COMMENTARY: Shadows on the Wall

c. 2004 Religion News Service (Les Kaye is the abbot of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, Calif., and author of “Zen at Work.” He is the founder of Meditation at Work, an awareness training program for businesses.) (UNDATED) If you didn’t know better, you might think that they had collaborated in a […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Les Kaye is the abbot of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, Calif., and author of “Zen at Work.” He is the founder of Meditation at Work, an awareness training program for businesses.)

(UNDATED) If you didn’t know better, you might think that they had collaborated in a study of the search for truth. Despite differences of place and worldview _ Buddha from the east and Plato from the west _ they arrived at strikingly similar insights concerning the human dilemma. While Buddha emphasized “delusions,” Plato spoke of mental “shadows” as the root cause of human suffering.


Plato’s well-known metaphor portrays men living in a cave, forced to face the wall, backs to the light of the fire, seeing only shadows of what is real. His method for seeing the truth, for “turning around” from the wall of shadows to experience the light of reality, relies on using the intellect, following the path of reason.

Buddha also urged mankind to seek truth but in a different way. Buddha encourages us to understand that shadows create the cave, not the other way around.

So, when the mind becomes captive to its own delusions, it feels trapped in a cave or locked in a cell, blindly scuttling around, hoping to stumble on the key to freedom. The futile effort produces a life addicted to seeking a “way out.” Our frustration shows itself in troublesome ways of relating to the world, as anger, impatience, resistance, criticism, stubbornness, indifference and pessimism become coded expressions of our yearning to be “let out.”

To escape our self-created prison, Buddha discouraged trying to figure out how to “break down the walls” with the sledgehammer of intellect. His way is deeper, more sensitive than direct confrontation at the surface. It begins by stepping back, by seeing the “wall” with a new vision, by giving shadows a new context, and by considering how we create our own dark and humid cave where delusions flourish.

Shadows can be fascinating and entertaining, and our delusions can seem very real. And so our “cave” may feel like a safe place, even while we feel we are in prison. To be trapped in a world of shadows is to be captive to our own unreflective, conventional thinking, deluded by the outward appearance of things and by stubbornly insisting, “This is real; this is true.”

Were they here today, Buddha and Plato would tell us we are living in a movie theater, playing the film again and again, rather than allowing it to fade. Buddhism urges us to recognize our shadows as just such a movie. Its meditation practice develops our capacity to sit quietly in the empty space of our larger self, without creating theater. Then we have no problem leaving the conditioned world of shadows.

When the mind is quiet, we have a chance to envision alternatives to what appears obvious, alternatives to what we habitually accept without question. In the solitude of quiet mind, we can see beyond the limits of the walls we impose on our self by our unreflective infatuation with the world of shifting shadows. When we can see into the nature of shadows, we are “turned around” and the cave no longer exists.


These days, more and more people are turning toward spiritual practice. Intuitively, they know that they are more whole and more gifted than they have assumed, or have been led to believe. They know there are limits to how they see themselves but don’t understand how the limits are imposed.

This “knowing” is as subtle and as delicate as a spider’s web, the feeling that our body-mind is just one aspect of our complete being, the manifest partner of the unseen spiritual nature. It is the sense of the universal gifts that are our natural state.

We know this life is greater than ragged raw material to be mined and molded into a “useful” component for the machinery of the modern world. Each age has its technology, politics, values, religion, economics, art, education and philosophy that shape human lives. They are the ingredients of the glue required to give society coherence and to raise the quality of life. But they do not define who we are, intrinsically; it only seems that way. They are merely the pigments that color and shape shadows on the wall. Useful in daily life, they do not convey a complete or accurate portrait of who we are. Believing otherwise is our biggest delusion.

Living as we must in a world of transiency and constant change, shadows will always be with us. But we do not need to be captive to shadows, or live as if we were a shadow. We can enjoy a movie, but when the film ends, we need to return to the light, not remain in darkness, captive to images and shadows; we need to let them go by giving up our fascination for them.

KRE/PH END KAYE

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