3 Zen Tips About Cause And Effect And The Spiritual Path
Yin Yang, the Middle Path, and the Pendulum of life.
For the most part, life is an extension of the law of cause and effect. This is the truth! Is there any escape? From a Zen perspective, …. yes and no. It is what it is. What I mean when I say this, is that in this life, every sense of reality we have, in every moment, a movement from one extreme to the other.
In Chinese Zen (Chan) and in Essential Taoist thought there is the concept of Wu wei — non-action, non-interference, or non-assertion of the self. Wu wei can be a powerful tool for living in the world without creating new attachments.
1. The ego resists: This resistance creates efforts and actions that in the end are an obstruction to spiritual freedom. A spiritual essence or life essence — for those who react negatively to words like God, divine, and spirit — will reach a climax in movement and revert from expansion to contraction or vice versa.
2. Everything is changing: There is always a movement from one pole to the opposite pole. The lesson is that the spirit never goes anywhere; instead encompassing all of it as well as remaining in the center of all of it as well. Spirit, whatever it may be, flows like the tides of the ocean first expanding and then contracting. It does so within its natural rhythm. Spirit never actually flows from one extreme or another. It is our perception of it that is really moving back and forth.
3. Moderation and contentment. This is the practice of ignoring the extremes and staying on what Buddha called the middle path. To do otherwise is to court reaction and struggle as you go past the line of moderation. According to many masters and sages, this action-reaction cycle and the struggle that comes with it is a true reflection of the law of Karma.
Through knowledge of the importance of choosing the Spiritual Life, you will experience a new sense of freedom. Here, you will transcend your attachments to material things. These are the very things that draw you into a cycle of first, action, and then, reaction. Attachment to the world arises in many shapes and forms. It may be greed, envy, emotional attachment, or the desire for power and influence. In the end, this attachment creates suffering. It is the daily application of these 3 tips that will help you to create the Wisdom Practice that will help you to reduce and finally end attachment and suffering.
I was a shaman’s apprentice for over 15 years with Vincent Collura. I carry with me Vincent’s message. “Many in Our Work like to say ‘Life is a school where you learn lessons’. It is a sweet saying and does have some truth to it. I, however, would prefer to frame it in the following way — Life is not school, it is a message board. If you don’t hear and see the message, then you will have to learn the lesson!”
Many students on the Path like to say “everything is an illusion.” The fact is that you cannot live sanely without some sense of ordinary or common reality. Most individuals live from day to day without being conscious of who they truly are and what the nature of the world truly is. For others, this is not so easy a task. Throughout their lives, some extraordinary individuals have a calling to expand or recreate their understanding of reality.
The western philosopher Descartes asked, “How can we be certain that what we think we see is what is actually there?”
There are things that we understood to be real when we were young that no longer seem real when seen through adult eyes. That youthful reality did exist but those perceptions from the past may not fit neatly into your adult reality.
There are as many different realities as there are people. Reality is not limited by the mind, the senses, or what you have been told it is. Walking the spiritual path will show you a deeply penetrating insight and can offer you knowledge of a reality that is beyond ordinary intellectual or emotional comprehension.
Vincent also taught me…
“…at times the extraordinary individual must act insane to themselves in order to appear normal to the ordinary person.”
Through this way of thinking, you must create two realities…
1. an extraordinary reality that reflects your spiritual intentions,
2. an ordinary reality that will allow you to function in the world of ordinary individuals — individuals who are comfortable living from day to day without being conscious of who they truly are, what the nature of the world truly is, where they are going, etc.
So, What is Reality?
It is possible that you are constantly creating new dysfunctional realities while living in what seems like a present reality? Maybe you do not even exist? If you study the great philosophers and some of the great spiritual teachers throughout history, you will see that they often approach this idea of existence from a very unconventional perspective. For them, there is a reality that we think we know but don’t truly understand. We live in change coming from a place we can’t remember as we move towards a future we cannot see. Birth and death are the only reality and we don’t understand either.
The Takeaway
The approach I have taken in my life is to consider the idea that all realities, other than love, are created by the mind through the influence of the senses. Their very existence is relative and dependent on interaction with the world. There is an authentic self that we know but don’t realize we know. If we focus on love, in all its form we can come to understand this, most important of realities.
Author: Lewis Harrison is a serial entrepreneur, and an Independent Scholar with a passion for knowledge, innovation, personal development, self-improvement, problem-solving, and being happy. He teaches Transmodern Zen and is the creator of Harrison’s Applied Game Theory, an executive coaching system. His website is AskLewisGameTheory.com.
The Book: This article is based on ideas presented in my translation and meta-analysis of the Tao te Ching; used by students and scholars of Eastern philosophy throughout the world.
“I am always exploring trends, areas of interest, and solutions to build new stories upon. Again, if you have any ideas you would like me to write about, just email me at LewisCoaches@gmail.com.
You can find all of my Medium Posts at Lewisoaches.Medium.com
………Lewis
