Ways of Knowing
The translations of Thomas Cleary from the Daoist and Buddhist corpus
have done the world a magnificent service, in making accessible an
important and little-known strand of the intellectual development of
humanity.
A particular revelation to me has been the profound clarity of the
writings of Liu Yiming (1724-1831). A couple of quotes will give the
gist:
"The science of eternal life begins and ends with nurturing the
primordial open non-reified one true energy. There is nothing else...
An ancient classic says, 'Know the One, and all matters are concluded.'
These words can comprehend a thousand classics, ten thousand books...
It is so great it has no outside, so fine, it has no inside. Release it
and it fills the universe, wrap it up and it withdraws into storage in
secrecy. It can only be known, it cannot be said...
The Great Way is alive. It is not stuck in the realms of being or nothingness."
In the explanation of the couplet from the Hundred Character Tablet of
Ancestor Lu (7th or 8th century), Active or quiet, know the source
progenitor./ There is no thing, whom else do you seek? Liuzi says,
"The primal true one energy is the generative energy that gives birth
to heaven, earth and human beings. It contains all patterns and is
present at all times. This is what is called the source progenitor of
essence and life. Those who keep aware of this are sages, those who
ignore it are ordinary people.
The Dao mind is the source progenitor of cultivation of the Dao. The
Dao mind is the master, the human mentality is the servant. To know the
source progenitor is to have the master employ the servant. Each
action, each rest, is the operation of the Dao mind. The human mind
itself becomes the Dao mind. Inwardly there are no errant thoughts,
outwardly no arbitrary concerns. External energies cannot penetrate.
This is the realm of no-thing.
If you can reach the realm of no-thing, you find it empty and clear. There is nothing but the Dao mind. Whom else do you seek?"
Liuzi was an austere master of the northern (Clear and Serene) branch
of the Complete Reality school which was dedicated to the true
integrity of Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist spiritual knowledge. The
southern (Celestial Immortals) branch in mutual influence with tantric
teachings, originated and developed the well known qi gong, feng shui,
dao in, and tai ji practices, whereas the northern branch in mutual
influence with Zhan Buddhism, taught its followers of the danger of
getting caught up in means to the detriment of the all-at-once end of
spiritual realisation.
Liuzi has no patience for mystification - his aim is to be as clear and
simple as possible - nor with what he calls "vain imaginings". He
mentions "the 72 deluded sects and the 3600 aberrant practises" and
their pernicious uselessness - which was also the theme of the original
beshara sufis (as well as of the Quaker Friends). Practice that does
not penetrate to the living motherlode of experience of divinity is a
distraction and verging on blasphemy - as if the rituals of servanthood
could command the obedience of heaven!
He explains, "There is the life that consists of a quantity of energy,
and there is life that consists of the meaning of the Dao. The life
that is a quantity of energy is created by the universe and is
conditioned; the life of the meaning of Dao creates the universe and is
primordial... the jewel of life is hidden [by conditioning]... Using
life to the full means getting to the end of conditioned life;
achieving one's aim is to achieve primordial life."
It's not the form but the content of practice that is participation in
the living stream of Dao, sweeping us into the ocean of eternal being.
Practices are efficacious when they enable us to bypass the rational
nonsense of the cerebral cortex and so get deeper and broader than the
analytic conscious permits. The very difference between the terms used
in Daoist and Islamic esotericism helps me to read between the lines,
to hear that which cannot be said, to being known as well as knowing.
Liuzi says "When the human mentality departs, the Mind of Dao remains. This is called 'Light Shining in the Empty Room'."
In every age there is one after whom it is named; for the remaining ages, I am that one. - inscription on the tomb of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi
So the name of the age is muhyiddin - the vivification of religion, or
life-giving religion - spreading recognition of the hidden treasure
through love and knowledge.
We might say the Celestial Source or the source of the celestial; we
might talk of qiblah or the mysterious pass. Either way, what we are
addressing is the integrity of existence, the responsibility of
freedom, participation in the plenum of lacklessness, realisation of
personal transparency, the integrity of primordial, temporal and
eternal cosmic identity.
Liuzi says "It is not greater in sages, it is not lesser in common people."
With the realisation of self-responsibility comes the obligation of
service to the truth, of full and correct relationship with the living
being. Religion is vivified when it is no longer dependent upon belief
nor even faith, when it doesn't stop when the practice ceases. Daoists
call this wu wei - the enlightenment of practiceless practice.
Liuzi says, "If one can stop evil and promote good, eventually one will
reach ultimate good without evil; with true sanity always present, one
returns to the pristine state of completeness which is the order of
heaven...
Human life in this world has a mission, which alone is important; with
this direction there is life, without it there is death. If one cannot
find happiness in this mission, this direction, this order then
everything else is empty and false. That to which heaven directs
humanity is only good; if one can find happiness in that command then
this is obeying heaven. Obeying heaven is the way to obey the command;
finding happiness in the celestial mandate is the way to happiness in
heaven.
Having the direction of heaven is the greatest of possessions but
having the direction of heaven consists entirely in stopping evil and
promoting good. Stopping evil and promoting good is illumination,
obeying heaven and finding happiness in its order is strength. Strength
is the substance, illumination is the function, open awareness
unobscured embraces myriad principles and responds to myriad things.
Through clarification of the quality of illumination, one eventually
reaches ultimate good, wholly integrated with the celestial design,
nature and life stabilised. No possession is more substantial than
this, no greatness is greater than this. No external possessions in the
world can compare with it."
Life creates religion - there is life and religion is the intelligent response to life - we might say, devotion to meaning.
Religion in this sense incorporates art, science, philosophy, culture,
indeed civilisation - all practices of aspirational humanity.
The being of the Plenum - the Cosmic Identity - is omnivalent; integral
in its particularity as of its universality; immanent and transcendent;
emergent and primordial.
This life is no other than the projection of unitary being into the
eleven (or ten or twelve, or thirteen) dimensions of spacetime (or
however many degrees of freedom it takes to manifest plenary nature).
Our conscious participation in this unfolding is not limited because we
are only five-dimensional beings - it is only limited because we
believe that we are only five-dimensional beings. Our unconscious or
transconscious participation in plenary life needs no guarantee or
proof.
The human mentality is wholly instrumental in origin and method - it
turns everything into means of its own aggrandisement. It works by
dismembering reality into components and processes, by constructing
self-verifying models and conducting exercises in sophisticated game
theory.
Liuzi says, "the science of essential life begins and ends with nurturing the primordial open non-reified true one energy."
This remembrance of original nature is the antidote to our unrefined
condition of contingent closed reified false disintegrative exhaustion.
Because we have thought ourselves into that condition, we can begin to
feel our way out of the trap we have come to recognise that we have set
for ourselves.
The five dimensions of the world of common presence - the three
dimensions of space (location, extension and boundary) and the two
dimensions of time (change and memory, or entropy and information, or
experience and imagination) - constitute the minimum necessary for
existence and the consciousness of existence.
In mathematical analogy, each dimension represents a degree of freedom
more than the previous. The fifth dimension of memory allows the
comparison of different four-dimensional configurations - it is free
from the constraint of sequentiality, like the pencil's freedom from
the page is the mechanism of writing. Of course, what matters is the
meaning of what is being written, which is from the unimaginable higher
dimensions of understanding and expression.
All dimensions, outer or inner, zahir or batin, manifest or collapsed,
exist as necessary articulation of the living Plenum. It is not that
they are hidden, occult, secret, esoteric, mysterious or concealed,
just that they cannot be reduced to their expression within the world
of common presence, if that be limited to the explicable space-time
continuum.
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