When your spiritual teacher isn't called to teach anymore

 Recently I got an email from Adyashanti saying he was taking a break from teaching. It feels like an ending, even though he hasn't, in an active way, been my teacher for a long time. But he did change my life, or, as I think of it to myself, saved my life. I guess I mean that the way Christians mean it of Christ, or meant it in the early days of Christianity:  that I thought I was just this little being of skin and bones but discovered I am infinitely big. His retirement (because I suspect he won't come back to teaching, as least not full-time) doesn't change what he gifted me, of course, but it somehow finalizes it. The love of a student for her teacher is forever.  

Leaderless Meetings in Truth

 Lately, I've been flirting with the spiritual tradition I was involved with before I met Adyashanti: Quakerism. By "flirting," I mean attending Meeting through Zoom. 

It's been years since I've been drawn to Meeting. Compared to going to satsang, it seemed I couldn't go deep. 

 But last week that changed. I realized that it wasn't a matter of going to Meeting to get something from the group but to give myself the opportunity to sink into the truth of my being, as we say in nondual circles. 

And this week as well, I found it a deep experience -- a Meeting in which everyone was engaged in the question of what faith is, what being a Quaker is. 

The thing that drew me to Quakers, more than anything else, is that there is no paid clergy -- no one who is set up to know Truth while everyone else listens to what that wise person says. There may be leaders -- or elders, as Quakers sometimes call them -- those who are wiser than most of the other members of a Meeting, but they become that by common understanding that they do know more, not by any official designation. And they are the exception to the rule that everyone present is equally called upon to look inside and find God, or what is most true. 

And expectations matter. When people go to a gathering expecting to be told the truth, they often fail to realize that that truth is closer than their own nose. Going to satsang can be like that. You sit in front of the nondual teacher and listen to him/her and feel the awake energy penetrate you. Wonderful! I used to love that so much. 

But there came a time when I began to wonder if that wasn't disempowering. We need examples of embodied awakening; otherwise, how can we recognize it when we begin to experience it in ourselves? But once we do begin to experience it, is it not more helpful to our development and that of others we share the meeting space with if we recognize that each of us is a manifestation of the universal energy. If we have realized it but still look to a leader in order to experience it, we are giving away our own realization.

So, this is why I was so intent on establishing a leaderless nondual group. But my attempts haven't been very successful; maybe the hierarchical tradition in nonduality is too strong.  People don't seem to know how to be in a nondual group where there is neither teacher nor students, and maybe I myself don't know well enough how to model what I want to see. 

The result seems to be, at least for now, that I recognize how valuable the traditions of the Society of Friends (Quakers) are: there is a way to do this that is 350 years old, and it works.

The transformative effect of our divinity being seen

I just finished listening to a recent talk by Adyashanti in which he says, "One of the most healing things that can happen for any of us is for someone to look right through our imperfections and see us and know us as completely whole -- spiritually, humanely whole and divine -- from the very beginning. When someone sees us like that . . . that is an incredibly healing presence."

And, he adds, "Ultimately, spirituality is about finding that in ourselves."

I don't know if I would have dared to voice it that way when I met my first teacher. I only know that all I needed to do was sit in front of him and healing tears would start to flow. He actually saw me that way though the words were never spoken. And so, of course I became attached -- because when you see yourself as broken and someone and not only treats you as though that isn't true but actually sees your perfection -- well, it's a miracle of sorts.

The trick is to realize the last part of what Adya said: ultimately finding that in oneself. And that means finding that unbroken, eternal spirit in oneself.  For me, that took meeting Adya and having that truth reflected to me again, but this time becoming conscious of it.

How Do We Embody Non-dual Reality?

Last Saturday, I came across an article – “Nondual Realization and the Personal Self,” by Judith Blackstone (2010) – that I had bookmarked some time ago. At the time, I was deeply impressed with the short, two-page description of the experience of embodied nonduality. It described the realization in language that reflected my own experiences. She writes,

“Fundamental consciousness is experienced as luminous stillness, or emptiness. For example, if we have realized this dimension and we look at a table, we will see the table with all of its weight, color and texture, and at the same time, we will be aware that the table is 'transparent.' It appears to be pervaded by-or made of–luminous space.”

I still remember my first experience of this many years ago, and taking it to Adya for confirmation. Then, when I complained that I don't experience people I have issues with this way, he responded, “That's why it starts with a table. Tables are easy.”

I don't remember the exact year of that experience, but I'd guess around 2006. And all the teachers, including Adya and Blackstone, say something to the effect that “Eventually the patterns of personality that are in the way fall away.”

In the fourteen ensuing years, there has been a gradual deepening of the realization, but still, that sense of unease when confronting certain people has not dissipated. What is in the way? Sometimes I think about this rationally; sometimes I just try to feel into it. When I do the latter, I suspect that the “personal self” that seems to get in the way is just, as Adya used to say, this luminous emptiness “in drag.” No, I know that. But in the midst of an argument, or fear that something I need will be taken from me, I never remember.

So this is what I thought Blackstone might help me with. I searched for her website – and found she was giving an on-line workshop the very next day. I signed up.

There were only 16 of us in the workshop, so she had time to observe everyone. I noticed that she was very perceptive – that she could sense people's subtle energies even through the internet connection.

She exercises she led us through were about exploring our experience of nondual reality in our bodies. When it came time to ask questions, I asked how this experience and the “personal self” fit together. She said she didn't use the term “personal self.” But, I objected, you wrote a paper about this! She didn't argue but she also didn't remember, which made explaining where my question was coming from pretty much impossible. I tried asking the question in different ways two other times and the final time, she asked what I meant by the “personal self.” I was caught up short – I realized I didn't know.

It goes without saying that it's pretty much impossible to solve a problem when you don't define it accurately. When I awoke the next morning, I pondered my confusion about just what the “personal self” is. According to Adya's teaching, as I understand it, it is the illusory self constructed out of thought. But “personal self” in Blackstone's article seemed to be something different. I re-read the article and my attention focused on this paragraph:

“At the very center of one’s body there is a subtle vertical channel, running from the base of the torso to the top of the head. This channel (called the central channel in Tibetan Buddhism and sushumna in Hinduism) is our entranceway into fundamental consciousness. This means that we can realize nonduality through deep inward contact with our own individual form.”

So this seems to be the key. It is, I think, also what Tolle meant when he said spoke of the “inner-body” as the “doorway into the unmanifested.” It's probably also the energy channel that I contacted when I was doing neo-Reichian work back in the 1970s and awoke to nondual reality for the first time.

So, given that we all must have this subtle vertical channel, what gets in the way of living as nondual reality 24/7? I think it is that that channel gets blocked, or bound up maybe is more accurate, in order to protect our form when we are children. So doing Reichian energy work would to liberate this channel.

But then the energy gets blocked again by habitual patterns of holding fear or other emotions. Clearing this channel, allowing feeling to flow through and not get stuck, seems to be the key to fully and consciously living the nondual reality that has been realized.

Taking the teacher's words lightly

Last night I went to hear my beloved teacher, Adyashanti, talk. I hadn't seen him in person for almost two years, and still, as always, I felt such a deep appreciation for his being, so much joy in his presence.

A couple things caught my attention. He talked about the "immensity."  I actually find the word "boundless" more accurate, both in my own experience, and in terms of definition. "Immensity" implies size while "boundless" acknowledges that what we are describing is beyond measurement. For me, it's more like falling into a bottomless well -- you just go down and down and there is no bottom.

Nonetheless, words are meant to evoke, not only to denote, and in that respect "immensity" probably does the better job than "boundless." The body can feel that largeness, and I, for one, was moved deeply into that space last night as he spoke of it, as it seemed the whole room was.

Adya also talked about his experience of enlightenment as of first moving out of the body into the immensity (I'm paraphrasing, I hope correctly), and then, in time, the awake energy needing to move back into the body, to become "embodied." This has been Adya's teaching since early on, and for many years I tried to match my experience with his description.

Now I see it a little differently: We already ARE that enlightened presence. It lives us, in fact, whether we are conscious of it or not. So it makes more sense to describe what happens as the awakened energy recognizing itself as (not "in" but "as") the body, as form, as well the formless. It has never been any other way: we've just failed to notice.

The point is not to take what is said by any teacher, or anyone else, too seriously or literally. It is all just a way of trying to describe the indescribable. And when the pointers work, it's wonderful.

Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?

In the centerfold of the Summer 2017 catalogue of the Buddhist publisher, Wisdom, there is a whimsical drawing of a bear and raven in dialogue. Their interaction is reported as follows:

"Black Bear came to a meeting late and said, 'I'm feeling frazzled after dealing with my cubs. What if I don't feel compassionate?'

"Raven said, 'Fake it.'

"'That doesn't seem honest,' said Black Bear.

"'It doesn't begin with honesty,' said Raven."

There is no attribution, so I suspect that this is a traditional Buddhist teaching story.

But whether this particular story is traditional or not, in my experience it does represent an important attitude in Asian Buddhism: behave not based on what you are but on what you aspire to be. Or, in other words, fake it 'til you make it.

When I was twenty-two, I lived in a Buddhist temple in Japan and this attitude came up again and again. Once, I was told to write a letter to my mother telling her how grateful I was for everything she had done for me. Like most 22-year-olds, I had my share of resentments toward my parents. Giving thanks to them for what they had done for me while omitting what they had done to hurt me seemed dishonest.  Black-bear like, I complained, "But I don't feel grateful." "That doesn't matter. Do it anyway," my teachers replied.

It actually caused me pain to be false to myself in this way. I don't know whether Asians experience this or not. But I think most Westerners, contrary to Raven, would say that it does begin with honesty. My main teacher was Adyashanti, a third-generation American Buddhist -- that is, his teachers were all American-born. And he definitely stressed honesty -- to the extent that it may have been his most important teaching. 

Why is honesty important? Well, for one thing, it takes a lot of energy to lie and keep track of your lies and make sure that they have had the intended effect -- which is usually to either enhance your ego's standing among other egos or to make sure, at least, that it isn't diminished. If you are using your energy in this way, you are wasting it, and it's running counter to the realization of oneness that a glimpse of egolessness will give you.

So I'm with Adya on this one. That said, I do still tell social lies. If someone invites me to dinner whose company I don't enjoy, I don't tell them that. I usually, like most people, find an acceptable excuse for bowing out. Perhaps this is a cop-out, but I can't see a reason to hurt someone unnecessarily.

With intimate relationships, though, and, most especially with oneself, honesty is essential. Lying in those circumstances will bring one further and further away from the Truth one is seeking.When I find myself lying in those situations, I try to remember to ask myself, Why did I do that? What was I hoping to gain?  And, most importantly, Why am I so lacking in trust -- in myself, in the universe, or in a loved one -- that I felt the need to try to manipulate through lying?

Secret versus Open Spiritual Teachings

I've been thinking about secret versus open paths. In some traditions, especially those with roots in Asia, the path is secret -- that is, outsiders are not permitted to know the details of how one progresses spiritually. The knowledge is considered esoteric, and it is thought that preparation is needed to understand the teachings. If people are not prepared spiritually, they will misunderstand what is being taught and perhaps even be injured by what they hear. They may also speak in a misinformed way to others about the teachings, which could therefore be corrupted.

Others seem to believe that having a secret teaching gives it a special power. For example, my mother, a follower of Yogananda, had a secret mantra. It was supposed to have been given to her specifically to address her unique spiritual needs.

In Rinzai Zen, where koans are employed, it is considered unwise to comment on the solutions to koans, as the answers are not to come out of discursive reasoning but out of one's deeper being. I remember once seeing a book of solutions to koans. A friend who read this book was sure that he now knew the meaning of all those koans. But in the Zen tradition, only the Zen master is capable of seeing whether the student has grasped the teaching embodied in the koan. Publishing the answers violates the premise that a koan is not an intellectual puzzle but a way of breaking through discursive reasoning to a deeper truth. Therefore, a Western student who does not agree to keep material confidential can run into trouble. It is said, for example, that Yasutani Roshi, dismayed that when his student, Philip Kapleau, included transcripts of Yasutani's interviews with his students in the back of his seminal book, The Three Pillars of Zen, cut him off. (I remember reading those interviews when I was young, with tears in my eyes, because I too wanted what was being pointed to.) The interviews, Yasutani had thought, were only for Kapleau's research purposes. The argument against such publication is that every student is different, and what the Roshi said to each is therefore different. Such conversations cannot be taken as a map of how to proceed, or as a statement of what is ultimately true.

But Westerners have trouble with secrecy. There are many sanghas in the West that have "Open" as part of their name. The American teacher, Adyashanti, for example, calls his sangha "Open Gate." The invitation is to everyone, and while seriousness is encouraged, no commitment is required. Anyone can come, anyone can listen to what he has to say, and anyone can pass on to others any or part of what he or she hears. And, simply due to sheer numbers, Adya no longer meets with students privately but only at satsang, so every student hears what he says to every other student. Some might apply to you; some not. Adya apparently trusts that things will sort themselves out: people will take what applies to them, and discard the rest.

As Westerners, we have been brought up in the tradition of openness, in the belief that if all views are aired, that which is true will ultimately prevail. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," is a quotation widely attributed to Voltaire. Whether or not Voltaire actually said this, the spirit of this freedom is certainly alive in Western world, and one definitely not shared with other all cultures. The culture clashes with Muslims in Europe, which sometimes have turned violent, are a case in point. 

To Westerners, secrecy means you have something to hide. So when Eastern paths are transported to the West, they often have to adapt to the West's openness. I have never been a part of a secret spiritual tradition, and maybe there is virtue in that approach of which I am unaware, but, whatever the virtue, I don't think such traditions can stay secret in the age of the internet. 

The Little Secret

One of the myths about enlightenment is that it's very difficult to attain, and that only an august few human beings manage to do it.

I remember many years ago at my teacher Adyashanti's satsang, a man came up to dialog with him. The man asked several questions, all of which were in the vein of, “Can someone who is not awake have a reasonably happy life?” Finally, Adya stopped him because he saw the assumption this young man was making: awakening was impossible for him. Could his life be worthwhile nonetheless, he was asking.

“Let's see who's here tonight,” Adya said, looking out over the gathering, which was small enough in those days that he knew personally most of the people present. “I'd estimate,” he said, “that fifty percent of the people present have had an awakening, so why not you?”

This is the little secret, you see. Most people think that awakening is somehow this difficult thing. You have to meditate for years, or do some other kind of practice, and then maybe, if you are the right kind of person, you will be blessed with a little glimpse of the truth. No! Someone needs to tell the truth: we all have access to this. And there are no preconditions. It is our true nature. How could it not be available to us – whoever we are, whatever our past or present circumstances?

Anyone can awaken

One of the myths about enlightenment is that it's very difficult to attain, and that only an august few human beings manage to do it.

I remember many years ago at my teacher Adyashanti's satsang, a man came up to dialog with him. The man asked several questions, all of which were in the vein of, “Can someone who is not awake have a reasonably happy life?” Finally, Adya stopped him because he saw the assumption this young man was making: awakening was impossible for him. Could his life be worthwhile nonetheless, he was asking.

Adya finally stopped the man and said, “Let's see who's here tonight.” He looked out over the gathering, which was small enough in those days that he knew personally most of the people present. “I'd estimate,” he said, “that fifty percent of the people present have had an awakening, so why not you?”

This is the little secret, you see. Most people think that awakening is somehow this difficult thing. You have to meditate for years, or do some other kind of practice, and then maybe, if you are the right kind of person, you will be blessed with a little glimpse of the truth. No! Someone needs to tell the truth: we all have access to this. And there are no preconditions. It is our true nature. How could it not be available to us – whoever we are, whatever our past or present circumstances?

What IS universal love?

 Having been disillusioned with the Buddhist paths I tried in Japan when I was young, I joined the Quaker meeting in the town I lived in in the late 1980s. Although I still believed, theoretically, that those paths led to enlightenment – and had in fact had a couple of spiritual awakenings on one of those paths – in the end, they just seemed too hard – and too foreign. I wanted a way to the Infinite that relied on my own Western spiritual tradition, but at the same time didn't discount the realizations of deeper truth I had had through the Eastern way. I was also looking for something less hierarchical and sexist – and the fact that there are no paid clergy in Quakerism – that everyone is, in fact, a teacher to everyone else – appealed to me. All around, Quakerism seemed a good “Middle Way.”

I was active in the Meeting until I moved away in 2000. Shortly after I re-located, I found Adyashanti – and he undid my world. Undid and remade and everything else that there are no words for. So Adyashanti's teachings became my new “Middle Way.” I call it this because Adya never studied Zen in Japan – and neither did his teacher – but he did come from a Zen lineage. As a third generation teacher, though, he felt free to innovate – and he did. In the beginning, he called the talks he gave “Zen-Satsang” because the content was often Zen-like, but the format was in the Nondual tradition of India – and specifically of Advaita Vedanta: a talk and then questions from students. This worked for me: no arduous practices – no need to do anything but just sit and let the energy wash over me.

Through all of those years, I wondered if I could still call myself a Quaker – or whether I should resign from the Meeting which I was, in any case, no longer close enough to geographically to attend except very occasionally. When I did get there, it had been so long that many people didn't recognize me anymore. Still, I have kept my membership, and so I get the monthly newsletter.

In the November 2014 newsletter I just received, there is a quotation from John Woolman, a well-known 19^th century Quaker: “To turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of Universal Love becomes the business of our lives.” When I read this, I thought, “This is why I'm still a Quaker – this is a tradition that really does still speak to me.”

After years of Adyashanti, I no longer feel the need of him in the way I once did – which is fortunate because he rarely comes around to my town anymore. But there's one area where I've still felt like something was missing. It is said that there is a Universal Love that one comes to manifest when spiritually awake. I kept waiting: where was it? Last year, I was at a five-day retreat of another teacher, Pamela Wilson, and when I emerged, the love was so palpable – I went to the grocery store and loved everyone I saw there! (I probably wrote about that here if anyone wants to go back and look at the summer 2013 posts.) But it quickly faded.

Now, recently, I've become part of a leaderless nondual spiritual group which I initiated. It's the fulfillment of my dream of a non-hierarchical spiritual path. After a bumpy start finding our way, the group has turned into a fount of love. But it doesn't feel like I always expected love to look, and I think that's why I've been missing it all along. So, I've been asking myself how it is different and the answer I'm coming up with is that it isn't self-conscious. We usually think, “I love him (or her, or everyone)” But what if that secondary thought is absent? What if thought is absent from the experience entirely? Then love is something else. Certainly not sentimental, certainly not self-absorbed.

"Only ego wants to get rid of ego." -- Adyashanti

I can't begin to describe how frightening I'm finding this book I'm reading -- Enlightenment Blues (see previous post).
As I said before, I don't have any personal experience with Andrew Cohen. I'm taking as true what is in this book, and I'm sure some out there will see it differently. But it doesn't really matter because I am not so interested in Andrew Cohen as in what caused so many to follow him for years, putting aside their own doubts while the demands on them became more and more absurd. There will always be megalomaniacs, and some of them will be gurus. The more important question is not what to do about them, but why so many follow them.

Author Van der Braak, with his penetrating analysis of his own process, puts his finger on so much of what happens psychologically when one joins the kind of spiritual community that demands absolute obedience and also, especially, on why it is so hard to separate from such a community. Anyone who reads this regularly knows that I have a special interest in cults because I lived in a cultish spiritual community for a short time when I was young. I completely relate to all of the rationalizations Van der Braak told himself.

First, you have an awakening experience with a certain person. Or maybe (as was my case in my youth) you just see the divine in the other, and you want that for yourself. The guru becomes the means to access the divine, or enlightenment, or whatever label works for you. You convince yourself that the guru is the only possible access to the divine for you. Maybe the guru believes this himself, as Cohen apparently did, or maybe, as in my case, the guru doesn't. But the follower believes it -- that's what matters. Once one believes that, it becomes almost impossible to leave. You imagine yourself damned forever if you do, and there will be plenty of people in the community who will try be only too anxious to convince you of that outcome. You probably have no friends who are not part of the community, so there is no alternative viewpoint to hear.

This book is scary because the amount of psychological abuse (and one example of physical abuse is also cited) is so profound, and yet everyone in the community buys into the argument that the reason Cohen derides them, punishes them repeatedly by banishing them to invisibility in his sangha, etc., is so that they will stop coddling their ego. Everyone in the community believes this. If only I were better: I just have to try harder and then I will live up to the standards of the Master.  The amazing thing is that not one person noticed the contradiction in Cohen's teaching: if everything is impersonal, if "I" don't really exist, then who is it that is having to try harder to banish the ego?

As Adyashanti once said to me, "Only ego wants to get rid of ego." 

Enlightenment and cultural accretions

I'm reading a couple of books that, in very different ways, discuss an issue relevant to those involved in traditions that come from other cultures.  One is a memoir about living among modern Sufis in Afghanistan: Embattled Saints: My year with the Sufis of Afghanistan, by Kenneth P. Lizzio.  The other is a novel about a shy Japanese priest sent to New York to help build a temple for his sect: Buddhaland Brooklyn, by Richard C. Morais.*  The problems these two men face are the mirror opposite of each other.

The American who goes to Afghanistan hoping to gain Sufi mystical wisdom is dismayed when told how important shari'a law is. Over and over again, he is admonished that shari'a is part and parcel of the mystical path, not something only for fundamentalist Muslims but for all Muslims.  He resents having to grow his beard to a certain length and shape, and he believes the sexual segregation is plain wrong, to name only two of his many issues with Muslim law.  But he wants what the Sufis have, so he goes along.

The Japanese priest has the reverse of this problem.  Having lived in a mountain temple since he was a boy, he believes that everything that he was taught to do in reverence to Buddha is a step on the path to enlightenment, and that none of it can be omitted. So, for example, when his New York believers complain that it is hard for them to kneel on the floor, he says, in effect, "Tough shit."  When they want lectures more relevant to their daily lives, he explains that, in order to attain enlightenment, devotees must understand the sacred texts in all of their subtly .  He believes the New Yorkers aren't taking Buddhism seriously because they don't want to do it the received way.

When I was young, I practiced two kinds of Buddhism in Japan.  My unexamined assumption was that I could only get enlightened if I became like a Japanese.  And the problem was, the Japanese believed this as well!  I went home after a year, a total failure.

The trick is to separate the essential teachings from the cultural context.  Not easy.  On the one hand, we have (hopefully) an enlightened teacher who has taken a certain path to his or her wisdom.  On the other hand, we have aspirants who are not enlightened and do not share the teacher's cultural assumptions.  In such a situation, who is going to decide what is necessary to the deepest spiritual realization and what is just a cultural accretion?

Sometimes it takes more than a generation to work this out.  When Philip Kapleau found what he'd been looking for in Japan, he brought it back to America virtually wholesale, and it was not until his senior student, Toni Packer, said, "Wait, much of this doesn't really work for a lot of Westerners," and went off to found her own meditation center, that the deepest realization in Zen could be found, without the cultural accretions.  My own teacher, Adyashanti, was a third generation Zen student -- someone who had never been to Japan and whose own teachers had also never been there.  There was enough distance to have lost the cultural accretions and yet the wisdom of the lineage was intact.  How grateful for this I am! This is what we all hope can happen.  It doesn't always.

*Note: My review of  Buddhaland Brooklyn appears on the Buddhist Fiction Blog. 
My review of  Embattled Saints is at http://www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2014_07_020733.php

   

When Does Spiritual Dialog Hit the Mark?

A few of us on Facebook have been discussing Oprah's interview with Adyashanti on Easter Sunday.  The main issue resolves around a certain place fairly early in the interview when Oprah has an "ah-ha" moment -- when she realizes the nature of the connection between her and Adya.  Some people think that this realization wasn't as deep as it could have been; others that it was in fact a glimpse of the nondual dimension of consciousness. 

I'm not so interested here in which view is right as in the fact of the disparity of views.  We all watched the same interview and yet every person that commented saw it differently!  On the one hand, maybe this shouldn't be surprising.  It's common to emerge from a satsang thinking it was a wonderful talk only to overhear someone else say it wasn't that good.  Or vice versa.  To speak about the wordless dimension is in itself a kind of contradiction, so it's not surprising that when words are used, people interpret them differently.

The question that's been teasing me, though, is this:  if you watch the interview, it's clear that Adya himself knew exactly what was going on with Oprah, where she was and how she took what he said, even if the audience obviously wasn't so sure.  So how did he know?

I've watched Adya talk with students over the years, and also spoken with him myself numerous times.  It seems that he particularly has a knack for being "with" the student -- being able to comprehend what is meant by the words someone utters about the inexpressible.  He misses the mark only rarely.  I've always wondered how he was able to do that.

Of course, a satsang is different from a TV show.  Without the commercials on Oprah, the show ran only 36 minutes. With interruptions every four or five minutes, I doubt if anyone watching had the opportunity to sink into a deeper state of consciousness .  So we were watching from the outside.  The participants, though, did not experience these commercials:  they had the advantage of spending the time together uninterrupted, the time to move into a place where they really could meet.  And this is where Adya was when he was dialoging with Oprah, and where he is when he dialogs with someone during satsang.  And it is only when we ourselves are in that place that we even have a chance of knowing what the two participants are experiencing together.

Elizabeth Gilbert's awakening: why did no one notice?

I'd heard a lot about EAT, PRAY, LOVE when I started to read it, but, since it was a best seller, I figured it couldn't be very deep and stayed away.  Am I a literary snob, or what?  Anyway, I was wrong. 

On pages 98-100 (paperback edition) Gilbert has an awakening. I couldn't help wondering why, in all I'd heard about this book, I never heard this. I mean, I haven't yet gone with her to Bali, where she finds true love, so I don't know what happens in the end, but an awakening seems pretty important -- certainly more important than romantic love. 

So I've been wondering why this seems to be the most under-reported awakening ever, despite the fact that the book itself is one of the most read books ever.  And what I've concluded is that if you haven't known what she describes, you don't know that it changes everything -- and I do mean everything.

A few years after my 1980 awakening, I wrote a paper about it and what led up to it.  Fortunately, I had my journal entry of that day for help. When I now read over what I wrote in 1986, I still think I captured it as well as a wordless non-event can be captured in language. But I noticed again and again that when I shared this paper with people who hadn't been awakened, they would read right over the critical part and think the story was about something else!  The first time this happened, I was dumbfounded, but now I'm used to it and even use the paper as a kind of test to see where people are spiritually.  (I gave it to my second teacher, Adyashanti, when I first met him, and he passed the test with flying colors!)

So what I'm saying here is that we all rely on our own experience to interpret what we read, and especially to find meaning.  Gilbert, basing her discussion on yogic philosophy, calls the awakened state (not really a state, but she refers to it that way) a "fourth level" of consciousness," beyond waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep.  My first teacher called it a fifth dimension.  Either way, it's not only beyond the realm of our ordinary experience, but more, beyond the way we ordinarily experience life because, in that moment, subject and object are annihilated. And so, when we come back to talk about it, we are talking in metaphors, because language assumes subject-object relationships. Still, Gilbert does a good job of describing it -- better than I did -- and it's too bad more people didn't notice.

It's said that they took most of the enlightenment section out of the film so that they could show more of Julia Roberts at the beach.  Imagine my surprise.

Cults vs. True Spirituality

When I was young, I lived in a Buddhist temple in Japan that was an offshoot of a major sect.  It is only recently that I've let myself know how cultish it was.  (I thought I was too smart for cults!)  Now I've been reading about cults.  The book I'm reading now, Cults in Our Midst, by Margaret Thaler Singer, is a classic on the subject.  Singer describes how various groups use a variety of tools to give people an out-of-this-world experience and then frame it according to the doctrine of the cult, e.g., "God has spoken to you," or "You are now a blessed one." 

Sometimes I still go to see Adyashanti, the teacher who transformed my life in the last decade.  And sometimes as I'm standing in line, or sitting in silence waiting for him to come in, I glance around and wonder how the gathering would look to an outsider.  Would we all look like a bunch of cultists?  Certainly, for me, I've experienced being "out-of-this-world" many times sitting there in front of Adya.  In fact, pretty much every time I see him.  I see golden light emanating from everything.  The whole visual appearance of the room changes and I go somewhere very deep I can't describe.  I have no idea how many others experience this.

I suspect Singer would say that this is a hypnotic trance induced by the teacher. But I know the teacher himself isn't at all interested in the accompanying "bells and whistles."  The ultimate truth is beyond physical manifestation, beyond bodily changes -- beyond, beyond -- to the place where you and I and all manifestation is one.  And there is not necessarily a sign that this is realized.

Seeing the perfection of persona through Buddha's eyes

"This that we are honors the persona equally with the eternal."  

Pamela Wilson.

There are a lot of helpers in the world.  Most of those helpers have some wisdom; some have a lot.  But there is something about the roles of helper/ helpee that has always bothered me: the assumption that someone needs "help."  

From one point of view, of course, we all need help at different times.  Some of us seem to need more than others.  But from the point of view of the eternal, no one needs any help:  we are all perfect as we are.  And somehow, when we meet someone who knows that, we are radically changed, even if the person says nothing at all about it. 

Many years ago, I saw a Kurosawa movie called, DO DES'KA DEN.  It was a commercial flop and not very many people saw it, but I've seen it three or four times.  I kept trying to figure out what it held for me, because when I saw it, it appeared that a transcendent wisdom was being transmitted, although I wasn't sure if it was in the film, or if I had just projected it.  In this film, a ragtag group of society's dregs lives in a rubbish pile on the edge of Tokyo Bay.  Their quirkiness is all in the service of survival.  And it was something about Life's pushing through, Life's just keeping on making it happen that moved me to tears.  Pamela today called it the "resilience of consciousness," and suddenly I saw why I had watched this movie so many times.

I saw for the first time how every form, everyone, not in spite of how they are but in the very being of who and what they are, is manifesting divine perfection.  Adyashanti used to call it "the Eternal in drag."  It just shines if you have eyes to see it.  And today, I have eyes to see it.

Of course, this doesn't negate that there will be people who push my buttons, people whom I don't like or who don't like me for a myriad of reasons.  All that psychological stuff is still there, but it doesn't obscure what is underneath anymore.

The Direct Path and Healing Psychological Wounds

I've been re-reading parts of a book by Alice Miller, the Swiss psychoalanalyst, which made a big impression on me when I discovered it in the 1980s.  She talks about how the true (psychological) self never develops in a child whose life depends on being pleasing to the primary caregiver. 

In the Direct Path, which has been the one that worked for me, all of the psychological conflict one has lived with simply gets by-passed and one finds that ultimate oneness and peace beyond understanding.  Rumi said, "I'll meet you there" in the field beyond right and wrong.  That's nice, but the important thing is to meet oneself there.  But then what?  Because that psychological conflict doesn't just magically melt away -- at least not for most people.

In his earlier years of teaching, sometimes someone newly awakened would ask Adyashanti why, since s/he had just realized ultimate truth, s/he was now in such psychological conflict and suffering, maybe only a couple of weeks after awakening. And Adya would say, "You came back for it."  Sometimes he'd add, "You wouldn't want to leave that behind, would you?"  By "you," he meant the Compassion one has now come to embody, which sees the suffering soul with its history of neglect or abuse or whatever, and knows that that is already part of the Whole, that it doesn't need to be excluded or denied, that everything is embraced.

And as I read Alice Miller now, that compassion in me for the small child is there and alive, and knows the truth of this. 

Self-Love

Last night, I saw a documentary on the comic actor, director, and producer Mel Brooks.  At one point, he says that his comedy comes from knowing how much we each love ourselves.  I suppose it could be added that comedy arises because we love ourselves and don't really know it -- because comedy requires a disjunction of some kind. 

Adyashanti interprets the Biblical passage, "Love another as yourself" not as it's usually interpreted -- as an admonition -- but as simply a fact:  because we are in fact one, we cannot do other than love others as ourselves.  But perhaps the more usually interpretation also is profound because in fact, we usually are not aware of how very much we do love ourselves.

We are taught very early that being narcissistic is bad.  This is part of socialization.  "Don't take all the cookies for yourself:  give Johnny half of them."  If we weren't taught that, I don't know if we would learn it anyway as our brains matured, or not.  But the way that lesson is conveyed can make a difference.  The nonverbal message, "You are a selfish pig," can easily be slipped into the overt message about sharing.  And then we start to dislike ourselves.

I'm not sure it's that simple, but it is patently observable that babies love themselves, so self-hate seems to be learned.  And once we learn that we should not even be dedicated to our own selves, all hell breaks lose.  We worship others or ideas outside ourselves, and at the same time we hate anything in the world which seems to reflect our own self-hate.

Really, all love starts right here at home, in my own heart, and it starts with loving myself.  And if I can't do that, nothing else I do is going to benefit anyone. 

The Awake World vs. Waking Up

 If the absolute has not been experienced, or if it is only touched on but its nature not completely understood, there can be the idea that what is true in that world should be true in the relative world as well.  Thus, for example, a friend with whom I was having a dispute sent me this comment:

"Adya says: When we abide in Truth, there is no judgment, or blame, or regret."

Well, I suppose that is something Adyashanti would say, but it is easy to misunderstand the intention.  He is not saying, "You should not judge or feel blame or regret."  In fact, such ideas are counterproductive and keep us from actually realizing the world of which he speaks.

The "way in," so to speak, is to accept everything.  A second way (which is really the same path, just another way of conceptualizing it) is to take the "backward step," as it's sometimes called, whereby we realize that we have been trying to have an experience other than the one we are having, and just rest in "what-is."  And what-is includes anger, blame, or whatever is arising at the moment.  The lack of judgment is the result of this acceptance, not the way to get there.

And lack of judgment is only a bit of what we get when we are able to do this.  To truly accept all of what we are means to accept all of what everyone else is, and to say "yes" to all of what life is as well, and it's very close to bliss.  

Masters of Deceit?

I left Zen behind decades ago, and yet I still feel there is something sacred about Zen lineage. Perhaps this is why I'm so annoyed as I notice, more and more, how half-baked teachers from other traditions —or perhaps from no tradition—apply the term “Zen Master” to themselves. Even someone who has practiced and taught Zen for years is not a Zen Master, or Roshi in Japanese, unless that person's own Roshi has designated him or her as a successor. Certainly, then, someone who has scarcely, if ever, set foot in a Zen center is not entitled to this designation.

My own teacher, Adyashanti, who comes from Zen, doesn't call himself a “Zen Master,” or any other kind of “master,” for that matter. But after a series of awakenings inspired by his presence, there was a period almost a decade ago now when I researched the various American Zen lineages. It seemed—and still does seem—that something incredibly precious was transmitted, and that it didn't start with my teacher but went back hundreds or even thousands of years. Maybe it's this sense of the preciousness of transmission that causes me to feel that it's a travesty for someone who has only the vaguest familiarity with Zen, or even with Buddhism in some cases, to refer to himself as a “Zen Master.”

Still, even those with a little knowledge of the history of Buddhism in America know that those who are legitimate dharma heirs—successors to the lineage holders in their tradition—have sometimes behaved in less than enlightened ways. Thus, people may well ask, “What does it even mean, anyway, to be a Roshi? Does it really guarantee that a person is a completely enlightened teacher? It seems that it doesn't. So if the purpose of lineage is to help potential students decide if a certain teacher is genuine, maybe it isn't that helpful a guide.

This brings up the whole question of teachers and their role. In an interview in Dialogues with Emerging Spiritual Teachers, by John W. Parker (Sagewood Press, 2000), Eckhart Tolle concluded that teachers who are awake sometimes experience return of their ego because of all of the projection from students (p. 122). In other words, when everyone thinks you're a god, it's hard not to buy into that view eventually. Christianity doesn't have that problem because the earthly manifestation of its god came to earth over 2,000 years ago and never since. But for seekers in Eastern traditions, the teacher often unconsciously represents the inner, unmanifest Buddha that is only consciously realized in awakening. This is natural but also causes much confusion.

In response to the quandary over how to find spiritual leaders of integrity, some communities based in Eastern wisdom have decided to elect their head teacher through democratic process. But this solution also raises some questions: Given that we don't know what enlightenment is ahead of time, how is it possible to select the right person to lead us to a goal of which we are ignorant? And how can we choose someone who will not succumb to the egotistic temptation of believing him/herself to be a great master? I continue to think we in the West need to grapple with this issue until we find the right structures through which the teachings transmitted from the East can flourish.