October 2026 Musings

Form is Emptiness. Emptiness is Form.
--The Heart Sutra
 
A teaching such as the one above can feel esoteric and irrelevant to our daily life until we have a direct experience of its application.
 
This month, we celebrated Sr. Phil’s life, sharing stories of her glorious expression in form. Through our recollections, we felt her Presence, vividly and immediately. Is that Presence less “real” because Sr. Phil is no longer in form? 
 
If we consulted Screwtape, his answer would be to dismiss the ineffable as merely subjective. 
 
Screwtape: The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are “real” while the spiritual elements are “subjective”; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist. Thus in birth the blood and pain are “real”, the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death “really means”. The hatefulness of a hated person is “real” — in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a “real” core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are “really” horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments. The creatures are always accusing one another of wanting “to eat the cake and have it”; but thanks to our labours they are more often in the predicament of paying for the cake and not eating it. Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of Reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment.
 
Sooner or later, an awareness practitioner, genuinely interested in going beyond suffering, has to grapple with “what is real.”  Screwtape would rather we debate the “basis” of reality or noodle the process of categorizing real/unreal, reality/illusion, subjective/objective. But Practice invites examination of the process that decides “what is real.”
 
It is hard to refute the reality of suffering.
Suffering appears very real.
So do “I.”
 
But just because “I” appears real, is it? 
 
We entertain this inquiry because the core tenet of the Buddha’s teaching is that the illusion of a separate self is the cause of suffering.  
 
What did the Buddha mean by illusion? 
 
Illusion in the Buddhist sense does not mean that things don’t exist. The Buddha did not deny the existence of suffering. The First Noble truth declares: Suffering Is.
 
Illusion in the Buddhist sense is pointing to the recognition that the way things appear to be is not the way things are. A mirage is an illusion of an oasis. The mirage is real (i.e., perceived) but there isn’t an oasis.
 
Suffering arises when appearances are believed to be “the way things are.” We are bound to be disappointed if we believe the mirage to be an oasis and hurry towards it in hopes of quenching our thirst.
 
In the familiar words of Wei Wu Wei:
 
What is your problem?
Mistaken identity.
 
Why are you unhappy? 
Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.
 
It isn’t that “I” don’t exist. But the self I conceive myself to be is a mirage. It isn’t who I am. So, per the Buddha, running around fulfilling its desires and avoiding its fears is a recipe for misery.
 
So how does this case of “mistaken identity” happen?
 
The first verse of the Dhammapada contends that “our life is shaped by our mind” and suffering is a result of our thoughts. 
 
In the words of our Practice, we suffer because we believe what we think is real, i.e. we believe what we are told by the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. If the voice in my head says, “I don’t want to meditate,” there is a tendency to accept
 
---the existence of an I,
---the reality of a desire to avoid meditation.
 
We don’t pause to examine, 
Who is talking?
Who is listening?
 
And most importantly, if there is awareness of a voice talking, and awareness of “someone” listening, what is this Awareness?
 
A practice of awareness teaches us:
Pay attention to everything.
Believe nothing.
Don’t take anything personally.
 
If we pay attention, 
(i.e. noticing thoughts without believing them), 
we can watch “my life” being shaped by the mind 
without identifying with the process
(i.e. not becoming “the person that doesn’t want to meditate”).
 
In fact, we can be aware of “the person” being created and maintained within the process of thinking. 
 
If I were the right person I would want to meditate.
But I can’t. And I really don’t want to.
What’s wrong with me?
 
Noticing thoughts is familiar to an awareness practitioner. Some of us are very good at it! But not believing what the voices are saying? There’s the rub!
 
The mind that shapes our lives is confounded when confronted with the proposition that not believing beliefs is an option. It sputters…
 
If I don’t believe my beliefs, who would I be, how would I operate in the world?
 
Exactly! 
 
As the Guide writes in the current email class:
 
If we weren’t going through life encased in the web of beliefs and assumptions and expectations that inform every tiny aspect of every moment of our existence, what would happen to us? We know what “this” is like. We know the familiar, the known, the stories, the suffering. Might we just step outside this for a moment to see if we want that other “reality”? There’s a sense of walking through a curtain and into… the unknown.
 
This unknown is Here, Now, shimmering as the space between the thoughts, the absence, Emptiness, that is Presence. 
 
A poem might be of assistance to guide us beyond the mind that “doesn’t know” but cannot grasp the unknown and wants to ask, “How do I walk through the curtain into the unknown?
 
Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you. 
But when the leaves hang trembling, the wind is passing through. 
 
Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I. 
But when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.
- Christina Rossetti  

Gasshō
ashwini