The basic form of Buddhist reasoning: "All 'dharmas' (including all phenomenal conditions as well as every kind of action and result of action) are temporary and limited expressions of the play of causes and effects. At the level of human awareness, all conditions are nothing but temporary forms or modifications of mind. If I react to them by attachment, I am limited to them. If I react to them by seeking an alternative to them (or an escape from them) I am still limited to them by virtue of my struggle against them." On the basis of such logic, the Buddhist schools have developed a basic and consistent orientation to the understanding of this apparent double-bind as a fundamental but conventional and emotional struggle of mind, or an unnecessary double-bind of conscious being.

This is the ultimate logic of Buddhism: Neither "samsara" (conditions) nor "Nirvana" (the absence of conditions) can be happily and finally embraced or attained. Relative to conditions there is only struggle. But the struggle is added to conditions. It is the result of attachment to conditions and the convention of independent self. Mind and self are added to or hallucinated upon conditions. The "Nature" of mind and self is not other than mind and self. It is the prior Condition of mind and self. It is not other than the world of phenomenal conditions itself, in its "natural" or spontaneous mode or moment of arising, prior to any addition or reactive qualification in the form of thought, desire, aversion, or psychic differentiation of self. The "natural" state of mind is one that does not react to conditions but is at ease, uncreated, tacitly aware of events without clinging or aversion.

From the point of view of conventional mind (or thought, which reflects, reacts to, and is superimposed upon the world as well as upon the simple awareness that witnesses the world) the world of phenomena is a double-bind of alternately pleasurable and painful limits. Thus, the mind proposes either fulfillment of pleasurable possibilities or else escape from all conditions. The proposition of pleasurable fulfillment (even at the risk of painful frustration) is the proposition of "samsara." The proposition of dissociation and escape from conditional states is the proposition of "Nirvana." Therefore, both samsara and Nirvana are conventional propositions of the mind. The two propositions are, as such, mutually exclusive or contradictory. Thus, they represent the internal contradictions, or the inherent problem-structure of the mind.

The trend of Buddhist philosophy is to criticize mind and all propositions of mind as artificial and binding artifices. Indeed, it is the convention of mind as such that is, from the Buddhist point of view, the source and essence of non-Enlightenment, or ego-bondage. And Enlightenment is, therefore, a matter of the transcendence of mind (and thus the conventional self-idea as well as all other limiting and binding conceptions).

The Awakening associated with Enlightenment in the traditions of Buddhism is an Awakening to the native and natural state of awareness prior to identification with mind. It is a matter of being aware of mental states as a simple flow (prior to any act of choice or evaluation or reaction)—and it is a matter of being thus aware of even physical states or conditions (rather than relating to such states or conditions via identification with the structures of mind). Once the position of simple awareness is established as the native state (rather than the conventions of the body-mind-self), then the ultimate "Nature" of mind and body and world events suddenly becomes obvious in the form of a tacit or "mindless" intuition.

To put it in the terms of my own Teaching, the psycho-physical contraction-reaction to phenomena produces the self-convention and the emotional struggle of mind, high and low. If this contraction-reaction is transcended, the manifest being continues to arise spontaneously in the plane of phenomenal Nature but the being abides in its native or natural state (prior to contraction-reaction and all clinging and seeking). In that native or natural state, which is unqualified or, as a Buddhist would say void or empty (since it adds nothing to what is spontaneously arising), there is blissful clarity in which the "Nature" of Nature is obvious.

In the conventions of our limited born state, we react and contract as the body-mind. Thus, we become possessed by the idea (or presumption) of limited independent self and by the flow of ideas (or presumptions) about phenomena. But both the ego-idea and the flow of phenomenal ideas are superimposed on the actual situation by the reactive contraction. If this can be rightly understood, the reactive contraction can be transcended in the equanimity of right practice. And in that self-transcending and mind-transcending equanimity, there is inherent freedom from the self-idea. Instead, there is natural abiding in the "Nature" or original state of mind. And in that native state of consciousness or being, prior to mind and the conception of self, there is neither attachment to phenomena nor the revulsion from phenomena that gets expressed in the search for a state that excludes phenomena.

In other words, "samsara" is not a problem, and, therefore, "Nirvana" is not needed as a solution. In place of conventional attachment to phenomena ("samsara") or to the absence of phenomena ("Nirvana") there is the native state of no-contraction, no-reaction, no-mind, no-ego, no-clinging, no-aversion. And the "mood" of such Enlightenment is that naturally associated with the native state of being. It is the blissful mood of innate freedom, in which phenomenal conditions are naturally or spontaneously permitted (neither sought nor suppressed) as a pure or mere event, without binding implications. On the basis of this pre-mental and pre-egoic equanimity, the intuition ultimately arises that all phenomena are a display or spontaneous modification of inherently Radiant Transcendental Being.

This is the ultimate sense of Buddhist philosophy. In Nirvanasara and in The Lion Sutra 1 (as well as in previous works) I have made it clear how this fundamental process of insight, developed in somewhat different terms as a process in practice, is also the essence of the Way of the Heart.

In the course of my own practice there arose a spontaneous understanding of the source of the "problem" that was motivating my own search. It was a matter of direct insight into the reactive contraction of the body-mind. As this insight became more and more profound, the sense of "problem" weakened. The presumed goals of religious, mystical, yogic, and philosophical effort were understood to be nothing more than attempts to solve the "problem"—but it was clear that no such solution was more than a temporary, conditional, or non-ultimate convention of the self and its problem. What was ultimately necessary was understanding and transcendence of the problem at its root (which was present psycho-physical self-contraction) and thus transcendence of the entire search for solutions built upon the problem. Thus, in the Event at the Vedanta Temple, native Enlightenment or Awakening to Truth was restored. 2

Paradoxically, the Vedanta Temple Event was followed by the spontaneous development of various "siddhis" or higher powers of manifest being. Instead of my own self-problem, the focus of consciousness was expanded, so that the mind began spontaneously to reflect the states of others—even countless others. And soon I was drawn into the Work of struggling with others in a Teaching Ordeal. In that Ordeal, a remarkable history of instructive play developed, full of extraordinary wonders and all the theatre that attends the undermining of egoic conventions in a group of ordinary people. As a result, a complete and newly considered Teaching of Enlightenment was developed, and a full culture of practice was elaborated. And it was only when all of that had stably appeared, thus fulfilling the purpose of my original submission to those who are alive in this time and place, that I was able to retire again into a relatively secluded and private circumstance—to bless all beings unobserved and to serve mature practitioners of the Way.

In summary, relative to the historical precedents for the Way of the Heart, I would say that the process of insight into the problem-consciousness is the most fundamental practice, and, therefore, there is a clear line of sympathetic affinity between the Way of the Heart and the philosophical features of traditional Buddhism. But the Realization of Transcendental Wisdom and the Transfiguring Radiance of Reality is not different from the Realization of the Transcendental Divine proposed in the schools of high Hinduism (as expressed in the Bhagavata Purana, the Bhagavad Gita, and in the spiritual demonstrations of many great "Siddhas" or Free Adepts in the high Hindu tradition, and finally epitomized in the sixth to seventh stage Teachings of the Sages of Advaitism). Therefore, the Way of the Heart enjoys sympathetic affinity with the spiritual idealism of high Hinduism and Advaitism, just as it does with the insight schools of Buddhism.

The ideal of rigorous application to Realization via devotion (or self-sacrifice) to the Radiant Transcendental Being is, ultimately, fruitful in the same sense as rigorous application to the process of insight into the conventions of the self. In the Way of the Heart, the practice of devotional idealism, or self-sacrifice into the Divine Being, is basic to the foundation level of the discipline (or the Way of Divine Communion)—although, clearly, even the foundation level of practice requires discriminating intelligence, insight into the conventions of self, conversion or release of feeling-attention from the self-contraction, and continuous maintenance of the self-sacrifice into Divine Communion via all functional and conditional structures. But rigorous application to the process of self-transcending insight is, in the Way of the Heart, most fully developed in the "esoteric" and the "radical" stages of practice (or in the progression to the Way of Relational Enquiry, then the Way of Re-cognition, and, finally, the Way of Radical Intuition). In the form in which I Teach it, the Way of Divine Communion is founded on the disposition that characterizes the ultimate or seventh stage of life. Thus, if it is rightly and rigorously engaged, it will naturally and inevitably lead to the esoteric and radical stages of practice.

The conventional philosophy of Hinduism does tend to posit a Divine Reality over against phenomena, so that the method of practice often tends to become one either of exclusive inversion toward the essential self or exclusive ascent and expansion toward the Divine and away from the grossly concentrated phenomena of body and mind. This is understood from the Buddhist point of view to be a beginner's approach to Reality, the results of which are fruitless asceticism, false views, the neophyte's "stink of Enlightenment," and an attachment to "Nirvana" (to the exclusion of "samsara") that makes native Enlightenment impossible to Realize. Likewise, in the Way of the Heart, the false effort that comes from the tendency to objectify the Divine as a concept over against and separate from phenomena must be understood as a convention produced by the ordinary self-based mind. Thus, I have communicated a Way of practice that enters into Divine Communion on the basis of Ignorance (or awareness free of mind, conventionally objectified ideas of God, problem conceptions, strategies of problem solution, and so forth). Therefore, the idealism of Divine Communion is, in my view, a viable form of the Way, once it is established on a base of right understanding and expressed as an ordeal of moment to moment self-sacrifice or self-transcendence in Divine Communion rather than a problematic effort to escape the world or the self. If the Way is engaged as self-sacrificial (or ecstatic) Communion with the Radiant Transcendental Being, then every kind of necessary insight into the self and mind will arise naturally as practice matures. But if the Divine is pursued merely by attempts to dissociate from states of mind and body, the sufferings and illusions of self are only magnified in the form of religious and philosophical conceits.

The dissociative method and its illusions have also been a part of the Buddhist tradition. The convention of dissociative effort to escape conditions has traditionally been criticized as "nihilism." And the false or illusory concretization or objectification of the Ultimate Reality or Truth has been criticized as "eternalism." The Lankavatara Sutra, one of the greatest of all Buddhist scriptures, dwells on the criticism of all such false views that come from the conventional mind in its struggle with phenomenal limitations. And what is called for is insight into mind, or the process of conceptual and experiental consciousness in relation to phenomena, so that mind (or consciousness) may Awaken from thoughts and mentally based propositions to the native state of phenomena (including the body-mind). It is natural identification with the native state of awareness (rather than conventional identification with any particular or conditional state of attention, or the suppression of awareness, or the attainment of any higher object or state of mind) that is the disposition called Enlightenment in the high tradition of Buddhism.

Ultimately, the traditions of Buddhism and of high Hinduism demonstrate the same Enlightenment in the case of actual and complete Realizers. Both traditions have provided the cultural framework for the appearance of Free Adepts. The Way of the Heart is a new tradition that refreshes the Way as an opportunity for humanity in this epoch. I have communicated this Way as I have Realized it. Likewise, I have criticized and appreciated the historical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the animistic and magical traditions of shamanism, and all the mystical cults of terrestrial and cosmic Emanationism. I have done this in order to clarify the minds of those who consider the sacred ordeal in this time and place, when the historical traditions have lost their clarity, face, and power due to the accretions of centuries of conventional influences.

Enlightenment remains the ultimate Realization of Man. It is the Truth of Nature Realized by Man, and, once Realized, it is the Truth or Radiant Reality that Outshines Man and the world. The Realization of Truth liberates, but the Truth Realized is also the Reality to be Realized for Its own sake. To Realize the Truth is to be entered into a new Destiny, gone beyond even the conventional transmissions and limitations of light in space.

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Footnotes

1. The Lion Sutra is Sri Adi Da's revelation of the wisdom of the seventh stage of life, the transcendence of attention or the practice of Enlightenment. See lionsutc.htm
For excerpt see: lionex.htm

2. Sri Adi Da's own spiritual transformation was spontaneously perfected while sitting in meditation in a small temple on the grounds of the Vedanta Society in Hollywood, California, on September, 1970. See Official Site (http://www.adidam.org/wisdom/nov97/vedanta.htm) and DAbase (vt.awak.htm) and The Knee of Listening (kneec.htm)

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