Alan Parsons Open Secret An objective evaluation Molly, I am so glad that you enjoyed the Alan Parsons Open

pen Secret website <http://www.theopensecret.com/index.shtml> that was recommended by my friend Tan Kah Tee. I too am very glad about what Alan Parsons is doing preaching his Open Secret world-wide. I am proud of and humbled by him. He is indeed a Buddhist Bodhisattva although he does not claim any link to Buddhism. Despite my own personal sudden awakening to the Ultimate Reality, when I suffered a heart attack, I am unfortunately like a brilliant mathematician teaching arithmetic at the local village school. Alan Parsons, by comparison, is like the High School English Teacher from Southampton who is given a Professorship in English studies at a Chinese University. He is bringing Zen, albeit that he calls it the Open Secret, to the vast masses of Westerners; whereas I am still giving discourses on Zen in my small little home village. However, please do not be overly infatuated by his teachings, esoterically wise and luminous as they are and he is; for as I had indicated to you, he is only 90% there. The 10% gap makes a huge critical difference in Zen because he is like an adept who is at the top of the 100 foot bamboo pole but is still clinging there instead of taking the bungy leap or jump of liberation off the bamboo pole. Out of convenience, I will sum up the failings or rather the constraints of Alan Pearsons Open Secret by borrowing two of his phrases (1) pure beingness and (2) Apparent life in freefall as the discussion or debating points. Let me explain:(1) pure beingness. The Heart Sutra mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra, if expressed fully, has a preamble or introduction followed by the actual mantra or dharani Tadyatha OM [Preamble or Introduction], Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha! [Mantra or Dharani]. In fact when we chant the Heart Sutra mantra we chant in full the preamble plus the dharani.

The preamble in fact sums up the mantra; like a subject title or heading sums up what is in a book or a paragraph. We have already on many occasions discussed the mantra Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha! as meaning Going, Going, Going Beyond, Going Well Beyond, Enlightenment, Hail! and subsequently, when we cross over to the other shore - Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Well Beyond, Enlightenment, Hail! Now let us decipher or translate the preamble or introduction Tadyatha OM . Tadyath is an

adverbial compound consisting of tad 'that' and yath as in 'as like, according to, in that way'. So Page 1 of 3

tadyath means 'like this'. So, Tadyatha OM means Like this OM. In English linguistic expression it becomes OM is like this or thus. Like this or thus is expressed colloquially in Zen as This is this and That is that. And that is what this colloquial expression stands for beingness. And OM beingness is pure beingness. We can try to explain OM as being mystical and sacred, and as representing creation as in the 1st cosmic sound, the first and original vibration signifying the stirring of life out primordial emptiness or void of latent energy; but that would be worldly speculation. OM is like Tao and can never be conceived grasped or expressed in worldly words or concepts. If it can be explained it is no longer OM or Tao! Let me illustrate OM by inference by way of analogy or metaphorically as the spiritual BIG BANG. Let us do it the way taught by Bodhisattva Avalokitevara in the Surangama Sutra in the search for Nirvanas heart, it is best to contemplate on worldly sound. Close your eyes and imagine that you have just hit the big brass bell at the Zen temple - BOOM! Focus and trail the sound of the BOOM as it ripples like waves further and further from your hearing. That is what OM is like. It rises or is born and it then moves on and continues to expand onwards. Just like the Universe expanding. Even when there appears to be total silence, plod on, imagine that your spiritual ears will hear the radio frequency that still radiates from that allegorical BOOM or the OM of the spiritual BIG BANG. Let me illustrate with another analogy. Imagine that the primordial emptiness or void of latent energy is like a coiled spring in a 0. Imagine that you snap-cut the coil and it springs into a 1. The creation in OM is like that; from egolessness there is suddenly the Ego of an I! But 1 has a false power despite what the popular book The Power of One, the 1989 novel by Bryce Courtenay might suggest. But without the true power of 0 there would be no mathematics and definitely no computing! So the true power is the Power of Zero! OM is like the 0 of the seed, inchoate with energy of prospective life, that when it germinates, it becomes a sapling of 1. But the life of 1 or I of a plant or tree is fleeting and just a transitory beingness of a dreaming; but the seeds of 0 of life, whatever forms it might take through evolution or otherwise will be eternal, beyond the endless cycles of rebirths of generations of plants, trees, life or dreaming. Just as an aside you will note that when you join Tadyatha as in like this or thus with Gate as in Going or Gone; you get one of the names or titles of the Buddha, which is Tathgata. Tathgata is broken down into tath and gata. Tath means thus as synonymous with like this or thus in Tadyatha. Thereby Tathgata means - "one who has thus gone". So, a Buddha is one who is like Tadyatha OM and has thus Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Well Beyond, Enlightenment, Hail! So, you can now see why it is important in our Zen tradition to fully understand the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra as the pathway to Prajpramit ["Perfection of Wisdom"].

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The pure beingness of Alan Parsons Open Secret gets you to the beingness of like this or thus and This is this and That is that but it never gets to the OM. It never gets to the Going, Going, Going Beyond, Going Well Beyond, Enlightenment, Hail! and subsequently, when we cross over to the other shore - Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Well Beyond, Enlightenment, Hail! Although his sudden awakening gets him to realise the beingness of This is this and That is that; he is still stuck in the dreaming. He is still caught or comprised nonchalantly in the dreaming, even though he knows he is only dreaming. He is saying that I am only dreaming and yet there is no I dreaming but he is not saying who is doing the dreaming? He is not even Gate let alone Paragate or Parasamgate. Sudden awakening is not Nivarna and if it is not Nivarna, it is definitely not the Paranirvana of a Buddha. (2) Apparent life in freefall. Alan Parsons treatment of life as a freefall is deceitful. With strange characters around us with crazy minds and attitudes, he might be misunderstood and cause a demented soul to either reclused himself totally from the world as if the Samsaric world does not exist or to go on a wild rampage and commit murder and rape like Mad Manson. To tell someone that the human world is a dream and an illusion without explaining the Immutable Law of Karma and how that accounts for the World of Samsara; is not telling that someone how to extricate himself from the dream. That is why sudden awakening has to be followed by gradual spiritual cultivation to gradually reduce karmic residue. There can never be Enlightenment or Nivarna or Liberation as Alan Parson calls it until all karmic residue are spent. Even Buddha could not leave his worldly existence until he suffered the retribution of being poisoned by wild mushrooms. Love. Vince. 21/5/13

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