Eight Steps to Freedom | Page 4

merged in mutual identity at this subtle level of understanding. This is the result of a change of perspective that allows a perception of reality as a dynamic whole, rather than a set of ontological structures in a linear causal relationship.
For instance, our usual understanding is that a tree is an adaptation of a specific organism to a unique time and space. This is a linear perspective, however, and does not see the tree for what it is. It ignores the tree's interaction with the rest of the environment. A tree is a dynamic process rather than a concrete unit of being. That we perceive it as such is because of the limits imposed upon our senses by their very structure, and the corresponding interpretation by our mind.
In other words, our eyes are able to perceive light reflected from a source within the limits imposed by the visible spectrum. Although we are aware scientifically of other radiations such as infrared and ultraviolet light, we are unable to perceive them. Though the energy of light is composed of undulating patterns or waves, our perception of change is limited to only rapid transformation. We can see this clearly when we look at a time lapse film of a garden flower.
What appears to our ordinary consciousness as a rose in bloom is actually a rose in process. Through time lapse photography we can see the crest and trough of the energy of the rose bush as it generates buds, blooms, drops flowers, and begins again, all while it continues growing. Along with all the visible manifestations of process, are the myriad aspects of its interaction with the other forces of the garden. The rose interacts with the soil, absorbing nutrients, dropping leaves and flowers, which recycle nutrients, hosting insects, the insects feeding each other, and absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.
Nothing about the rose is static. In fact, its very being is in interaction. Our consciousness defines it as a thing, however. A unit which is separate from the other units in the minds arena. It is either experienced as foreground or background. When the mind contemplates a garden, it delegates the rose to the role of background, and when it considers the rose itself, the sky or the garden wall becomes background. The reality of rose, however, is in its interaction with its environment. The names rose, garden, sky, and earth are mere tools of the intellect and communication having no real relationship to the reality of the phenomenon itself. This is always a matter of mutual interaction or better put, interpenetration.
The Buddhist term "mutual interpenetration", recognizes the absolute coincidence of being that is an environment. Every aspect of the garden is effecting and being effected by all other aspects simultaneously. The evidence of this reality is recognized in many disciplines from ecology to particle physics. The essential point for a Buddhist is that his own being is also sharing in this interpenetration. There is no abiding reality of self outside of this interpenetration; no permanent soul, mind, or spirit that is not one with this eternal interchange.
The process is being, there is nothing else. Ideas about self are irrelevant to the truth. They are mere clouds over the garden, coming into being and dissipating. All the while the constant stream of interaction goes on. As clouds blow where the wind takes them, so the dharma student allows ideas of self-freedom to blow across the sky of this eternal mutual interpenetration.
The forest is the trees and the trees are the forest. The rose is the garden, and the garden the rose. Others are the self, and self is the other. There is nothing other than this, nothing to cling to and nothing to fear. For if all is self, then there is no self which can be threatened by other.
How is it possible, then, for a person to operated effectively in this world of things holding this lofty view of mutual interpenetration? It is possible because each phenomenon, though sharing an essential being with all other phenomena, never the less maintains its own pattern or structure as an expression of this interrelationship. Things do not cease to exist when we become aware of their essential emptiness of self. If they did, then all existence would vanish with them. The process of this awareness can be found in the Zen saying, "First there is a mountain, then there isn't a mountain, then there is."
When we first see things we see them as absolute concrete realities in themselves. A mountain is a mountain and nothing else. Then we become aware of the mountain's essential emptiness, that it does not exist outside of its interrelationship with the world. Finally, it becomes mountain again when we see it with the enlightened eye as the perfect expression