"The Joker" poem -- can you see what's wrong?

Read this, and then if you can't figure out what's wrong with it, you can scroll down...

THE JOKER

At the centre
of the spinning circle
sits the joker
with a mirror
in his hand,
reflecting all to everyone
to help them understand.

His face is fierce, yet gentle,
his eyes, they pierce you through,
you cannot escape his gaze
no matter where you go,
no matter what you do.

His smile is warm, he draws you in,
he is so calm, why are you
so confused by him?

Your thoughts are like a raging storm
between the whirling sky and sea,
nothing seems certain any more,
nothing’s how it used to be.

Once things were clear in black and white,
you thought you knew the wrong from right,
you drew the line, and cut it fine,
between the day and night;
but now your world is crumbling,
there’s nowhere you can call your own,
nothing’s solid anymore,
not even cities made of stone,
not even your own body,
not even flesh and blood,
not even skin and bone.

The sun and moon are falling on your head,
the stars are tumbling down,
flowers sing like angels,
in the winter town.

The dead are living, the living dead,
fire turns to water, water burns instead,
silence is so full of sound, time stands still,
you hear the earth turn round.
Your life flashes before you,
is that thunder, or the beating of your heart,
you don’t know if this is the end,
or something new about to start.
You don’t know if you’re dreaming
or if you are awake,
and as you go on spinning
you see the joker’s mirror
reflecting every move you make.

You show him good,
and he will show you evil;
you show him truth,
and he will show you lies;
you show him life,
and he will show you
how all that’s living dies.

You show him happiness,
and he will show you sorrow,
you show him yesterday,
and he will show you tomorrow;
you show him poverty,
and he will show you wealth;
you show him sickness
and he will show you health.

You fall as if forever, falling
spinning round and round,
tumbling into empty space,
without up or down
and thus you will go on falling
until you understand
how opposites arise mutually,
then you and the joker
will dance, hand in hand.

Then you will know the truth:
that all is of one taste;
then you and the joker
will have the same face.

- Unknown

...

figured out the problem?

......

no?

.......

This poem comes from the perspective of Advaita philosophy, where there is a divine source to all of duality, and that source is itself Awareness (or we can call it your "True Face" a la Zen). You'll find a lot of that talk in Zen and other Mahayana sects of Buddhism, because the original teaching of Anatta was not easy to understand, and so later Buddhist schools mostly lost it.

In Theravada, the closest to original teachings we have from Buddha, there is no divine source, no original face, no true "you." There is no awareness behind appearances. Nor is there unity to everything. Just the opposite. If you read the Bahiya sutta, Buddha clearly explains that Nibbana, the nature of reality, is: When in the seen, there is only  the seen. In the heard, only the heard. In the cognized, only the cognized. There is no awareness that binds it all up into one experience. Nibbana is also known as "unbinding."

However, tho I find the Bahiya sutta to be abundantly clear, I've noticed it can seem to mean whatever people want it to mean. So, does it mean nothing? I'd argue that it has a real, specific meaning just like any worthwhile teaching, but one has to be open to hearing it or else they will miss it entirely.

What if everything is already perfect?

Just thought I should post this as it is something I send out to everyone in the mail along with either Buddha's pithy Bahiya sutta, or "The Joy Hidden in Sorrow: Two talks on death and dying," by Ayyā Medhānandī.

What If Everything

Is “Already” Perfect?

ONLY READ IF YOU ARE READY FOR TRUTH

Life seems pretty miserable, doesn't it? You have a few birthdays, you try to satisfy desires as they arise, and before you know it, your health is declining, and then you die. If you are religious, at least you hope to go to heaven. But what are the chances you chose the one true religion? Each one claims to be the only true one, and they all demand blind faith.

But the one thing that almost nobody seems to consider is that they may simply be seeing reality incorrectly. In reality, everything functions perfectly according to natural laws. This perfection can only know itself when it’s realized that you and I do not exist.

Proof #1: Everything happens due to conditions. Think about that. Imagine what it would mean for that to be falsified. Could something happen without any supporting conditions? No, of course not. This is common sense.

The very strange thing is, this common sense is ignored so that we can feel as if we are independent agents able to make choices which are not dependent upon conditions (aka “Free Will”). Obviously, choices are made. But how? What causes one choice vs another choice? If it were random, then nothing would make any sense at all. But even if it were random, that still wouldn't help us feel as if our choices are truly our own.

We don't know our next thoughts until we think them. We don't decide which desires will surge up. And even if we did choose desires and thoughts, there would be conditions leading to those choices. Even a creator God, choosing to create the universe, is subject to the same lack of free will as any other being. Free will itself is a logical impossibility.

For some strange reason, when confronted with this realization, people often assume that their choices are meaningless, when in fact the opposite is the case. Precisely because each choice affects future conditions & future choices, each choice is important in shaping the future, tho it happens automatically. There is no “self” that exists outside of reality (aka the web of conditions) to influence reality. The most powerful choice to make is the choice to meditate on and contemplate this truth of Dependent Origination, for it leads to liberation from the dream of identity.

The next problem that people run into is imagining that they must exist as simply the awareness of what is going on, since they are now convinced that everything is happening automatically. That's a frightening idea, that one is trapped as some type of powerless observer. But thankfully, it is just another illusion.

Proof #2: Let's look at direct experience: sensations, emotions, and cognitive experiences like thoughts and other states of mind. Looking closely at these aspects of direct experience, is there any witness (self) to be found in any of it? Or is the sense of witnessing simply a conceptual overlay that integrates the various streams of perception? When seeing, is there truly someone experienced to be seeing, or is there only the seen? When a thought appears, "I am seeing," is it just a thought that links thoughts, or is it pointing to some real “self” somewhere that is seeing?

Reality is witnessless/backgroundless, disjoint, center-less, infinitely interpenetrating self-known timeless processes/suchnesses; it is not unified nor is it subject & object. It is maddening to ignore the truth!

With practice at not hiding from the logical truth, many "people" even today have managed (to varying degrees) to get over the delusion that the conditioned sense of self points to a truly existing self, and thus have overcome stress & the illusion of birth and death caused by unification (allowing for identification) of disjoint experiences.

Remember: You are not the center of the universe. There is no center, nor background, except an imagined one.

∞ ❤ ∞ www.u-dont-exist.com ∞ ❤ ∞

What If Everything

Is “Already” Perfect?

ONLY READ IF YOU ARE READY FOR TRUTH

Life seems pretty miserable, doesn't it? You have a few birthdays, you try to satisfy desires as they arise, and before you know it, your health is declining, and then you die. If you are religious, at least you hope to go to heaven. But what are the chances you chose the one true religion? Each one claims to be the only true one, and they all demand blind faith.

But the one thing that almost nobody seems to consider is that they may simply be seeing reality incorrectly. In reality, everything functions perfectly according to natural laws. This perfection can only know itself when it’s realized that you and I do not exist.

Proof #1: Everything happens due to conditions. Think about that. Imagine what it would mean for that to be falsified. Could something happen without any supporting conditions? No, of course not. This is common sense.

The very strange thing is, this common sense is ignored so that we can feel as if we are independent agents able to make choices which are not dependent upon conditions (aka “Free Will”). Obviously, choices are made. But how? What causes one choice vs another choice? If it were random, then nothing would make any sense at all. But even if it were random, that still wouldn't help us feel as if our choices are truly our own.

We don't know our next thoughts until we think them. We don't decide which desires will surge up. And even if we did choose desires and thoughts, there would be conditions leading to those choices. Even a creator God, choosing to create the universe, is subject to the same lack of free will as any other being. Free will itself is a logical impossibility.

For some strange reason, when confronted with this realization, people often assume that their choices are meaningless, when in fact the opposite is the case. Precisely because each choice affects future conditions & future choices, each choice is important in shaping the future, tho it happens automatically. There is no “self” that exists outside of reality (aka the web of conditions) to influence reality. The most powerful choice to make is the choice to meditate on and contemplate this truth of Dependent Origination, for it leads to liberation from the dream of identity.

The next problem that people run into is imagining that they must exist as simply the awareness of what is going on, since they are now convinced that everything is happening automatically. That's a frightening idea, that one is trapped as some type of powerless observer. But thankfully, it is just another illusion.

Proof #2: Let's look at direct experience: sensations, emotions, and cognitive experiences like thoughts and other states of mind. Looking closely at these aspects of direct experience, is there any witness (self) to be found in any of it? Or is the sense of witnessing simply a conceptual overlay that integrates the various streams of perception? When seeing, is there truly someone experienced to be seeing, or is there only the seen? When a thought appears, "I am seeing," is it just a thought that links thoughts, or is it pointing to some real “self” somewhere that is seeing?

Reality is witnessless/backgroundless, disjoint, center-less, infinitely interpenetrating self-known timeless processes/suchnesses; it is not unified nor is it subject & object. It is maddening to ignore the truth!

With practice at not hiding from the logical truth, many "people" even today have managed (to varying degrees) to get over the delusion that the conditioned sense of self points to a truly existing self, and thus have overcome stress & the illusion of birth and death caused by unification (allowing for identification) of disjoint experiences.

Remember: You are not the center of the universe. There is no center, nor background, except an imagined one.

∞ ❤ ∞ www.u-dont-exist.com ∞ ❤ ∞

Short summary of "my" journey starting with Divine Source to No Self

S: "I do not know if what you have encountered was the same thing as i did, however i did encounter what seemed to be the source of all life that is a part of all of us & everything we know & was able to return to a very familiar, comforting place that felt as if i had been there many times maybe before birth & after many pervious lifetimes. "

Yes, I'd say I think I did encounter the same thing you did as you describe it. That happened the first (and every) time I did ayahuasca. It also included the ability to see everything in the universe from all times all at once, a sense of knowing everything & nothing in particular, like a meta-knowing, and infinite love. 

But every time I went there, I immediately knew I needed to come back, because in some way, my work was not done here. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I figured it meant at least that I needed to help others get to this same place. The problem was that my problems in life did not magically disappear (namely, the feeling of disconnection, loneliness, neediness, desires for x y z), and so I didn't see how I could promote to people what I had seen while I was still suffering just like everyone else at this level (well, almost like everyone else, because now at least I knew that there was a divine reality behind it all, so in that sense my earthly suffering was less important, but then I had the new suffering of trying to get the divine reality to return to me, preferably without needing ayahuasca). 

I decided that meditation must be the method for attaining the divine reality permanently, so I looked for a good book on meditation. Miraculously, someone suggested to me a really good book which I still believe is one of the best: Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, by Ajahn Brahm. The only problem was that the Buddhist nibbana (nirvana) didn't sound quite like what the ayahuasca divine reality was... it was more about no self, which I didn't quite understand, because my only experience of no self was in the stage just prior to the divine reality stage... it wasn't a lovely experience, just kind of ok/no judgement. So I struggled for quite a while with this concept of No Self and I felt that I had the ability even to choose whether I wanted to have a self or not. Soh Wei Yu helped me understand that it isn't about losing the self... it is about realizing that there never was a self to begin with. That self is a logical impossibility. 

Reading the dialogs over at www.LiberationUnleashed.com also helped me understand this. (I highly recommend doing the dialog there if you haven't yet.)

There are many arguments but one simple one is the notion of free will. In order for identity to make sense, there must be free will. If it is all automatic, then there is no reason that any one part of reality should be considered "me, mine." From reading Sam Harris, I realized that, indeed, no decision can ever be made except based upon conditions, logically. It is not sensical for somebody to be outside of reality and thus able to act upon reality without any conditions/reasons for doing so. 

Focusing on this insight, and the physical laws that all atoms in the known universe adhere to, including those in "my" body, I was able to meditate into the state of No Mind/No Self that I had never before imagined was possible. In this state, everything was self-aware, but there was no awareness awaring it all, no background observing it, no center of reference, no me, no mine... and all was happening perfectly automatically, automatically perfectly. This was somewhat similar to the initial no self experience that I had prior to the divine reality stage in every ayahuasca trip, but the difference was that there was no longer the underlying desire for something "more" than the automatic perfection, and as a result, it was finally seen as the perfection that it is, rather than as a stage to get past.

To the dualistic, identifying mind, it sounds like a prison--the idea that there is no free will. But from the perspective of No Self, it is the ultimate freedom. And unlike the ayahuasca divine source experience, it did not require me to give up an earthly identity or stop helping people in this earth plane, because No Self is not just a higher dimension to attain that makes no sense here. It is what is happening right now, always has been, and is the only thing that makes logical sense. So instead of splitting the mind further between logic and experience, instead of expanding identity to encompass the universe, it collapses the split and the identity all at once. 

The task is simply to remain mindful at all times that everything is actually happening by itself, without anyone here doing anything, while emanating great compassion for those who are still asleep in the illogical dream of identity. When one practices this enough, it is felt to be more and more automatic and profound. Meditation on the breath as instructed by Ajahn Brahm is also helpful, as it expands the capacity for mindfulness. 

An alternative to thinking in terms of automaticity is simply paying attention to the sense streams. As explained in the Bahiya sutta, simply notice that in seeing, there is nobody seeing, just the seen. In cognizing, there is only the cognized, nobody there cognizing, etc.

"Quantum physics proves free will is true and determinism is wrong!"

This is something people often say to me: "If you look at the double slit experiment and the quantum eraser experiment, you see that determinism is an old classical physics idea that has been superseded. The observer determines reality. Therefore, free will exists."


And my response:

Quantum physics cannot show that determinism is wrong. That is impossible, because there is no way to prove that randomness exists (even Bell's Theorem may in fact indicate superdeterminism despite the general understanding of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Superdeterminism). We don't know if there is a better way of expressing quantum physics aside from probabilities. So far, our formulas work based on probability. But in the future, we could have more exact math. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory

And even if randomness were somehow the case, that still would not allow for free will, which is logically impossible regardless of what physics you may think you know. If your choices are generated at random, is that what you call free will? Information Philosophy has an interesting take on this, showing how it is *possible* that randomness co-exists with determinism, such that creativity comes randomly out of some infinite pool of possibility, and is then narrowed down deterministically. In this way, there is indeterminism, in the sense that the future can never be known, yet causality is not broken. "Free will" is redefined as "freedom, then (determined) will" or "free/will." According to Buddhism, the future can be known, so I'm not sure that this I-Phi stuff has any merit apart from being a theoretically interesting proposition.

The observer effect has nothing to do with free will, either. In fact, the observer doesn't need to be a human. It can be an instrument (and it is, always--no experiment on quantum physics is done without instruments, and those observing instruments cannot observe without also influencing the behavior of that which they are observing, just as your eye cannot perceive a photon without capturing it from the scene).

You are positing something that is neither random, nor deterministic. So what is it? What makes "free will" tick? Why choose one thing over another thing? You say it is very subtle. But if it is too subtle for even you to understand, perhaps it is just a simple delusion. So far, nobody has been able to give any logical argument or even been able to define free will logically. If you can do that, you might win a Nobel Prize.

P.S. Please see my post on determinism vs dependent origination.

Also see my post on whether consciousness can create conditions instead of vice versa.

"Buddhists must simply not Know God as *I* do!"

Many people have a real personal and "magical" relationship with what they think of as a personal God.

Buddha supposedly said it is better to believe in a personal God than it is to believe only in this material reality, since at least then you are hoping to overcome selfishness.

But I find that the belief in a personal God is often just a way to obscure the selfishness and subsume it into the idea of serving God (to say nothing of holy war). Of course, there are folks like Peace Pilgrim who seemed to have a "better" God to talk to, but the problem is that her God is not the same God that others are talking to, so ultimately the idea of getting answers from God is almost as bad as getting answers from a magic 8-ball. The real answer you need to get is, the answer to the question, "Are questions simply appearing automatically in this mind due to conditions?"

First of all, what is God? Many people think that God is the "being" that created the universe. Of course, if the universe had a beginning, then logically God must also. If God is beginningless, then the universe could also be beginningless (i.e. Big Bang after Big Bang etc.), thus making God just a useless conceptual addition. In any case, nobody has ever had any evidence that the God they talk to is the creator of the Universe, so what really are we talking about?

Basically, people are talking to some "being" that seems to know everything, and is all-loving, and has some kind of divine quality that can't be easily described. "I" "myself" have talked to such a God on various occasions.

But the one thing that this all-knowing "God" being never seems to know about is dependent origination. Why? Because if God were to explain dependent origination to someone, then they would realize that there is no self, and thus no God either. Instead, this "God" character usually seems strangely concerned with how to help the one talking to him to have a better life and avoid danger--in other words, how to better "live the dream" (the dream of self).

I used to be very hesitant to accept Buddha's teaching of no self/dependent origination, because of these amazing God experiences I'd had. It wasn't until I read "What is Self" by Catholic nun Bernadette Roberts, that I realized that God is merely that which is beyond the self. When perceived from the point of view of a self, the "beyond" or "divine" becomes reified into this God being. Once self is gone, the personal God too is gone, and the "divine" is all that remains, without any beings/labels/concepts to split it up. I think that in Buddhism, the term for this divine nature of all things is "suchness." It is pretty hilarious to imagine using a term like suchness instead of "divinity," I admit!

Here is an excellent post by Soh Wei Yu on his experience of divinity post-realization of anatta (no self).

"What happens when we die?"

Many people pose this question to me. First of all, as with most questions, it begs definition of its terms. What is meant by "we" and what is meant by "die"?

If by "we," one is referring to the physical body, well, clearly we already know that after the physical body dies, worms eat it. But I don't think people are talking about the physical body when they ask this question.

So, what are they talking about? When a man asked Buddha this question, he responded by saying something like: "So silly to ask what happens after death, when you don't even know what happens in life." 


What did he mean by that? Well, in reality, whether or not we call something life or death, still it all happens automatically with nobody in it. You are no more alive than the word "you" is alive. It is an illusion that there is a true "you" that the word "you" points to which itself is alive. In direct experience we can see that the concept of self is created in the brain/mind in order to integrate various streams of perception through time and space, but it is not any kind of essence that actually exists anywhere.

Now, there is a lot of literature on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) which I have read, so probably people are thinking in those terms. The interesting thing about NDEs is that they are very much influenced by culture. There are some common themes that cut across cultures, but a Thai NDE is nothing like a western NDE, is nothing like a Tibetan NDE. What does that tell us about the nature of the NDE? It tells us that what the mind expects to happen at death (even via subconscious things like hearing stories of others who have had NDEs) is very likely what it will get. There are actually some very strange and hilarious Hindu NDE stories. I've read numerous accounts of people going thru the whole life review process and seeing into the afterlife and all this, and then being told by some kind of cosmic clerk, "woops, sorry, we thought you were this other guy who was supposed to die (same name and town)... we're going to send you back now... sorry about that." 

The other thing about NDEs is that they are not true DEATH experiences. They are only NEAR death experiences. Nobody ever *actually* dies in an NDE. So what do I mean by "actual" death? Well first of all, we are now learning that it is almost impossible to define what physical death is, since people have been declared dead and then woken up a week later as if nothing happened. Brain death is a term which is quite difficult to define, since the brain may appear dead on an EEG or fMRI, and then later it may boot back up again. But again, I don't think most people reading this care about this idea of physical death. 

So what is "real" death then, if not physical death? To me, "real" death is when the sense of self is obliterated completely, at least for a period of time. The only way that it could get any realer is if the person physically died and did not have any more rebirths (no more identification), but then we would never hear from that person again so there would be know way of knowing what this state (called parinirvana) is, except to extrapolate from what we know of the state of nirvana that is experienced by many beings who are awakening today, as well as folks all thru the ages who have learned the nature of reality (dependent origination). 

The strange thing is that many people, including "myself" have "experienced" the obliteration of sense of self, either via psychedelics or meditation (like this technique that I employ) or just realization due to logical thinking. And this experience of no self can be somehow remembered and conveyed, although one who has not experienced it can not quite imagine what is being conveyed, generally speaking. Imagine everything in the universe, all appearances, instead of being seen from one point of view, are seen from every perspective, every angle, without any seer behind all the seeing. All the appearances (at every level, from atoms to stars) are self-seen without any reference point nor background observing awareness whatsoever. Since all the appearances are dependently originated, they are fully interpenetrating, tho still not simply One appearance. Depending on what kinds of traces of clinging remain in this state, there may or may not be infinite bliss associated with it--for "me," at first, there was not bliss, due to the habit of identity still remaining strong, but after time, the state was filled with infinite happiness. 

In my day-to-day waking life, as of this writing, I remain stuck in the self-delusion experientially, but my teacher, Soh Wei Yu, and many others on the facebook group Dharma Connection, are living day-to-day without sense of self interfering most of the time (in what is called "the natural state").

Right View and Humility: The Middle Path Mind

Never trust the mind. It isn't your mind, yet it will do anything to make you think that it is. Unless the mind is unraveling itself with wisdom, it is not putting itself to proper use. Right View is the view which serves to eliminate all notion of any viewer truly viewing, while also being the source of infinite compassion for all beings stuck in self-view. 

It is easy to judge the monsters outside our "self" but hard to see the origins of similar monsters within our "self." Although I and others have always considered my "self" a loving and compassionate being, I have nearly been a serial killer, a thief, a rapist, a psycho, all kinds of things that looking back I can see I was on the verge of becoming due to various urges, thoughts, and justifications. Even now I am seen by many as an arrogant asshole, and by others as almost a saint. I have learned that we must always be on guard against self deception, and especially when we start to feel important. This mind can never fully trust itself. Remember that a truly insane person will never think they are insane.

Even Shakyamuni Buddha himself was often filled with useless pompous thoughts, such as "I am so wise, I should go back and take my rightful place as king." Or, just after becoming enlightened, when someone asked who he was, The Buddha told the wanderling that he was "the Victor and Conqueror of the World, superior to gods and men, an All-Enlightened One beholden to no teacher." The Buddha later realized that his answer only served to alienate the wanderling, who perceived the Buddha as merely another arrogant fool.
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(This post is in relation to a previous post on the question of how can anything be known.)