Buddhism
During my first thirty day retreat, on the first day of spring, I saw the Goddess waking up in the trees. When I told him, Robert Hall, my teacher, said “someday you will see that it is you”. Yes, of course it is me. And yes, of course it is She.
I continue to move away from the conventional teaching, the modern interpretation of the Buddha’s words. I have spent a lot of time studying both the original texts and modern interpretations. And the result is my strong belief that the Buddha had something important to say yet modern teachers just don’t get it.
There is a saying that came to me years ago during a retreat:
Let go and find something new,
Hang on and create something new.
For me, that is the heart of the Buddhist Middle Way.
Of course, I don’t need to tell you that is just my opinion and it may be that I am the one deluded (clearly, since I am the delusional type!). I strongly believe in a Noumena behind Phenomena. Reality is there and it is real. Yes, it is filtered by our perceptions. That doesn’t make it any less real.
The idea of “inherent existence”. My path to understanding that one led me to a new view: the process view.
Another is the concept in a permanent self. They keep saying that it doesn’t exist – yet I know it does. I had a hard time finding the self that isn’t. Self isn’t a thing, it is a process. It comes into being, is exists for a time, then vanishes. What could be more obvious?
And impermanence, how could anyone see it otherwise? Of course, I may be deluded.
The biggest cause of suffering in life is exactly what the Buddha said: clinging. What is needed is a balance: holding on and letting go. That is obvious. We have positive expectations, they are born from desire. We have negative expectations, they are born from fear. In both cases they are expectations. And holding on to those expectations causes suffering.
There have been several places in my Buddhist journey where something has occurred that they talk about in the teaching yet when I experienced it I had, just before or just after, read something in modern cognitive science that explained it. “Being in touch with the Universe” is one of those. And I think I am touching another one: the self as “The Press Secretary”. I think that is the self that isn’t.
Another one, the no-self, is a logic fallacy. I knew the logic had to be wrong, or what they were saying is wrong. I finally found the logic fallacies. Then I took the next step and found the fallacy of logic itself and created the process view. It and the emptiness view are two valid views, And just like the earth centered and sun centered views – both are valid. One is metaphorically simpler and explains certain things more simply. The other is what you actually experience. You are standing from the view point of where you are.