CHAPTER 12<\/h5>\n

BODHI SVAHA!<\/h1>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0There are many ways of expressing an idea. Dialectic is one format which has proven very efficient and it is sometimes presented as a discussion using logic and reasoning in a dialogue, or through question and answer, as a systematic investigative procedure. \u00a0 Our Heart Sutra has used this sort of question and answer to good effect as a method of disciplining the power of reason for philosophic and spiritual realization. \u00a0 Certainty is the requirement; theory and conjecture can never prove anything and can only provide possibilities. But dialectic can deliver us to a more perfect reason and clarity of thinking by analysis through which, at the very least, reality can be indicated. \u00a0Prajna-wisdom is the superb virtue of the paramitas and can be induced through the use of dialectic as a means to determine the validity or invalidity of any question, any statement, or any answer. \u00a0 \u201cDia\u201d means \u201cthrough\u201d or \u201cacross\u201d, dividing something into two parts, or investigating something from two different standpoints in order to expose wrong and incomplete conclusions and see the deceptions of an errant mind that lets one sink into illusion, hypnosis, bias, and even insanity. \u00a0 The dialectic method can cut through delusion by investigation into language, which provides descriptions through the use of opposite terms or by association with similarities. So each concept provided by language becomes mind-structured and dualistic. \u00a0 The method of the Heart Sutra transcends even the best logic because logic becomes contradictory since it is limited to the mental categories of dualistic language. \u00a0 Because any statement always uses a term or terms that are supported by their opposite term, any affirmation of what something is can be understood only in a relative and dependent context with its implied opposite term \u2014\u00a0or what something is not, apoha. \u00a0In this way, any statement has to be understood by what it is not. \u00a0 Thus, one must finally admit ignorance of understanding what something really is since it can only be defined by what it is not. \u00a0 Reality is beyond any format of expression by language or conceptual elaboration because reality does not have an opposite and cannot be defined by what it excludes. Reality is perfectly all-inclusive.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Another way to express an idea so that a realization can \u201cgo beyond\u201d the limitations of logic is through the use of paradoxical language. \u00a0 Any kind of a statement or proposition, insofar as it may be presented as an attempt to define reality, will be found to contradict itself. For example, this statement: \u00a0\u201cReality is absolute, infinite, unbounded.\u201d Absoluteness, however, excludes whatever is limited, partial, incomplete, or separate. So then, absoluteness must exclude limited objective relativity, and exclusion is the obvious standard for limitation, or what something is not. \u00a0 Exclusion is a delineation of an excluding boundary between two things \u2014\u00a0what is supposedly there and what is not there. Thus, absoluteness sets conceptual boundaries. Calling the absolute \u201cunbounded\u201d becomes a contradiction because the absolute has to be thought of as unlimited \u2014\u00a0which excludes all limitation. As relative phenomena each have boundaries and limitations, they cannot be termed absolute and must be excluded from the definition. But in actuality, there is nothing excludable from the absolute; it is absolutely absolute. \u00a0 In the same way, infinity must actually include all finite phenomena, which appears paradoxical.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Once we find the right way, the skillful means, of seeing reality, no more questions and statements and answers need be made. \u00a0The usual forms of concept-making are the very limitations which create the obstructions in the first place. \u00a0So here in our Heart Sutra we find paradoxical statements that go against the grain of conventional language and thought. Why should we try to attain prajna-wisdom or bodhi when the Sutra tells us there is \u201cno attainment<\/em>\u201d? The paradoxical language of the Sutra is intended to unite the opposites of conditioned relative reality and the ultimate truth, thusness, or the absolute truth. \u00a0There seems to be a tension between the two truths, relative and absolute. This is because conventional language and conventional thought separates everything through a mind that grasps each thing in terms of its distinct characteristics. \u00a0The Sutra tells us there is no difference between form and emptiness which is the same as saying there is no difference between the relative and the absolute. The absolute is unconditioned, yet it has to also include the totality of conditioned states. \u00a0 So when the truth is realized it is because mind can only conceptually grasp relative and conditioned form, but because form is not separate from the absolute truth, thusness, then the ultimate truth is indicated through conventional form, which is also thusness.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Prajna is an in-seeing or a direct and immediate knowing, an experience<\/em> of emptiness. This is completely different and beyond any sort of conceptual fabrication, perception, or knowledge which is \u201cattained\u201d through reasoning, philosophical thinking, or logic. \u00a0The Heart Sutra teaches about a trans-conceptual experience<\/em> that is beyond anything that could be revealed or indicated through words, symbols, or ideas. \u00a0It is this prajna-wisdom that dissipates all mental delusion, the mother who gives birth to all bodhisattvas and all buddhas.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There is a mystical profundity in this Perfection of Wisdom that shows us the fact that all phenomena are empty of their own substantial self-existence. The revelation is that all sentient beings are already<\/em> beyond the limitations of self-existence and all the stress of entanglement within the world process. There really is nothing to attain. \u00a0 Striving and seeking are ego-based and will only keep the wheel turning. Identifying oneself with the skandhas is the primal mistake, the ignorance of emptiness. \u00a0 Only by seeing<\/em> into the truth of it all, as did Avalokitesvara, will it be possible to jump off the wheel.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Everyone has gradually accumulated habitual notions of ego and separation. \u00a0The dichotomizing way of the common intellect has become the standard, and this becomes the base for disharmony and the continuity of lack of true discernment. \u00a0 So to become aware of how and why misconceptions originate is the way to be free from deluded thought. When someone is able to get the vision, or see that which is beyond all thought, then he moves through prajna-wisdom to bodhi. \u00a0 Ordinary beings have so far not proceeded along the right path, so they are tangled in a continuous stream of conceptual delusion, never free from dichotomous thoughts. If someone reaches to insight into that which transcends the thought stream, then he knows how and why deluded thoughts arise, and he also knows he is that which is beyond thoughts. \u00a0He comes to know he has been existing as a mistaken identity, fulfills the skillful means used to put an end to the deluded thought stream, and manifests prajna-wisdom and bodhi.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 All phenomena have the same essential nature, that is, each phenomenon is empty of its own self-existence. \u00a0 All phenomena are nondual, meaning that apparent diversity is only an illusory appearance. \u00a0In whatever way any thing may seem to appear, its real essential nature cannot differ from every other thing (dharma), and this sameness is not concept but the true fact of nonduality. \u00a0All phenomena are beyond any sort of thought fabrication because the limited human mind is not capable of conceiving correctly all the details and characteristics of everything in existence, of all the infinite causal and relative correlations and endless potentialities and possibilities inherent in the totality of conditional relations. \u00a0What is ultimately real is beyond thought constructs since it is both immanent and transcendent, within and beyond each particular objective form. \u00a0Elaboration by means of concepts and ideas cannot ever truthfully or completely represent the infinity of form or emptiness. \u00a0The one word that indicates this inconceivability is \u201cthusness\u201d.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 We do not have to create or change anything; all that is necessary is to just recognize our real essential nature of thusness, of what-really-is, and see all as-it-really-is. \u00a0What is beyond and behind our nearly incessant thoughts is the unaltered state of awareness, the amalavijnana, or the mind of thusness. \u00a0 \u00a0Alterations and corrections in the thought processes are functions of the dichotomizing mind absorbed in the delusion of dualisms. Whether pertaining to conscious awareness or to phenomena, thusness means things as-they-really-are. \u00a0 When we examine the primal, unaltered state of awareness, we are re-identified as what-we-really-are, the mind of thusness. \u00a0This is the state of being Avalokitesvara was in when he saw that the five skandhas were empty.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 When the true state of phenomena or mental factors are closely examined, it is found that without exception all are empty. \u00a0Everything is stamped and sealed with the truth of thusness and no thing can be excluded from thusness. \u00a0 True thusness permeates all places without boundaries; reality is thusness-essence, always retaining its own nature without change. Its nature is the self-essencelessness of all things. The mark of true thusness is markless, signless, non-conceptual, and unconnected to any limit of boundary or realm, yet the nature of thusness always adapts and establishes sentient beings. Thusness is omnipresent, eternally pure, and pervades all times, but cannot be explained in words. Thusness is not something that can be cultivated or attained.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 When everything is realized and experienced as pure thusness already, there is no need to cling or act upon ego-based motivations. \u00a0All is in harmony already; everything is as it should be because of the causal chain. \u00a0Mental contractions, called thoughts, are just fabrications so there is no need to get absorbed in the delusion of them; just stay in the unfabricated state. \u00a0This is a spontaneous continuity of presence and can be known in one\u2019s primal being. Freedom from the influence of mental constructs is the freeing of constricted attention, the de-programming of constriction habits. \u00a0This is the entry into the heart of existence. The lack of this understanding is the defilement to be overcome.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Pure knowing experience comes about by letting everything be in its reality of thusness; there is no need to add or remove anything. Even so-called defilements are already perfect defilements, so there is no necessity for transforming them. Just recognizing them for what they really are makes them disappear as what they really are not. \u00a0 The goal of contemplative exercise is the eradication of unwholesome seed impressions from the storehouse consciousness. These seeds are the base of subverting and hindering tendencies and proclivities. When attention is passive, not willfully active, these proclivities are allowed sanction to arise in the mind-stream of reactive thinking and behavior. Abandoning attachment to this passive process of automated reactivity is the practice, but this cannot be performed without first recognizing what is almost continually arising from the depths of alayavijnana. \u00a0 Passive attention must be remade into active vigilance. \u00a0 Actively vigilant, then distractions have no effect when they are recognized as thusness.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Presence is an active and willful silence of thusness. When presence is compromised, there is a slip back into a hypnotic passivity where automated reactivity of mental effluents can resume. The onlooker, stabilized in presence, can look on through the mind of thusness, with no preference, no prejudice, just seeing<\/em> thusness. \u00a0 Hindering proclivities will gradually fade away due to this contemplative practice, a return to primal, free consciousness. \u00a0Pure receptivity in pure presence is an open attentiveness, not to what was or to what might be, but to what is, here and now, with no particular fixation, just the free consciousness of the knowing onlooker.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Vigilantly receptive, waiting patiently for the next thought to manifest, then no thought will arise. \u00a0This is the gap between thoughts. In this gap there is a mental silence with no words and no images disturbing or distracting pure presence. Mental functioning becomes quiescent. \u00a0 The gap will not last more than a few seconds at first, but those few seconds are enough to recognize what pure presence is. \u00a0 And it is a knowing awareness, not just a vacant reflector.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 There are two fundamental ways that thoughts usually arise: as concepts described by words or as concepts portrayed as images. Images, mental pictures, are more subtle than discursive, word-laden ideas, but the practitioner progressively gets more and more acutely aware of these images. \u00a0Both types of mentation are conceptual fabrications and when they are caught arising they are just dismissed as soon as one becomes aware of them. They then subside back into their source. \u00a0 This process is one of active and attentive detachment from rising thoughts, and with each practice session the seeds in the alayavijnana wither away more and more so that the mechanical arisings have less and less power to arise. The automatic and habitual mechanism of passive mentation and daydream imagery is thus slowly de-energized. \u00a0 The power of relaxed lucidity is all that is required and a sustained and stable presence in the gap between thoughts is possible.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 No matter what kind of thought appears. \u00a0 Be aware of it as what-it-really-is, thusness, and let it go its own way; just let it go. \u00a0Continue with diligence in attentive presence until attentive presence is the normal state of awareness at all times. \u00a0This is the right kind of effort, but keep it relaxed. \u00a0 This kind of right effort is equated with proper discernment, or the ability to distinguish skillful from unskillful mental qualities. \u00a0 To be alert and vigilant means being clearly aware of what is happening in the present moment. \u00a0 Being mindful means to be able to remember to do this. The task is twofold: remaining focused on thusness and putting aside or dismissing all distractions. \u00a0 Just stay with immediate experience without slipping back into an automated mental narrative. Thus, one becomes more aware of the potential to slip back into distraction. This contemplation is a monitoring of attention, being alert and attentive to movements of attention.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 All phenomenal events arise and pass away. External events and internal events, such as physical objects, mental objects, and events of attention are all temporal; they all come and they all go. \u00a0Just be aware of them as thusness events and let them follow their natural course unimpeded. Watch for the factors which accompany them and lead to their origination and dissolution. This is the mind of thusness, and the more one can get stabilized in this attitude the more skillful mental qualities will be maximized. \u00a0This must be mastered, rather than just being a complacent and passive witness. \u00a0Thusness recognition is an acute sensitivity to conditionality. \u00a0It is easy to just let things be thus.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Sensitivity to the present moment requires sufficient training in concentration. \u00a0 When a thought from the past or a thought for the future arises, it must simply be dismissed. \u00a0Not that thoughts, or thinking, reflecting on past events, or thinking and planning for the future here are being relegated as worthless; they are not worthless. \u00a0 What is worthless and a waste of life is letting habitual mentation, like daydreams, take over the mind. \u00a0 Since we are heirs of our individual actions and thoughts, care should be taken to detach from worthless mental activity in every moment. \u00a0Just keep the awareness of what is happening in the present moment, what the habit of the mind in the present moment seems to be. \u00a0Being really in the present when mind finally settles down is an adjustment toward contemplative proficiency; this is the movement of prajna. \u00a0But this does not mean that we will arrive at some projected goal at some future time. \u00a0The present moment is already present; it only remains to stabilize awareness in this presence.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Dismissal of an arising thought is possible only after vigilance has waned and lucidity has been corrupted by falling back into distraction. In the absence of vigilant concentration, which permits a thought, and then a multitude of thoughts, to arise, only then can thoughts be dismissed. \u00a0One merely remembers again that distraction has happened and then again distraction ends and vigilance is restored. This is the practice. \u00a0 When vigilance is restored, then thoughts can be dismissed. \u00a0 We are not trying to kill out all thoughts. \u00a0 \u00a0Right thinking is necessary, but it is a willful activity of a properly discerning mind. \u00a0 What we are after is to eliminate habitual delusion based on errant discriminations. \u00a0When habitual thoughts and daydreams start up again, just return to presence and dismiss them. This, done many, many times during the day, sets up a sort of alert system in the mind itself, the alert to awakening.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 The vigilant sustaining of attentive presence is not another habit; it is the interruption or breaking down, breaking apart of the structures that sustain the automaton mind. \u00a0 \u00a0Acute vigilance allows attention to remain active, falling not again back into passivity. So the practice of vigilant presence is concerned with the state of attention itself. \u00a0 Passivity of attention is inattentiveness, whereas active attention is willful direction of attention. Wakeful contemplatives monitor the status of their attention. When automated thoughts flow in the mind-stream then attentiveness has once again waned into passivity. The unbiased dismissal of automated thought is the disassembly of the proclivity patterns they exist in, and the re-activation of clarity, insight, and lucidity.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 What it boils down to is whether or not we are distracted and dreaming. \u00a0All the implications of distracted semi-awareness result in non-awakening, non-bodhi. \u00a0 So basically there is either distraction or there is awakening. \u00a0 The correct and most profound and efficient practice is the repeated recognition of distractedness, over and over until a subtle change in the awareness occurs, one that is overtly vigilant and actively attentive. \u00a0 Once this change becomes more and more continuous, then stability in the primal state of bodhi becomes securely established and distractedness becomes more and more absent.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The perfect and spontaneous recognition of thusness is the correct standpoint of practice. \u00a0This naked awareness is called naked because it is not clothed with overlays and superimpositions made by mind. \u00a0 \u00a0Superimpositionless awareness is that nondual apperception poised between Being and Becoming, the two truths. \u00a0 Being and Becoming are both facts and neither exists alone. Form and emptiness do not differ. \u00a0 Both are thusness and when seen and understood without delusion, overlays, or superimposed ideas \u2014\u00a0this is the samadhi of thusness. \u00a0The only difference between a common person and a buddha is that the common person lives in a mind continually projecting and superimposing, not knowing his real condition. \u00a0 On the other hand, a buddha does not live subservient to a projecting and automaton reactive mind, and he knows his real condition, and he knows the real condition of the common person. He understands perfectly. The common person does not realize he is asleep and dreaming. \u00a0 \u00a0A buddha knows he is awake and that the common man is asleep.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0How does one get stabilized in the vision of thusness? \u00a0There will, of necessity be a protracted ordeal because of habitual propensities and attachment to results, or to the fruit of practice. \u00a0Ego-based motives are always concerned with the fruit. So we deceive ourselves until we can consciously be on guard against our base propensity, the ego-notion and the non-understanding of emptiness. \u00a0Through study, thoughtful reflection, meditation, and certainty we can learn to see<\/em> beyond ego and acknowledge the truth. \u00a0 All biased discriminations, like beautiful and ugly, vulgar and noble, fast and slow, pleasant and unpleasant, are perceptive distortions. \u00a0The truth must be sought for behind whatever happens to be its transitory phenomenal expression.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Thus it is. \u00a0 The machine of karma is a spinning wheel of spatiotemporal conditioned causality, unrelenting, unyielding, and uncompromising. Karma is also thusness; it is as-it-is. \u00a0The only thing necessary to remember is to never be distracted. \u00a0Keep checking to see if distraction has once again taken over; if it has, that\u2019s karma, that\u2019s thusness, that\u2019s how it is. Return to the mind of thusness, seeing the karmic cycles roll on and on. \u00a0 Just cease to get entangled in them. Recognize things as-they-really-are and recognize distractedness as habit-energy to be conquered. \u00a0 That is why the bodhisattva warrior is a warrior, and when having conquered, he is a conqueror, a tathagata, gone into, disappeared into thusness. \u00a0 This is bodhi svaha! \u00a0 Such it is.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0 The power and influence of karma and interdependent conditioned arising is a vast and complex cycle. \u00a0 The structure of the cycle points to its possible end. \u00a0Karma causes birth into cyclic existence. \u00a0Ignorance is the foundation for all false projections and errant discriminations; from these all kinds of conflict and afflictions arise. \u00a0Conceptual thought structures are developed in the midst of all the errant mentations and delusions which sustain themselves and promote further delusion, particularly about the notions of intrinsic selfhood based on identification with the five skandhas, and on the presumed intrinsic existence of objective phenomena. When concepts based on errant discrimination cease through insight into emptiness, the whole karmic nexus is transcended and made impotent. Understanding this sequence of the thusness of the matrix of existence, the process for conquering it can be fortuitously understood. \u00a0Thus the samsaric cycle comes to rest.<\/h4>\n

\u201cSariputra, bodhisattva mahasattvas should train in the Profound Perfection of Wisdom in just this way<\/em>.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u201cBodhi Svaha!<\/em>\u201d<\/h4>\n

The End<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 S. R. Allen 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Also by this author:<\/h4>\n

Gnosis\u00a0<\/span>A Philosophical Psychology Concerning the Emergence of Individuated Holistic Intelligence<\/span><\/h5>\n

click here<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER 12 BODHI SVAHA! \u00a0 \u00a0There are many ways of expressing an idea. Dialectic is one format which has proven very efficient and it is sometimes presented as a discussion using logic and reasoning in a dialogue, or through question and answer, as a systematic investigative procedure. \u00a0 Our Heart Sutra has used this sort … Continue reading ch. 12 Bodhi Svaha<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1314,"parent":0,"menu_order":135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1342","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1417,"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1342\/revisions\/1417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gnostiko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}