12 Tenets of Holons

How the Light Turns into Concrete

Haiku Mu

(NOTE: The words "Mu" (Japanese) and "Wu" (Chinese) carry the meanings of "No, not, none, not any, nothing" and in this context these words connote with "void, emptiness, no-knowing, not knowable" and with the Sanskrit words "Neti, neti" ("Not that, not that") used for via negativa contemplation. Traditionally, the koan "Joshu's Mu" (or "Joshu's Dog") is the first used in koan training. It goes like this: A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" Joshu answered "Mu!"


Does a mangy dog
Possess the Buddha nature?
Joshu answered “Mu.”
  
As for Joshu’s “Mu”
I haven't one word to add:
“Mu” means “Mu” means “Mu.”

Mu Mu Mu Mu Mu
Fallen into the answer
What was the question?

Beginning with Mu
Ending with exactly Mu
Call that a journey? 

Okay, I’ve arrived.
I’m at home where I started
All alone with Mu

Mu is not special
Add three bucks and buy coffee
Fragrant steam rises 

Look: Only Buddha!
Sutras are toilet paper
Wipe “Mu” on them all

Freed from ego-pain
Empty Luminosity 
Jealousy... Ouch! “Mu.”

Contemplating Mu
Clouds don’t hinder empty sky
Even at Auschwitz?

THIS identity
O wonderful terrible 
body-mind-world-Mu

Death and Deathlessness

"And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?"
             Walt Whitman ("I Sing the Body Electric")

There is no other "I" aside from the personal "I"--that is, no "I" exists in addition to the body-mind stream. The Source that precedes and transcends the personal "I" is NOT personal. It is transcendental --- not any kind of personal object or subject. Don't bother trying to imagine this self-existing Identity; images do not pertain. ("Thou shalt have no images before Me.") 

The personal "I" is mortal. Here today, gone tomorrow. So (in view of "I") death really is death, and there's no getting around it. The constructed identity (ego-"I") feels afraid and wishes death could be other than what it is, hence the emergence of consoling religious mythology about the afterlife and reincarnation. 

However, the Trans-personal Source is not destroyed or even dimmed by the disappearance of "I". The Source is the Giver of birth AND death: the Giver of "I" (the whole birth-change-death process). Source does not depend on "I" for its existence; rather, "I" depends on Source. So, naturally, Source survives the death of "I". That is why I say death is not annihilation. (But, again, "I" does not survive the death of "I"! Can you find the raindrop after it merges with the ocean?)

I am not going on "faith." I long ago turned off all faith (belief, speculation, theory, hearsay, etc.). All of that gets in the way. I would go so far as to say that beliefs prevent awakening---or at least awakening at the most profound level. I am able to intuit for myself the Reality, without starting with presumptions or adding notions to my IMMEDIATE intelligence. I know directly (as opposed to conventional knowing, which is knowing about something.). In Greek, such radical knowing is called gnosis, and in Sanskrit, jnana, (and in "Martian" it's called grokking). It is knowing by way of being. Franklin Merrell-Wolff calls it "knowledge through identity." We've all heard the truism, "It takes one to know one." That is exactly how it is.

Therefore don't bother to have faith in what I say. To hell with dharmas and dogmas! If you care intensely enough, you may be able to directly find out for yourself. But there are no guarantees. 

All of this reminds me that when I was in the second grade our teacher, Mrs. Bivens, assigned the class a sheet of arithmetic problems to solve. One of my classmates whined, "Do we have to?" Mrs. Bivens said, "The only thing we HAVE to do is die."

syn·er·gy

1. the interaction or cooperation of two or more substances or agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
2. 
   
3. It comes as no surprise that love-devotional paths (e.g., bhakti yoga) and intuitive-insightful paths (e.g., jnana yoga) are naturally intertwined and synergistic.
4. 
   
5. Ramana Maharshi, an impressive living example of non-dual realization, strongly encouraged his disciples to explore the love-devotional aspect of Self-realization. Ramana himself was a devotee of Arunachala, a small mountain traditionally associated with the worship of Shiva; he claimed the mountain was his guru and he regularly made devotional circumambulations of it. The quarterly magazine of his ashram is "The Mountain Path." 
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7. Ramana's corollary is Sri Ramakrishna, the most famous bhakta of modern times. He was devoted to loving worship/remembrance of Kali (as Supreme Identity in the Form of Divine Mother). His most famous disciple, Vivekanada, said of Ramakrishna, "He was a bhakta on the outside, and a jnani on the inside; I am a jnana on the outside and a bhakta on the inside." 
8. 
   
9. Like Vivekananda, whose name means "Bliss of Discernment" (between the essential and the non-essential), I am outwardly a jnani and inwardly a bhakta. Nearly all my writings come off as Zen-like, promoting the sheer, open, non-dual vision. But my total personality certainly does not lack a devotional side.
10. 
    
11. My latest book Eye of the Heart is a brief meditation that weds Bhakti and Jnana.

The Great Silence

Buddha famously said, “I teach only two things: suffering and liberation from suffering.” Accordingly, he was uninterested in metaphysical speculations. There is a moment recorded in Buddhist literature in which a student asked Buddha (Siddhartha Guatama) about survival or non-survival of death. Buddha simply sat quietly and did not answer the question. This has come to be called “The Great Silence.”