Unpindownable Effortless Presence

freedom from fixation and certainty

She saw that all phenomena arose, abided, and fell away.
She saw that the knowing of all this arose, abided, and fell away. 
Then she knew there was nothing more than this. 
No ground, nothing to lean on stronger than the cane she held.
Nothing to lean upon at all and no one leaning. 
She opened the clenched fist in her mind, let go and fell into the midst of everything. 

 — Tejitsu, 18th century Zen nun

When you become more sensitive to the body you have the impression that the inhalation-exhalation is no longer localised. It is all around you. It is important to see how we live mainly in our heads. Think with your whole body, feel with your whole body. In the whole feeling, the global sensation, you go into your room and touch your whole room. You go outside and touch the clouds, the trees, the water. You do not live in isolation. In your radiation you are in communion with all things. In this expansion there is no place for the ego because the ego is a contraction. Love is expansion, a feeling of spaciousness.

—Jean Klein

If you're thinking about these quotes and trying to analyze what they mean, you’re missing what they’re offering. They’re both pointing us to a kind of opening, dissolving and letting go that is not conceptual. They are pointing to the core of our being, the presence that is most intimate and that cannot be grasped because it is too close, too boundless, too transparent, too omnipresent. These quotes are pointing to a felt sense, a direct present moment discovery of the freedom and aliveness of no-thing-ness, the all-inclusive spaciousness of open presence, the wholeness where nothing can be pinned down or separated out, and yet everything appears distinct and vividly itself, all of it seamlessly breathing together.

In spirituality, there is a deeply habituated tendency to try to think our way to what we imagine we're seeking—trying to figure it out and pin it down conceptually. If we're trying to fix our car or figure out which road to take, that mode of functioning can be very helpful. But when we're trying to figure out the meaning of life, the nature of reality, or how to awaken from the trance of separation and unnecessary suffering, that approach simply doesn't work.

Hearing talks and reading words can help initially in providing some necessary clues and pointers, and they can help along the way by periodically providing reminders, encouragement, inspiration, and even new insights and perspectives. And if the words emerge from spacious presence, they can energetically transmit the listening silence, the openness, and the aliveness underneath the words.

Words are quite magical actually, how spoken sounds or little shapes on a page can unfold in the listening mind into whole worlds of meaning, and how they can evoke and invite the silence behind the sounds. Words are like breadcrumbs that can be followed, a finger pointing to the moon, the hands of a skilled bodyworker bringing attention to previously unfelt places, a light illuminating the dark.

Words can be useful and informative as well as beautiful, descriptive, revelatory, celebratory, evocative and moving. They can open new vistas, show us things we haven’t seen, create whole worlds in the imagination or deconstruct and dissolve what appears solid and substantial. They can touch and open us in profound ways.

I love words. Words pour out of me. I love writing and reading. Words are as much an activity of the Holy Reality as the sensory world or the listening silence or any other dimension of this living actuality. I would never suggest that we should (or could) live without words, thoughts and ideas. We swim in them like fish swim in water.

At the same time, as I’m often pointing out, words can also be very deceptive. They conceptually seem to carve out and concretize what cannot actually be grasped or held onto, turning inconceivable no-thing-ness into things that seem solid and substantial and extended in time and space. This is true even when the words are pointing this out. Just by naming the ungraspable, unpindownable, unnamable aliveness here and now, “it” seems to become something, this but not that, a subtle object that can be found, possessed or lost. But this no-thing-ness is not a thing. And yet, as soon as I say, “no-thing-ness,” that seems to become something. The vast majority of the words I write are meant to point this out and to invite, as the old Zen nun suggested, an opening of the clenched fist of the mind, a letting go and falling open into the midst of everything. Being this moment, this aware presence, this present experience.

Letting go of the scaffolding of words and ideas can feel scary, and it's easy to keep grabbing on. Sometimes that grabbing on takes the form of arguing over which words or formulations of reality are best, or maybe getting tangled up in mentally trying to figure out what different word-concepts actually mean, or maybe reading yet another menu instead of eating the meal, or looking at one more map rather than embarking on the actual journey. Of course, the map is an aspect of the territory, mapping is something the territory is doing, and we are always already the journey and the meal. We can never really avoid the living reality that is effortlessly presenting itself in every moment—this that cannot be named is all there ever is.

So-called awakening is a recognition of this. It’s a falling away of certainty and belief, an opening and dissolving into the vastness and immediacy of this one bottomless moment. Thought pops up and wants to take hold of this living reality, explain it, figure it out, pin it down, understand it, get control of it—but that never works.

So we learn to open and relax the clenched fist of the mind, to allow this ever-changing, ever-present, whatever-this-is to reveal and dissolve and open itself, without trying to grasp or make sense of it. We discover we are it—there is no gap, no “me” observing or experiencing “it.” Even the intermittent appearance or thought-sense of an apparent gap is itself simply another fleeting shape that this is momentarily taking. Whatever shape this takes, there is always only undivided, seamless, boundless, no-thing-ness, always right here, right now.

And the more we tune into this bottomless present moment and this awaring presence that we are, the more we discover the magic and the wonder of everything, and the freer we are from getting stuck in our imaginings—otherwise known as all the compelling dramas and plot lines in our movie of waking life, especially those of the central character, “me.” We can still enjoy the movies, and we can still play our part in the Great Drama—in fact, we have no choice—but we don’t take it as seriously.

We know that ultimately, nothing matters because nothing is really happening as it appears to be happening, and everything is vanishing in the same instant that it appears. We know that this “me” is unfindable, that it is nothing more than a mental image, a bunch of thoughts, stories, memories and sensations—a mirage with no substance.

It's possible to become increasingly sensitive to when words are serving us well and when we're clinging to them as life preservers in order to avoid dissolving into the ocean. Trying to think our way to some imagined goal is like trying to free ourselves from quicksand by clawing at it—the harder we try, the more deeply we dig ourselves into it. And whatever goal we have in mind, it’s always an imagination, as is the one seeking it. The only real goal is this, right here, right now, where we always already are. It is never not fully attained.

And yet, at the same time, it is often ignored, overlooked and unappreciated. And thus, we have suffering. And in response, we have paths and practices and teachers and all the rest of it. It may seem that some of that can be a huge distraction, and sometimes it can seem to go wildly astray, and at other times, it can seem immensely helpful—but in truth, none of it is ever how we think it is, and it can never be other than how it is. Even the so-called distractions, missteps and moments of disillusionment and heartbreak are all essential aspects of the whole. It’s all included.

What truly matters is the living presence here and now, and direct present moment experiencing, just as it is, not a bunch of ideas and beliefs about all this. So in my view, if a path or practice or teacher or book is bringing you home to right here, right now, that’s great. But if it’s just filling you with ideas and getting you more and more tangled up in thinking, then in my view, it’s probably not the best path or practice or teacher or book for you at this moment. In another moment, it might be. It’s like finding the right diet. It changes. It requires moment to moment sensitivity to what’s happening now, not what worked yesterday or what worked for someone else.

So I encourage us all to give open attention whenever it invites us to the non-conceptual living actuality here and now. Seeing, hearing, sensing, breathing—just this—the non-conceptual happening of this moment and the felt sense of presence itself. Not in some heavy-handed, result-oriented way, but playfully in a spirit of exploration, enjoyment and devotional love of what is.

Listen to the sounds. Feel the breathing. See the colors, the light, the textures and shapes, the movements. Feel the body—feel it as sensation, as energy, as light, feel how it expands into space and isn’t really solid or fixed. Feel the aliveness of everything, the spaciousness, the seamlessness, the boundlessness, the wonderful way everything is appearing and disappearing. See how the last moment has totally vanished, and how the whole history of your life and the world is all a kind of mental imagination.

Notice how the seemingly solid world seems to coalesce into known forms and how it dissolves and evaporates into ungraspable formlessness, how it all comes and goes. Notice the movement from waking life to dreaming to deep sleep and back to the waking dream. Feel the compulsion to think about all this if that arises, the urge to get a grip, hold on, figure it out, get control. Feel the fear of letting go into openness, of not knowing anything. Feel all this as sensation and energy, without labeling or judging or trying to get rid of it. Allow everything to be exactly as it is—and notice that this allowing is already happening, that it is the very nature of this mirror-like aware presence to allow everything to arise and pass away.

Is it possible, if only for one moment right now, to forget what all the great spiritual authorities have said? To forget all the second-hand information that has been learned and absorbed, all the models of reality, all the words and descriptions? Is it possible, right now, to simply be, without trying to understand what this is, or pin it down, or make sense of it?

And for that matter, is it actually possible not to simply be? Is there really anything other than this indivisible, unpindownable, utterly alive presence that we naturally and effortlessly always already are? Isn’t it always revealing itself, unfolding itself, being itself—appearing and disappearing? Even the grasping, the seeking, the conceptualizing, the holding on, the apparent solidity—isn’t it all simply momentary appearances, sensations and shapes of this boundless awaring presence that we are?

That’s not an idea to believe. It’s a possibility to explore and discover and experience and taste and live as and enjoy. It’s a way of life, a way of being, a pathless path going nowhere (now/here).

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Everything Is Included

Riffing on Peter Brown’s description of everything as radiant presence, my friend Dorothy Hunt writes:

Radiant Presence is dancing with itself as you are reading these words.  We may not need to interpret each dance. Life simply moves itself as an endless flow from a deep silent stillness. It moves as light and shadow, comedy and drama, the pain in your knee and the laughter of children at play.  There is no separation between what you most deeply are and who you take yourself to be.  Likewise, those who pronounce some moments as spiritual and others as not, perhaps have not seen deeply enough into the single, undivided wholeness of Being and its tapestry of infinite forms of energy--dancing as physical forms, thought-forms, feeling-forms, dream-forms, activity, sensory perceptions, ways of loving.

YOU are an expression of this radiance, exactly as you are, and yet the dance of this presence may pirouette in your heart as your longing to awaken, or to love more deeply, or to heal divisions that exist in yourself or in your world. What could possibly be excluded from this undivided wholeness moving as it does moment-to-moment?

No words can describe the Mystery once it reveals itself in its depth; the mind of thought is absent in those moments.  At best we can later attempt to point to the Unnameable using language. But once it reveals itself, we understand the profound truth in Bodhidharma’s answer centuries ago to the Chinese emperor Wu’s question: “Then who stands before me?”: “I don’t know.”  Yet inside, there is delight in deeply knowing that an unspeakable radiant presence is dancing in all moments, in all lives, in all experiences. Paradox indeed—this knowing and not-knowing—but only to the thinking mind.

—Dorothy Hunt, from the Moon Mountain Sangha July 2024 Newsletter 

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Love to all…