This talk emphasizes what we can use from Dune for our own personal evolution or transformation. Science fiction explores archetypes and mythic structures and can help us consider what it means to be human. Twilight language, which permeates Dune, is the way that mystics and shamans speak, which requires a different state of consciousness to understand. Frank Herbert creates a world that leaves out a lot of details so that our imagination is engaged to fill in the gaps in spinning the Dune universe for ourselves. There are major themes threaded through the series of books that can be of spiritual value to reflect upon: the complex relationship we have with human heroes and saviors, how power corrupts and attracts the corruptible, taking what is good in religion but avoiding what is deleterious, being careful when the need for religion becomes fanatical, trusting the guidance of someone who is more advanced without giving over all our critical faculties, differences in human and animal nature, learning how to learn, sacrificing the comfort of the worldview we’ve been given and raised with to enter a path of conscious evolution, the value in training awareness and attention, how the stasis of dogmatic fixed ideas can lead to manipulation and death, respect for resources, gathering energies that can be used for higher purposes and transformation, how self-indulgence is at the core of much evil in the world, restraint as a virtue that is based on self-observation, warriorship as the readiness to respond when necessity arises regardless of mood, the tension between the moral law we live under and the necessity of circumstance, how each experience carries its lesson, the convergence of choice and destiny, and the ultimate responsibility we have for ourselves. Bandhu Dunham is the author of Creative Life and an internationally recognized glass artist and teacher.

Zazen is a practice that involves the body in ways such as working with the breath. Joshu Sasaki Roshi came up with the phrase, “Buddha is the center of gravity.” Rooting ourselves to the earth through the hara, the abdominal area, is an aspect of Chan or Chinese Buddhism that came to be known as Zen in Japan. We unconsciously absorb negativity that denigrates the body in our culture. There is a symbiotic relationship between spirit and the body in ancient systems like yoga, tai chi, and qigong. There is a traditional analogy of a chariot (the body), horses (our will and energy), driver (the ego that is in connection with the world), and passenger (the Self or witness). The ego needs direction from the Self. When we get beyond busy-ness we can hear the messages of the Self and the body. In Buddhism, it is not desire but unexamined desire that is suffering. The vessel has been referred to as the receptacle of the soul. Do we relate to the vessel with tenderness or judgment? Judgment pops up over and over; it is ingrained and patterned in our bodies. With deep meditation experience we understand that we’re not just the human body. In spiritual practice, relationship to the body is often ignored. The Middle Way does not deny or punish the body with ascetic practice and does not indulge the body. This way has got to look different today than when Buddha lived in 500 B.C. The focus on the evolution of consciousness can last right up to the end of our lives. A koan is a practice of a dying activity meant to dissolve the sense of a separate self. When we have compassion for ourselves, it spills out to other people. Myosho Ginny Matthews was a student of Joshu Sasaki Roshi for 40 years. She took lay ordination in 2000, leads retreats on practice, is a dance teacher and choreographer, and is featured in the book, The Unknown She: Eight Faces of an Emerging Consciousness.

Identification is the great law that governs all human life. We are enslaved and quickly swept away by it as it captures and consumes our attention, which is what we are in essence. Yet, we are blind to it and believe we are free. All human problems are caused by identification. Imagination and identification are identical twins that work together. We are powerless to hold attention for long before being captured by imagination. We are identified with the body and ego structure and by attachment to objects, people, ideas, belief systems. A root of identification is self-importance when we see ourselves as the center of the universe. Identification is fear, which blocks love. It has one aim only—the survival of the false self/ego structure. One of the primary tools of identification is judgment, which can become a reminding factor. The mark of a person who is willing to work is self-honesty. Freedom is freedom from identification. There is only ever one problem: an unwillingness to confront the need to cease all identification. We can loosen the hold of identification with the practice of presence by self-observation and self-remembering. The body is an objective feedback mechanism to help orient the attention in the present. If we’re not conscious of the body, we’re not conscious. Conscience can be seen as the Will of God, or Love. In saying and doing things that violate conscience, we suffer remorse and our hearts can change. Beauty is everywhere but we don’t see it due to fear or identification. We can come to be grateful to those who offend us. Intuition can be distinguished from imagination. Love is the standard by which we can compare and come to disbelieve reactions and feelings. Red Hawk is an acclaimed poet and the author of 13 books, including Self Observation, Self Remembering, The Way of the Wise Woman, Return to the Mother, and Book of Lamentations.