6. What Are You Looking For?
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This week we question what it is we’re all looking for and whether ‘Enlightenment’ really is as much hard-work as it sounds. Sound effects recorded in our kitchen during a particularly average Sunday lunchtime. Please feel free to comment.
March 22nd, 2010 at 7:07 am
Nice one! :)
Indeed sensations are something amazing, beautiful, magic. Perhaps it would be safer not to vilify thought though, eventually thought is also part of experience, it also is fantastic and magic. I love the imaginary world of some epics for instance.
About detachment i remember some statement from a Sufi tradition (which exactly: i forgot) which said: “i am not ascetic in order to be closer to God, but i am ascetic because there is only God”. What we take to be the end is often the beginning, and it is also true for the sentence “i am looking for happiness”.
March 22nd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
You’ve gotta work a little bit for it. Sometimes more, sometimes less. That’s the fun of it, no? Like any Muse, she’s not just up for grabs: you gotta deserve her at least a little bit.
Maybe your words perform the same function: bringing to clarity what shld be a given, doing the needful Work. Nine bows!
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:56 am
Like the kitchen sounds! At first I thought you’d recorded an intercity 125 to match talking about life speeding by, then realised it’s your kettle. (how amazing!) Like the sound of the fun you’re having too.
I agree that the mind takes us away from experience with wishing things to be different. Looking for happiness in things other than they are, even in ideas of ‘enlightenment’. I’m not sure you can just be ‘unattached’ tho. Perhaps rather drastic surgery would be needed? ALthough yes valuing those moments where we enjoy sensations more directly with less attachment is great. But even then there are often subtle levels of attachment or wishing things to be a certain way. I do not think this is wrong, just human. And those big painful attachments are there whether we like it or not. How have you guys managed with these? Personally it does seem to help to notice if there is aversion or clinging to experience, and if so then to turn towards it, to understand it, to dis-identify with it. I think it would be dangerous to say to oneself ha! no attachments! Far better to recognise one’s attachments so as not to be so driven by them, so that they may dissolve with time, patience and love. So perhaps there is a role for gentle cultivation of awareness..(and especially awareness of attachment) …as a practice?
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Thanks for the comments everyone!
@Ben: I like that Sufi quote. So for that “I am looking for happiness” sentence, you mean that the sentiment of beginning to look for happiness is also in some sense the end of looking for it? Sort of similar to, “You need to dream in order to make a dream come true”?
@Martin: “Like any Muse, she’s not just up for grabs: you gotta deserve her at least a little bit.” So true :) Ten bows!
@Julia: Yeah, there’s no escaping attachment really is there, you’re right that’s just the deal of being human! Overcoming attachments, most often not out of choice (bereavement, separation, etc), have been a huge part of my emotional life. And I would unhesitatingly support a cultivation of awareness as a means of easing such transitions. With awareness, like you say, you can see that it is somehow the nature of difficulties to resolve themselves if they are simply given the time, patience and love to do so. Yes and I think this is a practice, it’s a skill that can be improved over time.
March 24th, 2010 at 5:58 am
@Tom: with “I am looking for happiness” having its end at the beginning, i meant that the beginning of the sentence itself is “I” and that is the problem as well as the happiness.
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:08 pm
@Martin: Do you deserve to be what you are? No. You just are that already. You cannot be other than that but your mind will convince you that ‘what you are’ is nothing worth noticing. It will seduce you with ideas such as ‘Enlightenment’ and convince you ‘how to get it’ (do this, not that, etc. Most probably it will also let you know that ‘you’ are not good enough for it. You’re far too impure and unholy to ever ‘get it’.
Once seen what the mind gets up to, one can only laugh.
What you are is what your’e looking for. See that and the notion of ‘deserving’ falls away naturally.
@Julia: Glad you like our sounds effects! regarding attachment; I would suggest looking at just ‘who’ is attached to ‘what’.
Attachment and Unattachment, practice and cultivation etc, implies a fundamental duality, a separation. There is you and you are attached, it is pain and suffering, and you want to become unattached and happy and free. Then there is the ‘way’ the ‘method’ to do that. The method gets you from A to B. Method again implies a separation.
Speaking from the heart I say that there is no time to waste in seeing the falseness in this. If you want to be free, if you want to be unity, oneness, happiness, being…. then look now at just ‘who’ is it that wants to be ‘unattached’.
This practice does not take years, nor is there a ‘special method’ which needs to be learnt and cultivated. There is just now. Right now. And right now is free to all.
Look for what you are, beyond ideas of what you are. You are only ever the space or awareness in which these words, their meaning, the sensations or emotions you’re feeling, are all taking place. Even the idea of ‘Julia’ happens in this space.
Here there is no ‘getting’ no ‘doing’ no ‘better’ no ‘worse’. Just space in which everything dances. You are this space, space is what you are. So how can space control? manipulate? avoid? suffer? How can space be unfree?
When ‘you’ fall into space then all of this ends. And al the round-about cunning tricks of the mind are seen through.
I hope you fall soon.
Mike x
March 26th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
thanks for yr words Mike, always acutely observed. I’m thinking about the notion of the ethics of awakeness. What would it mean for someone to be Awake, in the way you describe, and be otherwise misguided? ‘Deserving’ is the wrong word, but it seems that the natural condition of Awake Mind is unlikely to occur (or if so, to be in a sense disturbed)in a mind that is also (simply because of its conditioning/karma, as you like) preoccupied with various forms of harmfulness. Or are they mutually exclusive? Your words would seem to imply so. Is the mind of someone who thieves, rapes, or murders, also potentially Awake? If not – why not? Buddhist dharma speaks of awakening flying on the wings of two things – insight/wisdom and compassion/merit. What is awakened mind without a prior, and continuing, context of right action? Does it mean anything, in fact? Yes, none of us need ‘deserve’ awakening or anything like it. But is it really going to happen, or mean anything, outside the ethical?
March 27th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Hi Martin,
I think this is really important actually. I’ve had think about it and here’s what I came up with..
I would say that there are two noticeable flavours or characteristics of ‘Awakening’: Emptiness and Love.
Herein lies a beautiful paradox: We realise emptiness in order to be free yet we realise love in order to free others.
It seems to me that seeing ‘oneness’ not only empties the mind of conceptual limitations but opens the heart like a flower.
Flower. Flow.
We then move naturally from the Mind into the Heart, from thinking into being, from the Many into the One.
From the awakening to the dream arises an abundant and tender compassion for those dreamers.
What is it that the ‘Awakened’ can do to awake others? Be a mirror to which they truly are, and never indulge in the apparent ‘reality’ of a suffering dreamer. There is nothing more truly compassionate then somebody who never shirks from pointing out your imaginary bonds, nothing more loving than rejecting everything but your obvious and inherent freedom.
This is Love loving.
You mentioned Buddhist Awakening as flying on the wings of insight and compassion. I think I agree but would instead say something like Awakening is the marriage of emptiness and fullness. The insight is to see the emptiness of all things, the compassion is to be the fullness.
Regarding ethics….
Well, it needs to be made clear that being allows all things. Everything. There is nothing which is not Awareness. Here I’m reminded of the pantheon of Hindu Gods. There is Shiva and Kali, creation and destruction. Polarities of the dream-world.
At one time I would have defended the right for an ‘Enlightened person’ to do whatever the hell he/she wanted to do, because why not? – Its all and dream so we can play can we not???
This reminded me of Alistair Crowley’s Maxim:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Will is only ever Awareness. Awareness is you, Awareness is emptiness, Emptiness as Will, Will-Willing whatever…
But now, something like intuition, heart-intuition, tells me that any forms of destructive living involving harming another, physically or psychologically is based upon separation and limitation rather than a conscious oneness.
All is One. Awareness. This is it.
This is not an idea to be played with which lets you do whatever you want. You certainly can do whatever you want but until you see your Oneness then all your actions will be born from illusion and separation and result in suffering for the false will always fail.
Where is the love and compassion in adding to this?
Oneness, expressed as Love, dissolves all illusions. It takes no prisoners.
So, I think that any action which uses people as a means to an end and which ignores someone’s fundamental divinity can only be based upon a basic misunderstanding of what it truly means to be a Human Being. To BE as ONENESS.
This does not mean you have to be ‘nice’ nor does it mean you become meek or Saintly. It means you act from Truth and like Jesus with the Money Lenders, sometimes you might just have to turn a few tables over and kick some illusory arse.
March 29th, 2010 at 2:01 am
Inspiring Mike. A beautiful vision of the experience of Awakening to Oneness, as you describe it, and the love that naturally reflects it. I was referring to all that comes prior to that experience, however. That what you describe will not arise fortuitously, or out of nothing at all, that it will require an equally crucial preparation-ground of many kinds. Which is where practice comes in, which is where what we do, now, before (or even after) Awakening might have arisen, is of the essence. Nothing is causeless, nothing is random, even Grace is that muse who we must serve, even when it seems everything has already been lost. Until then…wishful thinking, at best, deep delusion, at worst. The lotus blooms from the poisoned mud, dross, shit of separation. But what is it that prompts it to bloom?
March 30th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Hi Martin,
Good question! The important question! The ONLY question! What causes Awakening to bloom?
Well with this question the mind comes up with a lifetime of problems to solve. First do x then y then z, or try z,y,x, or perhaps just hardcore xxx!
I would say that from the relative side of the street where there is still an individual wanting ‘enlightenment’ then practice, technique and method are the only real options you have. Until these fail, and they will fail. Their job is to fail. It is this failure of any process which exposes the inherent reality of what you truly are.
But if you still feel like your going somewhere and getting something, then you continue down whatever ‘path’ you have chosen.
From the absolute side of the street it appears that both everything you ever did, and nothing you ever did are the apparent ’cause’ of awakening.
But it just doesn’t make sense to say that awakening was directly caused by anything because the agent of cause, the ‘Me’ falls away and is seen as an inadequate idea which never really did anything. There is only Awareness.
So if you didn’t do it, then how could you have caused it? You cannot produce what you already are. Your are free, you cannot ‘make’ freedom.
It would be like a flower thinking it has to ‘become’ a flower. When it is realised that the flower was already a flower, then there is great relief and all ‘becoming’ falls away. Then, there is the simple fact of flowerness. Beautiful.
Some people get ‘it’ stepping off a bus, some whilst sitting in Zazen or looking into a Guru’s eyes.
There is no absolute ‘way’. How you realise it isn’t the realising itself. Ikkyu awakened when he heard a crows caw, another monk when he heard a stone he’d kicked strike a bamboo.
Because its everything and nothing, you can see it in everything and nothing. There is no way, and yet any way is it.
You can’t go off the path, can’t escape the net. The apparent tightrope is a million miles wide.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Enough of this nonsense Tom my old friend! All are capapble of delving into said question and some choose to study via the medium of literature, unfortunately this will unavoidably influence your path (to enlightenment)and ultimately your perception of the the question! free your memory of external influence (the sages etc, etc) and simply define the question in your own mind. The trick then is not to allow your own personal experiences and feelings to distort your findings, discount any seemingly usefull parallels and your then left with what is. And what is, simply is the question. There is no cosmic illusion, no divine trickery. The answer to all questions including the greatest question of all is simply a question, beyond that is impercievable!
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Ohh and judging by the sound effects Tom i think you are looking for a spoon or could it be a fork. No it’s a spoon for sure. Is that the answer? Am i now enlightened? Damn it! I miss our chats……. i love some of the comments left on this site though… touching.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:16 pm
@Aaron, me ol’ mucker :) You really are a wise old sage and I know you’ll hate me saying that!
“There is no cosmic illusion, no divine trickery.”
It’s a spoon alright, a spoon every time my friend. Too right you’re enlightened old boy, you’ve bloody well earned it as well!
@Martin, Julia, Mike:
I just wanna speak up again for practice; that it is both something worthwhile and, perhaps more importantly, something to cherish and enjoy.
One must walk a very careful line between doing and not-doing, both are profoundly important, but both are also potentially detrimental. Personally I feel that on the spiritual path there is nothing more extraordinary to realise than the sheer uncanniness that anything exists at all. That’s it, that’s the big breakthrough, nothing more. However, we’re still lumped with attachments, habits, bills and, most significantly, a mind; a mind that will do anything and everything within its power to mislead.
Getting to know the mind is a lifetime’s work and certainly does not happen over night. Ironically some of the deepest, darkest and deluded tricks of the mind are the ones that relate to ‘spirituality’. In the name of freedom, peace, goodness and all that jazz it has by far its most secure hiding place and by that same fact it is from there that it can also unleash its most insidious and destructive thoughts. “I have attained the absolute therefore all my thoughts are pure”. Hmmmm.
Getting to know something, whether it be friends or the mind, is something that can only happen in time and requires a certain sense of humility and long-term commitment. A spiritual practice is, in one sense, a form of long-term commitment to the mind. A commitment that, like a true friendship, persists through the goods times and the bad, and occasionally offers the sanity of a pinch of salt.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Dear Mike and Tom,
Interesting comments thank you both very much. It feels like a comparison of the ‘gradual’ and the ‘sudden’ paths to awakening. (Emphasising method and practice vs the sudden experiential knowledge of what is really (or isn’t) there in terms of ‘no self’).
Mike, thank you for your passionate words.
Intellectually I understand that there is no intrinsic self. HOwever that doesn’t stop me finding myself clinging to ideas or aversive of pain. The question for me is what to do (or not to do) when I see this happening. The habit is of course to reactively try to change the experience. I think turning towards such an experience is to become more aware of these processes, and can allow one to watch them without getting sucked in, to understand them better, and see them more as phenomena. i.e not me nor mine. Do you think this is similar to your experience of the freedom of being space?
Asking myself who is this self? (surely also a form of practice!) has a similar feel to me as investigatively turning towards experience . I have not asked myself this much before because it has felt like an intellectual imposition on experience. However I know it can be useful. I’m thinking that to be useful it is important that it is linked with experience, that the intention should be to understand experience more deeply and to know the mind. (rather than risk using it for escape/suppression). Is this your experience?
Tom I love your comments about befriending the mind with humility and long term commitment.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:21 am
Dear Julia
Unfortunately, the biggest barrier to seeing what you are is the intellectual ‘understanding’ of it. I carried around all sorts of ideas which I though I ‘knew’ for years and years only to realise that no amount of knowledge can give birth to ‘this’.
You cannot reach where you are. You cannot get to where you are. You cannot practice what you are. This is because you simply are. Fact.
You know you are. That’s it.
The mind reaches out from habit to pick up ideas and labels in order to function, but all our labels are created by mind, and then mind believes in the reality of its own creations.
But what is it that knows mind?
You know you are not your thoughts or sensations, they come and go. Even the habit to associate comes and goes. It all comes and goes.
Yet does anything come and go without you knowing it? Can you know anything without being aware of it?
In order to know you must be aware. To know something means to be aware of it. So knowing and awareness are the same.
How do we know? Through our senses. We perceive. What is the fabric of perception? Knowing. To know is to perceive – and to perceive is to be aware.
Perception and knowledge cannot be without awareness.
What is there which is not perception?
No perception = No world. For you, at least.
Can you see that everything then, world, tree, moon, person, Julia, pain, thought, label, dream…is only ever your awareness appearing as these forms?
The forms come and go, but what is it they spring from?
You are here. Right now. Free.
You are awareness, arising now as these words, their meaning, a sensation, a sense of peace…
The notion of a separate ‘you’ also arises as awareness.
It all plays a part.
When seen that all is awareness then all is also emptiness as awareness in itself has no qualities, yet, paradoxically, it is everything in terms of appearances.
So you are everything and nothing, simultaneously,
This is the ‘space’ which no words can describe. There is no ‘practice’ to be what you are.
You are beautiful, you are free.
Mike x.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Hi MIke,
I should probably preface this with the statement that I’m curious about the questions and issues you’re discussing but am ultimately unconvinced about the conclusions.
What are we free ‘from’? What are we free ‘for’?
Your reply to Julia’s comprehensive attempt to ‘understand’ is purely ideological:
“You cannot reach where you are. You cannot get to where you are. You cannot practice what you are. This is because you simply are. Fact.
You know you are. That’s it.”
Not a ‘fact’ at all, but a simple refusal of temporality. The association that there is ‘no past’ and ‘no future’ and that there is ‘only the present’ ignores the implicit identification of the knowing of the very word – we ARE ‘pre-sent’. To be in the present is, I think, explicit although we often associate the present as only ‘this’ moment – ultimately, there is a ‘pre’ and ‘sent’ -ness to us, and if there is some kind of fundamental ‘truth’ in the gap between our ‘pre’ness and ‘sent’ness then it is only determined by the possibility of allowing our capability to ignore it.
More specifically I can’t grapple with your conception of ‘freedom’ or ‘beauty’ without their antithetical agents – ‘slavery’ and ‘ugliness’. What agency/ies or institutions create our conceptions of ‘freedom’ or ‘beauty’? What, fundamentally are we free ‘for’ or ‘from’? Is there, as a way of signifying my point, such a thing as a ‘free’ ‘slave’? Is there ‘freedom’ in a concentration camp? Hans Christian Anderson’s tale ‘The ugly duckling’ is enough to illicit the subjective problematic of ‘beauty’ being contingent on group or political dynamism.
Sorry for being somewhat of a gadfly in the ointment you’re working towards but my philosophical pre-suppositions find your methodology problematic.
P
March 27th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
@Discussion on compassion:
Describing the so-called enlightenment with words and concepts is just as trying to explain the taste of a fruit with words. The only difference is everyone tastes this fruit, but look for a specific taste to attribute to the fruit.
Concepts are not irrelevant though, in a world of light only, the only way to discover light is through the many colours which distinguished from one another. But eventually, considering all colours with equanimity, there is just light-in-colours. In the same way there is only perception/manifestation/being which is known as many, but ultimately it can be seen as the one-in-all.
So when there is a discussion on compassion, let’s be clear: it has nothing to do with the so-called enlightenment. The discussion on a so-called enlightened being knowing compassion presupposes a substantial individual with attributes. This however is the world of thought, it is not relevant to Light.
Suppose water could drink? What thirst could be attributed to the water? In the same way the self-conscious knows the self, but it is the self only.
The idea of a compassionate enlightened is a distortion of Truth, just as colour is a distortion of light. What is manifested is what is manifested, naming it, understanding it, is irrelevant. It’s the beauty and simplicity of this which is compassionate. It is not a compassion bound to relationships, it is compassion by itself.
This said i kind of agree with Mike in the sense that the mind is taking its source in perception. To formulate the above ideas, the mind, thought is necessary. The mind is definitely part of this process of realisation, but it is not the subject of it. When it knows its own limits, it can accept its inefficacy and relax, (to a certain extent).
April 18th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
I totally disagree with Ben here again, but since he doesn’t seem to believe in the importance and relevance of names and understanding it is kind of pointless to engage with his thinking any further. He’s just plain wrong and should refrain from the debate since he doesn’t believe that it can achieve anything.