Thoughts about the Diamond Sutra: An Additional Thought

Howard Pashenz (Suffolk Institue for Eastern Studies)
suffolki@aol.com

(Click here if you would like to read Thoughts About The Diamond Sutra Part 1)

In yet another deeply puzzling series of statements, also repeated in slightly different form throughout the Sutra, we read that something that is true is not really true. And that is why it is the truth. For example:

"What the Tathagata (Buddha) has called the highest transcendent understanding is not, in fact, the highest transcendent understanding. That is why it is truly the highest, transcendent understanding."

After puzzling over this for quite awhile, the only possible explanation I can come up with is related to our two distinctly different basic approaches to understanding reality. The most common approach, taught from early childhood, uses words and language as a tool, or window, through which we view what our senses experience. This is, however, secondary to our immediate, undifferentiated, bare, organic sensory receptivity.

Another way of understanding these two modes is to imagine a mirror. What I see in the mirror I classify and differentiate, etc. But the mirror simply reflects. The self, or ego, is this secondary elaboration tacked on to our initial pure awareness, "the mirror", that then "takes over" to become the distorting prism through which life is viewed.

In order to function as a "normal social being" we had to learn to ignore, or overlook that primary, unelaborated sensory experience. Instead, we discriminate and differentiate; creating a world of ideas and emotions that can be related, or opposed to one another. We lost our feeling of "oneness" and entered a vast multidimensional, multifaceted conflict ridden wasteland filled with desire and suffering. By existing exclusively within the confines of concepts and language there is always self in opposition to all that is not self; subject opposed to object. But language only tries to describe "after the fact" of unelaborated, spontaneous, sensory awareness. It is not "primary reality" but the mind's only way of relating to this wordless, dimensionless energy level underlying the ego's narrowed experience of it. In that sense language is a barrier that must be somehow bypassed. So when we view the "highest transcendent understanding" as not the highest understanding, it is because these are only words created by the thinking mind. Instead of thinking we could allow the experiencing of "a feeling" (not immediately "labeling and classifying") and thus bypass the thought processes. A concrete example of this approach occurs when using the sensory modality of vision. I can "feel" whatever I'm viewing as an extension of my own bod; my body boundaries have become permeable, almost nonexistent. Thus everything is now only an aspect of a new "limitless" all-inclusive "self" that is no longer understood or described by language. I am referring to the "being" of experience, rather than remaining in the "descriptive mode". In the terminology of the Diamond Sutra, "seeing is not seeing" when it is formulated and expressed as an idea. However the bare experience of "mirror-like" seeing is truly seeing. What I am referring to is seeing without the self or ego. And this is one of the requirements often stated in Buddhist scriptures; giving up the individual personalized self in order to become "all". Then there is no individual left to suffer. There remains all the feelings, thoughts, and sensations, etc. but they are just part of total awareness that is constantly changing spontaneously.

But how does one shift from the verbally formed self to a boundary-less experience? To try to accomplish this returns us to a self with a goal, the old subject/object dilemma. The Buddhist teachings speak of nothing to achieve, that everyone is inherently a Buddha however that is concealed by the conceptually created self. Then how is this "concealing self" removed or bypassed? This is where all the many-varied meditation paths and techniques are useful. To match one's inherent personality with an appropriate meditative technique is a difficult task.

In sitting meditation, one instruction is to simply observe the breath. Simply observing is extremely difficult; the thinking mind keeps bringing in thoughts and emotions while the body has its own world of painful and pleasurable sensations. It is no easy task to not become "involved" while just remaining aware. Then comes the patient practice of simply watching "without becoming involved" in the seemingly endless "coming and going" of the thinking mind. Gradually there will be moments of "just resting" where there is an "emptiness" that "feels complete" and can peacefully wait and watch the spontaneous unfolding. A passive (no self) just smilingly waits and witnesses. There is no dissatisfaction that requires a controlling reaction or response. Everything is simply OK. There is a faith that an underlying wisdom is operating exactly as it should. This is something the incomplete self can never accept. So this ego, or incomplete self, becomes viewed as just another activity of the thinking mind. It is only a miniscule secondary process when compared to the open "mirror-like" consciousness that has no limiting boundary or spatial location.

The "thinking I" is always "chasing after something" for pleasure or to correct some discrepancy. Primary awareness feels complete and just rests in its own spontaneous unfolding of the "invisible life force" that continues to form the present moment.

Another path leading to this "spiritual awareness" is the martial art of Aikido created by Morehei Ueshiba. In this Japanese art of self defense, the attacker is not viewed as separate but as another aspect of oneself. It is more like an opportunity to integrate the attack as the beginning of a simultaneous response - and there is only one single integrated, balanced movement. To accomplish this takes many years of practicing specific Aikido self defense techniques to the point that they become "habitual", and habits do not require thinking. Here the Diamond Sutra might say that "Aikido techniques are not Aikido techniques and that's why they are Aikido techniques". At this level the practice of Aikido has moved beyond the thinking level; the techniques emerge spontaneously in a personally individualized variation of the classical form. The practitioner doesn't practice Aikido but now becomes Aikido.