Nonduality and the World

How can this be perfection or unconditional love?

When I see that I am nothing, that is Wisdom; when I see that I am everything, that is Love; and between the two my life flows. 

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

Not long ago, I dozed off in my armchair and dreamed that I was on a trip to outer space, but I turned around and came back. In the dream, someone asked me why I came back. I woke up with a jolt. I felt that in some way this was a profound and relevant question: Why do I come back? From deep space, or maybe from going beyond the world, from transcendence?

I thought of the Bodhisattva who refuses to disappear into nirvana until all beings can be awakened. I thought of my unrealized childhood dreams of being a doctor or a social worker serving the poor and the dispossessed. I thought of my political past, my caring for the suffering and injustices in the world.

And I thought of how I've moved over the course of many years into a nondual spiritual perspective that sees everyday life as either a dream-like movement in consciousness and/or as illusory forms, like those we imagine in Rorschach blots, in what is actually inconceivable, unresolvable, unpindownable, seamless flux. Either way, everything that appears is realized to be nonsubstantial and in some sense illusory. It’s never what we think it is. The so-called relative world of apparently stable, persisting, autonomous forms doesn’t actually exist.

This isn't just an ideology or a belief, but a direct realization that arises from examining and feeling into present experience. But when it is taken on conceptually and not fully realized experientially, it can feel heartless and even repellent. Or it can sometimes serve as a kind of mental comfort blanket in the face of a world where there is so much suffering and cruelty, a way of turning away and closing our eyes and hearts. Many people balk at statements about everything being perfect as it is, or unconditional love being the fundamental reality. How can that be?

In my own life and in the private lives of every nondual teacher I know personally, we all care deeply about loved ones, have relationship issues, emotions, medical problems, opinions about world events, and all the things that make up ordinary human lives. Most nondual teachers don't write about those things in the way I do, and most don’t seem troubled in the way I sometimes have been about any apparent discrepancy between caring for the world and seeing it as a kind of illusory appearance.

Maybe because of my background, I've never felt comfortable with dismissing the reality of our human experience with the realization that nothing real is being hurt or damaged, and that all of it is nothing more than a momentary dream-like movement of consciousness or inseparable waves of energy. I can certainly see it that way, and that discovery is indeed profoundly liberating, but I can't dismiss the human level either.

I’ve found after many years of wrestling with this that when the nonsubstantiality of everything that appears is fully realized on the level of direct experiencing rather than being heard as ideology and belief, there is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever. So if these questions trouble you as they have troubled me at times, what I’ve found is that the resolution can only be found by tuning into direct experience here and now.

---

A few excepts from my last book, DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement, came to mind that might be relevant.

This first is from a chapter that describes one of the last retreats I attended with Toni Packer. It was roughly a year after my mother died, when I was still living in Chicago, and I had traveled to Springwater Center in northwestern New York for the September seven-day retreat:

Toni is like a fierce Zen master on this retreat, like Nisargadatta—ruthless. Anything you pick up, she says, throw that away. Anything she describes—wholeness, presence, whatever—she immediately says, throw that away, too. Don’t hold onto anything. She speaks of closing the book on the past, on the encapsulated little self. “Stop holding to this little thing,” she says. “You are vast. Close the book on this little thing, and in that closing, there is an opening—the empty page.” Freedom. Space. Vastness. Stop following the “yes, but’s” in the mind, she says. Close the book. Be the vastness you are.

The silence is so palpable, the immense quiet, the natural world so vibrant and full of depth. This fresh page, this empty mind is God: “A way of seeing in which everything is perfect,” as Toni put it. That seeing, that infinite intelligence, that unconditional Love, that vast awaring presence beholding it all—accepting everything and clinging to nothing—that is God. It’s not that the cruelty and horrors in the world are perfect as they appear to us; the perfection is in the way of seeing them, the unconditional love beholding them, the no-thing-ness of them, the seamless unicity in which everything goes together perfectly, the non-clinging to any viewpoint, any idea, any memory, any interpretation. Closing the book on all our ideas, not holding to anything, not knowing what anything is—that is God, that vast open presence, which is actually all there ever is. That vastness is free to take any shape, and no shape endures.

We are here together learning to close the book. We can’t really say how we do it, any more than we can say how we ride a bike, drive a car, lift our arm, open our hand, swim or walk. And closing the book is a newer, less familiar movement, like those we learn in Feldenkrais. We are learning slowly to open. The old habits return—grasping, clinging, controlling, defending, seeking, resisting—but the new possibility is also there, and gradually, over time, the balance shifts. And, of course, “we” aren’t doing any of this. It is all happening by itself. Ever-fresh. Ungraspable.

The fields are full of goldenrod and wild flowers, milkweed, buzzing insects, delicious fragrances. A few pieces of Mom remain on the wet earth in the north woods where I scattered her ashes, a few tiny bits of bone still discernible. But slowly, she is dissolving back into the earth, like a dream.

At night, sitting in silence, the delicious sounds of rain, wet and playful, soft, delicate, cleansing, opening the heart.

On the last day, Toni reads from Nisargadatta: “There is no progress in reality…the source of light is dark…seedless and rootless…without cause, without hindrance.”

Words, like the hands of a skilled bodyworker, can draw your attention to something previously unseen or overlooked. Something is illuminated, touched, revealed by the word as by the touch of the bodyworker—awareness floods the area, light comes into the previously darkened room, a flame is ignited in the heart. And then, throw that away, too. Don’t hold onto anything.

Whenever I get the urge to drop the whole spiritual thing altogether, which I periodically do, it seems to be one of those little dharma bells—ding ding—waking me up to the fact that I’m lugging around something that would best be dropped, and it might not be spirituality, but rather the ideas I have about it. After all, the real heart of spirituality, at least as I mean it, is about dropping everything, moment to moment. Not clinging to anything. So when I’m feeling fed up with the whole thing, perhaps it is a good time to ask myself what exactly I’m thinking “the whole thing” is.

—from Death: The End of Self-Improvement

This next except is from a chapter about a retreat I attended in California with the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Anam Thubten:

On the retreat, Anam Thubten talked about our humanness. He is so wonderfully down to earth and honest. “I’m distracted all the time during meditation,” he says. This isn’t about not having any more darkness, doubt or imperfection. And in fact, that’s exactly the place where we find the light. Perfection can only be found in the imperfection. Nirvana can only be found in samsara. He spoke of the importance of humor. Love is losing everything, he said. Any states of spaciousness or clarity will come and go. Not to attach to any of it. Non-attachment is not detachment, he says, and he speaks of the dance of attachment (or love) and non-attachment (or letting go, not clinging to anything). Awakening doesn’t mean pulling away from life—detaching or dissociating—it means loving fully, but not holding on, not clinging.

We do walking meditation outside as the sun goes down, single file down this country road. A horse gallops excitedly across a pasture to greet us. I feel my love for the beauty around me (attachment) and then letting it go as we walk on (non-attachment)—the dance of attachment and non-attachment, loving and letting go.

—from Death: The End of Self-Improvement

---

In response to a comment about love on my last post, "Openness and Aliveness," I wrote this:

To me, unconditional love is synonymous with awareness. It allows everything to be as it is, it accepts everything, it clings to nothing, it is inseparable from everything it beholds. Beholding is such a beautiful word, as it contains both being and holding. Unconditional love evokes the love of a mother for her child. It is how everything is seen from wholeness, rather than from separation and particularity.

Yes, emotional love can be mixed with desire, greed, insecurity, clinging, possessiveness, lust, and other messy things, but at its core, love is a sense of feeling at one with something, seeing the beauty in it, being filled with that presence, which is our own presence, the presence that has no center and no owner. Love evokes the mystery of "not one, not two," the dance of lover and beloved, oneness and multiplicity, form and emptiness. Love is a word that speaks to the heart, evoking the warmth and the fullness of this emptiness.

At some point, the heart may open to the totally indefinable, unpredictable, and often unwanted movement that life is. Love is that openness of heart…

– Darryl Bailey

---

One of the many things I deeply appreciate about the late Peter Brown’s expression is that his sense of radiant presence includes both the radical nondual perspective of unresolvability and the everyday dimension of our lives as human beings. Here are a few excerpts from two of his books by way of illustration:

From Peter’s book This That Is:

Q: Can you say a little bit about what Radiant Presence is like for you?

PB: I’m Peter Brown, a neurotic and psychologically damaged imperfect human being at the same time as being literally the creator of the universe.

Q: What is the texture of that for you?

PB: Every texture. There are an infinite number of textures on an infinite number of dimensions simultaneously.

One of the major aspects of Radiant Presence is that it presents with arbitrary coexistent dimensions, all of which are essentially contradictory in their implications, yet they’re all present and equally true from their relatively postulated points of view, let’s say. I can be in my body and my personality and my identifications and simultaneously I can be intuiting meta-spatial energies. There are no words for these things.

The essential point is that it doesn’t come together into a nice, neat, simplistic whole that you can structuralize or draw a map of. It’s a coexistence of an arbitrary number of very different perspectives of very different dimensions, many of which are radically different from one another–yet they’re all present in awareness. The awareness drifts among them, emphasizing various of them simultaneously and instantaneously. It’s all very fluid.

Q: Do you ever feel the temptation to grab a hold of some of them?

PB: It’s not only a temptation. I do, of course, but in the grabbing hold of, it’s like trying to grab hold of a water balloon. It slips out. It’s not something you can stabilize and hold on to. The whole thing is slip-sliding through itself, and you’re slip-sliding through it, and that’s what it is.

When you try to concretize it, it becomes a disaster because you end up with pain and confusion. The more you let go and let it be what it is, the more enjoyable it is. You get your cake and eat it, because when you let go and let it be what it is, you have the most full enjoyment and engagement with these various dimensions. When you try to grab hold of any of them or concretize them, you actually lose the fullness of what it is. You lose other perspectives, and the whole thing becomes a train wreck.

The height of wisdom in being with life is to let it flow. Let the energies be what they are and do what they do. Don’t try to make sense of them or map them or grab hold of them or slow down. There are no brakes. Let it go.

—from This That Is

In the afterword to his book The Yoga of Radiant Presence, Peter writes:

I sit here, overlooking the amazing panorama of San Francisco Bay, writing these words.

The view of the bay, the inconceivable luscious flavors permeating my experience, the limitless inspiration and insights of spontaneous intelligence upwelling; the personal satisfaction of a great work completed, and ongoing-I AM.

This Being—that is the bay, that is the infinity of flavors, that is the intelligence, that is the sense of my personal being, my history, my life, that is the satisfactions and the openendedness of the sense of personal participation, that is the love, intimacy, and meaningfulness of the interpersonal intertwinings that shine like jewels in the flow of my living.

This sacrament of God, Radiant Presence, appearing nakedly revealed as the fullness and poignancy of personal life; fully, completely, utterly lost within its infinite Being, its being lost is its being found-Home, home, HOME.

I wish blessings and satisfaction to you.

— Afterword from The Yoga of Radiant Presence by Peter Brown

And speaking of Peter, he has a new posthumous book, a collection of talks put together by Nic Higham, that has just been released, available on Amazon.

---

New Peter Brown Book:

Liberation Beyond Imagination: Discovering Spiritual Freedom Through the Truth of Experience:

---

Maybe all of this throws some light on the often troubling questions about seeing the nonsubstantial, dream-like nature of everything while still caring about the world and enjoying and valuing our everyday human lives, and how perfection and unconditional love can include all the suffering and cruelty. Above all, I hope this post conveys the importance of exploring this experientially, by tuning into the sensory-energetic actuality and the felt-sense of this one bottomless moment and letting the urge to think about it and try to figure it all out fall away more and more. Notice how everything is happening by itself. Notice how fluid it is, how multi-dimensional, how ungraspable, how alive. Notice how everything slips away, instant by instant. Notice how it is always Now, this immediacy, this present-ness, this one bottomless moment. Notice how this awaring presence is the common factor in every different experience.

This moment, just as it is, is all there is. This moment, just as it is, is exactly, perfectly, just what it is... There is no place to stand outside this moment, outside of myself, outside of the world. This moment, this self, this world, all one thing.

– Barry Magid

Feel the unstoppable, pouring forth of life that is each instant, each experience, each momentary perception. In every moment, reality assumes a different shape and form, a different flavor, a different texture, a different quality. But all of it is reality, all of it life's emanation, life's effulgence.

– John Astin

The actuality of this is not some ongoing condition of anything in particular… It’s intrinsically flirtatious, intrinsically dynamic. It’s like the ocean. It never stops moving: all these currents and modes and huge storms and gorgeous clear peacefulness, everything. All of its modes are just its modes, its way of being itself.

– Peter Brown

---

Love to all…