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Enlightenment 011: A Mahayanist’s

Disappointing Rebuttal to Certain Propositions

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Earlier Set Forth by Pandit Sri Ken Teixeira

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All praise, gratitude and thanks to the sangha for allowing me to speak before you. I hope my offering proves worthy of your gracious attention.

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I reserve my highest and most effusive thanks for Pandit Sri Ken Teixeira, whose careful and often brilliant teaching sessions provoked in me an experience of unusual depth

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and power. What follows is my best effort to convey to you that experience, and its power.You have doubtless noted and possibly found curious the title I chose for this talk. I’ll clarify

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two of its stranger elements. First, why “011?” This is a computer programmers’ in-joke, a nod to Ken, who is an expert in that domain. You’ll recall how he named HIS talks:

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“Enlightenment 101.” Although he intended, I’m certain, an allusion to a typical numbering scheme for an introductory-level college course, I noticed 101 also the

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binary notation for the number 5. “011” is one of several ways to denote negative 5 in binary.Much, indeed nearly ALL of what Ken told us is unassailable. Just TWO

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elements of his argument are—to my mind—residues of view, of mental habit, of socialized thinking—in other words, of causes and conditions. As Buddhists we are taught, suspect, believe or even know

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directly that causes and conditions are impermanent, wispy, transitory, liable to—rather, GUARANTEED to disappear when subjected to examination by the mind. Causes and conditions

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CANNOT accurately reflect “Buddha mind”—our mind AS IT IS, rather than AS IT SEEMS. Thus,

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[Pause to write on board: 101 + 011 = 000. Then, underline Disappointing]Why THIS word? I selected it not from diffidence, self-aggression or self-protection.

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It’s meant to stress that a rebuttal need not set forth a contrary view. It need only deflate the original one. My hope, perverse though it may sound, is to sow confusion where you once might have felt

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clarity. You could say, I want to take us back to zero.[Return to board and circle 000.]To be effective, a rebuttal must summarize what it calls into

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question, accurately, comprehensively and without bias. There is a more mundane way in which my talk could conceivably disappoint. I took no notes when Ken spoke, and my memory is somewhat

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porous. I can only promise to try my best.As I said, only TWO of the underpinnings of Ken’s presentations gave me fits. The first one, although I need to

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mention it in case anyone accepted its premises uncritically, I can actually hurry over since Ken avoided being snared by its potential illogic.

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I’m talking about the “Selfish Gene” theory, which derives its name from the title of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’s 1976 book.

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My primary problem with Ken’s using that theory as a framework for his case are is that it needs to thread a moral quagmire parallel to early 20th-century’s Social Darwinism, which recast scientific insights

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into dubious ethical analogies validating reprehensible ideologies and social structures. Examples? “The upper classes, or the wealthy, are enjoying the just rewards of their superior genes.” Or,

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even worse, eugenics: “the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population” (Wikipedia), whose best-known adherent is, of course, Adolf Hitler.

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Selfish Gene theory has ALSO led down some moral blind alleys. One of them has the following contour: “As a mere vehicle for maximizing replication of my genes, it’s perfectly understandable that

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I, a man, would be driven to impregnate every woman I possibly can.” There’s a small step from “understandable” to “justifiable,” and some scientists haven’t avoided taking it.

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To be fair, more thoughtful ones HAVE refined the theory to protect against its more dismal consequences. More importantly for our present

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purposes, Ken didn’t “take the bait” either. For that we should all be grateful.I proceed to my second point.Ken gifted us with diagrams, MANY diagrams: well-

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conceived illustrations of the self and consciousness both as conventionally conceived (“my Self resides within this Body”), and as we learn through our practice of vipaśyanā, or analytical meditation, more

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CORRECTLY (“I HAVE a body; Self, which is AWARENESS, encompasses IT”). Ken drew several of these circles within circles to denote various individuals. Someone—to no avail, I’ve been wracking my

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brain to recall who—interrupt me if you remember—asked a question like “Does consciousness cut across these boundaries between persons?” Ken replied—although he phrased it better than this

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—“No. These are discrete occurrences.”My jaw dropped. In a matter of seconds, my mind went into full John McEnroe mode. I wanted to scream “You

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CANNOT be serious!” I wanted to leave the room. Only one thing held me back: the faint hope that he was deploying a benign and masterful technique, camouflaging his

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real purpose in order to later, better illuminate the issue.But that did not come to pass. And it took nearly a week for my outrage to settle, my mind to calm.

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Positing of separate selves is simply an error of logic, an imputation of permanence and substantiality that flies in the face of what meditation teaches us. To put it more modestly and less absolutely, it

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does not match up with what I’ve learned in pursuing understanding of Mind.I have news for you: I’m enlightened, and you are too, each and every day, for at least

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an instant. And that instant is the same for all of us (or would be if we were all on the same schedule in the same time zone). Can you guess when that instant is? Our first awakening from sleep. It’s a

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time when the flow of sensory data from our environment is experienced in an unorganized, unmediated way. Before we “assemble our ego,” before we STRUCTURE that naked experience, we see

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reality as it is. Simply and plainly put, that’s the state of enlightenment.

20th century social science and philosophy gave us a fancy

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term for such a transitional, in-between, “amid,” “on the border” state: “liminal.” I’ll use it a few more times in the next 20 minutes.

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What those western academics didn’t know is that every educated Tibetan from the 11th

century to the present knows a word describing the same concept: bardo. For a Tibetan, the moments surrounding

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birth are a bardo. So is death. But most crucially, and perhaps surprisingly, so is life!

How useful is a liminal state like waking from sleep? How

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comfortable? If you’re like me, the answer is “Not very!” Without making necessary, dualistic judgments, without sorting our experience into categories, without “shaking ourselves awake” to the

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demands of the world, then after we get out of bed we’ll find ourselves incoherent in communication, rude to our loved ones, deadly behind the wheel of our cars. We NEED a healthy ego to live in the

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material world. To LIVE our enlightened nature, in other words.Fortunately, we have a way out: the Noble Eightfold Path, which teaches us how to

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sustain enlightenment in daily life.A quote, from the Lankavatara Sutra, a central text of Mahayana, and especially revered in Zen Buddhism:

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“All objects are thought-constructions and appear like a mirage and as a city of angels in a dream. There is no past, present or future, neither permanency nor impermanence. Doing, work

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and fruition are nothing more than dream-events.”Central to ALL varieties of Buddhism is the metaphor of awakening—indeed, Buddha translates to “one who is

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awake”—but this awakening is not FROM a dream, but instead TO a dream!Another quote, this one from Joseph Goldstein:

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“In Pāli, the language of the oldest written Buddhist teachings, the belief in some core notion of self is called sakkaya-ditthi; this is sometimes translated as ‘personality belief.’ It’s said to

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be the most dangerous of all defilements, more dangerous than greed or even hatred, because [those] are rooted in that mistaken belief. This wrong view of self is central to how we go about in the world,

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and all kinds of unskillful actions come out of it.”Finally, from Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel: “To think that dualism is a problem is quite dualistic.”

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One more point, which may seem a digression, but I promise you’ll grasp its relevance to the thread of this talk in a few minutes, concerns IDENTITY.

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It’s a concept with multiple connotations. Two of the most typical are almost diametrically opposed: on one hand, sameness to the point of being indistinguishable (“These two index cards are

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identical”); on the other, an essential characteristic that definitively allows us to distinguish one thing from another. (My “Markness,” my identity, cannot be confused

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with your “Lindaness,” YOUR identity.)Over the next ten minutes, I’m going to ask a series of about a dozen questions. (Please don’t call out your answers—let us

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each contemplate them first!) I’ll read them slowly. As you consider them, please do so in light of “the dreamlike nature of reality.” [Write on board:

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Remember, at all moments we are assembling all reality “from scratch.”]When I’ve finished asking my questions, I’ll turn out the lights and we’ll meditate for 5

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minutes. Finally I’ll invite YOUR questions.

QUESTIONS

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1) If a liminal state, without ground, without a viewpoint, invites a more direct experience of reality, shouldn’t we work to prolong that state, rather than cut it short?

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2) Is building a wall around emptiness, around shunyata, anything more than an attempt to carve out, and to privatize a space: “This is mine; this is ME; this is A ‘Me?’”

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3) Since each of us has no inherently existing self, WHAT is telling us where to build that wall?

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4) What is identity?

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5) If you and I, along some dimension—say our desire to be happy and free from suffering—are identical, in what way are we distinguishable?

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6) Could anything of value arise from putting forth the mental effort necessary to identify, discover, emphasize, or even assemble from

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scratch [circle on board] those distinctions?

7) Are we not, in fact, in every significant way, identical?

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8) Is a strongly held view, by its very nature, an impediment to enlightenment?

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9) How strongly do you hold your view on this question?

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10)Why might you impute a wall between one self (oneself) and another (the Other)? Is it to protect and preserve

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something? Can you name that thing?

11)Liminal states—abodes of arisings and fallings—out of what do they arise? Into what do they

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dissolve? Now close your eyes, and invite yourself to dream for 5 minutes. Examine, with a child’s fascination, those arisings and dissolvings.