Three Analogies on Causes and Conditions
In Kentucky this Spring we had a continuous succession of thunderstorms, some of which caused considerable damage. The other night I was reading Jamgon Kongtrul III's book Cloudless Sky on the Path of Mahamudra (excellent, by the way). Somehow an analogy cropped up comparing the storms with the process by which the cloudless sky of dharmakaya gets closed up. I jotted down a note and the next day a third analogy manifested bringing health into the picture.
For starters, then, we live in a world of open space which, in its purest form, we call blue sky. Because of causes and conditions, however, as winds change and moisture flows up from the south, thin clouds begin to show; they thicken, and within hours a thunderstorm develops. We have lost our blue sky. But, in essence, the thunderstorm is not a thing, it is empty. It exists relatively because heat and moisture cause energy to collect as storm. We wait for blue sky to return.
The open space of mind is like blue sky. As the skandhas create a dualistic world of self and other, we fill the space with thoughts and feelings. Habitual mind blocks the freshness of our view and blue sky is obscured by clouds. The world we construct with ego is contained within the emptiness of blue sky. Our human, relative world also develops because of causes and conditions. According to Jamgon Kongtrul, Lodro Taye, the entire world of matter and mind is created by the evolutionary actions of sentient beings. Through meditation and insight, we try to rediscover blue sky.
We live in a relative world of body/mind and the analogy of blue sky is the health or balance of both. Because of causes and conditions, however, we get sick or disabled. Causes and conditions can be of many kinds, from genetic to communicable disease, to diet, and lack of exercise, or simply, as the Tibetans might say, to an imbalance in the humors of body. Through meditation and insight we can find the blue sky of health within the conditions, whatever they are. Health seems a complex process. As one writer, enigmatically expressed it, in dealing with sickness we must first work with the culture, then with the individual, and lastly with the sickness.