Here’s the opening of the Prologue to my book COSMOSITY:

Prologue

To set the scene and clarify some of the ideas raised in these pages, this prologue is written in the form of a Platonic dialogue. The philosopher, Nirvanean, is about to present a paper, Cosmosity, for discussion by his three colleagues. Updating the context from Plato’s day, we envisage our four sages making up a modern symposium in an internet chatroom.

Readers should cast aside all preconceived notions of chatroom encounters and imagine themselves in the presence of a wise and high-minded company :

SkyMind (Moderator)
ClearLight (Scientist)
Avalon (Mystic)
Nirvanean (Philosopher).

[ … ]

Nirvanean I should point out that Nirvana is glimpsed by a faculty we all have running in the background of our consciousness. I call it Nirvanoception.
SkyMind So tell us, Nirvanean, what is Nirvanoception?
Nirvanean If perception is of the five senses, and conception is of the mind, Nirvanoception is the means by which we “know” Nirvana.
Avalon Then if you want to be mystical about it, it’s the means by which Nirvana knows itself.
ClearLight Good grief!
SkyMind A touch of Meister Eckhart, don’t you think?
ClearLight Remind me, SkyMind.
SkyMind The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.
Nirvanean Substitute “Nirvana” for “God” and I’d be happy with that.
SkyMind Broadening this out a bit: Why is Nirvana so essential for humans? Why does the world need living Buddhas — or Posthumans, as you say?
Avalon If we knew the answer to that …
Nirvanean All right, let me try to give some sort of answer. It’s provisional, of course, so don’t nail me down on it …
SkyMind We each have our cross to bear, Nirvanean.
ClearLight Can these questions be answered at all?
SkyMind Let’s hear what Nirvanean has to say.
Nirvanean Our consciousness exists at the levels of perception (senses), conception (mind), and Nirvanoception (Nirvana, my preferred word for God). Generally, we’re only aware of the first two. If Nirvana is the “sorrowless state” — the Garden of Eden — why did we evolve a body-mind form that clings so stubbornly to sense and sensibility? Could it be some colossal mistake? An evolutionary dead-end, perhaps? I don’t think so. Could it instead be an inner imperative driven by a force higher than ourselves? If so, is that force a demiurge, a god, or a mindless principle? I believe the whole seemingly baffling scenario of our existence is a natural process whereby Nirvana seeks awareness of itself.
ClearLight On a purely theoretical level, I may be able to go along with that.
Nirvanean To make sense of that rather apocalyptic statement we have to ask, how would an infinite awareness become conscious? Clearly it would need to “throw” out of itself organs of sense which are self-generating and capable of detecting changes and movements around them. In other words, individual “pods” of consciousness grounded in the unity of being (Nirvana), but which also have the potential to take control of their own activities (free-will). Such beings would need to develop self-consciousness and, in turn, create their own little worlds. Eventually, the more advanced among them would become aware of their origins and gradually rise above the small world of their fellows.

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Religions tend to follow a recognized cycle of development: a parabolic curve of usefulness and decay. The Buddha knew this and forecast that his Dharma (teachings) would last for 500 years, no more. Sure enough, at the 500 mark, “Buddhism” became “Mahayanaism”, and changed out of all recognition ~ though to be fair, the Mahayana did have many remarkable insights of its own.

The pattern of change is always relentless. The initial spark by an enlightened individual is taken over by a conservative elite who wish to preserve it in all its literal aspects. Invariably this movement is led by a group of disciples who claim apostolic succession from the now deified founder.

Meanwhile a more adventurous group of young bloods want to adapt the message and make it relevant to changing circumstances, as they see it. This polarization results in a political auction of claim and counter claim, while truth suffers almost grotesque inflation from both sides. The newish “religion” reverses itself and adopts the very infrastructure and corruptive practices that the original movement sought to replace.

All our institutional religions have gone through this disheartening process and are looking distinctly threadbare and careworn in the 21st century.

It seems to me that what most Westerners are seeking today is not an alien culture imposed on them through an ancient apostolic religion, but a simple process of spiritualization: a technology of realization. The aim would be nothing less than the widening and deepening of our individual consciousness to include the nirvanic realm.

By “technology” I mean the artful implementation of a principle that has been proved workable under specific conditions. So it would utilize both art and science ~ mind and spirit ~ by acting on empirical data from productive fields of practice. If this sounds rather technical, it’s not. It’s just a way of creating a general definition of something like the Buddha’s “mindfulness” program of recollection. Other types of insight meditation (vipassana) are equally valid as Mind Technology.

Such a technology of realization, without the pressing burden of belief in human-made creeds and ensacredized worship, would remove the pedantry and inherent violence from our religious lives by concentrating our minds on actionable areas for the integration of our divided being.

SPIRITUAL NIRVANA is closing down for 7 days and will be back on Wednesday 28th. Urgent enquiries should be addressed to the email given in the sidebar.

All Syntagma Media blogs will be post-free until the same date. Some maintenance and enhancements will be carried out during this period, and our 9th blog, Vista Office, will be launched on the 28th.

In the meantime, have a very merry Christmas, Winter Solstice (Thursday), or whichever festival you celebrate at this time of year.

John Evans
Syntagma Media
Blog Network.

Continuing the discussion of Jung and Suzuki begun in Part 3, here we concentrate more on D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966), the man credited with bringing Zen to the West.

For a Buddhist point of view we are fortunate to have Suzuki’s description of his own Enlightenment. After a period of intense concentration and Samadhi, Suzuki attains Satori: “…this Samadhi alone is not enough. You must come out of that state, be awakened from it, and that awakening is Prajna. That moment of coming out of Samadhi, and seeing it for what it is, that is Satori. When I came out of that state of Samadhi I said, ‘I see. This is it.’”

The next day, after the enlightenment was approved by his master, he walked home from the monastery and saw the trees in the moonlight. “They looked transparent, and I was transparent too.” From that moment he was able to answer the apparently nonsensical questions of his master out of a profound insight.

He later wrote that at that point he was not fully conscious of his experience. There was still an element of dream clinging to his consciousness. While working in America a greater depth of realization dawned when contemplating the Zen phrase “the elbow does not bend outwards.” He suddenly saw that the restriction itself was the true freedom.

Later still, and back in Japan working on the records of Bankei, he felt a huge mass of stones “that I had piled up through many years fall away in a moment. I found myself in the unconditionally restful state of mind of … as-it-is-ness (suchness).”

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