[Below is a post I wrote for the Dharmapada forum, but which was rejected there.]
Dear All,
I originally wrote the piece below for the “Buddhism Without Boundaries” forum, but my registration then turned out to be rejected there and its admin referred me to this forum instead. (I hope saying this much doesn’t fall under “Disclosure of Internal Private Messages/Off-Site Emails or Any Type of Private Correspondence Without Prior Consent from the Sender” according to this forum’s ToS.)
I post the piece below because I think it’s a pret-ty good exhibition of my current understanding of Buddhism (I wrote it less than two weeks ago). By the way, I write “I”, “me” and the like for the sake of convention/convenience, but it may be more apt to write “he”, “him” and the like, as I’m only one illusionary self among countless others.
Kind regards,
one All-in-one in All
::
It’s perfectly natural that that doesn’t ease the terror. After all, that is exactly the reason for your terror. Your terror is that, unless transhumanism succeeds within your natural lifetime, you will no longer be a self after that lifetime. So telling you that you’re already not a self, and have never been a self, cannot ease your terror.
But the fact that you will probably, a hundred years from now, no longer exist already tells us that you don’t really exist even now, and have never really existed. All that seems to exist is illusion. Your death only matters to the illusion that is your self, and the illusions that are your loved ones’ selves. See through that illusion, and the terror’s gone.
Yet the Infinite Void that is behind the illusion, or is the Whole of all illusions, has nevertheless bound itself to your self. It has one of its infinitely many perspectives in you. And the question is: Why? Why would the Godhead Itself want to incarnate as you? What could it accomplish in your shoes, in your body, in your persona (mask)?
That is the question that has led me to this forum. In fact, I should write Me, because I AM the Mind. But this, I only now realize, is itself the answer! Why does the One imagine itself fragmented into all these selves? In order to be conscious of itself. And this is why a full Buddha becomes a Bodhisattva, devotes One’s self to enlighten other selves: because the Bliss of Buddhahood exists only in Communication, in making common or sharing the beauty of the illusion.
The values, the hues of this flower-garden only come into their own in the exchange thereof. I show you my flower so that yours may open up as well. The Bliss of Buddhahood is not in any particular flower or number of flowers, but in the inexhaustible flowing forth of such flowers. The soil of this garden never gets depleted; its fountain jumps and dances even in winter, when everything is snow-white and crystalline. This is Nirvana, to not be attached to any particular part of Samsara, but only to the whole. To be sure, flames get blown out in the breeze all the time; but the breeze itself is absolutely warm, and kindles ever new lights in the darkness. Even the darkness itself is a light: a counterlight, without whose contrast the light would be nought. [I might have written more (or deleted or edited some things), but this is when I read the admin’s email. In any case, I was about to wrap it up.]