Day 52 of 365: Emergence and Decay

As the black-eyed susans in my front yard begin to wither, it seems fully appropriate to contemplate emergence and decay.  We have clear ideas in our mind of when something is coming to be and when it is dying or disappearing.  These teachings are nudging us to take another, closer look.  Are emergence and decay the same or different?  Clearly, they are not the same, just by virtue of what they mean.  Are they different?  Different, to the Middle Way aspirant, means that they are not connected and that there is no dependency.  (Recall that the way we take things as real is as singular, lasting, and independent.)  Clearly, emergence and decay cannot be different because they are opposites and depend upon one another.  In this way, we walk out on the diving board of concept, only to discover that in fact there is no diving board.  Perhaps, with this larger view, the wistfulness of fall and the joy of spring could be inseparably experienced as our flowers wither.

Day 51 of 365: Causes, Results, and Blame

Nagarjuna examines causes and results again, saying:

If cause and result were one,
Then producer and produced would be the same thing.
If cause and result were different,
Then causes and noncauses would be equivalent.


Having gone through several Middle Way arguments at this point, we should all practically be logic ninjas at this point.  This particular reasoning is not really that different from the other arguments in style.  If cause and result were one, then there is really no other option than producer and produced being the same.  Think of the seed and sprout.  If they are the same, then the producer and the produced are literally the same.  If the cause and result are different, then they must be independent, meaning there is no dependency.  If this is the case, then a cause might as well be a noncause.  They would be equally likely to produce the result.

As we move through our day, especially in the work place when things get difficult, fast paced, and messy, we all tend to think about blame.  This argument is a great opportunity to undermine the thought supporting the blame game.  Without causes and results being real, how can there be blame?

Day 50 of 365: No Traffic Jam

One way in which we constantly solidify the world is through taking a collection of things as real.  Take your body, your hand, or your house as an example.  They are a compendium of smaller things, which when "put together", we take as a solid real thing.  But, where exactly is the body, hand, or house?  What if we remove one part?  Does it change what we call it?  A person without an arm still has a body.  A house without a roof is still a house.  We realize after a while that we can't really find the essence of the collection of things we're looking at.  

Ever had a day that looks like this?  This is probably the richest practice opportunity for looking at collections in the DC area.  I am stuck in traffic many times a week.  It feels incredibly solid when I am.  However, what is a "traffic jam"?  Is it a specific number of cars?  50 cars, 100 cars, 1000 cars?  Is it a specific speed that we're reduced to?  You could have a traffic jam at any speed.  So, next time I'm in traffic, perhaps I'll take the opportunity to look at the collection of cars and try to find the essence of "traffic jam".  After all, I won't be going anywhere otherwise.

Day 49 of 365: Time Management

In the next verses, Nagarjuna examines the three times: past, present, and future.  There are three verses which one can use to turn your mind inside out:

If the present and the future depend on the past,
The present and the future would exist in the past.


If the past and the future depended on the present,
The past and the future would exist in the present.


If the past and the present depended on the future,
The past and the present would exist in the future.


These verses really speak for themselves.  We think that the past, present, and future are real times.  We think that we've lived the past, are living the present, and will live the future.  However, these times really only exist in mutual dependence upon the others.  Most people would acknowledge this initial statement.  What Nagarjuna is doing is taking this to its extreme logical conclusion so that one can see the absurdity of these concepts.  As meditators, we tend to solidify the three times through our practice.  Be present and do not wander into the past and the future with thoughts.  However wonderful this is to initially stabilize us, it can make the practice stale.  At some point, we have to relax and let go of the present as well.

Day 48 of 365: Free from Distinctions

Such is the fifth defining quality of the precise nature of reality.  Somehow, when you pull the thread, each of the defining characteristics all come back to the same point.  Yet, they all seem to highlight a little way in which we are trying to scheme and get an angle on emptiness or the precise nature.  This quality, in particular, invites us to take a look at distinctions and labeling.  Throughout the day, we constantly ask ourselves, immediately and in a habituated way, is it like this or like this?  Is this person rich or poor, tall or short, fat or skinny, nice or mean?  Am I happy or not happy?  The precise nature is the equality of these distinctions because it is beyond them all.  When we can't label in this way, we feel that things get dicey and we become afraid.  The same is true in our meditation practice in increasingly subtle ways.  Perhaps the words on our ticker tape become softer or more about meditation practice, but often they are there, lingering.  Once we become aware of our constant labeling and either/or game, it is no longer as powerful and we spark further curiosity for what exactly seems to be happening.  When we notice and let go, settling into the dicey and fearful moments of ambiguity, we begin to crack open the door to the precise nature.  This seems to be the journey we are invited to take.

Day 47 of 365: Not fabricated and non-conceptual

The third and fourth characteristics of the precise nature are "not fabricated by fabrications" and "nonconceptual".  As we move through meditation practice, all kinds of experiences arise.  Anger, happiness, blankness, busyness, feelings of upliftedness, depression.  One of the main ways in which we pigeonhole our experience is through descriptive labels such as these.  We often feel on a gut level like what we are experiencing is real.  But, beyond that, we feel that it warrants a description, a concept.  It's immediate and habitual.  The teachings are really giving us a litmus test for our experience.  Is there an overlay of concept?  How "naked" is our experience?  If we cannot say it is genuinely direct, nonconceptual, and naked, then it is not emptiness.

Day 46 of 365: Peace

The second quality of the precise nature of reality is peace.  Khenpo further describes this, saying that the precise nature is "peace in its true nature".  The precise nature is peace because it is free from the four extremes.  Any conflict that we have or struggle that we have is because we are grappling, perhaps in a subtle way, with reality and trying to pigeonhole our experience into one of the four extremes (existence, non-existence, both, neither).  As we sit, this happens continually.  A thought arises.  It is real!  We let go.  Oh, maybe it's not so real!  An emotion arises.  We investigate, finding that we can't find a center or fringe to the emotions nor a color or a texture.  But, the emotion is there.  Maybe it's real and not real somehow?  We constantly are trying to get an angle on the situation.  But, this fundamental reaction is really nothing other than paranoia and fear, leading us away from true peace and the precise nature.

Day 45 of 365: The Precise Nature

Many synonyms can be used to describe emptiness.  One of these is the precise nature:

Unknowable by analogy; peace;
Not of the fabric of fabrications;
Nonconceptual; free of distinctions--
These are the characteristics of the precise nature.


These are the five parts of the definition of the precise nature of reality from Nagarjuna.  I'll be working with parts of this definition for the next couple of days.  The first part, unknowable by analogy, is interesting.  Emptiness, the precise nature, transcends concept and therefore is ultimately unknowable by concept.  Khenpo makes the point that, because of this, the teacher's only real option to lead student's to emptiness is to elucidate what it is not.  How does this part of the definition of emptiness affect meditation practice? As we rest in non-finding are we still resting in some concept of what we think emptiness should be like?  In moments of non-finding, it seems we must muster the courage to let the years of fear slide off our back and be like "a child in a shrine room".

Day 44 of 365: The Great Interdependence

This is one of the five great reasonings of the Middle Way.  I have been working with this through an example from Thrangu Rinpoche that is really simple and wonderful.  Take two sticks of incense, one which is 2 inches and the other which is 4 inches.  Set them side by side.  Clearly, we immediately think that the 4 inch stick is the largest.  What if we replace the 2 inch stick with a 6 inch stick?  Then the 4 inch stick is the smallest.  What changed about the stick?  Nothing.  This shows, in a gut level way, the dependence of small and large.  They are, in fact, equal.  Notice big and small throughout your day.  What reference point are you basing your concept on?

Day 43 of 365: Aggregates and You

Essentially, at some point, Nagarjuna wore down his questioners to such a degree that they asked, "Well, if actors, actions, mental afflictions, etc, are all mere appearance, then what is the true nature of reality?"  Nagarjuna's response was to explain the selflessness of the individual and the selflessness of phenomena.  He writes:

If the self were the aggregates,

It would be something that arises and ceases.

If the self were something other than the aggregates,

It would not have the aggregates' characteristics.

In other words, if the self were the aggregates, then it would be constantly arising and ceasing.  Through meditation, we can see that emotions, thoughts, and even our bodies, are constantly arising, changing, and ceasing.  Could they then be the self that we feel as unchanging, independent, and singular?  If the self were something other than the aggregates, then what could it be?  The aggregates constitute our entire experience. Thus, the self would have to be, as Khenpo puts it, an inert space.  Clearly, this is not how we take ourselves to be.

The self chases us,

Behind the jolt of nowness,

Frantic to label

Day 42 of 365: Karma

How do these Middle Way logics apply to karma?  

For those belonging to the family of the noble ones, karmic actions do not exist and results of karmic actions do not exist either.

The logic behind this is a fairly straightforward examination of actors and actions.  Look at which came first.  Neither the actor nor the action could come first because then you would have an actionless actor and an actorless action respectively.  And, they cannot be independent and arise at the same time either because independence implies that there is, in particular, no causal relationship.  Thus, they are are dependently arisen mere appearance as would be any resulting karma.

This is a really interesting logic from a conduct standpoint.  Our immediate reaction is to go towards nihilism. If there's no karma, then it doesn't matter how I conduct myself.  This is the way our mind moves.  However,  until we realize and stabilize the profound Middle Way view, our conduct matters very much.  We could, taking this logic in a naive way, further ensnare ourselves in the net of samsara.  Though neither karma nor samsara exist in an ultimate sense, we spend 99% of our time convinced they do in our guts.  So, our karma, most of the time, is just as real.  No wild kegger tonight for us!

Day 41 of 365: Happy Independence Day

It seems appropriate to look at the nature of our imprisonment by afflictive emotions on Independence Day.  Nagarjuna writes:

Do the mental afflictions bind?
They do not bind one already afflicted,
And they do not bind one who is not afflicted,
So when do they have the opportunity to bind anyone?


If one is already trapped in ignorance, already afflicted, they how could one become afflicted anew?  If one is not afflicted, like the buddhas, then how could one become afflicted?  In our own experience, we have moments of liberation and moments of what we take to be affliction.  It seems that Nagarjuna is encouraging us to look carefully at the moments where we think we're trapped.  What changed between those moments and the moments of liberation?  How are these moments different in true nature?  When did the affliction begin?  At what exact moment?  How is it that our perspective can change so suddenly?

Day 40 of 365: Wandering in Samsara

Nagarjuna takes a look at bondage and liberation next.  This forces us to take a look at how we further solidify the predicament of our confusion by believing that we are trapped in our confusion and that we can attain some sort of liberation.  To undercut this, he takes a closer look at the idea that we are wandering in samsara.  If there were a self wandering in samsara, that self would have to be impermanent or permanent.  If the self were impermanent, that would mean it is constantly changing, so what is it that would be wandering?  If the self were permanent, then you would have an unchanging self wandering in a constantly changing samsaric existence.  Clearly this is not the case either.  By looking for a moment, we can see that we are constantly changing.  So, there is nothing singular, lasting, and permanent wandering in samsara.  Maybe we can just drop the ruck sack of our concepts for a moment and enjoy the world beyond bondage and liberation--open, spacious, and relaxed.

Day 39 of 365: Flowers in the Sky

When the right causes and conditions are present, objects appear, and when they don't, they don't.  This is, for example, the reason we don't have flowers in the sky.  This is not, however, a basis for claiming that anything truly exists or does not exist.  Our five sense consciousnesses do not think "this is real" or "this is not real".  These ideas are concepts in the sixth consciousness.  There is only the direct perception without this overlay of concept.  Consider our thought that, say, a flower is real.  In order for the flower to be truly existent, it would have to exist independently of our idea of it not existing.  Clearly, this is not the case.  We only consider something as "here" relative to it "not being here".  Therefore, whatever it is, it is beyond both truly existing or not existing.