An Open Question

Sometimes I wonder if people who lived long ago had naturally quieter minds. I remember a line from the Bhagavad Gita about how noisy the mind is – and that was written about 2000 years ago. Perhaps people's minds were just as busy thousands of years ago as they are today. You’d think they were a little less busy though. Here’s that Gita quote, "Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, powerful, violent; trying to control it is like trying to tame the wind.” Krishna responds that it is difficult to silence the mind, but not impossible.

But is it necessary (for enlightenment)? The short answer, at least my answer is – I don’t know. Well that wasn’t very helpful was it?

Okay here’s a longer answer (not a really long answer, don’t worry). I suspect it works like this: Non-identification with thought (which is necessary for enlightenment) is a result of becoming aware of thought through meditation. And silence of the mind tends to be a result of this process of non-identification.  And although silence of the mind seems to be a natural and perhaps unavoidable (positive?) consequence of non-identification, it is not directly a necessary condition for awakening to occur. Or is it? I still don’t know. This is an open question. Perhaps I’ll write more on this in a future post.

Tallis

A Sticky Ball of Goo

Who is this ‘you’ that wants to be enlightened? Can ‘you’ as the thinking mind free yourself from yourself? This is a variation of the famous bootstraps paradox. You can’t lift yourself up from your own bootstraps; it’s impossible. Likewise, the thinking mind can’t untangle itself from itself, it’s equally impossible. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to. Freedom isn’t found as a result of the thinking mind thinking its way out of itself. Freedom comes by letting awareness of thought slowly dissolve thought. (Freeing the brain from attachment to thought, allowing it to function naturally and effortlessly.)

So who is this ‘you’ that wants to be enlightened? Why it’s a sticky ball of goo, clinging to itself as not to come unglued. This is true, the thoughts that are masquerading as ‘you’ are just sort of clumped together forming a sticky ball of goo. Drop that sticky ball of ‘you’ into a warm bath of light and insight – feel it dissolve into bliss . . . and then into ‘this.’

Tallis

Paper Bag Enlightenment

Our community has banned plastic yard bags in favour of thick, multi-layered paper ones. The paper yard bags are very strong when dry, but they don’t hold up so well when wet.  After a week of absorbing the moisture from various organic materials, and the odd rain fall they begin to disintegrate. It’s usually the bottom that goes first, and usually while I’m lifting the offending bag to the curb. That’s just the nature of paper - enough moisture will eventually cause the bottom to fall out of even the thickest, strongest paper bag.

This is a parable of sorts I suppose. Awareness is the water. Meditation is the sitting bag, the act of letting your watery awareness gradually sink into the deepest and most subtle layers of yourself. Meditation is the practice of becoming so completely open and vulnerable to your own awareness that even the most well hidden and previously protected layers of your papery self structure begin to disintegrate - until one day the bottom falls out. Enlightenment! 

Tallis

Defining Enlightenment

Here, somewhat randomly, are 7 important and distinct kinds of awakenings that I have noticed as topics of conversation on Twitter and in Blog Posts.                                                                                                        

1. The realization that you are one with all phenomena - separation is an illusion.

2. The gradual quieting of the thinking mind.

3. The awakening of the heart (and other) chakra centres. In the heart's case, a new found compassion and love for all forms of life.

4. The collapse of the ego - the end of identification with thought as self. (Often a sudden, dramatic, ego devastating event.)

5. The gradual process of un-grasping from and dis-identifying with all manifest phenomena.

6. The realization that you are both one with, yet free from all manifest phenomena.

7. The slow and gradual process of (re)-integrating all that was formerly dis-identified with, into a free flowing expression of Self.

And no doubt there are many more ways of understanding and interpreting awakening. I think we tend to forget this when speaking about awakening - we forget that we may in fact be speaking of rather different things. Just something to keep in mind when discussing the topic of enlightenment in our ongoing attempt to share, understand and effectively communicate with each other.  

Tallis

Speaking of Enlightenment: A Simple Rule

Is there some ineffable It – some deep and transcendental aspect of our being that is distinct from samsara?

Yes.

Buddhists are not nihilists; we must answer yes (or answer I don’t know) to the above question. However, if we answer yes then we must answer yes with qualification. The qualification being that we are not to qualify It, for It does not exist (standout) in such a way that our minds or brains can perceive It as having any qualities. It is ineffable because it lies beyond the range of objectification (i.e. it is not an experience or object of any kind).

Attempting to speak of that which is ineffable causes serious problems. (The problems start the moment we make It into a thing that possesses attributes.) However, not speaking of It has led to a more serious problem – nihilism. Therefore, I think we should speak of It, but carefully – by observing the following two-part rule:

i) Speak of It only in terms of what it is not. For example, in the suttas the Buddha sometimes calls It the unmanifest (not manifest) or the unaging (not aging). (S.N. 43)

ii) Do not use attributes (qualities, characteristics, or properties) to describe It. When, in the suttas, you come across terms such as ‘the peaceful’ or ‘the wonderful’ (S.N. 43) used synonymously for ‘nirvana,’ realize that these words are not actually describing It, but rather they are describing the liberated state (i.e. the free flowing experiences and actions) of an awakened person.

Again, the two-part rule is as follows:

i) Speak of It only in terms of what it is not.
ii) Use attributes to describe the experiences of an awakened person or moment, but not the It itself.

It is a simple rule and observation, but it has really helped me to keep things straight.

Cheers,

Tallis

P.S. I feel as though there might be a third component to this rule. Is there something I am missing? That is very likely, for sure. Maybe making some sort of subjective/objective distinction is in order here. I’ll consider it over the Christmas break. Oh yes, Merry Christmas everyone!
  
 

Living in the Moment: What is Time? (4/5)

Remember that precious experience you had that changed your life forever? Maybe you’ve had more than one. I’ve had a few: the birth of my daughter – seeing her for the first time; falling in love – my wedding day; and that lucid dream I had where I was flying toward the sunrise – and it felt as real as real could be.

And many of us have had and/or will have an experience similar to this: A moment when you suddenly escape the tangles of your busy mind and sink into a state of silent awareness – a moment when you feel so intensely present that the simplest activities spark divine revelations – when you realize with absolute certainty that this very moment contains . . . , no is the secret of existence!”

What an amazing and precious experience. I love that one!

The experience I just described of dropping out of the mind and into this moment is an essential part of the awakening process.

But be careful, because sometimes when we see a particular truth it’s as though we see it reflected in a well-polished mirror. Even though things may appear perfectly clear to us, we may still have it exactly backwards.

Time (and specifically the present moment), the subject of this post, is I think liable to be seen and understood in just such a manner, as if it were reflected in a mirror.

Therefore, let us proceed carefully.

Most of us picture time as consisting of three components: the past, the present, and the future.

We imagine that the ‘present moment’ (what Eckhart Tolle is fond of calling the “NOW”) is 1) a specific point in time and 2) a point that is moving from the past and into the future.








There it is in our timeline diagram above, the ‘now moment’ represented as a point.

With regard to this ‘now moment,’ Zen teachers (the New Age type) often say things like, “your true nature can only be discovered in the present moment – therefore return to the present moment again and again and you will eventually discover who you really are.” (You know that sort of thing.)

Such a promise, that returning to the present moment will allow you to unravel the mystery of who you really are, can easily distract us from an even more pressing question: What does it mean to return to the present moment?

Since most of us picture the present moment as that elusive point sandwiched in between the past and the future, then presumably most of us believe that living and remaining in the present moment is rather difficult because it is so elusive. And difficult also because it means that we have to stop focusing on and thinking about the past and the future which most of us find nearly impossible to do for very long.

Is this what it means to ‘live in the present moment’ – to stop thinking about the past and the future?

No!

Definitely not!

In fact, that is pretty much the opposite of what ‘living in the present moment’ means, as I see it.

The above timeline diagram does not represent our experience of the past, the future, and the ‘now moment’, but rather it represents our somewhat confused attempt to fit the ‘now-moment-experience’ into an objective framework. Stop it!

The ‘now-moment-experience’ is not objective. It is subjective.

Subjective things cannot be placed on objective timelines.

It is absolutely impossible.

And that is where we go wrong – we confuse objective time with subjective time.

Objective time (a timeline) is just an idea – like an idea in a book, a book that is on some shelf, in some bookcase, in some library, somewhere.

Subjective time is in you. It is this moment – it is every moment. It is experience itself!

The subjective ‘now moment’ is the sound and feel of raking the leaves on a cool crisp autumn afternoon. But it is also the memory of such an experience. (Because even the act of remembering such an experience necessarily takes place in the present moment.) Again, it is every moment.

Subjective time, the ‘now moment,’ is not a point. It is nothing like a point. Mathematically a point has no length, no duration. It is impossible to live in a point, and trying to will make it feel like you are boxing yourself in, cutting up reality into smaller and smaller moments, reducing experience ultimately to nothing whatsoever. This is hell. Thankfully living in a ‘point-like-now-moment’ is just not the point of ‘living in the moment.’ The point is to be consciously aware of your experiences and to notice that your thoughts, even your thoughts about the past and the future, are happening right now.

Living in the now should not be restricting. Ultimately one should feel perfectly free to imagine the past and the future, knowing and feeling that those visualized experiences are happening right now, which is to say that they are subjectively happening. We don’t really need the word now, do we?

Subjectively, the present moment is just your experience. Using the word ‘now’ is redundant. It is always now! (Subjectively, that is.) The now is not just a small or focussed moment in time. The now is not small or short. Nor is it large or long for that matter. The ‘now’ is simply whatever is being experienced.

Let’s look at the picture below. Think of the picture below as that ‘pin-point-now-moment’ from the timeline diagram above, but expanded. (Yes, I am that good of an artist!)














Our friend in the diagram is showing us how to live in the (subjective) ‘now.’ Notice that thoughts of the past and future are included in the ‘now.’ Something else to be noted is that the ‘now moment’ does not move from the past and into the future. Subjective moments don’t move – that is, they don’t turn into new moments. There is only one subjective ‘now moment,’ and it is always already being experienced.

I think it is a confused mind that sees the ‘now moment’ as an elusive point that is constantly turning into new ‘now moments’ as it travels from the past and into the future. Such an understanding leads us to treat the ‘now moment’ as something that needs to be located, aligned with, and/or grasped. I think a better way of understanding the ‘now moment’ is to see it as your total field of experience – a field of experience that is in a continuous state of flux, for that is the nature of experience, it is always changing. But this changing flux is not going anywhere; it is not travelling from the past and into the future, at least not subjectively as your experience. Things are just changing, that is all.

(And you are the unchanging and unmoving witness at the centre of this changing flux, but you are also one with this flux of experiences, and yet still you are neither of these extremes. You are simply mysterious!)

This flux of experience is time. Without experience, (which is to say without something that changes) there would be no subjective time.

It is a mistake to attempt to reduce our experiences down to some hypothetical ‘pin-point-now-moment.’ (Attempting to cut out all thinking is a fine and perhaps necessary meditation practice on the path to enlightenment, but living in such a limiting manner should certainly not be our ultimate aim.) A better approach is to eventually let the ‘now moment’ expand, so to speak, to encompass every possible kind of experience, including those experiences we call thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. (Or rather to notice that this already is the case – that any type of experience may potentially arise in and as the ‘now moment.’)

Okay, so we are always living in the present moment, but then why does it sometimes seem like we are not living in the present moment? (For example, when we are imagining ourselves at work Monday morning when it is in fact still Sunday night.)

In other words, how can we freely think about the past and the future and yet still feel like we are fully grounded in ‘this moment,’ – still feel like those thoughts about the past and the future are happening right now?

Sounds like a question for next time.

See you in the objective future.

Tallis

Living in the Moment: Try this! (2/5)

How do we stop worrying?

In particular, how do we stop worrying about tomorrow?

This is a complex issue. Our worry has many sources.

But focusing on the present moment, not thinking about the future, not thinking about tomorrow morning for example, is definitely not a good technique to use to stop yourself from worrying. (It is not a good “technique” to use because it is incomplete, and more than a little bit confused. We’ll return to this point later.)

Sure, focusing on the present moment can work for a time. Or rather, it can seem to work for a time. But those thoughts about the past and the future will arise no matter what you do – if not consciously, then unconsciously – if not in your waking life, then in your dreams.

If you’ve heard and believe that living in the present moment is the key to enlightenment, or at least the key to ending worry, then you may want to read the next posts.

It is in the next posts that I want to share with you something very special, something that I’ve learned about the relationship between living in the present moment and worrying.

But for now, I’ll leave you with this experiment:

Try to consciously not live in the present moment. Can you do it? (What does that even mean – ‘to consciously not live in the present moment’?)

Tallis

Describing Enlightenment Again . . .

Suddenly it happens . . . there is no separation between you and your experiences. You are no longer on the inside looking out, nor on the outside looking in. But rather the inside and the outside are one, and you are that one.

There is nothing to grasp . . .

I am listening to my 2 year old daughter sing while I type these words.

She is sitting beside me on the sofa.

We look at one another and smile; she begins to giggle through her song.

Now she is laughing.

This is it . . .

I cherish her and this moment.

This is enlightenment. (Well . . . one definition anyway.)

Tallis

Embracing Imperfections

People who know me know how imperfect I am. Buddhists, on the whole, have an odd relationship with imperfection. I remember in an interview Barbara Walter’s asked the Dalai Lama if he was enlightened. Here is the exchange:

Barbara Walters: Are you enlightened, your Holiness?

Dalai Lama: No. I do not know what would happen tonight. I do not know. And my memory – what details? . . . what happened yesterday? – I’ve already forget.

Barbara Walters: If you were enlightened you would remember everything?

Dalai Lama: Oh yes.

Barbara Walters: You haven’t reached that stage yet?

Dalai Lama: No.

[End Quote]

If you were enlightened then you would remember everything? Now I’m going to give the Dalai Lama the benefit of the doubt here. He was asked on national (worldwide?) television if he was enlightened. How can you possibly answer such a question and still appear to be both humble and wise? His was a good answer: In effect he said, “If you think that being enlightened means being perfect and all-knowing – then I am not enlightened. I don’t know, maybe the Dalai Lama really believes that the Buddha was omniscient. Maybe he doesn’t. But that’s not the point.

The point is that many Buddhists do equate enlightenment with this kind of perfection. (They equate enlightenment with physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual perfection.)

And this is very unfortunate.

Enlightenment has nothing whatsoever to do with being perfect, period.

It seems to me that the closest an enlightened person might ever come to being perfect is in the acceptance of his or her own imperfections. (Although I suspect even his or her acceptance would be imperfect.)

Suppose (pre-enlightenment) you have a poor memory (are always forgetting people’s names), can’t roll your “R’s”, have unattractive feet, can’t hit a golf ball straight, are losing your hair, wear contact lens, have allergies, and . . . well you can’t even count the number of imperfections you have for there are so many (plus you’ve never been that good at math anyway), and have a habit of writing run-on sentences, then post-enlightenment you will most likely still have all of those imperfections. Maybe you wouldn’t even consider those imperfections.

This is kind of a nice thought. I mean if you’re a little insecure about your shortcomings now – the thought that even enlightenment wouldn’t fix them is, I think, a little comforting. I mean what more do you want?

In fact, I suspect that the closer you are to enlightenment the more imperfections you would notice in yourself.

What about character imperfections? Surely an enlightened person would have no character flaws. Can you imagine an enlightened individual who is either arrogant or humourless? The Buddha couldn’t possibly have been conceited or stubborn.

Maybe, maybe not – what do you think?

Certain imperfections you just can’t change. Some you can. Certain flaws slowly change through their very acceptance. Sometimes you just can’t remember why you ever considered a particular “imperfection” a flaw in the first place. Perhaps for some individuals enlightenment is easy and all the real work is done after enlightenment. In the sutras, Buddha occasionally comes across a little conceited. Might it have been the case that he was just plain arrogant and had to work on this character flaw for years following his enlightenment? Maybe he never quite licked it.

I really like the following excerpt from the song ‘Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

This is beautiful. How could the light get in if you had no cracks? And I might add that those cracks (imperfections) are also needed for the light to get out. The more imperfections you notice in yourself the better! More imperfections = more light.

Oh, how wonderful! Noticing and accepting your many flaws – perhaps this is the ultimate spiritual practice.

Radiant spiritual light is shining through the multitude of our embraced (even partially embraced) imperfections!

Wow! Doesn’t the mere thought of this make you want to go stand naked in front of a full length mirror under bright lights in order to search for and embrace your own imperfections? (Uhh . . . maybe it’s just me, never mind.)

Tallis

Addicted to Silence

Most people are addicted to thinking – letting a voice incessantly rambling on and on inside their minds.

But some people are addicted to silence – they “incessantly” don’t think about anything whatsoever. (The space between thoughts has expanded to such a degree that their minds are usually absolutely silent.)

In some ways being addicted to silence is even worse than being addicted to thinking.

Why worse?

Well, worse if silence is confused with emptiness (śūnyatā: all phenomena are dependent and conditioned on other phenomena and therefore are without essence).

Worse if silence is equated with nothing, is mistaken for Enlightenment – because if that’s the case you may start giving people some pretty terrible advice.

And worse still because, let’s face it, silence of the mind gets a bit boring after awhile.

If you’ve reached a state of silence of the mind and feel slightly let down, wondering, “Is that all? Is this it?” – don’t worry, that is not all, this is not it.

There is still more to come . . .

So you have silence of the mind – now what?

Sit with it. Notice that silence is something. I like to notice that silence is a type of sound – that it is a type of auditory experience. Notice that you are not this experience.

Just wait . . . while sitting in silence with the realization that you are not silence – something rather remarkable is bound to happen . . .

Tallis

The Disappearing Self

I’m watching the French Open. (Federer just lost the first set.) Anyway, my daughter keeps standing too close to the TV. And I keep telling her to move back. Telling her for the third time gave rise to following idea:

I was thinking about how when you move up close to the television screen the picture disappears – all you see are a bunch of dots (pixels). But then, of course, when you move back out a few feet there is the picture again.

This is like the experience of being a self. When you move deeply into the experience of being a self, it seems that the self disappears. But move back out a “few feet” and there is the self again.

So which position or state shows the situation as it really is? I suppose they both do. It all depends on your point of view. (Although, in the case of the television, sitting back a few feet is usually more practical.)

Okay, I need to go watch the rest of this tennis match.

[2 hours later]

(Federer won the match.)

I’m thinking that the deeper truth is not revealed in either the experience of being a self or the experience of being a no-self. But rather, the deeper truth is revealed in the movement between these states.

This is the miracle of an enlightened moment – freely moving between the experiences of self and no-self.

Tallis

Jhana and the Formless Spheres

I remember reading about the Jhana and the formless spheres when I was a teenager. (The Jhana are deep meditative states. There are four stages of Jhana. In addition to the Jhana, there are four higher meditative states known as the formless spheres. ) They sounded very cool! Wow, to make it to the fourth Jhana, pure consciousness, the beginning of psychic powers! Or to enter into the sphere of infinite space, to become one with the universe! Wow!!

To my teenager mind these states sounded so lofty, so grand, that they might as well have been unattainable. Now, when I listen to an individual (including myself) speak about his/her own experiences and attainment of these states, I can usually hear an awkward mix of false humility and pride. That’s okay. We are human.

But the thing is: these states are very subtle, you really can’t exclaim “wow!” while in them; you’d kind of ruin it.

The first thing I want to say is that everyone already knows these states in a manner of speaking.

For example, does entering into a profoundly deep meditative state in which you are oblivious to all external sensations seem a little incredible to you?

But perhaps you already know this state. While having a dream (or a lucid dream would be closer to the state) someone could tap you on the shoulder and call your name and you might not notice.

That state doesn’t sound so special anymore. (Have you ever had a lucid dream and in the dream you’re meditating and your mind is absolutely silent? That would be very close to the state of the second or third Jhana.)

I am trying to make these states sound less impressive. They are very natural.

As we sleep we move through all of these states; it’s just that we are usually unconscious. I remember the first time I fell asleep consciously. I realized that these states are very ordinary, very familiar. Idealizing them will prevent you from entering into them consciously.

Something else to remember about these states is that they are subjective. They are your states. They may not match up perfectly to someone else’s description of them, even Siddhartha’s. There is a lot of disagreement and confusion concerning these states. I think what is important and what is most universally agreed upon is that with each successive Jhana or sphere what you previously took to be nothing is now discovered to be something.

What do I mean by that?

Here is an example: Say after years of meditating you have finally learned how to let your mind become silent. There is no sound. There is nothing. Wonderful! Maybe you are enlightened! Life goes on. You continue to meditate, enjoying your nothingness. But then one day you realize that the silence is in fact not nothing after all. You notice that silence is a type of sound. You realize that silence is an auditory experience. You discover that nothing (that is, what you mistook as nothing) is actually something.

This is the process of transcendence. The Witness is learning to differentiate itself from its experiences. With each successive Jhana or sphere the experiences become finer and finer. After each differentiation there arrives a new state that is taken to be nothing. You can’t see it because you are identified with it. However, given enough time you learn to see it, or hear it, and therefore differentiate yourself from it. The process of transcendence continues.

The same thing happens with inner body silence. Not the sound, but the feeling. You might not even notice the feeling. It is so subtle. You think that it is nothing at all. But one day you suddenly realize that the inner feeling of stillness is actually an experience. You may call it bliss.

And again the same thing happens with inner visual silence. Infinite space, the first formless sphere – at first you don’t notice it. It seems to be just infinite vast formless emptiness/nothingness. But then one day you notice that it is a type of visual experience. You differentiate from it; you see it as something. (It is when you begin to see it that you need to sit with it.)

And on and on you go in like manner.

Each time subtler and subtler experiences are discovered to be masquerading as the Witness or Experiencer. (Experiencer isn’t a real word, but I try to avoid the term Witness because the word seems to privilege visual experiences over other experiences. I should say “Witness”.)

What do these “altered states” have to do with enlightenment?

The answer is: Everything and nothing.

Everything, because you learn what you are not in these states.

Nothing, because Enlightenment does not necessarily take place while in any of these “altered states.”

When you are ready, it could happen at any time. When you are ready, you are hanging on by the finest thread. The attachment and therefore the “Witness” can go at any moment.

Finally, one day, perhaps while sitting in the park watching and listening to the flurry of activity around you, it happens, the “Witness” collapses into that which is experienced. The process of transcendence has worked itself to completion in the ordinary day to day waking state. Now, in that freedom, you simply see clearly, you are awake.

Tallis