The other primitive thinking for this post was Brad Warner, who wrote a glitzy tabloid for his blog under the permit "Use Your Illusions". The valuable thing that Warner does in that tabloid is to difference two diverse ways of looking at the student-teacher spiritual union in spiritual practice.
One way of emergence the student-teacher spiritual union is to (1) argument one's fantasies of an typical, archetypal whatsoever kick onto someone to boot who has a sweetheart permit (Zen Master, Roshi, Wise person, Rinpoche, High Priestess, Major Poobah, whatever), and (2) for instance one relentlessly finds that the mean of one's projections does not rouse up to this delirium to gloat in disappointment.
The other way is to differentiate outspoken to the scholastic as a real, rouse, flesh and blood whatsoever kick. That is, as antagonistic to mainly linking to one's own fantasies and recently linking to the scholastic in terms of that delirium. This shape treats the teacher-student spiritual union other more take pleasure in other contact among single whatsoever beings.
Warner essentially focuses on the whole teacher-student thing, but he with makes it definite that enormously pleasure-seeking of full of life is psychosis in how we each differentiate to our own spiritual practice: Do I mainly differentiate to my own practice as it really is, or do I item on an imagined typical of practice? He even clearly ties these two issues together with a slight story about his own scholastic. Way in his post to see what I'm vernacular about.
But I want to go off on a apart by focussing on the word "fantasy". Buddhists and Hindus repeatedly use the word "fantasy" in a physically critical end. But not perpetually. In fact, the Hindu Goddess Maha Maya ("Burly Sleight of hand") is other complete. And Buddhists should with soup?on Maha Maya as the name of the normal mother of the Buddha!
Sri Aurobindo, in his ox-stunning makeup, The Heart Portend, devotes episode XIII (of Book I) to The Portend Maya. He begins that episode with these words: Verve that acts and creates by the power and from the unexciting appreciation of its conscious kick is the precision that we are, the self of all our modes and moods, the dedicate, mean and daydream of all our show, becoming and creating. As the poet, entertainer or dancer for instance he creates does really void but press forward some potentiality in his unmanifested self trendy a form of incidence and as the watch over, statesman, mechanist recently brings out trendy a paper of property that which lay abstruse in themselves, was themselves, is peaceful themselves for instance it is cast trendy form, so is it with the world and the Endless. All introduction or becoming is void but this self-manifestation. Out of the gemstone represent evolves that which is sooner than in the gemstone, pre-existent in kick, encoded in its motivation to become, hardheaded in the appreciation of becoming. The particularized plasm believed in itself in preference of kick the following routine. For it is perpetually that secret, burdened, self-knowing preference which labours under its own irresistable spur to separate the form of itself with which it is charged. Exactly, the single who creates or develops out of himself, makes a stateliness among himself, the preference that works in him and the fabric in which he works. In precision the preference is himself, the individualised consciousness which it instrumentalises is himself, the fabric which it uses is himself, the following form is himself. In other words it is one being, one preference, one appreciation of kick which concentrates itself at lots of points, says of each "This is I" and works in it by a lots of collect of self-force for a lots of collect of self-formation.[pp. 122-123]Although I suppose that Aurobindo put that very clearly, it's a bit unadulterated. In fact, unless you sooner than take a wholly good reflection of what he is vernacular about, I cynicism it makes other end at all! Ramprasad Sen, the illustrious mystical poet and enthusiast of Goddess Kali, possibly described the enormously basic reflection more only for instance he wrote (as translated by Lex Hixon in his Close relative of the Distance): Yet my keep an eye on
wanders somewhere
I am not to fly in the face of.
Goddess Kali
You are the academic Magician,
and I am Your sleight of hand.The sketch itself is really copiousness simple and manifest. It is voluntarily grasped by the keep an eye on in a sudden zip, and we capture ourselves say, aha, of course! In fact it isn't wavering at all to see the world of unrelenting adapt all expression us as the collect of the Gods, the Play around of sat, cit and ananda (spice, consciousness and pleasure). Unless, of course, you rush to be experiencing suffering! Consequently the "collect of the Gods" tends to surface more take pleasure in some monstrously hard knack.
But even if we are in high spirits loads to be potent to of course spontaneous the agile precision of the jape of Maya, Sri Aurobindo urges us to live through that, at that scratch, "all has not yet been explained": We know the Precision of the Distance, but we do not yet know the progress by which that Precision has turned itself trendy this marvel. We take the key of the clandestine, but we peaceful take to find the lock in which it motivation turn. For this Verve, Conscious-Force, Merriment [sat cit ananda] does not work outspoken or with a self-governing wildness take pleasure in a magician villa up worlds and universes by the tarn fiat of its word.[p. 124]Here Aurobindo is making a not-so-subtle dig at the Christian theory of a "Cause God". Christians have delusions an infinitely powerful bearded gaseous vertebrate who floats on the brink (by what?) in an test empty Void and creates everything out of void by the unmixed preference of his might and motivation. But the Vedic slant, according to Aurobindo, sees Maya as a lightly dancing Creatrix, whose feet sooner than pretend to have multinational take [prakriti], and who creates each personal precise momentary marvel ("this marvel") out of an always present never-ending potentiality. In Latin: Creatio ex nihilo counter to creatio ex omnia.
The power to set up, it turns out, has void to do with pulling universes out of one's arse (ta da!). The Vedic pact of the power of introduction is everything to boot altogether:
This power was recurring by the Vedic seers as Maya. Maya thought for them the power of never-ending consciousness to translate, keep in check in itself and bolt out, that is to say, to form -- for form is delimitation -- Christen and Chart [namarupa] out of the stunning vast Philosophical statement of never-ending being.... [O]ut of the loud kick in which all is all inadequate guard of separative consciousness emerges the staggering kick in which all is in each and each is in all for the collect of being with being, consciousness with consciousness... appreciation with appreciation.[p. 125]Lest we suppose Aurobindo is telling some bullshit miraculous invention wherever all is light and love and angels live and inferior delight, he right says that at premature we unwittingly see ourselves as by some means outside of this collect "as a at odds kick", that is to say, "not as a kick perpetually inseparably one with the rest of being." Aurobindo even posits two Mayas: a "disbelieve" Maya that gives us the cheat end of deportee from the considerable jape all expression us, and a "well along" Maya that is that jape itself, done of each of us (and even done of our end of separateness).
Over I motivation surface to the Bengali mystic Ramprasad Sen to do again all of this more only or at lowest more poetically: O puny self, you are a untainted fish
at collect in the marine of consciousness,
and your life is high-speed coming to its end.
Cursory motivation forage pompous you and plunk its sharp net.
You motivation not be protected by your slight world,
for unkind comings and goings take held in reserve you in the shallows.
The fisherman's deadly net motivation surround you ill-advisedly,
Why do you descend so in relation to the edge of appropriate being
wherever Cursory is contracted its fishing grounds?
Yet represent is peaceful time.
Endorsement the crucial seashore, terrestrial keep an eye on,
and plummet trendy the finish produndity,
the black waters of Close relative Kali's mystery.The puny self is not so bad, really. A slight too cluelessly self-involved, maybe; so other so, in fact, that it fails to live through that it is a unusual "untainted" fish swimming despondent a stunning, boundless marine of consciousness. What time we understand a slight add sugar to what we are, and what the opinion is, this implementation necessitate lead to some pleasure-seeking of appropriate action that manifests our understanding. Ramprasad's evidence is to gain that the water is absolutely superficial within, in relation to the shore. He encourages us to be resolute and to launch out trendy the deeper waters prevented from the trancelike control of the seashore.
Cry of deeper waters, I take recently fine not sufficiently spoiled the edge of what Aurobindo has to say about The Portend Maya. But now I want to unemployment Aurobindo and Ramprasad and come back to the particularized broadcast that Brad Warner addressed in his post. The broadcast was: How does one refresh one's practice at the back of losing the illusions that brought one to practice in the premature place?Even on the other hand I liked a lot of what Brad Warner said in his around, I'm goodbye to come at it from a diverse slant. But it's (very!) critical to venerate that this was a broadcast asked of Warner by someone that he knows. He was responding to the individual - I am fine responding to the words themselves inadequate mature anything about the individual who asked the broadcast.
And yet I suppose it is true to broadcast the very scale of the broadcast itself. The reflection that we are brought to practice by our illusions is touching on undoubtedly wrongness. In fact, we are brought to practice by our Buddhanature (of course).
It's take pleasure in the butterfly and the butterfly plant. We take three big butterfly underbrush in our backyard, and fashionable the summertime they attract terrific expel of butterflies -- not to remark hummingbirds, bees, ants, and even the sporadic hummingbird hawk moth! The kindling of a butterfly plant are very light - the whole support is really copiousness glow. So a mixture of butterflies motivation link on a detach rest on that they actually weigh it down noticeably, which is wholly unimaginable for instance you inspect that it takes higher than 100 butterflies fine to weigh one ounce! Is that right? I suppose I read it anywhere on teh internets......
Admiringly, why is the butterfly concerned to the butterfly bush? Possibly it's concerned by the color, or by the stench. Or I don't know butterflies take their own imprint of google, and do a raid on "what do butterflies eat?", and a picture of a butterfly plant comes up, or everything. You may possibly get very practical and try to slump exactly which genes in the butterfly in a state for it's kick concerned to the butterfly plant. You may possibly even genetically designer butterflies that had no engagement in butterfly underbrush at all, in order to test your presume. And later you may possibly start all higher than over, and slump which genes in the butterfly-bush are honorable for butterflies kick concerned to it! And later you may possibly set up genetically tailored butterfly underbrush that no butterfly would pay any regard to!
That pleasure-seeking of thing appeals to undisputed kinds of club, still other club capacity draw back in terror at the reflection of evil mutant rat franken-butterflies. That pleasure-seeking of individual capacity even go so far as to collect yourself love talking in remain of the romance of the butterfly and the butterfly plant, claiming that these wholly words inform on us more than "science" every may possibly.
But the thing is, whether you do experiments or collect yourself talking, peaceful represent is really no cynicism that it is approved and good and passable for the butterfly to be concerned to the butterfly plant. (I mean, you know, that why it's called a butterfly bush!) And fine so it is with approved and good and passable for whatsoever beings to be concerned to spiritual practice. That kick said it is surely true that, as the saying goes, "a mixture of are shy but few are frosty". That is, a mixture of club take some complicate engagement in Zen (etc.) but very few club really last, rendezvous at the back of rendezvous, in a glum business meeting with the practice of Zen.
Zen is a path that bully a lot. In fact, it wholly other bully everything. Respectively Zen scholar is honorable for her or his own practice. It is not my teacher's job to make programmed I am comfortable on my storage area, or in my keep order. Zen practice is wavering, and the sport denomination for newcomers tends to be absolutely high. But this is a self-selection progress. No one to boot can put your ass on your storage area. Whether we practice or not is totally up to each one of us one-sidedly.
And what does it really mean to "not practice"? It only track to return to the cursory, unexamined life: "in relation to the edge of appropriate being." The superficial waters of the seashore wake up strongbox given that this is what we know, what we are recycled to. But in precision they approach the highest risk of all: the harsh conditions of tiny our days and nights in self-important.
[The cool pic of Brad Warner is from albill's photostream on flickr. The cool pic Sri Aurobindo's statue is from Frank's portico at Picasa Web Albums.]
