[FutureBuddha (33)] Dharmakhaya, We are the World ...

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  • Jundo
    Treeleaf Founder and Priest
    • Apr 2006
    • 40783

    [FutureBuddha (33)] Dharmakhaya, We are the World ...

    From my book ...

    ~ ~ ~

    Many Buddhists have come to taste that there is an aspect to our existence by which we can intimately identify our “self” as this whole world itself, and our self as flowing time and all other things of the world too, not merely limited to this circumscribed “me, myself, and I” sense of self which we each experience. Buddhists are not alone in this realization, however, and numerous thinkers and scientists share some equivalent viewpoint. In other words, we certainly die when this body, with its brain and sense of individuality dies, just as the historical Buddha appears to have grown old, and died, then had his corpse burned to ashes on a pyre.

    However, to the extent that “I” am also the world itself and all within it, and can come to redefine my “self” as an aspect or facet of the whole of reality, then so long as this world and all of reality keeps on keepin’ on, then “I” (and you too) keep on keepin’ on in such way.

    Of course, one word of caution: Although we use words like “whole world” or “universe” or “reality,” we come to realize this “world/universe/reality” as not really a fixed thing, but change itself, processes in motion, nothing ever still. For Zen Buddhists, in common with many process philosophers and theoretical physicists, there really is no “world/universe/reality” to nail down as a solid, static object, for all is constant motion and change. That constant motion and change is us but, out of necessity, we might call it “world” or “universe” or “reality.”

    As well, we realize that, since every thing in this world is also the world, we are each other in our respective guises. Since you are the world, and I am the world, and the mountains and stars are the world, thereby (because world is world is world is world), you are I as you, I am you as I, both of us are the mountains and stars, while they are all each other and just us.

    Imagine a water drop which comes to know itself as, not merely one little drop, but as the whole river flowing dynamically as all its drops. We Zen folks can come to feel, not only that each drop flows physically in the river, but that the whole river flows, unimpeded and completely, inside each drop, as if the entire river were contained within every tiny bead. Imaging a wave that knows it is but the sea waving, or a leaf which realizes that it is the tree leafing for a season, with the entire sea in each wave, the whole tree growing inside every atom of the leaf. Imagine a bird in flight in the sky that comes to define itself as not merely the bird, but as the flying, the air, the whole sky as one. Imagine a golden lion which is gold shaped as a lion, which is a lion giving shape to gold. The water drop may break apart and disappear, but the river flows on; a gold statue of a lion may be melted down, yet the gold remains though the lion vanishes; the sea wave might rise and fall, but the sea flows on; a single leaf may sprout and fall from a tree in one season, yet the tree lives on through the seasons; the bird may vanish from the sky, yet the sky and air continues. Like that.

    To the extent that the drop can see itself as the river, the lion as the gold, the wave as the sea in motion, the leaf as manifestation of the tree or whole forest, the bird as sky and air in flight, then each flows, shines, grows, flies, and moves long before and beyond its time.

    Further, the ability to redefine an aspect of our identity as “everything,” rather than as just this finite body and mind, does not require any resort to anything mystical, mysterious or magical (except in the sense that all this life is magical and miraculous just by being this life). Instead, it merely requires a subjective redefinition of the idea of “self” that is created by human thinking, and a redrawing of the hard borders of self that are felt to end at the skin line. Doing so is accomplished via a self-modeling of the limits and margins of the human body that is created and delineated within the spatial centers of our brain. In other words, our brain defines within itself where we start and stop, for example, at the skin line, top of the head, tips of the fingers. Our brain defines who “I am” as opposed to who “you are” and what the “mountain is.” However, we can alter that definition, knocking down the border gates, and our experience of our demarcation. We simply learn how to redraw the lines internally, through meditation, and to fuzzy-up the borders of where we start and stop. Suddenly, the hard borders of “I am you are mountain is” are not solid.

    Buddhists have various traditional techniques to soften, or fully drop, the inner sense of these hard physical borders, and to redraw the boundaries of what is “myself” in contrast to all the “not myself” creatures and objects, and even moments of time, that occupy the rest of the world. Using these learned skills, the borders grow soft, merge and interflow between all other persons, things and moments and all persons, things and moments, including ourselves. We also can experience a profound interidentity, with “me” being you who is “me-ing,” “you” and me “you-ing,” and the mountain as both of us “mountaining,” and so on and so on. We do so by retraining the brain to expand the borders to include all, to interconnect and merge the distinctions, thus to discover that the divide of self/not-self need not be so rigid as we day-to-day assume. We Buddhists can learn to reverse the mental experience of our own separation and alienation from the world, such that we come to embody our own identity with, and as, the world, and every person, worm, mountain, galaxy, or tiny mote of dust it contains, just as much our own hands or heart or face are experienced as being ours.

    Such border dropping can be recreated in laboratories. It is this sense of the wholeness, connection, and interflowing of all items and times of the universe, including you and me, that has come to be sometimes called “Buddha” in boundless sense. To distinguish this usage of the term “Buddha” from the “long ago man in India” sense of Buddha we earlier discussed, I sometimes call this the “whole works” or “timeless” Buddha (for, as this wholeness goes on endlessly or for incredibly long stretches of time, such seems truly unbounded by time). Traditional Buddhists had other fancy names for this, such as Dharmakhaya Buddha or “Buddha nature.” Maybe it is not that different from what other folks might wish to call God, especially if not simplistically imagining a fellow with a great beard who is up in the sky dispensing justice. Names don’t really matter and, in fact, are limiting and automatically misleading because the “whole” cannot be captured in a small name.

    (to be continued)

    ...


    ADDED NOTE: I would like to highlight this version of the "We Are the World" song by Chin refugee children. The Chin are a minority people in mostly Buddhist Myanmar who have been frequently persecuted (like the Muslim Ryohinga who have gotten more publicity) for reasons including that they are not Buddhist (mostly Christian) and other cultural differences.

    We may all "be the world," but the world can be cruel to the world sometimes ...


    Around 500,000 ethnic Chin live in the northwestern area of Chin State in Burma/Myanmar. The Chin are ethnically very diverse. The six main tribes of Aso, Cho (Sho), Khuami (M’ro), Laimi, Mizo (Lushai), and Zomi (Kuki) can be further broken up into at least 60 different sub-tribal categories. The Chin speak more than 20 mutually distinct languages. Despite such diversity, the Chin are unified through a common history, geographical homeland, traditional practices, and ethnic identity. The missions of the American Baptist Church starting in the late 1800s served to further unify the Chin people through religion. In a country that is predominantly Buddhist, the Chin are 90 percent Christian with most belonging to the American Baptist Church. Chin State is one of the most underdeveloped and isolated regions in Burma/Myanmar, with little in the way of road infrastructure, communication systems, healthcare facilities, electricity or running water. 70 percent of the Chin people live below the poverty line; 40 percent are without adequate food sources; and malnutrition and child mortality rates in Chin State are among the highest in the country.

    ... Since 1988, rapid militarization in Chin State combined with widespread ethnic and religious discrimination has resulted in a litany of human rights violations perpetrated by the Burma/Myanmar army. More than 150,000 Chin are currently seeking refuge in India and Malaysia, while hundreds of thousands are estimated to have moved to other areas of Burma/Myanmar, outside of Chin State.

    ...

    Until 1990 Chin could generally practise their non-Buddhist beliefs with little interference; since then the military regime appears to be involved in attempts to coerce some Chin to convert to Buddhism and to prevent proselytizing by Christians by, among other things, destroying churches, harassing, arresting and even abusing pastors.

    https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1033916/download

    Myanmar junta demands lists of churchgoers in Chin State

    A new rule requires members of Christian congregations to report their names to junta-appointed local officials seven days before going to worship services in Chin State


    According to the CHRO, over 70 religious buildings have been destroyed throughout Chin State in the two years since the military coup due to junta forces’ airstrikes and arson attacks.

    “The churches are cultural monuments for the Chin people. The military not only bombed, burned, and destroyed our churches, they’re now also restricting our rights to go to church,” said Thang Te, a Falam resident.

    The military council has not only declared martial law in seven of Chin State’s nine townships, which are strongholds of anti-junta armed groups, but has also cut off telephone connections and blocked routes that could be used to bring food supplies to the state.

    https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/myan...in-chin-state/
    Last edited by Jundo; 05-10-2023, 03:17 AM.
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