The Natural Good: Samantabhadra’s quest in terms of justice as natural co-creative intelligence manifesting spontaneously as natural unconditional law called dharma.
The recognition of injustice as a heart-felt response when harm, abuse, and violence is enacted upon other sentient beings spontaneously arises within the overall context of primordial presence. The awareness of injustice thus sets into motion the movement toward justice, thus annulling wrong karma based on distorted views, remediating the harmful effects of negative karma by creating space for positive actions to further. As such, it is a natural “two step in one” manifestation of absolute bodhichitta in action in the realm of relative co-creative form, the union of the natural compassion of a bodhisattva in concert with absolute reality, dharma, as skillful means, upaya. Such is the core, the heart essence teaching in action, the co-creative activity of a tenth stage bodhisattva or the dharmakaya buddha as it has come down to us via the primordial co-creative tradition.
By definition, bodhisattvas naturally feel compassion toward suffering sentient beings. That is, bodhisattvas are able to bear the pain of worldly beings; but due to their continuous abiding in transcendent realization, they are able to spontaneously emanate a healing light simultaneously embodying appropriate skillful methods. They undistractedly desire to awaken and thus liberate all beings utilizing skillful means. A deep felt-sense of injustice is naturally provoked when a bodhisattva witnesses dharmic displacements in the form of harm, violence, abuse, exploitation, oppression, and pain imposed by human beings upon other sentient beings. Such artifacts of harmful activities are perpetuated by human beings whose condition has become estranged from their innate wholistic connections of body, speech, and mind, thus forming an a-dharmic relationship. It is a-dharmic because they will karmically produce even more suffering to both the perpetuator and the persecuted. Violations of the all-compassionate rule prompts a bodhisattva to right such violations. Hence, feelings of injustice arise naturally in a bodhisattva when they witness needless suffering that can be righted through skillful means (as a synergistic partnership of compassionate action and unconditioned wisdom). A bodhisattva desires to prevent such injustice — violations of the rule of compassion, thus lifting the dark veil that holds living beings in darkness, confusion, turmoil, and dysfunction.
All truly dharmically based cultures, societies, nations, communities, their institutions, values, and laws must be based on this universal dharmic principle. All perceptions must include the recognition of the co-creative primordial power that is inherent in all, in form, in the relative temporal world, in viewing the mountain, the ocean, stars, and fellow sentient beings. Lacking in that recognition of the universal dharma is just that, ignorance, avidya. It is not a matter of following manmade artificial thought constructs founded on biased laws, but rather the innate law written deep in the heart of all beings and phenomena. Hence, social norms, codes, and laws must conform to and be reflective of universal timeless law, not replace or pervert it. Such values must reveal that innate beauty, goodness, love, and joy. That integrity must be honored by honorable human beings; otherwise they serve to corrupt, fragment, and confuse. All manmade laws and moral codes must themselves be based upon this universal timeless, boundless unconditioned, and measureless basis through direct yogic perception of the light of goodness — through integrative wisdom of the relative and the absolute reality.
In ordinary dualistically based societies, our feelings regarding justice are too often relegated to the displaced authoritative domain of philosophy, religiosity, and authoritarian experts of socio-economic politics, rather than integrated as directly accessible heart-felt experiential feelings of right and wrong, because our inner wisdom has too often become co-opted and repressed through negative conditioning and the adoption of limited and inadequate false frames of reference. As long as human beings remain disassociated and alienated from recognizing their innate goodness, they become capable of perpetuating great harm and injustice, either individually or en masse. Hence, we find unjust laws, unjust societies, unjust nations and empires capable of great harm and negative karma — self limiting and lacking in expansive equanimity.
Unfortunately, such habitual dualistic objectifications of an inborn heartfelt sense of justice can too easily become encapsulated in escapist frameworks made up to insulate the egoic mindset from what is perceived as the discomfort of the heart’s promptings. Such attempts at isolation and avoidance leads to more limited predilections of time and place, until the egoic mechanism is disassembled. Because of fear and egoic grasping, such imputations unfortunately become “the norm”, while deviations from the norm too often become feared, weird, spooky, disparaged, demonized, or ridiculed. Therein, the co-creative genius and evolution of such a society wanes. Any a-dharmic system that perpetuates confusion, deceit, fragmentation, conflict, harm, and suffering is unjust; hence, it becomes is a natural target to transform in order to effect liberation and good, to unbound the chains of habitual negative karma, and liberate the potential expression of bodhiciita
Such artificially contrived and limited frameworks where systems of “justice” that are based upon conditioned biased assumptions, can be identified through the keen discriminatory sword of cultural relativism; yet, they are sorely inadequate to compensate for heartfelt self-estrangement until the wisdom sword is applied to itself, the instrument of knowing. Therein, one’s innate wisdom is honored and revealed. The wisdom eye opens disclosing the true nature of phenomena.
Peering into frozen temporal time-place biased assumptions, one can then easily discern the culturally conditioned biased baggage of law. For example narcissistic and nihilistic religiosity, codes of conduct, and laws such as the Laws of Manu, Sharia Law, Buddha’s dharma, Midrash halakhah, Confucian Book of Rites or Lijing, Rites of Zhou, Zhouli, the Book of Etiquette and Rites, Yili, etc. However, here will be presented an exposition of universal justice, the dharma, that is not subject to temporal bias, but based on immutable universal and timeless law placed inextricably within a co-creative ever-changing setting. Impossible, say the nihilists; but let us see.
Universal timeless awakened transpersonal teachings are due to the boundless domain of infinite compassion and light. Such is taught continuously by the dharmakaya buddha in the holographic multi-verse, in all domains. This is not an ideological assumption, but an experiential reality that can be conceptually explicated; but incompletely. It is yogic subject-object alignment and moreover, an integration with that primal motive dynamic of innate creativity that sets a buddha or bodhisattva in motion. It is in this way that a bodhisattva becomes a dharma facilitator, a Shambhala warrior who destroys the elements of corrupted thought processes and deceit, while letting in the light. Such is the satisfying justice evoked by the unerring sword of wisdom which eliminates all pain. In short, a bodhisattva does “good” in the context of primordial purity.
As we know, compassionate intent by itself, is not enough to accomplish a beneficial effect. Rather, benevolent activity has to be accompanied by transpersonal universal wisdom, which occupies the same equanimous domain as compassion. Such reflects the original inseparable nature of form and limitless space, of relative and absolute reality that culminates in Mahayana’s Middle Way fruition. In order for actions to have compassionate results, such is considered expediently co-creative; or stated differently, neither exclusively compassionate nor exclusively wise. It must be guided by the wisdom inherent in compassion and the compassion inherent in wisdom, both as their innate inseparable transubstantiation.
Thus contextualized, just action, as in justice, in accord with the primordial mindstream of all buddhas and awakened beings, bodhicitta, leads us to “just activity” and beneficial effects for sentient beings manifest justice in action. This transpersonal non-dual compassionate embodiment activity, once actualized is experienced subjectively; albeit it can be explained intellectually. In short, it is transconceptual experience based on valid yogic direct perception or pure perception, vidya.
Background
In the past the presentation of an alive and vivid system of justice within a Buddhist context became problematic to explicate because of past nihilistic tendencies; i.e., self-limiting assumptions in early Buddhism, Shravakayana, of which the Theravadin tradition is an extant example. This is not an assertion that Sravakayana concepts are wrong; but rather often needlessly self-limiting. Sutra, in general, often becomes self-limiting because of its all too common overemphasis upon negation and obsession with renunciation; i.e., negation of the sensory world, escape from the world, the dualistic understanding of skandhas as substantial, etc. That misunderstanding arises because “the world” is overtly objectified, while the yogi becomes locked into a paradigm of liberation by fixating upon an objectified world that is imputed to be separate from an objectified observer or ego. In that dualistic proposition the negation of the observer (ego) becomes a self-created problem that cannot be solved within the dualistic assumption of a separate reality of samsara and nirvana. Samsara is mistakenly identified as a physical object, albeit temporal, rather than an artificially imputed state of mind. Hence, embodiment as emanation is ignored and averted. Alongside the limited dualistic ideational framework the possibility of benevolent activity as compassion in action is missed and/or dismissed as attachment and craving –misunderstood as samsaric and unworthy activity.
Sadly, lost in dualism, one too often becomes unconcerned, calloused, and separated from the suffering of others and the implementation of justice in our very lives, socially, or the planet in mechanisms of avoidance (egoic protectionism). One then too easily sublimates into an “otherworldly” system of justice and personal salvation, as an escape mechanism of a personal spiritual karmic ideation. Thus, the necessary integration here and now expressed in “presence” is delayed and/or ignored.
Mahayana will recognize the transconceptual and transpersonal non-dual impetus that resides in the heart of hearts in alignment with Buddha’s universal awakening, the true nature of limitless mind or mind’s essence, the absolute bodhicitta as primordial mind essence. That path involves cultivating increased awareness of its uncontrived promptings disclosing its natural ineffable potential. That feeling is not based on separateness, rather non-dual integration.
Dualistic aversion was rectified by the Mahayana’s non-dual mission statement that explicates the bodhisattva, bodhicitta, the emptiness of the skandhas, and the matured non-dual explanation of co-arising origination, pratityasamutpada, the integration of absolute truth with valid relative truth. The Vajrayana took this non-dual realization even further. The salient idea is that skillful compassionate activity is not due to raga, ordinary desire or craving, but rather due to a natural unconditioned non-dual and transpersonal selfless passion, compassion. From that integration of absolute reality with true relative truth, a systematic structure based on skillful methods in order to beneficially liberate all beings from ignorance, avidya, and its inherent discomforts, kleshas and duhkha, was formulated. All such activity of those on that path could be evaluated on the basis of integrity according to how they integrate energetically through body, speech, and mind with dharma.
For example, the body forms an interactive wholistic ecological integrity in the sense that its cells, atoms, nerves, and biopsychic modalities each interact intelligently within an internal ecological relationship which may be harmonious and healing when in tune with natural function, or on the other hand it may be a cause of disharmony and dis-ease according to causes and prior conditions. Similarly, the body interacts with gravity, air, water, heat, ecosystems, the tides, and cosmos as an integrative whole in a mutually beneficial harmony, or on the other hand violently and destructively. This interdependent sentient relationship in turn is the result of an age old process obeying the laws of cause and effect since beginningless time. Within that holistic universal domain human beings can be said to truly exist as a co-evolutionary part of such a dynamic. To the extent that we respect and honor this co-creative co-evolutionary relationship wisely and compassionately benign justice is effected. With the intent of absolute universal awakening of our natural state justice naturally arises as skillful means. In that limitless domain all beings act in co-creative natural loving harmony. Here, the dharma self-arises spontaneously. Such a motive force is benevolent activism. It is “good”, beneficial, and salutary, if we define “bad” as egoic confusion and its resultant torment; while “good” is the boundless mind’s expression at every continuous juncture.
Abiding within this transpersonal natural state any violence, abuse, pain, or exploitation of a sentient being triggers a spontaneous compassionate response, which when set in motion restores natural balance, health, and harmony that arights unbalance and injustice, and transforms disparity into equitability when co-evolutionary vectors are synchronized. In short, when the dharmic laws are abrogated a bodhisattva moves toward balance and harmony with natural law. Where the poisons of hatred and confusion arise, our collective sense of justice restores harmony and inspires. Moving in this direction and simultaneously being moved by such vectors synchronistically, sentient beings celebrate together in a joyful dance of unimpeded co-evolutionary boundless light and thus realize their co-creative evolutionary potential. Here the journey rests in its natural completion as Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri complete each other.
May the curse of egoic confusion be lifted. May the causes of suffering be completely dispelled. May the causeless cause of natural original joy be revealed. May peace and love reign supreme in the multiverse as co-creative, intelligent, open, and compassionate play.
Dedicated to the All Good – Samantabhadra
Featured image of chakra wheel, clock picture and reflections by Nat Clegg, Warwick, UK. Children wanting peace by Annette Jones, Washington DC, USA. Justice scale by Mona Tootoonchinia, Toronto, Canada. Child in the nature by Petra, Austria.