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.

When the body-mind seems not to "get" the deepest Truth

I just listened to an interview with Rupert Spira on BATGAP (Buddha at the Gas Pump) from 2011. At the end, Rupert talks about the relationship between realization and the body-mind's adjusting (my word, not his) to the Truth that has become known. He says that this takes usually takes time, and that this adjustment can happen before or after the realization of the truth of nonduality -- or both before and after -- and in fact seems to continue indefinitely.

I think those of us who have realized Truth to the extent that it is clear that there is no self often reflect on the contradiction that in daily life, many of the old patterns of behavior persist. That is, I often behave, internally (in thought) or externally (in behavior) as though I really truly believe I am a separate self. There continues to be that deep knowing that there really isn't anything separate, but I must admit that one looking from the outside wouldn't be able to tell that!

I've become much more relaxed about this. My programming from childhood was to become "perfect" in order to be loved, and that has given way to a kind of compassion for the illusory separate self that seems to show me up as less than perfectly enlightened! (See how the "me" creeps in -- as though enlightenment were something "I" do?)

Fundamentally, just as enlightenment isn't something "I" do, neither do I create the separate self.  "I"  am not the author of it nor responsible for it. Life does everything.

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?

Uses of the Gaze

In nondual spirituality, as well as in some other traditions, an awake person may gaze into the eyes of another person, for various reasons. First of all, it is fun to see the deeper dimension of consciousness in another, beyond the physical appearance. Second, it can be a way of helping another awaken: when that deeper energy is displayed for another, it can help another access it in himself or herself. This is sometimes called transmission, but that is a bit of a misnomer, because really the other person, while s/he may not be conscious of the awake energy, just as surely possesses it as the awake person.

It is a third use of the gaze that I want to speak of here, however. That is to determine to what extent someone else is awake.

A person might say, “I had an awakening,” or “I'm still waiting for my first awakening,” or, “I have no clue what awakening is.” But people can mean different things by these words because the mind has various definitions and stories about awakening. For some, being awake means having reached perfection on all levels of existence. They will see proof of their lack of awakeness in every “selfish” thought they have. For others, of an opposite psychological bent, if they have even had a glimpse of transcendence, they seem themselves as fully awake. Still others may have experienced an awakening but, not having been able to “maintain” it – which generally means staying in the same bliss as occurred when the awakening occurred – will believe that awakeness was in their past but not a current reality.

Thus, because there are so many definitions of awakening held by so many people, it is impossible to know what someone means when s/he says, “I'm awake.” Here is where the gaze comes in – because it removes the mind from the equation. When the awake energy in one being consciously meets the awake energy in another, both are awake; if it fails to meet itself, then one of the two is not.

Awakeness vs Awareness

This blog's name indicates something about what my own path has been.  The sudden awakenings that are part of a number of traditions, such as Rinzai Zen, have been a big part of it.  But there are those who say this whole idea of "awakening" is fraught with illusion because, for one thing, it obscures the fact that consciousness is already awake, and for another, because it implies a goal, or a number of goals -- the time when one will awaken, or awaken more deeply, in the future -- whereas enlightenment is the eternal present.

And yes, both of those criticisms are valid.  And some people, for that reason, are more comfortable starting with the basic truth that there isn't anywhere to get in the first place, that it was all already here.  In Soto Zen (from what I know -- I've never done it) sitting itself is enlightenment.  Of course, it could as easily be said, then, that anything we do is equally enlightenment.

So why not start with the basic truth and skip over the seeking and finding and losing it and finding it again until the truth that it is what we are is finally realized?  I say, if skipping all that works, sure, by all means do it.  And by "if it works" I mean, if it solve the problem of what it is to be human.  If one feels at rest and really doesn't need to seek anymore.

Because it's tricky, isn't it?  "I won't seek because I know that's not where it's at.  I'll just be present all the time," one might say.  Well, good luck.  Just more seeking, right?  Because for most human beings, "being present all the time" isn't something that comes naturally.  Especially since, before awakening, we don't really know what being present truly is.

So, when we're meditating -- and that doesn't just mean formal meditation but any time the mind isn't busy with its stories -- sometimes a space comes between thoughts and we just are awareness.  We just are, just exist -- and there are no boundaries of self at that moment.  But that passes and its significance often goes unrecognized.  Why?  Because what awakening does is more than that.  Awareness is a door, but awakening is seeing that the door we have passed through is the door between illusion and reality.  Now we know, for the first time, that thoughts aren't real.  Before, we thought we knew that; we thought everyone knew that -- but now we really know what that means.  And once we know that, then we understand also that, even when thoughts come back in and busy themselves making stories about our lives, they aren't real stories.

So, truly, I'm thinking this out as I write, but where I've come to is that awareness is that vantage point where we don't filter our experience through thoughts (and "we" and "our" are just grammatical necessities because the reality is that there is no self at that moment).  But if there is not complete awakening, then when thoughts come back in, they are believed again.  Each time we rest in awareness, though, the thoughts may become less solid-seeming, more transparent.  We may become awake even though we have never awakened!

Self-Absorption and Awakening

I've some inchoate thoughts around this topic, so let's just see where this goes.

Based on my own experience at different stages in my life as well as on observation of others, I would describe two types of self-absorption.  The first is the unaware kind.  This is where the person's orientation is basically outward, toward finding satisfaction outside him/herself.  But s/he is unable to find it because the reason for the outward orientation in the first place is the deep belief that there is nothing of value inside.  Thus, the only hope is that what is needed will come from somewhere else.  That need for the sense of emptiness to be filled is self-absorbed because the person isn't really interested in others except to the extent that s/he sees hope that others might fill the emptiness.  Usually this orientation is pretty unconscious although someone who is doing this and is scrupulously honest might eventually get a sense that it really isn't about any genuine interest in others.  Such a realization might be the start of a genuine search for truth.

The other type of self-absorption is the one that arises as one starts on the path to awakening, or re-starts after a period of outward orientation.  Suddenly, everything and everyone in the environment comes to take a back seat.  One does the daily tasks and maybe has a few recreational pursuits but the meaning of life only comes from absorption in one's advancement on the path.  This kind of self-absorption, unlike that above, arises from an inner orientation.  It is the one that leads to freedom.

Post-awakening: why a teacher is needed

I have spoken with many people who say that their teacher is an inner one, or one whom they have only met in books.  So long as having this type of teacher does not occasion self-deception (we are so good at seeing only that which fits in with our ideas of ourselves and the world), that is fine.  But for me, I've needed external teachers.  Recently, thinking about my early awakenings (in the 1980s), I realize that if I'd had a teacher easily accessible at the time, things might have gone very differently for me.

At the time, my teacher was in Japan.  My only support was his letters, which came infrequently, in part because each of mine had to be translated and then, again, his advice back to me had to be translated.  Two weeks was the soonest I could expect a reply, and that was only if my letter accurately conveyed to him what had happened to me.  It's hard to remember that in those days I didn't have the vocabulary for something that is so far beyond words and beyond thought.  I had to talk around it -- to point but not pinpoint.  And I was talking to someone from another culture.  But even these were not the worst impediments.

The biggest impediment was that I myself had a whole host of misconceptions about what awakening was.  I imagined I would be completely free of all problems and conflicts, that I would never have a negative thought about anyone, that I would now experience oneness with everyone all the time.  It's a tall order for one little awakening -- or even one big one!  And the thing is, when these expectations didn't come to pass, I discounted what really was a genuine spiritual awakening.  So the return of suffering was not only because my karma didn't come to a sudden end with one awakening, but also because, although a part of me never doubted that what I experienced was what I'd been seeking for so long, alongside that sense of trueness was a nagging suspicion that I must have deceived myself since I still wasn't perfect.  It has only been in recent years that I was able to go back and see in what I wrote in those days genuine realization of Truth.

So, bottom line, it seems to me that having a teacher close at hand to whom one can go immediately after an awakening, before the mind gets hold of it and starts to distort it, is important, if not critically urgent.  Otherwise, the benefits of the realization that comes out of it may be lost -- not forever -- once awakening happens, it's "in the blood," so to speak -- but for a time.  For me, it was a long time.

Is it all in your head?

I'm reading a little book by Frank A Smitha called Your Philosophy and Mine: Choices for the Twenty-First Century. Smitha is a rationalist and makes his points in support of his position cogently.  But I'm going to play with his position a bit here.

In one chapter, Smitha discusses the religious scholar Huston Smith.  He states, "[Huston] Smith assumes that the spiritual oceanic sense within him is a real universal force existing outside his head."

My response to this is that Frank A Smitha assumes that the tables and chairs and people he sees really exist outside his head.

And you might say, implicitly agreeing with Smitha -- of course they do.  Because, you see, all of us are innately rationalists, although we may have some sort of intuition of something else which we begin, at some point, to pay attention to.  But our implicit and unconscious assumption is that the things we see are "out there."

And yet, we don't know that they are out there, do we?  We only know that things appear to be outside of us.  And "appear" is the operative word here.

My argument here is not a solipsistic one (solipsism being the position that nothing can be known outside one's own mind), although I know I found this point confusing for a long time.  My teacher kept saying, "It's not solipsism," but I couldn't understand why, if we can't know whether anything is really outside ourselves, it isn't.

And then the wall between "inside" and "outside" started to break down.  I felt myself to be the table, or whatever I was touching, and then other people, and finally everything.  So then, who or what is the "I" to which we usually refer when we say, "I see that table over there"?

In the nondual community where I hang out, "What am I?" is not meant to be answered but to be the beginning of an inquiry into one's true nature.  But just for fun, I'm going to answer it here -- because it is also the answer to the question of solipsism.

"I" is nothing other than the thought-wall that separates the physical body from the things outside the physical body.  It is not the body itself -- although this is the unconscious assumption -- but an assumption of thought. What happens during the awakening process is that the identity between the body and thought begins to break down, so that one can see the distinction.

(Please note:  I received a comment for approval which contained a link.  When I clicked on the link, my virus software told me malware had been detected.  I'm sorry but I can't expose readers to this risk, so I deleted the comment.  If the writer would like to resubmit without the link, it will probably work.)

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.  

The Bodhi Tree Myth

I don't know how much of the story of the historical Buddha's enlightenment is apocryphal.  But even if it's true, I know it was misleading in its attractiveness to me -- especially when I was young.  This guy wanders in the forest for years with no realization of his True Nature whatsoever, and then sits under this tree, vows to stay there until he realizes Truth, and finally does.  In one fell swoop -- complete.  Nothing left to do. 

OK, so maybe it happens.  But how many of you know of people who woke up that way?  I have met some people who claimed this is how it was for them, but if I talk to them for a few minutes, I see that they still have plenty of ego left.  Nothing wrong with that (except, maybe, the self-deceit part), but the way they function doesn't really look to others the way it appears to them.  And I sometimes wonder whether they, like myself when I was younger, have been deceived by the Bodhi Tree myth into thinking that this instantaneous, complete and total awakening is the way it always is, and so have superimposed that belief onto their own experience.

For most people, including myself, it's not about one moment of transcendence which becomes the final  realization of ultimate Truth but a series of awakenings and a gradual shift in the way life is experienced and seen.  It is true that that first awakening is very marvelous -- there is, in fact, nothing so wonderful.  But those realizations that follow take you deeper into a more complete understanding of your True Nature.  Ego keeps functioning and all -- but now there is an understanding of its more limited role -- to keep the creature safe and functioning well.  What we really are, though, encompasses not only our ego and all that we as form are, but all that everyone and everything else is as well -- that's what it is important to know.  We don't transcend our lives in a moment, but rather we come to see more and more how the Eternal is always present in everything.

Emotion and Awakening

Q:  What is the relationship between emotion and awakening?

I once thought that emotion somehow went away when one woke up, and was replaced by constant bliss, or something like that.  Pretty silly, now that I think of it.  But I think that belief was encouraged by some teachers who seem to look upon emotional states as illusory.  My experience is that I definitely still experience emotion -- both positive and negative.  What seems to have changed is my judgments about emotion.  There seems to be an allowance for all kinds of feelings.  So-called "negative feelings," such as sadness, don't have to be gotten rid of.  In a way, I can just enjoy them as part of existence, in the same say that we experience the sad emotions in a work of art as enjoyable.