I'm reading
a book by Steve Hagen, bestselling author and renowned Zen teacher, titled, “Buddhism
Is Not What You Think”. The basic theme,
which I have seen before in Buddhist writings, is that the raw data you receive
through your primary senses is “Truth”.
After you apply thought to the data, you have corrupted the Truth with
your thoughts and previous life experiences and you no longer have Truth. That is true, but if pure perception were how
you observed the world and went no further, you would not be able to draw any
meaningful information from your perceptions.
A simple example of this would be the page you are now reading. The raw data, without thought applied, is
black spots on a white background. You
have learned to interpret these symbols as letters, words, sentences and
thoughts. You deal with them in the
English language. The same thoughts
would obviously appear differently if written in French. So, the new data that you take in is affected
by the previous truths (not a capital “T”) that you have received in your
lifetime. When I say the word “dog”, you
may envision a Toy Poodle, while my mind’s image may be of a German Shorthair Retriever. The individual’s
interpretation of any word is based on their personal, previous life
experiences. It can't be any other way. Oh, I suppose you could learn to sit still
and attempt to only take in raw data and do nothing with that data. I would rather water ski. You don't accomplish more by water skiing,
but I think it is a lot more fun.
The famous
author and philosopher, J.R. Pirtle once said, “Life is what you think.” This is a far more useful and realistic way
to view your real world. Life, to you,
can be no more or no less than what you think.
Even if you were a fundamentalist Buddhist (in other words, catatonic)
and only saw raw, unaltered data, that would be what you think. A friend of mine, a professor at our state
university, in reaction to Pirtle’s, “Life is what you think,” responded, “Sometimes
I think that life is not what I think.”
My response was, “Well, then it isn’t.”
I apologize
to you Buddhists for this blog post. I
should have written it sooner. I have
already made it a point to insult the fundamentalist Jews and Christians. Fundamentalist Muslims do not require
ridicule. They do it to themselves. But, I have held off on Buddhists and that is
probably because they claim not to be a religion and they compose only about
one percent of our nation’s population. However,
their eyes do glass over, just like fundamentalist Christians and Jews, when
they state one of the gullible beliefs of their religion. The Buddha knew and stated that he could not
pass down his wisdom. The Tao is an
individual’s journey, not a group’s. His
followers often tinkle their little bells and try to shy away from the
undeniable awareness of the concept, “self”.
Buddhists had better hold their nuttiness down or they will be
classified as a religion. I certainly can't blame them for trying to avoid that.
Comments are welcome, Old Buz (an agnostic who accepts any belief,
as long as it agrees with his own)
