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1. "At the same time I suddenly woke up in the night. There was a clear-bright omnipresence, a certain transparent charge in the house. Spontaneously I went into the room and took a pen and a piece of paper. Inspired by Nothingness I started to write. In English. The writing went of its own volition, without any hesitation or thinking. There was no reflection on what I was writing. I was not controlled by an “entity”. Everything came straight from the Great Void. After I had written everything down I looked at the result in bewilderment. It resembled a Buddhist tract of sixteen parts, dedicated to the “Great Mother”, with awakening, acceptance, friendship, dedication and action as pillars, written by… Maitreya Buddha. In the end, I received the title: "The Ultimate Sutra". I looked at it with total amazement. In order to put it away for years. Until in 1998 I was to “rediscover” it and included it in my book: The Enlightened Action 2)."
1) In 1978
2) I will reveal for the first time that some years before I had the Sutra printed and sent it anonymously to approximately 500 Buddhist monasteries in the whole world; this was a contribution to the renewal of the Dharma.
2. The only thing I changed in the text is the name of the “author”. For various reasons.. First of all, the Void you really are comprises all forms without exception, not only a single one. So to give yourself a name as mentioned above does not correspond with reality. That’s why I would never do that. 1) In addition, all those who have not woken up yet or rather do not have enough knowledge of themselves yet will identify this name with you. This could lead to unwanted situations. I know myself that in principle there are no identities. “The more you become Yourself, the more indefinable you are.“ So you have two choices, either you “present Yourself” anonymously, or you adopt several names, according to each situation. Since this Existence is a continuous attempt to show something of the underlying reality, I chose the latter. 2) Are the religions not already serious enough? So it’s my pleasure to add an element which has wrongly been shifted to the background: the Existence as a “play”, as Leela.
1) In my opinion this was a „trap“ of
the Ultimate in order to test me… (haha).
2) Or simply a name, knowing it is just a name.
3. As a title of this tract the name “Maitreya Mind” was chosen. This means that it is a quality of the awareness every single one can realize. And this is precisely its purpose. I know that in the whole world there are innumerable friends who are calling for a renewal of the Dharma. It is the best ones among you who are suffering from this all-time low we all have to go through. Has the “world” not adopted the treasures of Buddhism as its own? Oh, sure, already in the first century after Sakyamuni’s awakening they were talking about decay. The power of the original impulse soon faded. The disadvantage of so many enlightened followers … is that soon controversies and fragmentation were arising. This is characteristic for the development of religions. Wasn’t it as a consequence of this that they had their very own period blossoming? The variety of Dharma is like a crystal with many shining surfaces? The change came when the “swans came to the lake” 1). It had just seemed as if Buddhism was to “conquer the West”. However, now it rather looks like “the West has taken over Buddhism”.
1) Picture for the Asian Teachers who after World War II massively came to the West, in particular into the US?
4. A common characteristic of all patriarchal religions is their obsession with suffering and death. Some claim that this stems from the time before, when men played a subordinate role in society. One of their roles was the God of Vegetation in order to make sure there was a harvest. For this reason, they had to die every autumn in order to be reborn again in spring. With the advance of their emancipation they were increasingly revolting against this role. Having escaped the dominant Goddess, Gilgamesh declined the invitation and starts his search for “immortality”. The Buddha did not have to die himself, but he was deeply shaken when he saw “disease, decay, wasting, ageing, dying and death”. So deeply that he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to exploring immortality: “escaping the cycle of birth and death”. A few centuries later Jesus was nailed to the cross. He did not just die there, no, his death served a higher goal: “defeating death” for the redemption of all of us. And today Muslims happily sacrifice their lives “for Islam”. They are doing this because they believe that the gratification of an eternal paradise is awaiting them.
5. Friends, isn’t it an instruction of Buddha himself to first scrutinize the facts before accepting them as truth? Indeed. You cannot go deep enough when exploring. For this reason, the first characteristic of your Maitreya Mind is to also include the fields which in the tradition have been brushed under the carpet. In order to be able to further develop itself, every tradition develops a certain degree of selfishness. Out of this selfishness certain teachings are accepted while others are rejected. This causes a certain rigidity, which precisely is the beginning of downfall and decay. Is this the case with Buddhism as well? At first sight it seems improbable, if you take the huge range of all kinds of denominations, sects and schools into account. If it is like this it must be very subtle. Something which is not directly recognizable. On the other hand: if Dharma still would have its original vitality how is it possible that so many have given up their hope of renewal, among them many Buddhists? Today’s lack of awareness, authenticity, vision, moral courage, connectedness and compassion is so depressing. And the symptoms become increasingly painful. In order to diagnose correctly and select the specific treatment first you have to look for the causes.
6. Well then, let me, as your best friend, tell you about my deeper insights. About Maitreya Mind which was granted to me. Oh, not that I was burning with impatience to share this treasure with mankind. To my shame I have to admit that – even though the treasure belongs to all – I have kept it for too long for myself. A kind of recalcitrance with coming out of my paradise into the open certainly played a role in that. Even though “my” consciousness is all-embracing, there had always been a certain hesitation to go among people. The confusion around me finally put an end to my indecision. In this period of despair – an existential crisis without precedence, both “internally” and “externally” - we find ourselves increasingly with our back against the wall. We don’t know where to go anymore. This is the moment for you to dare the leap into another dimension. Without help this probably won’t work. So that the cry is given out to those who have preceded you in it. In a time of profound crises we cannot resort to existing paradigms. They are a part of the problem, after all. The point is that Buddhism hasn’t got an answer for today’s crisis either. The separation of spirits as can be seen today is one between those who merely repeat the old things and those who have taken the first step toward further evolution. In order to make this more clear, I’d like to call the former the domain of Sakyamuni Mind (SM) and the latter the domain of Maitreya Mind (MM). Hopefully it is clear that this is exclusively applied as a method of teaching and not to play them off against each other. So it is my joyful task to accompany you on your path into the “promised land”, if you so wish.
7. The school of Sakyamuni Buddha is centred around “the problem of suffering“. For this reason Buddhism can be defined as an attempt to “overcome” suffering. All teachings and exercises are based on that. The point of departure are “The Four Noble Truths”. They deal with the problem of suffering, its causes and methods of overcoming it. An example of the first is Buddha’s sentence: “What, monks, is the core of suffering? Birth is suffering; decay, disease and death are suffering. Not receiving what you wish for is suffering. In short, the entire human being, with its inclination to clinging and adhering to things, is suffering.” However, this view is not completely consistent. In a way that up to today misunderstandings are thriving. Is life suffering or is exclusively clinging to life suffering? The former leads to a condemnation of emotions, desires and ambitions; while in the latter case those would in principle be okay. This is one of the first issues which definitely would have to be resolved. Buddha follows his teachings with Mutually Dependent Causes, the Eightfold Path, the Three Characteristics of Existence, the Three Jewels, the Five Skandhas and many more. All those are highlights of self-insight and as such almost indispensible for Spiritual Life. They are the result of many centuries of teachings of innumerable masters and teachers; such an abundance of tradition we in the West have at our disposal. A tradition with many faces, in which everyone can find what he or she needs. If this is beneficial in every case is a question I will not deal with for the time being. Now my aim is to find out if in Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, alongside all old and new schools, a common denominator can be found.
8. Dear friends, watch out, since on the following text my whole argumentation stands and falls. So you have to decide if you still want to continue reading any longer. My position is that whether you practise Buddhism with insight, meditation, concentration, attention, acceptance, compassion, action, loving friendliness, surrender, devotion and reverence… that consciously or subconsciously the underlying impulse is to overcome or rather get rid of suffering (as it is propagated by Sakyamuni Mind, which might very well differ from your own personal path, something I’d like to expressively emphasize on at this point!). It is actually the same as in the case of orthodox medicine. You want to get rid of a complaint or a disease as quickly as possible. For this reason you consult a doctor (not for nothing Buddha is compared to a doctor). He will examine you then and make a diagnose according to which you will be treated; all this with the aim of freeing you of your ailments and pains. In the course of this process it might well be that you get some valuable insights into yourself or your disease. Something which in the future can help you avoid the factors which have led to your disease. Undoubtedly this is the positive side of this process. If there is a result, the original drive – the reason why you went to the doctor in the first place – will not cause any troubles anymore. You are rid of your disease, and this is what it really was about. Wasn’t it? Isn’t it important with which intention you went to the doctor?
9."Looking suffering in the eye and not escaping it“, yes, those are the words of Sakyamuni Buddha. Just as modern teachers preach acceptance. It seems as if by doing so reality is accepted as it is. Wrong! Because there is a catch: “looking suffering in the eye” and so on only served as a way of getting rid of suffering. It’s a method, a trick, based on … not accepting. It is rooted in the experience that if you “allow” emotions or desires they will disappear sooner. Or, as a Buddhist teacher put it: “that you are sooner back again in your untroubled consciousness”. The emotion has no value in itself. For it belongs to the world of Samsara, the field of relativity, the cycle of birth and death which has to be overcome. Becoming aware is exclusively for its own sake, not for wholeness e.g. integration of your entire being. If this is the case, objects – internal and external ones – are only used to emphasize the quality of your watching. For instance, in Zen or Vipassana the “counting of breath” is not excercised because of gratitude towards (the nature of) our body, but is seen as an instrument for “transcending” the body. Behind this there is the impetus to become detached from the relative, from the Five Skandhas, which is seen as redemption. Ironically, in your eagerness to overcome suffering you create new “karmic burden”; i.e. self-manipulation to "overcome" it i.e. by manipulating your body. Degrading the body to an object is in stark contrast to the guidelines Buddha wanted to give mankind: to have compassion with all beings. However, Buddha himself created this “misunderstanding”. The obsession with suffering and the ambition to overcome it makes us blind for the fact that this creates new suffering.
10. Whether or not it’s the Five Skandhas themselves or only clinging to them; whether you consider suffering as real or understand that it is an illusion: the basic impulse to want to “overcome suffering” is the same. Your “ego” feels miserable, doesn’t want to suffer and thus creates the expectance of redemption. It doesn’t matter if you believe yourself redeemed already – as in the case of Mahayana-Buddhism – and that only its realization is lacking. Even if you completely believe in the promise of Amida Buddha that he will redeem you and lead you to the Pure Land, it is the underlying attitude which will subconsciously make you reject suffering. Is that so bad? Yes it is, in fact it is decisive for your attitude in life. I’m thinking of the consequences for normal everyday life or Samsara. It is about: do you live with a basic attitude of acceptance or rejection? And I am not thinking of Complete Realization, in which finally form-Void and samsara-Nirvana turn out to be one. This merely supports the claim that first you have to be enlightened before you can optimally handle suffering. Strictly speaking the opposite is true. It is a trick to think that only when you’re enlightened the “problem of suffering” will be solved. The point is that while studying the Dharma I have nowhere convincingly found a value of suffering. Only in relationship with “overcoming it” but not as a recognition of suffering as being a part of yourself, something that could have a valuable message for you. Is suffering really only an obstacle? Or is more behind it? To find out we have to examine ourselves again, deeply and honestly.
11. Friends, I feel a deep sigh coming up. After all, it is a rather big affair we are talking about. It touches the core of a spiritual-philosophical system which is already thousands of years old. How many excellent masters haven’t cared for the tradition? Their profound insights have increasingly adorned the edifice. Who am I to intervene with my layman’s wisdom? As if I could compete with all the illustrious predecessors. Imagine I am completely wrong. That in my own wisdom I just think that it is like this. I could pack up and go home then. But there are a few flickers of hope. First there was my Zen apprenticeship with Karl Graf Dürckheim; then “my” unfathomably deep Threefold Realisation; thirdly the above mentioned miracle of the Ultimate Sutra and fourthly the studies from canonical and non-canonical sources as I pursued them in the last few years.
12. The decisive role of the „outsider“ in the renewal of traditions is a well-known fact. People within the tradition are not in the right position for this, since they adhere to the paradigms which have their basis precisely in this established tradition. The former on the contrary are mostly persons who have spent a big part of their lives at the “other shore”, in order to come “back to the world” at a certain point of time and share the insights bestowed to them in their withdrawal with everyone who is interested. This was the case with Buddha, with Jesus, with Zarathustra and many others. Dear friends, I belong to this very special latter living tradition. The medium of this is the Maitreya Mind. However, Maitreya Mind does not originate from me. I do not posses it, on the contrary, I belong to it. It is an entirely new quality of realisation, equipped with qualities which are adjusted to show humanity in this unique situation of today, this very critical time, the way. It is my task to make you aware of your Maitreya Mind as the basis of your life. My deepest wish is that you realize the most precious in yourself in a way that you “will be saved”. Let me first tell you what happened to me – already quite a while ago. Thank you for your willingness to listen to me. By doing so, you are giving me the opportunity of sharing my own heritage with you. This in turn releases me of the burden I am always carrying around.
13. My time with Karl Graf Dürckheim was very instructional. Already in the beginning I had the privilege of effortlessly being able to stay in my awareness; this discovery brought me great joy: “I am here and my thoughts are there” (in front of me). I had found out. This inner leap immediately changed my identity. While shortly before I had still been identified with my self-image, now a completely new self was arising. This new self was characterized by inner stability, clarity, awareness, continuity, space, openness and connectedness. Instead of constantly being occupied by thoughts now I was resting in myself, while thoughts were passing through me. What was striking when I was sitting was the discovery that the more I was “present in my body”, the quieter my mind became. “Completeness” of body and emptiness of mind turned out to be two sides of the coin. This gave me the idea of doing an extra training in body-awareness (eutonie-German); as an endorsement of my sitting. This was successful. What was decisive in this process was in particular to consciously feel (not think!). This had the desired effect. Feeling the body was the essential part. From the very beginning contact with the floor, the feeling of clothes on the skin and consciously breathing became an inherent part of my sitting. Now there are two forms of attention: attention linked to an object (concentration/masculine) and receptive free attention (feminine). In the former, awareness is narrowing while identifying itself with an object, i.e. it “goes out”. In the latter “you stay with yourself” while impulses, sensations and so on come to you. I discovered that above all the latter significantly changed my sitting. The secret? The constant feedback between “seeing” and “feeling”. With every physical sensation my attention expanded. But it worked the other way around as well: expanding my awareness made my physical energy rise. “So the body is an ally of the mind and vice versa”, was what I suddenly understood. That such an easy exercise can lead to so much insight! Gratitude arose in me. Enthused I then (around 1978) wrote about my discoveries on “feeling awareness” to a (meanwhile well-known) Buddhist teacher 1).
1) Thich Nhat Hanh. I am still waiting for his reply.
Sitting and feeling, feeling and
seeing;
sitting in feeling awareness
14. Dear friends, in this way the first taboo was broken, i.e. that “feeling” could destroy your aware clarity. There was the traditional advice “to let it pass by”. By consciously letting it happen it turned out to be different. In the first case “sensations pass by” without any consequences for conscious perception, while in the second case a positive reaction could be experienced. And it doesn’t stop here. By re-establishing a conscious feeling of the body – I called it feeling awareness – the ground becomes an “extension of my body”. Conscious feeling and expanding my inner space were two sides of the same coin. So that in a completely spontaneously way clear insight and quality of the heart – compassion – were interwoven with each other. Often consciousness is expanding to such an extent that it surpasses the body. Crucial is that in order to trannscend the body you first have to become is e.g. re-connect to it. By expanding further, e.g. sitting in a room the chair, table, carpet, plants on the windowsill and the TV are all included in the clear presence. Everything has become a part of myself then – content of my awareness. Then you “love everything as yourself”. How strange afterwards all these theories seemed to me which say that spirituality is exclusively “about the spirit” and that the body only belongs to the “relative world”, i.e. two separate dimensions. The world as "illusion" I always felt opposition to this idea. My experience was exactly the opposite. When I went through the forest and the trees appeared in my undivided aware presence, they immediately obtained the brilliance of eternity I myself was in that moment. No illusion, no relativity, no illusory world, no samsara. So it is not just once you are enlightened, but immediately at the beginning of your becoming aware, that “Nirvana” and “Samsara” are complementary. And this condition is constantly there, since the Great Awareness exists even without me. As a consequence, the trees are constantly incorporated in that. It is exclusively our ignorance which cannot see that. Wow, I had once again taken another (huge) step in my insight. How could it be that some advanced and excellent spiritual systems had never discovered all this?
15. As a consequence I amended or changed the traditional advice of “washing the dishes with awareness”. That this advice didn’t work I had noticed very quickly. Because this kind of attentiveness soon results in “concentrating yourself”. And unfortunately this doesn’t work without a will, which anybody who has tried it will have to admit. Effort makes you tired. The consequence: before you’ll even notice you will already have been distracted by all kinds of thoughts. So, armed with my new insights (from the sitting) I started to also apply the feeling awareness to other areas of life. This means that first – before you “do the dishes with awareness” – you take the time to open yourself to the sensation of contact of your feet with the ground (while of course you are relaxing). Then you go through your whole body, for instance from the feet along the inner sides of your legs, your pelvis, your torso and so on towards the top; everywhere you feel the contact of your skin with your clothes. It is important that you “stay with yourself”, that you let the sensations come to you, instead of looking for them. In other words, constant feedback between “seeing” and “feeling”. Finally you feel the changing pressure of breathing in and breathing out. 1). Now it is important that while you start doing the dishes you stay with your conscious “feeling connection” with your body. You feel doing the dishes “from the soles of your feet”, or rather the contact of your body with its breathing. This will sooner or later result in a shortcut between your conscious contact with your body and the doing the dishes. You will reach a point where it is not longer you who is doing the dishes but your conscious body is. Doing the dishes becomes a prolongation of your conscious body. Your thoughts and whatever else will come up are only shadows, they cannot distract you anymore. Because “It” has taken over. Your doing the dishes does not anymore come from everyday’s automatisms, but directly from the Conscious Source. This can release so much energy that doing the dishes will obtain the character of an ecstasy. It can also happen that a great subtlety will come over you. It is different every time. All this will cause that you will not want to miss doing the dishes anymore. It was out of pure enthusiasm that I extended this exercise to eating, watering the plants, hovering and brushing my teeth; after a while it so became “my first nature” that I couldn’t do anything anymore without before being consciously in contact with my body.
1) To feel that you consciously receive your breathing is in stark contrast to the well-known advice of “counting your breath”. The former directly leads to consciousness, the latter comes from your mind. (Over a longer period of time it indeed may happen that it leaps into awareness. However, this is not “logical” but rather a matter of chance.)
The Maitreya Mind is inclusive
starting with your own body
16. I am convinced that at least a part of my Zen and Vipassana friends now have become interested in more of the above. And I would love to share it with them, but I would wander too far apart from the core of my story. *. I in turn will take up the thread from my point of departure again. I.e., how my understanding of “suffering” as it is considered in Buddhism changed. From my experiences several things became clear to me. For instance that not only we are unaware, ignorant about who we really are, alienated from our “true self”, but that we have also lost touch with our body (and in a continuation of that with our surroundings, with nature). So we are not only cut off from our “vertical dimension”, but also from the “horizontal” one. On the other hand, through feeling awareness our “vertical” contact is directly transferred into the horizontal. Extending our inner Space is including the world around you. Compassion is not a result of a (long-lasting) process, but is there from the first moment on. This comes from the experience that both dimensions have a positive “feedback” on each other. This insight has important consequences for your whole life. Hence, this knowledge has been of my concern ever since. It dawned on me that “definitions” depend on the circumstances. Buddha lived in a completely different time than ours. While he lived in a closed society with strict social/religious/controlled norms we live in a society which has become completely unrestrained. Instead of being members of a (coherent) society, at the moment everybody is “thrown back onto him or herself”. For Buddha, suffering meant being trapped in social conventions. Our (Western) suffering is exactly the opposite. The burden which makes us bend comes from the loss of touch with reality in its most extreme form. We have ended up in so much isolation that our suffering can be interpreted as “being cut off from heaven, earth and the community”. So ending suffering does not happen by detaching even more, but by restoring the contact with a many-sided reality. Becoming whole instead of “liberation from samsara”. This insight is one of the most important pillars of Maitreya Mind. Look for yourself and let it work out so that you may have your own insight.
* See also "The Integral Way/Path", Chapter "Breakthrough of the Light".
Sakyamuni Mind: "Life is
suffering";
Maitreya Mind: " Being cut off from life is suffering"
17. Dear friends, everyone of you knows from his or her
own experience that after you have received your first insight it will not let you go
again. This is an insight of everyone who is on the Path. I had the luck of getting a
guideline. As you certainly will know it “came over me” in the form of the
Ultimate Sutra. In it, we are asked to realize Maitreya Mind through awakening,
acceptance, friendship, surrender and action. At first sight it doesn’t seem so
spectacular. It was only a short while ago that I realized that the space Sutra gives us
is not without a reason. In our critical time it is necessary that the Dharma once again
becomes the common denominator. It is important and necessary that instead of further
fragmentation the emphasis will be put on unity (in all its diversity). So, the more
friends who join the Ultimate Sutra the better. Everyone can keep his or her loyalty
towards a specific way, teacher or course. Maitreya Mind unites instead of separating. It
is the time to concentrate powers. Nobody of us will deny that the big problems in the
“outside world” are a reflection of our “state of mind”. They are the
reflection of our ignorance. For instance, hunger in the world is a reflection of our
indifference, the enormous expansion of our cities a consequence of “being in our
minds”, the military-industrial complex together with genocide a consequence of our
imperiousness, the destruction of nature a consequence of our lack of connectedness and
the greenhouse effect a consequence of our greed.
Once you have seen that „inside“ is „outside“ you cannot ignore this
anymore. You suddenly realize that above is below – the world is the content of your
awareness – and that therefore you have a responsibility or rather a task to fulfil
in it. People who realize that they haven’t “just been born into our time”
by chance are potential incarnations of the Maitreya Mind. Not for nothing in the writings
it says that the new Buddha will not only come to transform religion but also the world.
By seeing the interdependency of “inside” and “outside” you get a
glimpse of what Maitreya Mind looks like. It is my task to spread a message “in all
directions” in order to call all friends together for a Universal Gathering of
Dharma; to talk about the new age which has dawned, about the mission of Maitreya Mind,
maybe about the “situation of the world”. Which I am doing here. 1)
1) In order to emphasize the renewal of Maitreya Mind I am consciously using as little as possible “Buddhist terminology” in this essay, or terms and ideas belonging to Sakyamuni Mind, respectively.
18. So what exactly is the essence of Maitreya Mind? How did it actually form? How do you recognize it? How can you know if it is genuine or not? All these questions have to be answered before you can connect with it. The important thing actually is to bring our deepest insights, desires and hopes to the surface – i.e. to the outside; in a way that someone else can resonate with it. Once we mutually experience “that we are on the same wavelength” a fruitful basis will have been created for “unity”. Since I took the initiative I will precede in this matter. Now, in order to understand how I define Maitreya Mind it is necessary to briefly talk about my change in life. It took place in India in 1977. Since I have already talked extensively about this in another place 1) I will limit myself to the essentials. It happened in this order: Suddenly and completely unexpectedly “my bodily energy pulled up like a fog”, from below to above, in a way in that only a ring was left on my crown. The body thus became completely penetrable, “it was out of my hands”, while the centre of my awareness was concentrating in the circle on my head. Suddenly this was destroyed by a supernatural lightning, in a way that for an instance my whole existence was annihilated: Absolute Nothingness. Immediately after I had dissolved into an ocean of Transcendental Light. The Light that I Am is timeless, limitless and eternal. Since all my functions had disappeared I do not have any memories of it, only "knowing knows". It took the whole day. Not only I was immersed in it, also my surroundings: the grass, flowers, trees, people, houses, clouds and sky; everything was part of it. The Light was all-embracing, not excluding anything. It is a condition of indescribable joy. That same night I suddenly woke up and realized that I was in an Ocean of Fear, a nightmare scenario of a time- and limitless, grey-black hell, all around me. Just like the Light the Horror also had a numinous character. It was the ultimate Angst. Everything I normally clinged to was dying within seconds: while I received “flashes” of worms eating my body perceiving the smell of corpses, while feeling ice-cold electric waves down to my bones, the “I” and everything related to it has dissolved into the Ocean. The only thing left was my pure aware presence. Since this also threatened to flow away – cause of constant panic and despair – I was forced to keep seated upright the whole night; an “empiric proof” of the fact that a Zen position is the best support of a clear consciousness. It took the whole night. In this extremely alert state “my consciousness little by little built up along the fear”, so that by the break of dawn my awareness was equally timeless and limitless. Only then fear began to fade.
1) See: "Threefold Realization"
19. Now, what exactly is the shaking news? Answer: that the Ultimate Realization is Threefold! It consists of Absolute Nothingness, Transcendental Light and the Great Death (Tibetan: Delog). Dear heaven, isn't it obvious that I needed to come to terms with this? Eventually it took me more than 20 years before I realized its complete meaning. The strange thing is that only then I could take one of the first lines of the Ultimate Sutra seriously. It was talking about “The Great Mother” as the Ultimate Reality. All the time before I had been thinking, “well, it must be like this” without ringing a bell. Only through my own misery – which hadn’t stopped despite Enlightenment 1) – it dawned on me that “there must be more”. The ultimate meaning of my revelation became abruptly clear to me. Light and Darkness had first of all been polar experiences. If they are two sides of the same coin, part of a duality, consequently Enlightenment can not be the Ultimate. Creation (the Light) and Destruction (Ocean of Horror) are two opposite, yet, complementary Cosmic Forces. Crucial was the understanding that both came from the same Source: Absolute Nothingness. Before I had been taken into the Great Light, my whole existence had been erased for a split Moment, the Complete Extinction, Emptiness beyond Emptiness. I realized that the order was essential: first Absolute Nothingness, then the Light and the Horror. In other words: Transcendental Nothingness comes before the Light. Or vice versa: the Light does not consist of itself, but is born from Absolute Nothingness. In ancient times the latter was called the Cosmic Womb or Great Mother.
1) From deep within you cannot suffer anymore. So, it is not “I am suffering” but “suffering is in me”. So I had two different kinds of suffering. The first one is “suffering from the world” and the second the attempt to use my spiritual realization for my own purposes. See "Autobiography"
20. I started to feverishly look for support for my experiences. I wanted to know whether there had been any predecessors who could confirm my Realization. After a bit of searching I found some people who had had comparable “experiences of dying” 1). However, I didn’t find a description of the Threefold Realization. Until I happened to hit upon myths of the legendary Sumer. They were talking about the “Great Mother”. There seemed to be a connection between these descriptions and prehistoric times. All cultures from back then had common ancestors who without any exception worshipped “the Mother” as the origin of everything alive. In the beginning, the masculine was playing a subordinate role. For this reason, from this time only images of the Mother or Goddess were found. The stunning thing is that the area of these excavations ranged from the outermost West of Europe to Siberia, India and China. So the later cultures must all have preserved a “memory” of the Great Mother in their collective soul. This finds its most obvious expression in Hinduism. Since in it they are talking about a law of the universe: the dynamic equilibrium between creation, preservation and destruction as aspects of the Ultimate. Even though these aspects later on “degenerated” into individual Gods like Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva, it shows the memory of an original “Cosmic Womb” is alive. The parallels to “my” Realization were obvious. The Absolute Nothing was equal to the Cosmic Void, called “Great Mother” in the Original Tradition. She is the Cosmic Womb from which everything is constantly born – both the Light and the visible world – while at the same time everything returns to her. In this I recognized my “own” Realization. The Great Light is the creative aspect of the Mother, where all life begins, while the Great Dying is the destructive aspect of Her. So, through “my” Threefold Realization the secret of the Great Mother – that which during all times had remained veiled in the fog of the myths – has become reality. As a consequence I am wondering if this also had found an echo in one way or the other in Buddhism.
1) Among others: Nangsa Obum (Tibet), Ramana Maharshi and Teresa of Avila. See the very valuable book of T.Allione "Women of Tibet"
21. The cosmos is happy that Her call has received an answer. Be happy with me. You can be sure that all pieces of the puzzle will fall into their place. Once our mind is put into order all other areas of life will follow. Now it has become clearer to me what is meant with “Nirvana”. I had been intrigued by this vague term ever since. Somehow I had the feeling that Sakyamuni Buddha had done this on purpose. Yes, I suppose he wanted to hide something that is beyond it. Only after The Great Mother had revealed Herself to me I understood. Because as I mentioned I had realized that there was something “beyond” Enlightenment. Watch out! Do not let yourself get confused by terminology. Because sometimes they call Enlightenment the “Void”. Why? Because with enlightenment the ego dissolves into infinity. To the ego, enlightenment is thus „Void”. Now if it is true that “beyond Enlightenment” there is the Ultimate Reality – called the Great Dark Mother – it can only be the “Void beyond the Void” – Nirvana.. Just like the ego dissolves into the Enlightenment/Infinity, Enlightenment constantly dissolves into the Cosmic Womb. Though Buddhists will immediately agree that Enlightenment is also “empty” in the end – since they are committed to keeping up their status – this raises a few questions. Isn't officially Enlightenment the Absolute, unchanging BuddhaNature, the dimension of the Great Certainty which is not ruled by the law of samsara? Here is the explanation: even BuddhaNature is constantly dying and being reborn. Since in the Eternal Realm there is no time, the Light is dying in the same Moment as it is born. If birth and death take place simultaneously there is the impression “in the outside” that it is absolute. It seems as if nothing leaves and nothing is added. That this only is an illusion will be obvious to you now. The conclusion has far-reaching consequences: even the Buddha nature is subject to the “cycle of birth and death”. This is like the gardener who wanted to escape death and moved to another city, in which death was already waiting for him on his arrival.
22. For the Sakyamuni Mind this means an unexpected turn. It says that nobody – not even Buddhas – can escape the “cycle of birth and death”. Isn’t that a joke? All effort for Nothing! Some will feel that the whole building of the tradition seems to be constructed on a sand bank (which can be washed away any moment). Is this the reason why the term Nirvana has always been kept so vague? Did Buddha know that his disciples could not cope with the truth? Or – let’s not beat about the bush – that it would undermine his own efforts? The surprising thing is that in the same tradition there are evident signs which suggest that very well there had been insights into the Ultimate Truth, just as described above. After all, they are constantly talking about “the Void beyond the Void”. But do they really understand what this means? Or are these just devoted (empty!) words? For instance, there is an attempt in Prajnaparamita Sutra. In this Sutra “the Void” is personified as a Goddess, also called Complete Wisdom. Superficially it seems that She symbolizes the Cosmic Womb giving birth to both BuddhaNature and the manifest universe, while both are continuously returning to Her. But is this really so? At a closer look the "Womb of all Buddha's" stands for Enlightenment! Few Buddhist realize that this isn't the Real Womb.
1) She bears a surprising resemblance to the Goddess of Wisdom from the bible: Sophia. However, the latter neither represent the “Void beyond the Void” or “Cosmic Mother”. See also "Womb of the Buddhas".
One the one hand this is confusing: "She is Complete Wisdom which is never born and never returns. She doesn’t know her equals, no matter on which level. She is Complete Wisdom giving life without giving birth to all Buddhas. By means of this sublimely Enlightened One it is only Mother Prajnaparamita who is turning the wheel of true teaching.” 1) On the other hand Sakyamuni knew that his Enlightenment wasn't the Ultimate Reality.... 1)
1) Mother of the Buddhas: Meditations on the Prajnaparamita Sutra, translated by Lex Hixon (1993 Quest Books).
Wasn’t it Sakyamuni’s difficulty to recognize this, the Buddha who warned his friends to not address him as “friend” anymore?:
"Monks, don’t address the One Who Arrived Just Now (Tathagatha) with “friend”! The One Who Arrived Just Now is a Saint (Arahant), a Completely Enlightened One (Sammasambuddha)”. (Majjhimanikaya 26I p. 171)
The non-authority who secretly wants to be the greatest authority? Who himself wanted to be the saviour despite knowing deeply that there is only ONE source of regeneration, which is the “Void beyond the Void”? In this case he would have had to put his own Realization into perspective. That it isn't absolute, but relative. Something he never did, as everybody knows. So is there actually an evolution in consciousness? If the Mother is the Unfathomable Ongoing Cause of everything She will continuously give birth to new Buddhas; all equipped with “skilful means” adjusted to their specific tasks. From the moment on in which they recognize the Mother as the Ultimate Cause they are no longer in the centre themselves, though. Their Enlightenment is no longer the source of highest authority. It is the Mother who is the Real Teacher, while the Buddhas are Her delegates. Her task is to show* the people the way back home – to the Mother. True Buddhas will thus emphasize the Way Back to the Mother as the core of their teachings. The Three Jewels will then become Four Jewels: "I take refuge in the Mother, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha“. The first Buddha after Sakyamuni who announces this insight – for the higher honour and glory of the Great Mother – is Maitreya Buddha. He is the beginning of the renewal of the Dharma. This is the reason why I ask you to realize your Maitreya Mind. In order to set in motion the wheel – originally set in motion by the Mother. We haven’t got much time left.
* The parallels with the Grail are striking. In that case it is also about re-establishing unity with the Great Mother. It is the mission of existential heroes such as Maitreya and Parzival.
23. Insight into how the „Void beyond the Void” is working – the Cosmic Void – is fundamentally contributing to understanding today’s situation we’re in. Friends, only one who has gone through this can testify it! Free yourself from your activities, your (old) fixed convictions and your ambitions. So that you may get receptive for the message of Maitreya Mind. If you are open, aware and receptive you can feel Maitreya Mind deep in yourSelf. Once you have recognized it in yourSelf, you will see it everywhere around you. For this reason I approach you as a friend in order to share the most Essential with you. To bring out the very best in you is my deepest drive. So I will start with the most important thing, which is recognizing the Great Mother as the Ultimate Truth. Her Essence is the True Void, the Dark Void that it is unfathomable. A dizzying Abyss - Absolute Nothingness - an inexplorable Bottomlessness, this is what you might be able to picture it like – in its actual sense it is unimaginable, though. Her deepest mystery is Her continuous self-emptying. Can you grasp that? No, of course you can’t. This is not a shame, no one can. How can the Absolute Void empty itself from “itself” again? Shut down your brain and remain amazed with the mystery. Her continuous self-emptying results in two movements: one from Her “centre” into the “periphery” and one from the “periphery” back to Her “centre”. The first movement is the one of Creation, the second the one of Destruction. Let’s start with Creation. Look! You can imagine it as follows.. By complete self-emptying – without Her contributing to it – the Eternal Light, the Great Consciousness, the BuddhaNature is born. It is Her “first (invisible) emanation”. Therefore She is called “Womb of all Buddhas”.* So Buddhas are sons and daughters of the Mother. Hence, not the Buddhas but the Mother is the Ultimate Cause. That this has far-reaching consequences should be obvious. What makes you a true Buddha is the insight that you are “servant”. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are Servants and Messengers (Sons and Daughters) of the Great Mother. They accept Her as their Origin, highest authority and originator.
* Which as we have seen doesn’t go far enough: read "Womb of the Buddhas".
24. Thus, to the Maitreya Mind Enlightenment is no longer central. This is the difference with Sakyamuni Buddha. The latter “achieves” “his” Enlightenment through his own efforts, his ambition. His way was climbing a mountain. That this influenced in his lessons will be obvious. Enlightenment as the result of one’s own effort. In the case of Maitreya Buddha it was the other way around. His Enlightenment came “suddenly and unexpectedly”, out of the blue. In no regard it was his own merit. On the contrary. In many different instances it is confirmed how „lazy“, „unimportant“, „insecure“ and „not too bright“ Maitreya was. His Enlightenment was a gift. However, you only get a present if you acknowledge a “giver”. And this is exactly how it is. If devotion to That-Which-Is-Higher is lacking you have to do everything on your own. Therefore the biggest trap of Sakyamuni Mind is the ambition to achieve Enlightenment. This has led to unwanted situations. Because the crucial point is that ambition originates in the ego. The ego is frustrated, cannot accept life as it is and therefore demands an “eternal bliss”. This resulted in various types of distortion. A relatively “innocent” one is that of “instant kensho” or “a spiritual quickie”. People propagating this do not realize that for every forced break-through they have to pay later on with corresponding problems when trying to integrate it. Every teacher who has realized the Truth knows from experience that the spiritual Path it is not about Satori – in general, this is easy – but the subsequent integration of the personality into a new Identity. Only when you have a certain maturity a stable Transcendence can happen. Your within will know when the time is ripe! The second big evil is that even if you should achieve an opening by “forcing” it – something which of course is possible – the underlying motivation is still not erased. Sooner or later – once the initial “elation” is over – the ego-ambition will emerge again. Like the ego adorning itself with a new tie, a new car or a new girl-friend now it will seize your spiritual “achievement”. There is a risk of you taking advantage of your Realization for your own purpose. In the tradition such an outgrow was limited spontaneously. It was a closed system of norms and values which alertly responded to such problems. Our situation is diametrically opposed to it. Since “to make a difference” is the “highest” ambition, as a consequence, hordes of people “jumped at Enlightenment”. Instead of an authentic desire for “Being”, “having” has become the incentive. Enlightenment as an object of desire, who would have thought that possible? Sakyamuni Mind hits rock bottom, since Enlightenment was „all it had“. Now if this has been corrupted – pirates got hold of it – the source of liberation is poisoned, doomed without hope. Indeed, the seed for this had been sown in the very beginning. The shattering which has started cannot be stopped anymore. It means the ending of an era.
25. However, it is even worse. Above we stated that the new Buddha Maitreya and everyone who realizes Maitreya Mind are no longer the highest authority but servants of the Cosmic Mother. They have acknowledged the “Eternally Feminine” as the Ultimate Truth and drawn their conclusions from it. This is in stark contrast to all Tantric – Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist – approaches who abuse the Feminine for their own purposes. They are insistent remains of a 2500-year-old patriarchal culture in which the BuddhaNature is considered the “ultimate” realization. The core of these practices is the “withdrawal of feminine energies” in order to achieve Enlightenment. From a spiritual point of view this is a “sin”… You just must not depreciate the Highest (in this way). It looks good: these Tibetan statues in which man reaches his spiritual orgasm. Few realize that the woman sitting on his lap – helping him realize – is only an object. in daily practice, during many centuries, after man achieving his goal the "consorts" - mostly very young girls - were just thrown back into their miserable female existence. She is no equal partner at all – least of all a Goddess – as one would think. No idealized Tibetan Goddess could change it. Are you worshipping the Divine Mother or using Her for your own purposes, that is the (crucial) question here. All patriarchal systems, Tibetan Buddhism included cultivated the latter, until this very day. Therefore they constitute a stark contrast to Great Mother Buddhism which is all about taking refuge in the Eternal Feminine.
26. So praise the Cosmic Mother. She will liberate women AND men. This is the revolutionary aspect about the return of the Great Mother. She “understood” that humanity had nothing left to fall back on. As a consequence She immediately gave birth to Maitreya Mind carrying the redemption from our anxiety. Maitreya Mind is free of ambition. This is the meaning of the myth of Maitreya Buddha. As mentioned above his Realization was granted by the Great Mother. The underlying impulse is not the one of ego-ambition but gratefulness for everything one has received. Therefore he did not “ascend” as Sakyamuni but has “descended” – from Tushita Heaven – to the people. Instead of claiming anything himself he comes as a friend. He doesn’t pretend to be the centre of the universe but comes as a delegate of the Mother, whose instructions he carries out. Friends, may your heart be open to embrace this joyful message! Let the alchemy of your deepest desire turn this message into pure gold. So that you will turn from a beggar to a king, one who selflessly spreads his treasures among the poor.
27. In order to have a deep insight we have to go back to the Cosmic Void. We have stated that in a miraculous way the BuddhaNature is born from the depth of the Womb. For this reason it is called Her Lightbody. Through the “push” from the Void – Her “urge for manifestation” – the universe is born from the Body of Light. Since the universe finally also originates from Her Void I call it Her “Material Body”. Can you follow until now? If not, put the text aside and let the emotions, intuitions and so on which might emerge act upon you (just listen to yourself). Do you feel a resonance? Okay, continue. So the Material Body emanates from the Body of Light: so the former – the universe, the world – is the content of the latter. Just like thoughts are present in you the visible world belongs to Great Consciousness. The latter proves to be all-embracing. It is the Natural Home to all living and non-living creatures. So once you are Conscious you embrace the world from the very beginning. To separate the spirit from the world does not correspond with the Truth. This corresponds with our practice of meditation, i.e. that there is a constant feedback between “Cauldron” and “content”.
Feedback with the body helps in expanding awareness. Once your inner observer is stabilized the content of your Mind can be observed: thoughts, emotions and desires. As a consequence my awareness will expand while (the energy of) “the objects” dissolves into my inner Space. Once you have discovered this you know that there is no difference between inside and outside. You won’t make the mistake then of excluding the outside world “in favour of your inner process”. In practice the inner process consists of impressions of the “outside world”. The latter are not only constant challenges – in former times you had to climb Himalaya in order to be in silence, today it is the noise around us which let you fall into silence - in order to discover that ultimately silence embraces everything, including noise.
The best proof are all these reports on Enlightenment which again and again tell us: „suddenly I heard a bird sing“, „I was wandering through the forest and suddenly a ray of light shone through the trees”, “when I read this or that sentence in a book”, “sitting on the deathbed of my father”, “when I was silent suddenly I was shocked by”… suddenly and completely unexpectedly there was a breakthrough… Who would after having discovered this still exclude the “outside world”?
28. Embracing yourself and the world, seeing that this is the natural state of awareness is a characteristic of Maitreya Mind. However, this is not the whole story. Let’s think of the Void again. It is constantly giving birth to the Lightbody while the latter is "emanating" the universe. The direction is from the “centre” to the “periphery”, i.e. centrifugal. On the way from the source to manifestation the connection with the origin is increasingly loosened with increasing distance. Finally, coherence is falling apart. The result is the fragmented society of today. Now the latter is split up into such minuscule parts that it starts to fall apart. It is the cosmic cause of disintegration and decay what is happening today*. It is a sign of the process of manifestation having reached its limits. Once it has done so – and everything indicates that – the cosmic process will turn into its opposite. Instead of further expanding the “way back” will be taken. This is called involution or shrinking. The emphasis on the way back is not on Creation but on Destruction. Since in this process everything old, fragmented, sick, ruined is further broken down and destroyed by the Void. We’re moving towards Nothingness. In Western culture this is THE reason for existential angst. The miracle is that through insight into the character of Nothingness – not as an abstraction to which only few of us can relate – but as the Cosmic Womb, i.e. as the Great Mother who “embraces everything with Her limitless love” – in which everything old is constantly being renewed we can overcome our fear. Not by evading it but by faithfully surrendering. The “reward” is a dissolving of existential angst.
* And something else has to be added. A characteristic of this process of fragmentation – to increasingly veer away from the origin – is also reflected in your inside. It is characterized by the Being falling apart in order to be replaced by Having.. Accumulating “more, more and even more” however can never satisfy your desire for the lost Being, so the latter has become an obsession. How can you satisfy your desire for love by buying new clothes? Such things again and again end in disappointment. The crucial point is that most of us know this. Therefore it is time to draw the right conclusions from your experiences. If you don’t, the Mother will undoubtedly confront you with that. For our accumulations have by far surpassed the tolerance limit of Her Void. She cannot let the excessive fluctuations of the cosmic equilibrium happen, anymore.
To resist Mother's loving interference with earthly affairs shows an ignorance with regard to the cosmic process. “Becoming aware” thus gets a completely new meaning. First of all, suffering is defined in a different way. It is the fear of Nothingness. It is the reason why we cling ot the ego. By clinging – being thrown back onto ourselves – we lose touch with a mulit-sided reality: heaven, earth and the community. Something called alienation. This ego-obsession results in an inner rigour. We lose the inner flexibility, which finally will have consequences for our mental-physical health. Working on the symptoms will only partially be successful, as you might understand. If the basic cause – existential angst – does not dissolve you cannot let go on other levels. So, look out… The ambition for Enlightenment can also be seen as an attempt to escape from the (Absolute) Void*. The ego will be delighted by your "spiritual" ambition. It will stimulate you in your "inner growth". In the end it will not help, though. So we have no choice. In order to accept basic suffering we have to face our fear of Nothingness. Isn’t it a miracle that precisely now – in this extremely critical time – the Great Mother has revealed Herself?
* Oh irony. Fear of the Void while in Buddhism – as is widely known – the Void is the all-redeeming dimension… So what has gone wrong?
29. Once you accept that, „destruction and decay“ can be seen from a completely new point of view, nonsense is turned into sense, the unacceptable accepted. First of all it is a process exceeding the individual existence by far. If you agree that an ideal life is the same as “being in harmony with cosmos” you have no choice but to subordinate to this process. Even if in practice this means that everything is being torn down. Through insight into this process – returning to the Source – you won’t want to resist against this. On the contrary. An aware person will see this as an opportunity to get rid of the accumulated burden. More so since if you are honest you’ll have to acknowledge that it was your own contribution which led to these accumulations. After all, every individual has the choice to turn towards Being or to leave it. At the same time this change is a moment of personal remorse. Of course you see destruction everywhere around you. And you know that ignorance, greed and indifference are increasingly destroying the earth. Perhaps your keeping away from this has even been rationalized through parroting “Buddhist wisdoms” such as the teaching of transience, no-mind, Five Skandhas or non-intervention. While you had invested all your energy into personal liberation with the trees and nature around you it was continuously going downhill. So you can count yourself lucky if you regret your laziness, carelessness and cowardice. It could be that the Buddist taboo of feeling has contributed to the fact that you just weren’t aware of things. Feeling is an important auxiliary function of awareness or compassion. In any case you are challenged to once again look into your most appreciated points of departure – Sakyamuni Mind. Were you critical enough or have you swallowed everything your teachers told you? If your house was built on the wrong foundation, the rest of it may look as beautiful as it may but it will sooner or later collapse.
30. So it is no miracle that finally we arrive at the core – the issue of suffering – again. It is to assume that Sakyamuni Mind – despite all “improvements” or changes which had later been made in teaching – cannot accept suffering. That this is its problem. Of course in it it is emphasized that suffering is only a sign of an unaware mind. That once you wake up suffering ceases to exist. This is correct, but this is not what it is about. The crucial point is that even though you might have succeeded, the underlying motivation – to rid yourself of suffering – as an undercurrent continues unaltered in your consciousness. So you have to pose the question for the character of suffering again. Is suffering just an obstacle on the way to liberation or does it have an “inherent” value? In the case of Sakyamuni Mind clearly the former is the case. Since its whole system is aiming at overcoming, getting rid of or eliminating suffering, no matter how you will define it. The question is if this important point of departure is the right one. The cause can be found in the Four Noble Truths. In them, two things are opposites. On the one hand there is suffering, on the other a liberation from it. This implies a value judgment: suffering is unwanted and liberation from it wanted. The crucial point now is if the whole idea that suffering has to be overcome is correct. It does not take into account what meaning suffering could have. Therefore the obsession to analyze suffering. It is fragmented into smallest parts in order to neutralize it. This comes very close to the work of a psychiatrist. He will also analyze you – according to his theory – hoping that he can find the “causes” of your problem. He has the same motivation: there is a problem which has to be solved. If this had been of use to some extent in a time in which the function of the mind was not commonly known yet, in our time, in which we have rationalized everything to pieces it is just “too much of a good thing”. So in this sense Sakyamuni Mind is “optimistic”… in thinking that suffering can be “solved”. Through insight into the Cosmic Void we now know that this is an illusion. Even on the “highest level” – Enlightenment – everything is subject to the cycle of birth and death.
31. A recent TV interview with Mattieu Ricard (19/8/2010, 3sat), famous Buddhist monk and close ally of the Dalai Lama.... shows how Buddhism is further drifting away from spiritual Truth. He declared the aim of Buddhism to be twofold: "the pursue of happiness, while trying to get rid of suffering". Although surely aimed at attracting more people, this kind of populism will inevitably undermine Buddhism further. First of all the innermost drive of people isn't "happiness" . Where people really long for is to search for Truth. They want to know the deepest Truth about themselves and the world. "Trying to get rid of pain" (again a PR stunt) shows how much Ricard sets on proselytizing through trying to attract the masses. They know that superficially people live according to the pain/pleasure principle, something Western psychology have been stressing for more that one hundred years. The former will fail, though. Because true Buddhists will not accept "happiness" as the highest Truth, while the masses have countless other ways to pursue it. It will not need Buddhism for it. In fact, a person who's life's aim is "to pursue happiness, while trying to get rid of suffering" is caught in self-centered desire. It creates a permanent inner conflict, something which we in the West call neurotic!* It thus (once again) stresses the necessity of transforming the Sakyamuni Mind which indeed aims at getting rid of suffering through escaping from the "cycle of life and death". The point is, that mankind will enter a period of time in which suffering cannot be avoided. On the contrary, it will come as a surge upon them (for one third of the population this is already the case). A simple "avoidance" will prove to be too superficial. Because what is needed is insight into the nature of suffering. People will desperately ask for the "why". At this point Buddhism will loose its leadership, because it has the wrong answer. Suffering that we people inflicted upon ourselves through our ego-actions has to be overcome by (painfully!) accepting it. We have caused it, so we have to take responsibility. We have to know its origin and its nature. It is part of us, therefore we cannot simply "get rid of it". On the contrary, once being aware of, acknowledged and felt, it has to (once again) become integrated. It is a major step on the way of becoming Whole, first ourselves, then the world "around us".
* Again, I am aware that Ricard is using his "principles" only as a strategy to attract people. Once they are involved in Buddhism, deeper truths will be shown to them. This split between "strategy" and "true aims" will prove to be a failure. though. In the rough times ahead mankind needs leadership, rather than PR stunts
32. By considering suffering exclusively as an obstacle we miss its meaning. We shouldn’t resent Sakyamuni Buddha for this. For Asians – and I’m married to one – letting suffering be is “unnatural”. Under any circumstances they will keep the (social) harmony upright. Everything which “disturbs you” is being put away, so perfectly that they don’t even feel the price they’re paying. So it is logical that they have never developed a model in which suffering is considered positively. In a culture like ours, however, we are longing not for further separation and analysis but for synthesis and becoming whole. We have a need for integration. Women will be the first ones to affirm that. Keep the law of the universe in mind for a second: the dynamic equilibrium between creation, “permanence” and destruction. While the masculine (seen from an archetypal point of view) is a reflection of “dying and being reborn” (something which women already have in them through the cycle of their menstruation), in general the talents of women are more in the area of relationships. They are a reflection of the Web of Life of the Mother, the whole mutually connected. While women represent the substance of life, it is the task of men to be subserving. While women are in the centre of life – they still take care of the family, children, education, health and so on – it is precisely them who cannot withdraw from everyday life. For this reason Sakyamuni Mind actually is a hobby for men. That women will have to accept suffering must not necessarily be judged negatively. Men will not admit this easily. But in general women are wiser, more reasonable, more emotional, more adequate, more autonomous and braver than men. Something which obviously hasn’t changed in the last 2000 patriarchal years. So the irony is that all this time men avoided the “cycle of birth and death” like the plague and were thus excluded from “liberation”. Why? The main reason they said, is that this cycle is responsible for the wheel of rebirths, something which keeps you trapped in the world of samsara. The same “cycle” – precisely when you don’t have a choice and have to accept it – now turns out to be the foundation of life, though. The world has turned upside down!
33. So somewhere there is a blind spot. Sakyamuni Mind fails in a time in which suffering has to be accepted, simply because of the fact that we will be strongly affected by it in the near future. So we need a new “model” in order to handle suffering in a more reasonable holistic way. Now that life is disintegrating on every level we no longer have a need for rationalisation. Since we have become alienated from life we long for getting in touch again. Dear friends, these are the gainings of Maitreya Mind. Obviously, you can always let superficial thoughts pass by. However, this is not possible in the case of “deep-rooted” emotions. Why? Because they are coupled to repressed fear, wishes, pain and anger from the past. You cannot just conjure them away through incantation formulas such as the Five Skandhas 1). In order to have an insight these complexes have to be (consciously) felt. Without your experiencing them they cannot be integrated. In that, the realization helps that in general emotions are energies which were so heavy in your childhood, that you could not let them be. This is the reason why you repressed them. Since it is the ego’s function to repress them (out of fear from break-throughs: an unexpectedly useful function!) it can take a long time until they emerge to the surface again. Something which happens once you’re on your spiritual path and are opening up. The more conscious you get the more repressed things will come to light. At the same time, the bigger the inner distance between you – the inner observer – and your mental processes is, the less fear builds up to be overwhelmed by them. So you allow them to come to the surface. This is the cause for the fact that in your spiritual practice sometimes things are getting rather chaotic and the expected peace and equilibrium fail to appear. Then you have the choice of repressing them again (something which would be possible through intensive meditation which is common practice!) or of consciously letting them happen. Something which might help is the insight that these emotions didn’t accidentally appear from nowhere (and you can dismiss them as annoying obstacles you don't like) but that they are your own stepchildren, parts of yourself you rejected in the past or had to suppress. These parts of yourself belong to you. For this reason you feel responsible for the fact that they have to be integrated retroactively. So you consciously let them happen. And not only that. Since they are part of your self 2) you feel a strong motivation to get to know them profoundly. This approach helps you when dropping your (natural) resistance. The miracle is that by “accepting the unacceptable” you discover its positive side..
1) „Generally“ a correct analysis.
2) Since Buddhists do not acknowledge the personality, for them there is nothing to integrate. So they never (really) face their imperfections. On the contrary, they simply ignore them. This is not only the cause of spiritual arrogance but at the same time a hindrance to further “growth”. You could say that Sakyamuni Mind is a system being stuck in Enlightenment.
34. In order to get to know something (your „self“) first you really have to have felt it. Is this not a lore we in the West have learnt, often rough-and-readily? For this reason increasingly more people have a resistance when this opportunity is taken away from them. The world has turned upside down for the followers of Sakyamuni Mind. Has the latter not tried to protect us precisely from that, undoubtedly with good intentions? However, we don’t want to be squeezed into an explanatory system any longer. Since it is thus taking away the possibility of experiencing the (emotional) depth or intensity of life. From depth arises passion and from passion strength. These are characteristics for which we are deeply longing – in our burn-out. And rightly so. In order to face today’s crisis or even consider it as an opportunity to take the next evolutionary step mankind is very interested in “passionate enlightened ones”, people who can extend their being whole into the world.. You will say: but becoming aware is the highest priority, this is where all is about, right? Well, this is another thing logically Buddha could not discover. I.e. that there is a positive feedback between attentiveness and emotions 1). Until recently we assumed that emotions would only distract awareness. Nothing is less true. If your awareness is deeply rooted in your body – which is a prerequisite (see above the interpretation of feeling awareness) – there will be a positive feedback between emotions and awareness. The reason is that in order to let emotions happen your awareness has to expand in order to overcome the natural resistance against pain, anger and fear. The more you can let your emotions be the more space your awareness will have. This is especially the case with the so-called “negative” emotions. In them, resistance is the biggest and as a consequence also the gainings. Only by letting them happen your negativity (in your inner space) is dissolved. So “be grateful” for your (negative) emotions. If you can be “grateful” for your “negativity” what can still go wrong in your life? Dear friends, this is a crucial discovery and an important foundation stone of your Maitreya Mind. Put this into practice and you will discover it for your own. By the way, in practising it it becomes clear that the process of integration is essential for your spiritual growth. For how can you pretend to be “enlightened” if there still are big chunks of repressed material inside you? You will have difficulties then. A repressed aspect – hatred for instance – can absorb all your energy for example. With every further opening energies will further blow it up. Until it will be so big that in an unexpected moment it will take the lead. Suddenly light will turn to darkness. By the way: by embracing your non-accepted parts the foundation for compassion is laid. For how can you love your fellow human beings when you’re not even able to embrace your own stepchildren?
1) Realization is not "just" Enlightenment but the integration of the personality into your New Identity. Further advantages of consciously letting things happen are among others: getting to know nature and background of your emotions; an increasingly bigger integration i.e. becoming whole; a reduction of your resistance so that a surplus of energy is being generated as well as an enrichment of your creative possibilities.
35. Summarizing the most crucial thing. "Birth and Death" appears to be the Ultimate Law of the Universe. Even on the hitherto "highest" level - Buddhahood - Enlightenment is uninterruptedly disappearing into the Bottomlessness of the Cosmic Womb Beyond, while constantly being reborn out of it. Because it happens in timelessness, death is replaced by birth in the selfSAME Eternal Moment, so that it SEEMS that Buddhahood - "contrary to the world of samsara" - is unchanging, as the official doctrine claims. In Reality it is NOT. Buddhism itself had once recognized this Truth, calling the Ultimate "Emptiness beyond Emptiness " or "Nirvana". However, in the course of time, together with the increase of spiritual ambition, this Truth was "forgotten". It means......that "escaping from birth and death" is an illusion. Note! on all other levels the "lower" level is dying into the "higher" as well. Awareness is dying into Satori, while Satori dies into Enlightenment. On a more basic level awareness is observing the ongoing flow of thoughts, emotions and desires, the latter also dying and being born. "Officially", this is "samsara" or the "world of impermanence", something that has to be "overcome" in order to attain Enlightenment. The Truth is just the other way round: both the flow, the observing awareness as well as Enlightenment.... belong to the selfsame Law of Birth and Death..... The Cycle of Birth and Death thus ruling the whole Cosmos, nothing excluded. The grave consequence is that the universal aim of Buddhism is based on a false predicament. Or worse, because by escaping from "birth and death" one withdraws him/herself from the beneficial effects of Cosmic Destruction. The latter as we know now is essential for breaking down the ego. Contrary to Buddhahood Absolute Nothingness ("Cosmic Womb") cannot be realized, attained or possessed. While ego-identification with Enlightenment - even after Enlightenment the ego comes back, a carefully kept secret - has led to the patriarchal power structure during the ages. Thus the irony: by combatting the ego (its way...) Buddhism has in fact promoted it! The cause is that it hasn't taken its own basic principle seriously. Not those who try to "escape from birth and death" but who advocates it, possess the Truth. These are in sequence: All those who acknowledge the Cosmic Mother as Ultimate Reality; those who selflessly serve Her with u.a. Maitreya Buddha as the most prominent one, founder of Great Mother Buddhism or Ekayana; those in general who have accepted "Death and Rebirth" as THE guideline for life ("Stirb und Werde" J.W.Goethe); those women who cherish their female natural cycles and..... nature as a whole, its ongoing regeneration and therefore sacredness.
"In Buddhism women are closer to birth and
death and thus
are considered ambiguous and dangerous"
(Ortner)
36. The „goal“ of your path is the Awareness of Cosmic Law, accepting "Birth and Death" as the Ultimate Truth. By taking refuge in it continuous breaking down of the ego with subsequent rebirth of the True Self is guaranteed. It is the main aim of Maitreya Mind. It is a consequence of working on becoming aware, (personal) integration and selflessly serving the other as a life-long "project". In it you don’t evade suffering. On the contrary. Supported by the insight that this is inherent in a time in which everything old is being torn down you work in accordance with the “cosmic purpose”. We are individually and collectively heading towards Nothingness. Instead of creating deepest fear we turn towards this Nothingness in order to be reborn, renewed or transformed in the Depth of its Void. So by returning to the Great Mother everything will abruptly change. Does Her Essence – the Void – not invite you to let go of everything old – to “die” – in order to be reborn again? To conquer death: not by overcoming it, but by allowing it to happen. In the centre is the acceptance of reality as it is without wanting to change anything. No escapes anymore! This is the only way to overcome our fear of Nothingness – our biggest inner obstacle. Once our New Self is reborn the next step is to reintegrate it into the web of life of the Mother. Hasn’t the existential suffering alienated us from reality, not only on a vertical but also on a horizontal level? So simply waking up is not enough. Those who do so refuse to give up their individualism – now adorned with a new quality.... No, the ultimate fulfilment is to become part of the Whole again and this on every level. The art of living is the integration of all dimensions. There is no separation between “spirituality” and the world. Everything is part of the all-embracing Cosmic Law. E.g. it is not a question of pursuing awareness on the one hand and “doing something for the world on the other”. Since the world is the content of your awareness you spontaneously embrace everything. It is the essence of compassion. In the New Era which has started rightnow the new Teachers are the Cosmic Mother and Her closest servants, women and nature. The Message of the Mother is spreading rapidly. So the situation is not as gloomy as you think. What is important is that everybody comes out of his cocoon in order to connect with each other. This is the priority of our time. This is what will neutralize our existential suffering – individualism and materialism. This is what puts the Dharma into movement again. Everything according to the motto of “unity in diversity”. Unity is the Great Mother, the Only one – I’d like to emphasize on that – who can bring together all fractions. So let’s praise the Mother!
JAI MATA DI
(May the Mother prevail)
Many thanks to Susan Bernhardt for this excellent translation
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