and the Hanged Man
by P.T. Mistlberger
****************** Copyright 1993 by P.T. Mistlberger, All Rights Reserved
Long ago, sometime during the 6th century CE, there lived in India a certain Buddhist monk renowned both for the depth of his inner realization, and for his unpredictable temperament and the wild look about him. His name was Bodhidharma. His image survives to this day in Chinese and Japanese brush-stroke renderings that depict what appears to be part inscrutable Oriental master, part scruffy pirate.
One day, Bodhidharma set sail off the east coast of India, following an inner guidance that directed him to transmit a particular lineage of Buddhist teachings to China. Once there, the legend tells of his encounter with the Chinese emperor Wu, who was himself a loyal Buddhist and had funded the building of monasteries, no small task in those days. The emperor wanted to know what sort of merit these good deeds had gotten him, and what his karmic reward in the future might be.
No merit, was Bodhidharmas blunt reply.
Somewhat put off, Emperor Wu next questioned the strange looking monk about the nature of ultimate reality.
Nothing is sacred, came the response. Everything is empty of content.
Finally, the exasperated emperor asked Bodhidharma, perhaps with a mix of righteous indignation and genuine curiosity, Who do you think you are, to speak to me this way?
I don't know who I am, came the answer.
At this point Wu had apparently had enough, and the wandering monk was dismissed from his court.
This tale is richly symbolic, especially because Bodhidharma through his responses, was in fact giving Wu the highest possible teaching, but the emperor was not ready to receive it, instead interpreting it as irreverent mumbo-jumbo thus failing to see beyond his own judgmental mind.
The legend continues with the Buddhist monk wandering north through China, finally settling at Shaolin, where he proceeded to spend nine years living as a hermit, mostly in meditation. One day a young seeker named Hui-ko hearing of Bodhidharmas reputation as a great spiritual teacher who taught no one, owing to an inability to find anyone ready to understand his depth located him in his cave, and rather dramatically demanded to be accepted as a student.
When after a long time Bodhidharma failed to even acknowledge the young pilgrim, continuing to gaze at a wall he always faced in meditation, the story has it that Hui-ko cut off his hand and dumped it in the teachers lap.
Ah, intoned Bodhidharma, so you have finally come for it was this depth of sincerity that he was looking for.
Bodhidharma was the very first Zen master. What he taught was sudden Awakening through the method of dhyana, the Sanskrit word for meditation. This word became Cha'an in China, and eventually Zen in Japan, when the tradition reached there in the 12th century. What so distinguished Zen from other inner disciplines was its emphasis on direct Realization through the transcendence of rational thought. This is a process of waking up that occurs as a result of going beyond surface perceptions, and beginning to finally see things with eyes free from the
conditioning or imprint of our past.
One of Zens great contributions to the understanding of the mind is that all awakenings are, in fact, sudden. However, a proper psychological foundation is essential; this is sometimes referred to in Zen as "Chop wood, carry water from the well," meaning stay grounded and humble.
In ancient Egypt, Greece, and medieval alchemy texts was found a recurring symbol, which represents this psychological foundation of higher awakening. It is a circular image of a dragon eating its own tale, usually recognized by the Greek name of Ouroboros.
The symbolism has to do with the alchemical marriage of the higher with the lower, or the union of opposites - of the dark, unconscious primordial instinct (the lower chakras) with the realms of light, vision, reason, and consciousness. In the Tarot deck this imagery is found in the Hanged Man card, which represents the descent of light into darkness. Or, in simple terms, bringing light to that which is unconscious - to enlighten. In Zen this was referred to as satori, or sudden awakening.
What is the nature of this psychological foundation, without which no true spiritual growth is possible? Essentially, it has to do with surrender to the whole, or the realization that one is part of a greater context. The book A Course in Miracles refers to this as the death of specialness. Part and parcel of this is acknowledging our interdependence with our planet - the need to clean up after ourselves, so to speak. Such pragmatism is part of the feminine principle, a part thoroughly squashed for the past century under the weight of the Industrial Revolution.
Our Western myths are full of patriarchal Sky Gods, such as Uranus, Chronos, Zeus, Odin, Jehovah, etc., who usually dominated and controlled in a typically patriarchal fashion, and just as usually ended up crashing down in a burnt out blaze of glory, symbolic in part of their disconnection from the Earth and body.
In fact, the Hanged Man parallels Odins sacrificial hanging on the World-Tree, symbolic, as mentioned, of surrender to the whole, realization of ones overall place in the scheme of things, and ultimate respect for Gaia, or Mother Earth. Psychologically, Gaia represents our unconscious mind, and physically, our relationship to our bodies and the world.
At this time in our evolution, awareness of, and being in harmony with, the Earth-Spirit is balancing the effects of two thousand years of gradual misuse of the powers of the rational mind, and disconnection from our natural, unconscious roots. Hence the importance of the Hanged Man symbolism, which represents a return to unity, or, as Rachel Pollock put it, "giving up the illusion of controlling the world, because we realize that we belong to all of life." This has now not only become necessary but essential. Such a grounding provides, on a psychological level, the basis for awakening to that which is beyond both body and mind, i.e. Spirit.
The understanding that there is something beyond the mind, or beyond the process of thought, lies at the heart of all truly transformative work. Everything else is but a modification of the already existing dream-world we find ourselves stumbling around in. Traditional Western philosophy and science, with its Aristotelian black-and-white logical roots, created a context and a model of thought necessary for the proliferation of scientific genius and technological invention, birthed in the Renaissance and exploding in the 20th century. However, its cultural and spiritual limitation lies in the fact that it has no model for understanding what lies beyond thought -- i.e. consciousness, and the world of Being, or Spirit. It follows naturally then, that the whole psychoanalytic school, springing as it does from the seed of Western scientific reductionism, has been partly limited from the beginning in its ability to affect lasting or significant change in peoples lives.
It became somewhat trendy in the last quarter of the 20th century to criticize Sigmund Freud, but the reality is he pioneered a transition from the bleak rationalism of early 20th century thought to the birth of the human potential movement, led by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, in the 1960s. What the human potential movement began to recognize was what the old Eastern traditions, and certain Western esoteric schools, had long since understood: namely, that the rational, thinking mind is a powerful tool, but it is not the master. As such, it is not the essence of our true spiritual identity.
However, as anyone who has made efforts on the path of transformation knows, it is not enough to simply know this. The body, the feelings, and the thinking mind must be understood and brought in harmony with each other in order to awaken to any sort of spiritual essence beyond them.
This is the meaning behind the circular shape of Ouroboros, the dragon eating his tail. The circle represents completion, balance, and integration, where we begin to work with ourselves, rather than against.
Most of us have experienced powerful highs in our life, what James Joyce called epiphanies, and what Maslow called peak experiences. These are usually brought on by a moment of contentment so profound that body, heart, and mind are brought in harmony for a moment, and the process of thought quiets or stops altogether.
Once we stop aimless, lazy thinking we stop projecting, and have a moment of true understanding. This is the meaning of the Greek term gnosis, to know through realization, not thought. In Zen it is referred to as kensho, which translates as seeing directly into reality.
Unfortunately, stopping the process of thought is easier said then done. In the early 1970s, after the counter-culture revolution had become somewhat more spiritualized, a number of sincere seekers threw themselves into Eastern meditation practices originally created for Eastern psyches, with mixed results. In the days of Gautam Buddha, when basic meditation methods to still the mind were devised, people were, in general, psychologically healthier, leading simpler and more natural lives. Twentieth century Western Man, however, was psychically scarred by two World Wars, and in general emotionally traumatized in subtle and insidious ways by the effects of the Industrial Revolution - everything from the grossly depersonalized Western method of childbirth, to the absent father syndrome, to the general desensitization of the mass-media generation.
The complexity and intensity of 20th century life created enormous psychic pressures, and, as such, a vast amount of repressed material in the average persons subconscious. This term repression is known in the lexicon of spirituality as denial. The failure of many seekers who tried Eastern methods in the early 1970s resulted not from any problem with the methods, but rather with the tendency of the Western psyche to repress, or deny, its emotionality, while making attempts to go beyond the mind.
All of this underscores the over-development of the masculine principle in Western culture, for a spiritual teaching can only be absorbed by a culture to the degree that the filters of that culture allow it to. And so, a large part of the spiritual rebirth of recent times has involved a re-emergence of the female principle in a more evolved fashion. This has been evidenced by the growth of pagan spiritualities, the rapid movement of environmental issues into the global consciousness (and even the attempt by governments to do something about it), and the extreme sensitivity, supported by mass media, to issues of abuse perpetrated by males in power-positions. But the masculine polarity in social consciousness is not the only thing that has been thrown into the spotlight. Increasingly there has been growing an awareness that typical feminism is not the answer either, as this usually is simply a form of encouraging women to compete with men in ways that often result in the woman becoming alienated from her own natural femininity. Similarly, many "new age" men have become feminized in their ways as a means of "getting more in touch" with themselves, only to find out later that women ended up losing interest in them on personal levels owing to their alienation from their own natural masculinity. In all of these cases, inner balance is the quality lacking.
Certain rare Eastern spiritual masters, such as Osho Rajneesh and J. Krishnamurti, understood the problems of getting out of balance, and of the denial of this, very profoundly, and attempted to teach the critical importance of non-denial, or expressiveness, in the awakening process. (Though they did it in very different ways -- Osho through the body, and Krishnamurti through penetrating insight).
Yes, Spirit or True Identity does lie beyond the realm of the rational mind, but this realization cannot be forced. The mind and its contents must be examined with a combination of discipline and compassion, but not controlled. This is ultimately accomplished with consciousness, not logical thought.
The imagery in the portrait of old wild-eyed Bodhidharma is symbolic of the transformational power of awareness. Another part of the legend has it that while meditating during his years of seclusion in Shaolin, the first Zen patriarch became so fed up with the effects of drowsiness on his practice that he tore off his eyelids, resulting in the determined look. A metaphor, perhaps, but significant nonetheless, in that it underscores the importance of seeing as opposed to merely conceptualizing.
Therein lies the meaning behind Bodhidharmas enigmatic responses to emperor Wu, in particular the answer I don't know who I am. For in truth, do we really know anything? Most spiritual practices revolve around beginning to see clearly the tendency of our minds to conceptualize and categorize everything around us, to the point where we really do not have direct experience of anything.
Somewhere in our early childhood, with the formation of our ego identity based largely on concept and language, we began to lose the ability to see and experience things with immediacy. Take, for example, a colour - let us say, blue. What was once a vibrant, extraordinary frequency of energy expressing itself in the visible wavelength of light as something we experience as blue - or, more accurately, blueness - gradually became, over a period of time, simply the colour blue. It became a concept, a label, and lost the vibrancy of being a direct experience.
There was a period of time in my early twenties where I embarked on a series of spiritual disciplines designed to awaken my mind to a glimpse of a higher order of reality, mostly motivated by my misery in this order of reality. At that time I was still very much dealing with avoidance of everyday life and its responsibilities, so there was an intensity behind my efforts that yielded some startling results.
One such experience in particular I recall vividly. I had been practicing two weeks of conservation of energy, i.e. no talking, no relating to anyone, celibacy, and continuous, minute awareness of my breathing and thinking processes. Naturally, this generated a huge buildup of energy. On the last night of my experiment, while seated in meditation, focusing my awareness on the rise and fall of my breath, I suddenly exploded.
This was not outwardly dramatic in appearance. It was an inner explosion, a kind of revolution of consciousness. I remember standing bolt upright, feeling like an electrified lightning rod. I walked over to the mirror, looked in, and posed the question, Who am I?
My mind fell completely silent. It was like a calm before a violent storm. For a moment reality seemed vast and spacious, and I was absolutely empty of identity. I literally did not know who I was, or who was looking back at me in the mirror. This was not a thought, it was an actual experience of total absence of memory or cognition of who or what I was, or had been. In that moment I understood why the Buddhists associate inner Awakening with the Sanskrit term shunyata, which translates as emptiness. I was having a direct experience of the empty, illusory nature of the separate ego, what A Course in Miracles means by You are at home in God dreaming of exile. It was an actual sense of waking out of a long, strange dream.
I recall walking into the kitchen, sitting down, and having the most extraordinary experience of colours virtually blooming and exploding with vibrancy all around me. A red dishcloth suddenly became this most amazing quality of energy, inexplicably alive. And yet, through the whole thing I was also aware that there was something very natural and even ordinary about all this, that this is the way things really are, and I had merely forgotten and fallen asleep.
At that point, a strange thing happened. I felt a surge of energy move up my spine, a wonderful, pulsating aliveness. But when it reached my heart it stopped, unable to penetrate this particular wall. Suddenly my pulse rate doubled, and I found myself in the throes of a very unenlightened panic attack. Fear took over, and the innocence and aliveness of the world around me ebbed and subsided. My mind began racing with the excess energy, and I felt a terror that I might truly be losing my grip.
For three nights I did not sleep, a strange golden light burning brightly inside my head every time I closed my eyes. When I did finally sleep, my dreams were violently primitive. It was as if the power of the energy that I had unleashed dug deep into my subconscious, excavating ancient, buried memories - a painful purging process. Partly through the compassion of a wise friend I was able to ground myself and feel normal again, after about a week of enduring the passing of the storm.
What went wrong? The answer is tied up in the symbolism of our friend Ouroboros, the circular dragon, the Hanged Man, and the failed Sky Gods. My lower and higher centers of body, heart, and mind were simply not in harmony. I was in denial of what was in my mind, and especially my relationship with physical reality. Thus, the attempt at going beyond was doomed to failure from the beginning. So, although I had a bona fide experience of waking up, I could not sustain it, or integrate it, because the foundation of inner harmony was lacking.
Carl Jung once wrote: It is a psychological rule that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be tom into opposing halves. Hence the necessity of understanding, with awareness, the contents of our minds, else the world will forever remain a seemingly indifferent, arbitrary reality.
Bodhidharma, standing in simple, naked truth before the symbol of worldly power, the emperor - much like Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate and responding with mysterious silence in answer to the question What is truth? - represents a higher order of truth, based on a foundation of balance and inner harmony. Thus, he was fearless enough to tell Emperor Wu (who could have easily had his head) that the emperor had in fact accumulated no merit for his benevolent acts. This was because he did not have the awareness of a transformed man, obvious by his being more interested in trying to attain something in the future - a pay-off - rather than being awake here and now (another failed Sky God).
Toward the end of Bodhidharmas life the legend tells of his final meeting with his four closest students. In order to test their realization, he asked them to explain the nature of ultimate truth.
The first replied, We should depend neither entirely on words and thought, nor do away with them completely, but rather use them as a tool for awakening.
You have my skin, answered Bodhidharma.
The second came forth, and said, All things are impermanent, turning like the wheel of life; truth lies beyond that.
To this the Zen master replied, You have grasped my flesh.
The third student offered, The entire universe is void of content; there is, in fact, no ultimate truth to grasp.
You have my bones, came the reply.
The last one was Hui-Ko. With tears in his eyes, he said nothing, and bowed low, his heart full of gratitude, and at one with Bodhidharmas heart.
You, the old man said, have my marrow. You have truly understood.
It is in the true Heart-connection, with passion, that real spiritual awakening is found - not dry and detached, but fully embodied and present. This is the proper joining of the male/female principles, the balance between revolutionary insight and openness of heart. Both are needed, as both are incomplete without the other. Over the last two millennia the patriarchal power structures of the Western world have evolved the revolutionary insights that have created our modern sciences and technology. But the Heart, for the most part, has been neglected, and the planet has suffered as a result. It is past time to pull up the other wing of the bird - the Heart must be listened to, the planet restored, and both masculine and feminine principles truly understood, embraced, and celebrated - equally so.
In the end, any spiritual realization or awakening, no matter how seemingly humble, is a state of being, not communicable through words, but shareable nonetheless. This is communion - the end of separation. In this lies a moment of eternity, because like circular Ouroboros, it has no beginning, and it has no end.
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