Awake in This Life

When shampoo attacks…

Anyone interested in a comprehensive collection of Buddhist blogs and news should check out Alltop. Nice work from Guy Kawasaki, et al.

In his blog post, Tom Stine notes:

The only “criteria” I have for awakening is seeing, truly seeing, beyond the self, the “I”, the “me” that everyone thinks they are. When that is seen through, completely through, it is as if one has awakened from a dream, a dream of self. One then knows oneself as the Unborn as the Buddha would have said. Or we can say Emptiness, Spirit, the Formless.

However, as one great Zen master pointed out, “to encounter the Absolute is not yet enlightenment.” This awakening has to penetrate the entire being. When it does, the person knows through and through the truth: there is only One. Wherever they look, they see One. And this One has the appearance of form but is in fact Formless, Empty. When they look inside themselves, they see Nothing, Emptiness, the Absolute. All is Emptiness, all is One.

As much as I liked the content of this post, in my experience it is precisely here that both students and teachers can potentially get into trouble since this interpretation puts us just past the half way mark of the climb, so to speak. We haven’t come back into the world until we can see and know “the many” both for what it is, and what it is not.

Stine rightly points out that each teacher will approach this differently, but if any of us consciously expresses our living from the One in ways that are deeply integrated, the Many spontaneously shows up as neither distinct nor singular.

I talk about this in Chapter 3.

All boundaries fall away in [the] conscious meeting of Infinity. There is neither this nor that, we might say. All is once and forever the One and the many, all at the same moment.

Neti, Neti! Neither this, nor that!

The implications of this are huge and particularly interesting to egos that are looking for an Omega-point in this process: When am I done? Is that teacher fully awakened?

Stine goes on to say, in a follow up post that discusses Adyashanti’s view of the process

“To encounter the Absolute is not yet Enlightenment.” … The veil parts, but then more is seen through over time. To be certain, this process has been my experience. And yet. And yet, is that even true? While it may appear that a process is occurring, it also seems, to those who reach the endpoint of this process, as if the process never occurred.

There is some great stuff here, and I think Adya pretty much nails the unfolding process of Awakening nicely. But there’s never an endpoint. There are deeper and deeper levels of resonance, but no Omega to this unfolding. None of us is ever absolutely done, fully cooked, totally baked, or completely educated.

From Chapter 6:

None of us will ever be finished with this work. We won’t arrive at some endpoint and be done attaining stillness, since the Universe will keep moving, always showing us that there is more to meet. More grace and resistance to observe and then release.

So often it’s suggested that fundamentalists are at the root of the majority of the problems facing both this country and the world. I couldn’t agree more. Except that those making this suggestion can obviously be guilty of the same unconsciousness they see in others.

An author I know makes this case in his new book:

Fundamentalism arises when any religious organization, or any person, attaches so intensely to some version of truth that it must be defended. In this space, the ego continually seeks security by playing out its drama of “attack and defend.” This drama offers all sorts of teachers and practitioners an opportunity to commit to various forms of separation where an attitude of “we’re right and they’re wrong” not only rules, but begets more attachment. This space can sow seeds of terrible violence all in the name of the collective egoic version of what it deems sacred.

So who is it that’s getting fundamental, really? Surely anyone in the midst of defending a position runs into this trap. It’s like the moment any experienced meditator begins to attach to non-attachment, he finds himself immediately thrown into the contraction of an ego that sees itself as Awake. Defending that which doesn’t need any kind of defense lures us into the same trap.

In this this podcast, Michael McAlister discusses what he calls the “Four A’s” of awareness, acceptance, availability, and authenticity. Living from the Four A’s we free ourselves from the contracted activity and limited thinking of the small self.

Check out the link. The book is currently up at Amazon.com

Awake in This Life