is no longer a sufferer with a story about their suffering and with intentions to become free of their suffering. There is only suffering arising and suffering passing away.

The suttas compare the enlightened being to a fire blown out with the embers still burning. These embers are the residue of past karma. Once the winds of time extinguish the embers too, no new fire arises. The flames of Dependent Origination are blown out. And yes, the Sanskrit word for ‘blown out’ is nirvāṇa.

Once ignorance, the cornerstone of the conditioned world, is no longer present, the whole structure collapses. What remains then is the unconditioned. But we’ll talk more about nirvāṇa in the future.

Transcendental Dependent Origination

Much of the Buddhist tradition focuses on waking us up to our bondage to cosmic laws we do not understand. This can result in a bleak, even hopeless picture of life.

But consider this: How did the Buddha – in this world of bondage, ignorance, and sorrow – how did he manage to realize nirvāṇa? Looking at the 12 links, it seems all odds are against us. How is a sentient being supposed to find liberation?

And if all things are conditioned, where do wisdom, compassion, and liberation come from? What conditions them?

Before you go, allow me to share with you a little-known Pāli sutta on Dependent Origination. This nearly forgotten text answers these questions and reminds us the spiritual path is not one of negation but of courage and discovery.

This text, the Upanisa Sutta, expands on the 12 links we’ve covered with 11 more links. These additional links make up what is called Transcendental Dependent Origination. Don’t worry, I won’t go into any detail on these. But it’s worth your time to have a look at them.

Here is what we’ve covered:

Upanisa Sutta continues the chain like this:

This is the unraveling of the nightmare. The process of waking up to nirvāṇa. Transcendental Dependent Origination.

The Original Non-Dual Insight

Upanisa Sutta was mostly overlooked by early Buddhism. It took centuries for the tradition to arrive at the understanding that saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, bondage and liberation, ignorance and insight, are one and the same reality seen from different angles. This non-dual insight is usually attributed to Nāgārjuna and Mahāyāna Buddhism. We can see, however, it existed from the very start, waiting for us to catch up with it.

The venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi writes:

As the frame behind the four noble truths, the key to the perspective of the middle way, and the conduit to the realization of selflessness, [Dependent Origination] is the unifying theme … of a single coherent vision.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, Transcendental Dependent Arising

This vision is the Dhamma, awakening, and liberation. I hope this essay gives you a new appreciation of the unity of the Buddha’s teachings. And for Paṭiccasamuppāda as the DNA of the Dhamma.

How do you react when someone wrongs you? Do you lash out, or do you try to rise above it? And if you don’t vent your anger, do you manage to transform it or do you only bottle it up?

It takes years for a tree to grow and bear fruit. It takes only a moment to cut that tree down. If wisdom, compassion, and peace are the trees we grow, anger is the ax that cuts them down.

Anger, conflict, hatred… The Buddhist tradition has long recognized these as key hindrances to awakening. And root causes of suffering.

In this essay, we look at 2 Buddhist stories that teach us constructive ways of dealing with anger. These stories show ways of responding to conflict that may benefit both ourselves and those around us. Whether you need help dealing with your own anger or that of others, you will find some useful insight here.

Our anger can be directed at ourselves, our partners, our children, friends, or total strangers. Whatever the case, suffering follows. World events today are a tragic display of the power of anger, should we allow it, to create hell on earth.

Let’s see how Buddhist teaching can help us prevent that.

Story 1: The Reviler

The first story we’ll explore is an ancient one. It comes from the Pali Canon, the oldest collection of Buddhist scriptures.

This story is fascinating in that it recounts an incident where the Buddha himself became the target of anger and abuse. His response in this situation is a profound teaching in and of itself. A teaching even Nietzsche praises in his autobiography after reading the Dhammapada:

Hatred is never ended by hatred in this world.

By non-hatred alone is hatred ended.

This is a law eternal.

Dhammapada 5

The story tells of a time when the Buddha sets up camp with his disciples close to a Brahman clan. For context, the Brahman caste was the religious authority at the time and dominated the social hierarchy. Even kings had to pay their respects to the priests.

Wandering ascetics like the Buddha and his monks were very much the opposite of the Brahmans. They lived outside of society, refused to define themselves by caste, and explored alternative ways of living. You could say they were hippies before the hippies were a thing. This was something of a threat to the Brahmans, who were keen on keeping things as they were.

Anyway, soon after the Buddhists set up camp, a Brahman abandons his clan, puts on a robe, and joins the monks.

This causes something of a scandal, naturally. One of the Brahmans, later known as ‘the Reviler’, takes it personally. Enraged, he rushes straight into the Buddhist camp. There, he finds the Buddha and begins shouting at him a stream of invective.

The Buddha’s Response to Anger

The Buddha, probably just up from morning practice, waits for the Reviler to finish and then politely addresses him with a question:

‘Tell me, Brahman, do you sometimes receive visits from friends, family, or other guests?’

This immediately throws the Reviler off-balance, as he’s there for a fight, not conversation. He looks around at the gathered monks and answers the Buddha in a lower voice: ‘Yes, I sometimes have visitors.’

‘When you receive your guests,’ the Buddha continues, ‘do you offer them food, drink, and lodging?’

‘Yes,’ replies the Reviler, still confused, ‘I do.’

‘But if, Brahman, your visitors do not accept what you offer, to whom does it then belong?’

‘If my guests do not accept my offerings, these things remain with me.’

The Brahman feels awkwardly out of place in the silence that follows.

‘It is just so in this case,’ the Buddha says with a kind but firm voice. ‘You hate us who do not hate in return, you abuse us who do not abuse in return. We do not accept these offerings from you and hence they remain with you, they belong to you, Brahman.’

For a few moments, the Reviler remains completely still. He then does a quick, barely perceptible bow, and goes away from the camp, his eyes lowered.

Non-Anger for Anger

It is easy to misinterpret this story. One is tempted to think: ‘Yeah, the Buddha really showed that guy! You better not to mess with Big B!’

But this, I feel, is the exact opposite of the message.

We find the key to interpreting this story in another Buddhist scripture called Vepacitti Sutta. There, we read:

It is indeed a fault for one

Who returns anger for anger.

Not giving anger for anger,

One wins a double victory.

He behaves for the good of both:

Himself and the other person.

Knowing well the other’s anger,

He is mindful and remains calm.

In this way he is healing both:

Himself and the other person.

Vepacitti Sutta; SN 11.4

Anger is a Choice

With clear insight, the Buddha responds to conflict in a way that both ends the spread of anger and delivers teaching. And his teaching is two-fold.

First, another person’s attitude becomes our problem only once we make it so.

To become angered or offended is a choice; it’s just that we make this choice unconsciously most of the time and don’t realize there’s an alternative. We get hijacked by anger and only propagate the same enmity that hurt us in the first place.

But if we cultivate mindfulness, we make our minds less reactive and more capable of intelligent response to conflict. We do not identify with our emotions and this allows us to consciously direct them, rather than be unconsciously directed by them.

So, think about the last time you let anger take over. Could you have done something differently if you were more mindful?

Healing Anger

The second teaching in the Buddha’s response to the Brahman is that those immersed in anger have their understanding obscured. It is by guiding them back to understanding that we end the spread of anger and suffering for both them and ourselves. Sure, we don’t get the satisfaction of ‘putting them in their place’ by retaliating. But we get a much more precious price: mutual peace and understanding.

It’s difficult to respond with such insight when you’re stuck in traffic. Or when your kid’s shouting at you after a long day at work. But this ancient story tells us there are, in fact, constructive ways of responding to anger and healing the wounds it opens.

It shows us even the most unpleasant displays of hatred can be a form of teaching… if we are ready to receive them as such.

But oftentimes, anger has already arisen within us before we’ve had the chance to reflect on what’s going on. What do we do then?

Well, this brings us to our second story, told by one of the greatest Buddhist teachers of our time, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Story 2: The Boat

The story of the boat tells of a certain monk who seeks quiet for his meditation practice.

The monk finds himself disturbed in the village by the daily commotion of people. He finds himself disturbed in the monastery by the shuffling footsteps of monks. Even out in nature, he is disturbed by the birds chirping and the ants crawling on his legs.

Determined to achieve total concentration, the monk takes a boat out into the middle of a lake. He observes the mirror-like water surface and lowers his gaze with relief. Finally, the conditions allow for undisturbed meditation. Perhaps today is the day of his self-realization.

The monk begins to observe his thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations coursing within the field of consciousness. His ego-identity begins to dissolve and give way to a boundless, undefined condition of present awareness. And then…

*BAM!!!*

Something crashes against his boat. With his lowered eyes, the monk sees the outline of the object and recognizes it’s another boat! Immediately, he is filled with rage.

‘What kind of imbecile,’ he thinks, ‘would go out in the middle of the lake, see a meditating monk, and disturb him!’

The monk springs up, ready to confront the intruder. Once his eyes adjust to the light, he freezes. He sees there is nobody in the boat that hit against his. It’s simply a loose, empty boat, carried out into the lake by the wind.

It is at this moment the monk achieves self-realization. From that day onward, whenever he feels the stirring of anger at some person or situation, he reminds himself: ‘The boat was empty.’

Anger is a Story We Tell

This story rewards careful contemplation. It contains several layers of meaning, so let’s go through some of them one by one.

On the surface, the message is clear. The monk’s anger arises out of his own fantasy drama. He is ready to vent his rage before he has even properly opened his eyes. The empty boat acts as a mirror that shows him how his own mind produces the anger he experiences.

To the monk’s credit, he responds to the embarrassing situation mindfully. This allows him to recognize it as a teaching.

He observes it is not people, situations, and things that cause anger. It is the stories we tell ourselves about people, situations, and things. Anger originates within; it finds its external target only after the fact.

So, what stories do you tell yourself when you’re angry? Think about how these shape the way you relate with others and the world.

Anger as Projection

On a deeper level, the story depicts what Freud termed ‘projection’. Projection is a form of non-visual hallucination where we see in others the same feelings and qualities we repress within ourselves. It is a basic defense mechanism of the ego and likely the main cause of human violence.

The monk, who can’t stand even the footsteps of his fellows, clearly has some bottled-up aggression. To recognize this aggression as his own would tarnish his self-image as a good Buddhist. So, he represses the aggression. He then projects this repressed feeling outside whenever he gets the chance.

The empty boat, again, acts as a mirror, reflecting the monk’s projection back to where it came from. That is, himself.

From the point of view of depth psychology, this realization is only the beginning of a long, frightening, but rewarding process. The process of discovering the disowned parts of ourselves and integrating them back into our total personality.

It is what Jung called individuation.

This shows us how anger can serve as a tool for self-understanding. Jung writes:

‘Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.’

C.G. Jung

Discovering our repressed feelings is always frightening at first, but it can lead to a renewed sense of humility, compassion, and appreciation for life. I explore this at length in my essay on shadow work, so check it out if you want to learn more.

Buddhist Emptiness

On a third level of meaning, the story of the boat depicts śūnyatā, the great Buddhist teaching of emptiness.

‘The boat is empty’, the monk realizes. While he imagined there was somebody – some self – driving their boat into his, what really occurred was the coming together of multiple causes and conditions.

Wind speed and wind direction, the coming loose of the empty boat, the monk’s decision to go out into the lake on this day and not another… All these factors and more have come together to form the impact of the two boats.

Notice how the monk later remembers this incident whenever some person or situation is about to anger him. But why would the empty boat still be relevant then?

I believe that is because the monk realized that even if there was somebody slamming their boat into his, even then the other boat would be empty.

Why?

Because the reasons why people behave the way they do are just as many and as impersonal as those that drive empty boats.

Genetics, past history, indigestion, cultural background, bad sleep… all these factors and more come together to drive people’s actions when they hurt or offend us. What we call ‘people’ or ‘selves’, are in fact, empty boats driven hither and thither by the winds of causality.

This returns us to our first story.

Everything and Everyone is an Empty Boat

Why did the Buddha not get angry at the Brahman?

If we think the Buddha repressed his anger to appear as a proper guru, we’re cheapening the story. The correct interpretation, I believe, is that the Buddha genuinely did not feel any anger at the Reviler’s attitude.

Why?

Because he knew perfectly well the Brahman was just an empty boat. There was no self there, shouting these hateful words. In fact, there was no Buddha hearing them either.

Our discussion of anger leads us to one of the most powerful teachings of Buddhism, the doctrine of emptiness. We won’t go further into emptiness here, as I have another deep-dive essay on it already. I highly recommend that if you’re interested, emptiness is one of the most fascinating fruits of Buddhist philosophy:

I hope you’ve gained some insight from the 2 stories we covered. And let me know in the comments what lessons about anger you’ve gained on your journey. These may be useful to others too.

Good luck on the path, and remember: what you seek is seeking you.

See you next time.

Becoming your true self might sound like a paradox, but it is the greatest achievement we can aspire to. Despite our potential, most of us never fully experience the true possibilities of human life. There’s much confusion around what it means to ‘become’ or ‘discover’ your true self. Different traditions, thinkers, and schools of thought give different answers. All seem right, in a way, but all seem to be missing something vital, too.

And look at the world today. For all our knowledge, we are drowning in injustice, suffering, and ignorance. Our whole species is in need of realizing its potential. And soon.

In this essay, you’ll discover a map for self-actualization that can guide both your personal journey and our collective evolution. This map is the result of decades of interdisciplinary research by Ken Wilber and his colleagues. It combines the key insights of ancient wisdom traditions with the cutting-edge findings of modern psychology.

The map traces 3 major paths of becoming your true self: Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning Up. These aren’t paths you choose between; they must work together if you’re to unfold your nature in the deepest, most comprehensive way possible.

Waking Up means exploring the states of consciousness accessible to your mind. This path leads to direct experience of your ultimate nature. It leads to enlightenment.

Growing Up means evolving your sense of identity. This path widens your perspective on your place in society and the world. It leads to maturity.

Cleaning Up means setting free all you’ve repressed within yourself. This path leads to true understanding for yourself and for others. It leads to authenticity.

After we explore these paths, I’ll briefly mention Jung’s insights into Individuation. This will round off our discussion with some much-needed context.

Waking Up

Let’s begin with the oldest path of becoming your true self. The core of every spiritual tradition in the world: Waking Up. In everyday speech, ‘waking up’ means leaving the dream state and returning to waking consciousness. The path of Waking Up builds upon this principle. The idea is that if we can move between waking and dreaming, there might be other states of consciousness out there too.

As it turns out, there are a number of increasingly open states of consciousness available to our mind. As you progress through these states, your sense of being a separate self becomes ever more fluid, until it finally dissolves. Waking Up culminates with the direct recognition of your identity with the entire universe.

This may sound like esoteric mumbo-jumbo, and sometimes it is. But the states we are about to cover have been reported worldwide by various traditions. What’s more, each and every one of them is open to you, should you undertake consistent practice under an experienced teacher.

Consciousness can spontaneously enter altered states. Near-death experiences, extreme exertion, and extreme emotion are some cases where this may happen. Wilber writes around 60 % of people have had a major altered-state experience in their lives. But generally, Waking Up requires consistent effort on the part of the individual. It requires some sort of practice. Various traditions have developed such practices ranging from meditation and breathing techniques to ecstatic dancing and plant medicine. Each of these has its particular strengths and limitations, but that’s a topic for another time.

The 5 Major States Of Consciousness

Here, we’ll map the various states your mind can experience. Integral Theory’s cross-cultural analysis has concluded there are 5 of them. Each of these states reveals a new dimension of your self and unlocks new ways of experiencing reality. The states are:

• Gross (or Waking)

• Subtle (or Dreaming)

• Causal (or Archetypal)

• Turiya (or Witnessing)

• Turiyatita (or Non-Dual)

The first three of these are relative states, while the last two are ultimate states. We’ll return to this distinction in a bit.

Waking Up: Gross State

The gross (or waking) state is the one we’re in most of the time. Here, consciousness is securely anchored to the ego. Our sense of separate self is more or less fixed and we experience the world as made of separate objects, people, and events. Consciousness experiences incessant mental chatter and bouts of craving, aversion, and ignorance. Most importantly, this state is suffused with discomfort, dissatisfaction, and suffering. What the Buddha calls dukkha.

An important note here: language is adapted to this gross state. The further we get from this state, the less adequate words become as a means of communication. Literal language gives way to metaphor, and metaphor gives way to silence. There are states of consciousness from which people return without any words to describe their experiences. In such cases, silence says more than words ever could.

In my pieces on Buddhist Interdependence and on Jiddu Krishnamurti, we go deeper into the limits of language:

In any case, the suffering inherent in the gross state has driven people’s search for alternatives. And the first state they explored is the one we experience every night.

Waking Up: Subtle State

In the subtle (or dream) state, the ego liquifies. We still possess a subtle personality, but one that is fluid and porous. Our sense of self can easily morph and embody different aspects of its nature. This same fluidity imbues also the things, entities, and events we experience. The physical realm is replaced by metaphysical images, symbols, and forms. The shamanic practice of ‘soul flight’ and lucid dreaming work in this state.

Jung, that great modern shaman, has explored the subtle state further than most. It is here that he says our personal psyche can receive teaching from the collective psyche of our species, of all of life in fact. This is what makes dream journaling and analysis such a powerful practice. Seemingly meaningless dreams often contain lessons in symbolic form. Jung points out dreams are not obscure on purpose; in fact, they communicate as clearly as the subtle state allows. This is not theory or conjecture. The messages within dreams are an observable fact, should we afford the humility to listen.

You can read my piece where I compare Jung’s Self archetype with the Buddha’s non-self teaching for more:

Waking Up: Causal State

Once we move beyond the dream state, we enter the causal (or archetypal) state. This state actually has two levels, a formal and a formless one. Now, my description of these states may sound esoteric at times. Not many people have experienced these states throughout history, and so appropriate words have not been invented. Hence, we have to use ordinary words in non-ordinary ways.

Formal Causal

The formal causal state contains what Plato calls forms, what Jung calls archetypes, and what Indian philosophy calls vasanas. These are all names for the universal patterns of existence. You can think of these patterns as the fundamental motifs or the primary colours of reality.

At every moment, Spirit generates universal forms, the first forms. Forms such as Love and Hatred, Life and Death, Light and Darkness, etc. Spirit then filters down through these forms and shapes into the manifest world we experience. This is not something you must take on faith, and please ignore it if it makes no sense. Just know this is what Integral Theory calls the formal causal state. Here, you experience the forms that cause the world. It is a real state, and there are a number of practices that can take you there.

Formless Causal

The formless causal state takes us one step beyond these universal forms, where they are still undifferentiated. Here, one only experiences pure consciousness without content, apparently. I cannot speak from experience. The wisdom traditions claim we enter this state every night during deep, dreamless sleep. The Buddhist tradition in particular discusses it at length.

This exhausts the relative states of consciousness we know of. There are two more states, however, which Wilber calls ultimate. Whichever relative state you are in, the two ultimate states are already present. There’s nothing you must do to enter these last two states, as you are already in them. The catch is, it may take you a lifetime to recognize this. As the Sufi wrote:

The thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.

Bayazid Bastami

Waking Up: Turiya

The first ultimate state is called ‘turiya’. You don’t have to remember the word, don’t worry. Integral Theory borrows the term from Hindu philosophy to denote a state free from all identification with experience. This state is also often called the Witness.

In turiya, you experience yourself as the boundless, empty, aware space in which all of experience is occurring. And yet this description is misleading. ‘Being a boundless, empty, aware space’ is yet another experience within turiya. Turiya cannot be adequately described with words, and you can never understand it until you experience yourself as it. Wilber writes:

The Witness is not anything that can be observed or seen; it’s the pure Seer…
As you go in search of this True Self… you won’t find it by seeing something—if you see anything, that’s just more objects, more content, more stuff…

Rather, you will start to sense a vast Freedom from all of this, a vast Openness and Spaciousness, not as an object but as an atmosphere.

Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness

Turiya is one good candidate for what the Buddha describes by the term nirvana. Recognizing this unconditioned state and staying with the recognition means full liberation from suffering. Buddhist self-immolation is a tragic but powerful display of this. One watches in horror and wonder as the monk burns to the bones without so much as a flinch.

Waking Up: Turiyatita

The final and highest state of consciousness is turiyatita. This means simply ‘beyond turiya’. This state is also called non-dual, as it is the recognition of the total identity of consciousness and its contents. Here is how Wilber describes it:

Your sense of being a separate-self simply disappears. Your ego no longer has an experience—your ego becomes every experience it has.

That is, your sense of self expands to enfold every single experience that it is having—it reaches out and embraces the entire world, and you are all of that.

Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness

Turiyatita is well-documented in nondual traditions. Here, as the Heart Sutra says:

Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. Emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness.

The Heart Sutra

I hope this summary of the 5 states open to consciousness gives you a good map for your own journey. For most people, the ordinary, waking state constitutes ‘real reality’. Waking Up shows us quite the opposite is true. The gross state is the most constricted and stressful mode of being. What’s more, it gives you the most partial understanding of your true nature.

Waking Up opens up new dimensions of experiencing ‘ourselves’ and ‘the world’, leading to the total identity of the two. What was first an ego discovers it is, in fact, all of existence. Talk about becoming your true self! But as revolutionary as this is, it is only one part of the journey…

Most enlightened teachers in history have supported slavery, sexism, racism, and war. Many have been painfully superstitious. To experience yourself as the universe tells you nothing about universal human rights, or ecology, or the scientific method. Altered states of consciousness eclipse the ego for a while, but sooner or later, you’re back to the small-minded, anxiety-ridden, neurotic ego, wondering where all the enlightenment went.

And the answer is, it is not enlightenment’s job to make you a mature and authentic individual. Nor is it enlightenment’s job to stop war, violence, and crime. For this, there are other journeys we must undertake. Other paths to becoming our true selves.

Growing Up

While our species has pursued Waking Up for ages, we have discovered Growing Up in only about the last century. Growing Up has always been happening, of course, but collectively, we have only just noticed it.

Remember, Waking Up traces the states through which we experience ourselves and the world. So, states of experience. Well, Growing Up traces the stages of how we interpret ourselves and the world. So, stages of interpretation. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this. Reality is not just an objective ‘thing’ we are perceiving. The very act of perception is a form of interpretation.

When I write ‘Копривщица’ most people read gibberish. Bulgarians read the name of a beautiful town in the western part of the country. The objective word I write is the same, ‘Копривщица’, but it makes different people perceive entirely different things. That’s because perception is interpretation.

Any major shift in your interpretation causes your whole reality to change. When you hear people say a person, a book, or an experience changed their lives, what changed was their interpretation of their lives. They’ve gained a new perspective on the world, and now they simply can’t go on living the way they used to. They’ve grown up.

Psychologists have found people’s interpretation of experience evolves through distinct stages. These stages always go in the same order, and each new stage transcends and includes the previous ones. Integral Theory has concluded there are between 6 and 8 key stages of Growing Up. We don’t need to study all of these in detail here. I’ll only go through 3 major periods of Growing Up, which will give you a good idea of the whole process. Chronologically, these periods are:

• Egocentric

• Ethnocentric

• Worldcentric

Wilber also adds a fourth, extremely advanced period of development called Integral, but we don’t need to go there for now.

The stages of Growing Up describe both the development of humanity throughout history and the development of each person throughout their life. It turns out each of us repeats in small scale the collective journey of our species. Understanding this process then gives us both personal and societal insights. It explains the reasons behind most man-made suffering and also holds promise for ending this suffering in the future. So, let’s look at the stages…

Growing Up: Egocentric Stages

When we are born, we all begin at square one, the adual stage. At the beginning of human life, there is no experience of separation between world and self. Biting down on a blanket and biting down on our finger feels only vaguely different. Here, the newborn identifies unconsciously with the material world. This should not be mistaken with consciously identifying with experience, which is non-duality.

The adual stage evolves into the narcissistic stage, where the young child develops personal preferences and intentions. The young ego here recognizes only its own reality. Others are real only insofar as they can serve our purposes. We are narcissists in the most unconscious, innocent sense of the word. It just never occurs to us that someone else can be as real as we are.

A powerful Waking Up experience at an egocentric stage will be filtered through the pigeonhole of the ego. You will become convinced you are the one and only messenger or incarnation of God. Jung calls this ‘inflation’: the ego grows up to the size of the God-image. Many cults have formed around such enlightened narcissists.

Growing Up: Ethnocentric Stages

Our next major period of development comes when we see we are not the only real person around. Here come the ethnocentric stages where our sense of self centres around our group. Here we resonate with statements such as: ‘I am a Hindu’ or ‘I am an American’, or ‘I am a Socialist’. Of course, we belong to such groups all the time, but at ethnocentric stages, our group identity is our self-identity.

Here, we develop for the first time the capacity for care and understanding towards others. Acts of compassion begin from this period onward, though here they are unconscious and exclusive. Wilber remarks:

Nazis truly loved their families and their country.

Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness

The ethnocentric stages of development are, in fact, the greatest source of human violence and cruelty. Here, acts of aggression can feel not only justified, but honourable. If my people serve the one and only true God or ideology, it is my moral responsibility to convert your people. If conversion is not an option, well, all the worse for you lot.

The danger of ethnocentric stages is that they make it feel very right to do things that are very wrong. Here, the world is strictly divided between us and them. All fundamentalist, extremist, racist, sexist, and xenophobic sentiments are born here. Unfortunately, humanity has been at ethnocentric stages throughout most of our history.

And here you see the true importance of Growing Up. Our species has had access to the highest states of Waking Up for millennia. And yet, the practice of slavery officially ended only about two hundred years ago with the Enlightenment. Discrimination against women is still the norm in much of the world. No amount of Waking Up will fix this.

A powerful Waking Up experience at an ethnocentric stage will only strengthen the conviction your tradition is the one and only true path. Should you hear infidels describing similar experiences, you will be certain what they experience is a corrupted, perhaps even demonic perversion of the true thing.

Wilber writes 70% of people today are stuck in ethnocentric stages or even lower. Hence, all the humanitarian disasters and war crimes we are witnessing. Thankfully, there are a number of more mature stages of development. The fact we know of these stages today makes us all the more responsible for cultivating them in our communities.

Growing Up: Worldcentric Stages

The worldcentric stages begin with the understanding that ‘us and them’ is a broken way of seeing what is really only ‘us’. Here, our sense of identity transcends our family, society, culture, and religion. Ideas like universal human rights, indiscriminate compassion, being a global citizen… All these are born here. Even our species is no longer a limit on our compassion. The well-being of animals, plants, and the whole ecological system becomes a priority here.

Wilber often uses the term ‘rational’ here, since at worldcentric, humanity becomes receptive to universal laws. He writes:

[Here we] find the first emergence of the modern, rational, universal sciences—modern physics, modern chemistry, modern astronomy, modern biology, and so on—not Hindu chemistry versus Protestant chemistry, just chemistry, universal in its reach.

Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness

Here we also find the post-modern stage. At post-modern, one becomes aware of the relativity of systems of thought, belief, and morality. One begins to see the underlying structures of power that create and shape the way people live and think. Nietzsche is a prime example of this stage. The post-modern stage can make us critical of tradition to the point of recklessness. This is its danger. It does, however, further open us to universal care and understanding. This is its promise.

It is at worldcentric stages that Waking Up becomes truly effective. Our relative self is finally ready to embody the experience of our ultimate self. Wilber believes the world’s greatest teachers, such as the Buddha and Christ, were worldcentric individuals:

[Christ] was indeed awakened to his Oneness with Spirit. Importantly, he interpreted his realization from [a] worldcentric stage not [an] ethnocentric stage, which is why Jesus the Christ clearly wanted his realization to be given to all the gentiles as well as the Jews…

He himself insisted that he was most fundamentally “the son of Man,” which meant the “son of all humans,” not just the son of one people.

Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness

These are the 3 major periods through which our interpretation of ourselves and the world evolves: egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric. If each of us is an opening through which the universe knows itself, then by Growing Up, that opening widens. And yet, at every stage of Growing Up, we are exposed to danger. With every step, our relative self can be crippled due to the inability to face certain aspects of itself.

For example, as my ego forms when I am a child, I may repress all feelings of anger. This can happen if my father is responding to my tantrums with punishment. Or, when entering the worldcentric stage, I may repress my spiritual interests. This may be because my peers mock religious people for being superstitious.

These feelings and ideas we repress don’t just vanish. They cluster in the basement of the psyche, the unconscious. And the more parts of ourselves we push down there, the more fragmented we become, the more scattered our energy, the more difficult Growing Up. Worst of all, our inner conflict comes out as aggression towards others.

To fully Wake Up and Grow Up, we must enter the basement of our psyche and reclaim what is truly ours. We must walk the path of Cleaning Up.

Cleaning Up

Consciousness is a tiny stream in the otherwise vast ocean of psychic life.

As we navigate our days, countless thoughts, feelings, memories, and fantasies present themselves. The task of consciousness is to discriminate between these and pursue only what best serves our purposes. Think of how many thoughts and feelings you’ve had while just watching this video. How many of them did you have to look away from to stay focused on what I’m saying? Chances are, most. This automatic process leaves most psychic content by the wayside, directing our attention to only what’s important.

But sometimes we push away thoughts and feelings not because they are not important. Sometimes, we push them away because they are too important in a way we don’t like. We repress what otherwise demands our full attention because we are afraid of the consequences it may have on our lives. We pretend it’s not there. This repressed content goes into the basement and becomes what psychologists call the ‘shadow’.

Repressed shadow elements usually make a number of attempts to draw our attention. And every time we deny them, their attempts become more disruptive. They begin showing up in dreams, in slips of the tongue, in intrusive thoughts, emotional outbursts, depression, anxiety… They may even cause physical illness, as Gabor Mate has shown.

For example, the son of a homophobic father would rather live with depression than recognize any gay tendencies in his own psyche, should such arise. What would happen if it turns out he is gay? The boy would become everything that’s wrong with the world – or so has his father convinced him. So he pushes his authentic feelings down and feels depressed. But that’s not all…

The more we repress, the more pressure builds up within us, pressure which disrupts our normal functioning. The psyche has evolved a mechanism for releasing this pressure and restoring psychic balance. A mechanism both efficient and dysfunctional: projection.

Let’s continue our example with the boy. Every time someone brings up gay people, he lashes out with a hateful, homophobic rant. And he isn’t faking it. He is genuinely hateful of homosexuals and feels they are everything that’s wrong with the world. Why? Because they represent what he least wants to recognize in himself. He has projected his own shadow onto them, and this releases the pressure he feels. After his rant, the boy feels renewed, finally free from inner conflict. For a time, that is.

Wilber uses a similar example. He quotes a study that found homophobic men experience greater arousal when seeing homoerotic images as compared to non-homophobic straight men. And this is exactly how shadow projection works. The things I want to destroy within myself, but can’t, I try to destroy in others.

Remember, projection is not a mind game we consciously play. If it were, only the most sophisticated of people would do it. In fact, it is the most psychologically immature among us who project the most. Projection is an automatic response of the psyche, entirely unconscious. We don’t think ‘Let’s project some repressed feelings onto these people’. We simply think ‘I hate these people’.

One becomes uneasy the first time he hears of this: ‘What if it turns out I am projecting?’ Well, yes, you are. We all are. It’s safe to assume every overwhelmingly negative or positive reaction is a projection of repressed material. You hate a certain politician with a passion? Most likely, he has qualities you hate to admit you have.
You’re in love with the wisest, kindest person in the world? Most likely, you underappreciate the wisdom and kindness within you.

Discovering your projections is no cause for concern. In fact, it’s progress. It is a form of consciousness expansion that neither Waking Up nor Growing Up provide. Remember, the discoveries of depth psychology are little over a century old. That’s why ancient traditions offer little insight into the unconscious. And the guidance they do offer is wrapped in ambiguous language, since their understanding was an intuition at best.

Becoming whole by integrating our shadow is one of the key tasks of self-actualization. Cleaning Up is more urgent in some periods of our lives, but really, it is the work of a lifetime. Theoretically, you can do this work on your own. In practice, you go much farther, much quicker, and much safer by working with an expert. Therapy, journaling, plant medicine, and confession are all ways of Cleaning Up. And you don’t have to limit yourself to just one.

In an exclusive video for Patrons & Members I discuss a shadow work technique Ken Wilber recommends. Join the community and check it out if interested.

As long as the shadow remains unseen, we have only a partial and false understanding of ourselves. We are rigid, at war with our own nature, and looking to take this out on others. Sincere compassion for others and for ourselves becomes a rare thing. We live a life we think we ‘should’ live, and not the life we yearn for. We are neurotic, inauthentic, unfulfilled, and victims of compulsions. Altered states of consciousness dissociate us from our issues for a time, but this only postpones the work. Sooner or later, we return to our conventional self and find it in need of healing.

This then concludes the triad of self-actualization I wanted to present to you: Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning Up. Before you go, though, there’s one more perspective I want to bring up. This, I hope, will dispel some misunderstandings that may arise from what we’ve covered.

Jungian Individuation

For Jung, individuation is the most important task of human life. It is to find your life’s true meaning; to become who you truly are.

Jung points out our actions, thoughts, and beliefs mostly conform to unconscious collective values. Convention and tradition are like ocean currents that carry generations of people along well-trodden paths. And thank God for that! These unconscious currents keep us safe within tried and tested patterns of life. Finish school, finish college, get a job, find a partner, start a family, etc.

Any well-adjusted member of society must learn to recognize these patterns and align with them. This keeps you safe within the herd, it protects you from the pitfalls of disgrace, isolation, and insanity. Unfortunately, it also keeps you from finding out who you really are.

A well-adjusted life is an achievement we shouldn’t disparage. For many disadvantaged people, it requires inhuman effort. Still for others, it remains only a dream. But those who earn their place in society, it is they who find how empty this leaves them. The well-adjusted life, as good as it can get, will always be a form of servitude to the herd. No matter how successful we may appear from the outside, we remain an amalgam of what family, friends, and society expect.

To become yourself, to find out what you truly feel, think, and believe, requires one of the most dangerous acts for a human being. It requires that you leave the herd and expose yourself to the very dangers convention and tradition protect us from. Clearly this is the road least taken. And no sane person would walk it if they were not forced by necessity.

Individuation usually begins when a dramatic experience shakes us awake from unconscious life in the herd. Suddenly, we find ourselves facing a challenge others know nothing about. Our close ones may offer understanding, support, or even (most annoyingly) advice. But ultimately, we are on our own. We find ourselves exiled from the currents carrying so blissfully those around us.

But this is not enough for individuation. Here we can, through great repression, force ourselves back to sleep. And just like that, the opportunity of a lifetime is lost. To individuate, we must answer our unique challenge with a unique response. A moral choice. This choice usually flies in the face of what others consider right and proper. But through the choice sounds the voice of our true self.

This voice, we find, comes through us but not from us. Though it is an inner voice, it feels like a call from outside, a command from an intelligence beyond our ego. To others, we appear fiercely independent, while in fact, we are only answering a call. A call coming from unconscious depths and leading us to our life’s purpose.

I’ll stop here…

Individuation deserves its own proper essay, something I plan for the future. I am introducing it here, however, to address 2 misconceptions that might arise from what we’ve covered.

First, Cleaning Up is only one aspect of working with our unconscious. The unconscious is not just the trash bin of consciousness. It does not contain only repressed personal contents. Jung discovered a collective dimension of the unconscious that contains timeless wisdom. The unconscious can be a teacher, should we know how to approach it, and it can point us to our true self, should we know how to listen.

Second, Growing Up widens our self-identity to the point where we feel one with all of life. This must be balanced with Jung’s insights into individuation. Your mind and body are not there simply to be transcended and left behind. They are unique expressions of the ultimate.

The spirit of life works through the individual no less than through the collective. Being one with everyone must not come at the cost of abandoning the person you are. If total oneness was the goal of existence, we would all be one by now. The person you are, with all your flaws and idiosyncrasies, embodies a unique piece of the universe. By discovering and embracing who you are, you uncover insights the entire species may need. Jung reminds us humanity’s greatest achievements have always come from individuals. Dissolving into the collective will deprive both you and everyone else of the treasures only your destiny holds.

Conclusion

This completes the map I hand to you with this video. Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning Up, all balanced with individuation. While no map will capture the full richness of the journey, this one offers a profound guide for a lifetime of self-discovery.

Ignorance of what we’ve discussed here has engulfed our planet in conflict, suffering, and confusion. I urge you not only to absorb this knowledge but to embody it. Spread it through your actions, your words, and the way you live your life. This is how we heal, one step at a time.

Remember, we are all desperately in need of what you, and only you can bring forth from within. Our maps of reality have blank spaces waiting for you to fill them.

So, get on with it.

Of course you exist, don’t worry! If you didn’t, how would you know it? There wouldn’t exist anyone to know they don’t exist!

To put your existence to doubt is to prove it. Only one who exists may wonder whether they do or not! Right?

Right… Unless our premise is wrong. A wrong premise may produce a perfectly logical wrong conclusion. And what is our premise?

Our premise is the very question. To ask ‘Do I exist?’ is already to set yourself up for a wrong answer. The Buddha’s most life-changing teaching addresses this paradox. But we’ll get there in a bit.

This essay has 3 parts. First, we look at how language makes us hallucinate a virtual reality and traps us in it. Next, we’ll explore what a better representation of reality might be. The Buddha will offer profound insight here. Finally, we’ll take what we’ve learned and apply it to our ‘self’ – or to what we take to be our ‘self’. By the time we’re done, you’ll see your true nature transcends all questions, words, and concepts you may aim at it. This is an insight powerful enough to change your entire experience of life.

But we’ll take things one step at a time. First, let’s deal with our collective hallucination. Let’s talk about language.

I. LANGUAGE

Why should we discuss language in an essay about the self? Well, we can only speak about the ‘self’ within the limits of language. It is exactly these limits that get in the way of our understanding.

Language is founded on an assumption. It takes as a given that the world is made of ‘things’. And true enough, look around and you find all kinds of ‘things’. But remember, to one holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail… Let me show you the problem with language with an allegory. A modern version of Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Imagine a group of people who grow up with a virtual reality headset strapped to their heads. Unbeknownst to them, all they see of the world comes through the headset. And the headset has a low-resolution display. Since birth, its users only ever see pixelated images of the world – and of their own bodies. As far as they are concerned, they are pixelated people living in a pixelated world. They even dream of pixelated sheep.

Now, say one of these people loses her headset. In a terrible moment of revelation, she gazes out at the world with her naked eyes for the first time. The world, she discovers, is not made of tiny squares! The world is made of shapes and colours that flow into one another. And so is her own body!

In the early excitement of awakening, the woman runs to her group to share the good news. She shouts from the rooftops: ‘Nothing is pixelated – not even you!’ The response? She is laughed at, of course – ignored at best – burned at the stake at worst. And her peers are right to disbelieve her as they watch her pixelated form preach the unreality of pixels. Tragic, I know. But the real tragedy of the story is that the pixelated people are us.

Language is a representation of the world composed of ‘things’. Anything can be a ‘thing’ (pun intended). Objects, events, processes, qualities… ‘Things’ are pixels language uses to put together a picture of reality. This compresses the complex terrain of existence down to a map. This map is perhaps the most useful tool we have. It allows us to make sense of the world, of ourselves, and even of things we cannot perceive with our senses.

The trouble comes when you stare at the map for so long, you forget there’s a terrain in the first place. You forget you are wearing a headset.

Take, for example, the laptop I’m writing these words on. My ‘laptop’ is the result of a web of causes and conditions. This includes its assembly, the manufacturing of its parts, the mining of minerals from around the world… My laptop is the work of designers, programmers, businessmen… It is the result of advancements in science and technology, market pressures, and cultural trends. Go back far enough, and you find the atoms making up my laptop being born in the heart of a star. What we take to be a ‘thing’, a ‘laptop’, is but a momentary phase of causal stream stretching all the way back to the Big Bang. It is a snapshot of a fractal web of relationships comprising all of reality.

Even this short analysis is a lot for the human mind. No wonder we prefer to simply say ‘laptop’. We prefer the map. But the longer we stare into the representation, the more we lose sight of what is being represented.

The distortion language creates is nowhere more important than in how it obscures our own nature. Language pixelates not only the world, but also us. It tells us we are a ‘thing’ – a ‘self’. This deeply engrained belief serves as the foundation of most we ever do. And most we suffer.

But what if it’s wrong? How would life look like if we found our ‘self’ is a hallucination? Before we explore this, one last point…

In my attempts to show my laptop is not a ‘thing’, I still conceded to the limitations of language. I still listed a number of ‘things’: minerals, programmers, stars, and so on. We can, of course, analyse each of these down to its causes and conditions. But this would only produce more lists of ‘things’. Such is the trap of language. It allows us to describe the world, yes – but only the world it is able to describe. Now let’s see how reality might appear if we take off the headset. Let’s see how you might appear.

Enter the Buddha.

II. INTERDEPENDENT ARISING

Unlike the woman in our allegory, the Buddha did not rush to share his insights. In fact, it took the pleading of the gods to convince him to teach others. Initially, he thought to himself:

This [insight] that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize … subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise.

Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1

Notice the wording here. Awakening is ‘to-be-experienced’. What the Buddha discovered is incommunicable through language. It can only be seen by taking off the headset.

So, how are we to discuss Buddha’s insight if it’s ‘incommunicable through language’?

Well, metaphors help – and allegories. The world’s wisdom traditions love figurative language. By taking language to its limits – they point to what lies beyond those limits. Even then, the student needs to take the leap beyond concepts. He must walk without the map.

Here is how the Buddha’s insight translates into language:

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhaya Sutta; SN 12.41

Every teaching of the Buddha arises out of this insight. The insight called Interdependent Arising.

Interdependent Arising sounds like a fancy term, but don’t get hung up on the words. The point is simple: every ‘thing’ arises due to causes and conditions.

To have my laptop, you must have the factory where it was built and the workers who built the factory. You can’t see these workers when you look at my laptop, but they are there. They, too, are phases of that causal continuum which, at this point of space-time, appears as my laptop. Some years ago, this continuum appeared as the construction of a factory. Some time after I’m done writing this, it will appear as an essay you are reading.

The point is, when you lift the veil of language, you don’t see ‘things’. You see a dynamic tapestry of relationships, constantly evolving and criss-crossing. You see a cosmic current of causal change. This current forms patterns, like waves in a river. Language picks up on these patterns and draws boundaries around them. ‘This is a laptop. This is a factory. These are workers.’ Such classification is indispensable for understanding. But left unchecked, it becomes misleading. What we gain in understanding the parts, we lose in understanding the whole. Again:

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.

In other words, the ‘this’ is contained in the ‘that’ and the ‘that’ is contained in the ‘this’.

‘This’ and ‘that’ are separated only by the process of causation, but the process of causation is also what unites them. There is no ‘this’ and no ‘that’, really. No separation – no union even. The world is not made of things, not even of relationships between things. The world is made of relationships between relationships. And no matter how much you zoom in, you only find more relationships. You never find ‘things’.

Later Buddhism calls this thing-less-ness of the world ‘emptiness’. You can have a look at my deep-dive essay on that. The Buddha calls it Interdependent Arising. The world as a fractal of relationships.

Here you may think: ‘Great, but why should I care? What difference does it make whether the world is made of ‘things’ or ‘relationships’? My life remains the same either way.’ Well, the significance of all this appears when we look back at ourselves. Most our energy goes into thinking about, worrying about, and figuring out our ‘self’. This stands to change forever once we examine just whose life ‘our life’ really is.

III. YOUR ‘SELF’

The Buddha’s no-self teaching is the most profound analysis of the self from among all wisdom traditions. Encountering it may at first feel uncomfortable. What if it turns out we really don’t have a self? Our self feels threatened by this prospect. You see the irony here…

The Buddha analyses personal experience in five dimensions. ‘The five clinging-aggregates’, he calls them. These are the most common targets of our clinging to self-identity. Let’s go through the aggregates one by one. As we do so, search for your own center of gravity. Search for where you feel your ‘self’ to be.

1. The Body

The first aggregate is our physical body. It is easy to take the body for a ‘thing’ and hence a ‘self’. The body has specific dimensions, it remains relatively the same for a relatively long time, and it seems to partake of our every experience.

But should you investigate it, you find the body is in a constant state of change. You find it is a web of complex processes you don’t even understand, let alone control. It is the result of eons of evolution and carries the features of countless ancestors.

In short, the body is not a ‘thing’, but a web of relationships, a cluster of causes and conditions. Your body is not your ‘self’.

2. Feeling

The second clinging aggregate is feeling. Here, we identify with the experience of pleasure or displeasure. When dogs bring us pleasure, we think, ‘I am a dog person’. When a bad smell brings us displeasure, we think, ‘I hate this smell’. We project an ‘I’ onto the feeling.

We rarely reflect that our mom made us a dog lover. Or that our biology makes us enjoy some smells and hate others. We forget that what brings us pleasure or displeasure is a reflection of our genetics, upbringing, culture, and countless other factors.

In short, feeling is not a ‘thing’, but a constellation of relationships, the fruit of causes and conditions. Your feeling is not your ‘self’.

3. Cognition

The third clinging aggregate is cognition. Cognition is the field out of which language grows – and into which language plants its seeds. Cognition is the tendency to classify experience. ‘This is a shape. That is a colour.’ This comprehension of what we perceive can often feel as our self.

But look at this red circle:

Can you now recognize this red circle as a blue triangle? You can’t because it is, in fact, a red circle!

Cognition is a reaction of the mind to external stimuli. As such, it is a relationship between the external world and your body-mind. Could you have any cognition about the red circle if you never had eyes? Unlikely.

In short, cognition is not a ‘thing’; it is a confluence of relationships. Your cognition is not your ‘self’. In fact, the very ideas ‘I am a self’ and ‘I am not a self’ are just patterns of cognition.

4. Volition

The fourth clinging aggregate is volition. Here we identify with our thoughts, words, and actions. Surely, you are the one who decides to keep reading this essay! To prove so, you can put away the essay at any time. There – you’ve made an intentional action – you exist and you are your free will!

But consider this: do you choose what you choose to do? Do you choose what you choose to say and think? Aren’t your choices the results of past experiences? Aren’t they a reflection of your environment, upbringing, and genetics?

If volition was an independent ‘thing’, nobody would ever struggle with temptation and addiction. People would just choose to choose what is good for them. But we do not choose what we choose. We simply choose and then search for ourselves in the choice. Hence, all the blame and guilt.

Rare are those who look for what stands behind a choice. And when they look, they find no ‘self’ there, but a labyrinth of relationships. They find people’s choices are as free as the apple seed’s choice to grow into an apple tree.

In short, intentional words, thoughts, and actions are a function of the world just as much as the world is a function of them. Your volition is not your ‘self’. (You can read my piece on karma for more.)

5. Consciousness

The fifth and final clinging aggregate is consciousness. This is the most stubborn base for self-identity, especially in spiritual circles. ‘Surely, if nothing else is my ‘self’, then at least my awareness of experience should be it!’

But consider this: my dog, Barney, can hear a wide range of sounds I will never be able to hear. And I can see a spectrum of colours he will never be able to see. It is not that Barney’s consciousness is different; it is not that this makes him one ‘self’ and me another. It is simply that our different body-minds allow for different experiences. Consciousness is simply the space in which body-mind and world encounter one another.

Consciousness is not a ‘thing’, but a property of the world. To identify with your knowing of experience is as absurd as identifying with the space in which you stand. Your consciousness is not your ‘self’.

The Dimensions Of I

Here, then, are the five aggregates: body, feeling, cognition, volition, and consciousness. The usual suspects for our ‘self’. All, we’ve seen, arise from causes and conditions and change when the causes and conditions change. For all, it applies that:

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

We’ve seen each of the five aggregates is the coming together of relationships. And the aggregates themselves stand in relationship to one another. Body affects cognition, cognition affects volition, volition affects feeling, and so on.

Zoom in and you see consciousness, zoom out and you see a person, zoom out more and you see a planet or a galaxy. But these different ‘things’ – consciousness, person, planet, galaxy – these are only different scales of one and the same phenomenon. This phenomenon is the cosmic flow of relationships, the stream of cause and effect connecting all of space-time. Interdependent Arising.

So, is Interdependent Arising our true nature? Is it your true self?

This would be a satisfying conclusion. But to identify as Interdependent Arising is to fall for the last desperate attempt of language to impose itself on reality. To make a ‘thing’ of the emptiness of things.

The Buddha himself reminds us – Interdependent Arising is just words. It too is a map. It is a useful raft for taking you across the river. But once you cross, you leave the raft behind.

IV. DO YOU REALLY EXIST

A man called Vacchagotta once asked the Buddha point blank: ‘Does the self exits?’ The Buddha was silent. Then Vacchagotta asked: ‘Does the self not exist?’ The Buddha remained silent.

There have been many interpretations of this, but my favourite is by Dr Peter Harvey. He compares Vacchagotta’s question, ‘Does the self exist (or not)?’ to asking an innocent man, ‘Are you still mistreating your wife?’. There’s no right answer to such a question. To answer it is to submit to false assumptions. To say I have stopped mistreating my wife is just as untrue as to say I am still mistreating her. I never have mistreated my wife. I don’t even have a wife.

But imagine I get distraught and go around looking for my wife, trying to make it up to her. This hopeless endeavour would occupy my entire life with worry for a made-up problem. In the same way, we spend our lives searching for our ‘self’, using any means to satisfy and protect it. Of course, we never truly find that self, we never truly satisfy it, and we never quite manage to protect it. Our efforts remain as fruitless as trying to make peace with the wife you never had.

Or say we have a superficial understanding of Buddhism, and we deny the self. We ignore the relationships between causes and conditions in our experience, we reject responsibility for our actions, we dissociate from our roles in family and society. These efforts remain as fruitless as trying to divorce the wife you never had.

To say you don’t exist is just as untrue as to say you do. The former ignores the relationships between causes and conditions we call ‘I’. The latter ignores that what we call ‘I’ is relationships between causes and conditions. Both arguments are stuck in the headset; they are arguments about the map without reference to the terrain.

But one day our headset slips. Our eyes meet the terrain for the first time, uncharted, untranslated, and unpixelated. At that moment, there is no ‘self’ looking, seeing, and understanding; there’s no ‘thing’ being looked at, seen, and understood. There is only the looking, only the seeing, and only the understanding. Only relationship. Questions such as ‘Do I exist?’ and ‘What am I?’ no longer apply. The pixels remain in the headset we have taken off.

This doesn’t mean language has to be done away with. Language is not only a representation of the world. It is also a representation of our thinking. To get our thinking straight, we need to get our language straight. We need a good map. The Buddha’s Interdependent Arising is an attempt at such a map. And as a map, it has practical uses.

Once we see ourselves as a fractal of relationships, we don’t lose our agency. If anything, we become more skilled agents who better understand their role in existence. To see the world’s interconnectedness unlocks new ways of living. We become more mindful and intentional in what we consume, how we spend our time, and what work we engage in. We see how our words, thoughts, and actions shape our private reality and our environment. Our self-improvement is no longer separate from world-improvement. We realize it never was. We see the healing of ourselves and the healing of our environment as the same process at different scales. We no longer need to tackle challenges directly and violently – we learn to work with the causes and conditions around our problems and see the problems resolve themselves. We realize we do not exist within a family, culture, and planet. We realize we are co-extensive with our family, culture, and planet. With all of life, in fact. This makes us more responsible, more compassionate, and more engaged. We realize the bombs falling on the other side of the globe are falling on our own heads.

Interdependent Arising does not annul our ability to think critically. If anything, it adds new depth to what we are able to think. Freedom comes not with tearing up the map. It comes with realizing you can put the map away for a while and enjoy the view. And when you pick up the map again, you can alter it, make it a truer map.

Only after seeing past the limits of language do we begin to use the true power of words. Only then we remember why words were invented. To point to what lies beyond them.

The 3000 words I’ve used here are the map I hand to you. Imperfect as this map is, I hope it points you in a good direction. And wherever you go from here, in this fractal we call life – remember to enjoy the view.

Christ says:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

‘The kingdom of heaven’ is Christian lingo for the ultimate goal of spiritual life; it is the Christian equivalent of the Buddhist nirvāṇa. What could it mean that the goal of spirituality belongs to the poor in spirit? Shouldn’t the exact opposite be the case?

Shouldn’t we aim to accumulate virtue, wisdom, and good karma? Shouldn’t we let go of temporary material riches and replace them with the eternal treasures of spirit? What does it mean to be ‘poor in spirit’ anyway?

To make sense of all this, let’s hear what the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart has to say about it. ‘The man from whom God hides nothing’, people called him. Eckhart says there are 3 forms of spiritual poverty:

[A] poor person is someone who desires nothing, knows nothing and possesses nothing.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

This is no random definition. As we’ll see, many of the world’s wisdom traditions agree with Eckhart here. So, let’s learn the 3 forms of spiritual poverty and let’s see how they can connect us with the divine mystery at the heart of it all.

I. Desire Nothing

Spiritual poverty is different from outer, material poverty, and yet it follows the same principles. A nun might be proud of having no possessions and practicing the harshest asceticism – but this very pride makes her full of herself. So full, in fact, there’s no room for the spontaneity of spirit to flow through her. Rather than letting go of attachment, she has simply traded material attachment for attachment to spiritual goods. Spirituality for her has become a sense of superiority, and good karma has become a vanity item. Asceticism, to be blunt, has become spiritual masturbation. All food for the ego.

Eckhart writes:

[Some] cling to their own egos in their penances and external devotions … These people are called holy because of what they are seen to do, but inside they are asses…

[S]uch people are not truly poor nor are they like those who are poor. They are greatly esteemed by people who know no better…

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

Eckhart reminds us the best intentions are really the ego in disguise. Whether we consider ourselves a bodhisattva nurturing the enlightenment of others, or a preacher growing God’s Church, or a volunteer helping souls in need, we are serving an idea in our heads, usually one that makes us feel important.

This egoic impulse is crucial at the outset of the spiritual path, but it must be surrendered eventually. Eckhart writes:

[A]s long as you have the will to perform God’s will, and a desire for eternity and for God, you are not yet poor. They alone are poor who will nothing and desire nothing.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

The Buddha gives this same lesson with his teaching on karma. As we know, he teaches moral actions generate bright karma with joyful consequences and immoral actions generate dark karma with miserable consequences. What many tend to forget is that the Buddha does not recommend bright karma. Rather, he teaches bright karma too comes from a sense of egoic desire, attachment, and ignorance.

The Buddha’s recommendation is anti-karma, or what he calls ‘karma which leads to the ending of karma’. This means pure action free of intention. Free even of the intention of realizing nirvāṇa. Such action cannot be forced, as this would make it intentional. It can only arise spontaneously from the conditions of wisdom and compassion when these are no longer obscured by the defilements of the mind. If you want to learn more about this, I invite you to my essay on Buddhist karma and rebirth:

II. Know Nothing

Eckhart’s second form of spiritual poverty is to ‘know nothing’. His ideal here could be Socrates, whom the oracle of Delphi called the wisest man in Greece. Why? Because Socrates alone knew that he knew nothing.

The opposite of this would be a conservative rabbi, or imam, or priest – so full of ideas about God and the holy life that it is his ideas that live and not he. This can also be any of us when we succumb to a sense of certainty about what’s right and what’s wrong, what the ultimate nature of reality is, and what a well-lived life looks like.

Eckhart writes:

[T]hey who wish to be poor in spirit, must be poor in all their knowing so that they have no knowledge of anything, neither of God, nor of creature, nor of themselves.

This is why it is necessary that we should desire to know or perceive nothing of God’s works. In this way we can become poor in knowing.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

As Ram Kir, the Indian mystic, says, ‘a God defined is a God confined’. In other words, the ultimate nature of reality transcends thoroughly the limits of our intellect. Any ideas we may have about it will be partially true at best.

If we crown any partial truth as the Ultimate Truth, we make a fiction of life. This fiction may provide us with a comfortable sense of certainty, of ‘being right’. But sooner or later, the aspects of life we have failed to embrace surprise us most painfully. We may stubbornly resist facing these realities, but our resistance only deepens and prolongs our suffering.

The Buddhist tradition recognizes this, too, with the teaching of ‘no views’.

Once, a man approached the Buddha’s closest disciple, Ananda. The man asked Ananda a number of metaphysical questions like: ‘Are the soul and the body one or are they separate?’, ‘Is the Cosmos eternal or not?’, ‘Does an enlightened being exist after death or not?’ Ananda refused to answer any of the questions. Displeased, the man asked how could Ananda not know and see the answers of these questions. Isn’t he supposed to be a wise ascetic? Ananda replied:

The extent to which there are viewpoints, view-stances, the taking up of views, obsessions of views, the cause of views, & the uprooting of views: that’s what I know. That’s what I see.

Kokanuda Sutta (AN 10.96)

In other words, it is by letting go of preconceived ideas, opinions, and beliefs that we become receptive to wisdom. Wisdom is not a library full of answers to life’s questions. It is freedom from answers; it is the understanding that no one answer can capture the essence.

III. Possess Nothing

The final kind of poverty Eckhart describes is the most mystical one. That is to say, it is the one where we most require personal experience to understand him. He says:

Whoever does not understand these words, should not be troubled. For as long as someone is not themselves akin to this truth, they will not understand my words, since this is an unconcealed truth which has come directly from the heart of God.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

To understand what it means to ‘possess nothing’, we must be ‘akin to this truth’. In other words, ‘possessing nothing’ refers to our very being; it is not an action we perform or a quality we have, but a reality we are.

Eckhart also calls it ‘an unconcealed truth’. An ever-present reality that remains obscure not because it is hidden, but because it is so obvious, so close, that we miss it all the time. Until we don’t…

Now let’s see how the mystic himself describes this reality in his own peculiar language. Don’t get discouraged if the words sound strange at first. We will unpack them in a minute:

[I]n that essence, where God is above all existence and all multiplicity… I am my own self cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is in time.

There I am unborn, and according to the manner of my unbornness, shall never die. According to the manner of my unborn nature, I have been eternal, as I am now and ever shall be.

But what I am according to my nature which was born into the world, that shall die and turn to nothing, for it is mortal…

Here God is one with our spirit, and this is poverty in its ultimate form.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

The Medieval character and the opaqueness of these words tempt us to dismiss them as abstract theology. But this cannot be further from the truth. Here, Eckhart is describing a real subjective experience recorded throughout history in virtually every wisdom tradition. An experience you and I can have right now. He is describing the recognition of one’s identity not with one’s temporary body and mind, but with the background of aware being that accompanies every moment of experience. This background of aware being is present right now as you are reading my words. It is what Eckhart calls the ‘essence’: the true referent of the pronoun ‘I’.

Now as I continue, please relate my words to your own present experience and test whether they make sense for you.

The essence of aware being experiences every moment of the flow of time; as such, it does not appear within the flow of time. Rather, time appears within it. This essence does not have a beginning or an ending in time. It is both ‘unborn’ and ‘undying’, and yet it is always present. In short, it’s eternal. This is why Eckhart says:

There I am unborn, and according to the manner of my unbornness, shall never die… I have been eternal, as I am now and ever shall be.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

This is no superstitious belief in immortality. Eckhart is quite upfront about the impermanence of the personality and the physical body. He says:

[W]hat I am according to my nature which was born into the world, that shall die and turn to nothing, for it is mortal.

Meister Eckhart, Sermon 22

Meister Eckhart is simply pointing to the fact that our ego and body are not what we truly are. They are rather appearances within what we truly are. They are carried along by the flow of time within the ever-present embrace of aware being. Our body-minds are temporary garments that life puts on for a while, and then discards, putting on something else. Somebody else. And beneath all these changing forms, there is one and the same essence. The true referent of the pronoun ‘I’.

To the outrage of his colleagues, Eckhart claims this essence of ours is no different than God’s essence. This may sound like heresy to a conservative Christian, but in fact, the Bible bears it out. In the Old Testament, God describes himself to Moses thus:

… I Am That I Am… Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.

Exodus 3:14

In the New Testament, Christ describes himself in a strikingly similar way:

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

John 8:58

Both Bible passages point to that essence unbound by time which yet penetrates time at every moment. An essence which always is and which can describe itself only as ‘I am’. When Schrödinger says ‘the present is the only thing that has no end’, it is exactly this essence he is hinting at. An essence present in every conscious experience of every sentient being – past, present, and future.

Your essence.

To ‘possess nothing’ means to recognize not your relationship, but your identity with this eternal essence. An essence free of all qualities and actions except for the simple fact of being. To shift your sense of identity from the separate ego to the essence, you must surrender all attachment to the contents of experience. Your body, name, biography, desires, fears, beliefs, ideas… all of these must be let go of as temporary appearances in an otherwise timeless condition. This is core to many types of meditation, particularly in the Buddhist and Vedantic traditions. I would be surprised if Eckhart had not developed a similar spiritual practice of his own.

Enter Heaven Here & Now

These then are the 3 kinds of spiritual poverty that bring about the kingdom of heaven: desire nothing, know nothing, and possess nothing. Letting go of our pride, letting go of our ideas, and letting go of our identification with the ego. To see our treasures are dead weight and to surrender them is the poverty Christ speaks of. This throws new light on another, often misunderstood, statement of His:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Mark 10:25

So, wherever you are on your journey, be mindful of the riches slowing you down. It is the joy of adolescence to accumulate, but maturity begins with letting go. As we read in the Tao Te Ching:

One who seeks knowledge learns something new every day.

One who seeks the Tao unlearns something new every day.

Less and less remains until you arrive at non-action.

When you arrive at non-action, nothing will be left undone.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48

This video was born of a conversation with a good friend of mine, Ivo Mihov. Thanks for the spark, Ivo!

I walk, therefore I am.

Elly, my partner

You walk the path one step at a time.

What do these words mean?

Each one of us is a path, a narrow path amidst a mist. We are the one who walks the path and also the path being walked. By creating the path, we follow the path.

One step at a time.

Thay says ‘walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet’. But what do these words mean?

A path is a dead thing – a trace of something living, true, an echo of a word spoken – but no more. What lives is the word between two lips, the kiss between feet and Earth.

Life is not a path; life is the lovemaking of path and traveller, seeking and finding, setting off and arriving. Life is walking.

One step at a time.

Lao Tzu says ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. But what about the second step, and the third, and the ones after that? Does a new journey begin with each? And once you pass the thousandth mile, where will your journey be if not within your next step?

Is not each journey a step – and each step a journey?

What is time anyway?

You walk the path one step at a time.

But what is time? Is it measured in steps, or is it one whole path? And does this path return to itself like a circle? A clock’s circle, perhaps, whose two arrows are our feet, measuring time… or creating it?

Step by step.

Kiss by kiss.

Is time a love game between now and eternity? And are we the offspring? Why then does time consume us? For it measures us no less than we measure it. What it gives with one hand, it reclaims with the other.

You walk the path…

But where do you come from and where are you going?

The path is a conversation. A dialogue between setting off and arriving. The path is always seeking its goal, but it is the goal that leads to the path. Yes, in the beginning was the word, but the beginning itself is meaning. Meaning speaks the word. The goal leads to the path.

So, where do I come from and where am I going?

We think back and imagine a womb. We think forward and imagine a tomb. We imagine ourselves as children of a beginning, destined for an end.

But when we look, both forward and back, we see only a mist shrouding the path. When we look both outside and within, we find only mist. We think up names for the mist. We call it ‘womb’, ‘tomb’, ‘self’, ‘other’ – we call it ‘God’… We call it ‘mist’. We get it wrong always and always we try again. Our lips stumble towards the unspeakable, and we keep walking.

… one step at a time.

But what about missteps? What about getting lost?

Razumikhin says, ‘to go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.’ And Campbell says, ‘if you can see your path laid out… it’s not your path.’

We need the mist, mistress of all seekers. By shrouding the path, she leads us to it.

Your path and my path, our path and their path, the crooked path and the straight, the ascent and the descent, the common path and the one less travelled… Are we not all steps on one and the same path? Are we not kisses exchanged by the same lovers? Are we not words seeking the same meaning?

But what do these words mean? What are these steps seeking? Who is lover and who the beloved?

Traveller, You walk the path one step at a time. And for a time – an instant – I am Your step upon the Earth. I am the Word between Your lips. I am Your breath as it chases the mist.

Blessed be the lips and blessed be the feet. Step by step, we arrive. Kiss by kiss, we succumb. Word and Meaning rejoin.

You walk the path one step at a time. A path shrouded in mystery. From seeker to seeker You walk, and what You seek is seeking You.

Eternal recurrence is a life-changing idea. It is not an idea meant for philosophers, but for individuals. For the most individual of individuals, in fact. It is not meant to explain life, but to transform it. To cast light over every shadow and bend even the loneliest suffering towards joy.

(That is, if you can handle it… That was your warning.)

In his solitude, Nietzsche laid the foundations for the coming centuries. His ideas would influence generations of intellectuals, scientists, artists, and the general public. These ideas include his profound criticism of Christianity, his pioneering work in psychology, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, his attack on morality, his ideal of the overman… But Nietzsche himself thought these were all secondary to his deepest insight.

Eternal recurrence, or the eternal return, is, on the face of it, a bizarre concept, abstract and impractical. It is the idea that your whole life — past, present, and future — repeats exactly as it is, forever.

Much of the charm of the idea comes from how childlike it is. This is the charm, perhaps, of all great ideas. You can imagine a 9-year-old pulling his mother by the sleeve, saying, ‘Imagine, momma, if our lives repeat again and again – and always the same!’ If a child says this, we would smile and pat him on the head for the silly notion. But when one of history’s deepest thinkers insists on it – we might want to pay closer attention.

Here is how Nietzsche describes the idea in verse:

Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence.

Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth itself the same house of existence. All things separate, all things again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of existence.

Every moment beginneth existence, around every ‘Here’ rolleth the ball ‘There.’ The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

When he first introduces the idea of the return, Nietzsche calls it ‘The Heaviest Burden’. He later calls it a ‘breeding’ idea, meaning it weeds out the weak of spirit. It is an exclusive idea, meant only for the deep, the strong, and the noble.

Here is what Nietzsche is proposing, in prose this time:

This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence…

The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom

Eternal recurrence is not rebirth. There is no karma, sin, heaven, or hell here. No reward for the good, no punishment for the bad. No final answers, no moral to the story, no ‘beyond’. Only the permanent repetition of your impermanent life.

All your anxieties and unresolved conflicts, all disappointments, regrets, embarrassments, and suffering; all this mixed with your joys, pleasures, and triumphs, every ecstasy, every agony, and every dull, trivial, wasted hour… All of this again and again, forever. This is the heaviest burden. The eternal return.

I. Being vs Becoming

Before we explore the implications of this strange idea, let’s see how it might have come about.

We should start by noting Nietzsche rejects the idea of a transcendent realm of existence. Plato’s world of forms, the Christian heaven, the Buddhist nirvana – Nietzsche views all these as diseased ways of thinking. To him, faith in an ideal world is but an escape from the only world there is. Love of a ‘beyond’ is but a subtle form of hatred for the here and now. He is continuing here an ancient debate in Western thought. A debate we can trace back to Heraclitus and Parmenides. That is – Being vs Becoming. Let me give you a broad summary of the two views…

Philosophers on the side of Being claim there exist eternal things: perfect, immutable, unconditioned realities. They view only these universals as ‘really real’. What we perceive with our senses are but the shadows and reflections of ultimate reality. This world – the world of appearance – is but a veil, and the body is a prison of the soul. Man’s goal is to escape prison, to tear down the veil. He must detach from everything material. Through contemplation, one can access the eternal and transcendent. At death, the enlightened sage begins their true life in the realm of the immortals – the ideal world.

The philosophers of Becoming (fewer in number) claim existence is an endless stream of change; everything arises out of this stream and returns back into it. There is nothing ‘beyond’ the stream. All things interact, arise from, and depend on one another. Man is imprisoned by the illusions of permanent things with fixed identities. This includes the illusion of being a fixed ‘self’ (or ‘soul’). To become free, one must accept the impermanent, relative, and contradictory nature of reality. When illusion is dispelled, frustration is transformed into fascination with the spontaneity and playfulness of life. One becomes one with the creative flow when they realize they never were anything else.

Nietzsche takes a clear stance here. He writes:

One has deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world. The “true world” and the “apparent world”—that means: the mendaciously invented world and reality…

The concept of “God” [has been] invented as a counterconcept of life… The concept of the “beyond,” the “true world” invented in order to devaluate the only world there is—in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept of the “soul,” the “spirit,” finally even “immortal soul,” [were] invented in order to despise the body, to make it sick…

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

In short, Nietzsche sees the notion of Being as pathological. Heraclitus, whose philosophy of Becoming I’ve covered, was Nietzsche’s favorite thinker.

But Becoming didn’t satisfy Nietzsche for long. There too he encountered problems.

Let’s assume for a minute there is nothing permanent, universal, and absolute in the world. God is dead and everything’s permitted. Time to party! But wait. Think for a moment what this would mean. Think what it would mean for you. Your life, with its triumphs and tragedies, all lessons learned, all challenges faced… the entire journey of self-overcoming, self-transformation, self-discovery… What would be the point of it? If your life is an infinitesimal stream of change in an infinite ocean of change… Then of what consequence are you? What’s the point of anything?

The quick answer here is ‘Just live in the present, man, don’t think about it’. But this is not an answer; it is denial of the question. Why live in the present? Why live at all if change sweeps away everything? In fact, it seems much better not to live than live just long enough to understand living is meaningless. Existence in a world of becoming is, at bottom, suffering. The Buddha knew this better than anyone, as we’ve explored in my essay on his greatest teaching.

Nietzsche understood that, while the philosophy of Being leads to fanaticism, the philosophy of Becoming leads to nihilism. Both views deprive life of joy and meaning. Both alienate us from the here and now.

But can there be an alternative view of existence? Can we reconcile change and eternity? Is there a philosophy that can encourage life in the present and also satisfy our longing for eternity?

Nietzsche writes:

That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to the world of being.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

A whole book can be written on just this line. In fact, I think a few have been. But I’ll be brief…

Heraclitus famously says no man steps into the same stream twice, for both the stream is different and the man himself. This is Becoming in a nutshell. Nietzsche replies:

I teach redemption from the eternal flow: the stream flows back into itself again and again, and you enter the same stream again and again, as the same.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke VII/1,209

[Marcus Aurelius] kept constantly before him the transitory nature of all things, so as not to attach too much importance to them and to remain tranquil in their midst.

Conversely, to my mind it seems that everything is far too valuable to be so fleeting.

I seek an eternity for everything – should the most precious salves and wines be poured into the sea? – and my consolation is that all that has been is eternal: the sea will wash it ashore again.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nietzsche’s recurrence presents the world as a mobius strip. From up-close, existence appears as an endless flow of change. But in the span of eons, the flow goes in cycles, repeating forever the same course. Change and rest, Being and Becoming, now and forever – are a matter of perspective. What unites them is the eternal return. This idea may, at first, seem like a thought experiment – an exercise in abstract thinking. This is only because we’re not taking it seriously enough.

II. Eternal Recurrence as a Challenge

Let’s assume, for a moment, that the world really does recur. And let’s drop all philosophical arguments about Being and Becoming. Let’s make it personal.

Does your life, the way it is, stand the test of eternity? Would you relive it all over again… forever? Most of my audience answered ‘No’ to this when I polled them. But let’s entertain Nietzsche a step further.

Ask yourself this, how would you have to live for the eternal repetition of your life to bring you joy? Must you pursue pleasure and achievement above all else? Perhaps only billionaires and celebrities can bear the return?

I think Nietzsche has something much deeper in mind… Look at his life: a lone genius, misunderstood by family, ignored by contemporaries, rejected in love, crippled by illness… This is the prophet of the eternal return. We can be sure the idea is not about having a pleasant life. In fact, the harder your life, the better you’ll be able to understand Nietzsche. Embracing recurrence is not about accumulating positive experiences to cancel out the negative ones. This one-sided hedonism is a form of immaturity. It is inability to face life in its wholeness.

The eternal return is also not about trying to ‘justify’ negative experience. This would be the approach of your average guru. They’ll teach you to accept suffering by pointing out its benefits: wisdom, growth, and so on. ‘There can be no light without the dark,’ ‘No pressure, no diamonds’ – that sort of thing. But this too is a subtle form of resistance. It’s like telling your partner ‘I will tolerate your nastiness, because I love all the rest’. This cheap facsimile of love will not do for a deep relationship. It won’t do for a deep life either.

No, eternal recurrence cuts our every means of escape from reality. There is no world beyond, no ending with death, no future rebirth. There is only this life, as it is, forever. In fact, there is only this moment as it is, forever. To face this, no half-measures will do. As Nietzsche says, recurrence calls for

A Yes-saying without reservation, even to suffering… Nothing in existence may be subtracted, nothing is dispensable…

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

He continues,

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [love of fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.

[One must] not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

We begin to grasp the eternal return when we no longer approach it as a philosophical idea. Rather, it is a Zen kōan. Nietzsche’s aim is to spark psychological change within us. To bring us back to the present moment of the only life we can know we have. The eternal return is a torch thrown into the deepest caverns of our being, exposing every trace of resistance to experience, every form of clinging against what is. In a twisted, but profound way, it is a Buddhist idea. It is Nietzsche’s way of guiding us to complete surrender to experience. That is – to love. But here I am getting ahead of myself…

To learn more about Zen kōans, you can check out my interview with Zen master Henry Shukman:

We’ve now explored the return as a synthesis of Being and Becoming and as a challenge to our resistance to life. Let’s now tackle the idea from one more angle. Let’s explore recurrence in the light of another one of Nietzsche’s big ideas. The will to power. This will reveal how the eternal return crowns Nietzsche’s entire philosophy. We will get a bit technical for this final section, but by the end I think you’ll feel it was worth it.

III. Eternal Return & the Will to Power

Above all things, Nietzsche treasures the impulse to creative self-overcoming. The instinct to grow, affirm, and express oneself. He calls this, rather misleadingly, ‘the will to power’.

Our individual will to power, Nietzsche says, is but a special case of a universal principle. This principle is the tendency of energy to seek ways of discharging itself. We read:

This world is a monster of energy, without beginning or end, a fixed and invariable magnitude of energy…

[A]n ocean of tempestuous and torrential energies, forever changing, forever rolling back, with enormous periods of recurrence, with an ebb and flow…

This world is the will to power – and nothing besides! And even you yourselves are this will to power – and nothing besides!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Let’s explore the will to power as a human drive, the form in which we know it best. This drive for self-expression and self-overcoming is by nature inexhaustible. Should it encounter no resistance, the will would claim absolute power. But the will does encounter resistance. It encounters necessity.

By ‘necessity’, Nietzsche means all the circumstances of our life, conditions which define, and thus, restrict us one way or another. Necessity includes our genetics, nationality, gender, skin color, education, family, income… Everything that must be one way or another is necessity. And it is a limit on the will. It is a cage, chaining the will to a particular sort of existence, denying it absolute power.

Nietzsche recognizes the will is always restricted by necessity. His difficult life taught him this. And he was too deep a thinker to fall for the modern idea of ‘improving’ our life. If we seek ‘improvement’ by changing one circumstance or another, we engage in a never-ending battle against reality. This gives us temporary satisfaction, but rather than solve the problem, it only displaces it.

Nietzsche agrees with the Buddha that the will can never find final satisfaction. Sooner or later, it crashes against the walls of necessity. And among all kinds of necessity – one cripples us the most…

Time.

Time is continually devouring what is, shutting the doors to what was, shoving us towards what must be whether we like it or not. I can change my gender, my nationality, my skin color even. But I cannot change the flow of time.

Time cages the will into the infinitesimal space of the instant. And it takes even this space away as soon as it gives it. With its right hand, time denies us actuality, leaving us stranded in a sea of potential. This is the future. With its left hand, time freezes us in actuality, denying us any freedom of expression. This is the past.

In short, time is a monster.

In a previous piece, we explored the Buddha’s response to this. The will’s frustration is cured once the will is extinguished. The self must be subsumed under the conditioned world. The will must be recognized as just another form of necessity, an impersonal process. To experience the world as a flow of events devoid of self removes all dissatisfaction.

Time devours all things, but nirvana, being a no-thing, devours time. As we read in the Buddhist Jataka tales:

Time eats all beings, along with itself,

But he who eats time, he cooks the cooker of beings.

Ja II 260

We can say Nietzsche’s approach is exactly the reverse of this. He says we must rather subsume the impersonal world of necessity under the personal will. Time and necessity are not enemies of the will. In fact, they are its servants. How does that work? Remember, Nietzsche says:

This world is the will to power – and nothing besides! And even you yourselves are this will to power – and nothing besides!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nietzsche reminds us the forces of life within us are not separate from the forces of life in the world we inhabit. In fact, we do not inhabit the world any more than waves inhabit the sea. Our individual will is part and parcel of the cosmic flow of energy. What we call ‘necessity’, everything that opposes our will, is just other expression of the world will. Nietzsche writes:

The fatality of man cannot be detached from the fatality of all that was and will be… one is a piece of the fatum [fate], one belongs to the whole.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nietzsche studied Sanskrit to gain access to Indian scripture. I don’t know how far he got and what he knew of the Upanishads, but here he is reiterating their most famous insight. Atman is Brahman. The essence of the self and the essence of the world are one and the same essence. I do not merely participate in the world; at the deepest (and truest) level, I am the world.

Of course, Nietzsche gives his own twist on this. There is no Atman and no Brahman. There is no essence, no Being. To think there is would be escape from the reality of impermanence. Rather, there is the eternal essence-less flow of impermanent events. But this flow repeats forever the same patterns so that its essence-less-ness becomes its true essence. It’s Becoming is its Being.

If you’ve read my piece on Buddhist emptiness, you will see the deep parallels here with Nagarjuna’s philosophy and the later idea of Buddha Nature.

When our sense of identity sinks down from the personal will to the world will – necessity and time are no longer enemies. In fact, nothing can be our enemy. To identify with the world will is to see everything in existence as belonging to you, as being an expression of you. Nietzsche writes:

To stamp becoming with the character of being – that is the supreme will to power…

Friedrich Nietzsche, NL 1885-1887

The will takes ownership of its limitations. It subordinates them. It recognizes its own flourishing in every struggle, suffering, and defeat. Once we see all that was, is, and will be as the fulfillment of our will… What’s left then, but to say ‘Yes!’ to it all, willing it all over again forever. Only the apotheosis of the will can make us strong enough to embrace the eternal return. This is the meaning of Zarathustra’s cry, a cry Nietzsche repeats in block capitals:

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

The ring of ouroboros expresses the wholeness of existence and the cyclical nature of time. But Nietzsche calls the eternal return a ‘marriage ring’.

Remember the themes we’ve been exploring here. Time vs eternity, Being vs Becoming, change vs permanence, the will vs necessity, the individual vs the world. All these pairs of opposites find their union in the idea of the return. They are integrated into a whole, they are coupled — married — in Nietzsche’s deepest insight.

And now remember the challenge.

Can you bare the possibility your life, exactly as it is, may repeat again and again forever? If not, how must you live for this to be the case?

Nietzsche’s answer is as simple as it is radical…

Love.

Love all.

Love even the unlovable, even suffering. Love your wasted potential. Love limitation, injustice, and frustration. Love the shadows no different than you love light.

As the Buddha taught, such transformation can only come with insight – with awakening. You must see life is the will actualizing itself. Heraclitus says time is a child at play. You must see you yourself are that will, that child. You must see the beauty and terror of it all. Only then will you know if you are the noble kind of spirit Nietzsche wants. Only then will you know if you are capable of the deepest, bravest form of love.

Only absolute love can withstand the eternal return. In fact, the eternal return, Nietzsche’s deepest idea, is only a guidepost. And what it guides us to is this: a love supreme.

With desire the world is tied down.

With the subduing of desire it is freed.

With the abandoning of desire all bonds are cut through.

The Buddha, Iccha Sutta; SN 1.69

Desire is the force of attraction we feel from an object in our perception. Sexual desire is the most exaggerated form of this. That’s why so much has been written on it. But sexuality is only one instance of a more fundamental drive.

Whether you strive for money, knowledge, a happy marriage, status, or enlightenment, the differences are superficial. Underneath, there is the same basic force. This force fixes attention on an object and demands that you be united with that object. The ‘object’ can be anything, ranging from material things to abstract notions like ‘progress’, ‘success’, and even ‘wisdom’. Philosophy is simply the lust of the intellect.

All this is to say, desire cares little what you desire—as long as you do desire.

And enough is never enough. As soon as the object is attained, it is either recognized as not so desirable after all, or one begins to take it for granted. In either case, desire simply moves on to the next object, and the next, and the next…

The joke’s on us, of course. Though we know the trick desire plays on us, we never fail to fall for it. Time and again, we let ourselves become enchanted, we open mind and body to the thrill of a new passion, a new goal, hope, wish, longing…

There is, however, more to learn about desire than what I’ve just said. And the best place for that is Buddhist psychology, which is all about understanding and overcoming desire.

Buddhist scripture often uses medical metaphors. It presents the Buddha as a doctor, his teaching as medicine, and people as afflicted with the symptoms of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, stress, and suffering. On the face of it, the Buddha’s aim is to heal people from that suffering. In fact, he repeatedly describes himself as doing just that. But we know a doctor’s job is not to remove the symptoms of an illness. When possible, he must cure the illness itself. And what’s the cause of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, stress, and suffering? The Buddha says that is the mental illness of desire. But that’s not all…

In most places, Buddhist scripture says desire is the root cause of suffering. But other passages point at ignorance as being that same root cause. We can dismiss this as mere inconsistency of accounts. But in fact, here is a subtle piece of insight, hidden in plain sight.

The equivalence of desire and ignorance.

You see, the Buddha suggests desire is not the attraction we feel from an object in perception. That is how we experience it, but that’s not how it actually is. For example, a straight man feels attraction to the female body. A gay man might not experience that attraction. A Buddhist arahant certainly wouldn’t.

In short, ‘desire is in the eye of the beholder’. The pull of attraction we feel from objects does not originate from them. In fact, these objects might go entirely oblivious to our deepest longing. (Our crush back in high school is a case in point.)

This is the sleight of hand desire uses to trick us time and again. It fills us with agitation and fixes our attention on an object. It convinces us union with that object will remove the agitation. But of course, the object has nothing to do with our agitation. It is desire itself that creates the conditions for its own existence. The particular object is secondary and, frankly, arbitrary. It will be one thing today and another tomorrow. And while we’re busy chasing it, we forget entirely that the agitation and attraction we feel are projections of our own mind.

Desire thrives on misdirection. It acts like a magician who draws the gaze of the audience to his right hand while performing the trick with his left. And the trick works only as long as the audience is fooled. Desire works only as long as there is ignorance.

But we should be careful here.

Desire cannot be entirely reduced to ignorance. When a thirsty man desires a glass of water, he is not being ignorant. The organism is responding to dehydration, and desire is the means for survival. This works on the psychological level too. A person chasing after success is not simply being ignorant. Perhaps her entire childhood, she was ever only embraced if she was being ‘a good girl’. To her mind, success is the condition for love. Ambition to her might feel no different than how thirst feels to a dehydrated man.

My point is, desire is not entirely divorced from reality. It is not simply ‘ignorance’. But it does work through ignorance in the way it warps perception. A glass of water feels one way when we are thirsty and another way after we’ve had our fill. Desire imbues its object with extraordinary value. It narrows attention. Context and consequence disappear, and there is only the object before us and its enchanting pull. This is why we don’t do groceries on an empty stomach.

Perhaps this enchantment is necessary for survival. Perhaps the tunnel vision of desire gives us the focus and motivation to act and thrive. Nietzsche, for one, points out ignorance can be more conducive to life than truth. And after all, who is to judge what way of seeing the world is true and what false? We may recognize that desire affects perception, but to say that it makes perception less true is a mere prejudice.

In any case, it’s not the evolutionary role of desire that’s causing us problems. It is rather its tendency to overreach its utility, to enslave us to objects neither necessary nor good for us. To convince us we need success when, really, we need love.

It’s here that the Buddha’s insight comes in handy. That is, the reminder that desire is a private experience, a hallucination really. Yes, that hallucination has its reasons, and we'd better explore and address these reasons… But it is a hallucination nonetheless.

I don’t think the overcoming of desire is a matter of life experience. I’ve seen people over ninety who’ve gone no further with it than I have. (And I haven’t gone far.) Rather, it seems to me the Buddha was right in saying desire diminishes to the degree that insight increases.

I also don’t think overcoming desire is incompatible with life. Surely, the Buddha didn’t forget to drink water. Rather, the filter of agitation applied to perception dissolves, while what is necessary (like drinking water) remains perceived as just that: necessary.

Buddhism calls the extinguishing of desire ‘liberation’. There are deep reasons for that, but one of them must be that the mind is no longer ensnared by objects. In fact, the mind realizes it never was ensnared by objects. The chains were always of its own making. This liberation is not easy when desire is constantly feeding on new objects. That is why the Buddha established a monastic order.

But there is a fair amount of progress you can make without putting on a robe. The Buddhist monastic code was created to facilitate liberation, not to produce it. What produces liberation is mindfulness of experience and our reactions to experience. Desire cannot be defeated by resistance. It can only ever be outgrown by insight. The road to liberation is contemplation. Surely, this is something we can all do a little more of—monk, nun, or otherwise.

If you want to learn more about the Buddhist way of liberation from desire, have a look at my essay article on the Four Noble Truths:

Suffering is a universal fact of existence. This is the starting point of two of history’s greatest psychologists. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the ancient Indian sage known as the Buddha.

Dwelling on suffering is often gratuitous and makes a bad situation worse… But not always. To grasp human life in earnest, you must explore not only its sunny hills, but its shadowy valleys too. Nietzsche says joy cannot thrive without suffering. The two are inseparable in what he calls the economy of the soul.

Painful experiences often lead to

Nietzsche refuses to divide life into pairs of opposites. Good and evil, joy and suffering, right and wrong are, to him, conventional labels. In the conflict of opposites, he sees a creative process of mutual nourishment. In this, he joins company with the Taoists and with Heraclitus, whom I’ve explored in an earlier piece.

Nietzsche’s life was marked by illness, loneliness, rejection, and, ultimately, insanity. Despite his misery (or perhaps because of it), he insists on the benefits of suffering. In a passage obviously derived from personal experience, he writes:

Nietzsche sees pain as a teacher. To him, misfortune provides the resistance necessary for growth of character. If one has the correct attitude, suffering can become the soil out of which joy, wisdom, and health blossom. The mud out of which the lotus rises.

Nietzsche says there are two basic ways in which we may respond to suffering. To use his language, we may call them “the way of the weak” and “the way of the strong”.

The way of the weak is to see suffering as something that consumes us. This is the impulse to avoid pain by all means, to preserve ourselves from it. To retreat back to safety, back into the womb, back into nothingness if possible. Nietzsche sees this as a cowardly, ignoble response.

The way of the strong, on the other hand, is to see suffering as something we consume. This is the impulse to build strength through challenge, to actively seek out discomfort. What Nietzsche sees as true nobility of spirit is the act of seeking out suffering. As he famously wrote:

So, Nietzsche says suffering is universal, but its meaning depends on our attitude to it. For the strong, suffering is a source of strength, reassurance, and expansion. For the weak, it is a source of weakness, doubt, and shrinking. This does not exhaust Nietzsche’s analysis. In fact, he says pleasure and pain, joy and suffering are epiphenomena. He sees them as by-products of the real drive of human activity.

The Will To Power

To Nietzsche, everything in life is driven by the impulse to discharge power. Inorganic processes, sentient beings, and societies alike. He was never too specific in his definition of the “will to power”, but one thing he didn’t mean was brute power or political power as such. Nietzsche’s example of the will to power par excellence was the artist, striving always beyond himself, creating what has never been created before. And the greatest artists, Nietzsche tells us, are philosophers and religious leaders. Through their art, these put reins on life and define how whole generations see and experience the world.

So, we can see the will to power as a creative impulse of expansion and novelty. This reminds me of Wilber’s evolutionary principle: “transcend and include”. We explored this in a previous piece:

For Nietzsche, what we call ‘suffering’ is simply the felt experience of the will to power being restricted. And the undisturbed flow of the will to power is the feeling we’ve come to call “joy” or “happiness”. Now, let’s relate this to the two fundamental attitudes to suffering.

Remember, Nietzsche says all of reality is the will to power in action. So, both the strong and the weak response to suffering arises from this principle.

The strong type receives suffering as the resistance necessary for growth. The overcoming of pain, the transformation of misfortune into fortune… This is what drives the noble one. She sees difficulty and suffering as necessary conditions for greatness. This is her will to power. In this view,

The weak type, on the other hand, receives suffering as an insurmountable obstacle. However, his will to power cannot simply disappear. As Nietzsche says,

So, the weak type turns the will to power against itself. As the will cannot assert itself in the world, it rejects the world, it rejects itself even. The weak type achieves his greatness in self-annihilation. The desire to abandon desire, the effort to cease effort, the dissolution of the self… This is how the weakling asserts his will to power.

Nietzsche sees this as the root of most religious traditions. We read:

The ultimate power move of the weak is to cast their own inferiority onto existence. To label the world of the senses illusory, to see the self and the will as enemies, and to escape into an imagined world of abstract perfection.

Now what would the Buddha say to this, with his idea of nirvāṇa, the illusory self, the overcoming of craving, and the ending of rebirth? Is the Buddha’s response to suffering what Nietzsche calls weak and cowardly? Is Buddhism an ignoble philosophy?

The English words “suffering”, “pain”, “dissatisfaction”, “stress”, “discomfort”, and so on all fall under the same category in Buddhism. They are different forms of what the Buddha calls dukkha. Dukkha describes all unpleasant experiences, but not only that. It also describes all experiences subject to change, and all experience arising due to causes and conditions. Pain, impermanence, and conditionality all lead to that background of uneasiness which underlies the human condition. It is this uneasiness, dukkha, that the Buddha set out to cure. He says:

Like Nietzsche, the Buddha also does not end his analysis with the existence of suffering. He, too, sees dukkha as a by-product of the real drive of human existence. He says:

In other words, it is the craving for experience that generates suffering. Craving is the ever-present drive for something more, something better, something different. Being of the nature to seek satisfaction, craving manufactures dissatisfaction whenever it appears. As the song goes:

The Buddha tells us craving not only generates suffering—it is what generates existence itself. He says:

The Buddha sees sentient beings as prisoners of endless cycles of rebirth. The force fuelling these cycles is the endless appetite of craving. We’ve covered this before in my piece on karma & rebirth.

Craving vs The Will To Power

So, to what extent can we compare the Buddha’s craving with Nietzsche’s will to power? Thankfully, the Buddha defines his terms more carefully. He says:

This overlaps neatly with Nietzsche’s will to power. To crave the world of the senses and its becoming is the creative, noble expression of the will to power. To crave the non-becoming of the world is the decadent, ignoble expression of the will to power.

And now we’ve stumbled on something fascinating!

Remember, from the two attitudes people can have towards suffering, Nietzsche extrapolates two fundamentally different ways of life. A person responds to suffering either with the will ‘to be’ or with the will ‘not to be’. The noble spirit is nourished by suffering; he seeks it out. The weak spirit is nourished by consuming himself; he seeks escape not only from pain, but from the very existence where pain is possible.

This is a profound insight of the German philosopher, but it appears the Buddha was there before him. He, too, recognizes these two opposite approaches, the craving for becoming and the craving for non-becoming. But unlike Nietzsche, the Buddha rejects both. Instead, he opts for a “Middle Way”.

This middle way is the Noble Eightfold Path. This is the path of Buddhist practice, and we’ve already explored it (see link above). In short, this path temporarily strengthens craving for some things (like enlightenment) in order to ultimately end craving itself. It combines the strategy of the weak and the strategy of the strong to achieve a shift of consciousness where there is no longer any strategy whatsoever.

“So!” Nietzsche would exclaim here, “I was right after all! The Buddha uses the will to overcome the will. He takes us into…”

Nietzsche is clearly a psychologist with few equals, if any. But I think there is one thing he fails to account for in his analysis of Buddhism. He had no access to the Buddhist science of mind cultivation, and so he overlooked its significance.

Buddhist meditation

No, I don’t mean the modern varieties of meditation for stress relief. We can envy Nietzsche for being spared from seeing these. I mean the ancient tradition of Buddhist meditation, which produces, on demand, states of consciousness inaccessible to the ordinary mind. To discuss Buddhist philosophy apart from meditation is like discussing food apart from its taste.

In short, meditation gave the Buddha the insight that experience falls into two broad categories. The conditioned and the unconditioned – or saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. What most of us call ‘life’ is really the realm of saṃsāra. It is the flow of experience according to causes and conditions, marked by impermanence and dissatisfaction. An infinite web of relationships with no substance or essence to be found anywhere. Within this web, sentient beings arise and disappear in cycles, all driven by the impulse of craving.

When the Buddha teaches liberation from craving, liberation from suffering, and liberation from rebirth – he is not teaching nihilism or extinction. Of course, it would seem he is teaching that to a mind familiar only with the conditioned. But Buddhist meditation reveals that an altogether different kind of experience is possible. It is this second kind of experience, nirvāṇa, that the Buddha is leading us to. He says:

Nietzsche would probably dislike the negative language here. But let us, for a moment, assume the Buddha was right about nirvāṇa. In fact, imagine you yourself had the experience of an eternal, unconditioned reality. Obviously, this reality would be unlike anything in ordinary experience; it would be unlike everything words were invented to describe. If you wanted to communicate it to others who have not had the experience, how would you do it?

To compare the unconditioned with conditioned things would be misleading. The sincerest, most accurate way of describing the indescribable is to say what it is not. The only form of language that can communicate the incommunicable is negative language. And even this is ultimately misleading. As the Buddha tells one of his disciples

Nirvāṇa deserves it’s own separate discussion and I’ll leave that for the future.

Now, let’s give the German philosopher his due and assume the Buddha was wrong. It is certainly not impossible that meditation is a form of self-hypnosis and faith in nirvāṇa is wishful thinking. This would make Buddhism a philosophy of the weak in Nietzsche’s book. He writes:

So, is there a dimension of experience free from suffering, impermanence, and conditions? Or is this a pipe dream of the weak? On this point, the whole argument hangs. This decides whether the world and its suffering must be embraced or overcome. But before we rush to a conclusion, let’s take a step back. Let’s appreciate just how much in common Nietzsche and the Buddha have.

People often overlook a key event in the Buddha’s biography. That is, his mother, Māyā, dies shortly after giving birth to him. Legend or not, this tells us trauma has accompanied the Buddha from his very entry into life. And the loss of the mother figure, the eternal comforter, could well have motivated his search for nirvāṇa, the end of suffering.

In light of this, it is not insignificant that Nietzsche lost his father when only four years old. This loss of the paternal figure cannot be entirely unrelated to his most famous proclamation: the death of God.

Both the Buddha and Nietzsche grew up with an intimate experience of pain. They arrived at the problem of suffering not as disinterested intellectuals, but as heartbroken men. It just so happened they were also geniuses. At first, both sought the cure for suffering in life-renunciation. Nietzsche in his passion for Schopenhauer, and the Buddha in his practice of extreme asceticism. Both were soon disappointed. They broke with tradition and retreated into a life of seclusion and there made their greatest discoveries.

Nietzsche’s kinship with the Buddha was not lost on him. He writes:

So, before we pit Nietzsche against the Buddha, we should recognize that, at root, they are kindred spirits. Their language betrays that, too…

Nietzsche keeps speaking of “nobility” of spirit, of the “noble” way of life. And what does the Buddha speak of? The Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path. Both describe a way of life attainable for the few, opposed to popular values, requiring insight, courage, and perseverance. For both, this noble way of life arises as a response to the problem of suffering.

I’m stressing these parallels to make a point. Obviously, there’s a lot Nietzsche and the Buddha do not agree on. But this doesn’t mean we cannot learn from both. That Nietzsche and the Buddha advise different ways of responding to suffering is secondary. If we read between the lines, we see the same core lesson. That is, when we encounter suffering, we shouldn’t look away. Tragedy and disappointment strip away our illusions; they remind us of the impermanence, fragility, and vanity inherent in everything. This is why they are so painful. But this is why, also, they are a gift.

Suffering is our greatest teacher. Everything trivial, vain, and artificial is burned in its fire. The greater the fire, the more gets burned away. What remains then is what is not trivial, not vain, and not artificial. Only this can resist the flames.

Here, the paths of Nietzsche and the Buddha diverge. Nietzsche says, “Turn up the heat, let suffering forge you strong and pure—befriend the fire!” On the other hand, the Buddha says, “Contemplate the fire, study its ways until you’ve learned how to put it out.”

There is strong disagreement here, but there’s also common ground. Both Nietzsche and the Buddha encourage us to take a stance towards suffering. Suffering alone does not bring wisdom. Suffering, confronted with courage, acceptance, and curiosity—this brings wisdom.

Nietzsche and the Buddha teach us the alchemy of transforming tragedy into triumph. As Nietzsche writes:

The Buddha, as we’ve seen, couldn’t agree more. Of his whole teaching, he says:

The noble life they both describe constitutes, finally, the creative act of making joy out of suffering, light out of darkness, victory out of defeat. This is the message; this is the core agreement.

But there is also the core disagreement…

Is there a mode of experience free from suffering, change, and conditions? Or is the world of the senses all that there is? The answer to this question would decide between the Buddha and Nietzsche. I would love to give you a sage’s opinion here, but I am neither a sage nor do I have an opinion. The ultimate nature of experience is not to be encountered in books, lectures, or blog articles. The ultimate nature of experience is to be encountered… well, within experience.

If you wish to have an understanding of reality rather than a mere opinion, you must make the experiment yourself. You would be surprised how much there is to discover from simply sitting in silence and observing the breath. And yet, much of what you discover will be your own projected ideas and desires. Your will to power is endlessly creative in its disguise. That is why knowing some Nietzsche will come in handy.

No serious Buddhist today should spare themselves the pain and pleasure of reading Nietzsche. And no Nietzschean should scorn a little meditation practice. In both cases, one will be saved from the lethal trap of certainty. And who knows, perhaps once we are free of this trap, we will have new ears for that timeless call of the Heart Sutra:

The law of karma and rebirth is one of the bedrock teachings of the Buddha. It is also one of the most problematic ones.

To some, karmic rebirth seems like outdated superstition. It ruins the image of Buddhism as a rational philosophy of life. Within the Buddhist tradition too, karma and rebirth raise difficult questions. If the Buddha had taught only the no-self doctrine or karma and rebirth, everything would’ve been fine. But he insisted both that all things are without self and that there is karma and rebirth. Now, if there is no self, what gets reborn? And if there are no selves, how can you or I, or anyone, have karma? And how does karma pass over from one life to the next? And does karma suggest our lives are predetermined – that there is no free will? If so, why does the Buddha teach us to put effort into improving our lives?

As I said, karma and rebirth are problematic… In fact, the Buddha says:

In the months I spent on this article, I experienced some of that madness and vexation myself. So, consider yourself warned. Life might appear even more mysterious to you after you’re done reading this.

Let’s start with the basics. Karma in Sanskrit (or kamma in Pāli) literally means ‘action’ or ‘doing’. That’s what the Buddha meant by the term, too – though he gave it a slight twist. He says:

By karma, the Buddha means intentional action. This detail makes a world of difference. For example, if a stranger asks you the way to the nearest bank, you may lead him there. This is bright karma. If that stranger goes on to rob the bank, he creates dark karma for himself. Your karma remains bright; your intention was to be helpful, and that’s what counts. Perhaps it then turns out the man robbed a corrupt bank full of criminals’ cash. His karma will remain dark, as it was motivated by greed, and that’s what counts.

See, the results of our actions have to do with countless factors beyond our control. Our intentions, however, are ours alone, and this is what defines our karma.

There is another important point. The Buddha says:

Karma is not only about what we do, but also about what we say, and what we think too. These are the three channels through which intention manifests into the world. Our thoughts, words, and actions are like musical notes sounding together as one chord. To bring this chord into the key of enlightenment, we must tune all three together. If any one of them remains out of tune, the harmony is lost.

The work of enlightenment happens either in our whole being or not at all. Outer shows of wisdom and compassion are useless if we’re full of repressed anger and desire. We can fool others, and even fool ourselves… But we cannot fool the law of karma.

Speaking of ‘the law’ of karma – who is it that enforces that law?

Nobody.

There is nobody ‘punishing’ dark karma or ‘rewarding’ bright karma. As the Buddha points out, a stone thrown into a river will sink; oil spilled into a river will float. The stone is not ‘punished’, nor is the oil ‘rewarded’. There are only the laws of nature playing out. So it is with karma.

The Buddha teaches karma as a fundamental principle of reality, like gravity. We can study and understand the properties of gravity. We can use them for our benefit, or we can suffer because of them. Our concern is not with why gravity exists as such, but how to deal with it. The same goes for karma and rebirth.

The Buddha, we are told, observed directly the rebirths of all beings according to karma. This happened at the moment of his awakening. He saw existence as the procedural generation and regeneration of beings in endless cycles. This cyclical algorithm, he saw, is not random, but works according to causes and conditions. Most importantly, each new generation of a being is determined by the intentional actions of its past generations. In short, its rebirth is determined by past karma.

This cosmic algorithm, the Buddha called saṃsāra – meaning ‘the wandering’.

In his vision, the Buddha saw existence stratified in 31 dimensions. The ‘planes of existence’, he called them. Some of these are material, like the planes of humans and animals, while others are immaterial, like the plane of hungry ghosts. Together they make up the ladder of existence, which reaches the hell-realms at one end and beyond the realms of the gods at the other.

At death, our accumulated karma forms a new being in one of the many planes of saṃsāra. Bright karma creates a rebirth in a higher plane and dark karma in a lower one. Kind of like how in water, a stone sinks and oil floats.

The Buddha did not teach karma and rebirth as mystical or esoteric. Nor did he suggest the various planes of existence are metaphoric or symbolic. He claimed karmic rebirth is an empirical law you can observe for yourself. Of course, to observe it, you must first cultivate your mind to be extraordinarily sensitive. Few have managed to do this, if any.

If you want to have a go yourself, you can learn the Buddha’s guide to enlightenment from my article on the Noble Eightfold Path.

The point is, karmic rebirth is not a conclusion of Buddhism – it is a starting point. The Buddha’s aim was not to convince anyone of karma or rebirth, or the planes of existence. To him, that would be a waste of time. Kind of like convincing a man falling off a cliff that gravity is real. Rather, the Buddha’s teaching is a guide on how to deal with what is already a fact.

Existence rolls on in endless cycles – and whether it is painful or blissful depends on your intentional actions. So, what can you do about this? First, you must learn what intentional actions are good – and what bad.

Bright vs Dark Karma

There are two rules of thumb for telling apart bright karma and dark karma. The first one, the Buddha told his son, Rāhula. He taught Rāhula to scrutinize his every action in the following way:

Creating suffering for yourself and for others weighs equally, and both are dark karma. That is because, ultimately, there is no distinction between self and others. Whether poison enters one wave of the sea or another makes little difference. In both cases, the sea gets polluted.

The second rule of thumb is that if an intentional action is rooted in craving, aversion, or ignorance – that’s dark karma. There’s a more detailed version of this in the form of a list. The list is broken into three sections concerning karma of the body, of the speech, and of the mind, respectively. The body creates dark karma by destroying life, stealing, and sexual misconduct. Speech creates dark karma when it is false, divisive, offensive, or pointless. The mind creates dark karma when it acts with craving, aversion, and ignorance.

These are the 10 categories of dark karma. The list of bright karma is simply the reverse of this. Lists aren’t especially exciting, so let’s unpack the teaching within.

Karma means ‘intentional action’. As we have seen, action occurs through the mind, speech, and the body. But intention, the key ingredient of karma, is of the mind. Karma is of the mind. So, the list of dark karma can be reduced to its three final members. Craving, aversion, and ignorance. Every kind of dark karma can be traced back to these. ‘The three fires’, the Buddhists call them.

But even these three are further reducible. Craving is ‘I want’ and aversion is ‘I don’t want’. Both are forms of desire. And what is desire? It is the active form of the delusion ‘I’ – the sense of being a separate, limited self. Desire is ignorance of our true nature. It is this ignorance, manifesting as desire, that keeps us spinning, dazed and confused, in endless cycles of existence.

Now we’ve covered the basics of karma – we know what it is and we know what makes it dark or bright. It’s time we talk about rebirth.

Rebirth?

First off, ‘rebirth’ is a misnomer. The word suggests someone gets born, dies, and is then re-born. In other words, a ‘self’ passes from one life to the next. The idea of a separate self is, according to the Buddha, our core delusion. I’ve covered this before, and you can learn more from my previous articles.

According to the Buddha, no self ever gets reborn. As a matter of fact, no self ever gets born in the first place. Rather, karmic energy propagates through the world and forms in its tracks what we call ‘selves’ or ‘beings’. It is both tricky and vital to understand this. Let’s explore it with a simile.

Imagine throwing a stone into a lake. As the stone impacts the water, waves appear. At first glance, it seems these waves are traveling over the water’s surface. But if we look closely, we find that’s not the case. What appears as waves traveling is really just masses of water rising and falling one after the other in quick succession. From a distance, these patterns of peaks and troughs appear as objects, or ‘waves’ moving. In reality, there is only the transfer of energy exciting the water surface. ‘Wave’ is but a conventional term for a much more complex reality. By ‘wave’, we designate a chain of events, where each event causes the next and is caused by the one before. Our language pictures this causal chain of events as an object. In reality, it is a process.

This might seem like a trivial point, but if we meditate on it, it can transform our whole experience of reality.

The Buddha describes the world of experience as a combination of five aggregates. Form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. We’ve covered this before. The five aggregates are like the three colours of a pixel. Red, green, and blue mix together in different proportions to form all the images you see on your screen. In the same way, the five aggregates mix together to form the world of experience. They form, also, what we call our ‘self’.

We’ve seen a ‘wave’ is a conventional label for what are really patterns of excitation of water. This excitation is due to the transfer of energy. (I know this has gotten technical, but stay with me here!) The Buddha says the ‘self’ is a conventional label for what is really, you guessed it, patterns of excitation of the five aggregates. This excitation is due to the transfer of karma.

Karmic energy passes through saṃsāra and creates patterns of the five aggregates. These patterns are what we call animals, demons, gods, and people. All of saṃsāra, with all its planes of existence, is but the pulsation of karma. The Buddha says:

In other words, you, I, and Barnie the dog are distinct not because we are different ‘selves’. We are distinct only insofar as we are different patterns of the five aggregates. Patterns animated by karma.

There’s one more important detail here…

In our simile, the waves do not appear out of nowhere. They appear as the stone impacts the water and transfers its energy into it. In the same way, karma does not come out of nowhere. Our intentional actions are not without cause. The cause of the waves is the stone; the cause of karma is desire.

The delusion ‘I am’, expressed as desire, creates intentional actions. Intentional actions gather bundles of the five aggregates. These bundles of the five aggregates, through the delusion ‘I am’, driven by desire, create intentional actions. These intentional actions gather new bundles of the five aggregates and so on ad infinitum. This closed loop is the prison of saṃsāra, the wandering.

The Buddha says:

Now you can see rebirth is not the transition of any entity from one life to another. What we call a ‘self’ or a ‘being’ is what the transfer of karma looks like. The Buddha tells us our mind and sense faculties are literally our past karma:

However, this does not mean our life is predetermined. The Buddha continues:

In other words, you find yourself in predetermined circumstances, but it is still up to you to choose how to respond to these circumstances.

This raises a difficult question. If everything in your experience is predetermined by karma… does this mean your karma is also predetermined? Does the law of karma suggest there is no free will?

The Buddha’s answer to this is subtle and profound. First, he maintains that personal effort is indispensable to enlightenment. We must, out of our free will, turn against the grain of saṃsāra to escape it. At the same time, the Buddha tells us there is no person to make an effort in the first place. There can be no will free from causes and conditions.

So, do we have free will or do we not?

The Buddha refuses to submit to this dualistic kind of thinking. He sees it as too crude to account for reality. To simplify things, he divides truth into two categories: ‘conventional truth’ and ‘ultimate truth’. We can also call them ‘low-resolution truth’ and ‘high-resolution truth’.

At the conventional or low-resolution level, we are selves that must work out our own enlightenment out of our own free will. On the ultimate or high-resolution level, there is the saṃsāric flow of causal events which, under the right conditions, resolves into nirvāṇa. Conventionally, we are waves; ultimately, there is energy transfer.

Now, we shouldn’t be snobbish about our truths. To hold to the ultimate only is to be insincere about the reality of our human, all too human lives. After all, we do experience ourselves as persons with free will. We shouldn’t act as if that’s not true. But to hold only to conventional truth is to be ignorant of the deeper reality beneath everyday experience.

‘Don’t miss the forest for the trees’, the Buddha tells us, ‘but also, don’t miss the trees for the forest.’ Both levels of truth are equally important.

So, do we have free will or do we not? Both. And neither. And both both and neither. And neither both nor neither. Just let go of the questions.

Now, let’s summarize what we’ve said about rebirth. Through the body, speech, and mind, you generate karma. This karma can be bright or dark in various degrees. It accumulates until the body fails and the five aggregates fall apart, or in other words, until you die. At the moment of death, your accumulated karma issues out like a lightning bolt and strikes saṃsāra at a new place. There, it animates a new bundle of the five aggregates. This bundle is determined by causes and conditions, the main one being the accumulated karma.

Ultimately, there is no rebirth. There is only karma pulsating through saṃsāra, creating patterns like waves on a lake. We are these patterns. In the Visuddhimagga, we read:

We’ve now seen how karma, rebirth, and no-self work together. Notice how the apparent contradictions in the Buddha’s teachings reveal, in fact, a deeper consistency than we would imagine. But more questions remain…

For one, if there is no separate self, how does your karma and, say, Barnie’s karma not get mixed up? Barnie has his past lives, and you have your past lives, but how can there be a distinction if it’s all just a flow of energy? And second, I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. How does the law of karma remember what I did a lifetime ago? Where and how is karma stored?

Let’s tackle the second question first. The Buddha speaks of three types of karma. There is light karma, whose effects appear in our present life or not at all. There is heavy karma, whose effects appear in our following life. Finally, there is massive karma, whose effects may echo out through a series of lives.

The heaviness of karma depends on the degree of suffering it has added or removed from oneself and others. Also, even light karma becomes heavy if it is habitually repeated over time. But where is the memory of all this karma stored?

This is a question to which the Buddha did not give a clear answer. So, various schools have offered their interpretations over the centuries. There are two explanations I want to share with you. The first is quite straightforward. The second, for a Jungian like myself, is profoundly exciting.

For the first explanation, let’s return to our example with the stone and the lake. Once you throw a stone, how does it remember to fall? And once it hits the water, how do waves remember to appear? After a couple of minutes, how do the waves remember to stop appearing?

The answer is obvious. A stone does not need to remember it has been thrown. It falls simply due to the laws of nature. Waves do not need to remember when to appear and when to disappear. They are simply patterns of energy transfer arising, again, due to the laws of nature.

This is a good way to think about karma, too. Your actions are part of a causal process that leads, sooner or later, to their consequences. If these consequences appear straight away, they are like a wave with a short wavelength. If they appear far in the future, they are like a wave with a long wavelength. The chain of causality can be stretched so far through time that a single human life is not enough to observe it. But the Buddha assures us it’s there.

So, no memory of karma is necessary – nature’s laws do all the work. This explanation works well, and I see no reason to search for a more complicated one. And yet, there is an alternative theory I just have to share with you. I mean the bhavanga-sota…

In Pali, bhavanga-sota means ‘ground of being’ or ‘condition for existence’. Nyanatiloka Mahathera writes:

If you are familiar with Jung’s works, you’ll detect here strong parallels with his idea of the collective unconscious. I’ve compared Jung’s concept of the unconscious with that of Buddhism in a previous article. It’s a fascinating topic, so do check it out!

The notion of an unconscious level of the mind might at first seem like an unnecessary complication of karma theory. But it does help explain some things. For one, it is an open question how karmic energy passes from one life to the next. At death, the five aggregates fall apart – where does the karmic energy go then? What is the medium through which it travels to the next existence? The bhavanga-sota offers just such a medium where karmic potentiality is stored as images (or what Jung would call archetypes). These images then find their way to manifest into saṃsāra.

The bhavanga-sota also suggests an explanation of the many synchronicities (or meaningful coincidences) that occur in life. Bhikkhu Bodhi writes:

We won’t go further here, as we are entering uncharted territory. Few scholars have explored this. After over 2000 years, Buddhist philosophy still has surprises waiting for us. Now onto the other question…

How does karma stay in its lane? If there is no self, but only a causal stream of events – what makes one stream distinct from another? Why do I not inherit your karma? For that matter, why don’t I think your thoughts or feel your feelings? If there is no self, how can we tell different bundles of the five aggregates apart?

As you can imagine, volumes have been written on this. But, unless you are bent on becoming a Buddhist scholar, there is one simple explanation that should suffice. That is, the bundle of five aggregates you take to be your-‘self’ stick together because of the strong causal relationship between them. This causal relationship is also what keeps certain karma associated with a certain bundle of aggregates. This is simpler than it sounds…

For example, if I throw a stone in lake A, and not in lake B, why do waves appear in lake A and not in lake B? Well, because my throwing the stone is in a stronger causal relationship with lake A than with lake B.

I the same way, your karma largely determines your rebirths and not Barnie’s. Why? Because a stronger causal relationship links your karma with the bundle of aggregates we call ‘you’ than with the bundle of aggregates we call ‘Barnie’.

Does this seem like an awkward explanation? It’s the simplest one I could find…

Before I bore you with the minutiae of karma and rebirth, let’s discuss the really important bit. The bit the Buddha spent most time talking about. If there really is karma and rebirth, what should we do about it?

The most obvious idea is to create as much bright karma as you can and hope for a good rebirth. Who knows, you might even earn the rank of a deity if you really put your back into it! But the Buddha says this is a bad deal.

You see, among all planes of existence, the Buddha says human rebirth is the most precious one. In lower planes, suffering, impermanence, and lack of stable identity are so extreme that spiritual practice is impossible. In planes above the human life is, yes, blissful and long-lasting, but… it is too blissful and too long-lasting. One has no need of spiritual practice then… Or so one thinks.

In short, human existence is the Middle Way between suffering and bliss, permanence and impermanence, self and no-self. It provides the best conditions for working out one’s own salvation. The Buddha says:

In short, we shouldn’t waste the opportunity we are given. To accumulate dark karma is a waste of cosmic magnitude. But to accumulate bright karma, while better, is still a waste in the eyes of the Buddha. As Bhikkhu Bodhi says:

Karma, be it bright or dark, chains us to impermanence, dissatisfaction, and emptiness of any real substance. Saṃsāra is a prison. Accumulating bright karma is only good for getting transferred to a more comfortable cell. But no matter how comfortable your cell gets, no matter how long you get to stay there, sooner or later you’re back in the pit.

So, what’s the alternative?

The alternative is what the Buddha calls “karma that leads to the ending of karma”. He describes it like this:

This is the Noble Eightfold Path, the set of practices leading out of saṃsāra. Again, you can read my article on it to learn more.

For a long time, contemplatives in India intuited that action is what chains beings to cycles of rebirth. To escape conditioned existence, many sought ways of eliminating action. This went to such extremes that one would even stop eating (as eating too is an action). The belief was that with death, the contemplative will be liberated from saṃsāra.

The Buddha says this is nonsense. First, he reminds us, it is not action, but intentional action that drives existence. And second, he makes the practical observation that one cannot avoid action. The avoidance of action itself is an action.

It is not in our power not to act, but we can choose how to act. So, one must limit oneself to a set of intentional actions that gradually lead to their own cessation. The Buddha curated this set of intentional actions in the Noble Eightfold Path.

Think about it – what is intention, anyway? Why did you intend to read this article? Why did I intend to write it? Why are we intent on learning from the Buddha?

Because we want something. Be it entertainment, knowledge, wisdom, or enlightenment – we crave something. Said differently, we are averse to not having that ‘something’. This brings us back to craving and aversion, the two sides of the delusion of a separate self. Even the brightest karma springs from craving, aversion, and ignorance.

The great album, Dark Side of the Moon, ends with the words ‘There’s no dark side of the moon really; as a matter of fact, it’s all dark.’ The same is true of karma.

The Noble Eightfold Path is not meant to turn you into a good Buddhist with lots of bright karma. It is meant to transform consciousness so that the three fires of craving, aversion, and delusion are blown out. This is called nirvāṇa, literally meaning ‘blown out’. But to put out the fires, you have to use the fires. There is simply nothing else at your disposal. The Eightfold Path is the practice of craving the right things, being averse to the right things, and being ignorant in the right way. ‘Right’ here means everything that leads to the end of craving, aversion, and ignorance.

So, in the closed loop of saṃsāra, where karma leads to more karma ad nauseam, the Buddha discovered a closed loop that leads to the end of all closed loops. A path leading to the end of all paths, the end of wandering… The end of saṃsāra.

Once the self delusion is extinguished, there can be no more craving, no more aversion, and no more intention. Without intention, there can be no more karma. After reaching this point, what was previously a person becomes pure enlightened action. The five aggregates remain together, bound by the force of previous karma, but when the body dies, no new birth follows. What then appears as ‘an enlightened person’ from the outside is really the flow of the Dhamma into saṃsāra. The thoughts, words, and bodily actions of such a one do not come from craving, aversion, or delusion. There is no intention behind them, no distance between self, other, and world. There is pure action, without an actor.

Deluded minds imagine this as a dissolution of the self, a sort of extinction. They can imagine it as little else, since enlightenment transcends the categories of thinking. But no self ever dissolves. Rather, the delusion of a self dissolves and reveals the unconditioned reality of nirvāṇa, which has always been right here, at the very heart of saṃsāra. As Francisco Varela writes:

Or, as we read in the Visuddhimagga:

Enlightenment is when this emptiness is no longer something you read and think about. Enlightenment is when the emptiness wakes up from the dream that is you.

Some Criticism Of Karma & Rebirth

This is a good place to end. You now know the basics of karma and rebirth as originally taught by the Buddha.

But let me keep you for a couple more minutes. I want to share with you a few points of criticism concerning the doctrines coming from outside the Buddhist tradition. This will give you a broader, deeper, and more balanced understanding of the context around the teachings.

First off, observe how with karma and rebirth, the Buddha postulates a law that cannot be falsified. If some misfortune happens to me, I might think there is no way I could have possibly deserved it. Belief in karma must be wrong! But from the Buddhist point of view, it is only I who can be wrong. For one, the Buddha says not all experiences are due to karma. Some are due to things like indigestion, seasonal change, or pure coincidence. Karma is the key ingredient in the sea of causes and conditions of saṃsāra. But there are other ingredients too. The Buddha also calls karma an ‘unconjecturable’. Meaning, no matter how much you contemplate it, your mind can never understand it all the way through.

In short, if you think something contradicts karma, you’ve either failed to account for other factors, or you lack understanding. Only you can be wrong, the law of karma cannot. Is this a little too convenient? Perhaps. But, let’s examine our own ‘rational’ thinking first.

Scientists and modern people in general believe every event has a cause. Every phenomenon arises within the laws of nature. If something appears to contradict these laws, we don’t abandon belief in rational causality. We rather assume it is we who are at fault and have failed to grasp some hidden cause. Only we can be wrong, the laws of causality cannot.

You see, Buddhism and modern science alike rest on axioms: unverifiable, unfalsifiable beliefs which hold together the whole structure of thought. No matter how much empiricism, rationality, and logic we heap on top, we mustn’t forget that all human thinking is rooted in faith. Faith in what we consider obvious, yes, but faith nonetheless.

If you ask the average Buddhist why he believes in karma and the average scientist why she believes in causality, they will both give you the same strange look. The look of faith which does not recognize itself.

Let’s move on to another point.

The Buddha tells us karma and rebirth can be confirmed by direct experience upon enlightenment. This is supposed to make them empirical principles. But pay attention.

To become enlightened, in the Buddhist sense, one must practice the Buddhist path with complete devotion. But to have this devotion, one must first surrender all doubt in the Buddha. One must have faith. Since enlightenment is so rare, the vast majority of Buddhists remain their whole lives in this perpetual state of faith.

Should one somehow realize nirvāṇa, one will presumably confirm for oneself the Buddha’s teachings. But by that point, one’s devotion and practice will have thoroughly reshaped one’s mind. The Buddhist worldview will be so deeply ingrained that no other way of perceiving the world will be possible. This sounds more like self-indoctrination than empirical confirmation.

But remember, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. He taught the way out of saṃsāra. The Noble Eightfold Path leads to the ending of all things conditioned, including the end of the Noble Eightfold Path. This principle led to the doctrine of holding no views, including Buddhist ones. Even Buddhist views are chains of gold and, amazingly enough, the tradition recognizes that. You can learn more about this in my article on emptiness.

The last point I want to make is that the Buddha did not insist on people believing in karma and rebirth. He did say, however, that to live as if this doctrine is true is better than to live as if it is not. The Buddha knew this teaching makes us more mindful of our behaviour. He knew it drives individuals and communities towards self-examination and moral behaviour. Karma and rebirth also reassure the Buddhist practitioner that their efforts count, even when progress is slow. The doctrine also gives us a sense of justice and meaning in life; it assures us that suffering and evil are not random, and the conditions of our existence are not arbitrary.

That is not to say karma and rebirth are ideas meant merely for their psychological effects. The Buddha taught them as basic truths of reality. But we must recognize there is more than one reason why a person or a people would commit to the doctrines.

What You Do, You Become

I hope I’ve given you a good foundation for understanding karma and rebirth as the Buddha originally taught them. Now it is up to you to decide what to do with this knowledge. If anything, these teachings remind us our every thought, word, and action is an opportunity to change the course of our life, for better or for worse.

The Buddha reminds us that, conventionally speaking, our actions are our only true possessions. They are the medium through which we create ourselves and our world. He reminds us to not be idle about what we do, say, and think, because what we do, say, and think is what we are.