KWOON - Threefold Lotus Martial Arts

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of USAWKF

On Becoming

I have written and quoted many texts regarding our state of "becoming". The evolution of consciousness, if you will, which we experience and to which we must ponder our "real" selves. In all this discussion it has been perhaps too easily forgotten that the goal is to "Be", but not the "being" of this phenomenal world as opposed to pure enlightened, illuminated "being". To address this confusion I will introduce a few terms.

In our present state, we humans experience life through the construct of complex associations and accepted "description" which we will term the world of "name" and "form". For example, when we "see" a chair, we all agree to certain characteristics of what is "chair". Predominantly, "chairs" have four "legs", a "seat", a "back", and perhaps even a "Cushion". Why all the quotation marks? Well, if I asked you to recite the characteristics of "Chair", would either of us expect a chair to suddenly materialize before us? No. The point is that a "chair" is a label for an agreed upon list of characteristics we "see" and use. Let me offer a more digestible example. Have you ever wondered why the colour "yellow" is so called? What makes it "yellow"? In point of fact, it is very well studied that the "colour" we "see" is the result of light particles absorbed and reflected from the surface of an "object" that we receive into our optical nerves as a bioelectric signal which then triggers the brains associative functions to search for a previously learned association to assign that sensation the conventional cognitive response. In other words, "yellow" is simply so because the series of sensations acting upon our minds is accepted and typed to be so.

Now consider that all phenomena are "known" in exactly the same way. Not just "things" but thoughts. Why do you get hungry when you smell food? It isn't instinct, which would drive you to hunt, it is the sensory recollection that makes your mouth water, the emotive response to the odours of prepared foods, the emotions given free reign to elicit all manner of physical and emotional response. What a minute! Who is in control here? And now you have arrived at the crux of our dilemma.

The science of the mind views the "normal" human "reality" as a conditioned reality. The conditions are all the rules, descriptions, associations, etc. made in order that we might experience this world of phenomena in some coherent fashion. Of course, we have all heard the simile: "Ten people walk through a garden past a fountain and then meet later in a room. When asked about the fountain individually, each of the ten people remembers the fountain differently." So even our elaborate efforts to create stability to this world of phenomena is obviously flawed, even to the point of our entertainment. This conditioned "reality" is named in the Pali texts as "Samsara". Samsara is the world of the conditioned, the illusory "reality" created by mind to experience the "subject", the self. Herein is the duality of Samsaric existence. The Yin and Yang if you will. For how could one locate the "I" without "other" in the Samsaric world is impossible without differentiation, subject and object.

So as conditioned existence continues to "grow", or "evolve" simply due to duration, we are moulded by our Samsaric illusions. This too is "becoming", but certainly not a noble or even "real" "becoming". More to the point, this is the defilement of true self, the gradual path of greater and greater attachments to false imaginings and distractions from the true conscious, awakened, directed self.

And so we have discussed at length methods of re-awakening, re-directing, and reversing the control by the mind to the controlling the mind and harnessing its capabilities for introspection and discovery of that which is not of the world of "name " and "form", but transcendent. This too is "becoming". However, this "becoming" is of a non-Samsaric" existence, an extra-Samsaric "reality" free from conditioned reality. And this is of great difficulty and of great value, but, lest we forget, the goal is not continued struggle to become. The goal, in fact, is to achieve the "becoming" and to finally "Be". Remembering always the goal to "Be" is not related in any way as to the Samsaric "be"-ing. To "be" in the conditioned world is to "be" deluded, lost and agitated, in a condition of extreme unrest. In the ancient Pali texts, this is named "Dukkha". Often translated in modern times as simply, suffering. But Dukkha is more complex than suffering for it includes all the conditions of suffering, all the causes of suffering.

This goal of ascesis and practice and of awakening is achievable in this life, in this moment. The one who achieves it is one who is the cause and effect master of self. A master of motion does not move himself, but inspires motion and directs action, but he himself does not act, in the sense that he is not transported; he is not involved in the action. He IS not action; he IS on the other hand, an impassive, utterly calm and imperative superiority, from whom action proceeds and on whom it depends.

As opposed to this goal of true and mastered action on the basis of purification and renunciation of all conditioned "reality" of the Samsaric world, one who acts while identifying himself with his action, impulsively, urged by passion, by desire, by the irrational, by restless need or vulgar interests, such a one does not really act, but is acted upon. His is a passive action; he stands under the auspices of the Chthonic rather than the Assured. The entire modern world with its "civilizations" of consumption, fashion, litigiousness, and theistic political manipulations is firmly gripped in the auspices of the Chthonic and Samsaric spell, a vessel acted upon and endlessly influenced by emotions, attachments and illusions. A spell that actually betrays the half-conscious desire to deafen and distract, that agitation and restlessness that reveal dread of silence, the internal isolation, the awakening of higher nature, and becomes the weapon in the revolution of man against the eternal, marking the limit of Samsaric "ignorance" and the intoxication of defiled "beings".

This is no small task of catharsis we practice my friends, as we seek to navigate this terrain of the mind versus ego along side the pollutions of the self driven intoxicants of the day. To be steadfast in resolute character, adopting the heroic posture of nobility and with a warrior spirit, it is indeed our caste, or sublime charge to awaken our true consciousness and take our rightful place in leadership of our lives, to "Be". To retrain our minds in the awestruck realization of the spectacular process of life. A process of identification without attachment, observation with joy and differentiation with discernment of illusion versus sparks of awakening; Supporting always the preciousness of the life process while exposing and doing away with all that defiles it. Through this and no other effort can the world of man be righted, can all consciousness be cleansed, can true harmony and joy be experienced for all.