Posted on May 13, 2019
The Bridle Paradox
I recently commented on a Facebook post quoting Daigu Ryokan: “Mind itself is the mind that leads into confusion. So never release the bridle of the horse of your mind.” That statement speaks to the duality of mind. I asked the question in the comments section, “who holds the bridle?”. You can’t hold the bridle of your mind because that would mean you have two minds, one being the horse of your mind, and the other mind holding the bridle. To stay with the horse metaphor, it would be like riding on your own back.
Then low and behold I see another post, quoting Alan Watts with the line “the cortex allows us the hallucination that we are two souls in one body”. To accept that hallucination as something real, to believe what is an illusion, is delusion. One brain. One mind. One me.
FollowPosted on October 29, 2018
Zen Mindfulness of Hanging Out the Clothes
I use a solar/wind powered clothes dryer, practically year round. Aside from the financial (clothes pins and rope cost me about $7.00) and ecological advantages, there is always this other dimension associated with drying the clothes. The oak trees are starting to change color. In hanging out the clothes, there is always a connection to the season and the weather. Sometimes the branches on the trees are bare or budding or changing color and falling off. Sometimes there’s a setting moon or a hawk in the sky. This stuff is always there if you just pay attention. It’s what they call Mindfulness.
Zen of hanging out the clothes.
Posted on October 19, 2018
Brad Warner of Hardcore Zen on Political Craziness
Brad Warner: He is not the zen guy you’re expecting.
Posted on September 14, 2018
Good Cop, Bad Cop
The enemy of spiritual awakening is duality. First of all, the idea that here I am and out there is everything else, is a mind trick. I am rereading Chögyam Trungpa’s “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”. The book deals a lot with suchness vis-à-vis ego, the misconception of seeking the self as a form of personal enrichment rather than finding reality as it is, through honest compassion. In my understanding of the mixture of Zen and philosophy and neuroscience, there can be no duality of mind, for the simple reason that we only have one brain. The idea that the self has control over itself is in itself, rather dicey.
Q: Who’s in control A: Me
Q: Who am I controlling A: Me
This is where the compassion comes in. Is the good part of you correcting your bad habits? The good guy in you and the bad guy in you are the same guy, that one person who is me. Compassion is acceptance and with that acceptance comes a better understanding of … everything.
Posted on September 3, 2018
Peppercorn Consciousness
In the previous post I wrote of the interdependence of perceived reality. This morning in the Washington Post I read an article “Lab-grown Brain Bits Open Windows to the Mind — and a Maze of Ethical Dilemmas“. The “brain bits”, shown in a petri dish, were described as being the size of pepper corns, hence my photo. To imply that these bits somehow relate to consciousness is a stretch.
The appearance of brain and mind in the title has some resonance, for without the brain there would be no mind. The brain material in the petri dishes are, “balls of cells that can’t think or feel” and in actuality our brain is a larger collection of that material. Cells, not thinking, not feeling. Consciousness is a biological function of the brain and also a biological interaction of brain cells (through the nervous system) with the environment.
Brain cells don’t think. I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy. How’s this: Suppose, I grow muscle cells in a dish, “balls of cells that can’t move” but muscle cells within the musculoskeletal system allow you to run.
