The Decline and Fall of Dharma—and Triumphal Return
We are all here because we are explorers of consciousness, not satisfied with the level of consciousness that had so far been achieved, requiring greater contexts, greater understanding, greater depths, greater freedom, greater capacity to love, to understand the other, to relate without projection. To purify our own minds of those autonomic processes that no longer serve us.
We are all here because we are explorers of consciousness, not satisfied with the level of consciousness that had so far been achieved, requiring greater contexts, greater understanding, greater depths, greater freedom, greater capacity to love, to understand the other, to relate without projection. To purify our own minds of those autonomic processes that no longer serve us.
We’re living in a society that is probably the first one in history not to have specific rites of passage from childhood to adulthood. In the so-called “primitive tribal societies”, there were ordeals, and vision quests, and shamanic processes, of reaching altered states, and of entering into the extreme levels of possibility for existence of the body—whether through fasting and through other kinds of physical and psychological self-torments, that would stretch our capacities to discover, what are the limits of the body, what are the limits of the mind?
But today, we don’t go through such passages, or if we do go through them, they no longer work. Because they are processes that were adapted to different kinds of societies. But the kinds of rites of passage that we need, we have to build, we have to construct, we have to create. And the catch-22 difficulty is that once you have assumed you know what are the rules of the game, and you choose to adapt to the game of the social system, and you congeal a kind of identity that enables you to find a comfortable niche within the capitalist system, and have a career and children, and a life with an ordinary sort of relationality, that accepts a certain level of consciousness, and no longer aspires to change or to grow, or to become different from what you are, because then that would disrupt everything you have established.
And so, one then tends toward a kind of psychological conservatism. And this, of course, leads to a stagnation of growth. But when you reach a situation in a historical context in which the rules of the game change on you midstream, or the game itself stops working and brings you diminishing returns, or no dividends at all for all the effort that you put out, and then you end up devastated with divorce and bankruptcy and all of the other plagues that the system often forces on people, regardless of how loyal they have been to the ethics of the system, and the aesthetics, and to the belief system in all of its modalities—including loyalty to a family system, that in itself no longer makes sense, because the people in the family have less in common than you have with your friends or with people you’ve never met on the internet. And there is no way to have conversations or communication with those people that you thought you should be most close to. And the alienation and separation—the gaps get wider and wider, until one feels a very weird sense of isolation, no matter how close you seem to appear to be with other people. But there’s a misunderstanding that remains constant, and that grows in its inability to bridge the gap with others who you discover are not who you thought they were, and all of your idealizations of parents and family and friends also collapse. Including your idealization of yourself.
And this leads to a different level of exploration in a search for authenticity, and for discovering what you might be underneath what you thought you were, that is now crumbling before your eyes. And all the meaning that you thought that you had discovered also collapses, in a realization that it was simply an artificial fabrication, a construct that was fictional all along, and simply meant to indoctrinate you into an enslavement to a system that doesn’t really care about you.
So, the more one matures into recognizing the true nature of the situation that one is in, one realizes one has to find one’s strength within, and one loses one’s appetite for dependency. But one also discovers that this process that seemed to be about differentiation from other members of the family system, and individuation to discover your specialness, your uniqueness as a person, also begins to morph into a letting go of that illusory individual, and a realization that you are actually universal.
And so, the process, beyond a certain point, becomes the fading away of everything that you had attained and gained and thought you had become, and all of the diplomas that prove you earned it, and all of the other signs of credibility, and eventually all of the signifiers of an ego identity, you find to be completely unable to relate to, and you end up in a complete state of not knowing anything, or who you are, or what anything is. I hope everyone has at least reached that place within the journey.
But then there’s a beyondto that, which is the realization that this emptiness and not knowing is the portal, into a different kind of knowledge, of consciousness in itself, that no longer strives to know, or to gain, or to possess, or to control—but begins to function in a mode of surrender, to discovery, to a new level of innocence, and of freeing oneself from the last enchainment to belief in one’s lack, one’s inadequacy, one’s sinfulness—however one had been limited and hobbled by the belief systems—whether of the religion, or the society, or the particular traumas—all of this too gets left behind, and the consciousness enters into a level of its being, that can make use of the not-knowing, to recognize the infinity of potential meanings, that is always relevant to any situation, and not try to force-feed one into some definite the state of being.
And one gives up the effort to disambiguate oneself and one’s concepts from all that is. And this willingness to enter into something—not just a vagueness, but a recognition that any use of language is going to have an inherent incoherence in it, since language doesn’t correspond to the Real.
And when one looks at any of the institutions of society—take religion. Take Christianity as one exemplar of that: you find very conservative forms of Christianity that support the system, and encourage you to accept your enslavement in the working class, or whatever it is that that you are being told to accept and to knuckle under. And then you have the liberation theologians that say that “No, Christ was the ultimate revolutionary. Don’t give in. And strive to disrupt the establishment and bring more truths and more lights, and speak truth to power”, and all of that form of Christianity.
But when you read the gospels or the Acts of the Apostles, or any of that, it’s clearly as an ambiguity of text itself, that cannot tell you what was originally meant, or even if there was an original meaning, because the context is so changed, and the language in which you read these texts is translated again and again from an original that you cannot know; even if you were to learn Aramaic or ancient Greek, you would no longer be able to have the context to recognize the signifiers of the particular meanings of the slang that was used, in the particular orations that were written down, usually much later.
And so, these kinds of undecidabilities, then, force one to discover authority within oneself, and not to project it outside. But one cannot claim an authority prematurely. And so, there is a very interesting historical evolution that religions go through. And I think the most interesting is that of Buddhism, that we can learn a lot from, particularly from the discoveries of the Dunhuang caves, that I’ve mentioned before. Earlier in the twentieth century, much more important than the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Nag Hammadi gospels—because they discovered schools of Buddhism that were oppressed and not only persecuted, but completely eliminated from memory—literally obliterated—and those include the original Tibetan form of Zen—but even more important than that, I’ve discovered, is a school of Buddhism the which I’m probably not pronouncing correctly—but Sanjie—which is often now translated, since the discovery of these banished and banned sutras, of the “Three Levels School”, or the “Three Stages”.
And it begins with the understanding that the human nature is in decline. We’re not progressing upward; we’re losing the capacities we used to have and entering into a very narrow egoic mode of consciousness that has tunnel vision and cannot recognize or import into itself the higher dimensions of its own reality. It has cut itself off from its roots and from its higher potentials. And that decline is going to exponentially increase, so that the original teachings of the Buddha will not be able to be understood, even five hundred years after the Buddhist teaching, there will be a whole new teaching. And in fact, there was: the Mahayana replaced the Hinayana—they say even the Hinayana was a complete misunderstanding of the original teachings of Buddha. But then there would be a further phase in which this middle kind of dharma, that was still able to make use of the resources of consciousness, to explode the ego construct and open to the infinite—even that would be lost, and there would be a period where the ego would be so densely defended, and completely in a shell of narcissism, and paranoia, and delusion, that it would be absolutely impossible even to give any teachings that could be understood in that final phase, that the state of delusion would be total, for a nearly everyone.
So, this school said, “How can we—before we get to that last phase—come up with some methods that we will be able to give to people in that condition, to help them at least know they’re in that condition, and to help them breaks through it?” And so, these texts were written specifically as time-capsules to be given the people at the end of the age, when they would no longer be able to understand the original teachings. So, naturally, they completely banned these and eliminated them from ever being discovered. But of course, as the drama of the intention of God can’t be overcome, they were discovered, and recently translated. And they’re very useful, at least I found them to be.
And what they say is, in in a nutshell, that yes, it’s true: you are in a state of perfect and absolute delusion, OK? If you can recognize that, and accept it, and not believe in your delusion, you’re already halfway out of it. OK? But the other thing to realize is, the part of your consciousness that has been encapsulated in that delusion, is not allof your being. You can’t capture an infinite consciousness into a finite delusion. So, all that has been captured is the part of your consciousness that is identified with that delusion, which we can call the “ego”. But that in fact, because you are infinite and universal consciousness, you are the Buddha Nature. So, even at the very moment that you are in your darkest despair, and anxiety, and paranoia, you are simultaneously already liberated into the bliss of true Buddhahood. It’s not that you have to get from the delusion to Buddhahood and you can’t do it—that’s the delusion. The reality is that you can’t ever be anything but the Buddha Nature, because that’s all that is.
And so, even if there are arisings of delusional modes of consciousness within that infinite field of absolute consciousness, that is itself Truth, and is itself love, and is itself light—even though there may be an apparent fall into such a delusional state—the fact is that you didn’t fall: that simply arose within you. And if you can contain the delusion, without struggling, by believing when the delusional thoughts come—“I can’t do it! I can’t stop my mind! I can’t find peace! I can’t find silence!”—all of that delusional struggle—instead of identifying with it, looking at it and saying, “Poor thing!” Let’s give some peace to that deluded node. Don’t identify with it, but realize that you contain it, and you pervade it. And from that space that’s beyond, and cannot be captured by any delusion or any identity, you can realize that you are in both levels of consciousness simultaneously, and not favor the speaking linguistic element of consciousness—that is the deluded element—but the silent witness that is able to free it from its identification, simply by disinvesting in that particular use of language.
Now, during the middle period, that was predicted by the Chinese Buddhists of the Sanjie School, what they predicted happened: which was that, within Zen Buddhism (or Chan in the Chinese version) there was a split into two schools. One was the Linji (or the Rinzai sect, in the Japanese version) and the Soto sect, or school. And the Soto Zen Buddhists, among whom is Hongzhi, who I’ve been reading lately, were, you could say “quietists”. And they say what Zen is about, is simply emptying out, and being the silent field of Presence, and then merging into it.
The Rinzai school (which is simply a Japanese pronunciation of “Linji”, the man who founded it), is based on the wild use of language in order to disrupt the logic of the ego. And that’s where you get all the Zen koans, and those very strange conversations that don’t make sense—and the shouting, and the hitting each other with sticks, and all of these kinds of relationalities that seem to be quite mad, and yet can produce moments of kensho, or enlightenment. And they are actually poetic “warpings” of language, in order to bring out latent possibilities of meaningmoreness that enable one to reach that infinite consciousness, in which language itself opens out into all of the poetic potentialities of infinite meaningfulness.
And so, when for example, in a famous koan, the monk asks the Roshi: “Why did Bodhidharma come to China?” And the answer is: “The flowers that surround the outhouse.”
Is that a metaphor? Is that an evasion? Is that simply to show the absurdity of the question? You know, what is that? And yet, the monks who would hear that, originally, became enlightened by hearing it. OK? And maybe had a more pleasant trip to the outhouse as a result.
But at any rate, their ability to communicate something in a phrase like that, that we might have to write a whole book—and books have been written about what is the meaning of that—were such that they could enable an enrichment of consciousness, that could use a very tiny bit of a linguistic information, and turn that into a recognition of the infinite consciousness, that produced it.
So, it is the need to get out of the limitation of the signifiers, that have produced a false sense of definiteness, that whenever we explore it we realize is incoherent, and inconsistent, and reaches a point of failure, in which that identity that you have chosen to believe you are, will not be able to handle a certain situation, that goes beyond the particularity of the system in which it defines itself.
And so, if one is going to be able to live in a reality that is not limited by the systems of thought that we try to impose on it, we have to be free, to explore a continual reformatting and “re-paradigm-ization” of our reality, and an ability to live beyond the limitations of meaning. So, the capacity, then, to meditate brings you to a soundless understanding of the Real that enables the recognition that the world that you find yourself in, you are only in because you believe you are in it, and you will only see what you believe, as a preconception. When you let go of all the preconceptions that you have about yourself, and your world, and all that is entailed, that you have thought you learned about both, then all of what you perceive shifts, changes, falls away. And the true nature of the Real, of this holographic field—and in a hologram, you know, every point contains the whole—the microcosm contains the macrocosm. But here, we have a situation where even the macrocosm is a delusional representation of that Real that’s indescribable, and not perceivable by the senses, or knowable by rationality.
And it’s that level that we want to get to, in order to be able to redream that holographic environment, in which we inhabit, and can influence, because whatever shift happens within the point of consciousness that we are, affects the whole, and recontextualizes it for everyone, not just for oneself.
And so, it’s that level of empowerment, that cannot come from an ego identity; it can only come from the surrender of ego identity. In the same way that in the final phase of Buddhism, in Japan, the Zen—both Zen sects—became a—pretty much dead in the water, because there were no longer any Zen Masters who either could reach silence, or an authentic—create an authentic koan—or mondo or dharma combat. And the new forms of Buddhism that were arising, that were no longer the same sort of Buddhism, which was based on discovering who you are beyond the ego, but instead, were a recognition that “I can’t get out of my delusion, and all I can do is pray to Amida Buddha (the Buddha of Infinite Light) through repeating some mantra. And somehow—because I can’t even have faith in Amida—but I’ll pretend to have faith in Amida, and say the mantra once in a while, and even that will be enough to get me into Sukhavati one day”, which is the name of the Western Paradise, where, you know, those faithful Buddhists will go.
So, you don’t need faith. You don’t need even surrender—because you can’t. And you don’t have the ability to have faith in yourself, or in anything. But what you can do, is to recognize the truth of your condition, and realize that the one who is recognizing it, is no longer under the jurisdiction of that belief system, and of the rules that that delusion creates, in the form of limitation of your capacity for a conscious expansion.
So, the bottom line, I would say, that occurred between this shift from what they call “self-power” to “other-power”—in other words, “I can’t do it. God save me!” or, “Maybe you’ll save me if I repeat this mantra, if I remember to do it.” But the realization that the one that you think you are, is helpless, in a flux, that it cannot control, it cannot understand where it’s heading, it cannot cope with, it cannot manage, and that it’s too fragile to be able to survive very long before breakdown.
If one can recognize that state that the ego has in fact entered, in which it is filled with negative projections, and opinions about itself, and complete despair and dismay, about any hope for the world—that that itself is a delusional belief system, and be able to step just one centimeter outside of that limited sphere of belief that you take for granted about yourself—then there is the infinite potentiality for a rebirth, as a completely unknowable kind of being, who has capacities that you cannot, in advance, either invoke or suppose or insist upon, but that through your openness to discovery, you will be able to be saturated by because the Power that created all of this—whether it’s a delusion or a reality—that Power has also created you, and cannot be anything but you, in the form of a representation of Itself in holographic form.
And therefore, the entirety of the intelligence of the universe, from beginning to end, is contained within your consciousness at this moment. And the accessing of it is simply a based on the requirement of being willing to go out of your mind. But to go out of your mind—not in a paranoid way, but in a metanoid way. So, they say you’re either metanoid, paranoid, or just annoyed, but what you want to be is not any of those, but in that state that is completely inconceivable, because that is the truth of what we are.
And I hope that that inconceivability will bring you the same bliss that it has brought to all the sages, including Buddha, and Christ, and all of those great beings who have been forgotten in the depths of time, but whose intelligence remains part of the noetic field, that is supporting our own attainment of the Buddhahood that is already our inheritance and our nature, that is now, again, the emergent property, that must now become our reality, because that is the design of the system of the universe in which we find ourselves, and that we find within ourselves, and that is the Self.
May you gain the peace of the attainment of no-mind, of presence to the deluded mind without identification, without investment, without attachment, without belief.
And may you gain the deeper peace, in the deep unknowability of consciousness that is all pervasive, all paradoxical, in that inconceivable Presence of the formless, bodiless nature of consciousness that cannot be held onto, or grasped, but neither can it ever be left.
And may you gain that supreme peace of the discovery within that vastness, of the Pearl of Great Price, that is precipitated out of the field of infinite consciousness, liberated from thought, that provides a new mind, a diamond mind, a mind of pearly fluidity and clarity—a mind of divine eternal purity, a mind free of delusion, desire, and fear. A mind capable of redreaming our world. And know that to be the Self that you have always been, and shall forever be.
This concludes the teachings of this retreat. I thank you very much, all of you, for your participation, your willingness to put up with it, and to flow with it, and to enter into its complexity, and its intentionality of liberation of your consciousness from any definitive limitation. And may you take whatever you have gained, and multiply it by recognition that your own creative resources are unlimited, in the development of your wisdom and your power of love, healing, and transformation.
And may you know that you have been brought to this stage of your own evolution, in accord with the evolution of the world process, in a state in which you have all the aptitude you need, through surrender to attain that absolute mastery over the chaos of the world, and bring it to a much higher, more beautiful, more loving, more authentic, more transparent, more long-lasting, more all-enabling world order, that will be a blessing to all the generations to come. And all of those generations will be your own reincarnations—so do it for yourself.
Namaste, Shunyamurti
This Post Has 2 Comments
Anuradha
9 Feb 2021This teaching is potent and pithily so, perhaps my pores were ready to become saturated in its many nuances. Worth coming back to time and time again. 💗
~Namaste
Mei
20 Feb 2023WoW ** It was so amazed hearing this, it reminded me of very wise man, who gave us the means he called ”the medicine”, just a few hundreds years ago. He just knew that humanity would need something quick & easy that would spread worldwide faster than a virus during time like this, full of chaos when people lose it, freak out and there is no peace nor time for learning. And it really works! Even if you know absolutely nothing at all, it is instant and you feel it Immediately even if you don’t believe in it, and I was very skeptic! Coherence and clarity, comes back naturally and there were millions back in 1984 already… We are everywhere, moving silently he knew it would be safer but so simple for anyone anywhere… Thank you Mister S with deepest gratitude for your dedicated courageous efforts for all of us.