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Männer Playoff Viertelfinal viertes Spiel
Zug United - SV Wiler-Ersigen am 20. März 2021 in der Sporthalle der Kantonsschule Zug
Bild: Michael Peter
The structure of thought, the convoluted geography of our personalities, the world of ideas is far more complex and subtle than the articulation of limbs. If we put ourselves in the position of thinking about the way we think, we have a tricky situation on our hands, to say the least. We are obviously limited in our thinking, by our style or manner of thinking. So; something apart from thinking needs to look at thinking. But what could this be? Buddhism describes this "something" as the open dimension of our being. It is the discovery of space.
The discovery of space begins with shi-ne. (shi-ne, Skt. shamatha - Remaining uninvolved with the thought process. Usually translated as "calm abiding" or "peacefully remaining". The practice of silent sitting.)
Shi-ne is the practice of letting go of our addiction to the thought process. We will need to look at the practice of shi-ne in order to get some sense of what is meant by "the discovery of space". But before we explore the idea of shi-ne, we will need to make some further exploration of the evolution of our perceptual "skills". We will need to ask some questions about the familiar yet somehow unfamiliar landscape of distracted being.
In a relative sense you could say that our being is distracted from be-ing. Our sense of what and how we are wanders interminably in a miasma of cross-referencing fictions. This faculty of cross-referencing includes every function of the intellect. It builds itself out of the compartmentalising, labelling and judging department of our conceptual bureaucracy. This conceptual bureaucracy sets itself up in order to maintain the illusion of duality, and it does this through continually seeking assurances from the world -- assurances that we really exist. Somehow we seem to be in doubt about our existence -- we have a sense of unease about it. This sense of unease would be very disturbing -- unless we simply remained unconscious of it. The fact that this doubt exists is actually evidenced by most of the philosophies that have arisen in the world. It would seem that no sooner have Maslow's hierarchy of needs --- hunger/thirst, shelter, sleep, sex, safety/security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and finally self-actualisation --- started to be met, then people start to question their own existence.
Many people would say that they have no doubt of their existence at all. They would say that they felt as real as the next person, or perhaps even more real. Some people would state quite categorically that they are certain of their existence. They know they exist; and what is more, they are annoyed and insulted by the apparent stupidity of this kind of question. But from the Buddhist perspective, this is not a completely honest response -- it is a response based on fear. If people are so convinced of their existence, why do they continually seek assurances and proofs of it? Philosophers have been doing this for a long time. Various pronouncements have been made, such as: "I think therefore I am". People may of course wish to disassociate themselves from the ruminations of philosophers.
They may deny that they seek reassurances of their existence. This is not really surprising -- no one in this society is brought up to recognise their fundamental perspectives described in this way.It is not easy to see the manner in which we live out lives as a process of doubt -- as a context of unease. We are geared into the machinery of our distraction. We imagine our acts and motivations to be "natural". But this doubt of existence is chameleoid -- it takes on the hue and tone of every aspect of our mutable emotional colouring.
But from where does this doubt stem? Is it an aspect of our realisation, or an aspect of our confusion? The answer to this question may be trifle bewildering: the doubt of our existence is both an echo of our enlightenment and an echo of our fear of space of our own being, which could also be called our unenlightenment. We continually seek assurances from life that confirm the unconfirmable. We seek security, and that is a problem. It is not that security does not exist, but that the security that is available is not the kind of security that we want.
For example: we can be secure in the knowledge that we are going to die. We can be secure in the knowledge that we are going to get older hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. We can be secure in the knowledge that we are going to get ill from time to time; and that one day the illness will be our final illness. We can be secure in the knowledge that we are going to lose our entire material context at the moment of death.
It could be said that insecurity is the only real security. This might seem a singularly unappealing concept until we consider that pain and misery also cannot be established as unchanging. The phenomenal world is unreliable, if reliability requires stasis. We cannot rely on the phenomenal world to provide either continous pleasure or continuous pain. We can be surprised: good friends can turn against us, and generous support can be comming from unlikely quarters. The "security of insecurity" and the insecurity of security", is a theme that will run through this book; and any other book that deals with Buddhist psychology. This is a crucial idea to understand if you seek to experience a happy life, let alone to seek liberation from duality. It is not even that existence of certain seeming securities is being brought into question -- it is more that the process of seeking security itself needs to be viewed as inherently problematic. Whether we seek security or not, what we get is a combination of "security" and "insecurity" --- and from the perspective of personal history it can, hopefully, become difficult to distinguish which is which.
There is something suspect about inability to enjoy anything unless we can define it as lasting forever. In actuality nothing lasts forever, and yet we act as if some things do -- in order that we can enjoy them. The fact that nothing lasts forever is very interesting --- it is true in two entirely different senses. We can say that "nothing" lasts forever, and that no "thing" lasts forever. Nothing is emptiness, which has no beginning or end. Things or phenomena are form, and therefore have beginnings and ends. Interesting paradoxes are wrapped up in this: we own emptiness because it cannot be owned; we cannot establish ownership of that which is already ours, without distorting it into something that we cannot own. We can only own forms on a temporary basis, and as long as we relate to these forms through ownership -- we cannot own them. If we understand that ownership of form only exists in the moment of appreciation, then we automatically own the entire universe of form. But we cannot own anything as long as try to own ourselves.
Paradox is the heart of Tantric understanding, and once we begin to get a taste for what it means at an experiential level --- the amazing world of what we actually are starts to open to us. When we begin to accept our emotions as the path, we can also begin to understand something fundamental: that as long as we continually attempt to establish ground --- we can never really experience ground. Our dualistic method of establishing ground, is to validate ourselves as being solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined. These form-criteria for evaluating ourselves arise out of the nature of the dualistic elements:
Solidity is the form quality of the earth element.
Permanence is the form quality of the water element.
Separateness is the form quality of the fire element.
Continuity is the form quality of the air element.
Definition is the form quality of the space element.
And all form is inherently impermanent. Paradoxically, we reject the criteria that actually validate our existence -- because they are exactly the emptiness-criteria which we fear as undermining our existence:
Insubstantiality is the emptiness quality of the earth element.
Impermanence is the emptiness quality of the water element.
Inseparability is the emptiness quality of the fire element.
Discontinuity is the emptiness quality of the air element.
Undefinability is the emptiness quality of the space element.
Nothing that comes into existence, has form qualities as permanently reliable characteristics. Because our experience does not conform permanently to these form-criteria, we cannot succeed in establishing our existence through attaching to them. Our attempts to define ourselves in this way are bound to be self-defeating. When we engage in this strategy, we subvert the brillant immediacy of our experience with our endless attempts to establish reference points. This is the major problem we face as human beings.
In struggling to maintain the illusion of duality, we are fighting a losing battle. Nothing will serve us as a permanently reliable reference point, because everything within the world of form is inherently impermanent. Phenomena will only ever afford us temporary proofs of existence according to their qualities of: solidity, permanence, separateness, continuity and definition. These are the form qualities of emptiness and their major characteristic is that they are ephemeral. Phenomena are solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined on a strictly temporary basis. So these existential criteria cannot possibly afford us proof that we could be any different. Everything we encounter in our lives is impermanent by nature, and will have limited duration over the course of time.
Impermanence is not only a quality of phenomena in terms of duration -- there is also the question of ownership and proximity. Our possessions may have many more years in them, but maybe not in our keeping. Whatever we have may be stolen, or sold because of a sudden shortage of money. More subtly, there is the extent of our own interest. Our prized possessions may remain with us as long as we live, but they may not always be prized so highly. Fashions come and go. Jumble sales are full of the clothes that people once wore with delight. Fashion is a great teacher of impermanence.
Making ourselves feel solid, permanent, separate continuous and defined -- by constantly scanning the phenomenal horizon for reference points which substantiate these criteria -- is a convoluted process. The phenomena of our perception will only serve us temporarily in this capacity. So if we take this course, we sentence ourselves to the continuous activity of establishinf referece points. When we engage in this process, we convert our perceptual circumstances into a prison In fact, our perceptual circumstances not only become an incarceration, but a very subtle personal torture chamber. We need to be continually on the look-out for new reference points. We need to reassess old reference points. We need to imbue ourselves with certain pervasive nervousness. We need to foster a sense of unease about the whole process of experiencing existence. It could become unrelenting hard work in our own personal forced labour camp.
In our attempts to establish reference points we react to the phenomena of our perception in three ways. We are either attracted, we are averse or we are indifferent. Attraction, aversion and indifference are usually reffered to, in the translations of Buddhist texts, as lust (desire or attachment); hatred (anger or aggression); and ignorance. Although these words have a distinct application to the three distorted tendencies (usually reffered to as "the Three Poisons"), they have connotations in English that lend them the tone of "the Seven Deadly Sins". Buddhism does not really deal with the concept of "sin" -- it simply deals with the mechanisms of confusion, and the means of liberation. There is no guilt attached to being confused, and no sense of deliberate "wickedness". The terms "attraction", "aversion" and "indifference" have been chosen because they are mechanistic rather than emotive -- they describe the machinery of dualistic perception.
If we encounter anything that seems to substantiate our fictions of solidity, permanence, separateness, continuity, and definition -- we are attracted, we reach out for it. If we encounter anything that threatens these fictions -- we are averse, we push it away. If we encounter anything that neither substantiates nor threatens these fictions -- we are indifferent. What we cannot manipulate, we ignore. But what is left of our responses if these fictions dissolve? The question of what our experience would be like without attraction, aversion, and indifference poses an interesting challenge to our rationale. In fact, we cannot approach this question at all, if we approach it through conventional reasoning. Fundamentally this question deals with the nature of experience itself. If attraction, aversion, and indifference dissolve, what remains is not any "kind of experience"; it is simply experience -- experience as such. In terms of experience as such; we are completely present, open and free in the experience of whatever arises as a perception.
In this totally spacious condition there is neither attachment, manipulation nor insensitivity. We are discussing straight experience here, in more or less the same way that we might discuss a straight drink. We are describing an undiluted shot of single malt, rather than some fancy cocktail, overloaded with tinned fruit, and decorated with a paper parasol. We are concerning ourselves with the essence -- the undiluted experience of our own intrinsic condition.
We rarely have a straigth experience. This is because we are almost invariably bound up in the convolutions of compartmentalisation. We have a vested interest in establishing reference points -- attempting to prove that we are solid permanent, separate, continuous and defined. We are either nervous about our situation, or we throw caution to the wind. Both are methods of attempting to manipulate the world referentially. Caution is calculated manipulation. Throwing caution to the wind is desperate manipulation. It may seem difficult to imagine recklessness as a form of manipulation, but we are only ever reckless as a last-ditch stand -- the "make-or-break" method of securing reference points. We stipulate the exact ingredients of our joys and sorrows and react in accordance with how closely circumstances conform to our pre-determined specifications.
NGAKPA CHOGYAM with KHANDRO DECHEN / Spectrum of Ecstasy / Shambhala Publications
Männer GF L-UPL Superfinal 2022/23
15.04.2023, stimo arena Kloten
SV Wiler-Ersigen
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Männer Playoff Viertelfinal viertes Spiel
Zug United - SV Wiler-Ersigen am 20. März 2021 in der Sporthalle der Kantonsschule Zug
Bild: Michael Peter
Dieses historische Druck der "Männer der Reformation" gesehen in der in der St. Michael Kirche ist einer von vielen interessanten Eindrücken eines Spaziergangs durch Schwäbisch Hall.
Photo No. 5D031720
ISO800 | f/4 | 1/40 sec | 40 mm
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM | EOS 5D
Aperture | PTLens | BorderFX
Schwäbisch Hall @ Wikipedia: english - deutsch - français - español - português