Awake in This Life

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

—Nagarjuna

Among the great things to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Descending the Mountain means that we are able to engage each moment in life from an unattached position of discriminating awareness rather than from a position of judgment. It can be helpful to think of discriminating awareness as simply the recognition of whatever presents itself to us without any positive or negative mental evaluation. Judgment, on the other hand, involves the ego’s assessment and appraisal. For example, as I began my meditation practice years ago, there were times when I would finish my morning meditation and then think, Wow, that was a great meditation. I hope I can do that again this afternoon. This egoic evaluation was metaphorically putting clouds in what otherwise would have been an open, blue-sky mind. In my contracted striving to recreate my personal judgment of what was great, I inhibited the expansion I’d tasted in the first place.

As an example, we might consider the ocean again: water vapor differs from waves, and waves differ from water beneath the surface. Yet vapor, waves, and deep water are also inherently the same thing. Recognizing their difference and their similarity without evaluating them as good or bad is exercising our discriminating awareness since there is no clinging involved. On the other hand, if we were to say something like, “I hate this… the waves suck today… no sense in even trying to surf,” the ego is attached to an outcome that it can’t manage and has therefore offered its negative evaluation.

Discriminating awareness, on the other hand, shows us that the various permutations of water are simply permutations of water. Whether at the stormy surface, or in the stillness of its greatest depths, water offers all of us only one constant essential quality of wetness. There are no preferences in this evaluation, nor are there any attachments. Metaphorically, wetness and Witness are the same. In other words, wetness is equally available to all parts of the ocean, just like the Witness is equally available to all parts of our experience. No matter what state we’re ever in, no matter what our circumstance or our life may offer, no matter what our depth of realization, we see that this immediate experience we call Being is always and forever expressed as one simple essence: Awareness.

From this view, all things have a certain holiness to them that transcends whatever label the ego might like to apply to whatever it sees. So while there may be no point in trying to surf when there are no waves, there is nothing to hate about the situation once we come off the mountaintop.

The only option for any of us, once we begin to see through our judgments and then let go of them, is to act from an inherently open place of discriminating awareness. A key implication of this orientation is that we have to make sure that the Freedom born from the enlightened perspective is extended to all beings without any reservation or evaluation. This means that radical, even revolutionary, personal action needs to be taken in order to support the expression of this teaching. Our practice of Enlightenment needs to involve not only sitting still but also letting that stillness consciously inform all of our mental and physical activity with total generosity. This can be a paradox on the level of mind and one that gets lots of climbers into trouble. Seekers, for example, are usually only looking for a way feel good so they cling to the ego’s definition of good rather than rest in the discriminating awareness of Spirit. Experiences of profound states of meditative bliss, for example, will be judged by the ego as something to preserve, thus defiling the experience. This craving for bliss fuels resistance to anything that gets in the way of its recurrence. Resistance leads to evaluation and then judgment, and the doors of judgment close on Awakened awareness.

The way out of this trap is to recognize it as a trap. Practitioners should repeatedly meet the experience of the life they are given without resisting anything, and then act from this place of openness. This unattached way of meeting life prevents the ego from evaluating and then going after or avoiding anything. As this ego-free meeting informs practitioners’ lives, they can begin to embody an enlightened awareness. Put another way, practitioners see that all things and all situations are beyond the limits of ego’s view. At the same time, they see the need to integrate or “improve” life by bringing conscious awareness to it, so that the wisdom and compassion inherent in this integration can spontaneously meet any situation.

This is how Awakening changes the world. It gives us more options rooted in generosity so that our choices work for the sake of the whole instead of for only ourselves. As opposed to allowing for us to stay on our meditation cushions or in our monasteries, this Awakening actually directs us to participate fully in the world with a committed purpose. Getting beyond judgment shows us that we can live in ways that are helpful, and this helpfulness naturally shows itself when we inhabit a perspective involving no fixated resistance to anything. From this place of nonattachment, all attempts to change the world become expressions of ease and balance, and they are amazingly powerful since they neither cling to nor avert anything. Being in the world in this way resonates in the hearts and minds of all who can watch this compassionate expression of Spirit in action. But in order for us to ground ourselves in this space, we need to Know the Infinite deeply. We can never grasp at judgmental certitudes and expect to be helpful at the same time. This is a key component in the actions of people coming down the Mountain. When they are open to the wisdom offered by discriminating awareness, they can burn with an embodied helpfulness and tender attention that the world always needs. If this recipe is followed with care, whatever comes out of the oven, so to speak, offers up one amazing taste. Rather than compulsively judging, compartmentalizing, categorizing, and evaluating things, a cooked practitioner sees that there is variation and unity all at once.