Transcendence & Transformation
Plus book excerpt, video and more
TRANSCENDENCE AND TRANSFORMATION:
The word transcendence has many possible meanings. If it means denying the body and our human beingness or escaping everyday life, then it’s not my cup of tea. But if it means realizing something beyond our habitual ways of seeing ourselves and the world and discovering subtler and more holistic dimensions of reality, then I’m all for it.
As I see it, the transcendent is right here, shining in every ordinary experience. It’s the awaring presence—the wholeness, the immediacy, the openness—beholding (being and holding) it all. It’s the magical way that everything self-liberates instantly, dissolving as soon as it appears. It’s the evanescent quality of both the imaginal realm and the seemingly substantial realm of so-called material reality, which is not as substantial or as fixed as it seems. It’s the love we feel for what is fragile and impermanent and inseparable from us—and the joy, depth and poignancy of that love. It’s our embodied human nature and that which transcends all boundaries, limits and definitions, and the way they show up together. It’s the all-inclusive, multi-dimensional, unpindownable, indeterminate, ineffable, dynamic and evolving nature of reality. It’s the wonder of not knowing what this is, and yet knowing it intimately as our immediate direct experiencing.
The openness of Here-Now is not conceptual or abstract. It’s not an idea to believe in. It can be felt. It’s both immanent and transcendent, and it reveals the absence of a boundary between them. The spaciousness of being is palpable at every level. Openness, like space, is unbroken, indivisible, all encompassing, whole. Like unconditional love, the open space of aware presence allows everything to appear and disappear. It holds onto nothing. Infinity and eternity (Here-Now) seemingly collapses into time and space (here and there, now and then) and into what appears as infinitely diverse, seemingly independent and persisting forms, but in attending more carefully, these ever-changing kaleidoscopic forms turn out to be unpindownable, unresolvable, inseparable, interdependent and holographic in nature. Everything contains the whole. Nothing stands alone, and yet every moment and every being (every wave, every whirlpool, every snowflake, every human life) is unrepeatable and absolutely unique.
There are many ways of experiencing and expressing transcendence. Silent meditation is one way. Singing the blues is another way, through the alchemy of turning grief and oppression into beauty and music. Finding the extraordinary in ordinary life is yet another way. Wim Wender’s movie Perfect Days is a gorgeous expression of transcendence in the repetitive life of a man who cleans public toilets for a living. Transcendence sparkles in a lovingly cleaned toilet bowl!
Transformation, as I see it, is happening naturally all the time. Nothing stays the same for even an instant. Human beings are a movement of the natural world, and humans have created many activities that are potentially transformative—education, psychotherapy, spiritual practices, somatic work, all the various art forms, and so on.
Transformation is at the very heart of what the spiritual journey is all about: seeing through the thought-sense of separation and dualistic conflict, relaxing the self-contraction, opening the heart-mind and discovering that it is always already open, waking up to the ever-present wholeness of being, seeing the false as false, being whole-heartedly who we are—both as an individual person and as impersonal boundless presence.
And a crucial point, one that is often overlooked, is that transformation only happens now, not in the future. Yes, it seemingly involves a change over apparent time, but that change always happens now, and if we are focused on an imagined or desired future result, we will be overlooking the jewel of here-now. Genuine transformation is not about going somewhere other than right here where we are; nor is it about having some bigger, better, different experience other than the one we are having right now. It’s not about becoming somebody or something else. It’s seeing what’s here now in a new way and discovering the aliveness and freedom in every seemingly ordinary moment no matter how it appears, an aliveness that no concept can ever capture.
Thinking about all this tends to be a grasping and clutching activity that objectifies the living actuality and generates the mirage-like separate self who is trying to “get” some kind of imagined “it,” whereas liberation always involves relaxing, opening, melting and releasing—dissolving the imaginary boundary between wave and ocean, and between seeker and sought. In a deep sense, there is really nothing to get, and even the ways we apparently miss the mark are all an inseparable part of this unfathomable happening, and none of it has the solidity or continuity that it seems to have.
Transcendence doesn’t require a belief in any supernatural power. It’s not about belief at all. It’s what emerges in silence and stillness, in open listening, but also in lovemaking, poetry, dance and great literature. It can be sensed in gothic cathedrals and in minimalist Zen centers, as well as in kitchens and living rooms. Transcendence is what the Sufi whirling dervishes are up to in their whirling and what Mary Oliver brings forth in her poems. It’s what I hope I did in my book Death: The End of Self-Improvement when I wrote about the gritty realities of old age, vaginal dryness and anal cancer. Really, there is no where it is not fully available. The transcendental (the love, the beauty, the joy, the peace) is not in the apparent objects; it’s in the listening awaring presence beholding it all.
It can be talked about, expressed and pointed to in widely varied ways, but what liberates us from our imaginary bondage is not getting hung up on evaluating and comparing the pointing fingers (the conceptual maps), but instead, dissolving into the experiential moon to which they are pointing. That which we are calling “the moon” here is not conceptual. It is just THIS, right here, right now.
BOOK EXCERPT:
This is a selection taken from two chapters in my book Nothing to Grasp, one chapter called Is That All There Is? and the other called The Original Face:
When I point to the Holy Reality by drawing attention to the sound of traffic, the song of a bird, the smell of coffee, a cigarette butt in the gutter, or the hum of a vacuum cleaner, people sometimes ask, Is that it? Is that all there is? Traffic, birds, coffee, cigarette butts? Aren’t we supposed to transcend all of that? Isn’t that all an illusion or just “the material world”? What about “Ultimate Reality” and “supreme enlightenment”? Isn’t the deepest truth “prior to consciousness”? What about “the noumenon,” “the soul,” “God,” “emptiness” or “pure awareness”?
Ultimate Reality is not somewhere else. Supreme enlightenment is not somewhere else. The absolute is not somewhere else. The Holy Reality is the intimacy, the subtlety, the aliveness of Here / Now. This is God, this is emptiness — this blue sky, this white cloud, this piece of trash in the gutter, this armchair, this television program, this leaf fluttering in the wind, this surge of anger, this yellow school bus, this wave of loneliness, this burst of laughter, this train of thought, this seeing-hearing-sensing-awaring-being. This is the Beloved.
A barking dog. Green leaves dancing in the sunlight. The listening silence. Open. Vast. Limitless. Just this!
This is not like anything else. It is as it is. How is it? It’s not any particular way for it is always changing.
The wonder of life is intimately connected to its transience and insubstantiality. Everything changes and no passing form has any enduring existence. Our childhood, our greatest relationship, our most embarrassing moment, the moon landing, the holocaust, the events of September 11, the stories on the nightly news, the entire history of the world, our whole life at the moment of our death—all these things pass before us and vanish like dreams (or nightmares). What is undeniable in every passing form, what cannot be doubted, is the suchness of it, the present-ness.
Presence (or emptiness) is not a “thing” that can be grasped. Awareness is not something that is “out there” separate from everything it reveals. Awareness is another word for boundlessness, for unicity, for seamlessness, for the unconditional love in which there is no separation between lover and beloved. In the light of awareness, whatever appears is the Holy Reality.
When you dissolve into this groundless ground, there is only love – love for yourself, love for the world, love for all beings.
All there is arises all-at-once Here / Now in perfect stillness. The stars that are light-years away, the past, the future, all the different points of view, all the different movies that are playing – everything is Here / Now. This is the timeless eternity, the placeless presence, the all-inclusive unicity whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Here / Now is the groundless ground, the Ultimate Subject, the Original Face, that which remains in deep sleep when every experience disappears along with the mirage-like experiencer. No subject or object, no presence or absence remains.
And this Original Face is not something other than a bowl of soup or a cigarette butt in the gutter.
—from Nothing to Grasp
VIDEO:
This is a talk I gave at the SAND (Science & Nonduality) Conference back in 2016:
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Love to all…
Thursdays have become one of my favorite mornings with the arrival of your offerings to my inbox, Joan! You say: “but in attending more carefully, these ever-changing kaleidoscopic forms turn out to be unpindownable, unresolvable, inseparable, interdependent and holographic in nature.” I am realizing more and more that the little “me” is existentially resistant to the kaleidoscopic and holographic, the relaxing of the self-contraction. Egoic self seems to want to be pinned down to its own solid concept of “real”. Awareness of this grasping for subject/object and not needing to do anything about it as I sit with your words. Thank you!
Thanks again Joan. “Nothing to Grasp” is the first book of yours I ever read. It was sent by mistake to me I had in fact ordered another book, by another author. I started reading it and couldn’t put it down. From that moment on I became a devoted fan. I have read all your books and many others on your booklist. I read somewhere years ago the question being asked where is the center of the Universe and the answer given was everywhere!!!! Wonderful post. Much love to all.