Choosing Dharma (eBook)

The Dharma Matrix

Morpheus: I imagine that right now, you’re feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?

Neo: You could say that.

Morpheus: I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees, because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?

Director: Cut. Mr Fishburne (Morpheus) will you stop pretending to be the Buddha!

OK, that last line didn’t happen, but, when the film ‘The Matrix,’ that was written and directed by brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski hit the screens of cinemas in 1999, it became the must-see movie for Buddhists all over the globe. Although it was within the genre of sci-fi fantasy, there was so much within it that Buddhists could identify with as being Dharma based. So, I thought it would be playful and helpful to begin this book by exploring some of the classic quotes in the film and unpacking them a bit, within the context of secular western Buddhism. Then you will be offered a choice. Do you take the red jewel or the blue jewel?

What is the rabbit hole? Within this context (humour me here), I suggest that it’s the confused and conditioned self-referential mind, that accepts things (physical, emotional, psychological or any combination thereof) that it engages with via the five sense gateways of taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, as being real. But, that reality is, according to the Buddha, just the subjective experience of the un-awakened mind that believes it’s a fixed or separate and enduring ego-identity, personality, individual, self, soul, spirit, essence, mind-stream, conscience, energy, vibration or any other thing than can be identified, labeled or established as being you, me or I.

So here we all are, sitting in our own little rabbit holes, thinking we’re experiencing actuality, without realizing we need to wake up to do that. In the movie Morpheus says to Neo: “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.” That sentence represents, I suggest, the very essence of the communication approach of the Buddha. He’s the finger pointing to the moon. He’s not the moon. He’s encouraging you to walk the eight-themed journey of helpful view, emotion, speech, action, livelihood, effort, concentration and awareness. This is the fourth of the four principal assignments that he set out in his first public communication, his primary teaching. This, he suggests, could lead you to the door of the awakening experience of clarity.

On this journey, he encourages you to test, challenge and attempt to refute every thing he says within your own direct experience. He suggests this, so you can see for yourself, if it works to move the mind away from the worrying of living in our own little rabbit hole of subjective reality, towards the freedom that is realized when the mind is at peace with itself, others and the world around it. But, the Buddha is not going to turn the door handle, or try to push you through the door. It’s your choice and if you have found the most helpful context for your practice, there will be nobody there trying to manipulate or coerce you to walk through that door.

Here, we see the awakened mind (Buddha) of Morpheus exploring and explaining, what in classical Buddhism is called dukkha, but within this context is called worrying. Whether you are ready to accept this or not, I suggest, that if you peeled back all the multi-layers of your experience, you will find, as he says, “It is this feeling that has brought you to me. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” This, I suggest, points to the actuality that worrying is inherent within all human experience, because all things are impermanent and insubstantial in or of themselves, including what you think of as you. Because, within the pre-conscious, biological, nature aspect of the human species there is the drive to survive, this gives rise to an inherent fear of non-existence. This creates the worrying mind which then clings to ideas such as fate, chance, luck, destiny, reincarnation and a first cause entity/being/deity/intelligence that’s in control. That fear of taking 100% personal responsibility for what we think, say and do, without recourse to blaming others or external events for the quality of our mind state, is what the Dharma journey sets out to become liberated from.

My personal favourite scene from the movie is the one where Neo goes off to be tested to see if ‘he is the one.’ There, he meets a young boy with a shaven head, dressed in robes, who appears to be bending spoons using his mind, a bit like the illusionist Uuri Geller used to do on TV. He gives Neo a spoon and says “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.” “What truth? asks Neo. “There is no spoon” says the boy. This, I suggest, points to the actuality of no-thing-ness, which was the realization within the awakening experience of the Buddha. This is the central theme of conditioned causal continuity, (causality) that is the source of everything the Buddha communicated. What the Buddha is pointing to in this source communication, is that it’s the conditioned and confused self-referential mind that prevents us from seeing things as they are. In the film Morpheus says “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” And so it is with the Dharma. It can only be pointed to. You have to go there and experience it for yourself.

The Dharma journey, could be said to be the move away from the reactive habitual patterns of thinking, speaking and acting in ways that cause the mind to worry, within conditioned subjective reality, to the awakened mind of conscious awareness, that engages with actuality as it is and responds as is appropriate to the experience and allows for the mind to be at peace with itself, others and the world around it. There’s a great clue about this in the film when Morpheus says “What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

According to a current functional understanding within neuroscience, that fits, I suggest, very well with what the Buddha taught, is that consciousness is the state of aliveness. All living things are consciousness. They do not have consciousness. Consciousness is not a separate thing from aliveness. Human consciousness/aliveness is considered to have evolved to be an ability to be aware of being aware and make sense of the neuro/electro/chemical firings in the brain, that react to sensory data input and is dependent on that living human brain and cannot exist independent of one. This, if correct, blows wide open the classical Buddhist version of rebirth, but would sit very well with the approach taken to rebirth within the secular western approach, where it’s not denied, but engaged with on a more practical level.

Finally, before we move away from the Matrix connection onto the exploration of a range of topics, let’s take a look at one more scene from the film. In it Morpheus says to Neo: “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Neo asks “What truth?” Morpheus replies “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.” When you translate that into Dharma-speak, it’s saying that actuality is what’s happening when there’s no sense of you within the experience. It’s saying that it’s the conditioned and confused self-referential mind that’s pulling the wool over your eyes and preventing you from seeing things as they are. It’s saying you’re a prisoner of the self-referential mind and the prison is the worrying state penitentiary.

At last we come to the reason why I chose to introduce this book this way. In Buddhism there are three jewels that correspond to the three acts...