Sunset in New York City

Pedro Dos Santos

The Five Realms of Human Destiny

“We are governed by a far greater force than we can ever imagine – one we can control & use to our advantage, yet very rarely tap into.” – Pedro Dos Santos, Face Book/12/29/16

In enlightenment the eye of wisdom is opened to an intuition of the heart being, a perfected vision transcending all dualities, the self-realization of our real selves. – from teachings of Hui-neng, Zen master, 7^th Century China.

New Moon

December 28, 2016 (Pacific Time 10:54 pm)

What is Possible in committing to

The Five Realms of Human Destiny*

From Dane Rudhyar’s Astrological Mandala

Original Intent – the Moon – 8° Capricorn

in a sunlit home domesticated birds sing joyously  . . . suggests how we can enjoy our life condition by allowing the spiritual values it embodies to fill our consciousness. In every condition provided by a healthy culture—which hardly refers to our present [1970s] chaotic world!—human beings can find enjoyment in the roles they are born to play.

Continuing – 20° Pisces

a table set for an evening meal – an indication that in the end and at the appointed time the individual’s needs will be met among those to whom he is linked by a spiritual (or biological) web of energies.

Recognizing – 2° Gemini

santa claus furtively filling stockings hanging in front of the fireplace – A rewarded faith in spiritual blessings. . . In this symbol, Santa Claus acts “furtively.” The gifts from an imagined and intensely believed-in spiritual world must not be examined too closely or at length by the reasoning intellect. . . the reception of new blessings from the spiritual realm above (the super-conscious) requires mostly faith and purity of heart, and a common type of understanding (stockings)—thus a state of innocence.

Participating – 14° Leo

a human soul seeking opportunities for outward manifestation – yearning for self-actualization. . . a transcendental clue to the technique of living. Let the soul speak out! Allow the power of the true tone of your being to manifest itself smoothly, easily, unobstructed—or expect a variety of consequences. let the soul manifest! [for those following teachings of the Buddha, this would mean allowing the enlightened nature to express itself; for enlightened Christians, “Let go, let God.”]

Constructing – 26° Libra

an eagle and a large white dove change into each other – interaction of spiritual will and compassion when critical needs arise. . . Consciousness operates beyond duality because the polarized energies of soul, will and compassion, though ever distinct, work for a single purpose.

Discovering the Five Realms of Human Destiny

*The Five Realms of Human Destiny were discovered December 5, 1977, after an intense morning of chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, title of the Lotus Sutra, or “Sutra of the Mysterious Law of the Lotus.”  Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo itself, five characters, and also the “Five Roots” of Buddhist practice: Faith (Original Intent), Zealous Progress (continuing with Original Intent), memory (recognizing Original Intent), meditation (participating with Original Intent), and wisdom (constructing Original Intent).

  Chanting took place as always facing the Mandala and during these early hours of that day, an open window facing east with Venus seen as a morning star – the same morning star the Buddha saw under the Bodhi tree seeking enlightenment.

  5 resonates especially with the human being (five fingers, five toes, etc.) and in the “Ten World” system, the Fifth World is the world of the human being before progressing toward enlightenment.

Dividing the Zodiac by 5 gives the “quintile” or 72° an abstract aspect suggesting special human abilities. Thus using the starting point of a particular moment – today, the New Moon – as original intent, the other realms are revealed in each of the succeeding 72° segments.

  That morning in 1977 after chanting, on impulse I looked back at my birth moment and remembered that a Full Moon followed the moment by only 22 hours, suggesting a fulfillment of what is suggested in the birth moment. (In traditional astrology, this would be the “First progressed full moon”). The full moon moment chart, was named “Promises Made in Past Lives.” Constructing a chart for the “Promises” moment, designating the cusp of the 4^th house as Original Intent, selected not arbitrarily, but that’s another story. “Original Intent” was at 10° Capricorn.

  I recall vividly as I read the symbol for 10° Capricorn for the first time, thrilled to realize, and crying aloud, “This is something I’ve always wanted in my life!”

“An albatross feeding from hand of a sailor – overcoming fear and its rewards – persons who radiate perfect harmlessness can call the wildest creatures to themselves and establish a partnership with them based on mutual respect and understanding. Every living entity plays a role in the worlds ritual of existence; beyond these specific roles, which too often separate one entity from another, the communion of love and compassion can bring together the most disparate lives . . . a picture extending the ideal of peace and happiness through culture so it now includes all living organisms on this planet. The power of such a culture of harmlessness and compassion generates TRUST everywhere.

  (Didn’t dare call this discovery an “enlightenment” – hardly what one would call an exemplary life of “enlightenment” followed the moment. Yet there it remains – the Original Intent of “Promises made in past lives.”)

  The morning of December 5, 1977 and discoveries made, strengthened the resolve to continue with practice now defined as celebration of the Lotus Sutra, celebration of life, and the teachings of the Buddha, and the continuation to this day, evolving to include each week meditation on the complete Lotus Sutra.

  Through succeeding years, this was not the first of such “discoveries.” Reading quantum physics and innumerable teachings resonating with Buddhism, as well as inspiration contemplating other schools of Buddhism, and most significantly The Threefold Lotus Sutra itself, published in a splendid English translation by Weatherhill-Kosei, and Nikkyo Niwano’s Buddhism for Today: A Modern Interpretation of The Threefold Lotus Sutra and his other writings.

  The remarkable thing is the universality of the Buddha’s teachings. Paradoxically, this is realized as one comes in touch with a diversity of beliefs, practices, incites, from persons who follow other spiritual paths and often are either only subliminally familiar with the Buddha’s teachings, or not at all. And yet they speak his words, happily in today’s world.

And so it was, another thrilling moment, to see and read Pedro Dos Santos post and resulting comments.

“We are governed by a far greater force than we can ever imagine – one we can control & use to our advantage, yet very rarely tap into.”

. . . it is that a great virtuous god is born?  Christmas visions, from one who practices the teachings of the Buddha:

  The Lotus Sutra:  “Parable of the Magic City” – “’Then eastward, all the palaces of the Brahma heavens in the five hundred myriad countless domains were brilliantly illuminated with double their normal brightness. And each of those Brahma heavenly kings reflected thus: ‘For what reason does this sign appear, that our palaces are now illuminated as never before?’ Then those brahma heavenly kings all visited each other to discuss this affair. Meanwhile, amongst those assembled there was a great Brahma heavenly king named Savior of All who addressed the host of Brahmas in verse:

‘In all our palaces
never has there been such shining;
what can be its cause?
Let us together investigate it.
Is it that a great virtuous god is born,
is it that a buddha appears in the world,
that this great shining
everywhere illuminates the universe?’

Mont St Michelle

Energy and Interdependency

From the film "MIND WALK" – directed by Bernt Capra, 1991; from the book "Turning Point" by Fritjof Capra: Setting:  Mt. Saint Michele.  Characters:  SONYA, the physicist; THOMAS, the poet; JACK, the politician.  (Liv Ullmann, John Heard, Sam Waterston)

SCENE – Chancellery; Thomas seated at organ playing a Bach fugue.

THOMAS – So, Sonya, life is a bunch of probability patterns running around.  Probability patterns of what?

SONYA – of interconnection.  I'm trying to say that these probabilities are not probabilities of things, but probabilities of interconnection . . . for physicists the particle has no independent existence.  A particle is essentially a set of relations that reach out to interconnect with other things.

JACK – What are those other things?

SONYA – They are interconnections of yet other things which also turn out to be interconnections, and so on and so on.  You see, in atomic physics we never end up with any thing at all.  The essential nature of matter lies not in objects but in interconnect­ions.

THOMAS – Ah! (Strikes a chord on the organ)   Everybody knows this chord, it's the third, and the most basic of harmonies.  It carries with it a very distinctive feeling, no?  And yet its individual notes carry none of it.  Therefore, the essence of the chord lies in its—

SONYA – In its relationships.

THOMAS – And the relationships between time and pitch (he plays a few notes of the fugue) make melody.  Relationships make music.

SONYA – Relationships make matter.

THOMAS – Music of the spheres.

SONYA – As Kepler said.

THOMAS – And Shakespeare before him.

SONYA – And Pythagoras before him.  Now this vision of a universe arranged in harmonies and sounds and relations is no new discovery.  Today physicists are simply proving that what we call an object, an atom, a molecule, a particle, is only an approximation, a metaphor.  At the subatomic level, it dissolves into a series of interconnections like chords of music. . . That's beautiful.

JACK questions, There are boundaries, yes?  We are two separate bodies . . .  (No reply from Sonya)  Are you saying that there is actually a physical connection between you and me?  And between you and the wall, between you and this bench?

SONYA – Yes.  At the subatomic level there is a continual exchange of matter and energy between my hand, the wood, the wood and the air, and even between you and me.  I mean a real exchange of photons and electrons.  Whether we like it on not we are all part of one inseparable web of relationships.   ♦  ♦  ♦ ♦

Energy – the Desire to Live

A Humanistic-Transpersonal Astrologer’s Point-of-View – Notes from 2005:

One force (energy) – the desire to live – causes or creates matter and its evolution; energy coexisting and becoming (causing) matter – phenomena appearing through breaking up of the symmetry of the one force into apparent multi-dimensional forces creating time – Light through a prism – the One Force – Energy “uses” particles (matter) as media for these apparent multi-media for all life in the universe.

Ultimately through this process (energy = matter) E=MC² – all phenom­ena (matter), energy-particles, continue as life because they are all interdependent and inter­connected – but their real aspect is 

primal energy, non-form.

When we remember clearly that we are caused to live by the great life force/energy of the universe, we are in the arms of that force, our perception is clear and pure, and we have perceived the real aspect of things.

THOMAS (the poet) quoting William Blake:  If the doors of perception are cleansed, everything appears as it is – infinite.

Paraphrasing Ken Wilbur in his dialogue with Shambhala Sun – Buddhist contempla­tion is sufficient for this ultimate truth.  It will directly show you the radical suchness of all phenomena, the Emptiness in the heart of the cosmos itself, the primordial, pure energy that is your own intrinsic awareness in this moment, and this moment, and this.

The Deliberate Oaks

reluctance to shed the ego’s outworn leaves

  This morning [several years ago, that is], reading “The Deliberate Oaks” from the New York Times Op-Ed page (November, 1968) – The oaks are deliberate trees, slow to leaf out in the spring, slow of growth, slow to color in the fall, and even reluctant to shed their outworn leaves which sometimes cling to the branches until new leaves burst from the buds in the spring. . . Reading this, I’m reminded how much it bugged me (an expression used in those days) that throwing sticks for proud male Daiquiri in Central Park, oak leaves clung to the branches all through winter.  Be gone! I commanded. This is not how it should be.

  A lot of things bugged me in those days.  Expectations.  Anticipations – living life in terms of what I wanted, how I wanted things to be. Expecting others to behave in a certain way. It got me into a lot of trouble – including trouble with my own mind.  Tensions – you bet!

  It’s taken a long time to release the ego which seems to command these desires and expectations – and perhaps some still linger like the oak leaves – but Buddhist contemplation in the last ten years or so with the Lotus Sutra (and a lot of other conciliatory teachings resonating with the practice of the Buddha’s teachings) has helped to disperse these debilitating desires.

  The freedom to be – now – to perceive – to know – pure energy of life available to me and to all with whom I commune. We are responsible, yet still the leaves cling to the oak trees – and to California sycamores – “challenging the rush of time.”

  How precious to be free enough to participate fully in the rush of time.

“Your head is right where it should be – stop turning to the outside.” – Lin Chi in the 2005 Zen Calendar.

From Chapter 5, “The Parable of the Herbs” – the Lotus Sutra:

To give peace to all creatures I appear in the world,
and for the hosts of the living
preach the Law pure as sweet dew,
the one and only Law of emancipation and nirvana.
With one transcendent voice I proclaim this meaning,
constantly taking the Great-vehicle as my subject.
I look upon all everywhere with equal eyes,
without distinction of persons, or mind of love or hate.
I have no predilections nor limitations or partiality;
ever to all I preach the Law equally;
as to one person, so to all.
Constantly I proclaim the Law, never occupied with aught else;
going or coming, sitting or standing,
I never weary of pouring it abundantly upon the world,
like the rain enriching universally.
Honored and humble, high and low . . .
with equal mind I rain the rain of the Law unwearyingly.  .  .

Autumn – Petersham, Massachusetts

Enlightened nature

accessible to all

(edited from September 30, 2015)

  So what are we waiting for? One may ask how do I reach a state of mindfulness to overcome, as recently, troublesome and disturbing personal circumstances, returning to the source of "what is accessible to all," in the middle of a night full of pain, making my way through the rapids, finding calm waters, stillness, and sleep. A small  miracle.

  Seeking to “experience the realm of mind and consciousness in its natural, spontaneous state,” is to discover the implicit reality—that the “buddha (enlightened) nature” exists within each of us and is accessible to all, and that our ultimate goal always will be to attain enlightenment in this lifetime; to serve others with compassionate hearts, mindful that, in reality, the nature of all existence is not in opposing forms, but like space.

  This guy’s really off his rocker, you’re thinking? – out of touch with reality. Our world today is fraught with “opposing forms,” contentions, ignorance, stupidity. Assuredly it  will take an eternity for the ignorant, the “stupid and those of little wit” to dig their way out of the morass to discover that paths to enlightened mindfulness do indeed exist and are accessible—eternally, as long as there is life on this planet. The driving force of energy which causes everything to live is present, always, and all living beings are one substance with it.

  When Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived in this world, not apart from it, beheld men and women suffering, by his power of wisdom, “knowing the natures and inclinations of creatures,” at first tactfully proclaimed the laws which would cause all to obtain gladness.” Observing with the eyes of wisdom, “creatures in the six states of existence, poor and without happiness and wisdom on the dangerous path of mortality, in continuous unending misery, firmly fettered by the five desires like the yak caring for its tail, smothered by greed and infatuation, blinded and seeing nothing, seeking not the Buddha’s wisdom,  and the Law to end suffering, but deeply falling into heresies, and seeking by suffering to be rid of suffering . . .”

  Note, the Buddha is not judging, nor condemning those on the dangerous path of mortality, but rather proclaims, “for the sake of all these creatures, my heart is stirred with great pity,” and proceeds to seek means and methods to motivate them to travel the path leading to happiness, and ultimately Perfect Enlightenment; to reach beyond the six “lower” states of existence into the world of learning, self-attained enlightenment, the compassionate world of the bodhisattvas, and ultimately the Buddha-world of Perfect Enlightenment.

  The Buddha and his teachings found in the sutras, are the original source of all his teachings leading to a celebration of life with compassion, reaching enlightenment—all evolve from the matrix of the appearing, historical Shakyamuni’s teachings during his lifetime, and resonate today with other teachings, whether scientific or metaphysical. The ultimate value of gaining mindfulness of his teachings will be seen within the ebb and flow of our lives—most surprisingly in our participating, loving, lighting up the hopes and dreams of others; realizing intuitively a sense of our miraculous inter-connection with others.

  [written in 2012] Today, negotiating crowded city streets and highways in my faithful Buick Skyhawk, vintage 1984, I no longer contest, allowing others to do their thing; a sense of inner peace, amused by those who contend, no longer engaging in the competition to “get there first.”

  I’m already there—traveling “lost,” arriving here and now.

  We don’t need to be anywhere – from the Diamond Sutra: “Subhuti, first among those who abides in peace, free from strife and passion, does not abide anywhere, that is why he is called one who abides in peace.”

  A man suddenly appears to help me  fix a flat tire. A waitress remembers my name. I maneuver the shopping cart among the crowd, evoking shared laughter when I come close to plowing down an old lady and say, “We need traffic lights, I think,” evoking laughter, not anger. The mundane . . . the passion . . . the profound.

  “A jealous one raises the mind of joy.” Enlightened awareness is proven to be accessible.

Central Doctrines of Buddhism

♦ The Law of Causation

♦ Seal of the Three laws  ♦ The Four Noble Truths 

♦ Eightfold path  ♦ Six paramitas

The Law of Causation

The Law of Causation states that all phenomena in the universe are produced by causation. According to this doctrine, since all phenomena result from the relation of cause and effect, all things in the universe exist in interrelationship with one another (“Nothing has an ego”), and all things and phenomena in this world constantly change (“All things are impermanent”).

Seal of the Three Laws

All things are impermanent – following natural direction of human life, advancing toward realization that we are one substance with the Buddha – the great life force of the universe, the one thing unchangeable, permanent in this world—the cause to live.

Nothing has an ego – without exception all things, all existences are related to one another. Nothing leads to an isolated existence. Everything is permeated by the same life-energy. We cannot live our lives alone.

Nirvana is quiescence – The quiet stage in which we cling to nothing, extinguishing all illusions.

To realize these three great truths, it is necessary to practice them, endeavoring to realize them in daily life; and to practice the Eightfold Path of the bodhisattva—in mind, body, and actions. Note the Truth of the Path as the Eightfold Path.

The Four Noble Truths

The Truth of Suffering – all things in this world are comprised of suffering for those who do not reach beyond personal ego nor pursue a path toward enlightened thinking and awareness—in doctrinal terms, to reach toward the Buddha-way, Buddha mind, Buddha thought. Human life is filled with spiritual, physical, economic, and other forms of suffering. To acknowledge the real conditions of suffering and see them through without avoiding them, or meeting them only half-way—this is the truth of suffering.

The Truth of the Cause of Suffering – to reflect on those causes which produce human suffering, investigating them and understanding them clearly.

The Truth of Extinction of Suffering – the state of absolute quietude wherein all sufferings of life are extinguished. The state of mind which is attained only by awakening to the great truths Shakyamuni Buddha has taught in The Seal of the Three  Laws: All things are impermanent, Nothing has an ego, and Nirvana is quiescence.

The Truth of the Path – method of practice to extinguish suffering—the Eightfold Path and the Six Perfections of the Bodhisattva Way

The Eightfold Path

the “right way” of conduct:

following the middle beyond extremes

Right View – abandon self-centered way of looking at things based on the Buddha’s wisdom which discerns and understands the principle of the Reality of All Existence.

Right Thinking – not to incline toward a self-centered attitude but to think of things from a higher standpoint, with “the mind of the Buddha.”

Right Speech – avoiding words which cause others suffering.

Right Action – daily conduct in accordance with mindfulness of the Buddha’s teachings.

Right Living – Not to make our living in work which causes trouble for others.

Right Endeavor – an extension of Right Living—harmony as the basis  for human society and communities, celebrating, depending upon it, and endeavoring to realize it.

Memory – gaining the same mind as the Buddha. We cannot say we have the same mind as the Buddha unless we address ourselves to all things in the universe with a fair and right mind. [note: also seeing “Memory” as keeping the teachings in mind through memorizing, copying, studying the Lotus Sutra, very much resonating with Meditation.]

Meditation – not to be agitated by any change of circumstances, thus leading to practicing consistently the “right” teachings of the Buddha.

The Six Paramitas

Perfected Practice of the Bodhisattvas

Donation – to be open to and perceive the needs of others, practicing “nothing has an ego.” Helping others according to their needs – not one’s own.

Keeping the precepts – to release the personal ego, keeping the mind at peace day and night, and always in meditation, contemplating the Buddha-way, Buddha- thought, rendering service to others, removing arrogance.

Perseverance – ego-free generosity, sustaining attitude of compassion.

Assiduity – to intend, not distracted by trivial things (this is sure a rough one to follow!) – to advance single-mindedly.

Meditation – remembering we are gestures of the great perfection: to contemplate, the true aspect of things.

Wisdom– to realize we are all one substance with the imperishable life-force of the universe.