THE MONKEY IS REACHING
The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He’ll never give up.
If he’d let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
-Zen Master Hakuin
“You may try hard, but if you try to solve single individual problems, you are bound to be a failure — that is absolutely certain — because in fact no individual problem exists: mind is the problem. If you solve this problem or that, it won’t help because the root remains untouched. It is just like cutting branches of a tree, pruning the leaves, and not uprooting it. New leaves will come, new branches will sprout — even more than before…unless you know how to uproot it, your fight is baseless; it is foolish. You will destroy yourself, not the tree.” — Osho
Trying to solve the problems of your life is a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole. The Greeks knew this well and encoded it into the myth of the Hydra. Much like Osho’s tree analogy, if you cut off one of the heads of the Hydra, two more will grow back in its place. The only solution is to prevent the problems from growing back, by uprooting the tree, or cauterizing the necks of the Hydra. When it comes to uprooting the root cause of problems, the solution is the dissolution of the illusory sense of self.
Normally we think of ourselves as a seat of consciousness sitting somewhere behind our faces. Like the little alien from Men in Black, we sit inside our heads and pilot our meatsuits.
This misconception comes from the dualistic mind, which we think of as our ordinary, everyday consciousness. You think of yourself as a mind, piloting your body but you don’t have a mind and a body, you are a body-mind, and you’re also much more than that. You have a soul, and a spirit too (more on that in an upcoming post).
Your true Mind extends out infinitely. But you’re blocked from that realization by your case of mistaken identity wherein you think you are the ego sitting inside your head.
Now don’t get me wrong, your ego identity is very important, very necessary. The problem is that it is only half of the equation, and the least interesting half of the equation. The entire work is in uniting the limited mind with the limitless Mind. And how is this done? By turning awareness in on itself - when you look for what’s looking, you end up finding the same thing the mystics have always found: no thing.
This “no thing” is something that transcends the categories of existence and non-existence, something that transcends all categories. Whether you want to call it Emptiness, the Self, the Christ Within, the Clear Light, or something else, it doesn’t really matter because these are all just fingers pointing at the moon.
It is one thing to conceptually understand that you’re not a separate entity, that you are interwoven into the interlocking, interdependent fabric of reality. It is quite another thing to experience this unity beyond all concepts. It has been called the end of suffering, and the death of fear. But my favorite way of describing this experience is found in Tilopa’s song, where it is called indescribable freedom:
When the limited mind
enters blessed companionship
with limitless Mind,
indescribable freedom dawns.
As I wrote in my last post, one of the best ways of dissolving dualities such as mind/body and subject/object is to go deeply into the body through practices like yoga and tai chi. Since we usually think that our consciousness is located in our heads, turning our attention to our bodies can be a major step towards wholeness. In turning inwards, you realize that your entire body is permeated with consciousness. As Candace Pert has said, “your body is your subconscious mind.” Instead of seeing the body as sinful and evil, we can learn to revere the body.
“Look at the body as the greatest creation of God. The first thing is to learn respect for the body, to unlearn all the nonsense that has been taught to you about the body. Otherwise, you will never turn on, and you will never turn in, and you will never turn beyond. Start from the beginning. The body is your beginning.” — Osho
In our culture, many of us have jobs that require significant mental effort. All this time spent thinking can lead to a condition where too much chi, or energy, is caught in our head. This situation can be chronic and low-grade, or it can lead to an acute nervous breakdown. This problem is well known in the spiritual traditions of the East as Zen Sickness or Kundalini Madness.
Hakuin, a well-known Zen Master, once suffered from a very severe case of Zen Sickness after he experienced an immature, unstable taste of enlightenment:
“My heart fire began to rise upward against the natural course, parching my lungs of their essential fluids. My feet and legs were always ice-cold: they felt as though they were immersed in tubs of snow. There was a constant buzzing in my ears, as if I were walking beside a raging mountain torrent. I became abnormally weak and timid, shrinking and fearful in whatever I did. I felt totally drained, physically and mentally exhausted. Strange visions appeared to me during waking and sleeping hours alike. My armpits were always wet with perspiration. My eyes watered constantly. I travelled far and wide, visiting wise Zen teachers, seeking out noted physicians. But none of the remedies they offered brought me any relief.”
Hakuin eventually sought out a Taoist Hermit named Hakuyu, who taught him a special meditation technique that is very good at getting excess energy out of the head, by pushing it down into the body. If you’re interested, you can read Hakuin’s account here: Zen Sickness, by Master Hakuin. If you’d like to try this very calming practice, I highly recommend the following rendition of Hakuin’s Butter Egg Meditation, and as always, I recommend practicing subtle breathing as you listen: