The Dumbing Down of Our True Nature (part one)

You have an obligation to examine the various elements of the human realm innate view and how that relates to the primary message of how you believe you are alive. I will use two different methods to discover truths about how we are alive that will be described in a later column. In order to do that in a meaningful way we need to begin that discovery, by continuing to demystify the gripping anxiety that many people feel toward subjects as scholarly as the Buddhist descriptions of the innate view.

Let us begin by remembering that an innate view would be, by definition, one that is not held by force of will power. In other words, you cannot hang onto it by thinking about it because it is not held by the intellect. It is also not held by remembering an innate view either as “These are the kinds of things that I believe in, me and my fellows,” or that you remember like a memory of your innate view. None of these is called an innate view by definition. Therefore, it must be a hidden programming, adhered, or glued, to an inner mind such as the subtle subconscious mind and/or even more subtle minds that are still part of your continuum.

Buddhism and other early inner scientists discovered that we possess more than one subconscious or subtle conscious mind identified as inner, subtle minds. These inner minds have various kinds of veils or barriers that separate them from each other as well as from the outer conscious mind. Unlike walking into a lobby of a hotel that has forty doors, there are not multiple doors opening from one main area for the purpose of our discussion of inner mind development toward the enlightened state. There are specific pathways toward higher development. The structure of these barriers and veils and how they work to hold space for higher development is a more secret topic. The important point here is that they do exist.

However, please note here that the increasingly subtle minds are only seen as subtle from a human realm perspective, and not from higher reality. The veils, barriers and separations act to contain space for various levels of potential development and the appearance to enlightened awareness is according to the development of the individual. It is like layers of plywood. To a less developed person without inner vision looking at the inner minds of an undeveloped person, it does not have separations but has an appearance like a steel plate preventing access to the interior. In addition, if there is no development, these levels are pressed together. As the mind opens and subtle levels of mind begin to energize for awakening, then the possibility for growth occurs within these subtle minds. Until then, that subtle mind has no self-awareness. In any case, since these subtle minds generally do not hold human valuations such as methods of holding memories, and so they exist invisibly, even within more developed persons.

Although it may seem that what is subtle is not very important as it is hardly here or discernible, however, the more subtle the inner mind, the stronger it is, because it is closer to reality than the human tool of the functioning mind. From higher and more subtle reality, the increasingly dense and complicated ways of existing are identified as belonging to categories of living beings up to and including the human realm. These are subjects of great concern to higher developed beings such as bodhisattvas and Buddhas. Their compassionate concern and how that becomes actions felt even in the denser realms such as the human realm is the focus of many discussions we have had and will continue to have and to discuss in the future in order to be receptive to that care.

The teachings of Buddhism such as scriptural advice, logical guidance such as Chandrakirtis “Twenty Emptinesses,” formal commentary as well as informal commentary are all results of this compassionate concern in action.

The traditional Buddhist statements regarding the basic condensed version of the innate view describe it as the confused or wrong view that a self exists when it does not. That is not complicated. This overarching arisal or organizational principle called self is the object to be negated, as it seems to hold a function of binding elements without a function of its own. This conclusion reached by Buddhist thinkers, scholars, and observers regarding the need to destroy the foundations of this organizational principle by destroying our confidence in the self is repeated throughout Buddhist philosophy and psychological training in the Buddhist path.

However, the presentation regarding the innate view is held to be almost impossible to understand correctly. In fact, there is quite a lot of anxiety even among logicians and scholars to gain a correct intellectual view and understanding of the issues surrounding the innate view.

So, in order to prove my point I will quote here a bit of commentary taken from classic Buddhist philosophy. "According to this system, if one understands the mechanism through which all things are merely posited on the strength of conceptual thought, then one will easily recognize that any apprehension of an intrinsically existent reality is made in contradiction with this mechanism." This is actually very correct. If you memorize and repeat it, others will think you are very intelligent! They will say, "I am not going to argue with that person because I have no idea what they are saying."

To continue the commentary, "The person is nothing more than an imputation made in dependence on a composite of parts. Therefore, there is no other entity to act as the base. Every conventionally real thing posited by conceptual thought must fulfill its own function. This is a most profound subtlety of the Madhyamika view." If you wish, you can say form follows function, which appears to be a very modern concept, but actually, it is ancient Madhyamika. To be continued…