Don't wish for union!
There's a closeness beyond that ...
Fall in love in such a way
that it frees you from any connecting.
Love is the soul's light, the taste of morning;
no me, no we, no claim of being...
As eyes in silence, tears, face:
love cannot be said.

-Rumi

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every force applied, there is an equal force applied back. The 'world', the universe, maya only exists because of resistance to it: you push against it, it pushes back.

The only way to freedom is surrender. You stop pushing, asserting yourself, and illusion stops pushing back, asserting itself. Stop pushing, putting energy into the system, and there is no energy in the system to push back.

Stop telling the story, and without that constant input of energy the story collapses.

-David Carse

Don't knock Monkey style kung fu !!!You can't kick the ass of a guy who is up a tree and throwing coconuts at you !!

Most of self defence has nothing to do with hand to hand combat, or any comabt at all. That much is true. However, the part of it that does deal with actual confrontations is simply not adressed by all of the scenario training and model muggings they advocate. Being able to fight requires a certain psychological characteristic, call it "toughness" that is simply not achieved by this type of training. Some people have it naturally, they are more or less born fighters. Others, like me, are softies, and no ammount of model mugging or low-contac sparring will ever get them to the point, where they will be able to stand up for themselves when push comes to shove. The only way you can become tough is formal or informal competition, or actual fighting experience. You have to go up against an opponent that is trying to actually take your head off, and not just simulate a mugger. This sort of fighting is a whole different kind of animal from friendly sparring. The agression, adrenalin, and fear for your safety change things a hell of a lot more than most people realize. This is why most of the reality self defence types will fold under real pressure, while most sports fighters will not.

Oh, smell the people!' yelled Dean with his face out the window, sniffling. 'Ah, God! Life!'"
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road

"Love is all.'
-Jack Kerouac

"I went with him for no reason."-Jack Kerouac on Neal Cassady

"What's your road, man? -holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow."
-Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty in On The Road

"Who are all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me?"
-Jack Kerouac, on the final gathering/Snyders going away party

"...Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH..."
J. Kerouac- Big Sur

"Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken."
-Jack Kerouac

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds."
-- "On The Road”

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
-- "On The Road”

Gurus I Have Known and Loved

My friend Peter has made a suggestion to me....that I write a bit about the effect that certain spiritual teachers have had on me. I said immediately that seemed like too big of a job, to review gurus."No," he replied, "just talk about the effect they had on you." And so I begin with Peter himself.

Peter came into my life a number of years ago. I had begun my website to write about my husband's multiple myeloma. It quickly turned into a place where I began posting spiritual essays that I wrote. I posted them on Jerry Katz's Nonduality Salon as well. One day Peter posted something there about spirituality and illness. I wrote him privately and thus began an instantaneous friendship. It was based on nothing but hands clicking away at their respective keyboards. And Peter apparently has a hard time with his, given that he has been ill for many years. He prefers that I not discuss that part of his life. He has overcome the illusion of having a separate self. As far as he is concerned, it is all the same...suffering or enlightenment are indistinguishable.

Peter's statements about life are inherently simple and therefore effective. When you can not do anything but sit in the sunlight with a cat on your lap, then that is what you do. Capice?
He once sent me a sound bite of himself playing the bagpipes in earlier days. I sat at my computer listening, tears winking in my eyes. I have seen his picture and he is an incredibly handsome man. I do not know his last name or where he lives. In that way he is a perfect mirror for what is beyond words and thoughts.

When my husband decided to die slowly, enduring chemo just to keep himself on the planet as long as he could, Peter would say, "For what it is worth, I hold your hand in this." Indeed. What verbiage printed in ink or online can match the clarity of caring. I knew that Peter's days were just like mine....hardly endurable. But we were both choiceless in the matter. My job was to care for my husband and his was to get through the day as best he could without falling. "Ho ho!" he would say, after confessing to aanother episode of crashing into tall grasses.

So Peter has come to be a guru for me. He lives in the moment as a matter of course. If coaxed, he will admit that at some point in time, he lost his "me." That should be a profound relief, but given that he also lost his balance, strength and career, etc., things have not been hunky dory for him. It does no good to try and figure it out.

I go long periods of time without hearing from Peter, understandably so. If I write about him, the love is activated as I click clack the letters on the keyboard. He vows his cat holds the key to enlightenment and I am not at all sure about that. Maybe it's even simpler and he is just using words to keep me from experiencing cosmic bliss. I mean, somebody is keeping me from it. I might as well blame Peter. That is how much I trust him.

People whose lives have been drug down to the baseline of existence and kept there for many years grow clear or crazy, one or the other. Having lost a child, I know what baseline feels like. It is forcing yourself to put your body through the motions while your heart is scattered all over the universe. You cannot call it home; it justwon't come. It is stubbornly holding out on you. Mine wanted a little girl named Laurie to come back. With Peter, it was his ability to use his body.

But Peter and I found each other serendipitously. Forget enlightenment, gurus and every word written about them. Loving what is does the trick. When you can love the lost things in your life and stumble forward knowing they will not return, good for you. Good for Peter and good for me. We know the essential truth of life. It will not change at our whim, but we can change in the moment of our suffering. It's called love.

Vicki Woodyard

Dear Aging Becomer
by Bob Cergol

A letter written by Bob to friends, many of whom have been "on the path" for 25 or more years, and read by him at the April 2005 TAT Spring Gathering:

You consider yourself more esoterically informed than most -- way, way ahead of the common masses and "Joe-six-pack." from animated postcard by Jeff Victor In the last 30 years, haven't you figured out yet -- how to become a reverse vector? Is it by more and more "doing" and "thinking" -- by running faster and faster, in ever decreasing concentric circles -- until ... you become like the "Do-Do Bird" Rose described. Is it through bodily action, or mental activity? Which of these follows which, and which is more substantial than Omar Khayam's "... snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, Lighting a little Hour or two -- [and] gone"?

If death equates to the absence of doing, thinking and experiencing, -- i.e. nothing, then aren't you on your way to becoming nothing -- with no effort required? Isn't that the direction of your life? Can you actually become something, fundamentally different, than what you are right now? Who or what is becoming? You used to be convinced that you could become, now you only hope that you can, that this leaden "YOU" that you know and love so well -- and hate -- can become a golden you, that will deserve your love forever -- and live forever -- PROVING ONCE AND FOR ALL WHAT IN YOUR HEART YOU DO NOT REALLY BELIEVE -- AND MOST FEAR. You the body-mind fantasize a vision of becoming something PERMANENT, and superior to yourself -- and that somehow YOU will remain anterior to everything -- intact as "you" -- containing God himself -- the timeless. WHERE DID YOU GET SUCH A DELUSION?!

I think it is your distorted seeing and hearing of the essential desire that comes to you from your true Self -- your Essence -- for even God does not have the power to split himself, and everything He touches was never separate from Him. (It is the INVISIBLE CURRENT from Rose's Jacob's Ladder diagram. This is pure metaphor, attempting to explain the mechanics of a creation that does not exist.) You the Shadow-Man cannot fail to act in accordance with your essence, your true source and fundamental nature. However, your actions are refracted according to the fixation of your attention on experience, refracted according to the resulting need for self-definition and personal survival, and refracted according to the resulting fears and desires generated by the experience. In other words, you the shadow man do not become or evolve or will your attention away from the false. You the shadow-man are watching two movies: one is the movie of your destruction, one is the movie of your denial and acceptance of this destruction. The theme of denial is depicted by the vision of becoming through acquisition. The theme of acceptance is depicted by one's own deconstruction through simple looking -- with acceptance.

Are you looking -- or acquiring? It is by virtue of your essence that your attention cannot be 100% glued to that which is separate. The desire and attempt to define your self, and to survive, is simply what manifests in the shadow of experience cast by the "Light of the body," that Christ said was "the eye." You, the Shadow-Man, are what manifests when Awareness reflects upon itself and finds no object to reflect upon. Your attempt to become is doomed to failure. This is beautifully stated in these thematic and climactic phrases from the poem The Hound of Heaven: All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.
Naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.
All things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Thou dravest love From thee, who dravest Me.

If your attempt to become transcendentally different is doomed to failure, what can and will you do about it? Can your actions lead to a change in anything other than your circumstances? You believe that it can because you mistake the after-the-fact reactive experience as you-the-doer. It is a wish of you-the-somatic-mind. Have you noticed that your actions have an effect upon your attention? What motivates your actions? The action of looking will further affect the focus of your attention. Becoming a reverse-vector is the opposite of external, worldly becoming. It is un-becoming.

It is your un-doing! It is the breaking of your fixation on all experience -- including the experience of identity -- until the attention collapses in upon itself and all experience either stops or is recognized as non-existent. Spiritual becoming is worldly and personal un-becoming through the reverse vector of the attention -- "that power of noticing" which is not your possession. The potential value in your activity aimed at becoming lies in the effect that it will have upon the direction of your attention -- not in becoming something other than what you already are or are not. Your desire to become was wisely exploited by your teacher, who coined the phrase: "milk from thorns." He also liked to recall the Radha Soami guru who answered his question about what can be done: "All that man can do is desire."

Rose knew full-well the ultimate Source of this desire, and how this desire manifested in the "mind realm" and in the "body realm." Your experience generates experience. Experience is to the identity as food is to the body. Your identity weaves itself in a self-perpetuating chain-reaction -- so long as the attention is glued to experience -- and so long as the body fuels the reactor. The "fabric" of identity unravels as the attention is turned to watching -- first experience itself, as an outside observer rather than a participant, and then when the attention is turned to watching the experience-er. Experience is binding.
Observing the process of experiencing is liberating. Good hunting, and may your life experience be decidedly disconcerting. As your faithful friend, I remain.... Bob

-------------------------


Only through the simple process of self-observation can this thing called the "self" be seen. We may need years of looking at it, seeing why it does what it does, thinks what it thinks, until we know it well enough to cease to believe in it. All of our energy, for all of our life, has been poured into this thing: our personality, the little self, the ego. A few moments of seeing, while of monumental importance, will not cause its complete demise. This demise is what we fear most; for it is seen by the thought-pattern we call "us" as death. At some point, the initial joy of seeing will turn to the pain of ego-death, as the Truth becomes known. It will not be pleasant. In fact, the pain and horror felt by the ego as it faces its own death, will be felt as yours. Hartmann's words again ring true: "Conquer the pains resulting therefrom." While all this may be just words to you for now, know that after you have gone beyond this realm of thought, beyond this self-surviving collection of reactions seeking nothing but its own continuity, "seeing" will still be there. You will then have no more need of thought or reaction to give you meaning and value, as the simple act of seeing will once again be enough. The world of thought will no longer be your home, having become a movie, a dream, as much a comedy as a drama, wherein the bit character you used to call your "self" is merely another player. Your interest will be only in a pure amazement at your own unknowable Being … and perhaps the need to help another find freedom from the trap of reaction, the world of "self."

It is the clinging to the false that makes

the true so difficult to see. Once you

understand that the false needs time and

what needs time is false, you are nearer

the Reality, which is timeless, ever in thenow.

Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness,

like the movement of a clock. It flows from

the past into the future endlessly, as empty

perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present

so vital, so different from the past and future,

which are merely mental. If you need time to

achieve something, it must be false. The realis always with you; you need not wait to be

what you are. Only you must not allow your

mind to go out of yourself in search. When you

want something, ask yourself: do I really needit? and if the answer is not, then just drop it.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That-

Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Acorn Press, 1973

Otherwise, you can add some weak acid at some point in the washing process. Since you need just a tiny amount, even cheap vinegar will do, without leaving a smell. You could make a soap goo out of soap and water, and add a bit of lemon juice. You could have a jug of water with a teaspoonful of vinegar in it, to rinse your hair with after soaping. Or how about pouring it into a plastic squirty bottle, so you don't spill it.

The world of Absolute Reality,
onto which your mind has projected a world of relative unreality
is independent of yourself, for the very simple reason that it is yourself.

Examine the motion of change
and you will see. What can change
while you do not change, can be
said to be independent of you.
But what is changeless must be one
with whatever else is changeless.
The main objective to grasp is
that you have projected onto
yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories,
on desires and fears, and that you
have imprisoned yourself in it.
Break the spell and be free.
You are universal. You need not and you
cannot become what you are already.
Only cease imagining yourself to be
the particular. What comes and goes
has no being. It owes its very appearance to reality.
You know that there is a world, but does the world
know you? All knowledge flows from
you, as all being and all joy.

Realize that you are the eternal source and
accept all as your own.Such acceptance is true love.
Having never left the house you are asking
for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all.
Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere.
Just cease imagining.
Don't you understand?! Enough if you do not
misunderstand. Don't rely on your mind for liberation.

It is the mind that brought you to
bondage. Go beyond it altogether.
is beginningless cannot have a cause.
It is not that you knew what you are and
then you have forgotten. Once you know, you cannot forget.

Don't ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind.
Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.

- Nisargadatta

Stop taking yourself so goddamn seriously and chill the fuck out. Everything is going to be fine.

"To come out in plain words and say it, it isimpossible because if you carry enough fuel to thrustlong enough to travel at say nine tenths the speed oflight you could
never have enough fuel to stop. You would have to keep
traveling forever. "

That a really good reason, but there's one that's an
even bigger problem:
Space Isn't Empty.

IIRC, the density of the interplanetary medium is
about 1 atom of hydrogen per cubic meter. That's not
much in the way of resistance, but let's say the front
of the vehicle presents a face of 10 square meters.
That means every meter distance travelled it will, on
average, collide with 10 atoms of hydrogen. Now, let's
pretend that you get this machine to go only HALF the
speed of light. That means you will collide with
149,896,271 atoms of hydrogen every second.
You're dead. The kind of kinetic energy of 150 million
atoms slamming into your ship at 1/2 c EVERY SECOND
will eventuate in your ship becoming incredibly hot
and radioactive. And God ferbid you hit a grain of
sand at that speed - it would slice right through your
ship so fast - dead meat.

So: you're going to go all star trek on me and
postulate a huge "deflector array"? Where's the energy
going to come from for that? And besides, as you
approach C, your time dilation kicks in, so you have
some tiny fraction of time to deal with microscopic
bits of grit travelling at relativistic speed.

Deflecting it will require even MORE energy, and WHERE
is that going to come from? A small little lonesome
bit of crap is floating in space, minding it's own
dull business as it had for 4.6 billion years, when
suddenly Mr HotShot space truck comes blasting out of
nowhere saying "You have to get out of my way RIGHT
NOW" the energy required to do that would pretty much
not only vapourise the little piece of grit, which
would result in even MORE heat and radiation, on top
of all the other radiation. And if you're travelling
at say, 99% of c, you're looking at 300 million atoms
of hydrogen slamming into your machine at nearly light
speed - something it takes insane amounts of energy on
earth to do, just to get a few atoms in an
accellerator up to any appreciable speed.

Now multiply that energy by 300 million EVERY SECOND
and talk to me about some silly notion of a deflectorshield.
Quite simply, Mr Patterson is correct: It Just Ain't
Gonna Happen. Period. Not now, Not later, not ever.

HOWEVER: I do think that we can, and should, get out
of the gravity well. But I think a more likely way
than building ships that travel near c, would be to
evolve a special class of "humans" who have a genetic
code that is largely impervious to radiation (there
are bacteria that have this feature), eat rocks and
ice in the asteroid belt, have enourmous wing spans
that collect solar radiation and can live in a vacuum.
Once they eat the asteroid belt, they can grow bigger
wings and go work on the Kuiper Belt and then it's off
to the Oort cloud.Sound ridiculous? Yeah, It is. But it's one HELL of a
lot more achievable than travelling at c... That's
just a stupid hollywood fantasy.

Mister Studebaker

"What then is that precious something contained in our food which keeps usfrom death? That is easily answered. Every process, event, happening -- callit what you will; in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means anincrease of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thusa living organism continually increases its entropy -- or, as you may say,produces positive entropy -- and thus tends to approach the dangerous stateof maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e.alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy -- whichis something very positive as we shall immediately see. What an organismfeeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, theessential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeingitself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive."

WHAT IS LIFE? by Erwin Shrödinger
First published in 1944.
http://www.dieoff.com/page150.htm

I asked once if Vlad could show me how to avoid a certain strike, he said, "No. I cannot. But if I attack you with sword you will run and move like crazy man. You already know how to move and avoid."

Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of
living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil
background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in
at the banquet.
— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

"I built my cottage among the habitations of men,
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses.
You ask: 'Sir, how can this be done?''
A heart that is distant creates its own solitude.

I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze afar towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.

In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words."

~Tao YuanMing

100 Items that will disappear first during an emergency

1) Generators.
2) Water filters/purifiers.
3) Portable toilets.
4) Seasoned firewood.
5) Lamp oil, wicks, and lamps.
6) All types of fuel; Coleman, propane, gasoline, kerosene, diesel.
7) Guns, ammunition, pepper-spray, knives, bows/arrows, clubs, bats & slingshots.
8) Hand-can openers & hand egg beaters, whisks, paper/plastic plates and cups.
9) Honey, syrups, white, brown sugars.
10) Rice, beans.
11) Vegetable oil
12) Charcoal & Lighter Fluid.
13) Water containers
14) Mini heater head (Propane)
15) Grain grinder (non-electric)
16) Small propane cylinders and the adapter to refill them from the larger size
17) Goats, chickens, pigeons, ducks, rabbits, milk cows
18) Mantles: Aladdin, Coleman, etc.
19) Baby supplies, diapers, formula, ointments, aspirin, etc
20) Washboards, mop Bucket w/wringer (for laundry)
21) Cook stoves (Propane, Coleman & Kerosene)
22) Vitamins (Critical, due to forced daily canned food diets.)
23) Propane cylinder Handle-Holder. Small canister use is dangerous without this item.
24) Feminine hygiene, hair care, skin products
25) Thermal underwear, tops and bottoms
26) Bow saws, axes and hatchets & wedges
27) Aluminum foil.
28) Gasoline containers (plastic or metal)
29) Garbage bags (impossible to have too many.)
30) Toilet paper, Kleenex, paper towels
31) Milk -powdered & condensed (Shake liquid every 3 to 4 months.)
32) Garden seeds (non-hybrid A MUST)
33) Clothes pins, line, hangers
34) Coleman's pump Repair Kit:
35) Tuna fish (in oil is preferable over water)
36) Fire extinguishers (or a LARGE box of baking soda in every room...)
37) First aid kits.
38) Batteries (all sizes)
39) Garlic, spices & vinegar, baking supplies
40) BIG dogs (and plenty of dog food)
41) Flour, yeast & salt
42) Matches "Strike Anywhere" preferred. Boxed, wooden matches will go first.
43) Writing paper, pads, pens, pencils, solar calculators
44) Insulated ice chests (good for keeping items from freezing in wintertime)
45) Work boots, belts, Levis & durable shirts
46) Flashlights, light sticks & torches
47) Journals, diaries & scrapbooks (Jot down ideas, feelings, experiences: Historic times!)
48) Garbage cans, plastic (great for storage, water, transporting - if with wheels)
49) Men's Hygiene: Shampoo, toothbrush/paste, mouthwash/floss, nail clippers, etc
50) Cast iron cookware (sturdy, efficient)
51) Fishing supplies, tools
52) Mosquito coils, repellent sprays/creams.
53) Duct tape and WD40.
54) Tarps, stakes, line.
55) Candles.
56) Laundry detergent (Liquid).
57) Backpacks & duffle bags.
58) Garden tools & supplies.
59) Scissors, fabrics & sewing supplies.
60) Canned fruits, Veggies, Soups, stews, etc.
61) Bleach (plain, NOT scented: 4 to 6% sodium hypochlorite)
62) Canning supplies (Jars/lids/rings/wax)
63) Knives & sharpening tools: files, stones, steel, oil.
64) Bicycles, tires, tubes, pumps, chains, etc.
65) Sleeping bags & blankets, pillows, mats.
66) Carbon monoxide alarm (battery powered).
67) Board games cards, dice.
68) Rat poison, roach killer.
69) Mousetraps, ant traps & cockroach magnets
70) Paper plates/cups/utensils
71) Baby wipes, oils, waterless & anti-bacterial soap
72) Rain gear, rubberized boots, etc.
73) Shaving supplies (razors & creams).
74) Hand pumps & siphons (for water and for fuels).
75) Soy sauce, vinegar, bouillons, gravy, soup base.
76) Reading glasses
77) Chocolate, Cocoa, Tang, Punch (water enhancers)
78) Lanterns, Coleman, kerosene
79) Woolen clothing, scarves earmuffs, mittens
80) Hats & cotton neckerchiefs
81) Gloves, work, warming, gardening and etc.
82) Graham crackers, saltines, pretzels, trail mix, jerky
83) Popcorn, peanut butter, nuts
84) Socks, underwear, t-shirts, etc. (extras)
85) Lumber (all types)
86) Wagons & carts (for transport to & from open flea markets)
87) Cots & inflatable mattresses (for extra guests).
88) Atomizers (for cooling/bathing).
89) Wire of all types, bailing, fencing, (barbed and smooth), electrical (all gauges).
90) Screen patches, glue, nails,
91) Teas.
92) Coffee.
93) Cigarettes.
94) Wine, liquors (for bribes, medicinal, etc.).
95) Candies of all kinds.
96) Screws, nuts & bolts.
97) Chewing gum.
98) Any type of food not listed above.
99) All kinds of pharmaceutical supplies.
100) Nails, string, twine, rope, spikes.

The beatings will stop when morale improves.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die."

- Blade Runner

Blues for Buddha

By Jed McKenna

Being critical of Buddhism isn't easy. Buddhism is the most likable of the major religions, and Buddhists are the perennial good guys of modern spirituality. Beautiful traditions, lovely architecture, inspiring statuary, ancient history, the Dalai Lama — what's not to like?

Everything about Buddhsim is just so... nice. No fatwahs or jihads, no inquisitions or crusades, no terrorists or pederasts, just nice people being nice. In fact, Buddhism means niceness. Nice-ism. At least, it should. Buddha means Awakened One, so Buddhism can be taken to mean Awake-ism. Awakism. It would therefore be natural to think that if you were looking to wake up, then Buddhism, i.e., Awakism, would be the place to look.

The Light is Better Over Here

Such thinking, however, would reveal a dangerous lack of respect for the opposition. Maya, goddess of delusion, has been doing her job with supreme mastery since the first spark of self-awareness flickered in some chimp's noggin, and the idea that the neophyte truth-seeker can just sign up with the Buddhists, read some books, embrace some new concepts and slam her to the mat might be a bit on the naive side. On the other hand, why not? How’d this get so turned around? It’s just truth. Shouldn’t truth be, like, the simplest thing? Shouldn’t someone who wants to find something as ubiquitous as truth be able to do so? And here’s this venerable organization supposedly dedicated to just that very thing, even named for it, so what’s the problem?

Why doesn’t Buddhism produce Buddhas?

The problem arises from the fact that Buddhists, like everyone else, insist on reconciling the irreconcilable. They don’t just want to awaken to the true, they also want to make sense of the untrue. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so they end up with nonsensical theories, divergent schools, sagacious doubletalk, and zero Buddhas. Typical of Buddhist insistence on reconciling the irreconcilable is the concept of Two Truths, a poignant two-word joke they don’t seem to get, and yet this sort of perversely irrational thinking is at the very heart of the failed search for truth. We don’t want truth, we want a particular truth; one that doesn't threaten ego, one that doesn’t exist. We insist on a truth that makes sense given what we know, not knowing that we don't know anything. Nothing about Buddhism is more revealing than the Four Noble Truths which, not being true, are of pretty dubious nobility. They form the basis of Buddhism, so it's clear from the outset that the Buddhists have whipped up a proprietary version of truth shaped more by market forces than any particular concern for the less consumer-friendly, albeit true, truth. Yes, Buddhism may be spiritually filling, even nourishing, but insofar as truth is concerned, it's junkfood. You can eat it every day of your life and die exactly as Awakened as the day you signed up.

Bait & Switch

Buddhism is a classic bait-and-switch operation. We’re attracted by the enlightenment in the window, but as soon as we’re in the door they start steering us over to the compassion aisle. Buddhists could be honest and change their name to Compassionism, but who wants that? There's the rub. They can’t sell compassion and they can’t deliver enlightenment. This untruth-in-advertising is the kind of game you have to play if you want to stay successful in a business where the customer is always wrong. You can either go out of business honestly, or thrive by giving the people what they want. What they say they want and what they really want, though, are two very different things.

Me Me Me

To the outside observer, much of Buddhist knowledge and practice seems focused on spiritual self-improvement. This, too, is hard to speak against... except within the context of awakening from delusion. Then it's easy. There is no such thing as true self, so any pursuit geared toward its aggrandizement, betterment, upliftment, elevation, evolution, glorification, salvation, etc, is utter folly. How much more so any endeavor undertaken merely to increase one's own happiness or contentment or, I'm embarrassed to even say it, bliss? Self is ego and ego is the realm of the dreamstate. If you want to break free of the dreamstate, you must break free of self, not stroke it to make it purr or groom it for some imagined brighter future.

Maya's House of Enlightenment

The trick with being critical of so esteemed and beloved an institution is not to get dragged down into the morass of details and debate. It's very simple: If Buddhism is about enlightenment, people should be getting enlightened. If it's not about enlightenment, they should change the sign. Of course, Buddhism isn't completely unique in its survival tactics. This same gulf between promise and performance is found in all systems of human spirituality. We're looking at it in Buddhism because that's where it's most pronounced. No disrespect to the Buddha is intended. If there was a Buddha and he was enlightened, then it's Buddhism that insults his memory, not healthy skepticism. Blame the naked emperor's retinue of tailors and lickspittles, not the boy who merely states the obvious. Buddhism is arguably the most elevated of man's great belief systems. If you want to enjoy the many valuable benefits it has to offer, then I wouldn't presume to utter a syllable against it. But if you want to escape from the clutches of Maya, then I suggest you take a very close look at the serene face on all those golden statues to see if it isn't really hers.

-Jed McKenna