A SIMPLE STATE
A SIMPLE STATE
The machine is a complex composite comprised of four lower centers. Instinctive, moving, intellectual and emotional. Each of these centers is divided into positive and negative halves, and each of these halves are further divided into an instinctive-moving part, an intellectual part and an emotional part. Every person on the planet has their psychology rooted in one of these parts of centers. Each of our machines is also a body type. Venusian, Mercurial, Saturnine, Marshal, Jovial, Lunar and Solar. More often than not though, we inhabit a combination of two or three of these types.
As well as body type and center of gravity, there is also the influence of one’s alchemy. Alchemy refers to the refinement of impressions we are naturally attracted to and allow into our existence. Alchemically in an individual may be gold, silver, copper or lead. One is not better than another, because just like center of gravity and body type, alchemy is what we’re born with and is just as mechanical as any other facet of the human machine.
There’s also the political, social and religious influences, that results in forming all the unconscious attitudes and opinions that the machine harbors. And all of us, every human being on the planet, is unconsciously subject to center of gravity, body type, alchemy, and so on, and so on and so on. Pursuing conscious evolution, the question of how to observe this unwieldily multi-faceted conglomerate we call ‘I’ becomes part of our raison d’être. And the only way to objectively observe imagination, identification, inner-considering, and all the unconscious attitudes and opinions that reside within the machine, is possible only by remembering ourselves.
As we gain being, and observe the lower centers more and more, so too does the desire and ability to be present increase. Instead of random I’s reacting to ‘the thousand natural shocks’, that is, the many and accidental stimuli that the four lower centers are subject to, the veil of imagination that gripped higher centers is gradually supplanted with introducing and prolonging the simple and inconspicuous wordless state of presence using the sequence of Work I’s. We have developed the conscious tendency of observing and studying the machine, developing a steward that limits it’s manifestations, and learning the difference between the machine and consciousness.
And then something wholly mystical starts to occur. Imperceptibly but surely, the effort of observing the complex nature of the lower self, is replaced with flashes of pure unadulterated presence. No I’s, no Work I’s. Just the simple state of a separate consciousness without opinions, judgements, wants or desires. Walt Whitman beautifully observed this: “O soul, we have positively appear'd—that is enough.” Higher centers appear.
The Zen Circle is a representation of the process of the evolution of consciousness. From the moment we enter a school with all our subjective instinctive, intellectual moving and emotional habits, with help from the Teacher and fellow students, and through the continuous practice of the non-expression of negative emotions, self-remembering and transformation of suffering, we arrive at a wordless beholding. The Zen artist portrays the process of mechanicality fading and presence emerging.
But look closely. Even as the black circle representing mechanicality fades and the white gossamer threads of presence become more definite, very discreetly the circle touches itself. A subtle reminder that even the sequence of Work I’s that introduce and prolong presence, are still in the second state of consciousness. Like Moses being denied the promised land, so neither can the steward nor the innermost chamber of the heart participate in higher centers, represented by the empty circle with no thing within it, nothing but the simple state of inconspicuous wordless presence.
Everything is simpler than we can imagine,and more complicated than we can conceive.~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
円相 (ensō), Zen Circle
Nakagawa Soen (1907-1984)
Courtesy John Stevens, Lion’s Roar
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