Also check out related articles on self-enquiry:
The Direct Path to Your Real Self
Ramana Maharshi's instructions on Self-Enquiry
If you like these writings, consider checking out Ken Wilber's books "A Simple Feeling of Being" and "A Brief History of Everything"
Here are some articles by Ken Wilber, which differentiates and clarifies the Witness (a.k.a. Thusness's Stage 1, the I AM) with Non-Duality (a.k.a Thusness's Stage 4): There are many things that I can doubt, but I cannot doubt my own consciousness in this moment. My consciousness IS, and even if I tried to doubt it, it would be my consciousness doubting. I can imagine that my senses are being presented with a fake reality – say, a completely virtual reality or digital reality, which looks real but is merely a series of extremely realist images. But even then, I cannot doubt the consciousness that is doing the watching…
The very undeniability of my present awareness, the undeniability of my consciousness, immediately delivers to me a certainty of existence in this moment, a certainty of Being in the now-ness of this moment. I cannot doubt consciousness and Being in this moment, for it is the ground of all knowing, all seeing, all existing…
Who am I? Ask that question over and over again, deeply. Who am I? What is it in me that is conscious of everything?
If you think that you know Spirit, or if you think you don’t, Spirit is actually that which is thinking both of those thoughts. So you can doubt the objects of consciousness, but you can never believably doubt the doubter, never really doubt the Witness of the entire display. Therefore, rest in the Witness, whether it is thinking that it knows God or not, and that witnessing, that undeniable immediacy of now-consciousness, is itself God, Spirit, Buddha-mind. The certainty lies in the pure self-felt Consciousness to which objects appear, not in the objects themselves. You will never, never, never see God, because God is the Seer, not any finite, mortal, bounded object that can be seen…
This pure I AM state is not hard to achieve but impossible to escape, because it is ever present and can never really be doubted. You can never run from Spirit, because Spirit is the Runner. To put it very bluntly, Spirit is not hard to find but impossible to avoid: it is that which is looking at this page right now. Can’t you feel That One? Why on earth do you keep looking for God when God is actually the Looker?
Simply ask, Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?
I am aware of my feelings, so I am not my feelings – Who am I? I am aware of my thoughts, so I am not my thoughts – Who am I? Clouds float by in the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, feelings float by in the body – and I am none of those because I can Witness them all.
Moreover, I can doubt that clouds exist, I can doubt that feelings exist, I can doubt that objects of thought exist – but I cannot doubt that the Witness exists in this moment, because the Witness would still be there to witness the doubt.
I am not objects in nature, not feelings in the body, not thoughts in the mind, for I can Witness them all. I am that Witness – a vast, spacious, empty, clear, pure, transparent Openness that impartially notices all that arises, as a mirror spontaneously reflects all its objects…
You can already feel some of this Great Liberation in that, as you rest in the ease of witnessing this moment, you already feel that you are free from the suffocating constriction of mere objects, mere feelings, mere thoughts – they all come and go, but you are that vast, free, empty, open Witness of them all, untouched by their torments and tortures.
This is actually the profound discovery of… the pure divine Self, the formless Witness, causal nothingness, the vast Emptiness in which the entire world arises, stays a bit, and passes. And you are That. You are not the body, not the ego, not nature, not thoughts, not this, not that – you are a vast Emptiness, Freedom, Release, and Liberation.
With this discovery… you are halfway home. You have disidentified from any and all finite objects; you rest as infinite Consciousness. You are free, open, empty, clear, radiant, released, liberated, exalted, drenched in a blissful emptiness that exists prior to space, prior to time, prior to tears and terror, prior to pain and mortality and suffering and death. You have found the great Unborn, the vast Abyss, the unqualifiable Ground of all that is, and all that was, and all that ever shall be.
But why is that only halfway home? Because as you rest in the infinite ease of consciousness, spontaneously aware of all that is arising, there will soon enough come the great catastrophe of Freedom and Fullness: the Witness itself will disappear entirely, and instead of witnessing the sky, you are the sky; instead of touching the earth, you are the earth; instead of hearing the thunder, you are the thunder. You and the entire Kosmos because One Taste – you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, hold Mt. Everest in the palm of your hand; supernovas swirl in your heart and the solar system replaces your head…
You are One Taste, the empty mirror that is one with any and all objects that arise in its embrace, a mindlessly vast translucent expanse: infinite, eternal, radiant beyond release. And you… are… That…
So the primary Cartesian dualism – which is simply the dualism between… in here and out there, subject and object, the empty Witness and all things witnessed – is finally undone and overcome in nondual One Taste. Once you actually and fully contact the Witness, then – and only then – can it be transcended into radical Nonduality, and halfway home becomes fully home, here in the ever-present wonder of what is…
And so how do you know that you have finally and really overcome the Cartesian dualism? Very simple: if you really overcome the Cartesian dualism, then you no longer feel that you are on this side of your face looking at the world out there. There is only the world, and you are all of that; you actually feel that you are one with everything that is arising moment to moment. You are not merely on this side of your face looking out there. “In here” and “out there” have become One Taste with a shuddering obviousness and certainty so profound it feels like a five-ton rock just dropped on your head. It is, shall we say, a feeling hard to miss.
At that point, which is actually your ever-present condition, there is no exclusive identity with this particular organism, no constriction of consciousness to the head, a constriction that makes it seem that “you” are in the head looking at the rest of the world out there; there is no binding of attention to the personal bodymind: instead, consciousness is one with all that is arising – a vast, open, transparent, radiant, infinitely Free and infinitely Full expanse that embraces the entire Kosmos, so that every single subject and every single object are erotically united in the Great Embrace of One Taste. You disappear from merely being behind your eyes, and you become the All, you directly and actually feel that your basic identity is everything that is arising moment to moment (just as previously you felt that your identity was with this finite, partial, separate, mortal coil of flesh you call a body). Inside and outside have become One Taste. I tell you, it can happen just like that!
(Source: Boomeritis, Sidebar E: “The Genius Descartes Gets a Postmodern Drubbing: Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age”. More to be found in The Simple Feeling of Being, a collection of Ken Wilber’s inspirational, mystical and instructional passages drawn from his publications, based on his experiences.) -------------------------------------------------------------- The Nondual Level
"In the previous level, you are so absorbed in the unmanifest dimensions that you might not even notice the manifest world. You are discovering Emptiness, and so you ignore Form. But at the ultimate or nondual level, you integrate the two. You see that Emptiness appears or manifests itself as Form, and that Form has as its essence Emptiness. In more concrete terms, what you all is all things that arise. All manifestation arises, moment by moment, as a play of Emptiness. If the causal was like a radiant moonlit night, this is like a radiant autumn day.
What appear as hard or solid objects “out there” are really transparent and translucent manifestations of your own Being or Isness. They are not obstacles to God, only expressions of God. They are therefore empty in the sense of not being an obstruction or impediment. They are a free expression of the Divine. As the Mahamudra tradition succinctly puts it, “ All is Mind. Mind is Empty. Empty is freely-manifesting. Freely manifesting is self-liberating.
The freedom that you found at the causal level- the freedom of Fullness and Emptiness- that freedom is found to extend to all things, even to this “fallen” world of sin or samsara. Therefore, all things become self-liberated. And this is extraordinary freedom, or absence of restriction, or total release- this clear bright autumn day- this is what you actually experience at this point. But then “experience” is the wrong word all together. This realization is actually of the nonexperiential nature of Spirit. Experiences come and go. They all have a beginning in time, and an end in time. Even subtle experiences come and go. They are all wonderful, glorious, extraordinary. And they come and they go.
But this nondual “state” is not itself another experience. It is simply the opening or clearing in which all experiences arise and fall. It is the bright autumn sky through which the clouds come and go- it is not itself another cloud, another experience, another object, another manifestation. This realization is actually of the utter fruitlessness of experiences, the utter futility of trying to experience release or liberation. All experiences lose their taste entirely- these passing clouds.
You are not the one who experiences liberation; you are the clearing, the opening, the emptiness, in which any experience comes and goes, like reflections on the mirror. And you are the mirror, the mirror mind, and not any experienced reflection. But you are not apart from the reflections, standing back and watching. You are everything that is arising moment to moment. You can swallow the whole cosmos in one gulp, it is so small, and you can taste the sky without moving an inch.
That is why in Zen, it is said that you cannot enter the Great Samadhi: it is actually the opening or clearing that is ever present, and in which all experience- and all manifestation- arises moment to moment. It seems like you “enter” this state, except that once there, you realize that there never was a time this state was not fully present and fully recognized- “ the gateless gate.” And so you deeply understand that you never entered this state; nor did the Buddhas, past or future, ever enter this state.
In Dzogchen, this is the recognition of mind’s true nature. All things, in all worlds, are self-liberated as they arise. All things are like sunlight on the water of a pond. It all shimmers. It is all empty. It is all light. It is all full, and it is all fulfilled. And the world goes on it ordinary way, and nobody notices at all.
Wilber, K. (1999). Stages of Spirituality. Collected Works, vol.4, pg.361-362.
--------------------------------------------------------------
From “A Brief History of Everything (Second Edition)”, Ken Wilber:
The Nondual
Q: So this casual unmanifest – is that the absolute end point? Is this the end of time, the end of evolution, the end of history? The final Omega point?
KW: Well, many traditions take this state of cessation to be the ultimate state, the final end point of all development and evolution, yes. And this end state is equated with full Enlightenment, ultimate release, pure nirvana.
But this is not the “final story,” according to the Nondual traditions. Because at some point, as you inquire into the Witness, and rest in the Witness, the sense of being a Witness “in here” completely vanishes itself, and the Witness turns out to be everything that is witnessed. The causal gives way to the Nondual, and formless mysticism gives way to nondual mysticism. “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.”
Technically, you have dis-identified with even the Witness, and then integrated it with all manifestation – in other words, the second and third phases of fulcrum-9, which leads to fulcrum-10, which is not really a separate fulcrum or level, but the reality or Suchness of all levels, all states, all conditions.
And this is the second and most profound meaning of Emptiness - it is not a discrete state, but the reality of all states, the Suchness of all states. You have moved from the causal to the Nondual.
Q: Emptiness has two meanings?
KW: Yes, which can be very confusing. On one hand, as we just saw, it is a discrete, identifiable state of awareness – namely, unmanifest absorption or cessation (nirvikalpa Samadhi, ayn, jnana Samadhi, nirodh, classical nirvana). This is the causal state, a discrete state.
The second meaning is that Emptiness is not merely a particular state among other states, but rather the reality or suchness or condition of all states. Not a particular state apart from other states, but the reality or condition of all states, high or low, sacred or profane, ordinary or extraordinary. Recall that on figure 9-1 we had Spirit as both the highest level (“causal”) and the ever-present Ground of all levels (“nondual”).
Q: We already discussed the discrete state; now the Nondual.
KW: Yes, the “experience” of this nondual Suchness is similar to the nature unity experience we earlier discussed, except now this unity is experienced not just with gross Form out there, but also with all of the subtle Form in here. In Buddhist terms, this is not just the Nirmanakaya – gross or nature mysticism and not just the Sambhogakaya – subtle or deity mysticism; and not just the Dharmakaya – causal or formless mysticism. It is the Svabhavikakaya – the integration of all three of them. It is beyond nature mysticism, beyond deity mysticism, and beyond formless mysticism – it is the reality or the Suchness of each, and thus integrates each in its embrace. It embraces the entire spectrum of consciousness – transcends all, includes all.
Q: Again, rather technical. Perhaps there’s a more direct way to talk about Nondual mysticism?
Kw: Across the board, the sense of being any sort of Seer or Witness or Self vanishes altogether. You don’t look at the sky, you are the sky. You can taste the sky. It’s not out there. As Zen would say, you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, you can swallow the Kosmos whole – precisely because awareness is no longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are not-two.
Everything continues to arise moment to moment – the entire Kosmos continues to arise moment to moment – but there is nobody watching the display, there is just the display, a spontaneous and luminous gesture of great perfection. The pure Emptiness of the Witness turns out to be one with every Form that is witnessed, and that is one of the basic meanings of “nonduality.”
Q: Again, could you be even more specific?
Kw: Well, you might begin by getting into the state of Witness – that is, you simply rest in pure observing awareness – you are not any object that can be seen – not nature, not body, not thoughts – just rest in that pure witnessing awareness. And you can get a certain “sensation” of that witnessing awareness – a sensation of freedom, of release, of great expanse.
While you are resting in that state, and “sensing” this Witness as a great expanse, if you then look at, say, a mountain, you might begin to notice that the sensation of the Witness and the sensation of the mountain are the same sensation. When you “feel” your pure Self and you “feel” the mountain, they are absolutely the same feeling.
In other words, the real world is not given to you twice – one out there, one in here. That "twiceness" is exactly the meaning of "duality." Rather, the real world is given to you once, immediately – it is one feeling, it has one taste, it is utterly full in that one taste, it is not severed into seer and seen, subject and object, fragment and fragment. It is a singular, of which the plural is unknown. You can taste the mountain; it is the same taste as your Self; it is not out there being reflected in here – that duality is not present in the immediateness of real experience. Real experience, before you slice it up, does not contain that duality – real experience, reality itself, is "non-dual." You are still you, and the mountain is still the mountain, but you and the mountain are two sides of one and the same experience, which is the one and only reality at that point. If you relax into present experience in that fashion, the separate-self sense will uncoil; you will stop standing back from life; you will not have experience, you will suddenly become all experience; you will not be “in here” looking “out there” – in here and out there are one, so you are no longer trapped “in here.”
And so suddenly, you are not in the bodymind. Suddenly, the bodymind has dropped. Suddenly, the wind doesn't blow on you, it blows through you, within you. You are not looking at the mountain, you are the mountain–the mountain is closer to you than your own skin. You are that, and there is no you – just this entire luminous display spontaneously arising moment to moment. The separate self is nowhere to be found. The entire sensation of “weight” drops altogether, because you are not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you, and you are purest Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the Divine, of primordial Purity. But the Divine is not someplace else, it is just all of this shimmering. It is self-seen. It has One Taste. It is nowhere else.
Q: Subject and object are nondual?
KW: You know the Zen koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Usually, of course, we need two hands to clap – and that is the structure of typical experience. We have a sense of ourselves as a subject in here, and the world as an object out there. We have these "two hands" of experience, the subject and the object. And typical experience is a smashing of these two hands together to make a commotion, a sound. The object out there smashes into me as a subject, and I have an experience – the two hands clap together and experience emerges.
And so the typical structure of experience is like a punch in the face. The ordinary self is the battered self – it is utterly battered by the universe "out there." The ordinary self is a series of bruises, of scars, the results of these two hands of experience smashing together. This bruising is called "dukkha," suffering. As Krishnamurti used to say, in that gap between the subject and the object lies the entire misery of humankind.
But with the nondual state, suddenly there are not two hands. Suddenly, the subject and the object are one hand. Suddenly, there is nothing outside of you to smash into you, bruise you, torment you.
Suddenly, you do not have an experience, you are every experience that arises, and so you are instantly released into all space: you and the entire Kosmos are one hand, one experience, one display, one gesture of great perfection. There is nothing outside of you that you can want, or desire, or seek, or grasp – your soul expands to the corners of the universe and embraces all with infinite delight. You are utterly Full, utterly Saturated, so full and saturated that the boundaries to the Kosmos completely explode and leave you without date or duration, time or location, awash in an ocean of infinite care. You are released into the All, as the All – you are the self-seen radiant Kosmos, you are the universe of One Taste, and the taste is utterly infinite.
So what is the sound of that one hand clapping? What is the taste of that One Taste? When there is nothing outside of you that can hit you, hurt you, push you, pull you – what is the sound of that one hand clapping?
See the sunlight on the mountains? Feel the cool breeze? What is not utterly obvious? Who is not already enlightened? As a Zen Master put it, "When I heard the sound of the bell ringing, there was no I, and no bell, just the ringing." There is no twiceness, no twoness, in immediate experience! No inside and no outside, no subject and no object–just immediate awareness itself, the sound of one hand clapping.
So you are not in here, on this side of a transparent window, looking at the Kosmos out there. The transparent window has shattered, your bodymind drops, you are free of that confinement forever, you are no longer 'behind your face' looking at the Kosmos – you simply are the Kosmos. You are all that. Which is precisely why you can swallow the Kosmos and span the centuries, and nothing moves at all. The sound of this one hand clapping is the sound the Big Bang made. It is the sound of supernovas exploding in space. It is the sound of the robin singing. It is the sound of the waterfall on a crystal-clear day. It is the sound of the entire manifest universe – and you are that sound.
Which is why your Original Face is not in here. It is the sheerest Emptiness or transparency of this shimmering display. If the Kosmos is arising, you are that. If nothing arises, you are that. In either case, you are that. In either case, you are not in here. The window has shattered. The gap between subject and object is gone. There is no twiceness, no twoness, to be found anywhere – the world is never given to you twice, but always only once – and you are that. You are that One Taste.
This state is not something you can bring about. This nondual state, this state of One Taste, is the very nature of every experience before you slice it up. This One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to it. This uncontrived state is prior to effort, prior to grasping, prior to avoiding. It is the real world before you do anything to it, including the effort to 'see it nondually.'
So you don't have to do something special to awareness or to experience in order to make it nondual. It starts out nondual, its very nature is nondual – prior to any grasping, any effort, any contrivance. If effort arises, fine; if effort doesn't arise, fine; in either case there is only the immediacy of One Taste, prior to effort and non-effort alike.
So this is definitely not a state that is hard to get into, but rather one that is impossible to avoid. It has always been so. There has never been a moment when you did not experience One Taste – it is the only reality in all of reality. In a million billion years, there has never been a single second that you weren't aware of this Taste; there has never been a single second where it wasn't directly in your Original Face like a blast of arctic air.
Of course, we have often lied to ourselves about this, we have often been untruthful about this, the universe of One Taste, the primordial sound of one hand clapping, our own Original Face. And the nondual traditions aim, not to bring about this state, because that is impossible, but simply to point it out to you so that you can no longer ignore it, no longer lie to yourself about who you really are. (Source: A Brief History of Everything. More to be found in The Simple Feeling of Being, a collection of Ken Wilber’s inspirational, mystical and instructional passages drawn from his publications, based on his experiences.)
-------------------------------------------------------------- In this excerpt from The Eye of Spirit, Ken Wilber offers one of the most powerful (and beautiful) pieces of spiritual writing he has ever produced.
This is the very first time these words have been reproduced on the
web, and we invite you to share this chapter however you like.
“What follows are various ‘pointing out’ instructions, direct
pointers to mind’s essential nature or intrinsic Spirit. Traditionally
this involves a great deal of intentional repetition. If you read this
material in the normal manner, you might find the repetitions tedious
and perhaps irritating. If you would like the rest of this particular
section to work for you, please read it in a slow and leisurely manner,
letting the words and the repetitions sink in. You can also use these
sections as material for meditation, using no more than one or two
paragraphs—or even one or two sentences—for each session.” –Ken Wilber
Where
are we to locate Spirit? What are we actually allowed to acknowledge as
Sacred? Where exactly is the Ground of Being? Where is this ultimate
Divine?
The Great Search
The Realization of the Nondual
traditions is uncompromising: there is only Spirit, there is only God,
there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all
the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the
degenerate-each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit
precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the
Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand,
not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.
This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the
separate-self sense. The separate-self is, at bottom, simply a sensation
of seeking. When you feel yourself right now, you will basically feel a
tiny interior tension or contraction—a sensation of grasping, desiring,
wishing, wanting, avoiding, resisting-it is a sensation of effort, a
sensation of seeking.
In its highest form, this sensation of seeking takes on the form of
the Great Search for Spirit. We wish to get from our unenlightened state
(of sin or delusion or duality) to an enlightened or more spiritual
state. We wish to get from where Spirit is not, to where Spirit is.
But there is no place where Spirit is not. Every single location in the entire Kosmos
is equally and fully Spirit. Seeking of any sort, movement of any sort,
attainment of any sort: all profoundly useless. The Great Search simply
reinforces the mistaken assumption that there is some’ place that
Spirit is not, and that I need to get from a space that is lacking to a
space that is full. But there is no space lacking, and there is no space
more full. There is only Spirit.
The Great Search for Spirit is simply that impulse, the final
impulse, which prevents the present realization of Spirit, and it does
so for a simple reason: the Great Search presumes the loss of God. The
Great Search reinforces the mistaken belief that God is not present, and
thus totally obscures the ‘reality of God’s ever-present Presence. The
Great Search, which pretends to love God, is in fact the very mechanism
of pushing God away; the mechanism of promising to find tomorrow that
which exists only in the timeless now; the mechanism of watching the
future so fervently that the present always passes it by—very quickly
and God’s smiling face with it.
The Great Search is the loveless contraction hidden in the heart of
the separate-self sense, a contraction that drives the intense yearning
for a tomorrow in which salvation will finally arrive, but during which
time, thank God, I can continue to be myself. The greater the Great
Search, the more I can deny God. The greater the Great Search, the more I
can feel my own sensation of seeking, which defines the contours of my
self. The Great Search is the great enemy of what is.
Should we then simply cease the Great Search? Definitely, if we
could. But the effort to stop the Great Search is itself more of the
Great Search. The very first step presumes and reinforces the seeking
sensation. There is actually nothing the self-contraction can do to stop
the Great Search, because the self-contraction and the Great Search are
two names for the same thing.
If Spirit cannot be found as a future product of the Great Search,
then there is only one alternative: Spirit must be fully, totally,
completely present right now—AND you must be fully, totally, completely
aware of it right now. It will not do to say that Spirit is present but I
don’t realize it. That would require the Great Search; that would
demand that I seek a tomorrow in which I could realize that Spirit is
fully present, but such seeking misses the present in the very first
step. To keep seeking would be to keep missing. No, the realization
itself, the awareness itself: this, too, must somehow be fully and
completely present right now. If it is not, then all we have left is the
Great Search, doomed to presume that which it wishes to overcome.
There must be something about our present awareness that contains the entire truth. Somehow, no matter what your state, you are immersed fully in everything you need for perfect enlightenment.
You are somehow looking right at the answer. One hundred percent of
Spirit is in your perception right now. Not 20 percent, not 50 percent,
not 99 percent, but literally 100 percent of Spirit is in your awareness
right now—and the trick, as it were, is to recognize this ever-present
state of affairs, and not to engineer a future state in which Spirit
will announce itself.
And this simple recognition of an already present Spirit is the task, as it were, of the great Nondual traditions.
To Meet the Kosmos
Many people have stern objections to “mysticism” or
“transcendentalism” of any sort, because they think it somehow denies
this world, or hates this earth, or despises the body and the senses and
its vital life, and so on. While that may be true of certain
dissociated (or merely Ascending) approaches, it is certainly not the
core understanding of the great Nondual mystics, from Plotinus and
Eckhart in the West to Nagarjuna and Lady Tsogyal in the East.
Rather, these sages universally maintain that absolute reality and
the relative world are “not-two” (which is the meaning of “nondual”),
much as a mirror and its reflections are not separate, or an ocean is
one with its many waves.
So the “other world” of Spirit and “this world” of separate phenomena
are deeply and profoundly “not-two,” and this nonduality is a direct and
immediate realization which occurs in certain meditative states—in
other words, seen with the eye of contemplation—although it then
becomes a very simple, very ordinary perception, whether you are
meditating or not. Every single thing you perceive is the radiance of
Spirit itself, so much so that Spirit is not seen apart from that thing:
the robin sings, and just that is it, nothing else. This becomes your
constant realization, through all changes of state, very naturally, just
so. And this releases you from the basic insanity of hiding from the
Real.
But why is it, then, that we ordinarily don’t have that perception?
All the great Nondual wisdom traditions have given a fairly similar
answer to that question. We don’t see that Spirit is fully and
completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is
clouded with some form of avoidance. We do not want to be
choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it,
or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it; hate it, love it,
loathe it, or in some way agitate to get ourselves into, or out of, it.
We will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the
present. We will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere,
quickly. The Great Search is the game, in its endless forms.
In nondual meditation or contemplation, the agitation of the
separate-self sense profoundly relaxes, and the self uncoils in the vast
expanse of all space. At that point, it becomes obvious that you are
not “in here” looking at the world “out there,” because that duality has
simply collapsed into pure Presence and spontaneous luminosity.
This realization may take many forms. A simple one is something like
this: You might be looking at a mountain, and you have relaxed into the
effortlessness of your own present awareness, and then suddenly the
mountain is all, you are nothing. Your separate-self sense is suddenly
and totally gone, and there is simply everything that is arising moment
to moment. You are perfectly aware, perfectly conscious, everything
seems completely normal, except you are nowhere to be found. You are not
on this side of your face looking at the mountain out there; you simply
are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are
everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly,
just so.
We know all the fancy names for this state, from unity consciousness
to sahaj samadhi. But it really is the simplest and most obvious state
you will ever realize. Moreover, once you glimpse that state—what the
Buddhists call One Taste (because you and the entire universe are one
taste or one experience)—it becomes obvious that you are not entering
this state, but rather, it is a state that, in some profound and
mysterious way, has been your primordial condition from time immemorial.
You have, in fact, never left this state for a second.
This is why Zen calls it the Gateless Gate: on this side of that
realization, it looks like you have to do something to enter that
state—it looks like you need to pass through a gate. But when you do so,
and you turn around and look back, there is no gate whatsoever, and
never has been. You have never left this state in the first place, so
obviously you can’t enter it. The gateless gate! “Every form is
Emptiness just as it is,” means that all things, including you and me,
are always already on the other side of the gateless gate.
But if that is so, then why even do spiritual practice? Isn’t that
just another form of the Great Search? Yes, actually, spiritual practice
is a form of the Great Search, and as such, it is destined to fail. But
that is exactly the point. You and I are already convinced that there
are things that we need to do in order to realize Spirit. We feel that
there are places that Spirit is not (namely, in me), and we are going to
correct this state of affairs. Thus, we are already committed to the
Great Search, and so nondual meditation makes use of that fact and
engages us in the Great Search in a particular and somewhat sneaky
fashion (which Zen calls “selling water by the river”).
William Blake said that “a fool who persists in his folly will become
wise.” So nondual meditation simply speeds up the folly. If you really
think you lack Spirit, then try this folly: try to become Spirit, try to
discover Spirit, try to contact Spirit, try to reach Spirit: meditate
and meditate and meditate in order to get Spirit!
But of course, you see, you cannot really do this. You cannot reach
Spirit any more than you can reach your feet. You always already are
Spirit, you are not going to reach it in any sort of temporal thrashing
around. But if this is not obvious, then try it. Nondual meditation is a
serious effort to do the impossible, until you become utterly exhausted
of the Great Search, sit down completely worn out, and notice your
feet.
It’s not that these nondual traditions deny higher states;
they don’t. They have many, many practices that help individuals reach
specific states of postformal consciousness. These include states of
transcendental bliss, love, and compassion; of heightened cognition and
extrasensory perception; of Deity consciousness and contemplative
prayer. But they maintain that those altered states—which
have a beginning and an end in time—ultimately have nothing to do with
the timeless. The real aim is the stateless, not a perpetual fascination
with changes of state. And that stateless condition is the true nature
of this and every conceivable state of consciousness, so any state you
have will do just fine. Change of state is not the ultimate point;
recognizing the Changeless is the point, recognizing primordial
Emptiness is the point, recognizing unqualifiable Godhead is the point,
recognizing pure Spirit is the point, and if you are breathing and
vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine.
Nonetheless, traditionally, in order to demonstrate your sincerity,
you must complete a good number of preliminary practices, including a
mastery of various states of meditative consciousness, summating in a
stable post-postconventional adaptation, all of which is well and good.
But none of those states of consciousness are held to be final or
ultimate or privileged. And changing states is not the goal at all.
Rather, it is precisely by entering and leaving these various meditative
states that you begin to understand that none of them
constitute enlightenment. All of them have a beginning in time, and thus
none of them are the timeless. The point is to realize that change of
state is not the point, and that realization can occur in any state of consciousness whatsoever.
Ever-Present Awareness
This primordial recognition of One Taste—not the creation but the
recognition of the fact that you and the Kosmos are One Spirit, One
Taste, One Gesture—is the great gift of the Nondual traditions. And in
simplified form, this recognition goes like this:
(What follows are various “pointing out” instructions, direct
pointers to mind’s essential nature or intrinsic Spirit. Traditionally
this involves a great deal of intentional repetition. If you read this
material in the normal manner, you might find the repetitions tedious
and perhaps irritating. If you would like the rest of this particular
section to work for you, please read it in a slow and leisurely manner,
letting the words and the repetitions sink in. You can also use these
sections as material for meditation, using no more than one or two
paragraphs—or even one or two sentences—for each session.)
We begin with the realization that the pure Self or transpersonal Witness is an ever-present consciousness,
even when we doubt its existence. You are right now aware of, say, this
book, the room, a window, the sky, the clouds…. You can sit back and
simply notice that you are aware of all those objects floating by.
Clouds float through the sky, thoughts float through the mind, and when
you notice them, you are effortlessly aware of them. There is a simple,
effortless, spontaneous witnessing of whatever happens to be present.
In that simple witnessing awareness, you might notice: I am aware of
my body, and therefore I am not just my body. I am aware of my mind, and
therefore I am not just my mind. I am aware of my self, and therefore I
am not just that self. Rather, I seem somehow to be the Witness of my
body, my mind, my self.
This is truly fascinating. I can see my thoughts, so I am not those
thoughts. I am aware of bodily sensations, so I am not those sensations.
I am aware of my emotions, so I am not merely those emotions. I am
somehow the Witness of all of that!
But what is this Witness itself? Who or What is it that witnesses all
of these objects, that watches the clouds float by, and thoughts float
by, and objects float by? Who or What is this true Seer, this pure
Witness, which is at the very core of what I am?
That simple witnessing awareness, the traditions maintain, is Spirit
itself, is the enlightened mind itself, is Buddha-nature itself, is God
itself, in its entirety.
Thus, according to the traditions, getting in touch with Spirit or
God or the enlightened mind is not something difficult to achieve. It is
your own simple witnessing awareness in exactly this moment. If you see
this page, you already have that awareness–all of it—right now.
A very famous text from Dzogchen or Maha-Ati Buddhism (one of the
very greatest of the Nondual traditions) puts it like this: “At times it
happens that some meditators say that it is difficult to recognize the
nature of the mind”—in Dzogchen, “the nature of the mind” means
primordial Purity or radical Emptiness—it means nondual Spirit by
whatever name. The point is that this “nature of the mind” is ever-present witnessing awareness, and
some meditators, the text says, find this hard to believe. They imagine
it is difficult or even impossible to recognize this ever-present
awareness, and that they have to work very hard and meditate very long
in order to attain this enlightened mind—whereas it is simply their own
ever-present witnessing awareness, fully functioning right now.
The text continues: “Some male or female practitioners believe it to
be impossible to recognize the nature of mind. They become depressed
with tears streaming down their cheeks. There is no reason at all to
become sad. It is not at all impossible to recognize. Rest directly in
that which thinks that it is impossible to recognize the nature of the
mind, and that is exactly it.”
As for this ever-present witnessing awareness being hard to contact:
“There are some meditators who don’t let their mind rest in itself
[simple present awareness], as they should. Instead they let it watch
outwardly or search inwardly. You will neither see nor find [Spirit] by
watching outwardly or searching inwardly. There is no reason whatsoever
to watch outwardly or search inwardly. Let go directly into this mind
that is watching outwardly or searching inwardly, and that is exactly
it.”
We are aware of this room; just that is it, just that awareness is
ever-present Spirit. We are aware of the clouds floating by in the sky;
just that is it, just that awareness is ever-present Spirit. We are
aware of thoughts floating by in the mind; just that is it, just that
awareness is ever-present Spirit. We are aware of pain, turmoil, terror,
fear; just that is it.
In other words, the ultimate reality is not something seen, but
rather the ever-present Seer. Things that are seen come and go, are
happy or sad, pleasant or painful—but the Seer is none of those things,
and it does not come and go. The Witness does not waver, does not
wobble, does not enter that stream of time. The Witness is not an
object, not a thing seen, but the ever-present Seer of all things, the
simple Witness that is the I of Spirit, the center of the cyclone, the
opening that is God, the clearing that is pure Emptiness.
There is never a time that you do not have access to this Witnessing
awareness. At every single moment, there is a spontaneous awareness of
whatever happens to be present—and that simple, spontaneous, effortless
awareness is ever-present Spirit itself. Even if you think you don’t see
it, that very awareness is it. And thus, the ultimate state of
consciousness—intrinsic Spirit itself—is not hard to reach but impossible to avoid.
And just that is the great and guarded secret of the Nondual schools.
It does not matter what objects or contents are present; whatever
arises is fine. People sometimes have a hard time understanding Spirit
because they try to see it as an object of awareness or an object of
comprehension. But the ultimate reality is not anything seen, it is the
Seer. Spirit is not an object; it is radical, ever-present Subject, and
thus it is not something that is going to jump out in front of you like a
rock, an image, an idea, a light, a feeling, an insight, a luminous
cloud, an intense vision, or a sensation of great bliss. Those are all
nice, but they are all objects, which is what Spirit is not.
Thus, as you rest in the Witness, you won’t see anything in
particular. The true Seer is nothing that can be seen, so you simply
begin by disidentifying with any and all objects:
I am aware of sensations in my body; those are objects, I am not
those. I am aware of thoughts in my mind; those are objects, I am not
those. I am aware of my self in this moment, but that is just another
object, and I am not that.
Sights float by in nature, thoughts float by in the mind, feelings
float by in the body, and I am none of those. I am not an object. I am
the pure Witness of all those objects. I am Consciousness as such.
And so, as you rest in the pure Witness, you won’t see anything
particular—whatever you see is fine. Rather, as you rest in the radical
subject or Witness, as you stop identifying with objects, you will
simply begin to notice a sense of vast Freedom. This Freedom is not
something you will see; it is something you are. When you are the
Witness of thoughts, you are not bound by thoughts. When you are the
Witness of feelings, you are not bound by feelings. In place of your
contracted self there is simply a vast sense of Openness and Release.
As an object, you are bound; as the Witness, you are Free.
We will not see this Freedom, we will rest in it. A vast ocean of infinite ease.
And so we rest in this state of the pure and simple Witness, the true
Seer, which is vast Emptiness and pure Freedom, and we allow whatever
is seen to arise as it wishes. Spirit is in the Free and Empty Seer, not
in the limited, bound, mortal, and finite objects that parade by in the
world of time. And so we rest in this vast Emptiness and Freedom, in
which all things arise.
We do not reach or contact this pure Witnessing awareness. It is not
possible to contact that which we have never lost. Rather, we rest in
this easy, clear, ever-present awareness by simply noticing what is already happening.
We already see the sky. We already hear the birds singing. We already
feel the cool breeze. The simple Witness is already present, already
functioning, already the case. That is why we do not contact or bring
this Witness into being, but simply notice that it is always already
present, as the simple and spontaneous awareness of whatever is
happening in this moment.
We also notice that this simple, ever-present Witness is completely
effortless. It takes no effort whatsoever to hear sounds, to see sights,
to feel the cool breeze: it is already happening, and we easily rest in
that effortless witnessing. We do not follow those objects, nor avoid
them. Precisely because Spirit is the ever-present Seer, and not any
limited thing that is seen, we can allow all seen things to come and go
exactly as they please. “The perfect person employs the mind as a
mirror,” says Chuang Tzu. “It neither grasps nor rejects; it receives,
but does not keep.” The mirror effortlessly receives its reflections,
just as you effortlessly see the sky right now, and just as the Witness
effortlessly allows all objects whatsoever to arise. All things come and
go in the effortless mirror-mind that is the simple Witness.
When I rest as the pure and simple Witness, I notice that I am not
caught in the world of time. The Witness exists only in the timeless
present. Yet again, this is not a state that is difficult to achieve but
impossible to avoid. The Witness sees only the timeless present because
only the timeless present is actually real. When I think of the past,
those past thoughts exist right now, in this present. When I think of
the future, those future thoughts exist right now, in this present. Past
and future thoughts both arise right now, in simple ever-present
awareness.
And when the past actually occurred, it occurred right now. When the
future actually occurs, it will occur right now. There is only right
now, there is only this ever-present present: that is all I ever
directly know. Thus, the timeless present is not hard to contact but
impossible to avoid, and this becomes obvious when I rest as the pure
and simple Witness, and watch the past and future float by in simple
ever-present awareness.
That is why when we rest as the ever-present Witness, we are not in
time. Resting in simple witnessing awareness, I notice that time floats
by in front of me, or through me, like clouds float through the sky. And
that is exactly why I can be aware of time; in my simple Presentness,
in my I AMness as pure and simple Witness of the Kosmos, I am timeless.
Thus, as I right now rest in this simple, ever-present Witness, I am
face to face with Spirit. I am with God today, and always, in this
simple, ever-present, witnessing state. Eckhart said that “God is closer
to me than I am to myself,” because both God and I are one in the
ever-present Witness, which is the nature of intrinsic Spirit itself,
which is exactly what I am in the state of my I AMness. I am not this, I
am not that; I rest as pure open Spirit. When I am not an object, I am
God. (And every I in the entire Kosmos can say that truthfully.)
I am not entering this state of the ever-present Witness, which is Spirit itself. I cannot enter this state, precisely because it is ever-present. I cannot start Witnessing; I can only notice that this simple Witnessing is already occurring.
This state never has a beginning in time precisely because it is indeed
ever-present. You can neither run from it nor toward it; you are it, always. This is exactly why Buddhas have never entered this state, and sentient beings have never left it.
When I rest in the simple, clear, ever-present Witness, I am resting
in the great Unborn, I am resting in intrinsic Spirit, I am resting in
primordial Emptiness, I am resting in infinite Freedom. I cannot be
seen, I have no qualities at all. I am not this, I am not that. I am not
an object. I am neither light nor dark; neither large nor small;
neither here nor there; I have no color, no location, no space and no
time; I am an utter Emptiness, another word for infinite Freedom,
unbounded to infinity. I am that opening or clearing in which the entire
manifest world arises right now, but I do not arise in it—it arises in
me, in this vast Emptiness and Freedom that I am.
Things that are seen are pleasant or painful, happy or sad, joyous or
fearful, healthy or sick—but the Seer of those things is neither happy
nor sad, neither joyous nor fearful, neither healthy nor sick, but
simply Free. As pure and simple Witness I am free of all objects, free
of all subjects, free of all time and free of all space; free of birth
and free of death, and free of all things in between. I am simply Free.
When I rest as the timeless Witness, the Great Search is undone. The
Great Search is the enemy of the ever-present Spirit, a brutal lie in
the face of a gentle infinity. The Great Search is the search for an
ultimate experience, a fabulous vision, a paradise of pleasure, an
unendingly good time, a powerful insight—a search for God, a search for
Goddess, a search for Spirit—but Spirit is not an object. Spirit cannot
be grasped or reached or sought or seen: it is the ever-present Seer. To
search for the Seer is to miss the point. To search forever is to miss
the point forever. How could you possibly search for that which is right
now aware of this page? YOU ARE THAT! You cannot go out looking for
that which is the Looker.
When I am not an object, I am God. When I seek an object, I cease to
be God, and that catastrophe can never be corrected by more searching
for more objects.
Rather, I can only rest as the Witness, which is already free of
objects, free of time, free of suffering, and free of searching. When I
am not an object, I am Spirit. When I rest as the free and formless
Witness, I am with God right now, in this timeless and endless moment. I
taste infinity and am drenched with fullness, precisely because I no
longer seek, but simply rest as what I am.
Before Abraham was, I am. Before the Big Bang was, I am. After the
universe dissolves, I am. In all things great and small, I am. And yet I
can never be heard, felt, known, or seen; I AM is the ever-present
Seer.
Precisely because the ultimate reality is not anything seen but
rather the Seer, it doesn’t matter in the least what is seen in any
moment. Whether you see peace or turmoil, whether you see equanimity or
agitation, whether you see bliss or terror, whether you see happiness or
sadness, matters not at all: it is not those states but the Seer of
those states that is already Free.
Changing states is thus beside the point; acknowledging the
ever-present Seer is the point. Even in the midst of the Great Search
and even in the worst of my self-contracting ways, I have immediate and
direct access to the ever-present Witness. I do not have to try to bring
this simple awareness into existence. I do not have to enter this
state. It involves no effort at all. I simply notice that there is
already an awareness of the sky. I simply notice that there is already
an awareness of the clouds. I simply notice that the ever-present
Witness is already fully functioning: it is not hard to reach but
impossible to avoid. I am always already in the lap of this ever-present
awareness, the radical Emptiness in which all manifestation is
presently arising.
When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I notice that this
awareness is not an experience. It is aware of experiences, it is not
itself an experience. Experiences come and go. They have a beginning in
time, they stay a bit, and they pass. But they all arise in the simple
opening or clearing that is the vast expanse of what I am. The clouds
float by in this vast expanse, and thoughts float by in this vast
expanse, and experiences float by in this vast expanse. They all come,
and they all go. But the vast expanse itself, this Free and Empty Seer,
this spacious opening or clearing in which all things arise, does not
itself come and go, or even move at all.
Thus, when I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am no longer
caught up in the search for experiences, whether of the flesh or of the
mind or of the spirit. Experiences—whether high or low, sacred or
profane, joyous or nightmarish—simply come and go like endless waves on
the ocean of what I am. As I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am
no longer moved to follow the bliss and the torture of experiential
displays. Experiences float across my Original Face like clouds floating
across the clear autumn sky, and there is room in me for all.
When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I will even begin to
notice that the Witness itself is not a separate thing or entity, set
apart from what it witnesses. All things arise within the Witness, so
much so that the Witness itself disappears into all things.
And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I notice
that there is no inside and no outside. There is no subject and no
object. Things and events are still fully present and clearly
arising—the clouds float by, the birds still sing, the cool breeze still
blows—but there is no separate self recoiling from them. Events simply
arise as they are, without the constant and agitated reference to a
contracted self or subject. Events arise as they are, and they arise in
the great freedom of not being defined by a little I looking at them.
They arise with Spirit, as Spirit, in the opening or clearing that I am;
they do not arise to be seen and perceptually tortured by an ego.
In my contracted mode, I am “in here,” on this side of my face, looking at the world “out there,” on the “objective”
side. I exist on this side of my face, and my entire life is an attempt
to save face, to save this self-contraction, to save this sensation of
grasping and seeking, a sensation that sets me apart from the world out
there, a world I will then desire or loathe, move toward or recoil from,
grasp or avoid, love or hate. The inside and the outside are in
perpetual struggle, all varieties of hope or fear: the drama of saving
face.
We say, “To lose face is to die of embarrassment,” and that is deeply
true: we do not want to lose face! We do not want to die! We do not
want, to cease the sensation of the separate-self! But that primal fear
of losing face is actually the root of our deepest agony, because saving
face—saving an identity with the bodymind—is the very mechanism of
suffering, the very mechanism of tearing the Kosmos into an inside
versus an outside, a brutal fracture that I experience as pain.
But when I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I lose
face. Inside and outside completely disappear. It happens just like
this:
As I drop all objects–I am not this, not that–and I rest in the pure
and simple Witness, all objects arise easily in my visual field, all
objects arise in the space of the Witness. I am simply an opening or
clearing in which all things arise. I notice that all things arise in
me, arise in this opening or clearing that I am. The clouds are floating
by in this vast opening that I am. The sun is shining in this vast
opening that I am. The sky exists in this vast opening that I am; the
sky is in me. I can taste the sky, it’s closer to me than my own skin.
The clouds are on the inside of me; I am seeing them from within. When
all things arise in me, I am simply all things. The universe is One
Taste, and I am That.
And so, when I rest as the Witness, all things arise in me, so much
so that I am all things. There is no subject and object because I do not
see the clouds, I am the clouds. There is no subject and object because
I do not feel the cool breeze, I am the cool breeze. There is no
subject and object because I do not hear the thunder clapping, I am the
thunder clapping.
I am no longer on this side of my face looking at the world out
there; I simply am the world. I am not in here. I have lost face—and
discovered my Original Face, the Kosmos itself. The bird sings, and I am
that. The sun rises, and I am that. The moon shines, and I am that, in
simple, ever-present awareness.
When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, every object is
its own subject. Every event “sees itself,” as it were, because I am
now that event seeing itself. I am not looking at the rainbow; I am the
rainbow, which sees itself. I am not staring at the tree; I am the tree,
which sees itself. The entire manifest world continues to arise, just
as it is, except that all subjects and all objects have disappeared. The
mountain is still the mountain, but it is not an object being looked at, and I am not a separate subject staring
at it. Both I and the mountain arise in simple, ever-present awareness,
and we are both set free in that clearing, we are both liberated in
that nondual space, we are both enlightened in the opening that is
ever-present awareness. That opening is free of the set-apart violence
called subject and object, in here versus out there, self against other,
me against the world. I have utterly lost face, and discovered God, in
simple ever-present awareness.
When you are the Witness of all objects, and all objects arise in
you, then you stand in utter Freedom, in the vast expanse of all space.
In this simple One Taste, the wind does not blow on you, it blows within
you. The sun does not shine on you, it radiates from deep within your
very being. When it rains, you are weeping. You can drink the Pacific
Ocean in a single gulp, and swallow the universe whole. Supernovas are
born and die all within your heart, and galaxies swirl endlessly where
you thought your head was, and it is all as simple as the sound of a
robin singing on a crystal clear dawn.
Every time I recognize or acknowledge the
ever-present Witness, I have broken the Great Search and undone the
separate self. And that is the ultimate, secret, nondual practice, the
practice of no-practice, the practice of simple acknowledgment, the
practice of remembrance and recognition, founded timelessly and
eternally on the fact that there is only Spirit, a Spirit that is not
hard to find but impossible to avoid.
Spirit is the only thing that has never been absent. It is the only constant
in your changing experience. You have known this for a billion years,
literally. And you might as well acknowledge it. “If you understand
this, then rest in that which understands, and just that is Spirit. If
you do not understand this, then rest in that which does not understand,
and just that is Spirit.” For eternally and eternally and always
eternally, there is only Spirit, the Witness of this and every moment,
even unto the ends of the world.
The Eye of Spirit
When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am resting in
intrinsic Spirit; I am in fact nothing other than witnessing Spirit
itself. I do not become Spirit; I simply recognize the Spirit that I
always already am. When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness,
I am the Witness of the World. I am the eye of Spirit. I see the world
as God sees it. I see the world as the Goddess sees it. I see the world
as Spirit sees it: every object an object of Beauty, every thing and
event a gesture of the Great Perfection, every process a ripple in the
pond of my own eternal Being, so much so that I do not stand apart as a
separate witness, but find the witness is one taste with all that arises
within it. The entire Kosmos arises in the eye of Spirit, in the I of
Spirit, in my own intrinsic awareness, this simple ever-present state,
and I am simply that.
From the ground of simple, ever-present awareness, one’s entire
bodymind will resurrect. When you rest in primordial awareness, that
awareness begins to saturate your being, and from the stream of
consciousness a new destiny is resurrected. When the Great Search is
undone, and the separate-self sense has been crucified; when the
continuity of witnessing has stabilized in your own case; when
ever-present awareness is your constant ground—then your entire bodymind
will regenerate, resurrect, and reorganize itself around intrinsic
Spirit, and you will arise, as from the dead, to a new destiny and a new
duty in consciousness.
You will cease to exist as separate self (with all the damage that
does to the bodymind), and you will exist instead as vehicle of Spirit
(with the bodymind now free to function in its highest potential,
undistorted and untortured by the brutalities of the self-contraction).
From the ground of ever-present awareness, you will arise embodying any
of the enlightened qualities of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—”one whose
being (sattva) is ever-present awareness (bodhi).”
The Buddhist names are not important; the enlightened qualities they
represent are. The point is simply that, once you have stably recognized
simple, ever-present awareness-once the Great Search and the
self-contraction have been robbed of separative life and returned to
God, returned to their ground in ever-present awareness-then you will
arise, from the ground of ever-present awareness, and you will embody
any of the highest possibilities of that ground. You will be vehicle of
the Spirit that you are. That ever-present ground will live through you,
as you, in a variety of superordinary forms.
Perhaps you will arise as Samantabhadra, whose ever-present awareness
takes the form of a vast equality consciousness: you will realize that
the ever-present awareness that is fully present in you is the same awareness that
is fully present in all sentient beings without exception, one and the
same, single and only—one heart, one mind, one soul that breathes and
beats and pulses through all sentient beings as such—and your very
countenance will remind all beings of that simple fact, remind them that
there is only Spirit, remind them that nothing is closer to God than
anything else, for there is only God, there is only Goddess.
Perhaps you will arise as Avalokiteshvara, whose ever-present
awareness takes the form of gentle compassion. In the brilliant clarity
of ever-present awareness, all sentient beings arise as equal forms of
intrinsic Spirit or pure Emptiness, and thus all beings are treated as
the sons and daughters of the Spirit that they are. You will have no
choice but to live this compassion with a delicate dedication, so that
your very smile will warm the hearts of those who suffer, and they will
look to you for promise that they, too, can be liberated into the vast
expanse of their own primordial awareness, and you will never turn away.
Perhaps you will arise as Prajnaparamita, the mother of the Buddha
whose ever-present awareness takes the form of a vast spaciousness, the
womb of the great Unborn, in which the entire Kosmos exists. For deepest
truth, it is exactly from the ground of your own simple, clear,
ever-present awareness that all beings are born; and it is to the ground
of your simple, clear, ever-present awareness that all beings will
return. Resting in the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, you
watch the worlds arise, and all the Buddhas arise, and all sentient
beings as such arise. And to you they will all return. And you will
smile, and receive, in this vast expanse of everlasting wisdom, and it
will all begin again, and yet again, and always yet again, in the womb
of your ever-present state.
Perhaps you will arise as Manjushri, whose ever-present awareness,
takes the form of luminous intelligence. Although all beings are equally
intrinsic Spirit, some beings do not easily acknowledge this
ever-present Suchness, and thus discriminating wisdom will brilliantly
arise from the ground of equality consciousness. You will instinctively
see what is true and what is false, and thus you will bring clarity to
everything you touch. And if the self-contraction does not listen to
your gentler voice, your ever-present awareness will manifest in its
wrathful form, which is said to be none other than the dreaded
Yamantaka, Subduer of the Lord of Death.
And so perhaps you will arise as Yamantaka, fierce protector of
ever-present awareness and samurai warrior of intrinsic Spirit.
Precisely those items that pretend to block ever-present awareness must
be quickly cut through, which is why ever-present awareness arises in
its many wrathful forms. You will simply be moved, from the ground of
equality consciousness, to expose the false and the shallow and the
less-than-ever-present. It is time for the sword, not the smile, but
always the sword of discriminating wisdom, which ruthlessly cuts all
obstacles in the ground of the all-encompassing.
Perhaps you will arise as Bhaishajyaguru, whose ever-present
awareness takes the form of a healing radiance. From the brilliant
clarity of ever-present awareness, you will be moved to remind the sick
and the sad and those in pain that although the pain is real, it is not
what they are. With a simple touch or smile, contracted souls will relax
into the infinite vast expanse of intrinsic awareness, and disease will
lose all meaning in the radiance of that release. And you will never
tire, for ever-present awareness is effortless in its functioning, and
so you will constantly remind all beings of who and what they really
are, on the other side of fear, in the radical love and unflinching
acceptance that is the mirror-mind of ever-present awareness.
Perhaps you will arise as Maitreya, whose ever-present awareness
takes the form of a promise that, even into the endless future,
ever-present awareness will still be simply present. From the brilliant
clarity of primordial awareness, you will vow to be with all beings,
even unto an eternity of futures, because even those futures will arise
in simple present awareness, the same present awareness that now sees
just exactly this.
Those are simply a few of the potentials of ever-present awareness.
The Buddhist names don’t matter; any will do. They are simply a few of
the forms of your own resurrection. They are a few of the possibilities
that might animate you after the death of the Great Search. They are a
few of the ways the world looks to the ever-present eye of Spirit, the
ever-present I of Spirit. They are what you see, right now, when you see
the world as God sees it, from the groundless ground of simple
ever-present awareness.
And It Is All Undone
Perhaps you will arise as any or all of those forms of ever-present
awareness. But then, it doesn’t really matter. When you rest in the
brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, you are not Buddha or
Bodhisattva, you are not this or that, you are not here or there. When
you rest in simple, ever-present awareness, you are the great Unborn,
free, of all qualities whatsoever. Aware of color, you are colorless.
Aware of time, you are timeless. Aware of form, you are formless. In the
vast expanse of primordial Emptiness, you are forever invisible to this
world.
It is simply that, as embodied being, you also arise in the world of
form that is your own manifestation. And the intrinsic potentials of the
enlightened mind (the intrinsic potentials of your ever-present
awareness)—such as equanimity, discriminating wisdom, mirrorlike wisdom,
ground consciousness, and all-accomplishing awareness—various of these
potentials combine with the native dispositions and particular talents
of your own individual bodymind. And thus, when the separate self dies
into the vast expanse of its own ever-present awareness, you will arise
animated by any or all of those various enlightened potentials. You are
then motivated, not by the Great Search, but by the Great Compassion of
these potentials, some of which are gentle, some of which are truly
wrathful, but all of which are simply the possibilities of your own
ever-present state.
And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, you will
arise with the qualities and’ virtues of your own highest
potentials—perhaps compassion, perhaps discriminating wisdom, perhaps
cognitive insight, perhaps healing presence, perhaps wrathful reminder,
perhaps artistic accomplishment, perhaps athletic skill, perhaps great
educator, or perhaps something utterly simple, maybe being the best
flower gardener on the block. (In other words, any of the developmental lines
released into their own primordial state.) When the bodymind is
released from the brutalities inflicted by the self-contraction, it
naturally gravitates to its own highest estate, manifested in the great
potentials of the enlightened mind, the great potentials of simple,
ever-present awareness.
Thus, as you rest in simple, ever-present awareness, you are the
great Unborn; but as you are born—as you arise from ever-present
awareness—you will manifest certain qualities, qualities inherent in
intrinsic Spirit, and qualities colored by the dispositions of your own
bodymind and its particular talents.
And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise driven
not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless
Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world
will begin to change, because of you. And you will never flinch, and you
will never fail in that great Duty, and you will never turn away,
because simple, ever-present awareness will be with you now and forever,
even unto the ends of the worlds, because now and forever and endlessly
forever, there is only Spirit, only intrinsic awareness, only the
simple awareness of just this, and nothing more.
But that entire journey to what is begins at the beginningless
beginning: we begin by simply recognizing that which is always already
the case. (“If you understand this, then rest in that which understands,
and just that is exactly Spirit. If you do not understand this, then
rest in that which does not understand, and just that is exactly
Spirit.”) We allow this recognition of ever-present awareness to
arise—gently, randomly, spontaneously, through the day and into the
night. This simple, ever-present awareness is not hard to attain but
impossible to avoid, and we simply notice that.
We do this gently, randomly, and spontaneously, through the day and
into the night. Soon enough, through all three states of waking,
dreaming, and sleeping, this recognition will grow of its own accord and
by its own intrinsic power, outshining the obstacles that pretend to
hide its nature, until this simple, ever-present awareness announces
itself in an unbroken continuity through all changes of state, through
all changes of space and time, whereupon space and time lose all meaning
whatsoever, exposed for what they are, the shining veils of the radiant
Emptiness that you alone now are—and you will swoon into that Beauty,
and die into that Truth, and dissolve into that Goodness, and there will
be no one left to testify to terror, no one left to take tears
seriously, no one left to engineer unease, no one left to deny the
Divine, which only alone is, and only alone ever was, and only alone
will ever be.
And somewhere on a cold crystal night the moon will shine on a
silently waiting Earth, just to remind those left behind that it is all a
game. The lunar light will set dreams afire in their sleeping hearts,
and a yearning to awaken will stir in the depths of that restless night,
and you will be pulled, yet again, to respond to those most plaintive
prayers, and you will find yourself right here, right now, wondering
what it all really means—until that flash of recognition runs across
your face and it is all undone. You then will arise as the moon itself,
and sing those dreams in your very own heart; and you will arise as the
Earth itself, and glorify all of its blessed inhabitants; and you will
arise as the Sun itself, radiant to infinity and much too obvious to
see; and in that One Taste of primordial purity, with no beginning and
no end, with no entrance and no exit, with no birth and no death, it all
comes radically to be; and the sound of a singing waterfall, somewhere
in the distance, is all that is left to tell this tale, late on that
crystal cold night, bathed so beautifully in that lunar light, just so,
and again, just so.
When the great Zen master Fa-ch’ang was dying, a squirrel screeched
out on the roof. “It’s just this,” he said, “and nothing more.”
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