Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hebert, Barbara, "Viewpoint: Shining a Light into the Darkness" Quest 106:3, pg 10-11

By Barbara Hebert
National President

We typically think of light and darkness as opposites that represent positive versus negative, or good versus evil. The light almost always epitomizes the positive—goodness, happiness, awareness, wisdom, unity, and hope. Light represents the Divine in whatever way we define that term. Darkness frequently symbolizes the negative—evil, ignorance, hatred, pain, isolation, and selfishness. Darkness represents materialism in its most earthly form—ungodly, nonsacred, and almost hellish.

Personally, I sometimes experience cognitive dissonance when thinking of this dichotomy. At times I struggle with the concept of a division between light and darkness, because it seems to propagate the idea that light is better than darkness, and, subliminally, that lighter is better than darker. In a society that continues with rampant racism, we need to contemplate the possibility that this idea perpetuates the belief that lighter-skinned people are better than darker-skinned people. While many may deny that a discussion about light versus dark has anything to do with racism, it remains a point that we must evaluate individually and objectively. Perhaps just a small change in our language may help to end divisions among people.

In any case, the division between light and dark exists, at least in this physical realm. There is light in the daytime and darkness at night. Light and darkness work to balance each other, and as human beings, we seem to need both light and darkness in some balanced manner.

Carl Jung writes, “The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” Replacing the word “happy” with “light” and the word “sadness” with “darkness” in his statement, we read, “The word ‘light’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by darkness.” Light and darkness provide meaning for each other.

Unity versus separation (light versus darkness) is one of the great paradoxes of the Ancient Wisdom. We are One, yet we are individual. We embody the light, and we embody the darkness, and the two make us One. We experience light to bring awareness of the darkness, and we experience darkness to bring awareness of the light. We are light, and we are darkness. We are a whole that encompasses both.

We can look at darkness in terms of those places inside ourselves where we don’t shine the light of self-awareness: the subconscious, the part of our consciousness that lies below our awareness. Every one of us has aspects of our personality that we would prefer not to see, and that we definitely don’t want others to see. Therefore we hide them away in the darkness of our subconscious. We don’t look at them, we don’t see them, we don’t allow ourselves to be aware of them. What do we repress? It may be thoughts, feelings, or even actions based on selfishness, thoughtlessness, cruelty, callousness. We may repress anything that we find offensive about ourselves.

The question arises, “If all of us have these aspects in some form or other, why do we suppress them?” The simple answer is that it hurts to acknowledge those aspects of ourselves that we deem undesirable, and as human beings, we will do whatever we need to do in order to avoid this pain. Jung writes, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Repression requires a great deal of energy and effort, even though we are rarely aware of it. It requires a lot of work to not see something that is part of us. Another potential challenge of repression involves the explosive potential of these hidden thoughts and feelings. Using the analogy of a volcano may be helpful. A volcano erupts because of increasing pressure within it. Similarly, when the pressure from repressed material becomes great enough, we also explode.

My personal and professional experience indicates that these explosions tend to happen at the worst possible time and in the worst possible place. For instance, a client with whom I worked several years ago had experienced what he considered an extremely unfair accusation against him. This accusation, while never substantiated, caused great turmoil in this young man’s life, and he felt isolated, ridiculed, and humiliated. These feelings coalesced into feelings of anger. But given his life circumstances, he could not express his anger about the situation, so he suppressed it for almost ten years. He came into counseling because of difficulties with his job in retail sales. His manager had told him that if he didn’t work on his anger issues, he would be fired.

Through counseling, this young man realized that he had suppressed his feelings of anger from that previous time in his life. Anytime a customer questioned the young man, he felt unheard, ridiculed, and humiliated again. Not surprisingly, he reacted with explosive anger, couched in sarcastic and hurtful comments to customers. Shining a light on the original incident enabled this young man to see the impact it was having on his current life. This awareness allowed him to heal from the original hurt and to experience more peace than he had had for many years. As Jung writes, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.” 

This young man was able to shine the light of self-awareness into the darkness of his suppressed feelings and thoughts because the counseling relationship is nonjudgmental. As always, I am a strong proponent of counseling, but I wonder how many of our personal issues could be addressed simply by being nonjudgmental toward ourselves. If we let go of the guilt, if we accept ourselves without condemnation, how much easier it would be to shine the light of self-awareness into the darkness of repression! Even more importantly, I wonder if we would continue to repress those things about ourselves that we perceive as offensive.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” The Ancient Wisdom shares this same insight: the human experience is about learning. If we see ourselves as learners, then we may be able to give ourselves permission to make mistakes, even mistakes that horrify us. We will all—at some point—act, think, or feel selfishly, cruelly, heartlessly. How can we learn if we have not experienced the results of our thoughts, feelings, and actions? Certainly I am not advocating that we purposely make mistakes; but I am advocating that we treat ourselves with kindness and refrain from judging when we do. Jung writes, “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.”

Imagine two children playing on the playground. A six-year-old says to another child, “If you don’t play on the swings with me, I’m not going to be your friend anymore.” This statement can be perceived as selfish and hurtful. The six-year-old may even have meant to be selfish and hurtful. Do we condemn that child? Hopefully, we will recognize that this is a learning experience for both children and deal with the situation with kindness.

We can apply this analogy to ourselves. If we see ourselves as learners on the playground of life, and if we observe ourselves having thoughts, feelings, and actions that we find objectionable, then we will hopefully deal with ourselves kindly and without judgment.

Of course, recognizing that we are learners in this playground of life does not absolve us from responsibility for our behavior. Even so, nonjudgmental self-acceptance and a willingness to learn and grow may propel us on our spiritual journeys. In this manner, we allow the light of self-awareness to shine into the darkness of repression. As spiritual beings having a human existence, we are light, and we are darkness. We are a whole that encompasses both. 

Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 106:3, pg 2

 It says so in the Bible: “God is light” (1 John 1:5). As with “God is love,” we hear this statement and agree to it unthinkingly.

God is light? Really? Does that mean that when you go into a room and flip a switch, you are turning on God? Does God travel at 186,000 miles per second? This seems unlikely. Yet mystics often experience the divine as what Walt Whitman calls “ineffable light—light,  rare, untellable, lighting the very light—beyond all signs, descriptions, languages.”

A verse from the Qur’an leaves a similar impression: “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is a niche, wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is as a shining star kindled from a blessed olive tree, neither of the East nor of the West. Its oil would well-nigh shine forth, even if no fire had touched it. Light upon light” (24:35). Indeed, an-Nur, “the Light,” is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam.

These quotations evoke a mystery—“lighting the very light;” “light upon light.” Both Whitman and the Qur’an seem to be saying that there are two lights. One, we can assume, is the physical light that we all know. But then there is the other light, which is the light of God. What’s the difference?

Henri Coton-Alvart, a French alchemist, has some striking insights into the relation of spiritual light to physical light. He writes, “These regions, whose extent is the order of magnitude that we attribute to the atom or the neutron, are . . . places devoid of light, in which nothingness, the spirit of negation, rules exclusively. That is the root of matter. . . . I am saying that matter is nonlight” (emphasis Coton-Alvart’s). This quote is taken from his book Les deux lumières (“The Two Lights”), and these are the two lights he is speaking of. Indeed Coton-Alvart refers to matter as the koilon, from the Greek word for “hollow.” It is, so to speak, a place from which the divine light is absent. This is the basis of physical sight, which is paradoxically a kind of blindness.

What, then, produces this darkness that lies behind physical light, and hides spiritual light? One answer comes from the mystical treatise The Cloud of Unknowing. I will quote it in the original fourteenth-century English: 

For when I sey derknes, I mene a lackyng of knowyng; as alle that thing that thou knowest not, or elles that thou hast forgetyn, it is derk to thee, for thou seest it not with thi goostly [mental] ighe. And for this skile it is not clepid a cloude of the eire, bot a cloude of unknowyng, that is bitwix thee and thi God.

To pierce this darkness, the anonymous author of this treatise recommends a kind of meditation, using a word such as God or love: “With this worde thou schalt bete on this cloude and this derknes aboven thee. With this worde thou schalt smite doun al maner thought under the cloude of forgeting.”

So we have the familiar light of this world—which does not illumine as much as we like to think—a light beyond, and “a cloude of forgeting” that separates the two. Maybe it would be better to call it a cloud of oblivion. A Course in Miracles connects it with fear:

The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and seems to be the foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden.

Sometimes this cloud, this “circle of fear,” is cleared away, whether in meditative practice or by the spontaneous arising of mystical insight, which may only last a few seconds but gives the unforgettable vision of a world that is both quite alien and much more real than our own.

It would take some discussion to say what this world beyond is, and no sooner does one begin than one realizes that the discussion does little more than make the clouds thicker. But there is one insight that may be useful.

Tibetan Buddhism speaks of the “Clear Light.” This must mean, again, a light different from the one we see, because we can see physical light, at least under certain circumstances. The Clear Light, however, is transparent. What could it be?

I would like to suggest that this Clear Light is connected with consciousness. Consciousness is not like physical sight, at least not entirely. Physical sight requires three things: a subject, an object seen, and light to see it in. If only the first two are present, one sees nothing.

With consciousness, it is not so. If you are aware of something, that very awareness is both the seeing and the medium by which it is seen. You can see an image in your mind’s eye even if the room is completely dark. (In fact it is often easier then.)

Is it possible that consciousness, in its purest, most transcendent form, is the “light upon light” of which the mystical texts speak? I doubt that this is the whole answer. But perhaps this insight may help us strike at the cloud of unknowing and penetrate more deeply to the mystery of mind that is beyond it.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Mether, Thomas, "Meditation and Logic" Quest 106:3, pg 33-38

By Thomas Mether

Some people assume that meditative practice is meant to transcend the logical mind. This is a misunderstanding. In fact cultivating the powers of logic and reasoning is necessary for developing meditative practice. This truth can be found in a number of esoteric traditions.

Many of these traditions distinguish between two powers of mind. On the one hand is discursive reason, which reflects on what consciousness has revealed to it—what we ordinarily think of as thinking or reasoning. In various traditions this power is called manas, ratio, or dianoia. On the other hand is the power of consciousness itself, which sees directly. In various traditions this power to see directly is buddhi, intellectus, or nous. This power of consciousness to directly see sometimes apprehends an aspect of the Logos, or intelligible meaning structure or archetype of reality. This aspect of the Logos is a noetic idea. The experience of seeing it is a kind of epiphany when a noetic idea is directly apprehended by the consciousness (see Simon, Maritain, and Spruit). The first is a matter of thinking about an experience (say, of an image in the mind); the second is actually experiencing directly, without the mediation of thought. These are ideas in the true, philosophical sense; they are not to be confused with ideas as ordinarily understood. The psychiatrist and spiritual teacher Maurice Nicoll tells us:

We know the experience of suddenly seeing the truth of something for the first time. At such moments we are altered and if they persisted we would be permanently altered. But they come as flashes with traces of direct knowledge, direct cognition.

The description of an idea is quite different from the direct cognition of it. The one takes time, the other is instantaneous. The description of the idea . . . is quite different from the realisation of it . . .

Such ideas act directly on the substance of our lives as by a chemical combination, and the shock of contact may be sometimes so great as actually to change a man’s life and not merely alter his understanding for the moment . . .

We can think of an idea, in this sense, as something that puts us in contact with another degree of understanding and takes us out of inner routine and the habitual state of indolence of our consciousness—our usual “reality.” We cannot understand differently without ideas. (Nicoll, 3–4; emphasis Nicoll’s)

Real ideas are something like Plato’s Forms. They are the spiritual and intelligible dimensions of reality in which we participate both inwardly and outwardly. They are portals by which the consciousness receptively participates in Being, because they are the intelligible aspects of the inexhaustible intelligibility, goodness, and beauty of Being. As such, they initiate us into mystery.

That which experiences ideas (in the sense above) is called nous in Greek and intellectus in Latin. (Again, this is not to be equated with what we ordinarily call intellect.) The English word reason more or less corresponds with the Greek dianoia or the Latin ratio. To a great degree, the distinction between these two faculties has been lost in contemporary thought. Indeed this loss has been blamed for the rise of rationalism in Western culture.

Certainly there is an inflated rationalism present today. The philosopher Jacob Needleman relates it to his experience as an intern on a psychiatric ward. Many patients, he observed, show no lack of  reason; in fact, they can formidably deploy reason to justify their pathological forms of experience and to shut reality out. Here reason is a psychological defense formation.

Philosophy can fall into a similar state. Esotericist Frithjof Schuon says that modern philosophy “concerns itself solely with mental schemes . . . From the point of view of spiritual realization these schemes are merely so many virtual or potential and unused objects, insofar at least as they refer to true ideas” (Schuon, 2).^.

Needleman believes that if philosophy is no longer practiced as a spiritual discipline and a therapy of the soul, it becomes facile, “easy,” as opposed to genuine philosophy, which is difficult. He writes:

Maimonides explains why the pursuit of metaphysical knowledge . . . is difficult, profound, and dangerous. He who seeks this knowledge, which is equated with wisdom, must first submit to a long and difficult preparation—mental, moral, and physical . . .
            With Plato, as with Maimonides, we read that the direct search for wisdom is to be preceded by a certain training of all the natural faculties of man: the body, the emotions, and the intellect.

Note that it is not only wisdom that is so high and so difficult of attainment, and which requires such remarkable preparation. It is also the search for wisdom, the love of wisdom—philosophy, properly so-called—which requires this preparation. (Needleman, 12; emphasis Needleman’s)

For Needleman, present-day philosophy has become “easy” because it has been detached “from the goals of religion, practical ethics, and therapy, it seeks primarily to think well about problems . . . The modern philosopher, in his philosophizing, no longer loves, i.e., searches for a condition of the self, a new state of being.”

Modern philosophy prides itself on its close adherence to empirical experience, but Needleman says that this very fact detaches philosophy from its true role—serving as a difficult spiritual discipline and therapy of the soul:

Modern philosophy sought, of course, to rest itself on the touchstone of experience . . . Common human experience is the touchstone of almost all modern philosophical thought . . .

The Platonic philosophy is exemplary of philosophy as difficult precisely because the appeal to given experience is never the basis for a line of thought . . . In fact it could be said that for Plato . . . man has no experience; or, to put it another way, his experience is not anything like he imagines it to be. Therefore, the education toward philosophy must involve the acquisition by man of the ability to have genuine experience. (Needleman, 13; emphasis Needleman’s)

Since we live in a culture that is used to consuming vast amounts of information, we tend to mistake mere concepts—what Nicoll calls the “description of the idea”—for real ideas. We fail to suspect that the idea is a portal into deeper and more hidden dimensions of reality and ourselves. Even when we have an authentic glimpse of a true idea, it is inhibited by our habit to turn all ideas into conceptual tools. Thus, while a real idea may be conveying a genuine understanding, we are prevented from fully experiencing it.

Nevertheless, real ideas can catalyze inward realization, not only because they are portals to deeper dimensions of reality, but also because they lead to an encounter with the Logos, the divine intellect. All logoi (ideas) are rooted in and united by the greater Logos; each individual logos is a faint and potentially awakening trace of this Logos. Each individual logos, therefore, is also a call and beckoning toward the inexhaustible expanse of Being. Schuon writes: “When speaking . . . of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a dogmatic understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object” (Schuon, 6).

But, I believe, it is misguided to see our present situation as the result of a simple eclipse of intellectus by reason. If we look at the history of human knowledge, we see that there is as much use of reason in the premodern world, before the so-called rise of rationalism, as there is afterwards. It is not so much a question of quantity (how much reason is used) as quality (the manner and way it is used). Instead, the situation may be better described as the eclipse of authentic contemplative experience that perfects the whole person and includes both intellectus and reason.

William Chittick, a scholar of Sufism, tells us that in all spiritual traditions there are two ways of knowing. In an Islamic context, he says there are “transmitted” (naqli) and “intellectual” (‘aqli) forms of knowledge.

Transmitted knowledge is characterized by the fact that it needs to be passed from generation to generation. The only possible way to learn it is to receive it from someone else. In contrast, intellectual knowledge cannot be passed on, even though teachers are needed for guidance in the right direction. The way to achieve it is to find it within oneself, by training the mind or . . . “polishing the heart.” Without uncovering such knowledge through self-discovery, one will depend on others in everything one knows . . .

In transmitted knowledge, the question of “why” is pushed into the background. When someone asks the ulama [scholarly authorities] why one must accept such-and-such a dogma . . . the basic answer is “because God said so,” which is to say that we have the knowledge on the authority of the Quran and the Sunnah . . . Intellectual knowledge is altogether different. If one accepts it on the basis of hearsay, one has not understood it. Mathematics is a science that does not depend on authorities. Rather, it needs to be awakened in one’s awareness. In learning it, students must understand why, or else they will simply be imitating others. It makes no sense to say that two plus two equals four because my teacher said so. Either you understand it, or you don’t. You must discover its truth within yourself. (Chittick, vii–ix, 2–3)

Chittick goes on to write:

Philosophy and Sufism diverged sharply from transmitted sciences by acknowledging explicitly that the meanings of things in the world cannot be found without simultaneously finding the meaning of the self that knows . . . Masters of the intellectual approach recognized that meaning hides behind the “signs” (ayat) of God, that all phenomena point to noumena, and that those noumena can only be accessed at the root of the knowing self. (Chittick, ix)

The philosophical school known as Illuminationism (ishraqiyya; the name is derived from ishraq, light, which is central to its theology and cosmology) included many great Sufis, such as Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna, c.980–1037 AD), Suhrawardi (1154–1191), and Mulla Sadra (c.1571–1640). The Illuminationists teach that meditative contemplation requires cultivating the analytic and discursive power of reason as well as the intuitive power of immediate awareness.

Suhrawardi, for instance, discusses the mastery of illumined self-consciousness (ana’ iyya) and wakeful awareness. This is an experiential, contemplative knowing by a state of presence (al-huduri) of the subject (basir). It has two integral components: (1) the analytical reasoning power of discursive philosophizing (hikma bahthiyya) and (2) the concentrated power of direct, intuitive seeing. Neither one alone is sufficient for attaining a theosophical participation with the divine intellect (divine theosophy, hikma muta’alliha). Rather, both are necessary for achieving proficiency in illumination (al-qayyim ‘ala’ l-ishraq).

Similarly, the contemplative traditions of Judaism also hold that cultivation of higher states of consciousness is not sufficient. The whole person, including the logical and reasoning power of the soul, must be cultivated and perfected. In Kabbalah the sefirot that correspond to these two powers of mind are Chokmah (the direct seeing part, usually translated as “Wisdom”) and Binah (the logical and analytic part, usually translated as “Understanding”). The eighteenth-century Kabbalist Moshe Chaim Luzzato warns that cultivating higher states of meditative awareness will go dangerously off track if one does not perfect the soul’s analytical power. Thus for his students, training in cultivating meditative states of awareness included training in the ways of reason (derekh tevunos), for which he wrote a textbook titled the Sefer ha-higayon (“Book of Logic”). Initially the objective is to transcend the indirect mediation of ordinary discursive concepts. Once this has been achieved, the analytic and logical power can work directly upon contemplative experience. As contemplative experience becomes more experienced or grows by these two powers working in tandem together, the sefirah Da‘at (Knowledge) grows. Da‘at is realized experience or contemplative experience of God.

The Vedanta too, in all its schools, requires cultivating analytical discrimination (viveka) in addition to concentrative meditation (samadhi). Such a discrimination can discern between lower levels of apparent reality and higher levels of more authentic reality. This analytical process is called badha. Sometimes misleadingly translated as contradiction, badha refers to an insightful discernment that, in a sense, subtracts the less real from the more real. It discerns between reality and appearances that are not as they seem. The appearance has been mistaken for reality because of adhyasa—reified false superimposition. For example, think of the well-known figure that can appear both as two silhouetted faces and as a vase. With adhyasa, perception is frozen into seeing only one possible appearing—seeing only the two faces and not the vase, or vice versa. Except that in this case it is a matter, not of a kind of optical illusion, but of a distorted view of life and its existential situations.

To turn to Buddhist teachings on this topic, we can turn to the famous debate in the eighth century AD between the Indian Buddhist Kamalashila and the Chinese Buddhist Ha-shang Mahayana. This debate was precisely about the role of logical analysis in the path and its relation to the direct realization of sunyata (i.e., nirvana). Scholar Guy Newland summarizes this debate. The point of contention was the Indian and Tibetan insistence that

nondualistic insight into the nature of reality must be founded upon careful and thoughtful analysis of how things exist . . . The Chinese monk Ha-shang Mahayana—having seen this statement that meditative insight involves things such as analysis and differentiation— exclaimed, “I don’t see how this can be a sutra!” In frustration, Ha-shang then kicked the text . . . Ha-shang simply could not believe that any sutra could identify meditative insight with analysis because it was his conviction that we should dispense with all analytical thought and meditate on reality by not bringing anything to mind . . . Tsong-kha-pa [a Tibetan Buddhist sage] argues that this wrong-headed approach will leave Ha-shang and anyone who is like-minded with a great many sutras to kick . . . The liberating insight that will set us on the path to freedom is not “spacing out” or “emptying the mind”. It is a precise, rigorous meditative analysis that breaks through false appearances. (Newland, 101–02)

Ha-shang lost this debate. The Tibetans would follow Buddhist teachings from India rather than those from China.

John Powers, another scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, writes,

Buddhist meditation literature contains many descriptions of meditative trainings that lead to equanimity and insight. An important goal of these practices is the attainment of “a union of calm abiding and higher insight”, in which one is able to remain focused on a meditative object for as long as one wishes and at the same time to analyze its . . . nature. (Powers, 74)

In the early phases of training (including the early phases of mindfulness practice), the practice of meditative stabilization does appear to put thinking and meditation at odds with each other. But this is only temporary. The two were initially at odds with each other only because of the effects of the passions and vices upon them. Later, the wakeful power and discriminating power are fused. Powers elaborates:

Calm abiding is held to be a necessary prerequisite for attainment of higher insight, but meditators must initially cultivate stabilizing meditation and analytical meditation separately. When one has first developed calm abiding, one is not able to remain in that state while performing analysis, and so, one must alternate between calming and analytical meditation. Through repeated practice, however, one develops the ability to maintain the two types of meditation in equal portions at the same time . . . This, however, is not higher insight. Higher insight occurs when one’s analytical meditation itself generates mental stability and is conjoined with physical and mental pliancy. At this point, one enters into a powerful meditative stabilization that is characterized by stability and a wisdom consciousness that understands the nature of the object of observation. The combination of stability and analysis in a single consciousness serves as a powerful counteragent to afflictions and is a potent tool for developing the ability to perceive emptiness directly. (Powers, 79–80)

In this light, we return to Newland’s discussion of the development of insight in order to directly realize sunyata. Here too the purified power of logical analysis and discrimination is crucial for the more advanced levels of meditation.

To meditate on emptiness, we must first identify our most fundamental misconceptions. Through careful practice with a teacher, meditators can learn to locate within their own experience the particular sense of self that is the deepest root of cyclic misery. Once the meditator introspectively locates very precisely the target conception of self, she uses logical analysis in meditation to see whether such a self could actually exist as it appears. Using reason to prove that it does not and could not exist, she realizes emptiness. This knowledge of emptiness, the ultimate reality of all things, is a profound certainty attained through introspective meditation and inferential reasoning. (Newland, 23)

As we have already indicated, at the early phase of beginning to realize emptiness, this analytic component is still a conceptual and therefore a dualistic kind of understanding (Newland, 24).

Some may assume that when Buddhist texts speak of “conceptual constructs dropping away” in more mature meditative states, they mean that logical analysis and the powers of discrimination are no longer operating. This view appears to assume that the discriminative power of the mind only operates with discursive concepts. On this assumption, “conceptual constructs dropping away” is interpreted as meaning that all logical analysis and discrimination have also “dropped away.”

Again the assumption is wrong. The power of logical analysis and discrimination no longer works indirectly, by means of the mediation of concepts (mostly products of memory and imagination). Instead it is now directly fused with wakefulness and works directly on experience without concepts. This is what is meant in many Buddhist texts as “nonconceptual thought” or “nondiscursive discriminative power.”

In the later phase, the conceptual element drops away while the logical power of discrimination fuses with the power of yogic direct perception in meditative stabilization.

Strengthening their analysis of emptiness with the power of concentration, bodhisattvas gradually develop deep insight into emptiness. Through the practice of insight, their experience becomes less conceptual . . . Finally, they are able to know emptiness directly and nonconceptually. (Newland, 24)

Logical analysis thus can work without concepts. It works directly with or on a direct perception. Concepts are left behind, but the mental power of logical analysis fuses with direct awareness itself. And the powers of reason and logic are fused with meditative concentration.

In the Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition known as hesychasm, the logical and analytic part of the mind (dianoia) is also cultivated in order to become fused with the states of concentrated awareness (enstasis) and presence (prosuchi) as the direct power of nonconceptual analytic discrimination (diakrisis). As in the other traditions mentioned, logical fallacies and errors in reasoning are studied as a diagnostic stage on the path to self-knowledge. The kinds of fallacies to which one is susceptible are seen as symptoms of deeper emotional and character issues to be encountered and healed. They point beyond mere errors in reasoning to moral weaknesses of the heart.

In hesychasm, confessional disclosure (logismoi) to a spiritual father has a different purpose from the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession. According to the text known as the Evergetinos, “the purpose of this disclosure is not juridical, to secure absolution from guilt, but self-knowledge, that each may see himself as he truly is” (1, 20, 168–69).

The practice of confessional disclosure is part of the training of the reason to make the right distinctions, analyses, and inferences in the light of conscience (as the template of self-knowledge). It is also to detect hidden moral faults revealed by errors in reasoning and logical fallacies. As author Joseph Allen describes it, this retrospective clarity of confessional analysis slowly endows the nous with the prospective virtues of watchfulness, questioning, and discriminative discernment (Allen, 23–25). It is no longer necessary to suppress thought in order to develop the power of noetic attention. The new level of heightened awareness has become habituated so that thought is no longer a disturbance. Nous and dianoia reinforce and augment the powers of reason at a level that is hardly imagined in the modern world. Instead of being a distraction, the rational power fulfills its proper role within a nondistracted state of noetic presence of the I to itself.

Thus the study of logical reasoning is also a component of a spiritual psychotherapy and pedagogy. The third-century church father Gregory Thaumaturgos writes of another church father, Origen:

Going round and surveying us, as it were, with the skill of an husbandman, and not taking notice merely of what is obvious to everyone and superficial, but digging into us more deeply, and probing what is most inward in us, he puts us to the question, and proposed things to us, and listened to our replies. For whenever he detected anything in us not wholly unprofitable and useless and ineffectual, he would start clearing the soil, and turning it up and watering it. He would set everything in motion, and apply the whole of his skill and attention to us so as to cultivate us. (in Blowers, v)

Sources

Allen, Joseph. Inner Way: Eastern Christian Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995.

Blowers, Paul M. Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Chittick, William C. Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007.

Evergetinos. Synagoge. Athens, Greece: Mattharon, 1957.

Maritain, Jacques. The Degrees of Knowledge. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Needleman, Jacob. Consciousness and Tradition. New York: Crossroad, 1982.

Newland, Guy. Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 2008.

Nicoll, Maurice. Living Time and the Integration of the Life. London: Vincent Stuart, 1953.

Powers, John. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 1995.

Schuon, Frithjof. The Transcendental Unity of Religions. 2d. ed. Wheaton: Quest, 1993.

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Thomas Mether (Ph.D., philosophy, Vanderbilt University), has a Boehmist background in Lutheran and Russian Orthodox Sophiology. He has studied with traditional Hesychast, Ishraqi, Tantric, Eurasian shamanic, Neo-Confucian-Taoist, and Vedanta teachers. He is a Life Member of the Theosophical Society, joined the Gurdjieff Foundation forty years ago, and leads the Gurdjieff Work groups and facilitates the Theosophy study group in Nashville.

Printed in the  Summer 2018  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Katagiri, Dainin, "Light of the Self" Quest 106:3, pg 30-32

By Dainin Katagiri

Buddha’s teaching constantly tells us how sublime human life is and how great our human capacity is. In Buddhism, this great capacity is called light. Each and every one of us has this light. When you look at your life and see how selfish and egoistic human beings are, you don’t believe you have a great sublime capacity. But you don’t discover your great capacity by evaluating and judging your human value. If you are thinking in that way, you have already shut yourself off from that light.

Don’t judge yourself as selfish or egoistic only. You are something more. So whatever you think about your life, first accept yourself as a person who has a great capacity. Then, in whatever situation you may be, calm your mind and take care of your life positively. If you get angry, try to calm your mind, even if you are just pretending. You may say that pretending to be calm is not realistic, but try to calm down anyway. That is not so easy for us, particularly under difficult circumstances. But still, whatever happens, you can stop, open yourself, and try to see the whole situation. Then you can learn a lot. 

The Whole World in the Ten Directions

You have a sublime capacity to understand your life. That capacity is called light, but it is completely beyond any intellectual understanding of what your human capacity is. Beyond your human speculation, you are already great because, whatever you may do, wherever you may be, light is working with you. This is called the light of the self.

In Shobogenzo Jippo (“The Ten Directions”) Dogen Zenji (1200–53), founder of the Soto school of Zen, mentions a saying by Chinese Zen master Chosa Keishin (Changsha Jingcen, 788–868). He says, “The whole world in the ten directions is the light of the self. The whole world in the ten directions is within the light of the self.” This saying seems to present two different ideas, but actually it is one picture seen from two angles.

The Buddhist term ten directions represents the entire universe—eight compass directions, above, and below—but it implies something more than the ordinary concept of the universe. The ordinary idea is that when you were born, the universe was already here. You are born into this world, and then you try to understand it.

But if you try to understand the meaning of “the whole world in the ten directions” in the ordinary way, you will never understand it, because you were not born into a world that was already here: you and the whole world were born together. You were born simultaneously with mountains, rivers, and the whole universe. That is the Buddhist teaching of interdependent coorigination.

A mountain appears to be very stable, but actually it is moving. Mountains are alive because mountains are constantly in the process of birth. If you understand a mountain in that way, you understand that your life is simultaneously there.

Day by day, from moment to moment, your life coexists exactly with mountains and rivers; you cannot be separated. This is your everyday life. We think we know pretty well what everyday life is. But in the deeper sense, “everyday life” is the great source of the flow of life energy, digesting everything and producing new life.

In Shobogenzo Shinjin-gakudo (“Body and Mind Study of the Way”) Dogen says:

Everyday mind is always every day, throughout this world and the other world. Yesterday left from that, today comes from that place. When you go, the whole world goes. When you come, the whole earth comes. The gate of this everydayness is opening and closing at the moment, the gates of myriad, myriad beings are opening and closing at the moment.

If you read this statement in Japanese, it’s very beautiful. When I translate it into English, maybe it’s not so beautiful. But, behind the words, please try to understand that everydayness is something existing with all sentient beings; it is present with the vast cosmic universe.

Dogen is difficult to understand because he uses words to express the oneness of the whole universe. Still, even if you don’t understand exactly, when you read this statement, something appears through the words, and you are really captured by Dogen’s beautiful statement.

Every day, from moment to moment, the whole world arises like images in bas-relief sculpture. If you calm the functioning of your consciousness, you can actually see images coming up from the background of space. It’s like watching a dance—something is constantly moving. In The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra recognizes that activity as Shiva’s dance, the cosmic dance of creation and destruction. In Buddhism we say it is the continuous stream of life energy, and it is called continuous practice.

In the realm of continuous practice there is a great opportunity—you can see the universe coming up as one whole. It’s just like a television. Push the button, and the myriad beings existing in the vast expanse of the universe immediately come into one screen. That one screen is called the self.

What is this self? Is it your small, egoistic self? Can you say yes or no? The self is a picture of the whole world coming up, but it’s completely free. Sometimes it appears as your individual self. Sometimes it appears as trees, birds, or pebbles. Sometimes it appears as vast space. This is the true picture of the great self you already have.

Your true self is not something separated from others; it is interconnected and constantly working with others. Where? Not in your own small territory, it’s working in the huge universe! In Japanese, that working is called komyo—light. The functioning energy of the whole world is the light of the self. Because light is working from moment to moment, the whole world constantly manifests itself as the human world. At that time, the whole world is within the light of the self.

Light of the self is something you can know because that energy is always moving and acting in your own life. Usually you are not aware of it, but it’s true—you can taste this. You can actually realize the dynamic functioning of your own life. When you sit down on your cushion, the whole vast universe comes into you as your body, your mind, the contents of your life, and you can taste the depth of human life. Then you can stand up there and take care of everyday life as it really is. So please accept your life as the whole world, and take good care of your life.

Dogen’s Eyeball and Nose

Dogen says something very interesting about the light of the self. I don’t know if my translation is right or wrong, but in Shobogenzo Jippo he says, “It is a single sheet with the eye and its cornea.” That’s pretty interesting but not so easy to understand. In your eyeball, the cornea covers the lens. It’s transparent, so you don’t see it. When I say that the cornea covers the lens, I have already separated the cornea from the lens. But is there any space between the cornea and the lens? No, there is no gap. When your eyeball is functioning in the proper way, those two things are working together as one. If you have some space there, that’s trouble for you. Please see a doctor.

When Dogen Zenji says light of the self means no gap between eye and cornea, he means there is no gap between you as your subject, “I,” and your object, whatever it is. Words always create a gap between things, but subject and object are not actually separate: they are interconnected. Your life and the whole world are always working together as one dynamic functioning. So self and the whole world are not separated; they are the same. Whatever you do, you always do it with the whole world.

Dogen also says, “The whole world is one’s nostrils prior to the parents’ birth.” This is very strange, so what does it mean? The world prior to our parents’ birth is unknown for us, so this saying implies the whole world throughout the past, present, and future. We don’t know what that huge world is exactly, because it’s too vast, too eternal to know. But even though you don’t know, here are your nostrils! In other words, right now, right here, that huge world is your nose. This is the real existence of your nose.

When my nose appears, it is the whole universe. How? I don’t know. But if I accept that the whole universe is constantly in the process of birth, then my nose is also coming up from moment to moment. My nose appears as a particular being because the whole world is functioning as one being. So through my nose I can understand the universe that sometimes appears as time and sometimes as space. Through your nose you can learn a lot; you can know many beings, because each and every being is exactly the whole world. In Buddhism, we accept every aspect of human life like this.

Total Dynamic Activity

Why are you alive? What makes your life continue? Is it by your own effort? Well, of course you can say so, because you cannot ignore making an effort to live every day. But there is something more than that. You survive because something real is working every day. Your life is moving with the whole universe. That movement has no colors, no flavors, nothing, but it appears to you under certain circumstances. For example, when you dance wholeheartedly, you can feel that energy coming up.

When you see this energy in terms of your own life, it is called individual effort. Before that, it has no name; it is just dynamism. If we give a name to it, this movement of life is called great effort or universal effort. Universal effort is there first, and then it appears in various aspects of your life as your individual effort.

We use the terms universal effort and individual effort, but actually there is no gap between them. You take care of universal effort by your individual effort. It’s a little difficult to do this, because we are always critical about our own effort. We attach to getting a certain result from our effort. Then we judge it in terms of ideas and emotions connected with our heredity, education, consciousness, and memories coming from the past, so it’s very complicated. Universal effort is very simple. That’s why we try to understand our lives in terms of the universal perspective. How?

When you wash your face, accept washing as universal effort first, and then make your own individual effort. Deal with everything—your face, the water, your posture of standing in front of the basin—as universal activity. Through the actions of washing your face, you can go beyond your usual understanding and experience the pure nature of washing your face. This is the realm of total dynamic action. Right in the middle of taking good care of your individual effort as universal effort, the whole world comes into one screen. That one screen is the big picture of your life. When you see that living screen, you can learn who you really are.

What makes it possible for the whole world to come into one screen? It is by your own acting. When you act with sincerity and a warm heart, there is a great opportunity, a very subtle opportunity, to invite the whole world into your life. That is wonderful, but if you misunderstand acting, it is very dangerous.

The usual meaning of human action is dangerous, because when we act only on the basis of individual desires, customs, lifestyles, or heredity, we are always creating problems. That’s why people are afraid to act, why people want to withdraw from the world and be quiet. Still, wherever you may go, whatever you do, even when you are asleep, you never stop acting. Nothing stops your acting, so your activity must be refined.

In refined human activity, your whole body is in dynamism, but your mind is quiet and calm. At that time, no words are interposed between you and the universe, so your idea of a separate self disappears. If your idea of self disappears, is there no-self? Yes, that is true. You are walking in the vast expanse of the universe—with people, animals, mountains, the sky, the four seasons, space—and there is no gap anywhere. At that time you realize the big picture of your life and your great sublime capacity. 

Moving from Doubt to Wisdom and Compassion

In Buddhism, we try to be straightforward toward our great capacity, live wholeheartedly with sincerity, and display our light in everyday life as best as we can. But maybe you are skeptical of this capacity, so your mind doesn’t accept it. Maybe you understand it intellectually, but your body doesn’t accept it. That skepticism is called doubt.

For example, when I answer some question, you say, “Yes, Katagiri, I understand what you said,” then you say “but” and want to talk about it some more. Where does that “but” come from? It comes from a gap between you and your object. We are always talking about this gap and how to fill it up. That’s all right; talking is the nature of human beings. Discussion is interesting for us. But if you are always talking, you never know real reality. Finally you become exhausted.

Before you ask a question, you are already here; you are already alive. So how do you live right now? Buddhism teaches us how to straightforwardly accept how sublime human life is. That is the activity of Buddhist practice.

When you touch your real self, you experience deep communication between you and the object of your practice, whatever it is. Then you can accept something totally and deal with it straightforwardly without creating any gap. So keep your mouth shut, calm your mind, and just be present in the continuous stream of life energy.

The Buddhist understanding of the self or the whole world seems to be abstract, but it is not abstract. You can really see and touch the self. You can learn that the whole world in the ten directions is the light of the self. How? Action! Try to remember this. In the dynamic activity of your practice, something happens that you have never expected. You can learn something great. That is called wisdom.

Wisdom is a deep understanding of yourself and the whole world around you, not only what’s on the surface of life. With wisdom, you understand that your own life is simultaneously the whole world in the ten directions. Then compassion comes up, and you accept others with magnanimous openheartedness. Compassion makes you generous, and through this generosity you can live with people; you can take a breath with people.

True compassionate action is based on wisdom, so when you express compassion, it should be based on deep understanding. If you use the world just for your own life, it becomes stinky, and people don’t like you; they keep away from you. But if you act with the whole world, light appears in your everyday life. Then, very naturally, your compassion is transmitted to somebody else. People feel this. People understand. You cannot perceive it, but people immediately receive this warm communication. It’s just like lightning.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi (1928–90) was founder and abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis. He is the author of several other books, including Return to Silence and Each Moment Is the Universe.

Reprinted from The Light That Shines through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Copyright © 2017 by Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications Inc., Boulder, Colorado: www.shambhala.com.