There is something formlessly created
Born before Heaven and Earth
So silent! So ethereal!
Independent and changeless
Circulating and ceaseless
It can be regarded as the mother of the world
I do not know its name
Identifying it, I call it “Tao”
Forced to describe it, I call it great
(Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25)
You may have noticed from the posts in the Practice Profiles series that I often write about what I refer to as the source. It’s difficult to write anything about the source aside from what has been written already. In fact, it’s difficult to saying anything at all about the source (hence the reason why I began this post with the selected passage of the Tao Te Ching).
The reason it’s difficult is because the source is not an object that can be grasped, nor is it an appearance that can be witnessed. Rather, the source is that which gives rise to every object or appearance, and also that which knows them. The cognizing quality of the source is what inspires some to refer to it as primordial awareness, or ground luminosity.
While the source is not an object, it is also not wholly other than any object that emerges from it. This “not-two-ness” is more eloquently articulated as nonduality (a term that anyone reading a blog about awakening may have heard once or twice before – maybe more).
The creative activity of the source is experienced as a spontaneous outflowing and inflowing; a flux of expansion and contraction. And the whole shebang happens in the space of awareness that exists prior to the assertion of will. In other words, it is completely and totally empty of self. (Buckle up, kids. There ain’t nobody in the driver’s seat.) Therefore, the source is none other than the ultimate emptiness.
In regards to liberation, the source is already free. It always has been, and always will be, free from any snares and entanglements. The implication here is that you (the real you) are already free, and always have been, and always will be. To recognize the source is to experience freedom. And when this recognition of the source is continuously abiding, the search is over. You have awakened out of the dream (i.e. nightmare) of separate, painful existence, and into the Truth.
I hope that I provided enough information to make clear what I mean by “the source” and what it has to do with awakening. For, while awakening has everything to do with the source, it really has nothing to do with you.
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June 29, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Alex
Thank you Sam, for this very good description of the Source, the Ayn, the Tao, the Mind that dreams the universe moment by moment.
Who can fathom it? We are but its shadow.
June 29, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Sam Watts
Thanks, Alex. Your comments have been pleasantly poetic.
Yes. “Mind” being an important word, here. The source is none other than Awakened Mind. It is the recognition of this basic, uncontrived nature that leads to its actualization – i.e., awakening.
June 29, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Joseph Parkins
That’s a good choice from the Daodejing, it makes it clear that what some refer to as the self is the same as what others refer to as dao. While we may only be talking about words, nonetheless the term ‘awakened mind’ is an odd one to use. Since mind is thoughts, what then is ‘awakened mind’? There is no mind. Still less a mind that dreams the universe. This is in the realm of conceptualisation. While ‘self’ naturally causes difficulties, since it is used for both the I-thought and the unitary unchanging self, it is nowhere near as subject to misunderstanding as the word ‘mind’. This is why the ‘no mind’ or wuxin teaching developed, after all, which is not the same as the Buddhist ‘no self’ teaching, since that self being referred to is the I-thought.
When people use the word ‘mind’ like this, it makes me wonder whether they have truly ‘awoken’, since it may be that they only think they have, if they keep the word ‘mind’ in active service. This is often the case with those who date-stamp their enlightenment, or believe they have ‘attained’ something. All it takes is a little less clumsiness with words, to remove such doubts.
June 29, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Sam Watts
“Mind” is indeed a tricky word. It can refer to the contrived conceptual mind, as you pointed out. But it can also be used in place of “cognizance” or “awareness,” in that all that arises and passes is known by the basic, uncontrived, non-conceptual nature – what I often call the source (though, no title will ever suffice).
I’ve made it pretty clear in my previous posts (as well as some more that will be published down the road) that awakening is not an intellectual or rational exercise. And you’re right in saying that nothing is gained when awakening occurs. It has much more to do with what goes away – namely, delusion.
June 29, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Joseph Parkins
I agree with what you say, although using the word ‘mind’ as a stand-in for ‘awareness’ creates needless difficulties. Look at the problem this word caused in Zen, doubly so there actually as the character ‘xin’ also means ‘heart’ (and look at all the nonsense spoken by Ramana Maharshi on the notion of ‘heart’).
I was interested in that quote from the Daodejing, particularly because I noticed it refers to the dao as ‘unchanging’. This inspired me to dig out my Chinese copy to see which characters were used for that. It’s ‘bugai’, so I searched through the Daodejing to see if it occurs anywhere else, and found that it doesn’t. Quite odd that the dao is said to be unchanging just once, at least with those characters, given that the most striking thing about the self is its changelessness.
June 30, 2010 at 12:18 am
Alex
I know that [about] the term Mind, but it has been used for centuries in classic traditional Chinese Buddhism. A good example is the Mind Canon version of the Platform Sutra where Huineng says something like “who would have thought that the Mind is the source of the miryad things”, not mentioning the ‘Awakening of Faith Shastra’ or Huangbo’s “Transmission of Mind”. No-mind is true Mind, nevermind…
We should mention also that ‘Xin’ can also mean ‘awareness’ in Chinese. Awareness is a better pointer I agree, but it can also be problematic simply because awareness is totally identified with consciousness and its content before awakening.
To recognize awareness following the pointers of skilled Avaita teachers seems to be a great shortcut, but it appears also that, in most cases, this realization doesn’t stick as an unshakable permanent adaptation until the Source is “seen” clearly at the moment of enlightenment (understood here as a one time event leading to a permanent adaptation that we may also call enlightenment, abiding awakening or self-realization).
June 30, 2010 at 8:45 am
Joseph Parkins
Well, the mind IS the source of the ‘myriad things’, the way the I-thought gives rise to the world. The ‘myriad things’ is presumably the ‘ten thousand things’, which is another way of referring to the world, ie delusion. The ten thousand things arise from the bifurcation of wuji into yin and yang, and from there to the rest of it.
It’s arguable whether xin could be read as ‘awareness’. Sure, it can mean ‘feelings’, but the choice is only ever between ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ when it comes to translating classical Chinese texts. Some may want to nudge that towards ‘awareness’, but that’s only blurs the issue. The wuxin or no-mind doctrine surely spells out clearer than anything the true Zen stance. The mind is just a thought, it has no existence. Re-purposing the word to refer to emptiness is just creating more slaves to thought.
I agree ‘awareness’ is not ideal. People of course use the same words to mean different things. The phrase ‘prior to consciousness’ (title of one of Nisargadatta’s books) is rather good, since at least it stops any kind of easy identification with consciousness, whatever that is.
As for the ‘one-time event’ theory — well that is fine until your next one-time event Alex. Hakuin talks of his many satoris, for instance. It is a mistake to cling to some kind of one-time event idea, because that’s all it is, an idea. Ultimately, you must see that enlightenment as a one-time final casting away that leads to some kind of establishment in awakening or permanent self-realisation is only another delusion, since you already are and have forever been self-realised. Making enlightenment out to be some kind of line in the sand is like saying it is important to remember that I forgot who I was.
June 30, 2010 at 9:15 am
Alex
If one may go through several non-dual experiences prior to awakening, there is one decisive event that reveals that we have always been That. When That is clearly seen, there is no need for any next one-time event. You just know that this is it.
At least this is how it happened for me. What about you Sam?
I would therefore say that you are right Joseph, but from the point of view of the absolute, like most neo-advaita jnanis: Ramesh, Poonja, Sailor Bob, etc.
Probably due to my Zen background, but also because it reflects what happened in my case- I tend to favor Dogen’s take on the complex non-dual relationship between practice and realization, beautifully expressed in his Genjokoan:
As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
June 30, 2010 at 9:36 am
Sam Watts
@Alex: “At least this is how it happened for me. What about you Sam?”
Yes, that’s more or less how the process went for me. The truth may be recognized over and over again, but for some reason it takes a while (in relative terms) to stabilize/abide. And then, for whatever reason, it clicks. It’s not that anything is gained, per se. But the truth is no longer shrouded by delusion. I have yet to meet anyone whose awakening occurred all at once.
Genjokoan is one of my all-time favorite treatises on awakening.
June 30, 2010 at 9:37 am
Joseph Parkins
There was one decisive event for me. Then there was another later, and another and another. This went on for twenty years. During all that time I referred my entire life to that first event, and it held me back as much as gave me guidance. Slowly, and more surely, I saw that clinging to that first enlightenment experience had led to me looking for something of similar ‘strength’ in the present moment, thereby forever drawing me away from truly seeing in the here and now, which of course has to be what one is really looking for. I don’t put that first experience in a frame on my wall any more, but I don’t have a date for a decisive time when I stopped doing that. It accumulated. Yet I cannot look at the time inbetween when I felt I was not living up to that first experience as necessarily deluded. It was a mixture of seeing it and not seeing it, so far as I recall. But these days there is no longer any question of not seeing it. It is obvious. This is how I know that framing of any one moment in the time-stream is ridiculous and only serves to underscore the degree to which one hasn’t really understood, yet.
June 30, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Alex
Thank you Sam and Joseph for sharing your experiences and views on this matter. I now understand your perspective Joseph. This is the reason why my current understanding is that awakening experiences are merely pointers that help clarifying the natural state until we realize that we have always been free, that there is no-thing to find and no one to enlighten.
June 30, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Joseph Parkins
“This is the reason why my current understanding is that awakening experiences are merely pointers that help clarifying the natural state until we realize that we have always been free, that there is no-thing to find and no one to enlighten.”
– That’s a sensible way to look at it. Assuming one is enlightened is a serious impediment, and every transitory arising mocks that assumption. This is why it is a bad idea to announce that one is enlightened, awakened, etc, since then one has something to live up to. Why make it hard for a transitory arising to subside? All experiences, even the so-called enlightenment experience, are just transitory arisings. By the time one has ‘matured’ the notion of enlightenment has become so ordinary it seems like a child announcing he is king of the castle to be at all bothered with declaring it. This is why the house of cards of the recently enlightened person is so easy to push over. The recently awakened person is quite likely to go straight back to sleep again, yet continue babbling as if they are awake. Unfortunately, they have nothing to say, just repeated scraps they have picked up from others, nothing of their own.
July 7, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Nitram
Just a point of the idea of enlightenment as suggested to by the modern schools they seem to create an enlightened ego or persona, in other words a man or women having had a “sniff” of our Real Condition then claims that to be so. Having apparently achieved such, and sometimes recognized by others in similar modern schools to be so, the myth perpetuates itself, but it is only suffering and delusion since it is not actually the case. Its a rather pompous and foolish position from my point of view, far better to be unenlightened and clear on the validity of it, and of the intuitions and insights that point to Absolute Freedom rather than settling for personal expanded states.
Don’t take this as an insult, just a friendly reality check, all the best to you.
July 7, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Sam Watts
You’re entitled to your opinion.
July 9, 2010 at 12:05 am
Alex
Speaking about reality checks…
To have a ‘sniff’ is to gain an insight, but it is not enlightenment.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with an expanded state.
Enlightenment is waking up from the persona.
Enlightenment is freedom from conditioned states.
Enlightenment is seeing things as they are.
July 9, 2010 at 11:12 am
Joseph Parkins
“Enlightenment and nirvana, like tying a donkey to a hitching post.” (菩提涅槃如繋驢橛) — from the Rinzairoku.
Why do you think Linji said this, Alex?
July 9, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Nitram
Hi Alex, yes agree on most of your points, though the description belongs to fundamental Vedanta and “dry bones” Buddhism, without any spiritual power or potency, a vision devoid of Divinty,Grace, Love, Light & Bliss, the corpse of Shiva without consort.
My earlier point was made after doing the rounds of nonduality blogs ( a quite painful experience by the way) to put it in a nutshell : It’s like a barefoot man, describing a pair of shoes he so badly wants, he can describe them to the tee, has pictures of them, talks incessantly about them, until he is certain he has them on, he then joins a society of all those who are barefoot and enjoying imaginary shoes. That’s a metaphor of enlightenment in the modern schools perhaps. The sniff or taste or intuition never becomes actual “shoes” those who argue for relative states of realization or mind based possibilities are always within this model, that is not to say those intuitive insights are not valuable they most certainly are, wonderful gifts, lifts a man or woman out of conventional bondage models –knowledge of our True Nature.
It bears out –”you can’t get there from here” or as you pointed out, since Enlightenment is truly unconditional, it is beyond cause or effort (acausal) hence self effort alone, will never cut it.
July 9, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Joseph Parkins
“… without any spiritual power or potency, a vision devoid of Divinty,Grace, Love, Light & Bliss, the corpse of Shiva without consort.”
– Even if the divinity appears before you with four arms bestowing grace upon you in a shower of bliss and love, there is still a seer of it. Which is real and eternal?
July 9, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Nitram
– Even if the divinity appears before you with four arms bestowing grace upon you in a shower of bliss and love, there is still a seer of it. Which is real and eternal? –(answer must be absolutely and inseparably both)
Hi Joesph, that indeed is the conundrum, you solve that one and you will be heading out of the imaginary shoe department. Make no mistake that is exactly the case (certain of it) There can be no withdrawal from arising conditions (internal or external) and yet there must be absolute freedom, completely co-incident with the arising of form.
(thanks for the conversation to all, by the way)
July 9, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Joseph Parkins
“answer must be absolutely and inseparably both”
So an hallucination is real and eternal?
July 9, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Nitram
“answer must be absolutely and inseparably both”
—So an hallucination is real and eternal?—
Well ultimately all forms, internal and external could be seen as apparitions in Consciousness– pure Vedanta, no doubt Consciousness is senior to its modifications. But Consciousness has a Radiance which is all forms, even what are commonly called hallucinations or mind forms, that Fundamental Radiance is Light, Love, Bliss, Divinity, Joy. What you call Enlightenment in the Advaita or similar paths sense, is a withdrawal into the inner self sense or sometimes called “I Am” or the “feeling of being”, it is Consciousness in denial of its own Radiant Form and is a “conditional” experience, with an observable felt “tension” in it. That tension is the stress of the apparent difference between Consciousness and “the world”
You could say then that the primary hallucination is the felt difference between Self and objects (Radiance or Light endlessly modified)
July 10, 2010 at 4:42 am
Alex
@Joseph-I get your point. What I meant is that enlightenment is not an expended state, but the realization of what we have always been.
@Nitram-I know that it can sound very dry, mostly because it is not an experience and is therefore difficult to describe. But my path hasn’t been so dry since it has also included kundalini yoga, contemplative prayer, Buddhist samatha practice to access and abide in the 8 Jhanas, as well as the visionary explorations of astral realms. If I don’t mention it, it is mostly because this blog is about awakening, which is not directly related to ecstatic experiences.
July 10, 2010 at 6:51 am
Joseph Parkins
Nitram — Seeing apparitions in consciousness as consciousness itself, and thereby somehow an acceptable understanding, is an idea about consciousness. A thought. Is consciousness just thoughts? If you drink warm water on a hot day when you expected cold water, do you need to have thoughts tell you it is warm or do you just know? What do you know about consciousness without thoughts? What about before consciousness? Seeing consciousness as in denial of radiant form is an interesting idea with which to wile away the hours and glorify form, but it doesn’t take you any closer to the truth. Many people take the half-baked ideas of others and fully bake them for themselves, kidding themselves that they know what they are talking about. They end up with a collection of wise-sounding things, but they never see the simple truth of reality as it is right now.
Alex — Consider that there is no enlightenment, no realisation, no awakening. These words only rang true to my own experience when I clung to some state in the past that seemed to be ‘it’. I don’t see anything whatsoever to name as enlightenment any more. It’s a word to which we attach all our ideas about what we think this is, thereby satisfying ourselves that we have a grasp of sorts, that when we realise it will be like this. It perpetuates the subtle illusion that there is still something to get, for all we ‘know’ better. It is a routine of the mind, and this is the donkey hitching post Linji referred to. You are bound, perhaps, to say you see this. If so, who sees it? There’s always that.
July 10, 2010 at 11:42 am
Alex
Joseph – the paradox is that awakening is precisely the realization that there is nothing to do and nowhere to go.
In the first paragraph of the Genjokoan, Dogen goes even a step further:
“As all things are buddha-dharma, there are delusion, realization, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.
As myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way, in essence, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.”
I therefore appreciate your advice, but may humbly suggest that freedom from all grasping also involves freedom from clinging to the absolute view according to which there is “no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death”.
We can argue for years, “yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread”…
July 10, 2010 at 11:51 am
Sam Watts
The ‘absolute view’ is definitely the most common place to get stuck, especially when it takes one many years to have reached this view in the first place. Zen has always provided the best ways of dealing with this problem, from the Kegon “dharma worlds” philosophy, to Tozan’s Five Ranks, to the Dogen passage you just quoted – all clear warnings not to let the ego forget that it still reigns supreme from the absolute view. I think this is why those who are stuck in the absolute view always appear to be so smug and know-it-all, as if they’ve figured it out, and that anyone who disagrees with them are just schmucks. No heart. No intimacy with form. It’s sad, really.
July 11, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Joseph Parkins
“all clear warnings not to let the ego forget that it still reigns supreme from the absolute view”
What does this mean? I’ve pondered it but I can form no impression of the meaning of this arrangement of words.
July 12, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Sam Watts
Identifying with an expanded absolute point of view is no better than identifying with a contracted relative point of view. The teachings I referenced all contain clear warnings against thinking the absolute view is the be all, end all of awakening. Hence all the fuss about “no fixed position.”
July 10, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Joseph Parkins
Well I often wonder why I trouble myself to ‘offer advice’. Frankly, I do see it as a shortcoming in me. It is intended well, I believe, though it may also be remnants of ego wanting to appear superior. I feel more in tune with what I suppose I see and know when I don’t engage. Quite possible I still have some rough edges that need knocking off. Though generally I have a solid view, and the fine details are probably best ignored. I should hold back from ironing out what I see as the mistakes of others, because, equally, they are my own mistakes too. I know that. But I am still human you see, and I still try to do my best with something it is impossible, really, to do anything with. I would have argued with Linji, with Bankei, I would have made them better too. But myself, I just live with it, y’know.
July 11, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Nitram
“Seeing apparitions in consciousness as consciousness itself, and thereby somehow an acceptable understanding, is an idea about consciousness. A thought. Is consciousness just thoughts? If you drink warm water on a hot day when you expected cold water, do you need to have thoughts tell you it is warm or do you just know? What do you know about consciousness without thoughts? What about before consciousness? Seeing consciousness as in denial of radiant form is an interesting idea with which to wile away the hours and glorify form, but it doesn’t take you any closer to the truth. Many people take the half-baked ideas of others and fully bake them for themselves, kidding themselves that they know what they are talking about. They end up with a collection of wise-sounding things, but they never see the simple truth of reality as it is right now.”
****
Ignoring your pomposity, You seem stuck on dogmatic concepts: that form is illusion or apparition, there is an ancient and modern thread, that sees Consciousness as indivisible from form, “Siva-Shakti”. The Truth is not shiva or shakti in isolation (alone), therefore that is what “unqualified monism” or true non-duality is, the argument of absolute separation from form as “Reality” has been shown to be false by argument and Realization.
The argument “form is illusion only consciousness is real” is just the opposite of scientific materialism “only objects are real, consciousness is both derived from and dependent on form” from this point of view which is just as dogmatic and limited as yours, consciousness is not real and objects are senior to it, both of these can be argued to the hilt and with equal legitimacy.
Paradox has to be introduced otherwise that’s all you ever get, arguments on these tangents. Great Realizers and Teachers always showed paradox in some shape or form. Or at least pointing to the great Liberation outside or beyond the extremes of method and dogma. Men and women of great humour, compassion and riddles. Always already Free, never implicated in any arising change or event, not bothered by form or no-form. Ultimately speaking the vision of “indivisible unity”, and even pointing to the ultimate heresy “nirvana and samsara are one”. Humour, Freedom, Paradox, the non ultimacy of any condition at all- Turiya-Turyitatta, that which really can’t be spoken only pointed to, isn’t this not after all the “intuition” that everyone is talking about on the in the nonduality circus?
July 11, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Joseph Parkins
Nitram — You can call me pompous, but you don’t realise that what you see is you.
If paradox has to be introduced, then it’s merely to shore up mutually incompatible ideas. All of this is in the mind. Why don’t you just look at what you are and discard all this mental gymnastics? There is not a single thing in what you have said so far that looks beyond the mind. What a load you are carrying. Put it down. Rest.
This is getting nowhere, moreover it is boring. Take your competitive spirituality and shove it up your arse.
July 11, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Nitram
Joseph, I don’t like to leave a conversation in a soured state, and no hard feelings at all here. Actually learned something form this talk and thanks to all for the conversation.
July 11, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Joseph Parkins
Good. Glad it was useful. Everyone is only ever recognising themself in the other. Some resist longer. It’s not as if they have something to seek, it’s that they fear they have something to lose.