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This is Dominique Johnson’s first blog post on this website. He is a sophomore at DePaul University, seeking a major in Religious Studies. Domonique is an active member of DePaul Interfaith.

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“There are three things, Bhikshus, that are everlastingly the same, upon which no vicissitude, no modification can ever act: these are the Law, Nirvâna, and Space and those three are One, since the first two are within the last, and that last one a Mâyâ, so long as man keeps within the whirlpool of sensuous existences.”—Buddha

From “An Unpublished Discourse of the Buddha” taken from the Second Book of Commentaries, addressed to the Arhats

Buddha says to his Arhats (direct disciples of Gautama Buddha) that the Universe humans pass through like “a flitting shadow” is “any more a real Universe than the dewdrop that reflects a spark of the morning sun is that sun.” Again the Buddha explains, “An elephant who sees its form mirrored in the lake looks at it, and then goes away, taking it as the real body of another elephant is wiser than the man who beholds his face in the stream, and looking at it, says, “Here am I…I am I”: for the “I,” his Self is not in the world of the twelve Nidānas [origins of phenomena] and mutability, but in that of Non-Being, the only world beyond the snares of Māyā.”

“Māyā or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends on his power of cognition”—The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pg. 39. We bring only material existence into our consciousness, and we interact in the field of the material world with sense-instruments. We cannot perceive any reality or existence higher than our present as long as the sense-instruments remain the only faculties by which we see or perceive the world. “The upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings” ibid. Each progressive awakening penetrates the World’s of Māyā & Duality (Polarity of Opposites) till the monad (spirit) which makes up Ego finally returns and merges into the “cosmic sea” which gave it birth — “the dew-drop slips into the shining Sea” says a Buddhist metaphor—Light of Asia.

The Mystery of Being is in anatma or non-self (the absence of anything, enduring or an Ego) in Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings. So, to Shakyamuni whatever Becomes, is not, meaning that only in Becoming does one realize the infinite possibilities of Non-Being or the Void and one must substitute rational concepts of Being (such as God, Sat, chit, Pure Consciousness, ect.) for the actual realization of Buddhahood. So long as one is not liberated or is-not liberating themselves from any or all of the twelve Nidānas, such realizations will seem unachievable.