After it seems like eons of spiritual wanderings , your musings along with John Astin, Amaya Gayle,, Angelo Dilullo and others have really hit the mark!🥰🙏Eckhart's .."Choice begins the moment we disidentify from the mind and conditoned patterns!..Yes...otherwise we are unconscious! So simple but not easy🙃. We and all things are already complete and perfect but we all could use a little work as realization goes on and on! May you have a wonderfilled retreat, much gratitude and ❤️
Thank you for your wisdom today, Joan. Wishing you a peace-filled, contented, accepting-what-is retreat. Many blessings to you and yours in 2025 and beyond.
Hola! Estic pensant, sol en soletat . El cos amb milions de partícules totes visquen, com potser aquesta societat
Jo sóc més o menys el seu representant
Sóc Deu, com a simbol, i estic sol. Amb possibilitat de relacions de tot tipus ,, però estic sol encara que acompanyat estic sol
Que es això? Sol ? En l'immensitat en el fosc no saber sabent
Però és així sóc aquesta Vida així com sóc no hi ha volta enrere cap responsabilitat tota possibilitat no pot estar millor per ara la pau social encara que la d'hom sigui completa la consciencia social global és la que mana
A lot of spiritual writing implies that we can make a conscious choice to choose freedom, to let go, to stop pinching ourselves, or maybe, as I’ve seen advised, to practice detachment. The best I can do is to impatiently watch my mind spin out of control as my body contracts with fear until the crazy train of thought wears itself out. I’m really grateful that I can manage that.
I was trying to suggest it as a question we might ask in the moment, without expectation and open to not knowing what might reveal itself, rather than as an assertion about what is or is not possible.
I'd say that "the watching" is awareness. The impatience is thought activity accompanied by sensations in the body, which translates as "fear" and "contraction." Even the impatience is being seen. When you say, "The best I can do is...," could that be solidifying a pattern that isn't actually solid? Who knows what is or isn't possible?
Thank you for this piece. I need to read it again to fully understand it but I appreciate your words. I also did not know you had written several books. I am struggling with getting old. I am not struggling so much with the dying as with the challenges and the letting go that aging requires. I ordered that dying book in order to consider different ways for me to think about things. It's hard being a human being.
Thanks for pointing me to this Joan, and yes - this. Full acceptance of this now, AND the opportunity for change. Full response-ability -
It’s like this.
Do I like it?
Yes - great!
No - what do I want to do about it?
Something….nothing….ten things….?
All possibilities available!
I’ve often wondered if teachers like the ones you’ve mentioned were in a lopsided exploration - the kind that focuses on the perfection of our true nature. And therefore ignores the human. Maybe even dismisses it as illusory. And is so stuck in ‘it’s all perfect…there’s nobody here who can do anything about it…any desire to change is the sign of an impure mind…’ (and all those kinds of spiritual denial tropes.)
Because fair enough to ignore the human if it only hurts yourself. It’s your life. But for it to spill into sexual misconduct or other hurtful behaviours is an example for me of ‘yes it’s like this snd no, that’s not ok.’
Unhealthy behaviour like that is a prime example of a chance to clean up the human conditioning. (Along with the myriad of mini hurtful behaviours that we count as normal in society.)
The teachers I mentioned were all quite different in what they offered and the countries and cultures from which they came and in which they lived. They were all, imo, quite profound and awake beings (with the possible exception of Ösel Tendzin about whom I know next to nothing other than his horrendous sexual-HIV scandal). But at the same time, they were all imperfect human beings, and in their very lives, they demonstrated that imperfection and the way "the same person" (which is of course an illusion) can have multiple sides to them. If you've never experienced the things they experienced, such as severe depression or addictive and compulsive behaviors that you were unable to stop, I suppose it's hard to understand how both sides could co-exist in a single person.
Of course, I'm all for calling out abusive and harmful behavior and doing what we can to change our own painful or destructive behaviors. The fact that I can, for example, have compassion for child abusers and serial rapists doesn't mean I approve of what they do or that I want them running free in society or working with children. And I suspect that these days, Chögyam Trungpa and Ösel Tendzin would have been called out in a way they apparently were not back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It was quite a different world back then in many ways.
When the wholeness, interdependence and infinite unresolvability of everything is deeply seen, it becomes apparent that everything has its place and that we truly can't ultimately say what is good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. That understanding doesn't negate our everyday relative sense of right and wrong, nor does it prevent us from taking appropriate action, such as calling out abusive teachers, or working on our own apparent imperfections, or putting serial rapists in prison to prevent them from doing harm. I tried to convey this in the article.
Thanks Joan, I agree with all of what you’ve said here. Thank you for articulating further and apologies if I missed that from the original piece.
It’s exactly why I differentiate awakening - knowing the truth of our nature and the nondual fact of all things. From enlightenment - cleaning up the human patterns. And hence why I once wrote a piece about how you can be an awakened ass 🤣
Yes. You might enjoy reading a book called "Single White Monk: Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex" by Shozan Jack Haubner. From the review on my website recommended books page: The book is about his time as head monk at Mount Baldy Zen Center outside LA, where he was a long-time student and eventually caretaker of Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the Japanese Zen teacher who founded Mount Baldy, and who was eventually exposed in one of the very worst Zen sex scandals. The book portrays this deeply flawed but powerful Zen Master in a way that manages to hold all of his different aspects, the brilliant light and the dark shadow, with both ruthless honesty and tenderness. We get a thoroughgoing, no-holds-barred account of what Sasaki did to many women over many years, without the author falling into any of the one-sided and overly simplistic reactions of either justifying or excusing what his teacher did, on the one hand, or self-righteously condemning him, on the other. In fact, Jack remains and cares for his teacher, who is by then very old and in a long process of dying. The book offers one of the most unflinching portrayals of aging and dying, along with a deeply insightful exploration of the inseparable nature of all opposites, including good and evil.
Thank you for your incredibly helpful and encouraging writings, Joan; and especially for your unique willingness to be so raw and honest about your own experience. That is a big support
“always encouraged open exploration—looking for myself, attending to direct experience rather than to ideology and belief, being open to new discoveries. They never claimed to be infallible authorities. They never gave me the sense that I lacked something”
I have heard that we teach what we need to learn. You have cherry picked for me “take what you need and leave the rest”.
"You are perfect just as you are, and there’s room for improvement."
—Shunryu Suzuki
and a new fave:
"The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside... We are never at any moment in the dilemma we fear ourselves to be."
It's an area of belief/explanation I've bounced around in for many years now - various perspectives have, at various instants, seemed to make perfect sense....only to be eclipsed by the next in a subsequent instant.
Currently, my view is that there is no "free will". Decisions that appear to be made autonomously are, I feel, always the result of a multitude of causes and conditions (the majority of which are not known to us), leaving only a single course of action realistically available which we then "decide" upon. Of course, our entire experiential history and physical/genetic/psychological/biochemical state form part of these causes and conditions - so "we" do have influence, albeit not through anything that could be called "will" - and ALL of them are in constant flux.
Other views are, of course, available and equally valid to those who hold them....I wish you well.
I was exposed to determinism as a child by my father, and it totally made sense. Over many decades, I have frequently expressed the discovery that the supposed author-thinker-chooser is a mirage. So I don't disagree with you, although I've come to feel that ANY attempt to nail this down conceptually inevitably misses the mark.
We can certainly approach this question intellectually and scientifically, as you are doing, and as folks like Robert Sopolsky have done. Or we can explore it experientially, as I have always encouraged. In my book Nothing to Grasp, I wrote:
"This is a wonderful question to explore by carefully and closely observing decision-making as it happens. So as we go about our daily activities, we might begin to actually watch, very closely, as choices happen. It could be little ones like whether to get up after you've been sitting down for awhile, or big ones like whether to get married or take a new job. Really watch closely and carefully as the process unfolds. Notice the back and forth thoughts that pop up by themselves making a case for this direction or that direction. See if you can catch the decisive moment when one side finally wins out and if you can find anyone in control of how that happens. See if you can find the "you" who seems to be authoring your thoughts. Can this thinker or decider at the helm actually be found? Investigate all of this not by thinking about it, but by giving it careful attention with awareness.
"Are you in control of the thoughts that arise? Do you know what your next thought will be? Even if you seem to be "choosing" to think positive thoughts, from where does the urge and the intention and the ability to do this arise? Does it always work?
"You may find that decisions happen, and that you cannot pin down exactly how they occur or what sets them in motion. We have stories about "free will" and "determinism," but in the end, these are only conceptual models. Like the pictures in the anatomy book, they can never capture the fluidity and the messiness of life itself.
"This kind of meditative inquiry begins with letting all your answers and beliefs go, and not knowing what you'll find, always being open to the possibility of seeing something entirely new and unexpected."
(end of selection from NTG)
Or, as I said in this article, "What if we drop all our preconceived ideas, beliefs and conclusions and simply approach this as an open question to explore anew in any moment when it seems as if we are stuck, limited or bound? In such a moment, maybe we can ask and openly wonder whether it is possible, right now in this moment—not in every moment for all time, but right now in this moment—to “take our hand away” as Adi Da says, to choose freedom, to open and let go? Instead of thinking about this question analytically and relying on past experiential insights, experiences or beliefs, what if instead we ask it freshly, in this moment, as a completely new question, without knowing what the answer might be, open to being surprised? How does this question act on us? What possibility does it open up for us?
And I agree that the ways in which we try to define this stuff is inevitably incomplete - lacking the wholeness of this....
But how can we honestly know that our fresh questioning in the moment is NOT influenced by preconceptions and responses to past insights and experiences - when so much of our life passes under the radar of conscious awareness until, maybe, events coincide and thoughts "bubble up"?
Is it ever possible to be certain that such complete dropping has occurred?
Again, you're approaching it intellectually, which is fine, but I'm suggesting something else. The open, explorative, experiential approach that I'm inviting doesn't aim at or result in some final certainty about such questions.
After it seems like eons of spiritual wanderings , your musings along with John Astin, Amaya Gayle,, Angelo Dilullo and others have really hit the mark!🥰🙏Eckhart's .."Choice begins the moment we disidentify from the mind and conditoned patterns!..Yes...otherwise we are unconscious! So simple but not easy🙃. We and all things are already complete and perfect but we all could use a little work as realization goes on and on! May you have a wonderfilled retreat, much gratitude and ❤️
Yea, how wonderful all this is available now. I think in the past monks travelled all over just to find someone who was liberated to learn from.
Thank you for your wisdom today, Joan. Wishing you a peace-filled, contented, accepting-what-is retreat. Many blessings to you and yours in 2025 and beyond.
Hola! Estic pensant, sol en soletat . El cos amb milions de partícules totes visquen, com potser aquesta societat
Jo sóc més o menys el seu representant
Sóc Deu, com a simbol, i estic sol. Amb possibilitat de relacions de tot tipus ,, però estic sol encara que acompanyat estic sol
Que es això? Sol ? En l'immensitat en el fosc no saber sabent
Però és així sóc aquesta Vida així com sóc no hi ha volta enrere cap responsabilitat tota possibilitat no pot estar millor per ara la pau social encara que la d'hom sigui completa la consciencia social global és la que mana
A lot of spiritual writing implies that we can make a conscious choice to choose freedom, to let go, to stop pinching ourselves, or maybe, as I’ve seen advised, to practice detachment. The best I can do is to impatiently watch my mind spin out of control as my body contracts with fear until the crazy train of thought wears itself out. I’m really grateful that I can manage that.
I was trying to suggest it as a question we might ask in the moment, without expectation and open to not knowing what might reveal itself, rather than as an assertion about what is or is not possible.
I'd say that "the watching" is awareness. The impatience is thought activity accompanied by sensations in the body, which translates as "fear" and "contraction." Even the impatience is being seen. When you say, "The best I can do is...," could that be solidifying a pattern that isn't actually solid? Who knows what is or isn't possible?
Thank you for this piece. I need to read it again to fully understand it but I appreciate your words. I also did not know you had written several books. I am struggling with getting old. I am not struggling so much with the dying as with the challenges and the letting go that aging requires. I ordered that dying book in order to consider different ways for me to think about things. It's hard being a human being.
Thanks for pointing me to this Joan, and yes - this. Full acceptance of this now, AND the opportunity for change. Full response-ability -
It’s like this.
Do I like it?
Yes - great!
No - what do I want to do about it?
Something….nothing….ten things….?
All possibilities available!
I’ve often wondered if teachers like the ones you’ve mentioned were in a lopsided exploration - the kind that focuses on the perfection of our true nature. And therefore ignores the human. Maybe even dismisses it as illusory. And is so stuck in ‘it’s all perfect…there’s nobody here who can do anything about it…any desire to change is the sign of an impure mind…’ (and all those kinds of spiritual denial tropes.)
Because fair enough to ignore the human if it only hurts yourself. It’s your life. But for it to spill into sexual misconduct or other hurtful behaviours is an example for me of ‘yes it’s like this snd no, that’s not ok.’
Unhealthy behaviour like that is a prime example of a chance to clean up the human conditioning. (Along with the myriad of mini hurtful behaviours that we count as normal in society.)
The teachers I mentioned were all quite different in what they offered and the countries and cultures from which they came and in which they lived. They were all, imo, quite profound and awake beings (with the possible exception of Ösel Tendzin about whom I know next to nothing other than his horrendous sexual-HIV scandal). But at the same time, they were all imperfect human beings, and in their very lives, they demonstrated that imperfection and the way "the same person" (which is of course an illusion) can have multiple sides to them. If you've never experienced the things they experienced, such as severe depression or addictive and compulsive behaviors that you were unable to stop, I suppose it's hard to understand how both sides could co-exist in a single person.
Of course, I'm all for calling out abusive and harmful behavior and doing what we can to change our own painful or destructive behaviors. The fact that I can, for example, have compassion for child abusers and serial rapists doesn't mean I approve of what they do or that I want them running free in society or working with children. And I suspect that these days, Chögyam Trungpa and Ösel Tendzin would have been called out in a way they apparently were not back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It was quite a different world back then in many ways.
When the wholeness, interdependence and infinite unresolvability of everything is deeply seen, it becomes apparent that everything has its place and that we truly can't ultimately say what is good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. That understanding doesn't negate our everyday relative sense of right and wrong, nor does it prevent us from taking appropriate action, such as calling out abusive teachers, or working on our own apparent imperfections, or putting serial rapists in prison to prevent them from doing harm. I tried to convey this in the article.
Thanks Joan, I agree with all of what you’ve said here. Thank you for articulating further and apologies if I missed that from the original piece.
It’s exactly why I differentiate awakening - knowing the truth of our nature and the nondual fact of all things. From enlightenment - cleaning up the human patterns. And hence why I once wrote a piece about how you can be an awakened ass 🤣
Wishing you the best uniquely-you Christmas.
Yes. You might enjoy reading a book called "Single White Monk: Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex" by Shozan Jack Haubner. From the review on my website recommended books page: The book is about his time as head monk at Mount Baldy Zen Center outside LA, where he was a long-time student and eventually caretaker of Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the Japanese Zen teacher who founded Mount Baldy, and who was eventually exposed in one of the very worst Zen sex scandals. The book portrays this deeply flawed but powerful Zen Master in a way that manages to hold all of his different aspects, the brilliant light and the dark shadow, with both ruthless honesty and tenderness. We get a thoroughgoing, no-holds-barred account of what Sasaki did to many women over many years, without the author falling into any of the one-sided and overly simplistic reactions of either justifying or excusing what his teacher did, on the one hand, or self-righteously condemning him, on the other. In fact, Jack remains and cares for his teacher, who is by then very old and in a long process of dying. The book offers one of the most unflinching portrayals of aging and dying, along with a deeply insightful exploration of the inseparable nature of all opposites, including good and evil.
Sounds powerful. Thank you 🙏
Thank you for your incredibly helpful and encouraging writings, Joan; and especially for your unique willingness to be so raw and honest about your own experience. That is a big support
for me when things get tough.
Enjoy you break, and may all be well with you.
“always encouraged open exploration—looking for myself, attending to direct experience rather than to ideology and belief, being open to new discoveries. They never claimed to be infallible authorities. They never gave me the sense that I lacked something”
I have heard that we teach what we need to learn. You have cherry picked for me “take what you need and leave the rest”.
Thank you
"It’s all included in this wave called Joan and this waving universe."
🫶 🫶 🫶
May you enjoy the season, Joan. May we all.
dear joan,
thank you for sharing all of this!
one of my fave quotes for a long time:
"You are perfect just as you are, and there’s room for improvement."
—Shunryu Suzuki
and a new fave:
"The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside... We are never at any moment in the dilemma we fear ourselves to be."
– Adi Da
thank you! much love,
myq
Thank you Joan....
It's an area of belief/explanation I've bounced around in for many years now - various perspectives have, at various instants, seemed to make perfect sense....only to be eclipsed by the next in a subsequent instant.
Currently, my view is that there is no "free will". Decisions that appear to be made autonomously are, I feel, always the result of a multitude of causes and conditions (the majority of which are not known to us), leaving only a single course of action realistically available which we then "decide" upon. Of course, our entire experiential history and physical/genetic/psychological/biochemical state form part of these causes and conditions - so "we" do have influence, albeit not through anything that could be called "will" - and ALL of them are in constant flux.
Other views are, of course, available and equally valid to those who hold them....I wish you well.
I was exposed to determinism as a child by my father, and it totally made sense. Over many decades, I have frequently expressed the discovery that the supposed author-thinker-chooser is a mirage. So I don't disagree with you, although I've come to feel that ANY attempt to nail this down conceptually inevitably misses the mark.
We can certainly approach this question intellectually and scientifically, as you are doing, and as folks like Robert Sopolsky have done. Or we can explore it experientially, as I have always encouraged. In my book Nothing to Grasp, I wrote:
"This is a wonderful question to explore by carefully and closely observing decision-making as it happens. So as we go about our daily activities, we might begin to actually watch, very closely, as choices happen. It could be little ones like whether to get up after you've been sitting down for awhile, or big ones like whether to get married or take a new job. Really watch closely and carefully as the process unfolds. Notice the back and forth thoughts that pop up by themselves making a case for this direction or that direction. See if you can catch the decisive moment when one side finally wins out and if you can find anyone in control of how that happens. See if you can find the "you" who seems to be authoring your thoughts. Can this thinker or decider at the helm actually be found? Investigate all of this not by thinking about it, but by giving it careful attention with awareness.
"Are you in control of the thoughts that arise? Do you know what your next thought will be? Even if you seem to be "choosing" to think positive thoughts, from where does the urge and the intention and the ability to do this arise? Does it always work?
"You may find that decisions happen, and that you cannot pin down exactly how they occur or what sets them in motion. We have stories about "free will" and "determinism," but in the end, these are only conceptual models. Like the pictures in the anatomy book, they can never capture the fluidity and the messiness of life itself.
"This kind of meditative inquiry begins with letting all your answers and beliefs go, and not knowing what you'll find, always being open to the possibility of seeing something entirely new and unexpected."
(end of selection from NTG)
Or, as I said in this article, "What if we drop all our preconceived ideas, beliefs and conclusions and simply approach this as an open question to explore anew in any moment when it seems as if we are stuck, limited or bound? In such a moment, maybe we can ask and openly wonder whether it is possible, right now in this moment—not in every moment for all time, but right now in this moment—to “take our hand away” as Adi Da says, to choose freedom, to open and let go? Instead of thinking about this question analytically and relying on past experiential insights, experiences or beliefs, what if instead we ask it freshly, in this moment, as a completely new question, without knowing what the answer might be, open to being surprised? How does this question act on us? What possibility does it open up for us?
It is an interesting question, certainly...
And I agree that the ways in which we try to define this stuff is inevitably incomplete - lacking the wholeness of this....
But how can we honestly know that our fresh questioning in the moment is NOT influenced by preconceptions and responses to past insights and experiences - when so much of our life passes under the radar of conscious awareness until, maybe, events coincide and thoughts "bubble up"?
Is it ever possible to be certain that such complete dropping has occurred?
Again, you're approaching it intellectually, which is fine, but I'm suggesting something else. The open, explorative, experiential approach that I'm inviting doesn't aim at or result in some final certainty about such questions.
Fair enough Joan....
Thank you, peaceful holidays, and happy New Year, dear Joan! ❤️