Lifting the veil of Isis the Buddhist way
Absolute Mind (ekacitta) wills itself, as it must, but the result is never pure Mind (cittamatra) but Mind as phenomenalized which is the macro and micro cosmos. Call this cosmos illusion or appearance but through it absolute Mind can eventually behold itself, face to face, having penetrated through all appearance thus awakening to itself. This is the highest attainment because Mind recognizes phenomena to be no more than a configuration of itself. In this sense the world while seeming to exist, doesnt actually exist, any more than does a dream. All sentient beings, although they appear to suffer relative to their strong desire for appearances, are inherently saved; this is true nirvana.
While the above sounds simple and straightforward the most difficult part for the spiritual adept concerns the penetration through the illusory veil. Every spiritual adept must, at the beginning, penetrate through this veil in order to advance on the Bodhisattva path to Buddhahood. In line with this, we are reminded of the ancient words of Isis, No mortal ever lifted my veil" (in Plutarch, De Iside, 354c).
With some deep thought on our part it is not difficult to understand why the mortal man (in Buddhism the prithagjana) cannot lift the veil of Isis. Isis, like pure Mind, is empty of determinate being. To lift or penetrate through the veillets call it the veil of illusionrequires of the adept to forgo all thought, that is, all determinate thinking (samj) insofar as each thought, no matter how subtle, is a veil.
Zen will instruct us that we have to go to our wits end and then some if we are to lift the veil of illusion and see, in an instant, pure Mind in all of its splendor (prabhsa). Certainly, no half measures! will do . Sitting on ones ass, as if sitting somehow resonates with Gautamas awaking, is out of the question.
Penetrating through the veil is much more important and difficult. To achieve this, speaking from my own experience, first one has to be put between a rock and a hard placethen lose all faith. This, particularly, means eventually to lose all faith that I can understand the Buddhas teaching especially about pure Mind. This loss is a deep, almost tearful resignation to the fact that one is a fucking spiritual moron! Sound odd? It isnt. What we dont realize is that our faith is false. It is faith that Buddhism, in someway, can be understood on our own terms. Does this sound familiar? It should, this is pop Buddhism.
With a complete loss of faith, one day or one night (in my case), seemingly out of the blue, an intuition of pure Mind comes. Suddenly, we know how to do one-pointedness of Mind, or the same, the single samadhi of Suchness. With this insight it is now possible to achieve Bodhicitta. Eventually, in a few years, if one practices the samadhi of suchness everyday, Bodhicitta follows which is more like a close encounter of the 5th kind (I have dropped hints about this in previous blogs). By this time we have a new faith. Its a faith that the human world is not what it is cracked up to be spiritually. In fact, it is quite backward.
