Tricycle | Awake in the World

TAKEN TO TASK
I had thought one of the commitments of Tricycle was to document and extend the presence of women in Buddhism. Of the ten feature articles in your third issue, only one, the editor's piece on abortion, has anything to do with women. Granted, Buddhism is a male tradition. At this rate, I don't see that Tricycle is doing its part to alter that fact.

LISE WElL
Montreal, Quebec

Tricycle responds:
While more women writers were featured in all our other issues, the representation of women's voices in Tricycle has been a subject of concern since we started. I, for one, did not foresee the obstacles that we have encountered: the dominant male presence in historical material, in addition to the disproportionate number of articles submitted by male writers and important articles that we have developed that deal almost exclusively with men (for example, two pieces on AIDS and one on Buddhism in modern Russia).

Incidentally, it might interest you to know that of the relatively few letters we have received about the abortion article, most were from men.

While the representation of women artists (including Mayumi Oda, Marie Hyon, and Frieda Kahlo in the last issue) should not go unnoted, we have started to make unequal efforts to equalize gender voices. The effects of this will take a little time, so please bear with us, and thank you for raising this important issue. —Ed.

"DON'T KNOW" MIND
In an otherwise exemplary article, Mark Epstein ("Freud and Dr. Buddha: The Search for Selflessness," Spring 1992) shows a lack of understanding and a consequent underestimation of Wilhelm Reich's contribution to our understanding of egolessness, even as Epstein conceives of it. Reich did not call for a process of unlearning, of casting off the shackles of civilization and a return to childlike forthrightness, nor did he romanticize regression, psychosis or any uninhibited expression of emotion. Reich showed that character (muscular) armor prevents us from being completely unified bio-energetically and psychologically, thus spiritually. Because of this lack of unity we cannot feel ourselves as one, as bare attention, as the "I" that is not the "I" falsely represented as the "I" that is a non-existence which is nevertheless existence. Armor also prevents complete release of excited bio-energy ("orgone" energy) in the genital embrace—orgastic potency, not as Epstein calls it, "orgasmic" potency. Thus the person who is orgastically potent is the person whose body and mind are free to be that unity that Epstein speaks of.

Epstein appears to recognize how difficult it is to reach the correct insight of egolessness. Perhaps one reason is the deeply rooted, immobile, unconscious armoring that binds us and imprisons us, causing us to struggle and squirm to reach an insight that, as Gurdjieff describes it, should be ours simply by the flow of time.

DAVID BRAHINSKY
Roosevelt, New Jersey

Dr. Mark Epstein's essay in Tricycle, Spring 1992, depressed me exceedingly until I came to a gem of lucidity at the very end: "Says Huangpo: 'Men are afraid to forget their minds, fearing to fall through the Void with nothing to stay their fall. They do not know that the Void is not really void but the realm of the real dharma.'"

Dr. Epstein's article reminded me of an observation by Sir Arthur Avalon in The Serpent Power, a treatise about Kundalini Yoga. He says that in the poem he is describing (Shat Chakra Nirupana) the moon is chosen as the emblem of absolute consciousness. Within this totality is the trinity (the triangle) and in its center is the Great Void—"not nothingness, but nothingness known to mind and senses—since it shines. "

MARIQUITA PLATOV
Tannersville, New York

Emptiness and egolessness—the awareness that "the self" is non-existent—are two basic tenants of Buddhism. Concerning the paradox, "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form," is it correct to say that this appertains to the warped labels we necessarily apply to things which make them what they are "not"?

In Buddhism, "the self" is an insubstantial entity, I believe. But if we are to doubt the self, see it as non-existing, then how do we know anything? Is it not "the self" that perceives? Is it not "the self" that evaluates and differentiates? How can we deny "the self" without denying that sound Aristotelian principle that the senses tell us. Or is the non-existent self a type of inauthentic self? An aberration directed by misdirected psychic energies such as neurotic behavior? Perhaps you can help me out of this quandary and guide me along the path of enlightenment, because I find this very problematic.

I hope that my query is not terribly muddled. Doubtless the confusion rests with me and my occidental prepossessions.

R.C. SAGNELLA
West Chester, Pennsylvania

Dr. Mark Epstein replies:
It is tempting to respond only to the feeling of your letter, to the obviously heartfelt questioning and doubt that have prompted your inquiry. It is just this struggle with the notion of self that the Buddhists are after; as the Zen master Seung Sahn is fond of repeating, "Keep that 'Don't know' mind!" If you could keep this kind of doubting while meditating I am sure many of these questions would resolve themselves, or perhaps mature into new questions. As it is, your questions are fine: Is it the 'self' that perceives?

As to the actual questions you pose, I think emptiness does pertain to the "warped labels we apply to things" but not only to this. Its point is much more pervasive, it is not just about the emptiness of concepts. I disagree that Buddhism sees "the self" as "an insubstantial entity." This strikes me as something of an oxymoron, or perhaps it refers to a ghost or spirit. The Buddha's point, beyond denying that there is either self or non-self, seems to be that we must, in fact, trust our senses thoroughly, investigate our feelings of "I" and through this arrive at some kind of understanding of who we have always been. There is a tendency to equate the Buddhist notion of self with the Western "false" or "inauthentic" self which can then be stripped away to expose the deep, true or authentic self, the "real me" that we can all still believe in. Buddhists would not object to this stripping away of false selves to find the true feeling of authenticity, but it is precisely this authentically feeling self that is empty.