Nondual Highlights
Issue #1806 Sunday, May 23, 2004
Editor: Mark
The gate
was opened to me ... in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew
more than if I had been many years together at a University ... I
saw it as in a great deep in the internal; for I had a thorough
view of the Universe, as a complex moving fullness wherein all
things are couched and wrapped up.
- Jacob Boehme
To be awake is to be unconditionally open to all that is. It is
to be completely without prior opinion or assumption about
anything. To stay awake is to surrender, totally, to unedited and
unrestricted awareness, to abandon the pretense of both past and
future.
~~Scott Morrison. from DailyDharma
There's an old story about a sailing vessel off the coast of
Brazil. The crew had run out of fresh water and when they spotted
another vessel they signaled to them to please come and meet
them, that they were out of fresh water, which is a very
dangerous thing on the ocean. They were out of sight of land. And
so they signaled, "We need water. We'll send some boats
over." And they got back the signal, "Put down your
buckets where you are." Although they were out of sight of
land, they were where the Amazon River empties into the ocean.
It's such a massive river that even out of sight of land, there
is still fresh water. So, "put down your buckets where you
are." Our practice and our realization is right where we
are. There is nothing missing right here. In one of the
enlightenment stories in the Dentoroku (Transmission of Light),
the stories that Keizan Zenji compiled of the enlightenment
experiences or koans related to each of the ancestors of the Soto
lineage, there is one I want to share with you from Lex Hixon's
translation in Living Buddha Zen
(Transmission #40), Tao Ying to Tao P'i:
The living Buddha Tao Ying enters the Dharma
Hall and remarks to the assembled practitioners: "If you
wish to attain a limitless result, you must become a limitless
being. Since you already are such a being, why become anxious to
bring about any such result?"
This is like Suzuki Roshi's teaching, "You're perfect just
as you are" or Matsu's "This very mind is Buddha."
So, "since you already are such a limitless being, why be
anxious about such a result?" So are we practicing just to
express this limitless being, or because we think we're not a
limitless being? And once we discover we are a limitless being,
will we continue practicing? Well, of course. That's what
limitless beings do. This is Dogen Zenji's
practice-enlightenment, practice-realization. This practice
itself expresses the limitlessness which is our essential being.
Another one of the stories in this collection is (Transmission
#37) Yao-shan to Yun-yen:
The living Buddha asks a wandering monk who
appears at the monastery one day, "Where have you
practiced?" The successor says, "Twenty years under
Pai-chang." "What does he teach?"
"He usually says, ‘My expression contains all hundred
flavors’."
"What is the total expression neither salty nor bland?"
The monk hesitates to make any statement.
During this moment, the Awakened One breaks through. "If you
remain even slightly hesitant, what are you going to do about the
realm of birth and death that stands right here before your
eyes?"
Becoming more bold, the destined successor replies, "There
is no birth and there is no death."
The Master says, "Twenty years with the wonderful Pai-chang
has still not freed you from habitual affirmation and habitual
negation. I ask you again plainly, what does Pai-chang
teach?"
Successor: "He often remarks, ‘Look beyond the three
modes of looking. Understand beyond the six modes of
understanding’."
Master: "That kind of instruction has no connection whatever
to actual awakening. What does Pai-chang really teach?"
The successor says, "Once Master Pai-chang entered the
Dharma Hall to deliver a discourse. The monks were standing
expectantly in straight rows. Suddenly the sage lunged at us
fiercely, swinging his large wooden staff. We scattered in every
direction. In full voice he then called out, ‘Oh monks!’
Heads turned and eyes looked and Pai-chang asked gently, ‘What
is it? What is it?’."
The Master says, "Thanks to your kindness today, I have
finally been able to come face to face with my marvelous brother
Pai-chang."
In his commentary, Lex Hixon says,
Yun-yen is not merely repeating his master's
words. He has realized the spirit of Pai-chang's teachings which
he reports carefully to the Awakened One. Hesitating at first to
make any statement at all that would limit the richness of what
he has received, only the non-teaching "What is it? What is
it?" has Yun-yen overlooked. Why? Because it is more subtle
than the subtle, more essential than the essential. Under the
relentless probing of Buddha Yao-shan, the submerged memory of
this non-teaching arises from early in his discipleship.
Remembering the fierce swinging of the wooden staff, Yun-yen has
suddenly become sensitive again to the dangerous realm of birth
and death, which from an absolute point of view, he has
mistakenly dismissed. "What is it? What is it?" Spoken
twice, almost in a whisper, clears away both absolute and
relative. This is what our ancient Japanese guide calls
"releasing the handhold on the rockface and leaping from the
precipice."
This question comes up again and again throughout Zen history.
This is what Seppo (Hsueh-Feng) asked the monks who came to his
gate, "What is it?" And what Yun-men said, "What's
the matter with you?" What is the business that brings us
here? Please investigate this: "What is it?" "What
is it you're doing here?" I don't ask you to look for the
words for it. Words are secondary. I want you to find the feel of
it. I want you to find the fire of it. I want you to touch the
source of your life force, to feel the joy and the love that can
come from living from the source of your being. This is taking
refuge: to throw yourself completely into the aliveness of your
life. It's pretty risky. You could lose yourself. There's nothing
to hold onto.
In the onrushing, kaleidoscopic chaos of our life there is
nothing substantial to hold onto. Arising moment after moment
after moment, we can't identify with any of it. It arises and
passes away. In the midst of the openness of this question,
"What?...What?...What?..." When you touch that really
open place, let it enlarge, let it expand, let it explode your
limited view of a substantial separate self and allow you to
experience the boundlessness of your being. Seeing yourself in
everything. This is Tung-shan's "It's like facing the jewel
mirror...form and image behold each other. You are not it. It
actually is you." This doesn't mean that when he saw his
reflection in the stream, that he saw that his reflection was
him. It meant that the water was him, the rocks were him,
everything...the onrushing stream was not separate from himself.
Wherever he looked was a jeweled mirror. Whatever he saw was not
separate. This is awakening to the totality of who you are and
what you are. It's not that you disappear. You are you and you
are everything, simultaneously. The relative and absolute
intermingle and interpenetrate, as we chanted this morning in
"Merging of Difference and Unity." You are you and you
are not separate from anything. It begins with breath. Just
breathing in and breathing out. What is inside, what is outside?
Following your breath in your hara, deep at the bottom of your
belly, let it out all the way...let it go completely. Just exhale
and don't worry about the inhale. The exhale will become an
inhale, of its own. Trust it. There, at the bottom of your
breath, between exhale and inhale, is a very quiet moment. Stay
right there. Be with whatever arises, right there.
- excerpt from Right There Where You're Standing - A Dharma Talk
by Zenkei Blanche Hartman
In 1999, I was
working in New Jersey, directing the natural & organic foods
division of a prominent nationwide wholesale distributor. After
several decades in this business, I had achieved a level of
success within my field that had brought me all the material and
social blessings that I could have hoped for. Moreover, I was
relatively free from illusions about any of it -- almost 3
decades of zen practice had disabused me of the notion that any
of it amounted to anything. It was simply service, and I also
recognized intuitively that none of it was my doing, that I was
simply being used. This had always been my "prayer" --
that I might be an unobstructed instrument -- "not my will,
but Thine".
Nevertheless, even after many "kensho", which
repeatedly had granted the confirming gift of "clear
seeing", a certain dryness had crept into my soul, something
I could never quite "put my finger on", but there
regardless, patiently gnawing at my heart. Perhaps those who have
delved deeply into Advaita might relate.
At any rate, our office had just been wired for the internet, and
I was naturally curious about this new capacity. I began by
browsing into "spiritual" topics, and was amazed by
what was available for perusal. One late morning, in between
spreadsheets and store designs, I happened upon a site that
featured a picture of Mother Meera. I had recently come across an
article in a magazine about her, but I was unprepared for what
followed.
As her murti photo slowly opened on my screen, I fell into a
stunned silence, and over an hour passed by before I was even
able to inhale. I then rose, shaken, from my desk, informed my
secretary that I was going out for lunch, and drove to a near-by
pond to walk along the banks and let what had just
"happened" sort itself out.
Within moments, I found my gaze lifted towards the sky, and as I
glimpsed the brilliant sun above my head, it felt as if Meera
reached in and squeezed my heart till it simply burst from the
pressure. A waterfalling cascade of deep sobbing tears erupted
from my core, searing me like volcanic lava. I fell down on my
knees, utterly overwhelmed and engulfed in Mercy. This was like
nothing I could have ever imagined! I was devastated by the
experience, as if a totally new organ had spontaneously developed
in my chest, and I could not cease from weeping constantly over
the coming months. All my previous experiences could not touch
this -- it was a totally vulnerable openess to the slightest
appearance of anything, coupled with a tender rawness that found
me broken open and flooded by a love I had no name for.
Although I had toyed with poetry back in college, I hadn't
written a word for 30 years, but now I suddenly could not stop --
it was as if something urgently wanted to communicate itself, and
I was merely the vehicle for this lovingness that wanted to
express itself through me.
After several months of this "communion", I received an
interior guidance from Meera, turning me over to an odd character
I had never heard of -- Nisargadatta Maharaj. I had never been
attracted to Hinduism, especially with my zen background, but a
woman friend who was undergoing cancer surgery told me during a
hospital visit with her that she had no idea why, but she felt
compelled to offer me a book that had come into her possession.
It was a book of dialogues with Sri Niz. Every day at lunch I
read several paragraphs, and then spent the rest of the time
allowing Niz's words to penetrate.
When Niz took over the steering wheel, I was of course a
"goner", and it was "Mr. Natural" who also
referred me to Ramana. Ramana then kindly led me to Mazie. How
could I have ever suspected that Beloved likes to play this way
-- revealing Itself in the person of a ragamuffin smile that
would crush my arrogance with a slight turn of the lips, a wink,
a touch, a true and natural kindness to all sentience, a poetry
of all-encompassing embrace, a shattering desire?
All that had transpired up to this point was, as it turned out,
merely preparation. All the "getting it", all the
tears, all the turmoil, the realizations, the service - all had
been simply the sheaths wrapped around this beating heart, this
innocence waking up to itself, burning a path to this door of
disrobing. Of course, it couldn't have happened in any other way,
nor could I have possibly strategized my way to this threshold,
manipulated myself into this heartspace, this availability to
have the whole house of cards go up in flames. No cross-legged
sitting, no intellectual resonance, no bahkti heart throb, no
wisdom chatter, no valiant striving, no perpetual service - none
of it was of any value whatsoever, since it was never any of my
doing from the start, and was in fact nothing but a kind of
dreaming, a trick of the imagination, although if I had been told
such anywhere or at any time along the way, I might have nodded
in agreement, but I would not have had any real understanding,
just the experience of the concept.
When Beloved took the actual form of myself as Mazie, every
motion of "my being" re-capitulated itself in a way I
never could have expected, hoped for, longed for, but in the
"spaciousness" of relationship, of
"two-not-two".
Grace. Yes. I could finally be honest. I could finally relinquish
being a knower. I could see my reluctance, my resistance, my
chronic defensiveness, "my story", within the light of
unconditional loving, and I could finally come to rest in that
nakedness, knowing it would not harm me. Only then, and ONLY
then, could compassion's seeds begin to sprout, filling this soul
garden with the wonder of surrender, the bliss of surrender, the
annihilation of the separate and separative self-sense that would
have things be other than they are, have life be other than it
is, and so I sing praise to the perfection of this path, which is
not a path, but indeed life itself, becoming aware of itself in
the ordinary forms of this human-ness, this Grace of our
startling appearance here, these precious forms that move and
change like water, ever nourishing, blessing itself in a symphony
of awe and heart-broken gratitude.
I love you, Mazie!
- Robert O'Hearn on AdyashantiSatsang
Highest Height, Deepest Depth
I am reminded of a beautiful truth or insight often indicated
metaphorically. The top of the mountain, the highest height,
symbolically can refer to the spiritual/psychic height of
Sahasarara Chakra. When Kundalini Shakti moves up, its last
resting place is the "top of the mountain." From there,
if one is totally and utterly indifferent to the highest height,
there can be a "jump off the cliff" so to speak. Grace
allows for this jump into the arms of Divine Beloved. It requires
total faith and trust in the Guru/God/Self/Heart/ or call it what
you will for the ultimate surrender of the mind itself. It is
with that "fall" into the deepest abyss of emptiness
that One Knows the Highest Height and the Deepest Depth are not
different. The Fullest Fullness and the Emptiest Emptiness are
Totally Identical. It is easy to see why mystics become mad,
break with traditions, and are willing to sing their songs even
when they are despised. With the cup always to the lips brimming
with divine intoxication, it is easy to see why mystics become
poets. The Same Sameness Everywhere.
The Sage Ribhu
taught his disciple the supreme Truth of the One Brahman (Pure
Consciousness) without a second. However, Nidagha, in spite of
his erudition and understanding, did not get sufficient
conviction to adopt and follow the path of Self-Knowledge (Jnana
Yoga), but settled down in his native town to lead a life devoted
to the observance of ceremonial religion (Bhakti Yoga). But the
Sage loved his disciple as deeply as the latter venerated his
Master. In spite of his age, Ribhu would himself go to his
disciple in the town, just to see how far the latter had outgrown
his ritualism. At times the Sage went in disguise, so that he
might observe how Nidagha would act when he, did not know that he
was being observed by his Master. On one such occasion Ribhu, who
had put on the disguise of a village rustic, found Nidagha
intently watching a royal procession. Unrecognized by the
town-dweller Nidagha, the village rustic enquired what the bustle
was all about, and was told that the king was going in the
procession.
"Oh! it is the king. He goes in the procession! But where is
he?" asked the rustic. "There, on the elephant,"
said Nidagha. "You say the king is on the elephant. Yes, I
see the two," said the rustic, "but which is the king
and which is the elephant?" "What!" exclaimed
Nidagha. "You see the two, but do not know that the man
above is the king and the animal below is the elephant? What is
the use of talking to a man like you?" "Pray, be not
impatient with an ignorant man like me," begged the rustic.
"But you said above and below" what do they mean?"
Nidagha could stand it no more. "You see the king and the
elephant, the one above and the other below. Yet you want to know
what is meant by 'above' and 'below'" burst out Nidagha.
"If things seen and words spoken can convey so little to
you, action alone can teach you. Bend forward, and you will know
it all too well." The rustic did as he was told. Nidagha got
on his shoulders and said: "Know it now. I am above as the
king, you are below as the elephant. Is that clear enough?"
"No, not yet," was the rustic's gentle reply. "You
say you are above like the king, and I am below like the
elephant. The 'king', the 'elephant', 'above' and 'below'"
so far it is clear. But pray, tell me what you mean by 'I' and
'you'?"
When Nidagha was thus confronted all of a sudden with. the mighty
problem of defining a 'you' apart from an 'I', light dawned on
his mind. At once he jumped down and fell at his Master's feet
saying: "Who else but my venerable Master, Ribhu, could have
thus drawn my mind from the superficialities of physical
existence to the true Being of the Self? Oh! Gracious Master, I
crave thy blessings"
- A Story of Sage Ribhu & his Disciple Nidagha (Chapter 26 of
the Ribhu Gita) as told by Ramana Maharshi
Though thin and weak
The chrysanthemum
Inevitably will bud
In 1999, I was
working in New Jersey, directing the natural & organic foods
division of a prominent nationwide wholesale distributor. After
several decades in this business, I had achieved a level of
success within my field that had brought me all the material and
social blessings that I could have hoped for. Moreover, I was
relatively free from illusions about any of it -- almost 3
decades of zen practice had disabused me of the notion that any
of it amounted to anything. It was simply service, and I also
recognized intuitively that none of it was my doing, that I was
simply being used. This had always been my "prayer" --
that I might be an unobstructed instrument -- "not my will,
but Thine".
The Sage Ribhu
taught his disciple the supreme Truth of the One Brahman (Pure
Consciousness) without a second. However, Nidagha, in spite of
his erudition and understanding, did not get sufficient
conviction to adopt and follow the path of Self-Knowledge (Jnana
Yoga), but settled down in his native town to lead a life devoted
to the observance of ceremonial religion (Bhakti Yoga). But the
Sage loved his disciple as deeply as the latter venerated his
Master. In spite of his age, Ribhu would himself go to his
disciple in the town, just to see how far the latter had outgrown
his ritualism. At times the Sage went in disguise, so that he
might observe how Nidagha would act when he, did not know that he
was being observed by his Master. On one such occasion Ribhu, who
had put on the disguise of a village rustic, found Nidagha
intently watching a royal procession. Unrecognized by the
town-dweller Nidagha, the village rustic enquired what the bustle
was all about, and was told that the king was going in the
procession.