The Dharma

Realisation: More than Black, White, Red & Emerald Green

"Newborns can see from birth, just not as clearly as an older child or adult. Until your child is about six months of age, he will respond best to bold, contrasting colors and graphics. That’s why it’s important to provide your baby with toys that feature the visual extremes of black, white and red. These high-contrast colors will captivate and hold baby’s attention, encouraging visual development as well as physical activity – like wiggling, kicking, and arm waving." -geniusbabies.com

The "dog-ness" of a dog's monochrome vision forces him to see the world in shades of grey. How to describe colours to a dog, or to a blind person? Unimaginable it might be, it does not mean colours do not exist. We visually much better off than dogs, but they have a keener sense of hearing and smell than us. Different species of life, and its different individuals have varying spectrums of sensory experience. Maybe the Buddhas have X-ray vision. With mastery of the mind, why not? Mind over matter!

In the children classic, The Wizard of Oz, the greenness of the entire Emerald City was possible because anyone who entered the city had to put on green glasses. Because the citizens of Oz are deluded into believing the glasses were a must in the city, they live collectively similar "green karma" - not unwillingly though, but by pure choice. Seeing should not always lead to believing - sometimes we see illusions. I don't like to wear shades - because I prefer to see things in their true colours. Even so, there is a limit to the exactness of seeing the colour of something as it is. Our bad perception as shaped by karma is much more complex than green karma! If only we can simply drop our tinted glasses and become enlightened!

We should humble ourselves in realising that we do not "see" everything as it "is", but as we "are" - as limited by our vision. I'm not talking merely about physical sight. Spiritually, as long as we are not fully enlightened, we perceive reality in a way as blurred and contorted as we are deluded. If there is one thing we can trust about what we perceive, it's that it falls short of total accuracy. This reminds us not to over-trust our perception. Why cling so firmly onto your judgement of a matter or person when it might be pure misjudgement? Do you see the entire spectrum? Think carefully - how often is your intuition true? Even if it is often right, you have to admit it fails sometimes. If so, what makes you think it had not failed this round too? What are your tinted glasses? Just when you think the Emerald City looks wonderfully magical in green, it's true colours are even more amazing.

If we mentally slap labels and place final misjudgements everywhere we go, we are being unfair to others and ourselves... while we self-righteously believe we are truth-seekers. "Once a thief, NOT always a thief." When we give up hope on someone's ability to repent, we might as well say they cannot become Buddhas - which is untrue as we all have Buddha-nature. If we choose not to live with an open heart and mind for everyday matters, choosing instead to believe in the murky views we percieve, we can forget about SEEING the ultimate reality of life. How then, can we SEE the reality of our being? Shocking as it might SEEM, there is no being or non-being, there is only constant BECOMING. Are you BECOMING more enlightened by the way you choose to see, or more blind? Let's not go back to limited baby vision, let's grow up spiritually and see through the Buddha's eyes of Wisdom, and with his eyes of Compassion. -shian

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