from your servant Rigdzin Teundroup, with the precious help of his brother Ivani Grifonievitch.
“In the space of meaning, nothing to be said, and yet, all comes from meaning.”
Drukpa Kunley, the Divine madman yogui
SPIRITUALITY — a kind of decentralized vision
The Nature of our mind is a kind of clarity, already awakened wakefulness sapience, a sort of inherent knowledge that does not need any effort to manifest itself. We know what we know, immediately, and this sort of automatic natural gnosis is absolutely non-conceptual, before any kind of discursive thoughts manifestations. We can experience it directly, between two contents appearing in our consciousness and even behind them.
The way our intellect develops though, is through distinguishing shapes and patterns among perceived sounds, colors and sensations and labeling them with a name, arrangement of mentalized sounds, emerging from our sapience’s clarity and finally forming the way we feel and understand the whole world around us. Forming an accumulation of layers of cognitive veils.
Even this built-in self-manifested clarity is labeled and designated by a sound, our name, that refers to it, for us and for others.
And we are innerly referring to it with the mental use of the sound “I”, as a tool, in our own inner stream of consciousness. We are generally using a pair, concept and sound, but it is for referring to a very particular feeling also called “ego”. This sensation is also a phenomenon, arising somewhere, as the result of natural potentialities.
From outside, an observer can perceive this phenomenon as an object of his own ego.
This particular feeling, this clarity, is perceived only by each one of us and emerges in the universe, where the causes and conditions are united, where our physical body stands, and only there, forming that experience of “I” also called subjectivity, individuality, ego, it is thus limited in space.
The Essence of that sensation is merely as every other particular phenomenon in the universe : It arises only when causes and conditions are present, and when they are not anymore, it ceases to exist. Because it exists only in dependence to some temporary particular conditions, it is thus limited in time.
We can then see that it has no intrinsic self-existence, by itself, from itself. Looking at the big picture, our very own feeling of subjective clarity is literally an effect, an effect of several causes, and so it can only intellectually or by ignorance be considered as an independent phenomenon.
The Energy of that temporary sapience is unswerving, even if the very content of our mind is never permanent and always changing, even slightly, it is unfailingly always placed in the instant present, as fundamentally past and futures are only perceived in an intellectual way, as a kind of halo around the present moment.
Let’s use the example of a movie theater screen. What is projected on it is always moving and changing. Just like the content of our stream of consciousness.
The screen always retains its natural reflective quality. It is, in essence, unaltered, whatever is projected and appears on it. Even if nothing is, its primordial potential reflective quality remains intact, unwaveringly and when causes and conditions, such as something being projected on it will manifest again, it will instantly be reflected, without the essence of the screen being altered.
The Nature of the screen is to reflect, its Essence is to be unaltered by what is projected on it and its Energy or potentiality is to unceasingly reflect manifestations, contents and appearances, with infinite possibilities.
In a certain sense, a sentient being’s mind works the same way, because it manifests itself as a potentiality of Reality itself. It is then sharing the Nature, Essence and Energy of the absolute Reality itself, and has the same characteristics and abilities.
The Nature of Reality is its clarity, its Essence is oneness and its Energy is unwavering manifestations. And it happens that our mind has inherited these qualities.
In the Buddhist teachings, it is said that between two thoughts we can have a glimpse of the State of the Buddha. Between two projections on the screen we can have a glimpse of its immaculate state.
It is also said that in our daily experience, this State of the Buddha*, though always present, is usually covered by cognitive veils, formed by the layers of projection accumulated from the past.
(* As “the natural state of the mind” is called in Milarepa’s Tradition of the Mahamudra)
These veils are inherited from the accumulation of all the projections that have been reflected on the screen, our mind, before having recognized and understood correctly its unaltered condition : All manifestations non-dually appearing in interdependence with everything that is arising on the screen, as the fruit of past causal connections.
From a highest and non-egotically centered point of view and understanding, ultimately there is no inside and outside and inner manifestations are not at all separated from their apparently external sources. This is a whole.
So, those veils, thick or thin, gross or subtle, are distracting us from noticing that primordial state among the unceasing flow of consciousness. And they are preventing us from realizing that our physical and spiritual being, as a phenomenon and experience, is an effect of the Ultimate and Absolute Reality itself. A scientific and metaphysical approach would simply say “of The Universe”.
It is also said that “Even the tongue of the Buddhas is weak to describe precisely the nature and ultimate essence of absolute and fundamental Reality”, in a way human beings can fully understand.
Even today, with the contributions of modern science, it seems wiser to simply acknowledge this is still beyond average actual human beings capacity of perception and description. Indeed, languages are the fruit of our present average level of abilities and so are still limited.
Here, it should be mentioned that some spiritual approaches have traditionally used a conceptual language tool to point at the Ultimate and Absolute Reality by using the concept of “God”.
Which comes with pros and cons. An advantage is this concept is providing a higher view than the totally dualistic perception that we are gradually developing when we appear in this existence. The main disadvantage is the reification of the Ultimate and Absolute Reality.
This reification of Oneness, the ultimate level of Reality, is a strong paradigm that may not be definitively solved by the Tsuka Sangha during our lifetime, because of the present human beings limitations and also because of the strong attachment forged in the past to that fruitful but also tricky concept of “God”. A lot of people are attached to it.
So it is necessary to keep an open mind and accept that this metaphysical and transcendental sum of knowledge is best acquired through both experience of contemplation and reflection, but that it’s ultimately achieved beyond the use of words and concepts. And that on the higher degrees of understanding and realization, words tend to lose their importance and conditioning power. And that the primordial experience of being one with the surrounding Reality, and so with the whole Reality itself, as all phenomenons are existing in dependance to others, is both the root and goal of any spiritual Path.
Being silent, still and aligned while experiencing Reality in the instant present, without the need of words, beyond how different authentic and living traditions have handled to present this experience within their own historical and cultural developments, this is the essence of the spiritual experimentation of reality.
So, back to the screen metaphor, it is a bit as if, in order to perceive the screen itself, one has to be able to see through all the movies ever projected on it and reflected by it. The Tradition calls this ‘clearing the veils that are covering the Buddha Nature of the mind’.
Seeing through the veils is one thing. Developing immutable stability without effort and fabricated meditation is another.
Indeed, on certain occasions, most of us have already experienced, seen, felt, perceived, this unaltered Nature of mind, beyond concepts. To develop and achieve perfect stability and integration though, without clinging to self-arising conscious manifestations, in meditation as in daily activities, it requires some subtle combination of causes and conditions. This is what we are practicing while doing meditation.
To put it simply, the fruit of meditation practice accomplishment is to remain in contact with the basis of our mind, free from any mental distraction whatever thought or event could arise. And more importantly, without identifying that mere state as being “this or that”.
“Just being in that State. This is called Self-Liberation.”
If most of us are consciously holders of that knowledge, maintaining it during just a glimpse is not what Tradition is referring to as being fully Enlightened. But we could call it Awareness, or maybe even Mindfulness, which is already a significant accomplishment.
Being conscious of the observer, beyond usual limitations, is not having managed to integrate and transcend the dualistic nature of our mind. For that, we need stability, integration and finally we have to transcend our ordinary experience.
“In general, we are falling after thoughts”.
We can take the example of the Jokari. Being well centered and always coming back to the basis is a sign of realization. A clear sign of it. And a real and genuine accomplishment.
There are many awakened and qualified people who can truly and genuinely help and efficiently guide us in our efforts to perfect our being.
And maybe there are as many different Paths than Beings, “For whatever your Way, it is also my Way.” (Bhagavad Gita)
Working on perfecting ourselves in order to then be able to help others do the same, again and again, in an uninterrupted chain of transmission, is the essence and the purpose of spiritual teachings and practices.
This reality of Transmission applies for both worldly knowledge and for the ultimate understanding and realization of the vast and profound nature of Reality itself.
At a higher level, we could say that transmission is the way the universe is naturally manifesting self-Illumination within its own manifestations, from which it is never separated.
This way around, there is no more such thing as Masters and Disciples, but only the Transmission.
Despite this, we really have to keep in mind that completely Enlightened and Illuminated beings are very rare. They have completely transcended and accepted the necessary efforts to successfully and definitively cut at its root the attachment to the subjective and egotic center of the self auto knowledge. ‘Their sapience’ does not need anymore to go back to ‘the ego center’. They are still playing the dualistic games of interactions but it is as if in the Jokari game, the ball was not linked anymore to a base. They are beyond the need to come back to a center, between each sequence of consciousness. They don’t come back to the notion and feeling of self, to the notion and also feeling of “I”.
Like in the jokari game, the ball is still there, the faculty of discrimination, but without the rope of attachment to a center. It moves from one place to another, the mind goes from one scene to another, without the fixation of the ego anymore. The screen is still there, receiving and manifesting contents of perceptions but the clarity and quality of their sapience is not losing its unaltered condition while still playing with the projections, without forgetting that their nature is projection.
Complete and perfect Enlightenment is quite difficult to achieve fully.
In another and last attempt to present it, this means all the potential human beings’ faults have been fully overcome. It means all the qualities have been increased, even if one or some of them may have been more developed than others. It means that in the now, and without going backwards, the mind is no longer going back to the sensation, the idea and positioning of the “I”, completely pointed in the present moment, altruistic, completely altruistic, totally altruistic, not only in an ethical sense, but right there, here and now, the center is not the ego anymore but the whole sphere of perception has replaced the natural focus on the subjective center of consciousness.
In the Hegelian dialectic approach, it could be said that the co-emergence of the subject and the object has led to a state of being that would be beyond the duality subject and object which allowed its manifestation. A state in which the consciousness would then be one with its surroundings, beyond subject and object.
But the Hegelian dialectic doesn’t account for those aspects of reality.
In esoteric Judaism, we could refer to the notion of Ein sof (or Eyn Sof in Kabbalah), naming the state of reality before its manifestation in several entities, starting with the first one itself, before the names, before the act of creation. Though it corresponds more with the first moment of the Hegelian dialectic.
Even Alchemy teaches that there is one original Light, distinct from the material phenomenon we call light and that we distinguish from darkness, or vacuum, as we can see in the rays and spectrum of any particles, as a sort of rainbow of luminous and dark patterns.
In one sense, we could say that completely Enlightened Beings are definitely One with the Oneness, embodying the full understanding and realization of Reality itself, in a human body.
Their body, speech and mind have become a pure manifestation of the Ultimate Reality’s Primordial Wisdom, in a way that ordinary people can still perceive, understand and try to reproduce. And this is achievable for us, thanks to the qualifications and potentialities allowed by our human condition and because they lies in the Reality itself, as a potential.
This is, again, just the way things are. And this is the very essence of the Christic Revelation and the core knowledge of the Eastern science of Avatars. Because of monotheism’s historical, cultural and political limits, this sacred knowledge has not yet been acknowledged and taught openly and freely to all of humankind.
Human beings have the possibility to actualize their understanding and realization of these faculties and potentialities residing in the nature of Reality itself. Consciousness, Love, Compassion, and all other qualities do not belong to human beings but to the nature of reality itself. And we can fully embodying them, in a process of understanding and refinement, well described in Asian spiritual Traditions.
Accepting the fact that this operative knowledge has been revealed several times in human history would have massive consequences and impact on society. We would start raising all our children as future incarnations of highly realized and accomplished beings. The global world civilization, its culture and structures of power would be shaken to their very foundations.
This revolutionary and operative knowledge can not remain the selfish treasure of a particular Tradition, for the benefit of the few.It is now time to reveal it to the masses and to teach it to the whole world. We are all future Christ or Buddhas and only the structure of the society and education prevents our children from accomplishing this potentiality.
How could human society remain based on inequity, organized rarity with a handful of predators milking the masses everyday when such understanding and operative knowledge will be unleashed ?
Now, that being said, we have to realize the level of accomplishment, the difficulty to gather all the causes and conditions and the general set of considerable efforts usually necessary to achieve that State in one existence. Ancient Traditions have considered the fully Enlightened beings as Saints, when they are not directly at the origin of spiritual Traditions themself.
And so, this is why they are considered holy and why the vast and profound ancestral knowledge, but also the Transmission process itself, and its main actors, are considered sacred and even divine.
It is difficult to conceive how ordinary beings like us would experience such a degree of Accomplishment. And so, we have to understand that it may even be difficult for our modern society to accept that this state of realization even exists.
Once we realize how much the lack of that Wisdom is unsatisfying, how much this incompleteness is a cause of both subtle and gross suffering, but that the Primordial Wisdom of the Universe, or Reality itself, is manifesting spontaneously through certain chains of Transmissions, embodied in some particular Great Beings, then a genuine, unfabricated and non obsequious devotion naturally arises.
DECENTRALIZATION — a kind of a spiritual vision
Now when we talk about decentralization, in blockchain and cryptocurrencies, it refers to the use of internet infrastructure to design networks that allow the execution of transactions, encrypted in an incorruptible database, directly from peer to peer, without resorting to a third party middleman to validate and record interactions between network users.
For example, in France, musicians must register with an organization approved by the French State, which will be responsible for collecting their royalties on their behalf. This organization is of course taking its share in the process.
The large-scale deployment and use of a decentralized infrastructure will allow artists to receive their payments in real time, directly in their electronic wallet, with minimal fees to cover the costs of network operation and development.
Now let’s keep in mind that human beings belong to the large family of mammals, so their social organization includes a hierarchy between the dominant and the dominated, where the dominant adopts predatory behavior on the rest of the herd.
We have therefore ended up in a situation where the dominants over time have taken control of the protocols of production and transactions, extracting a considerable part of the added value produced by the incessant activity of the people.
Such concentrations are immediately perceived in a public blockchain network and when the actors of a network notice it, they naturally bypass them in order to achieve greater efficiency. Peer-to-peer is the key to efficiency.
Especially when on the other hand, pyramidal entities lose a lot of energy to maintain their existence and pursue their concentration of power, like vortexes.
Here again, we can see a real lack of efficiency.
Building and using decentralized architectures to carry out human activities is a way to make our organization in harmony with the mechanisms of nature. It will mitigate the excesses brought by the possibility and potentialities of concentration, which is also a natural mechanism that we can observe in nature itself. Main excess being the formation of vortexes that drain the energy around them and do not distribute it efficiently to the network, acting like unconscious black holes.
So, decentralization in blockchain and crypto is the application of natural and efficient principles to the infrastructure carrying and recording transactions. It allows the way our activities are organized to copy the core of Reality, which could be described as a decentralized network of nodes.
Ultimately there is no center. Just temporary accretions of energy, manifested in space and time as long as the causes and conditions of their existence are gathered. They serve their purpose of computing and transmitting data, as nodes on a network.
All individuals and particular phenomena can be seen as nodes in the decentralized network that is the known universe.
Decentralization is making the microcosm, the way we deal with human transactions, in the image of Natural mechanisms..
That being said, a bit of centralization remains necessary and the point is to find the right balance. Not for the benefit of a few but for the good of mankind as a whole: indeed, concentration brings consciousness, brings power over the past and the future and ability to control other phenomena, to a certain extent.
The form of the pyramid, used to shape human society, is often criticized because it is not efficient enough for the whole species. It leads to concentration of power at its top and if the top hodlers are not acting for the benefit of the whole pyramid, the advantages of this shape are lost.
But this would be the same if we were using the circle or even the sphere. There will be a center that will concentrate power.
Hyper concentration leads to imperialism, which leads to a kind of black hole effect, inefficient for the whole network.
Hyper decentralization leads to anarchy, which weakens the network effect of being organized.
Finding the right balance, in our daily individual existence, in the present moment, as well as in our social collective interactions, requires understanding of these mechanism and the will to use them wisely for the benefit of the group. The group being sentient life forms itself.
It will require vision and power to balance the actual forces of hyper concentration. They have emerged from the vacuum, from Reality itself, and have naturally produced views, cultures, beings and civilisations that tend to preserve themselves from dilution in a new decentralized way of dealing with exchanges.
Decentralization will succeed merely because it is more efficient for more people and organizations.
CONCLUSION — words of my Perfect Teachers
As we can see since the inception of Bitcoin, time has come to focus on decentralization. It is a natural movement, we just have to embrace it by moving away from centralization where it is not efficient and building decentralization protocoles where it is efficient. For the efficiency of the whole human activity network.
The western movement towards Eastern Asian views and philosophy is the natural manifestation of the comic dance of Maya, going from hyper concentration to hyper decentralization.
Time has come for a multipolar world and no force or hegemonic egregore can oppose it. Even the forces trying to slow down this movement are just the manifestation of the time it takes for the rebalancing process to happen.
There is no war, just a dance, just a perpetual dance around the perfect point of balance, always there ultimately, but equilibrium is a dance.
Let’s find that equilibrium with decentralization and let’s deploy it within web3.0, for the benefit of the whole network and its participants.
DEDICATIONS
These few words of celebration have escaped from my heart,
Because have seen the Dharmakaya as Chenrezi Avalokiteshvara Tendzin Gyamtso, The Great 14th Dalai Lama,
Because have heard the Sambhogakaya as Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, The Great Mahasiddha,
Because have felt the Nirmanakaya as Vajracharya Denys Teundroup, The Great Transmitter,
Because of the unceasing powerful rain of blessings from all my other Teachers, all recognized as manifestations of the universal awakened wisdom, such as my beloved parents, relatives, friends, and my tribulations.
Any mistakes, incompleteness and any error or omission have to be imputed to that phenomenon replying to the sound Rigdzin Teundroup.
Let’s be happy, joyful and blissful, always, here and now, completely, totally and fully appointed in unity in the instant present.
Rigdzin Teundroup, member of the Tsuka Sangha, a nobody, certainly a disappointment. Yet, for the good of All, a lover of wisdom and compassion.
