No big breakthrough?

Quiet, moment-to-moment liberation

Items on my hospital breakfast tray waiting to be collected

No Big Breakthrough?

With some realization comes imperceptibly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Some people have sudden, dramatic awakenings. We’ve all heard such stories, and these stories and ways of talking about “enlightenment” and “awakening” immediately set everybody else up to search for an imagined Big Bang, line-in-the-sand, explosive future event (for ME!) after which nothing will ever be the same.

But for most people, as Shunryu Suzuki put it, enlightenment is more like getting wet in a mist. It happens gradually, imperceptibly and often goes unnoticed—thankfully, because it isn’t a personal achievement to claim or take pride in. And it’s an ever-new, always now unfolding.

As has often been noted, the best way to delay awakening (or pretend that it is absent here and now) is to seek it elsewhere and elsewhen. As Nisargadatta advised:

Stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

But we don’t believe that. Instead, we habitually think, “This can’t possibly be it. I’m not good enough. I’m not there yet.” We think and think and think about “it” and “me,” believing the thoughts that tell us, “This isn’t it,” “You’re not there yet,” “You don’t get it,” and so on.

Of course, waking up isn’t simply a matter of believing the opposite thoughts. It’s more about seeing through ALL the thoughts, especially the root thought—the “me” thought, the mirage-like central character in the story who supposedly is or isn’t enlightened yet. Waking up isn’t about beliefs at all. It’s about experientially discovering the nature of right here, right now.

Right here, Right now

In direct experience, there is always only this eternal timeless immediacy or present-ness here-now, this one bottomless moment, ever-changing and yet always right here, right now. Just this!

If we enter deeply into any apparent form—the body, the mind, any emotion, any so-called physical object (a chair, a house, a mountain, a continent), we find nonsubstantial, unresolvable, thorough-going impermanence or groundlessness—nothing we can grasp or pin down. And as they say in Buddhism, everything self-liberates, because the moment anything appears it has already disappeared, instant by instant.

When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. What we do not realize is that there is only stream. What we fancy as particular is, from the first, only movement, change and flow… It’s not that the universe is made up of innumerable objects in flux. There’s only flux. Nothing is (or can be) riding along in the flux, like a cork in a stream; nothing actually arises or passes away. There’s only stream.

– Zen teacher Steve Hagen

This is always the case, whether it is noticed or not. This streaming here-now-awaring-presence is the common factor in every different experience. Even thoughts, memories, daydreams and imaginings occur here-now as momentary shape-shifting appearances of the ungraspable, unpindownable, streaming flow and flux.

To realize this, to make it real in our life, is liberating. But realization doesn’t mean simply holding it as a philosophy or a belief, but rather, discovering it in our actual direct experience. Not yesterday or tomorrow, but NOW—now being the only reality there is, the eternal, timeless presence. This realization is ever-fresh, always new.

So if we feel depressed, heartbroken, devastated, sad, lonely, outraged, terrified, anxious, or any other disturbing feeling, we might explore it on the spot and discover its nonsubstantial, unresolvable, unpindownable, groundless and impermanent nature. We might feel it as pure energy or sensation, changing instant by instant. We might notice its no-thing-ness, its emptiness, and how it is already gone if we don’t hold onto it with thought.

Is Love a Deeper Truth than Hate?

Some say love and hate are equal and that spirituality should not emphasize beauty, joy or love because that’s dualistic and denies the reality of ugliness, despair and hate. But in fact, I do feel that love is a deeper truth than hate. I don’t deny that hate and apparent ugliness show up in this movie of waking life, and of course, those are equally a movement of the whole. To discover their sameness or equality as inseparable aspects of a seamless whole is a profound and liberating discovery, but that doesn’t negate the profound and liberating difference between them either. Both sides of the coin are true: sameness and difference.

I often give the example of Hitler and Buddha, each representing a facet of reality and an aspect of each one of us. I compare them to two waves in the ocean, one of which we think of as deluded (or evil) and the other as awake (or good). Both are equally movements of the ocean, both equally water, but the difference is that the Buddha wave knows that, while the Hitler wave is caught in the delusion of being independent and separate from the ocean, out to conquer or control the other waves and somehow “purify” the ocean. Their experiences and actions will be different as a result. It will all be a movement of the ocean, but the ocean includes the capacity for discernment and waking up from delusion.

There is no permanent, unchanging, separate individual who is permanently either awake or deluded. No one is all Hitler or all Buddha. And “Hitler” or “Buddha” can never really be pulled out of the flowing whole as some static, persisting, substantial, independent, autonomous “thing” apart from the whole. “Buddha” and “Hitler” (like chairs and tables and dogs and cats and oceans and waves and me and you and good and evil) are always only conceptual ideas that thought has carved out of an ever-changing seamless whole. We can call one of these conceptual abstractions “good” and the other “evil,” but both are a choiceless movement of the whole, inseparable from one another, and neither ever departs from being this indivisible aliveness that we are. The actuality is never really divided up—it is seamless. The perfection includes it ALL.

But again, the whole includes the capacity for differentiation and discernment. Buddha is the realization (or making real) of that wholeness, while Hitler is the delusion of separation and what follows from that delusion. Naturally, we want to wake up from such delusion on both the personal and global levels.

Speaking from my own experience, when I’m caught up in hate, anger, defensiveness and other “negative” mind states, I feel separate, tight, contracted, identified as a separate “me,” threatened by something seemingly outside of me. This is suffering and it feels like delusion. When I feel love, joy, and so on, I feel a sense of wholeness. In that wholeness, there’s no me, no separation, no problem. It feels like the deeper truth.

So yes, there is an aspiration, an interest, a devotion here to what brings forth the Buddha in me, and to seeing and seeing through and waking up from the Hitler in me. Who is doing this seeing, discerning and waking up? The whole ocean is doing it, and that doing happens through passing waves like you and me.

Nirvana and samsara, like ocean and wave, are not one, not two. Nirvana could be described as a different way of seeing samsara, and part of that different way is the discovery that we never depart from this all-inclusive whole, that we are both Buddha and Hitler and everything else as well, and than none of it has the solid, substantial, separate, autonomous, observer-independent, objective reality that we think it does.

A Different Way of Seeing

In my writing, I speak of finding the perfection in imperfection, seeing the sacred everywhere, discovering the beauty in what is conventionally considered ugly, seeing the humanity and the divinity in everyone, even when we deplore their actions and beliefs. In my experience, this is far more liberating, for myself and the whole world, than doing the opposite: speaking of the imperfection in everything, finding the ugliness everywhere, and seeing the evil in everyone. Importantly, I don’t deny the imperfection and evil, and I do consider it important to see and acknowledge that, especially in myself. I’m never talking about spiritual bypassing, “hiding in the light,” ignoring the darkness, or glossing it over with a happy face.

But there is a way of seeing things that brings forth relief, relaxation, peace, love, happiness and joy—and there are many habitual ways of seeing and thinking about things that bring forth misery, conflict and suffering. In helping me to discover and realize the former and see through the latter when it arises here, I’m grateful to all my spiritual teachers, friends and companions—those I was blessed to work with in person, and those I’ve known only from their books or recorded talks. They all encouraged me, and continue to encourage me (even when they are no longer living) to wake up right now. That was the first and most important key: NOW.

It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in the now… Reality is what makes the present so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

The moment you enter the Now with your attention, you realize that life is sacred. There is a sacredness to everything you perceive when you are present.

– Eckhart Tolle

In simple presence with what is right here now, be it joyful or painful, an amazing freedom reveals itself. It cannot be described or explained in words. It is the freedom to be totally, effortlessly the way things are at this moment.

– Toni Packer

Consider love, not as a particular feeling or sentiment, but as the mystery that allows all feelings and sentiments to be, the space in which every experience exists. Think of it as life, the very life that you are and that everything is—a great incomprehensible indivisibility, a mystery that welcomes all moments, without question or reason, because it is all moments.

– John Astin

This moment, is all there is — it is One Eternal Moment — One Instant.

– Gilbert Schultz

Presence is not simply paying attention. It’s the state of being fully here. It’s the realization that life is not happening somewhere else, at some other time, to some other person. It’s happening now, in this moment, in this breath. Most people spend their entire lives everywhere except where they actually are... Presence is the return home. When you’re present, the mind stops dividing reality into good and bad, past and future, sacred and mundane. You stop being a spectator and become the experience itself. Every sensation sharpens. Every breath deepens. The ordinary begins to reveal its holiness.

– Damien Echols

To be truly awakened is actually very ordinary. It just means that you are here as the trees are here. You’re here as the flowers are here. That’s all it is. You’re here, rather than lost in a world of not here. As you relax and deepen into the present moment, no matter how ordinary it appears to be, then slowly and gently the deeper levels of Presence will open up…

God cannot be known with the mind. God cannot be understood or defined. The best that the mind can do is believe in God. But to believe in God is a very poor substitute for knowing God through your own direct experience. And once you know, there is no need for belief.

For me, God is the silent Presence at the very heart of all things present… If you want to experience the living Presence of God in all things present, you will have to come to where God is. You will have to come out of the mind and become present. When we become fully present, we will begin to sense the Presence that is in everything. This Presence is what I mean by God.

– Leonard Jacobson

“Being Here Now” and “All There Is, Is Here-Now-Being”

Writing about wholeness or nonduality or spirit is inevitably paradoxical because the living actuality that is being talked about can’t be grasped by or contained in words. It can be pointed to, described, invited, celebrated, but the menu is never the meal and the map is not the territory. The pathless path involves exploring the territory itself and eating the meal. In the absolute sense, there is no way not to do that, since THIS is all there is, and in that sense, even the map is the territory and reading the menu is eating the meal. We can’t not be here now. And yet, relatively speaking, there are discoveries and discernments that can prove liberating, not as beliefs—because those are always shadowed by doubt—but as living experiencing, here and now.

Thus, I continue to value both the path of mindful presence or “being here now,” bringing open attention to the bare actuality of this present moment, feeling bodily sensations, hearing sounds, seeing thoughts as thoughts, feeling the presence, the aliveness of everything, and the ever-fresh discovery that everything is included in this here-now-presence, that there is only here-now-being, that nothing can actually be pinned down or separated out from everything else, and that all of it is a kind of dream-like appearance that vanishes instant by instant, endlessly self-liberating and refreshing itself.

I enjoy marinating or basking in presence (or spirit, if you prefer that word) in silence and stillness, opening into it more and more deeply, dissolving into it—and I also find it endlessly relieving and liberating to realize that being lost in thought or caught up in an emotional whirlwind is equally this indivisible ocean of being, that I’m never really lost or bound in the ways I can sometimes imagine that I am—in fact, that small “I” who imagines itself lost or found, enlightened or deluded, is only a mirage. And it is only that mirage that cares about eliminating all mirages and purifying “me.”

I value many different paths, pathless paths, direct paths, and non-paths to being awake in this one bottomless moment that is all we ever have, this placeless place of ever-present immediacy where we always already are, finding the grace in suffering and the enjoyment in simply being alive. Spirituality is as ordinary as those items on my hospital breakfast tray in the photograph above. Yet all of it is absolutely miraculous and extraordinary when we’re really seeing it, as if for the first time, which in fact, it always is.

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Love to all…