From aish.com:
My grandfather believed that our world is a manifestation of an invisible world. As a computer scientist, so do I.
by Fil Yeskel My grandfather believed in an invisible world.
It was populated by angels, demons, and a beneficent God. For unknown reasons God had chosen to avoid being directly perceived by human beings. It had once been otherwise: He had shown himself many times 3300 years ago. Nevertheless, it was still possible to perceive Him indirectly, most powerfully via tracks left in history.
I am an engineer and a computer scientist. My world is different from my grandfather's but, like him, I believe that the world we see is a manifestation of an invisible world we cannot see. My fellow technicians and I share a belief in an invisible world that is no less miraculous than my grandfather's and, many would say, no less evidence of a beneficent God.
To hear about our invisible world, play the child's game of "Why?" Ask an elementary technical question, then ask Why? or What? or How? in response to each answer. After a few levels you're at the invisible domain; another level or two and you're in the spiritual domain. The depth of the stack is a measure of human knowledge. These layers often seem thin compared to a dimly perceived core.
I walked such a path with an inquisitive girl of 13. I was demonstrating some graphics software during a "career day" event and had just closed a window on the screen.
"Where did the picture go?" she asked.
"It's in memory," I answered.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that the picture is now stored in a different way and in a different place."
"OK, where is it?"
I sensed that misty path that lives in the marrow of every technofile.
"Not where, what. It's not a picture anymore, it changed when I closed the window; transformed like a butterfly going back to a caterpillar. It's an arrangement of bits now. The computer broke it into pin head size pieces. It recorded the position, brightness, and color of each piece in a binary code."
"Can I see the bits?"
Drop down into the next world.
"They're stored in CMOS structures. This means they're just below the surface of a few pinkie nail size flakes of shiny silicon metal."
"Show me."
I powered down, opened the case, and showed her the memory chips.
"Show me the little flecks of metal inside the black plastic."
We used pliers to split a spare module so we could see the chip inside.
"You said the bits are just below the surface. If we scrape the surface, can we see them?"
Invisible world coming up.
"Sorry. The structures that hold the bits can be seen, but not the bits themselves."
The teacher came up with a micrograph of the top layer of a memory circuit. They look like very regular cityscapes seen from high in the air.
"Each room in the city holds one bit. A transistor acts as a door to each room that can open to admit millions of electrons."
"Why millions?"
"We can't detect one electron, only whole thunderclouds of them."
"Can I see them?"
"How do you know they're really there?""Sorry again. First, the room is never empty. New electrons simply add to a sponge-like latticework of atoms and electrons that's already there. Second, electrons can't be seen. Any attempt to see them changes, in a random way, what you're trying to see. It's like trying to grab smoke."
"How do you know they're really there?"
"By their effects. They're detectable in how they influence other things. They leave tracks; they leave history."
When all is said and done, I'm not so far from my grandfather. It's possible to leap from a visible world we sense, to an invisible one we can detect but never really "see," to one just out of reach of our machinery, but real nevertheless.
The vast majority of the world is invisible. We perceive this indirectly. All of our doings, petty and otherwise, are built on a foundation that runs very deep. We do well to remember, with awe, the worlds that exist just out of sight.
Published: Saturday, October 29, 2005
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Taking The Future Into Your Hands
From Tricycle:
Taking Your Future Into Your Own Hands
By Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
All sentient beings without a single exception have buddha nature, from the dharmakaya buddha down to the tiniest insect. There is no real difference in the quality or size of this enlightened essence between individuals. However, buddhas and fully enlightened bodhisattvas have cut the movement of dualistic mind at the very beginning. That is how they are different from sentient beings. Buddhas and bodhisattvas’ expression of mind takes the form of compassionate activity. This activity, through emanations and re-emanations, appears in all samsaric realms in order to teach other beings.
Sentient beings, on the other hand, have fallen under the power of dualistic thinking. An ordinary person’s attention strays according to any movement of mind. Suddenly there is the confusion of believing in self and other, subject and object, and this situation goes on and on repeating itself endlessly. This is samsaric existence. The buddhas and bodhisattvas were successful in getting up on the dry land of enlightenment. But we sentient beings became bewildered, and are now in the unsuccessful, unsatisfactory state we all find ourselves in. We are still in the ocean of samsara; we have not yet gotten our heads fully out of the water. We have roamed about in one confused state of experience after the other, endlessly. At the same time, we haven’t lost our buddha nature. Our buddha nature is never separate from our minds for even a single instant. Though we are not apart from it we do not know it, and thus we wander in samsaric existence.
Now is the time to free ourselves from samsara. Unless we do it in this lifetime, it is not going to happen all by itself. We have to take care of ourselves. Right now we have the ability to receive teachings and practice the Dharma. Isn’t this the right time? Wouldn’t that be better than continuing to act like an animal, concentrating only on eating and sleeping and letting the time run out? Why not take your future into your own hands?
From As It Is, vol. 1, ©1999 by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Reprinted with permission of Rangjung Yeshe Publications.
Taking Your Future Into Your Own Hands
By Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
All sentient beings without a single exception have buddha nature, from the dharmakaya buddha down to the tiniest insect. There is no real difference in the quality or size of this enlightened essence between individuals. However, buddhas and fully enlightened bodhisattvas have cut the movement of dualistic mind at the very beginning. That is how they are different from sentient beings. Buddhas and bodhisattvas’ expression of mind takes the form of compassionate activity. This activity, through emanations and re-emanations, appears in all samsaric realms in order to teach other beings.
Sentient beings, on the other hand, have fallen under the power of dualistic thinking. An ordinary person’s attention strays according to any movement of mind. Suddenly there is the confusion of believing in self and other, subject and object, and this situation goes on and on repeating itself endlessly. This is samsaric existence. The buddhas and bodhisattvas were successful in getting up on the dry land of enlightenment. But we sentient beings became bewildered, and are now in the unsuccessful, unsatisfactory state we all find ourselves in. We are still in the ocean of samsara; we have not yet gotten our heads fully out of the water. We have roamed about in one confused state of experience after the other, endlessly. At the same time, we haven’t lost our buddha nature. Our buddha nature is never separate from our minds for even a single instant. Though we are not apart from it we do not know it, and thus we wander in samsaric existence.
Now is the time to free ourselves from samsara. Unless we do it in this lifetime, it is not going to happen all by itself. We have to take care of ourselves. Right now we have the ability to receive teachings and practice the Dharma. Isn’t this the right time? Wouldn’t that be better than continuing to act like an animal, concentrating only on eating and sleeping and letting the time run out? Why not take your future into your own hands?
From As It Is, vol. 1, ©1999 by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Reprinted with permission of Rangjung Yeshe Publications.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Daily Dharma
From Tricycle:
July 6, 2010
Tricycle Daily Dharma
Accommodate Whatever Arises
Understanding that there is no solid, singular, or permanent “me” makes it possible to accommodate whatever arises in life without feeling so intimidated by our experience, without rolling over like a defeated dog in a dogfight. We can see that things arise due to our karma playing itself out and that it does not necessarily have to be so personal. In this way we can identify with something greater—which is our nature itself.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, "Realizing Guiltlessness" (Winter 2004)
July 6, 2010
Tricycle Daily Dharma
Accommodate Whatever Arises
Understanding that there is no solid, singular, or permanent “me” makes it possible to accommodate whatever arises in life without feeling so intimidated by our experience, without rolling over like a defeated dog in a dogfight. We can see that things arise due to our karma playing itself out and that it does not necessarily have to be so personal. In this way we can identify with something greater—which is our nature itself.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, "Realizing Guiltlessness" (Winter 2004)
Realizing Guiltlessness
from Tricycle:
Realizing Guiltlessness
The Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche speaks with Pema Chodron.
Pema Chödrön, an American nun in the Shambhala lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and the author of several books, including the best-selling When Things Fall Apart and The Places that Scare You, currently practices under the guidance of the Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, a teacher in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Dzigar Kongtrul established the mountain retreat center Longchen Jigme Samten Ling, in southern Colorado. He spends much of his time there guiding students, with particular emphasis on long-term retreat practice. At his retreat center last spring, Pema Chödrön spoke with Dzigar Kongtrul about a primary obstacle Westerners face in their practice: guilt.
Pema Chödrön: Rinpoche, since you’ve been living in North America for some time and know Western mind and culture well—what do you think is the most beneficial advice you can give to dharma students here?
Ven. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche: The most important thing that I see Western students needing to realize is guiltlessness.
PC: Guiltlessness?
VDKR: Yes, guiltlessness. They need to realize that the person or the mind is, by its very nature, innocent.
PC: Could you explain what you mean by “innocent”?
VDKR: I mean that from the Buddhist point of view we can understand that all the things we do to harm ourselves and others come from deep-rooted confusions and ignorance but that the mind is by its very nature pure and enlightened. When we feel a tremendous amount of guilt, we forget this view.
PC: I think sometimes Western students have trouble believing this view.
VDKR: The fact that all sentient beings long for happiness and freedom proves that the nature of their mind is pure and innocent.
PC: But it seems that we identify more with “bad me” than with pure and innocent.
VDKR: This sense of “bad me” comes from not understanding the view of selflessness that is so central to the Buddhist path. Understanding that there is no solid, singular, or permanent “me” makes it possible to accommodate whatever arises in life without feeling so intimidated by our experience, without rolling over like a defeated dog in a dogfight. We can see that things arise due to our karma playing itself out and that it does not necessarily have to be so personal. In this way we can identify with something greater—which is our nature itself. From this perspective, since there is no solid, singular, permanent self, there’s not going to be a “bad” self to feel guilty about. Mind is innocent but influenced by ignorance and wrong conceptual beliefs that project a self. But there is no self.
PC: So how do we realize selflessness?
VDKR: Mind has an innate intelligence, and this intelligence can be cultivated—so that one can realize selflessness—which is the opposite of this projected “me.” This is our true nature.
PC: With this in mind, how do we approach that deep-rooted tendency of feeling guilty?
VDKR: First, just on a basic level, we can remind ourselves that guilt has no benefit of any sort and only increases our neurotic attachment to the self. But, more importantly, we can see that guilt is actually the way we try to escape responsibility for our actions and circumstances. We feel guilty when we don’t fully accept our circumstances. Instead, we continually try to protect and cherish this imaginary self. When we feel guilty, we are actually substantiating this “self” even further, rather than honestly looking at the situation in front of us. If we remember that the mind is innocent, even though we so often act out of ignorance we can distance ourselves from the situation enough to actually look at it honestly. Guilt, on the other hand, is a sidetrack with no resolution—it’s endless. You may feel like you are facing something because you are steeped in it—kind of rubbing your nose in how very bad it is—but actually you are not accepting it.
PC: Rinpoche, if I’ve done something harmful and I’m not to feel guilty about it, then how can I come to terms with what I’ve done? How can I completely acknowledge what I’ve done and yet not feel guilt?
VDKR: Through means of regret. Regret is a function of mind’s intelligence. We can see what we’ve done to cause suffering to ourselves and others. We acknowledge what we’ve done and also resolve not to do it again. This is very helpful. We see it clearly and acknowledge it so it does not remain in our mind stream. To be able to self-reflect in this way brings tremendous freedom. It’s like you stop fighting your circumstances and look honestly. Because your view of self is not so tightly knit, you can look without intimidation. We do this practice of acknowledging and purifying, with deep regret about what we’ve done to cause harm. We expose it to ourselves.
PC: Rinpoche, I don’t really see the difference between regret and guilt. There’s still the sense that one has done something bad.
VDKR: The difference between guilt and regret is that guilt never faces the wrongdoing straightforwardly. There’s just this strong emotion of “I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish I didn’t do it. I wish I had never gotten angry” or “I wish I didn’t do that embarrassing thing,” and so on. Regret is the opposite of guilt. We acknowledge it, we expose to ourselves that we have done something harmful and how it came about from our ignorance, but we don’t get caught in emotions and story lines. The sense of remorse is not anywhere near as heavy as the “bad me” that guilt produces. As a matter of fact, the sensation of wholehearted remorse is freeing. By applying the view of selflessness, we can see how unhelpful guilty feelings freeze us in our perception of ourselves as “bad me.” When one feels room to open and can see that out of ignorance, not out of an intrinsic “bad me,” one has done something to trouble others, then there’s no hesitation to see that. And there is no hesitation, if it seems beneficial, to apologize.
PC: Thank you. That certainly clarifies a lot for me. Are there other benefits that come from reflecting on guiltlessness?
VDKR: When one realizes guiltlessness within oneself, one feels freer and lighter. The attachment to the self, which we all have, lifts. We also start to work with our minds better. The mind is more agile and flexible, because our intelligence becomes the reference point instead of this self we so desperately grasp onto. Then we can break down our actions more precisely and work with our actions in more creative ways in the future, with more wisdom. In the case of relating to the wrongdoings of others, we see that the nature of their mind is also innocent, guiltless. Ignorance has influenced them and they are blinded and vulnerable. And because they are helpless under the power of ignorance, it is easier for us to generate compassion for them and forgive them as well. It is much easier to do all this when we see the person as innocent rather than guilty and intrinsically bad.
PC: One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is to point out the student’s blind spots. How do you work with this when students have so much trouble seeing their faults?
VDKR: This is a good question. Ultimately, nothing significant can really take place within the practice or within the student-teacher relationship until the student is ready to see his or her faults without heavy guilt. To the extent that a student wants to do this, he or she is a practitioner. When a teacher points out these dark hidden areas, the ignorance is being addressed and exposed for the student’s benefit, rather than in order to increase a sense of an intrinsic bad self. But a teacher also needs to maintain an awareness of the true identity of the student. The teacher also points out the student’s basic nature so that he or she can identify with his or her own goodness, and not with guilt or defensiveness. Then there is plenty of room to look at the hidden corners that really are fleeting and temporary. Both student and teacher must have an awareness of the student’s blind spots and his or her Buddha-nature.
PC: So the readiness to self-reflect seems to be the key here.
VDKR: The readiness to self-reflect coupled with the greater view of selflessness, which really makes it possible to look. When we are able to do this, all in all, we will become much more carefree, free of struggle.
PC: Struggle?
VDKR: Yes, the struggle is the guilt—not wanting to look. With the view of guiltlessness we can work with wrong or right, did or didn’t. It doesn’t matter. We can feel free to work with that situation without struggle. The mind is more agile because there is more space—space to look without feeling threatened. Once guilt has awakened, it has this extra-strength feeling of intrinsically “bad me.” This is not helpful and not true and not in accord with the way things are. If we bring the view of egolessness to our guilt, it will pop the deep part of our emotional attachment to this intrinsic “bad me.” I feel certain that realizing guiltlessness and selflessness is very helpful for all practitioners.
Realizing Guiltlessness
The Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche speaks with Pema Chodron.
Pema Chödrön, an American nun in the Shambhala lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and the author of several books, including the best-selling When Things Fall Apart and The Places that Scare You, currently practices under the guidance of the Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, a teacher in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Dzigar Kongtrul established the mountain retreat center Longchen Jigme Samten Ling, in southern Colorado. He spends much of his time there guiding students, with particular emphasis on long-term retreat practice. At his retreat center last spring, Pema Chödrön spoke with Dzigar Kongtrul about a primary obstacle Westerners face in their practice: guilt.
Pema Chödrön: Rinpoche, since you’ve been living in North America for some time and know Western mind and culture well—what do you think is the most beneficial advice you can give to dharma students here?
Ven. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche: The most important thing that I see Western students needing to realize is guiltlessness.
PC: Guiltlessness?
VDKR: Yes, guiltlessness. They need to realize that the person or the mind is, by its very nature, innocent.
PC: Could you explain what you mean by “innocent”?
VDKR: I mean that from the Buddhist point of view we can understand that all the things we do to harm ourselves and others come from deep-rooted confusions and ignorance but that the mind is by its very nature pure and enlightened. When we feel a tremendous amount of guilt, we forget this view.
PC: I think sometimes Western students have trouble believing this view.
VDKR: The fact that all sentient beings long for happiness and freedom proves that the nature of their mind is pure and innocent.
PC: But it seems that we identify more with “bad me” than with pure and innocent.
VDKR: This sense of “bad me” comes from not understanding the view of selflessness that is so central to the Buddhist path. Understanding that there is no solid, singular, or permanent “me” makes it possible to accommodate whatever arises in life without feeling so intimidated by our experience, without rolling over like a defeated dog in a dogfight. We can see that things arise due to our karma playing itself out and that it does not necessarily have to be so personal. In this way we can identify with something greater—which is our nature itself. From this perspective, since there is no solid, singular, permanent self, there’s not going to be a “bad” self to feel guilty about. Mind is innocent but influenced by ignorance and wrong conceptual beliefs that project a self. But there is no self.
PC: So how do we realize selflessness?
VDKR: Mind has an innate intelligence, and this intelligence can be cultivated—so that one can realize selflessness—which is the opposite of this projected “me.” This is our true nature.
PC: With this in mind, how do we approach that deep-rooted tendency of feeling guilty?
VDKR: First, just on a basic level, we can remind ourselves that guilt has no benefit of any sort and only increases our neurotic attachment to the self. But, more importantly, we can see that guilt is actually the way we try to escape responsibility for our actions and circumstances. We feel guilty when we don’t fully accept our circumstances. Instead, we continually try to protect and cherish this imaginary self. When we feel guilty, we are actually substantiating this “self” even further, rather than honestly looking at the situation in front of us. If we remember that the mind is innocent, even though we so often act out of ignorance we can distance ourselves from the situation enough to actually look at it honestly. Guilt, on the other hand, is a sidetrack with no resolution—it’s endless. You may feel like you are facing something because you are steeped in it—kind of rubbing your nose in how very bad it is—but actually you are not accepting it.
PC: Rinpoche, if I’ve done something harmful and I’m not to feel guilty about it, then how can I come to terms with what I’ve done? How can I completely acknowledge what I’ve done and yet not feel guilt?
VDKR: Through means of regret. Regret is a function of mind’s intelligence. We can see what we’ve done to cause suffering to ourselves and others. We acknowledge what we’ve done and also resolve not to do it again. This is very helpful. We see it clearly and acknowledge it so it does not remain in our mind stream. To be able to self-reflect in this way brings tremendous freedom. It’s like you stop fighting your circumstances and look honestly. Because your view of self is not so tightly knit, you can look without intimidation. We do this practice of acknowledging and purifying, with deep regret about what we’ve done to cause harm. We expose it to ourselves.
PC: Rinpoche, I don’t really see the difference between regret and guilt. There’s still the sense that one has done something bad.
VDKR: The difference between guilt and regret is that guilt never faces the wrongdoing straightforwardly. There’s just this strong emotion of “I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish I didn’t do it. I wish I had never gotten angry” or “I wish I didn’t do that embarrassing thing,” and so on. Regret is the opposite of guilt. We acknowledge it, we expose to ourselves that we have done something harmful and how it came about from our ignorance, but we don’t get caught in emotions and story lines. The sense of remorse is not anywhere near as heavy as the “bad me” that guilt produces. As a matter of fact, the sensation of wholehearted remorse is freeing. By applying the view of selflessness, we can see how unhelpful guilty feelings freeze us in our perception of ourselves as “bad me.” When one feels room to open and can see that out of ignorance, not out of an intrinsic “bad me,” one has done something to trouble others, then there’s no hesitation to see that. And there is no hesitation, if it seems beneficial, to apologize.
PC: Thank you. That certainly clarifies a lot for me. Are there other benefits that come from reflecting on guiltlessness?
VDKR: When one realizes guiltlessness within oneself, one feels freer and lighter. The attachment to the self, which we all have, lifts. We also start to work with our minds better. The mind is more agile and flexible, because our intelligence becomes the reference point instead of this self we so desperately grasp onto. Then we can break down our actions more precisely and work with our actions in more creative ways in the future, with more wisdom. In the case of relating to the wrongdoings of others, we see that the nature of their mind is also innocent, guiltless. Ignorance has influenced them and they are blinded and vulnerable. And because they are helpless under the power of ignorance, it is easier for us to generate compassion for them and forgive them as well. It is much easier to do all this when we see the person as innocent rather than guilty and intrinsically bad.
PC: One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is to point out the student’s blind spots. How do you work with this when students have so much trouble seeing their faults?
VDKR: This is a good question. Ultimately, nothing significant can really take place within the practice or within the student-teacher relationship until the student is ready to see his or her faults without heavy guilt. To the extent that a student wants to do this, he or she is a practitioner. When a teacher points out these dark hidden areas, the ignorance is being addressed and exposed for the student’s benefit, rather than in order to increase a sense of an intrinsic bad self. But a teacher also needs to maintain an awareness of the true identity of the student. The teacher also points out the student’s basic nature so that he or she can identify with his or her own goodness, and not with guilt or defensiveness. Then there is plenty of room to look at the hidden corners that really are fleeting and temporary. Both student and teacher must have an awareness of the student’s blind spots and his or her Buddha-nature.
PC: So the readiness to self-reflect seems to be the key here.
VDKR: The readiness to self-reflect coupled with the greater view of selflessness, which really makes it possible to look. When we are able to do this, all in all, we will become much more carefree, free of struggle.
PC: Struggle?
VDKR: Yes, the struggle is the guilt—not wanting to look. With the view of guiltlessness we can work with wrong or right, did or didn’t. It doesn’t matter. We can feel free to work with that situation without struggle. The mind is more agile because there is more space—space to look without feeling threatened. Once guilt has awakened, it has this extra-strength feeling of intrinsically “bad me.” This is not helpful and not true and not in accord with the way things are. If we bring the view of egolessness to our guilt, it will pop the deep part of our emotional attachment to this intrinsic “bad me.” I feel certain that realizing guiltlessness and selflessness is very helpful for all practitioners.
Sowing The Seeds Of Wisdom
From Tricycle:
Sowing the Seeds of Freedom
Ajaan Lee explains how the Buddha gave us the tools to free ourselves.
By Ajaan Lee
Buddha Camp, Ran Hwang, 2006, buttons and pins, installation viewTHE BUDDHA NEVER meant for us to take as our mainstay anything or anyone else aside from ourselves. Even when we take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, he never praised it as being really ideal. He wanted us to take ourselves as our refuge: "The self is its own mainstay." We can depend on ourselves and govern ourselves. We're free. When we can reach this state, that's when we'll be released from our enslavement to greed, anger, and delusion—and be truly happy.
When we are slaves to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, we're told to be generous, to observe the precepts, and to practice meditation—all of which are things that will give rise to inner worth within us. In being generous, we have to suffer and work because of the effort involved in finding wealth and material goods that we then give away as donations. In observing the precepts, we have to forgo the words and deeds we would ordinarily feel like saying or doing. In both of these activities are ways in which we benefit others more than ourselves. But when we practice meditation, we sacrifice inner objects—unskillful thoughts and mental states—and make our minds solid, sovereign, and pure.
The Buddha praised the practice of meditation as a way of paying homage to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha that was better than offering material objects. The practice of training the heart to reach purity pleased the Buddha because it is the way by which a person can gain release from all suffering and stress. The Buddha taught us to meditate so that we can free our hearts from their slavery to the defilements of the world.
We're still not released from suffering as long as our minds still have worries and concerns. Being a slave to our concerns is like being in debt to them. When we're in debt, we have no real freedom in our hearts. The more we pay off our debts, the more lighthearted we'll feel. In the same way, if we can let go of our various worries and cares, peace will arise in our hearts. This is why the Buddha taught us to center our hearts in concentration so as to give rise to stillness, peace, and the inner wealth with which we'll be able to pay off all of our debts. All our burdens and sufferings will fall away from our hearts and we'll enter full freedom.
Buying ourselves completely out of slavery is like farming land so that it can bear abundant fruit. When the mind is pure and the body soothed, it's as if our farm has plenty of rain and groundwater to nourish our crops. Our concentration is solid and enters the first stage of absorption, with its five factors: directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure, and singleness of preoccupation. Directed thought is like harrowing our soil. Evaluation is like plowing and scattering the seed. Rapture is when our crops begin to bud, pleasure is when their flowers bloom, and singleness of preoccupation is when the fruits develop until they're ripened and sweet—and at the same time, their seeds contain all their ancestry. What this means is that in each seed is another plant complete with branches, flowers, and leaves. If anyone plants the seed, it will break out into another plant just like the one it came from. When we practice in this way, we'll come to the reality of birthlessness and deathlessness—the highest happiness—and on into liberation.
This is how we repay all our debts without the least bit remaining. As the texts say, "In release, there is the knowledge, 'Birth is no more, the holy life is fulfilled, the task done.'"
For this reason, we should be intent on cleansing and polishing our hearts so that they can gain release from their worries and preoccupations, the source of pain and discontent. Peace, coolness, and a bright happiness will arise within us, in the same way as when we unshackle ourselves from our encumbering burdens and debts. We'll be free—beyond the reach of all suffering and stress.
From Food for Thought: Eighteen Talks on the Training of the Heart © 1989 by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Available online at http://www.accesstoinsight.org.
Image: © Ran Hwang, courtesy of 2X13 Galley, New York City
Sowing the Seeds of Freedom
Ajaan Lee explains how the Buddha gave us the tools to free ourselves.
By Ajaan Lee
Buddha Camp, Ran Hwang, 2006, buttons and pins, installation viewTHE BUDDHA NEVER meant for us to take as our mainstay anything or anyone else aside from ourselves. Even when we take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, he never praised it as being really ideal. He wanted us to take ourselves as our refuge: "The self is its own mainstay." We can depend on ourselves and govern ourselves. We're free. When we can reach this state, that's when we'll be released from our enslavement to greed, anger, and delusion—and be truly happy.
When we are slaves to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, we're told to be generous, to observe the precepts, and to practice meditation—all of which are things that will give rise to inner worth within us. In being generous, we have to suffer and work because of the effort involved in finding wealth and material goods that we then give away as donations. In observing the precepts, we have to forgo the words and deeds we would ordinarily feel like saying or doing. In both of these activities are ways in which we benefit others more than ourselves. But when we practice meditation, we sacrifice inner objects—unskillful thoughts and mental states—and make our minds solid, sovereign, and pure.
The Buddha praised the practice of meditation as a way of paying homage to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha that was better than offering material objects. The practice of training the heart to reach purity pleased the Buddha because it is the way by which a person can gain release from all suffering and stress. The Buddha taught us to meditate so that we can free our hearts from their slavery to the defilements of the world.
We're still not released from suffering as long as our minds still have worries and concerns. Being a slave to our concerns is like being in debt to them. When we're in debt, we have no real freedom in our hearts. The more we pay off our debts, the more lighthearted we'll feel. In the same way, if we can let go of our various worries and cares, peace will arise in our hearts. This is why the Buddha taught us to center our hearts in concentration so as to give rise to stillness, peace, and the inner wealth with which we'll be able to pay off all of our debts. All our burdens and sufferings will fall away from our hearts and we'll enter full freedom.
Buying ourselves completely out of slavery is like farming land so that it can bear abundant fruit. When the mind is pure and the body soothed, it's as if our farm has plenty of rain and groundwater to nourish our crops. Our concentration is solid and enters the first stage of absorption, with its five factors: directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure, and singleness of preoccupation. Directed thought is like harrowing our soil. Evaluation is like plowing and scattering the seed. Rapture is when our crops begin to bud, pleasure is when their flowers bloom, and singleness of preoccupation is when the fruits develop until they're ripened and sweet—and at the same time, their seeds contain all their ancestry. What this means is that in each seed is another plant complete with branches, flowers, and leaves. If anyone plants the seed, it will break out into another plant just like the one it came from. When we practice in this way, we'll come to the reality of birthlessness and deathlessness—the highest happiness—and on into liberation.
This is how we repay all our debts without the least bit remaining. As the texts say, "In release, there is the knowledge, 'Birth is no more, the holy life is fulfilled, the task done.'"
For this reason, we should be intent on cleansing and polishing our hearts so that they can gain release from their worries and preoccupations, the source of pain and discontent. Peace, coolness, and a bright happiness will arise within us, in the same way as when we unshackle ourselves from our encumbering burdens and debts. We'll be free—beyond the reach of all suffering and stress.
From Food for Thought: Eighteen Talks on the Training of the Heart © 1989 by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Available online at http://www.accesstoinsight.org.
Image: © Ran Hwang, courtesy of 2X13 Galley, New York City
Bad Reputation
from Tricycle:
Bad Reputation
The Dalai Lama reflects on praise and blame in his commentary on lines from Longchen Rabjam's Finding Comfort and Ease in Meditation on the Great Perfection.
By The Dalai Lama
See the equality of praise and blame,
approval and disapproval, good
and bad reputation,
For they are just like illusions or
dreams and have no true existence.
THIS VERSE REFERS to the Eight Worldly Concerns: wanting to be praised and not wanting to be criticized, wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, wanting gain and not wanting loss, and wanting fame and approval and not wanting rejection and disgrace. We all experience these, don't we? Even animals probably have them in some slight measure.
I think all of us are concerned in particular about maintaining a good reputation. For example, when I am up here on this throne teaching, from time to time, somewhere in the back of my mind, there appears the thought: How am I doing? How are people going to react to this? Are they going to praise me? Maybe not . . . Oh! That did not go well. Will people criticize me? Whenever this happens I need to catch myself and say, Look, now that I am here on this throne transmitting the dharma teachings, I should not allow myself to be affected like this by the eight worldly concerns.
However, we will find that hopes, fears, and discursive thoughts of every description will come into our minds. Even very pure monks might sometimes harbor a concern in the back of their mind about whether or not people give them a few words of praise. Even worse, they might start trying to impress others in order to receive offerings or be invited to perform rituals. Thoughts like these are really dreadful. The Eight Worldly Concerns can creep up on us, quite stealthily and sneakily, and even when we do something virtuous, they will try to find a way to slip in.
As it says in The Way of the Bodhisattva, praise and a good reputation do nothing to increase our longevity or good health. Maybe if lots of people praised us we might get a bit richer! But apart from that, praise does not make us live longer or in better health or help us in any other way. If people criticize us, it does not make us sick or unhealthy and nor does it shorten our lives. It does not affect us in any substantial way at all.
If we really stop to think about praise and criticism, we will see they do not have the least importance. Whether we receive praise or criticism is of no account. The only important thing is that we have a pure motivation, and let the law of cause and effect be our witness. If we are really honest, we can see that it makes no difference whether we receive praise and acclaim. The whole world might sing our praises, but if we have done something wrong, then we will still have to suffer the consequences for ourselves, and we cannot escape them. If we act only out of a pure motivation, all the beings of the three realms can criticize and rebuke us, but none of them will be able to cause us to suffer. According to the law of karma, each and every one of us must answer individually for our actions.
This is how we can put a stop to these kinds of thoughts altogether, by seeing how they are completely insubstantial, like dreams or magical illusions. When people praise us and we glow with delight, it is because we think that being praised is beneficial. But that is like thinking that there is some substance to a rainbow or a dream. However much benefit appears to accrue from praise and acclaim, actually there's none at all. However convincing it seems, it is as unreal as a magician's illusion. And so Longchen advises:
Learn to bear them patiently, as if
they were mere echoes.
In exactly the same way, when somebody says something unpleasant or hurtful to us, we need to learn to be patient and forbearing and remind ourselves that their words are just like the sounds of an echo, equally insubstantial and unreal.
From Mind in Comfort and Ease, © 2007 by H.H. the Dalai Lama. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., wisdompubs.org
Image: © Don Farber
Bad Reputation
The Dalai Lama reflects on praise and blame in his commentary on lines from Longchen Rabjam's Finding Comfort and Ease in Meditation on the Great Perfection.
By The Dalai Lama
See the equality of praise and blame,
approval and disapproval, good
and bad reputation,
For they are just like illusions or
dreams and have no true existence.
THIS VERSE REFERS to the Eight Worldly Concerns: wanting to be praised and not wanting to be criticized, wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, wanting gain and not wanting loss, and wanting fame and approval and not wanting rejection and disgrace. We all experience these, don't we? Even animals probably have them in some slight measure.
I think all of us are concerned in particular about maintaining a good reputation. For example, when I am up here on this throne teaching, from time to time, somewhere in the back of my mind, there appears the thought: How am I doing? How are people going to react to this? Are they going to praise me? Maybe not . . . Oh! That did not go well. Will people criticize me? Whenever this happens I need to catch myself and say, Look, now that I am here on this throne transmitting the dharma teachings, I should not allow myself to be affected like this by the eight worldly concerns.
However, we will find that hopes, fears, and discursive thoughts of every description will come into our minds. Even very pure monks might sometimes harbor a concern in the back of their mind about whether or not people give them a few words of praise. Even worse, they might start trying to impress others in order to receive offerings or be invited to perform rituals. Thoughts like these are really dreadful. The Eight Worldly Concerns can creep up on us, quite stealthily and sneakily, and even when we do something virtuous, they will try to find a way to slip in.
As it says in The Way of the Bodhisattva, praise and a good reputation do nothing to increase our longevity or good health. Maybe if lots of people praised us we might get a bit richer! But apart from that, praise does not make us live longer or in better health or help us in any other way. If people criticize us, it does not make us sick or unhealthy and nor does it shorten our lives. It does not affect us in any substantial way at all.
If we really stop to think about praise and criticism, we will see they do not have the least importance. Whether we receive praise or criticism is of no account. The only important thing is that we have a pure motivation, and let the law of cause and effect be our witness. If we are really honest, we can see that it makes no difference whether we receive praise and acclaim. The whole world might sing our praises, but if we have done something wrong, then we will still have to suffer the consequences for ourselves, and we cannot escape them. If we act only out of a pure motivation, all the beings of the three realms can criticize and rebuke us, but none of them will be able to cause us to suffer. According to the law of karma, each and every one of us must answer individually for our actions.
This is how we can put a stop to these kinds of thoughts altogether, by seeing how they are completely insubstantial, like dreams or magical illusions. When people praise us and we glow with delight, it is because we think that being praised is beneficial. But that is like thinking that there is some substance to a rainbow or a dream. However much benefit appears to accrue from praise and acclaim, actually there's none at all. However convincing it seems, it is as unreal as a magician's illusion. And so Longchen advises:
Learn to bear them patiently, as if
they were mere echoes.
In exactly the same way, when somebody says something unpleasant or hurtful to us, we need to learn to be patient and forbearing and remind ourselves that their words are just like the sounds of an echo, equally insubstantial and unreal.
From Mind in Comfort and Ease, © 2007 by H.H. the Dalai Lama. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., wisdompubs.org
Image: © Don Farber
Monday, July 5, 2010
Jung's Red Book: Life After Death
from Parabola:
JUNG’S RED BOOK: Life After Depth
By Claire Dunne
The knowledge of death came to me that night….I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and live within….I turned away and sought the place of the inner life! —C.G. Jung, The Red Book
The Red Book, an epic chapter in the life of C.G. Jung, is now available to us fifty-eight years after his death. This fabled volume bound in red leather, which Jung initially called Liber Novus (New Book), echoes a medieval manuscript in its calligraphic text and richly toned symbolic paintings. It reveals a process that was primal in its energies and labyrinthine in its journey, one that became the genesis of his psychology. "The numinous beginning that contained everything", he wrote of it in 1957, four years before he died.
Cary Baynes, a former patient who was asked by Jung to transcribe the text, called it a "record of the passage of the universe through the soul of a man." It records the search, experiences, and initial findings of a man who at age forty had, by his own account "achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge and every human happiness," yet had somehow lost his soul.
"Meine seele, meine seele, wo bist du?" "My soul, my soul, where are you?" Jung writes in the Black Book series that preceded and was elaborated upon in The Red Book. In his introduction to The Red Book, editor and translator Sonu Shamdasani, a London-based historian of psychology and psychiatry, sets this potent work within the context of Jung’s time and life.
It began in 1913, the year Jung broke with Freud. Inner experiences were drawing Jung into a way of being not primarily dependent on intellect. There were dreams he didn’t understand and then a repeated and dramatic sign–a daylight vision of horrific floods, Europe devastated, rivers of blood, and an inner voice that said: "It will come to pass."
"I thought my mind had gone crazy," wrote Jung. He undertook a psychological self-examination but became stuck. To tap into underlying material, he devised a "boring method" that evolved into "active imagination," which was to become a keystone of his psychology as a means of accessing and penetrating fantasy. From late 1913 to mid-1914, he recorded a relentless avalanche of inner openings, images, and dialogue, material to be worked on as Jung’s "most difficult experiment."
Often these experiences occurred at night in his library, following a day’s work with patients and dinner with family. He sometimes did yoga-type exercises to quell emotional turmoil and empty his consciousness. He then went into the spontaneous fantasies that appeared, as if entering a drama, engaging in conversations with its characters. But he remained uncertain of the meaning and significance of their content. Mental illness was a recurring fear.
"Finally I understood," he wrote in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. His early symbolic pre-cognitions had been given terrible form. Understanding gave Jung the courage to begin a handwritten draft of his Liber Novus. He transcribed the Black Book material, adding further interpretations of each episode, and often combining these with a lyrical elaboration.
Here are some snapshot impressions of the book that may yield the skeleton of its content. Inner battles take place. In the prophetic opening the Spirit of the Depths spars with the Spirit of the Times in him. The contemporary and changing thinking of Time constantly has to give way to the immemorial and shaping future contained in, and arising from, the Depths.
A spiritual message emerges, a new way for the time we live in today, with Jung becoming the task, interpreter, and bearer of it. The teaching is of a new God image–an immanent God who is in everything big and small, dark and light. The paradox in this holds that "the highest truth and the absurd is one and the same thing." Moreover, "the melting together of sense and nonsense produces the supreme meaning"; and "if you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child." The task is to hold the opposites together, "the goal is not the heights but the center"–the center or Self which can be said as "God in us."
Jung came to believe that "You should be…not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God." He realised he needed to live all of life in him, God spirit and human animal, together in unity.
In Jung’s personal journey his feminine Soul voice battles with him to recognize and balance his own opposites. There is a peeling back of distrust, scorn, judgment, pride, defiance, doubt, confusion, rage, and fear. The need to develop patience—a waiting, enduring, receiving mode as the feminine (or anima) within—is put to him. He discovers that thinking and feeling need each other.
Jung has to face what least he wants to—symbolised as desert, hell, murder, and more, till "nothing human is alien to me." Opposites, he realises, are brothers: "the other is also in you." Soul counsels acceptance of solitude, the inner loneliness of knowing, uncertainty of path or goal, and fear and possibility of madness as part of his journey. "I believed…soul knows her own way….perhaps no one will gain insight from my work. But my soul demands this achievement….I should be able to do this just for myself, without hope–for the sake of God."
Jung carves his own path, insisting "my path is not your path" and, "to live oneself is to be one’s own task." The fantasies deepen in a spiraling journey of recurring, evolving patterns. The horror and the positive aspects of collective human history unfold before him. Soul insists he accept it all. "I feel the things that were and that will be". He initially recoils at the enormous task ahead. "Futurity grows out of me; I do not create it, and yet I do."
A transformative image of black snake appears, winding up, becoming white, and emerging through the mouth of the crucified Christ.
"To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation," he writes.
"We need it [magic]… to find the way that we are unable to conceive." Looking for inner help, Jung is "apprenticed" to Philemon, a "guru" figure that first appears in dream as a winged man bearing four keys, and then as the archetypal Magician. From him, Jung learns about objective reality beyond the personal. He risks the letting-go that is needed to bring together powers that conflict in the soul of man into a true marriage. Reason and understanding must unite with unreason and magic. Unity brings an apparent standstill that is "the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity." Yet his inner guidance reveals that the personal "life has yet to begin." This section ends with: "the touchstone is being alone with yourself. This is the way."
Another section opens with a devastating self-criticism of the "shadow" side of his state. "If I tame you, beast, I give others the opportunity to tame their beasts." Jung is encouraged by Soul to "be unwavering and create" while a haggard male inner image tells him, "you must bleed for the goal of humanity." As World War I savages on, Jung asks his Soul: "Which depths do you require me to advance to?" The answer "Forever above yourself and the present."
For nearly a year, the voices of the depths fall silent. Jung writes a draft of his Liber Novus. Then the voice of Philemon returns. "Self-willing is not for you. You are the will of the whole….Draw nearer, enter into the grave of God. The place of your work should be in the vault."
The dead appear to his inner vision and Soul declares "The dead demand your expiatory prayers." Jung reluctantly accepts. Soul announces that the "the ruler of this world" demands the sacrifice of Jung’s fear because he has "been summoned to serve him." "Why must it be me?" protests Jung. "I cannot. I don’t want to."
"You possess the word that should not be allowed to remain concealed," declares his Soul.
Philemon, who Jung had felt as "the presence of the good and the beautiful," now appears in priestly robes and gives "Seven Sermons to the Dead," a kind of Gnostic creation myth, including humanity’s role in it.
From Pleroma, unmanifest, infinite, eternal, in which "there is nothing and everything,, arises differentiated levels of Creation that are permeated with Pleroma. Pairs of opposites, which are balanced and void in Pleroma, appear as separate in created beings, eg., good and evil, sameness and difference. The striving at bottom is for "your own essence" as being.
Everything "created and uncreated" is Pleroma itself, the totality of being. The first manifestation devolving from Pleroma is Abraxas, a god forgotten by mankind, whose state of being is "effect," a paradoxical "improbable probability and unreal reality." It is "force, duration, change" at once. The next level of manifestation is more definite. God is creation. God is in essence "effective fullness" while Satan, his opposite, is in essence "effective emptiness."
Then there is a multiplicity of gods that act as either heavenly gods that "magnify," or earthly gods that "diminish," the four principal ones being Sun God, Eros, Tree of Life, and Devil. Spirituality and sexuality, "daimon manifestations of the gods," are opposites of the same spectrum, celestial in spirituality, earthly in sexuality. Man and woman "stand under the law" of both in differing ways.
In the last of the "Seven Sermons," Philemon reveals that man "is a gateway through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world; out of the greater into the smaller world." In this world "man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world," who has a star as his own "guiding God."
Much later, Jung told a colleague that the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" were a prelude of what he had to communicate to the world. They are the skeletal nucleus of Jung’s psychology including individuation, the conflict of opposites, and the co-creation of man with the godhead.
Yet, the journey of The Red Book continued on. Philemon had a further teaching about man: "You, being, are the eternal moment." Death as shade, and celestial mother in mantle of stars, also appear, requiring further sacrifice from Jung before he can give birth to his stellar child. Jung realizes that "only fidelity to love and voluntary devotion" lead to "my stellar nature, my truest and most innermost self, that simply and singly is."
Finally, a shade (Christ) enters. Philemon kneels to "my master and my brother," telling Christ "your work is incomplete" while man merely imitates his life. "The time has come when each must do his own work of redemption."
By the end, clear lines are drawn between personal Jung and the inner beings that have appeared throughout, including Elijah, Salome, and earth spirit Ka, in addition to Philemon. There is a final tussle with Soul as Jung refuses unconditional obedience to the gods. He insists that man is no longer "slave" to them, though "They may devise a service in return." After initial outrage the gods agree. Soul tells Jung: "You have broken the compulsion of the law." Christ (as shade) offers a final word as gift. In accepting light and dark together: "I bring you the beauty of suffering."
In 1916, while on military duty, a series of twenty-seven mandala images came to Jung. The first depicts a multilevel relationship of microcosm with macrocosm. Abraxas, "lord of the physical world," is at the bottom; Phanes, golden winged "divine child," is at top. Over time Jung transcribed his work into calligraphic form on parchment, illustrated the text, painted dramatic symbolic images of his journey and inserted it all into a six-hundred-page folio bound in red leather.
Patients recall seeing it, open, on an easel in his library. Jung counseled them to create their own kind of Red Book as a method of dealing with their particular inner processes. Christiana Morgan recalls Jung saying "You can go to the book, turn over the pages and for you it will be your church–your cathedral–the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal….for in that book is your soul."
He stopped work on The Red Book in 1930 when the impact of a Chinese alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, brought him "undreamed of confirmation" of his ideas, and the link between East and West. In 1959, a single handwritten page was added to the book by Jung, reaffirming its contents: "I always knew those experiences contained something precious." It ends in mid-sentence.
The Red Book continues to offer us profound insight into the processes of life, into Jung and his work, and into the need to honor our own inner lives in our own way.
The Red Book is published by W.W. Norton at a list price of $195.00.
JUNG’S RED BOOK: Life After Depth
By Claire Dunne
The knowledge of death came to me that night….I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and live within….I turned away and sought the place of the inner life! —C.G. Jung, The Red Book
The Red Book, an epic chapter in the life of C.G. Jung, is now available to us fifty-eight years after his death. This fabled volume bound in red leather, which Jung initially called Liber Novus (New Book), echoes a medieval manuscript in its calligraphic text and richly toned symbolic paintings. It reveals a process that was primal in its energies and labyrinthine in its journey, one that became the genesis of his psychology. "The numinous beginning that contained everything", he wrote of it in 1957, four years before he died.
Cary Baynes, a former patient who was asked by Jung to transcribe the text, called it a "record of the passage of the universe through the soul of a man." It records the search, experiences, and initial findings of a man who at age forty had, by his own account "achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge and every human happiness," yet had somehow lost his soul.
"Meine seele, meine seele, wo bist du?" "My soul, my soul, where are you?" Jung writes in the Black Book series that preceded and was elaborated upon in The Red Book. In his introduction to The Red Book, editor and translator Sonu Shamdasani, a London-based historian of psychology and psychiatry, sets this potent work within the context of Jung’s time and life.
It began in 1913, the year Jung broke with Freud. Inner experiences were drawing Jung into a way of being not primarily dependent on intellect. There were dreams he didn’t understand and then a repeated and dramatic sign–a daylight vision of horrific floods, Europe devastated, rivers of blood, and an inner voice that said: "It will come to pass."
"I thought my mind had gone crazy," wrote Jung. He undertook a psychological self-examination but became stuck. To tap into underlying material, he devised a "boring method" that evolved into "active imagination," which was to become a keystone of his psychology as a means of accessing and penetrating fantasy. From late 1913 to mid-1914, he recorded a relentless avalanche of inner openings, images, and dialogue, material to be worked on as Jung’s "most difficult experiment."
Often these experiences occurred at night in his library, following a day’s work with patients and dinner with family. He sometimes did yoga-type exercises to quell emotional turmoil and empty his consciousness. He then went into the spontaneous fantasies that appeared, as if entering a drama, engaging in conversations with its characters. But he remained uncertain of the meaning and significance of their content. Mental illness was a recurring fear.
"Finally I understood," he wrote in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. His early symbolic pre-cognitions had been given terrible form. Understanding gave Jung the courage to begin a handwritten draft of his Liber Novus. He transcribed the Black Book material, adding further interpretations of each episode, and often combining these with a lyrical elaboration.
Here are some snapshot impressions of the book that may yield the skeleton of its content. Inner battles take place. In the prophetic opening the Spirit of the Depths spars with the Spirit of the Times in him. The contemporary and changing thinking of Time constantly has to give way to the immemorial and shaping future contained in, and arising from, the Depths.
A spiritual message emerges, a new way for the time we live in today, with Jung becoming the task, interpreter, and bearer of it. The teaching is of a new God image–an immanent God who is in everything big and small, dark and light. The paradox in this holds that "the highest truth and the absurd is one and the same thing." Moreover, "the melting together of sense and nonsense produces the supreme meaning"; and "if you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child." The task is to hold the opposites together, "the goal is not the heights but the center"–the center or Self which can be said as "God in us."
Jung came to believe that "You should be…not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God." He realised he needed to live all of life in him, God spirit and human animal, together in unity.
In Jung’s personal journey his feminine Soul voice battles with him to recognize and balance his own opposites. There is a peeling back of distrust, scorn, judgment, pride, defiance, doubt, confusion, rage, and fear. The need to develop patience—a waiting, enduring, receiving mode as the feminine (or anima) within—is put to him. He discovers that thinking and feeling need each other.
Jung has to face what least he wants to—symbolised as desert, hell, murder, and more, till "nothing human is alien to me." Opposites, he realises, are brothers: "the other is also in you." Soul counsels acceptance of solitude, the inner loneliness of knowing, uncertainty of path or goal, and fear and possibility of madness as part of his journey. "I believed…soul knows her own way….perhaps no one will gain insight from my work. But my soul demands this achievement….I should be able to do this just for myself, without hope–for the sake of God."
Jung carves his own path, insisting "my path is not your path" and, "to live oneself is to be one’s own task." The fantasies deepen in a spiraling journey of recurring, evolving patterns. The horror and the positive aspects of collective human history unfold before him. Soul insists he accept it all. "I feel the things that were and that will be". He initially recoils at the enormous task ahead. "Futurity grows out of me; I do not create it, and yet I do."
A transformative image of black snake appears, winding up, becoming white, and emerging through the mouth of the crucified Christ.
"To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation," he writes.
"We need it [magic]… to find the way that we are unable to conceive." Looking for inner help, Jung is "apprenticed" to Philemon, a "guru" figure that first appears in dream as a winged man bearing four keys, and then as the archetypal Magician. From him, Jung learns about objective reality beyond the personal. He risks the letting-go that is needed to bring together powers that conflict in the soul of man into a true marriage. Reason and understanding must unite with unreason and magic. Unity brings an apparent standstill that is "the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity." Yet his inner guidance reveals that the personal "life has yet to begin." This section ends with: "the touchstone is being alone with yourself. This is the way."
Another section opens with a devastating self-criticism of the "shadow" side of his state. "If I tame you, beast, I give others the opportunity to tame their beasts." Jung is encouraged by Soul to "be unwavering and create" while a haggard male inner image tells him, "you must bleed for the goal of humanity." As World War I savages on, Jung asks his Soul: "Which depths do you require me to advance to?" The answer "Forever above yourself and the present."
For nearly a year, the voices of the depths fall silent. Jung writes a draft of his Liber Novus. Then the voice of Philemon returns. "Self-willing is not for you. You are the will of the whole….Draw nearer, enter into the grave of God. The place of your work should be in the vault."
The dead appear to his inner vision and Soul declares "The dead demand your expiatory prayers." Jung reluctantly accepts. Soul announces that the "the ruler of this world" demands the sacrifice of Jung’s fear because he has "been summoned to serve him." "Why must it be me?" protests Jung. "I cannot. I don’t want to."
"You possess the word that should not be allowed to remain concealed," declares his Soul.
Philemon, who Jung had felt as "the presence of the good and the beautiful," now appears in priestly robes and gives "Seven Sermons to the Dead," a kind of Gnostic creation myth, including humanity’s role in it.
From Pleroma, unmanifest, infinite, eternal, in which "there is nothing and everything,, arises differentiated levels of Creation that are permeated with Pleroma. Pairs of opposites, which are balanced and void in Pleroma, appear as separate in created beings, eg., good and evil, sameness and difference. The striving at bottom is for "your own essence" as being.
Everything "created and uncreated" is Pleroma itself, the totality of being. The first manifestation devolving from Pleroma is Abraxas, a god forgotten by mankind, whose state of being is "effect," a paradoxical "improbable probability and unreal reality." It is "force, duration, change" at once. The next level of manifestation is more definite. God is creation. God is in essence "effective fullness" while Satan, his opposite, is in essence "effective emptiness."
Then there is a multiplicity of gods that act as either heavenly gods that "magnify," or earthly gods that "diminish," the four principal ones being Sun God, Eros, Tree of Life, and Devil. Spirituality and sexuality, "daimon manifestations of the gods," are opposites of the same spectrum, celestial in spirituality, earthly in sexuality. Man and woman "stand under the law" of both in differing ways.
In the last of the "Seven Sermons," Philemon reveals that man "is a gateway through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world; out of the greater into the smaller world." In this world "man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world," who has a star as his own "guiding God."
Much later, Jung told a colleague that the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" were a prelude of what he had to communicate to the world. They are the skeletal nucleus of Jung’s psychology including individuation, the conflict of opposites, and the co-creation of man with the godhead.
Yet, the journey of The Red Book continued on. Philemon had a further teaching about man: "You, being, are the eternal moment." Death as shade, and celestial mother in mantle of stars, also appear, requiring further sacrifice from Jung before he can give birth to his stellar child. Jung realizes that "only fidelity to love and voluntary devotion" lead to "my stellar nature, my truest and most innermost self, that simply and singly is."
Finally, a shade (Christ) enters. Philemon kneels to "my master and my brother," telling Christ "your work is incomplete" while man merely imitates his life. "The time has come when each must do his own work of redemption."
By the end, clear lines are drawn between personal Jung and the inner beings that have appeared throughout, including Elijah, Salome, and earth spirit Ka, in addition to Philemon. There is a final tussle with Soul as Jung refuses unconditional obedience to the gods. He insists that man is no longer "slave" to them, though "They may devise a service in return." After initial outrage the gods agree. Soul tells Jung: "You have broken the compulsion of the law." Christ (as shade) offers a final word as gift. In accepting light and dark together: "I bring you the beauty of suffering."
In 1916, while on military duty, a series of twenty-seven mandala images came to Jung. The first depicts a multilevel relationship of microcosm with macrocosm. Abraxas, "lord of the physical world," is at the bottom; Phanes, golden winged "divine child," is at top. Over time Jung transcribed his work into calligraphic form on parchment, illustrated the text, painted dramatic symbolic images of his journey and inserted it all into a six-hundred-page folio bound in red leather.
Patients recall seeing it, open, on an easel in his library. Jung counseled them to create their own kind of Red Book as a method of dealing with their particular inner processes. Christiana Morgan recalls Jung saying "You can go to the book, turn over the pages and for you it will be your church–your cathedral–the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal….for in that book is your soul."
He stopped work on The Red Book in 1930 when the impact of a Chinese alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, brought him "undreamed of confirmation" of his ideas, and the link between East and West. In 1959, a single handwritten page was added to the book by Jung, reaffirming its contents: "I always knew those experiences contained something precious." It ends in mid-sentence.
The Red Book continues to offer us profound insight into the processes of life, into Jung and his work, and into the need to honor our own inner lives in our own way.
The Red Book is published by W.W. Norton at a list price of $195.00.
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