Here is my contribution to the question concerning the natural state. It is my belief that this theory manages to answer all questions regarding the matter without internal contradictions, and integrates modern and post-modern perspectives.
First of all, I think any theorist needs to make clear what his given is. For me, my given is called God, or Truth. God has only two characteristics that we can recognize.
* Suchness
Suchness is the fact that there is something rather than nothing; the pristine action-flow that is reality itself. (x-p, L/8, s/nd) We can not say that utterly nothing is, since that would constitute a nihilistic position with logical contradictions. This which we can say nothing about, yet is a not-nothing, is suchness.
"I prostrate to the perfect Buddha,
The best of teachers, who taught that
Whatever is dependently arisen is
Unceasing, unborn,
Unannihilated, not permanent,
Not coming, not going,
Without distinction, without identity,
And free from conceptual construction."
-Nagarjuna
"When the universal panorama is clearly seen to manifest without any objective or subjective supports, viewless knowledge awakens spontaneously. Simply by not reviewing any appearing structures, one establishes the true view of what is. This viewless view is what constitutes the Buddha nature and acts dynamically as the mother of wisdom, revealing whatever is simply what it is - empty of substantial self-existence, unchartable and uncharacterizable, calmly quiet and already blissfully awakened."
-Shakyamuni Buddha
* Structure
Structure is the fact that we don't experience total chaos. Structure asserts the inherent existence of a non-delusional pattern conditioning the flow of reality. (3-p, L/8)
"What is more amazing
And what is more marvelous
Than that the two ascertainments -
That all these are empty of inherent existence
And that this effect arises from that cause -
Assist each other without impediment!"
-Tsongkhapa
---
I have thus demonstrated the given, the Absolute, without which my philosophical theory below could not do. I have hereby asserted that God exists, independent of the discrimination of human beings. We can now proceed.
A human being is born in tears and screams. Due to biological - and soon social and cultural - conditions, the infant will become introduced to the natural state of all sentient beings - the state of ignorance. I'll say that again: the natural state of sentient beings, because of biological, social and cultural conditions, is ignorance. And what is ignorance? Ignorance is:
The misconception of persons and phenomena as existing inherently.
No healthy child was ever born enlightened. All children are born in ignorance of the given Reality mentioned above. This is how God chose to create the world. We have no say in the matter.
Because of this innate ignorance obscuring the Truth, for spiritual enlightenment to occur we need discriminative wisdom. But first let us define spiritual enlightenment:
The realization of the Truth by the complete removal of ignorance; the unsurpassed realization of non-dual suchness.
Since we have established that ignorance, and not enlightenment, is the natural state of a sentient being due to his biological nature, it is necessary for the person aspiring towards spiritual enlightenment to cultivate discriminative wisdom. This discriminative wisdom will function as an anti-body to the innate disease of ignorance. I call ignorance a disease because it causes suffering.
Discriminative wisdom evolves in stages. One model might look like this:
Stage 1 (Hinayana, inferior wisdom) - the discrimination which discriminates that what is dependently arisen is subject to death, and must therefore be avoided.
Stage 2 (Mahayana, superior wisdom) - the discrimination which discriminates that what is dependently arisen lacks inherent self-nature and therefore, is not born and thus not subject to death. And so, there is nothing to avoid.
Stage 3 (enlightened wisdom) - the discrimination which discriminates that there is nothing to discriminate.
Anti-body, stage 3, has completely removed any trace of the disease, and thus enables complete spiritual enlightenment to occur. At stage 3, it is realized that the one who was thought to be subject to the disease of ignorance was an illusion all along, and that the anti-bodies, the discriminations, are not needed any longer. They are abandoned. This abandonment doesn't mean there is no discrimination, it means that there is a discrimination which discriminates that there is no need to discriminate. This anti-body remains as a shield against our natural state. And armed with this anti-body Suchness, the Dharmakaya, reveals itself as the only reality, in which there is no arising, no abiding and, no ceasing.
An notable feature in the model that I've presented here is the ever-present possibility that the form which supports the enlightened consciousness might become distorted in some way (brain damage, regression, torture, severe memory loss, etc) so that ignorance takes root once again. Conditions could come together so that that the anti-body of discriminative wisdom is damaged, resulting in the appearance of a person falling back into ignorance.
Of course, in Reality, no person falls back into ignorance, and no person ever gets rid of ignorance, but it appears to persons in ignorance that this is what actually happens.
So the conclusion is that we must accept the fact that it is completely possible for ignorance to return to a person appearing to be spiritually enlightened, even though for the enlightened person - there is no enlightened person, and no enlightenment. This seeming paradox is one we must learn to live with.
---
In Christianity they have debated and speculated for millenia - was Jesus a man, a God, or both? Which is to say, was he subject to causes and conditions such as birth and death, possessing discriminative wisdom, etc? Or was he one with the Father, that is, were he completely enlightened so that there were only Suchness, the unconditioned, without birth or death, infinite? Or maybe both at the same time? Or maybe neither?
"Reality is not as it seems. Nor is it different."
-Lankavatara Sutra
Help
Sign In
QaR
October 2009 
Is.
Access: Public
