The Great Refusal is the refusal to sell short our potential for liberation for the paltry comforts of consumerism. In Golok, in Tibet, they say that the desire for comfort is the death of honor and truth. My denunciation of the "Western Buddhist Movement" stems not from political conservatism but from my embrace of Marcuse's Great Refusal; the refusal to trade freedom and happiness for cheap consolation. The new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.

It seems that to be "nice" one must cease and desist from all critical dissent and debate. To be nice, one must say things obliquely rather than directly, or better yet, say nothing at all. One should try to focus on points of agreement and smooth over differences in a fog of blandness. This emphasis on being nice is a form of oppression. Feminists pointed this out in the 70's and encouraged us not to teach our daughters to be "nice" because it was disempowering to them. Now we just want our Buddhists to be nice. This niceness which is being referred to is what Trungpa Rinpoche called "idiot compassion." It seems that it is fine for the Western Buddhist Movement to castrate the power of the Buddhadharma, but if anyone says "Hey, wait a minute, you are distorting the teachings of liberation," then they are branded with the scarlet letter - "not nice." This supposed niceness is in fact merely a tool for the suppression of radical critique that often takes its form in disagreement, debate and critical discussion - all forms of interaction which are historically central to Buddhism. Are we, as Western practitioners of Buddhism, so scared of our internal rage that we imagine any serious disagreement might turn into violence?

This vision of being "nice and compassionate" is different from the Buddhist vision. Compassion and kindness demand strong dissension and response in the face of harmful delusion. It is, of course, a matter of motivation. The precious Buddhadharma teaches me that all people have been at one time my mother, my lover, my child, and my best friend. One day my friend becomes my enemy, and then later my friend again. When we contemplate Buddhadharma we come to a stance of vast equanimity in the midst of debate, but this equanimity does not deny the need for valid, well-reasoned response. Is it kinder to let the moth burn alive or to point out to the moth that the object of it's obsession is, any moment, going to become the source of its greatest suffering. What is compassion? The prefix "com" means "with" and the body of the word passion, from the root pathos, means suffering. Compassion is to be with the suffering of others; not to turn a blind eye to the suffering of all sentient beings. In the Buddhist sense, compassion means to actively remove the causes of suffering as a function of love. It is not kind, loving or compassionate to see the causes of suffering and not try and remove them."

(Traktung Rinpoche)

"Soul seems more dangerous to talk about than sex, violence, death or money these days."

"It’s really hearing something that brings the consequence with it — “I hear you.” We know that sensation, when it happens the whole world deepens. If we really heard what is happening around us it’s possible some of it may stop. From a mythic perspective, seeing is often a form of identifying, but hearing is the locating of a much more personal message. Hearing creates growing, uncomfortable discernment. Things get accountable."

We Are In The Underworld And We Haven’t Figured It Out Yet | by Martin Shaw | Medium
https://medium.com/@schoolofmyth/we-are-in-the-underworld-and-we-havent-figured-it-out-yet-5d48d2c988aa

Celý svět nebyl dost velký pro Alexandra Velikého.
Ale jeho hrob ano.

Jung postulated that archetypes "bubble up" from the collective unconscious, the great cosmic repository of creative axioms. From the kabbalistic standpoint this is narcissism, because the collective begins and ends with the projection of human conceptual hopes and fears. Human beings attempt to "own" whatever phenomenon is encountered, whether consciously or subconsciously. True gnostic wisdom is revealed from beyond conceptuality and its archetypes, and enters human realm as a portal. On the other side are not the root patterns of conceptuality, as Jung believed, but the capacity to nullify self-identification altogether.

(David Chaim Smith - The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis: Commentary on the First Three Chapters)

"The intention to have faith itself causes faith."

"One cannot accomplish spiritual work with the same view that created the need for it."

The need for spiritual work is based on one central problem - a self-identified subject addictively grasps after what is believed to increase happiness and decrease pain. All attempts to remedy life´s circumstances will ultimately fail, as whatever is reached slips away at some point. After a lifetime of chasing after the fantasy of a panacea, an honest assessment of the situation might become possible. There is no way to "fix" the life situation. The only alternative is a shift away from the manufacture of the untenable scenario to a set of possibilities that might be more profound, more honest, and more relevant to the heart of the matter. The ordinary human view is completely fixated on the quality of experiences and their projected causes and outcomes. The most radical shift that is possible for a human being is to abandon this view, and turn the mind toward the essential ground of phenomena. This allows experiences and circumstances to come and go, leaving the heart of the matter untouched. Ultimately it becomes clear that nothing modifies the ground, and awareness and manifestation dissolve their separateness and sense of solidity within that realization. Once the quest for linear timeline is subsumed within a concern for the ground, the chicken-and-egg question loses its meaning and relevance. If these designations are probed deeply enough a critical analysis of origins and destinations points to the deconstruction of causality itself. All that remains is a question: What is the continuum when not overtaken by the relative designations of inner and outer equivocations?

"Keep your view as vast as the sky, but refine your actions as finely as flour."

(David Chaim Smith - The Awakening Ground)

"The conventional logic is that the mother precedes the child, and is the cause of the child´s existence. However, in order for a mother to actually be a mother there must be a child. Therefore the designation of mother is dependent upon the child. This reverses the expected cause and effect. The so-called cause (mother) is understood to depend on the so-called effect (child) for its designation, which renders the effect as a cause. Considering the fluidity with which the reversal is understood cuts through causality and allows the mystery of the continuum to outshine its coordinates.

The same fluidity applied to breaking through casual designations can be applied to the universe and perception. How would we know that there was a universe at all unless it entered somehow into perceiving? It is assumed that the universe precedes what perceives it, and that the perceiving mind is born into a universe that has prior existence, and allows it to exist. Therefore the universe seems to be the cause and perceiving is its effect. However, the effect of perceiving becomes the cause of the universe because of the necessity of the universe having to be perceived in order to be known at all. Therefore the perceiving becomes the cause and the universe becomes its effect. Like the Sefer Yetzirah states: "Their end is imbedded in their beginning, and their beginning in their end, like a flame in a burning coal (1:7)

If the seed of awareness impregnates the womb of its own expanse, is it a parent to its own thoughts? Which is cause and which is effect? How do mental phenomena indicate any coherent autorship? Why would it be assumed that there is a thinker prior to the thought? Is identity not designated by the thinking alone? Do you exist before the thought that you exist?

The nontheistic view held here assumes that creativity does not require a prior divine entity to pull its strings. Creative activity is uncaused, sourceless and spontaneous. The Fountain of Wisdom states: "Only that which generates itself can be called truly existent." Consideration of the magic of spontaneous uncaused creativity nullifies the linear causal progression, because a thing cannot create itself. In order to create itself a thing would have to exist before the act of creation to do the creating. This is impossible, and contemplation of the scenario allows a break in conceptuality.

The remedy for linear causality is a return to the open space "prior to" manifestation, without rejecting the display of its phenomena. The razor´s edge that equalizes form and formlessness can be realized in that space, no matter what seems to arise. Each mental construct can be taken as a body, and each body has five functions symbolized by five inner organs. Each organ corresponds to an alchemical function. The inner organs of the fivefold body of each mental construct mirror the senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.

Each fivefold collection of functions is the pregnant beast laid upon the fiery altar of sacrifice in contemplative practice, where the body surrenders to the fire of wisdom. As each functional unit is caught, bound, and consumed its life force is extracted, and allowed to dissolve in the same basic space that presents it. Space is a complete undifferentiated body that appears in the paradox of differentiation. No construct ever leaves space even for a moment. Therefore the sacrifice of the space-body marks the return to what it actually never left. The return is the sacrificial offering, its fire is sheer aspiration, and its rising smoke is the perfume of poetic resonance. Each moment of awakening enacts this scenario.

The fivefold organ system that constitutes a contemplative body can be applied to either the macrocosm or the microcosm, but it doesn´t really matter in the greater sense of the work. The main point is that each construct, whether vast or tiny, can be unmade in the midst of its apparent relative functioning. It doesn´t matter how the construct was made, as long as it can be unmade in the recognition of the essential nature of its life force. The assumption of independent existence that is imputed to the construct is the actual animal of sacrifice. This is the true meaning of the temple sacrifices described in the five books of the Torah.

The body is a whole offering, which sacrifices itself through the alchemical process. Immersion, absorption, and surrender unify the beast, and send its twitching impulses off garmented in clouds of variation, perfumed with the smoke of aspiration. Its smoldering flesh passes away in each moment. All constructs are impermanent, and their passing away is used by the practitioner as a sacrifice. The dissolution of phenomena is inherent in every moment anyway, so why not infuse it with gnostic intention? Why not make what is already happening into prayer?

(David Chaim Smith - The Awakening Ground)

"Thingness is the heart’s great sorrow"

Dzogchen Tögal — Encountering the Great Work
https://www.traktungkhepa.com/tidbits-blog/2019/2/11/dzogchen-tgal

Spiritual practice doesn’t heal the psyche as far as I’m concerned. Serious spiritual practice is tangential to it. You could still remain an extremely psychologically flawed individual and accomplish quite a great deal in spiritual practice at the same time, without one necessarily affecting the other. There’s a certain gross level in which they overlap, and the really severe distortions do become tempered, but at the subtle level, you can remain, as I did, extremely neurotic while you’re building up the resonance of practice accomplishment. I think that when spiritual practice becomes psychologized, it’s a very poor substitute for therapy, and it’s very poor psychology. It’s a different field. I think that the confusion between the two is largely due to a misreading of certain Jungian ideas, and other early 20th century ideas, that need to be sorted out. And I don’t feel that it is terribly sorted out in the literature. The New Age movement certainly has made matters much worse, where spiritual practice almost becomes synonymous with self-help, and self-healing. And I don’t think that they are. I think spiritual accomplishment has to do with the nature of consciousness and how it “en-worlds” an individual—ultimately, in the mystical sense, how an individual moves beyond the reification and division of a knowing subject and a known object, whatever that object might be.

The basic intention in my own practice, as the basic intention would be in my artwork, is to reach beyond conventional understanding and distill the resonance of that reaching — for no reason whatsoever. There’s a term in kabbalah, it’s a Hebrew term, lishma, which means ‘for its own sake.’ Meaning that something that is truly good, is a good in and of itself. There’s no reason needed. It’s based on its own inherent, innate goodness, which ultimately is the root of beauty. Spiritual aspiration is nothing other than a thirst for this purposeless, inherently beautiful, and inherently good, direction in one’s life. Ultimately, the more one acquires, builds up this resonance, the more one contacts the ultimate sacrament of the mind, which breaks down this dichotomy between the offerer, the practitioner and that which they are offering, which is their time and their effort, and ultimately the illusion that there is a recipient of the offerings that have been made…which in religion, is God. But, I am not a theist. So I don’t posit a creator god. The offering is made just simply based on its own inherent goodness for no reason whatsoever to nothing whatsoever.

One only becomes a practitioner out of love. It is undifferentiated, like the vastness of space, and it embraces everything through the direct recognition of beauty. This is the basis of the gnosis. To make a conceptual object out of that love, even one that encompasses everything within itself, defeats the purpose. It must remain open and pure, so that anything, everything, or nothing at all, can unfold without ever leaving its essence. To dedicate yourself to the pursuit of this requires discipline, clarity, and persistence. The goal is the absorption of the whole of your being, and the enworldment of that being, into the heart of sublime beauty. This is not a thing that can be calculated or reasoned out. It is a wild, crazy way to live. However there are those who have burned down everything else. We can’t live in society anymore, it’s too late. For us, the hardness of these disciplines redeem what would otherwise be total oblivion.

(David Chaim Smith)