Virtue and Enlightenment

I was speaking a few days ago with someone who has spent several decades on the Tibetan Buddhist path.  She said that morality was important -- that one couldn't access the higher states of consciousness without having the right perspective on behavior.  (I'm paraphrasing, I hope accurately.)  And it occurred to me as we spoke that this is where most of the Buddhist paths diverge from the nondual path I've come to embrace more recently.

The nondual path, also called the "direct path," says that we already are what we are seeking.  We don't have to do anything to attain it.  This means that the worst "sinner" and the best "saint" are equally "enlightened."  And I'm using quotes here because there really is no such thing as enlightenment.  We go after this thing, only to find out it was there all along. 

I can only speak for myself, but I know that when I had my first glimpse in 1978 of this perfection that is sometimes called the "enlightened consciousness," I suddenly knew that I had to do exactly nothing -- that it is a free gift that only requires being born into human form.  (I won't go into whether dogs can realize their Buddha nature.)  Of course, if you believe that you have to do certain things before realizing universal consciousness, then that idea will keep you from knowing that it is a free gift.  But even if you think you have to do certain things, that free gift can come upon you like lightning and suddenly you discover that nothing was ever required.

I know for me that was a big relief  -- because, like nearly everyone else, I thought I had to struggle to "improve."  And so, it is a blessing to know that in this one thing -- the only thing that really matters -- without any preparation, without any preconditions, Life itself just opens to itself and knows itself through a human form. 

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.