Joan Tollifson

An Eternal Now SG

By Joan Tollifson

http://www.joantollifson.com/waking.html

You have never questioned your belief that you are the body….it attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive one’s real nature. It is like seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the immensity beneath. The world is but the surface of the mind and the mind is infinite. What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet…it dissolves and only reality remains.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

The food body you are not. The waking state you are not. The deep sleep state you are not. You know the waking state. Since you know the waking state you are not the waking state. You know the deep sleep state; therefore, you are not the deep sleep state.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is only a stream of sensations, perceptions, memories and ideations. The body is an abstraction, created by our tendency to seek unity in diversity.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

The ‘secret’ of life that we are all looking for is simply this: to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment.

--Joko Beck

One teacher says that the secret of life is nothing more or less than present moment sensory experiencing, and another teacher insists that we are not the body and even suggests that nothing perceivable or conceivable is real. Is awakening about being fully embodied and awake to present moment sensory experiencing or is it altogether beyond the body and the senses and even beyond consciousness itself? If we only hear these different pointers ideologically, they seem to be totally contradicting one another. But if we really hear them, perhaps they are pointing to exactly the same realization.

Toni Packer, a teacher I was with for many years, often invites awareness of presently arising sensory experiencing: bird cheeps, the sound of wind, the sensation of our body meeting the chair, breathing, the beating of the heart. In her book The Silent Question, Toni writes:

It isn’t the content of the listening (such as birdcalls) that matters, but rather it’s the quality. Likewise in seeing, it is not what is seen that is of importance but the amazing fact that in the wholeness of seeing, the seer may disappear altogether! In complete seeing and hearing the ‘me’ is no longer the driving center, creating a dualistic world. Instead of the experience of ‘me’ and the flower or me and the birdsong, there is just the wholeness of what is heard and seen (touched and tasted) – too marvelous to describe in words: it is the ending of separation!

This wholeness (the ending of separation) isn’t something to get an idea about or think about, and it isn’t the content of any particular experience, such as the birdsong, but rather, it is the nondual seamlessness of the listener and the sound, for in reality, they are divided only by conceptual thought and language. The actual experience is simply undivided hearing. The aliveness, the beauty, the love, the joy is in the awareness, the listening presence, the wholeness of being.

The body turns out to be a wonderful field for meditative exploration. By tuning into the body with awareness, by exploring it as pure sensation, we discover that there is no “body” (except as a mental concept, an abstraction of thought), and we discover that the whole universe is our body. The boundaries are not really there.

This realization isn’t something mystical and exotic. It is rather something so simple, so immediate, so obvious, so ever-present that we tend to overlook it because our attention is absorbed instead in the ubiquitous abstraction created by conceptual thought that is overlaid on top of the bare actuality of being.

The actual experience here and now is nothing but ever-changing sensations. “The body” is an idea, an abstraction, a concept, a mental image, a thought-form. We can conceptualize a boundary-line between what we think of (and mentally picture) as “my body” and “the chair,” but when we look for this “body” with awareness, we find only ever-changing sensations and no clear delineation between “body” and “chair.” If we look with awareness for the place where “inside of us” turns into “outside of us,” we cannot find it. It, too, was only an idea! We know from modern physics that at the subatomic level, there is no solidity or substance and no boundaries. And this is our actual present moment experience right now, but we tend to ignore our actual experience in favor of the conceptual overlay that is so deeply conditioned and easily mistaken for reality. We mistake the map for the territory, the conceptual abstraction for actuality itself. We know from ecology that everything depends on everything else and that you cannot remove any part without altering the whole, but we easily overlook this in favor of our conceptual picture. We imagine a world of separate parts -- including “me”-- parts that can all be pulled apart and rearranged. Thus we imagine, “I could be somewhere else right now, and that would be better.”

In this abstract and imaginary world created by conceptual thought and story-telling, there seems to be separation and solidity. Bringing awareness to the present moment, to sensory experiencing, to the actuality of the body, erases the self completely, meaning that it erases the imaginary boundaries and leaves only everything, and this everything is seamless and all-inclusive.

The real body (no body at all) is not a cadaver or an anatomy book picture. It is alive and fluid and moving. Experientially, it is nothing but ever-changing sensations. And in fact, it's an ever-moving process of blood circulating, cells dividing, nerves firing, heart beating, lungs expanding and contracting, food being taken in and broken down, disbursed or eliminated. The body is in constant exchange with the environment, the skin is porous and breathing, flaking off, regenerating, the breath is coming in and going out. Your body now is not the same body you had ten years ago, or ten days ago, or even back when you started reading this page less than a minute ago. It is ceaseless change.

We can’t ignore the relative world in which we seem to be separate individuals in a world of other individuals, but we can learn to discern ever more subtly the difference between the anatomy book and the living body, between the map and the territory, between the thought of “me” and the actuality of present-moment experiencing. We can discover for ourselves that the actuality of the present moment is ungraspable and impossible to capture with thought, and that the deeper we go into the actuality of the body here and now in direct experiencing, the more we find no-thing (no body) at all. And yet, this nothing (or nobody) is not some nihilistic void, but rather, a vibrantly alive overflowing presence. And in the light of this presence, everything is sacred – the ordinary is the extraordinary.

This aliveness does not hold still. A friend of mine who was a surgical nurse described the shock of interns making their first cut in a living body. They’ve studied the anatomy book, they’ve dissected the cadavers, but now they’re cutting into a living organism and suddenly everything is slippery and pulsating and moving, blood is gushing out, everything is moving. This is real life. Nothing holds still. It’s a mess. And yet right in the heart of this messy impermanence, this utterly thorough-going flux, is true stillness, order and intelligence.

“Show me the Holy Reality,” a monk once asked the Master.
“It just moved!” the Master replied.

Just as we have these seemingly contradictory teachings about the body, we also find some teachers telling us that the world is an illusion while others say that enlightenment is all about being a bodhisattva who cares deeply for the world. Again, it can seem that these are contradictory and irreconcilable teachings, but as with the apparently opposite pointers about the body, if we look more deeply, we may find that these seemingly divergent teachings about the world also point us to the very same realization, the very same reality. Ramana Maharshi expressed it beautifully when he said:

The world is illusory;
God alone is real;
God is the world.

“The world” we conceptualize, like “the body” we conceptualize, is an abstraction, an idea, a map. And the stories we tell ourselves and each other about this world are all in the end fictional. But when we discover God (boundlessness, seamlessness, emptiness, the aliveness or suchness of Here and Now), we discover the reality of the world.

When we truly see that all of our choices, decisions, preferences, intentions, interests, inclinations, thoughts and actions come from emptiness, that every action arises from the Totality and not from “me,” the phantom operator, and that this is true of everyone else as well, then we are instantly free of guilt and blame, vengeance and retribution. This is true compassion. It doesn’t mean we approve of genocide, or that we allow child molesters to run free, but we see that those who commit such atrocities could not have done otherwise in that moment. We have compassion for them. We see that every action arises out of an infinite web of nature and nurture---genetics, hormones, neurology and conditioning. Hitler could not have “chosen” to be Ramana Maharshi anymore than Ramana could have “chosen” to be Hitler. What we call “Hitler” or “Ramana” or “me” or “you” is not really a solid thing with some kind of independent will, but rather, a boundless process that is inseparable from everything else in the entire universe. We are not encapsulated inside a body as we had imagined, and as it turns out, seeing this doesn’t in any way deny the actuality of the body either. If anything, we become infinitely more sensitive to the reality of both the body and the world. We see that it is the whole universe breathing, thinking, singing, dancing, sensing, awaring, body-ing, world-ing, being.

“You are not your body” points to the realization that “you” and “your body,” as you think of them, are nothing but ideas. It doesn’t point to denying or ignoring the body, or to some kind of mystical disappearance into thin air. Likewise, saying that “the world is a dream” points to the realization that “the world” as we think of it (a solid objective reality “out there” apart from us) is a dream-like illusion, a conceptualization, a kind of mirage. It doesn’t mean there is no world in any sense.

If we zoom far enough out, this planet is nothing but a tiny dot of light, and finally, if we go out far enough, it disappears completely. If we zoom in close enough, at the subatomic level, we find mostly empty space and nothing solid. Either way, zoomed in or zoomed out, the world as we know it with all our personal and global dramas is no longer here.

Sensory experiencing, the body, the world, and the entire movie of waking life are sometimes seen as a kind of veil that hides or obscures Ultimate Reality, and then there is an attempt to detach and transcend, to see that nothing perceivable or conceivable can be what I am. But ultimately, this detachment collapses into unconditional love. It is seen that sensory experiencing, the body, the world, the characters and the entire movie of waking life are all the perfect manifestation and expression of Ultimate Reality, that everything is one seamless whole from which nothing stands apart, and from which no detachment is ever possible. There is always only the Single Reality, the no-thing-ness appearing as everything.

Both zooming out and zooming in can be powerful ways of waking up. Advaita teachings often emphasize zooming out. They direct you to what is beyond everything perceivable and conceivable, encouraging you to discover that what you truly are is prior to the world and the body. You are the screen that is present before and after the movie, that is equally present in every scene of the movie, and that is never disturbed by the movie. You are boundless awareness. And in the most radical of nondual teachings, awareness itself is seen as the first appearance, and you are that which is prior to awareness, that which is both awareness and the content of awareness. Many other teachings, such as Zen, tend to begin by frustrating all your attempts to zoom out. You come to the Zen Master to find Ultimate Reality and enlightenment, and to your great consternation, all the Master ever does is give meticulous instructions for cleaning the toilet and sweeping the floor! Finally, you realize that Ultimate Reality is not someplace else. I have found all of these approaches potentially eye-opening. They can all reveal that what you are seeking has never been absent and can never be lost.

It is wonderfully liberating to see that nothing in the movie of waking life really matters. And at the same time, I've found that one of the very best and most reliable ways of discovering insubstantiality, boundlessness and the absence of separation firsthand, is to give close and careful attention here and now to the bare sensory actuality of the present moment. By giving careful attention to the form of this moment, we discover formlessness or emptiness. We discover that nothing holds still. And yet, we find that there is a great stillness beholding everything and at the very heart of everything.

The danger I see in trying to transcend the body or deny the world from an ideological place, rather than through direct experience, is that we can end up cultivating a kind of dissociated detachment. We keep trying to imagine or picture “formless nothingness” or “the screen” (as if this were some thing). The mind creates a subtle new object that doesn’t really exist, and then it takes effort to keep this imaginary creation always in mind, to keep remembering that I am formless nothingness and not the person, the screen and not the movie. We fall into an inner conflict, attracted by the movie and at the same time trying to turn away and detach from it. This is why I’ve often found it more reliable to go directly into the apparent forms, such as the body, and see what is revealed.

Instead of trying to ignore the world of form (the body and the world), go into it deeply with awareness, and discover for yourself how fluid and ephemeral and empty of self it all actually is. Discover the boundlessness of every moment, the boundlessness of presence. Discover that true happiness, beauty, joy, and freedom is not in any particular form, but rather in the awareness or presence at the heart of everything. Happiness is then no longer dependent upon getting the perfect lover, or the perfect location, or the perfect scenery, or the perfect job. It is about recognizing true perfection here and now. And in this realization of fluidity and wholeness, our grip on all our most cherished beliefs and ideas relaxes, along with our need to defend “me” and “my” side. We may still have strong opinions, but we become more open to questioning them, more able to see and consider other points of view, less caught up in “being right” and “winning” and “getting even.” More and more, we can enjoy the actual messiness of life as it is. Our ideals for how everything “should” be are like the anatomy book or the cadaver -- dead. However hard we try, the living body will never be “perfect” like that, and actually, that’s wonderful!

This alive and wondrous and utterly ungraspable IS-ness is true freedom. It is not the freedom to do what you want, but rather, the freedom to be what you are. What are you? Nobody at all, everything and nothing, and at the same time, a particular snowflake unlike any other. The whole universe is showing up as you, as this moment, just as it is.

The exploration and freedom and aliveness that is being pointed to here is all about the utter simplicity of being. Hearing the traffic sounds or the wind or the birds, feeling the breathing, seeing colors and shapes, sensations of cool air or heat, thoughts bubbling up and vanishing into thin air -- just this, nothing more and nothing less. In this simple beingness, there is no “you” and no “body” and no “world” and no “problem to solve” until thinking begins labeling the sensations and telling a story. And that story is only another momentary shape that emptiness is taking, just like the bird songs and the traffic roar. This present moment is alive with color and smell and taste and touch and sound – it simply isn’t anything you can grasp.

“Boundlessness” is a word that points to the very essence or nature of Here and Now, the groundless ground, the water in every wave. You cannot find what is being pointed to because nothing is outside of it. Anything you can find or define -- any sense of awareness or boundlessness, or any notion of Here and Now -- is another appearance. The boundlessness that is being and beholding everything is nothing you can see or grasp or experience or possess or pin down. You can only be this emptiness. And in fact, you cannot not be it. And whatever appears is always only this, for there is nothing else.

-- copyright Joan Tollifson 2009 --

An Eternal Now SG

Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object, or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?

--Dogen

There is no contradiction between body and spirit, between mind and matter. These are just words we use to understand one thing.

--Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Consciousness is your dream. But you are the absolute dreamer. You are, with and without consciousness, what you are. Even consciousness is a dream.

--Karl Renz

When the idea of the world collapses...the idea of Awareness collapses with it. If there is no object, there cannot be a subject. If there is a subject, there must be an object. So even in the idea of Oneness, duality is implied. Oneness is one thing too much.

--Rupert Spira

All you need to do is to get rid of the tendency to define your self.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

As we explore the actuality of the body and discover directly that it is insubstantial, impermanent, and boundless, we find that many knotty problems dissolve into thin air along with the body. For example, there is much debate over which is primary, mind or matter, and whether Consciousness is limited to the body or whether it is beyond the body. Will it survive the body or die along with the brain? Didn’t the universe begin with matter, and then consciousness appeared much later in the evolutionary process, as a feature of complex organic life? Consciousness occurs in brains, but not in stones, right?

We cannot deny that all our knowledge and experience, everything perceivable and conceivable, appears in Consciousness, and is in some sense “made up” of Consciousness. We have no actual experience of anything outside of Consciousness or other than Consciousness. The very notion that there is a “material” world outside of Consciousness can only appear in Consciousness, and can never be verified. Don’t take any of this on faith, but look and see for yourself. What is always here in every experience? What must be here first in order for anything else to appear at all?

As we explore actual present moment experiencing, and as we look closely into the nature of this dream-like reality that appears in consciousness, we find ceaseless change and complete interdependence. We find that everything is involved with everything else, and we discover that solid, independent objects only exist conceptually as ideas (and to some degree as conditioned perceptions). When examined closely and carefully, we see that the boundaries between objects are fluid, porous and notional, and that any given object only exists (and can only exist) along with, and because of, everything it is not---that it is actually made up of everything it is not---that everything is inside everything else. This is sometimes called Oneness, but once it is named and conceptualized, it becomes another (imaginary) object, so Buddhists prefer to call it emptiness. As one Buddhist teacher put it, everything is empty of itself and full of everything else. Emptiness is not some mysterious vacancy or voidness, but rather, exactly this – this present moment.

There can only be an outside and an inside if you have an object (a separate, independent, solid, continuous thing – like a “brain” or a “stone” or a “self”) to be inside or outside of. And yet in seeing clearly, it is obvious that no such separate, discrete, persisting objects exist in reality. At a casual glance, yes, we do seem to see a world of apparently solid, separate, persisting objects, and this appearance isn’t going to disappear. This appearance arises through some mix of conditioned perception and conceptualizing, and it has a relative reality and a functional utility within the dream-like movie of waking life that appears in consciousness. But when we look more closely and carefully, either through meditation or science, we find the borders are not solid, the objects are nothing but continuous change, and the "me" who is assumed to be seeing all this cannot be found. There is only undivided, seamless, thorough-going flux, constant change, change that is so thorough-going and so complete that there is actually no separate or persisting “thing” to be impermanent! There is always only this one timeless present moment that never comes and never goes and never stays the same.

If we see that there is only thorough-going flux, or One Immutable Reality, then we see that the brain is actually inseparable from the stone – they are different expressions of one seamless, ever-changing, ever-present Whole. To say that Consciousness resides in the brain and not in the stone is to imagine that “brains,” “stones,” and “consciousness” are separate, discrete, independent, persisting “things.” Clearly, within the dream that we take for reality, brains do play a significant and unique role in manifesting, revealing or transmitting consciousness, but the brain could not (and does not) exist without everything else in the universe including the stone. The stone and the brain are like two ends of the same caterpillar. Nothing is outside of this undivided flowing Wholeness.

We can say that I am inside or outside this room – and relatively speaking, this makes sense, and is a useful way of conceptualizing and speaking. It allows us to function. But in reality, there is no real separation between inside the room and outside the room, and there is no me apart from the room to be in or out of it. The boundary lines are purely notional, as is the room itself, as am I. All apparently discrete entities are simply conceptual ideas, reifications created by perception and conception abstracting out and freezing some tiny piece of the ever-shifting infinite Whole as if it were a separate thing and then drawing an imaginary boundary-line around it and giving it a name.

Likewise, in reality, there is no “my mind” and “your mind,” no “me” and “you,” no “here” and “there.” Such separations are always only conceptual and relative. They have a functional usefulness and a relative reality, but if we give them an absolute reality they don’t actually have, we suffer.

So how can Consciousness be located only in the brain and not also, in some sense, in the stone? Look at a brain or a stone at the quantum level, and you find mostly empty space with subatomic wavicles dancing in and out of existence. You don’t find solid boundaries anywhere. And all of this---brains, stones, wavicles, subatomic happenings, ideas---all of this appears in Consciousness and is Consciousness in that sense.

Even if I were a brain in a vat, as some of us have imagined we might be, where exactly would this brain and this vat be located? We could say, on Planet X, but then where is Planet X located? We could say, in some corner of the universe, but then where is the universe located? Where did the Big Bang happen? We seem always to come back to the primacy of Consciousness and the impossibility of ever getting outside of it. All our "objects" (from brains to subatomic particles to planets to vats) are seen to be thought-forms (and to some degree, conditioned perceptions) appearing in Consciousness. The fundamental reality would seem to be Mind and not matter, but then, what exactly is matter? We have an idea that it is something very solid and substantial, like chairs and tables, but when we look closely at any material, it turns out not to be in any way solid or substantial. “Matter” seems to evaporate into thin air when we really investigate it!

Clearly, we don’t “know” what Consciousness (or Mind, or Awareness) is either, and we never will know, because the eye can’t see itself. There is no way to stand outside of Consciousness and observe it as an object. And in fact, scientists are finding there is really no way to stand outside of anything and observe it as an object, perhaps because everything is Consciousness! In the deepest sense, we don’t really know what anything is! We can say that water is made up of such and such elements and that it is a liquid, but does that really tell us what water is?

Although we don’t know what Consciousness “is,” we certainly can’t deny the reality of Consciousness – it is always right here as the most intimate ground of every moment. It is the undeniable fact of being present, being aware. We have absolutely no doubt about being here, and this doubtless certainty requires no training and no proof. Consciousness would have to be here first in order to doubt it!

Although Consciousness is the one thing of which we have absolutely no doubt whatsoever—it is our most intimate and ever-present reality, the very ground of every moment—even so, we can’t ever apprehend or grasp this Conscious Presence or say exactly what it is! It has no taste, no color, no shape, no form – other than every taste and every color and every shape and every form. As someone said, it’s so clear, it’s easy to overlook. And even this clarity is part of the appearance, for every night in deep sleep, even the first sense of awareness vanishes completely along with everything perceivable and conceivable. The groundlessness that remains can never be perceived or conceptualized because it is the perceiving and conceptualizing, it is the awaring, it is being and beholding everything.

We may think that Consciousness is a brain creation, but no brain has ever appeared outside of Consciousness, and if we cut open the brain, we won’t find this room I’m sitting in. So where exactly is this room, and am I in it, or is it in me? Indeed, every location, every happening, and everything I ever encounter, appears within me, within Consciousness. Does it also exist “out there” apart from me? Are we really a bunch of separate, independent organisms all “looking out” through the windows of our senses at a single objective reality that always exists “out there” whether or not anyone is aware of it, each of us seeing this single reality in slightly different ways? Or is that very idea of an objective reality “out there” a fundamental misconception? As Zen Master Dogen asked, Are there various ways of seeing one object, or have we mistaken various images for a single object?

We intuitively sense that there is a Single Reality of some kind, but is it “out there” as an object to be seen, or is it rather the all-inclusive being and beholding of everything? And is anything really separate from this Single Reality, this ever-present, ever-changing groundlessness?

The thinking mind easily and habitually gets all tangled up trying to solve imaginary problems. It may now be tangled up in trying to figure out whether “the Single Reality” and “groundlessness” and “Consciousness” and “awareness” and “being” are all the same thing or a bunch of different things, and which thing is prior to which other thing, but of course, these words all point beyond the very notion of “things.” So the invitation here is to drop all these words and ideas for a moment and simply be. This is easy because you can’t possibly not be. Notice the actual reality of this moment right now. Something is undeniably present. Hearing, seeing, sensing, being -- something is. This IS-ness is always right Here, right Now, whatever different form the present moment takes. This aliveness that makes “the present moment” present, what is that? Never mind the word, whether we call it “Consciousness” or “Awareness” or “Presence” or “Being.” The actuality of it is undeniable and unavoidable. Being here in undeniable!

Without the words, what is this, right here, right now? No word can capture it. And what is it that knows this beingness? What is it that remains in deep sleep when the first sense of awareness has vanished completely? What was here before the universe was born, before the Big Bang? What were you before birth, before conception? Explore these questions not by thinking about them and trying to find some answer, but by falling into the answer-less-ness. This groundlessness that can never be grasped is the Single Reality, the emptiness that appears as the first mirror of awareness in which the entire universe and “you” as the imagined character in the story of your life appear and disappear. This Single Reality has no problem with any appearance. It has no problem with being the character or the universe or with dreaming the dream. It has no need to wake up from the dream, and yet, waking up happens, and it happens only within the dream, within the world of consciousness, as another reflection in the mirror of awareness. What can be seen in the mirror is always only a reflection. The Seer Itself can never be seen. This Single Reality can never be seen, and yet whatever is seen is nothing other than this. This is all there is, and all there is, is this. What is it? Any answer you come up with must be discarded.

When the thinking mind gets busy trying to solve the mystery of the universe, we wonder if the fundamental reality is mind or matter. We wonder which comes first, the brain or the mind, the chicken or the egg. We wonder if we are a brain in a vat, or whether or not Consciousness will survive death. We wonder what is prior to consciousness. Perhaps questions such as these are all akin to asking what happens to me if I fall off the edge of the earth. People used to worry about that. But obviously, the apparent problem, which at the time seemed quite serious, was based on false ideas about the earth. The danger of falling off the edge was never really there. In reality, no separate thing is ever born and nothing real ever dies. There is no before and after, no “out there” or “in here,” except relatively, in the world of appearances.

Where is the boundary between mind and matter, or between chicken and egg, or between form and emptiness? There is no actual separation anywhere to be found. Realizing this doesn’t mean we lose the ability to distinguish a brain from a stone, or a chicken from an egg, nor does it mean that we have no boundaries in the way psychology uses that term -- awakening does not deny relative reality or the ability to set limits and make distinctions, but awakened understanding functions within that relative reality without the stickiness and confusion that comes when relative reality is mistaken for absolute reality.

Gradually, we become more and more sensitive to this conceptualizing process – the way the mind divides, abstracts, reifies and then gets confused, trying to reconcile the pieces it has just created. We can begin to see this happening as it happens. And we can begin to see directly that our confusion is all in how we’re thinking and not in reality itself. We can come back to the simplicity of what actually is.

At the very heart of the present moment, in absolute groundlessness, we discover the extraordinary miracle that we imagined was “out there” somewhere. And we discover this not once and for all, but right Now. There is no “final awakening.” Awakening is an infinite unfolding, an infinite Self-realization, an infinite discovery, an infinite Now. It is never finished. There is no end to it and no beginning. It is ever-present and ever-changing.

Believing this as an idea is not enough. Belief is always shadowed by doubt. And even though we may know this secret of life from our own direct experience, our tendency is to forget and to once again go looking “out there” for something to save us, or even to go looking out there for “Here and Now.” This habit of overlooking the jewel and searching for it somewhere else is deeply conditioned and tends to recur. Seeking what has never been absent. It is a wonderful game, a wonderful joke, a wonderful play. The Single Reality loses itself and finds itself again and again.

In waking up, we realize that there is no enlightenment without delusion, and that we cannot actually say which comes first, delusion or enlightenment. They both appear together, like form and emptiness, or mind and matter, or chickens and eggs. Enlightenment is a word for recognizing the Single Reality that is never absent. Delusion is a word for entrancement in the story of separation and lack. Enlightenment has no problem with delusion, and recognizes delusion as an aspect of itself. In waking up from the story, consciousness realizes, again and again, that it has never really been lost or separate, that emptiness has never actually been absent. Wherever you go, Here is always Here. There is no way out of Here and Now.

In direct experience right now, what is this present moment? Can we see that no word or concept could possibly capture it?

Consciousness continues to explore Itself, and this is the nature of Consciousness, to explore and inquire and question. In the dream-like movie of waking life, the Single Reality appears as a multitude of individuals, and “we” do this exploration through meditation and science and body awareness work and art and lovemaking and politics and philosophy and psychotherapy and in all kinds of ways. Consciousness explores and plays with itself -- this infinite presence. And then, the Single Reality comes home from its explorations, and “we” put aside all our words, our telescopes and microscopes, our computers and paint brushes and cameras and drop into Silence. Deep sleep refreshes us, but before long, the dream world appears and then the movie of waking life, which is another kind of dream, and at the end of every episode of that dream-like movie, “we” let everything go and fall back into the refreshment of deep sleep, just like the whole universe, endlessly expanding and contracting, dying and being born, inhaling and exhaling.

And perhaps at the very heart of the present moment, there may be the discovery of the emptiness and freedom of deep sleep while fully awake, right in the midst of everyday life, the still point at the center, the Ultimate Subject, that which is unavoidable and never absent, beholding and being it all.

Where are the boundaries, the dividing lines, the place where “I” begin and end? Don’t look for the answer in thought, but simply be what you are, the answer-less-ness that needs no answer. You may find there is no end and no beginning to this indescribable being and no need to define it.

-- copyright Joan Tollifson 2009 --

An Eternal Now SG

Thusness thinks these articles are good description of the Anatta insight and I have posted it in our blog http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com

An Eternal Now SG

Another clear article by Joan Tollifson, moving from non-dual experience into Anatta and Emptiness.

Bubbles

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because
dawn has come.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

--Rumi

The temple bell stops—
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

--Basho

Giving up the body is a great festival for me.

---Nisargadatta

To ask whether there will be everlasting life or whether this mind or this self will remain, disregards everything else that you already are. The question of death can be asked only from the contracted state; it has no meaning from the whole.

--Steven Harrison

The day my 95 year old mother died, we blew bubbles over her bed, her Lift Off Bubbles, we called them. It was an extraordinary day, full of love and joy and laughter and tears. It was her last party, and she died just as the sun was setting. She lifted off, nothing to nothing, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. I sat with her cooling body, holding her bony hands, touching her face. Although we called them her Lift-Off bubbles, it was utterly clear that there was no-thing apart from everything that dies or survives death, no-thing that lifts off and nowhere to go other than right here. The bubble of apparent encapsulation burst, the dawn came, the Dorothy Show is finished and yet never finished, for it can also be said that it never began – Dorothy is everywhere and everything, sparkling in this new November sunshine, dancing in the leaves. Each life is like a bubble, inside and outside are the same always. When the bubble pops, all is One as it always was, and there is no more imaginary separation. Inside the bubble is empty; outside the bubble is empty. Each bubble is brief and fragile, but immensely beautiful. Shimmering. Wobbling. Billowing. Expanding. Popping. Oh, how I adored my mother's smile, her voice, her hair, her face, her nose, her hands – the Dorothy Show, ephemeral and precious. Pop! Gone now, and always right here.

What Remains

Where is Dorothy? Gone! What was Dorothy? Nothing can be grasped. And yet, Dorothy can't be denied. Form and emptiness, relative and absolute. Ocean and wave.

I cry and feel grief, but it is a pure grief, like a clean fire or a cleansing rain, almost an ecstasy at times, and I feel a great peace and love and groundedness, a new strength. Bits of my mother's life are migrating into my apartment now....a few red pillows, a purple sweater, her fuchsia colored shawl.....and already this place is changed. And I am changed. Nothing seems real now except the absolute simplicity of what is minus all ideas about it. Her death re-turns me to what is real and authentic, to ground and groundlessness.

Leaving my last class at the college where I teach before Thanksgiving, I see out the huge picture window in the hallway that winter has arrived with wild ferocity. Wind is raging and it is dark and bleak looking out there. Snow is blowing furiously by the window, the first snow. Outside, as I walk to my car, it is cold and dark and bare branches are tossing in the wind. And now, on Thanksgiving morning, the sun is out and the world is white and glistening.

My mother, who was so utterly real only a few months ago, and for as long as I can remember before that, is absolutely gone. And in my living room is a small cardboard box with a label that says: "This package contains the cremated remains of Dorothy A. Tollifson."

It's more like gravel than ash, and it's inside the box in a plastic bag not much bigger than an eggplant. A small parcel really, it weighs about 10 pounds maybe -- all that remains of an entire woman.

She's absolutely gone, and yet, she's right here. Not as a disembodied spirit waiting to ascend or reincarnate as some folks imagine, but as the entire universe: undivided, un-encapsulated presence, energy, beingness, consciousness, space, life itself.

Of course, the Dorothy A. Tollifson who played with me as a baby has been dead for decades. I barely remember her. Without photos, I probably wouldn't be able to picture that young woman at all. The Dorothy who saw me off to college 35 years ago is also long dead, a dim memory, as is the 70 year old Dorothy who lived so openly and gracefully through the death of my father, the man she loved with all her heart and soul. In fact, death is happening every moment. Continuity is an illusion. Some pattern apparently persists, something that allows us to recognize someone on the street whom we haven't seen in decades. But every cell in their body has been completely replaced in the course of those decades. There is literally no-thing left of the person we knew before. And yet, we think it is the same person.

Dorothy waving from atop an elephant in India. Dorothy in a huge-brimmed red hat in the Gay Freedom Day parade in San Francisco. Dorothy marching for peace in Washington, D.C. Dorothy moving mysteriously from youth to old age. Dorothy smiling at me from the photo on my wall. Dorothy in a small box. Dorothy embedded forever in the very fabric of my life.

I sort through her possessions. Her clothing. Her jewelry. The art she collected. Her books. Her wine glasses. Her cereal bowls. Her teacups. Her napkins. Her towels. Her sheets and blankets. Her bags full of old birthday cards and letters from her daughter. Her prayer wheel. Her hearing aids. Her table clothes. The remains of a life.

Her middle-aged daughter going forward. Walking on into her own crumbling away.

Life After Death

Earth, river, mountain:
Snowflakes melt in air.
How could I have doubted?
Where's north? south? east? west?

-- Zen Master Dongai’s poem on his deathbed

Nothing is ever lost. That which took the shape of the object then, is taking the shape of its "recollection" now.

--Rupert Spira

When form disappears, there is no emptiness to speak of. When the illusory mind disappears, true nature disappears as well. When the illusory mind does not move, true mind is not there. ….neither illusory mind nor true mind exists.

--Sheng Yen, Song of Mind

Nobody dies, death means finished; for example, a drop of water when it evaporates has become infinite. There is no death for anything, everything finishes to become infinite…..The idea of rebirth is a concept, because for something to be reborn something has to die. What is dead? Nothing is dead. Who is there to be reborn? No one was born.

-- Nisargadatta Maharaj

The question of what will happen to me when I die is indeed as misconceived as the question of what happens to my lap when I stand up or to my fist when I open my hand.

-- Ramesh Balsekar

The body exists, or seems to, because you believe in death. Body and death are part of the same illusion.

--Eckhart Tolle

Reincarnation is a fantasy. Existence has never had a form that could be repeated. It’s forever unformed. The shifting of galaxies on the far side of the universe is the same shifting event of our bodies and minds. This happening has never become anything in particular; it’s only shift and flux. There’s no thing becoming some other thing; there’s one great unformed presence remaining unformed.

--- Darryl Bailey

Form is precisely emptiness,
And emptiness is precisely form.

-- the Heart Sutra

If nothing is permanent, what can be impermanent, both, or neither?

-- Nargajuna

It’s astonishing how many people believe Mom is in heaven now, or floating around the room somewhere, or that she’s been reincarnated in a new body. It’s all about the notion of a self or a soul – a discrete unit that has continuity – the “me” that we think and imagine that we are. Does such a “thing” as this exist or is it more like a mirage?

It has been said that a true and complete understanding of impermanence reveals that nothing is impermanent, for in actuality, there are no persisting things that come and go – there is nothing solid here in the first place to be impermanent. Thought and imagination create the image or idea of various seemingly solid, independent, persisting things (me, you, table, chair, mother, father), objects that appear to come into existence, persist in some continuous and essential way for a time, and then go out of existence. But if we investigate directly, with care and close attention, letting our ideas of how it is fall away, are any such solid and persisting things actually found?

The wave is something the ocean is doing – it is waving. Language makes it seem that “a wave” is some thing that can be separated out from some other thing, “the ocean.” Is it true? When a wave breaks on the shore, what happens to it? Does it go to heaven? Does it float around ghost-like on the beach? Does it reincarnate as a new wave? Or are all these questions misconceived? Has any-thing actually died on the beach? Was any-thing there to begin with? When you open your hand, what happens to your fist? When you stand up, where does your lap go? When the bubble pops, what happens to the space that was inside the bubble?

“If everyone is up in heaven, it must be getting pretty crowded up there,” Mom once joked.

A so-called “person” is really more like a verb than a noun, more of a process than a solid and enduring thing. And this process is an activity of the boundless Whole, inseparable from everything else in the whole universe. An activity that is without beginning or end isn’t a “thing” that can reincarnate, but we could say that this boundless wholeness reincarnates endlessly as everything (one undivided waving whole, a boundlessness “which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment,” in the beautiful words of the late physicist David Bohm). Dorothy has not disappeared because the activity or process that was called Dorothy actually has no beginning and no end. It never really had solid boundary lines around it; it just seemed like it did.

So what has actually died? It seems like something has very definitely come to an end, but what is it? After all, there were many times when she was alive that my Dorothy disappeared (whenever she went into another room, or I was in another city, or my attention was elsewhere), and so what’s actually different this time? And is my Dorothy the same as someone else’s Dorothy, or Dorothy’s Dorothy? In fact, I knew many different Dorothys over a lifetime or even in the space of an hour, and Dorothy undoubtedly did too! Which was the real Dorothy? And what exactly is it that would go to heaven or be reborn?

At a quick glance, and because we have a word for it and a mental image and an idea of it, a whirlpool in a river looks like a solid something. At first glance, we see what we think is there. But if “the whirlpool” is carefully observed as it actually is, it is discovered that there is actually no-thing there. The so-called 'whirlpool' is constantly moving, changing shape, being reconstituted. And there is no real separation between whirlpool and river. There is simply a fluctuating pattern of water in motion that is actually not solid or separate or autonomous in any way. We could say that the whirlpool is an activity of the river. And then when we carefully observe the so-called “river,” we again find no-thing at all, only continuous movement and change, and the same when we examine the “water” or “the pattern.” Even closer in, we find empty space and subatomic particles or wavicles that flash in and out of existence in a quantum world where apparent solidity seems to be contingent on (or a function of) observation. Is there an observer and something else apart from this observer that is being observed? Or is there only observing, only being?

By paying careful attention to actuality (not our ideas about actuality, but actuality itself), it is clearly seen that there is no particular solid or enduring thing to be found anywhere, and there is no real separation (or duality) either. Seeing this is profoundly liberating. Although if we ask, “What does this do for me?”, the answer is, it doesn’t do anything for “me.” It reveals that this “me” is a mirage. And ultimately, even that mirage is something that the totality is doing in the same way the ocean is waving. But we have to be very careful with words such as “Totality,” or “Being,” or “Consciousness,” or “the Whole,” because again, is there really any such thing to be found?

When form disappears, there is no emptiness to speak of.

In paying careful attention to this so-called bodymind, this apparent person, it is discovered that this, too, is actually no-thing. This bodymind that seems so separate and solid and discrete and autonomous and independent appears to be a permanent something but is actually like the whirlpool or the wave or the river. It is a constantly changing functioning, an activity inseparable from the entire universe. Inside the bubble and outside the bubble is one and the same space, one and the same energy. And if we look for the operator or the creator or the observer or the owner or the source or the substance of this functioning, what is found?

We may find ideas like "me" or "God" or "Consciousness" or “Intelligence Energy” or “The One Being” or “The Self” or “Totality” springing up as possible answers to this question. But if we are not satisfied with ideas or concepts or subtle mental pictures, if we let them all go and fall back into not knowing, into simply being present with the openness of the question itself, what is found?

Rather than seeking a mental answer (a word or an idea or a “thing”), perhaps it is possible to live with that question, allowing it to dissolve all the possible answers.

What remains is not a word. And it is not nothing (in the sense of void). It is simply not something that can be grasped or contained by any word or concept. It is not “an answer.”

Liberation is a dropping away (or seeing through) rather than a picking up (or finding). It takes away everything and leaves no-thing at all. And this no-thing-ness is vibrantly alive. It is clouds blowing through the sky, trees bursting with leaves, snow falling, the taste of tea, the warmth of the sun, the smell of wet earth, the sounds of rain, tornados whisking away houses, bombs dropping on innocent children, ant hills being crushed under people’s shoes, colors and sensations, the whole amazing show with all its delicate beauty and all its horrific violence, all the sorrow and all the joy. Just this, exactly as it is.

I hope that this book will invite you to explore for yourself, to question, to stop, look, and listen. Endlessly interesting to wake up to what actually is. Endlessly liberating to let all the answers go, and to discover what's left.

An Eternal Now SG

http://www.joantollifson.com/writing1.html

True spirituality is possible only when you let go of everything.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

What is life all about? Does it mean anything? Where are we looking for happiness or liberation? Do we have free will? What is enlightenment and how can I get it? Can anything be done to free ourselves from depression, anxiety, compulsive behavior, wars, holocausts, prejudices? What is spiritual (and what isn't)? What happens when we die?

The thinking mind wants to find answers to questions. When you're trying to find out which bus to take or how to build a house, this ability to find answers is a useful function. But the thinking mind doesn't know when to stop thinking or when thinking is useful and when it isn't. And so, as we grow up, we live more and more in a conceptual world trying to think our way to happiness. We lose touch with the immediacy and wonder we had as children.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to give me a pail of water and a paintbrush so that I could paint on the sidewalk. I'd paint these paintings on the sidewalk with water, and they would disappear in a matter of minutes, but that didn't matter because what I was enjoying was the sheer joy of doing it. It needed no reward, no praise, no permanence. It was complete in itself.

And then at another point in my life, I was an art student, and I can remember seriously questioning whether it was worth painting at all if I weren't Leonardo or Picasso, if I were less than perfect. That sense of playfulness and curiosity that children have so naturally, enjoying the simplicity of being, gets overshadowed by this attempt to make something out of me, to make "me" into a successful me.

Very often when we come to spirituality, even when it's supposedly all about waking up from this story of me, it morphs into it's own new version of this same story, focused now on how successfully I'm waking up, how well I'm meditating, whether I'm enlightened or not. Oddly enough, this me that we're so concerned about may be nothing more than a kind of mirage or mental image, the central character in a movie story generated by thought and imagination, nothing real at all.

How can we find out? Is it possible to wake up from this mental mirage, this entrancement in thought? What is it that would wake up? Is it "me"? Or is it something else?

Again, the thinking mind looks immediately for answers. We seek out authorities and adopt their views. We cling to ideas and explanations, and seek bigger and better experiences.

***

Liberation is not about having the answers or having an experience. It has nothing to do with belief, but is rather the absence (or transparency, or seeing through) of belief. Waking up does not happen in the past or the future, only Now. Liberation or enlightenment is not something you find or acquire like a new car. It is not some dazzling or exotic experience like being permanently high on ecstasy or LSD. Liberation is seeing through the ubiquitous fabrications and mirages of conceptual thought, including the whole idea of liberation and the one who supposedly needs to be liberated.

Ultimate Reality is hidden right in front of our eyes in plain view. It is showing up as breakfast dishes, laundry, sunlight on leaves, the barking of a dog, sound of traffic or rain, the humming of the computer, the taste of tea, the shapes of these words, and the awareness being and beholding it all. And only when we describe all of this in words does it seem as if "awareness" is one thing and "the taste of tea" is something else. The non-conceptual actuality of this breathing-hearing-seeing-being is undivided, without center or periphery. No inside, no outside. No subject, no object. Simply this, just as it is.

And then perhaps a thought: "There must be more to life than this," or "What is the meaning of it all?" or "What about final enlightenment?" or "Isn't this all just the phenomenal manifestation, and isn't that an illusion?" Thought creates imaginary problems and tries to solve them. The complex human brain has an astonishing ability to conceptualize, imagine, remember, project, and think about things that have no actual reality. Yet even these thoughts are nothing but a momentary dream-like shape or expression of the One, undivided, boundless Whole.

Thought labels, categorizes, evaluates, and reifies the ever-changing perceptions that appear. Conceptual thought creates the hypnotic, mirage-like illusion of solid, persisting, independent things (including "me" and "you") -- the illusion of duality and separation. Thought imagines "me" as a separate character on a journey through time. It conjures up goals and stories of success and failure. It even creates the image of "me" as a serious spiritual person dedicated to getting rid of the "me." But without thinking, where is the "me"? What am I, really?

***

Is it possible that the peace and well-being we seek (that longing at the root of all our more superficial desires), cannot be found or satisfied by answers or attainments or experiences of any kind? Is it possible that the very search for it "out there" is precisely what prevents us from noticing that what we are seeking is the very essence of Here and Now?

And what is that?

It is nothing you can take hold of conceptually, and it's not any particular experience (as opposed to any other experience). It is the beingness, the groundlessness, the IS-ness of this moment -- this that is undeniably present beyond all doubt, requiring no proof or belief, impossible to deny -- before and after and even during all the grasping and searching and experience-seeking. The words (beingness, groundlessness, IS-ness) are only pointers. What they point to is nothing you can get hold of as an object. In fact, there really are no solid objects because everything is thorough-going flux. This no-thing-ness (or emptiness) is all there really is.

And this no-thing-ness is vibrantly alive, aware, conscious, awake, present. The grasping, searching and thinking may seem to destroy the wholeness of being or the spaciousness of presence-awareness, but can anything really destroy awareness, or the present moment, or beingness? Doesn't everything appear Here and Now, in awareness? And doesn't everything appear altogether at once as one diverse but seamless whole?

***

Conceptual thought (apparently) divides it up. The division and separation are never really there, of course. They exist only in thought and imagination, but if that thought isn't seen through, if it is believed and taken seriously, then the result is suffering. Zen and Advaita are all about waking up from this entrancement and suffering. But it isn't "you" who wakes up and then becomes "an awakened person." That is delusion. The very notion that there is someone who needs to wake up from delusion is part of the delusion! The problem of bondage only exists in the thought-created movie world of imagination. The whole problem is a kind of mirage. What's real is never absent, and what seems to obscure it is never real.

No words can ever capture the actuality of this one eternal present moment. It can be talked about and pointed to in various different ways, but anything we say about actuality is never actuality itself. We may nod in agreement upon hearing that; nevertheless, we habitually tend to mistake the map for the territory, the concept for the actual. We then get into endless debates and confusion over imaginary dilemmas such as whether there is or isn't free will, or whether any kind of spiritual practice is worth doing or not, or whether the world is real and deserving of our attention or only a dream-like illusion that is best ignored. This mind-spinning goes in circles leading nowhere. Reality can't ever be captured in concepts (like free will or no free will, self or no self, this or that). Whatever you say is never quite right. No word or concept is ever complete enough. If you say that you can't learn to ride a bicycle because there's no you to do it, or no free will, you'll be foolishly disempowering yourself. And yet, if you look carefully at who or what is riding the bicycle or "choosing" to do so, you won't find anything or anybody, nor can you really explain how exactly "you" do this bicycle riding.

We can argue endlessly over who rides, and whether or not they can freely choose to do it, or whether instruction and training is necessary or only a hindrance, and we can discuss the mechanics of bicycles and bicycle riding, or tell stories about legendary riders of the past, but finally, no amount of description or prescription will tell you how to ride a bicycle or how it is to be riding one. Talking about it, reading about it, watching others do it, or debating about who does it best, is not the same as simply doing it. Of course, enlightenment isn't quite the same as riding a bicycle, because enlightenment isn't an activity, but rather the realization of what has never been absent and the recognition that there is no way in or out of the groundlessness of what is. This is all there is, and you are this. But as in bicycle riding, it's the actuality that matters, the territory itself and not the map. Discussing enlightenment (or awakening, or liberation), thinking about it, imagining it, or seeking it as a future event are all map-events. But enlightenment is the territory itself, although paradoxically, even the map is the territory, for the One Reality is inescapable and unavoidable. It is absolutely simple and immediate and impossible to lose.

***

Right now, simply listen to the sounds that are occurring. Traffic sounds, honking horn, bird cheeping, lawn mower, snow blower, rain falling, wind, rustling leaves, dog barking, vacuum cleaner, children's voices, boom box, siren, train whistle, whatever it is. Listen to the sounds as pure sound, in the same way you might listen to music. If there is no sound at all where you are, listen to the silence. Feel the breathing, the sensations of the body, the heart beating, the rushes of energy, the tightness in the chest, whatever is felt. Feel all of this as pure sensation, without labels or judgments, without resistance, without trying to correct or improve or enhance it in any way. See all the colors and shapes and movements around you in the same way you might enjoy an abstract painting. Notice that everything is constantly changing, and yet, it all happens Here and Now. Here is always here. It's always Now. This "Now" can't be pinned down, nor can it be avoided. It's always right here, seamlessly present. Here and Now is obvious, unavoidable and undeniable.

What is Here and Now?

Notice what happens when this question is asked. Does the thinking mind instantly kick in looking for the answer? Does thought begin searching the spiritual (or scientific, or psychological) files? "This is all Consciousness," we might think. Or, "This is pure awareness," or "This is brain activity," or "This is my living room," or "This is text on a web site," or "This is Intelligence Energy vibrating into different patterns," or "This is a dream," or "This is the phenomenal manifestation and I am pure neumonom."

Can it be seen right now that these are all thoughts? They are concepts, ideas, explanations, words, labels, beliefs. They may have their usefulness, and they may be relatively more or less accurate as pointers or maps, but notice right now that they are all words. They are not the actuality (the suchness) of ever-changing sounds, sensations, shapes and colors. They are descriptions or labels (as are all the words I just used). The word "awareness" is not awareness. Any idea of awareness or presence can be doubted or argued. But the actuality of awareness or presence is beyond doubt or belief. It needs no proof. The word "awareness" seems to make "awareness" into a separate thing. But the actuality isn't really separate from everything else, is it? The Present Moment isn't really divided up into "awareness" and "content." It is one seamless Whole.

Can all words, labels, concepts, ideas, and beliefs be allowed to fall away (not forever and ever, but right now)? If they are let go, then what remains?

Is the thinking mind looking for something (an experience, a particular sensation, the right conceptual understanding, the absence of something, or whatever it might be)? Can that seeking activity be seen through and allowed to drop away? Can there be a simple resting in what actually remains -- this that is utterly inconceivable and yet totally obvious and impossible to avoid? Seeing, hearing, awaring, breathing -- simply this. Not the words, but the actuality. (And if the mind is now trying to banish words and thoughts in order to achieve some imagined non-conceptual purity, can that effort also be seen for what it is? Nothing needs to be banished, not even this effort! It's all one indivisible flowing whole -- this ever-changing appearance that always happens in this omnipresent Here and Now).

Every moment is utterly new. Don't cling to the words. They're never quite right. Language is inherently dualistic. It requires subjects and objects, it reifies and divides, but in actuality, where are the boundary lines? Where does "inside" turn into "outside"? You can think of a conceptual answer, but looking directly with awareness, can you actually find such a place? Can you see that this boundary is purely conceptual, that it's not actually found in direct experience? Don't take this on belief, but right now, if you close your eyes and pay careful attention, can you actually find the place where "inside" ends and "outside" begins? How solid is what you think of as "your body"? Is the apparent border between "you" and "everything else" really there in your actual experience, or is it actually nothing more than an idea, a mental image, a river of ever-changing sensations, a story appearing in awareness? Can you find any limit to present awareness?

***

What is being pointed to is not something you can formulate and take hold of and possess. Zen, Advaita, Dzogchen, Taoism, meditative inquiry, the power of now, presence-awareness, radical non-duality -- many names have been given to this aliveness. The danger in names is that they so easily solidify, codify, and deaden into dogma. Next thing we know, we have priests, scriptures, lineages, doctrines, holy wars, blogs - right ways and wrong ways. You may consider yourself a free-thinking, anti-authoritarian type, but this tendency toward dogmatism, fundamentalism, and authoritarianism can take subtler and subtler forms. It's easier to see it "out there" than it is to see it in oneself. Faced with uncertainty and insecurity, we want answers and reassurance. It's easy to slide into believing something, and then into identifying with those beliefs, and then into defending them to the death (literally or metaphorically). Belief is always shadowed by doubt. Let go of everything that can be doubted, and see what remains. What is beyond doubt takes no effort to maintain.

The ability to think in highly complex and abstract ways is both our greatest gift and our greatest source of suffering. Reactions and behaviors that make perfect sense in the wild often become useless or destructive when they get carried over into the psychological realm. We react to an insulting remark in the same way we react to an attacking tiger, or we search for enlightenment "out there" in the same way we search for food and shelter, and we end up with anxiety, depression, insomnia, and global warfare. We could say that waking up is about seeing through illusion, discerning the difference between what is real and what is imagination. Awakening doesn't mean never thinking again or throwing out all the conceptual maps, but it does mean being able to see (in the present moment) the difference between the map and the territory, and this seeing gets ever more subtle and refined.

Thinking is not the enemy. In practical matters, thinking makes sense. It's a wonderful tool. But much, maybe most, of our thinking has nothing to do with practical matters. Instead, it's a kind of habitual spinning of our wheels, chasing mental phantoms, battling with ghosts, obsessing over dreams. This kind of thinking never really works or satisfies us in the way we want it to. If you pay careful attention to it, you'll begin to notice how painful it is, and yet also how compelling. It's very much like an addiction. In fact, we could say that this kind of thinking is our root addiction. You may also notice that all of these obsessive thoughts center around the fictional "me" in some way or other: evaluating "me," judging "me," trying to make "me" happy or safe or powerful or enlightened. Waking up is not about bringing the story of me to a satisfying conclusion. It's about seeing through the story. It's about recognizing that the story appears and disappears within you, within awareness. The story is ephemeral, insubstantial, intermittent, fleeting. Awakening doesn't mean you forget your name or your life history, or that you lose all sense of being a particular individual. It simply means recognizing that all of that is a momentary appearance in awareness, a kind of play.

***

In some spiritual circles, there is considerable preoccupation with having a big bang awakening, imagined to be some line in the sand that "you" cross, after which the mirage of encapsulation is forever, irrevocably ended, and after which "you" are a liberated sage at last! Among so-called seekers, there is often great fascination with teachers, sages, and gurus who have supposedly crossed that mythical line. Everyone wants to hear their story. And above all, we want to know how this same wonderful thing can happen to me! Is it possible to see that this is the same old story about me? There may be people (but only ever in the dream-like movie of waking life) who have had all kinds of amazing experiences, but enlightenment is the end of the one who cares about being enlightened or unenlightened. It is the realization that there is not, and there has never been a separate person to get enlightened. And however many times the mirage of encapsulation appears, it is always only a mirage. And it isn't "me" who wakes up from this mirage because "me" is the mirage! In fact, it isn't "me" who does anything.

As "you" are reading these words right now, little markings appearing on this page in various combinations are being seen and instantly translated into meaning. Is there someone doing this remarkable activity, overseeing all these elaborate optical and neurological processes, or is it all happening automatically, on its own? We say, "I" am reading, "I" am seeing, "I" am hearing, "I" am thinking, "I" stopped smoking, "I" overate. But what exactly is that "I"? Do "you" really know (or control) what "your" next thought or "your" next action will be?

Right here, there is the ability to put attention on your left foot and wiggle your toes. But how does all that actually happen and what initiates it? Where do will and intention come from? Once the mind tries to capture this happening in words, it instantly creates the mirage of duality. Suddenly we are apparently lost in imaginary problems and conundrums: Do I have free will? If so, why do I do things I don't want to do? How can I change? What should I do? Can I do anything? Do I exist?

This is all thought. Whenever there is confusion and seeking, it's a clue that thought is busy chasing its own tail. Actuality is simple. The present moment is simple. Here, there is no confusion, no problem, no free will, no absence of free will. You are simply doing whatever you are doing. And actually, there is no "you" doing any of it. That "you" is an after-thought, a mental image, a grammatical convention, a reification of some energetic flow that is truly no-thing at all. In actuality, life is simply living itself through the appearance of "you" and "me." Truly seeing this eliminates all guilt and blame.

Given the "wrong" combination of genetics, neurochemistry, conditioning, provocation, and opportunity, what we consider horrible things can happen. "I" could be the perpetrator of such things, or "you" could. And while we would certainly want a serial killer or a child molester locked up for the protection of everyone; at the same time, if we look deeply, we can see that they are blameless. No one would commit atrocities if they really had a choice, if they were really free. Looking closely, it can be seen that if "I" were in "their" shoes (that is to say, if "I" had the same combination of genetics, neurochemistry, conditioning, provocation, and opportunity), then "I" would do exactly the same thing "they" did, because there is no "I" and no "them" apart from the "shoes" (the ten million conditions -- nature and nurture).

Does that mean that we should be totally passive or inert or maybe wildly licentious because, "It's all just happening," and "We have no choice"? No. It means that the "me" who could apparently choose to be this way or that way is a phantom, a mental image with no substance. Does that mean we are powerless, that nothing can be done?

Rather than slap down a conceptual answer (yes or no), is it possible to live with the question, to not know? Watch carefully as actions occur, as choices are made and decisions are reached - from the little ones like whether to get up from the chair, to the big ones like whether to get married or move across country - watch carefully. See if you can find the one in control, or if you can catch the decisive moment, or if you can explain how it all happens. You may find that you can't find anyone at the helm or say how it is that "you" do the simplest things, like raising your arm or reading these words. On the other hand, you can't really say that you can't do things either, since there is clearly an ability right here to act. You simply can't get hold (conceptually) of exactly what that is or how it works. And the more awareness is brought to any particular activity, the more refined the activity and the awareness seem to become, and the more possibilities open up. But who brings awareness to an activity? Is there a choice involved? You may find that words and concepts simply can't contain the actuality.

Here, in non-conceptual actuality, is the natural response-ability and intelligence, the choiceless choice or effortless effort exerted by life itself: breathing, circulating blood, thinking, awareness of thinking, dreaming, waking up, appearing, disappearing -- one indivisible wholeness in which there is nothing separate to have or not have free will, to cause or be caused, to be born or to die, to be enlightened or unenlightened.

Thought seemingly divides this wholeness up. It imposes a grid on top of the emptiness and conceptually sorts it into little squares. Then it imagines that Square A causes Square B, or that Square B is the result of Square A, or that Square A has free will to choose between Square B and Square C, or that Square A comes before Square B in time and space. This is all imagination, a way of conceptualizing. The squares aren't really separate; the boundaries don't actually exist; they're only conceptual, as are the imagined relationships between the squares, including time and space. The squares are actually not related at all because they're not two. And this thinking process that imposes conceptual grids on wholeness is itself an aspect of the same wholeness, as is the awareness that sees through the imaginary grids. Everything is included in the Absolute. We could say that the Absolute includes the relative (the world of apparent grids), but isn't bound by it. Awakening doesn't mean ignoring, discounting or denying relative reality, but awakening sees through it. It recognizes the emptiness of everything. But in relative reality, the show goes on, and you (as an apparent character) play your part, apparently making choices and taking actions.

What we often think of or call choices are simply thoughts that arise unbidden that may or may not be followed by the result they appear to select. A thought such as "I am going to quit smoking" arises on its own out of the ten million conditions and may or may not be followed by the cessation of smoking because that thought has no power. The "I" to which it refers is a powerless mirage, an illusion. A mirage cannot choose to do (or not do) anything. To the mind, this idea of having no choice and no free will sounds scary, as if "I" might then be a robot with no control. But this apparent dilemma vanishes into thin air with the realization that there is no "I" here in the first place to be either bound or free.

And actually, thought and conditioned existence are quite robotic and mechanical, but there is something prior to thought and conditioned existence that is free and unbound. The energy and aliveness is in that boundlessness. "You" as the character in the story of your life are an imagination, a phantom, an ever-changing appearance. You (in Truth) are the emptiness that is being and beholding it all, the no-thing-ness, the boundlessness that is appearing as everything, including you (the character) and the story of your life. Whatever appears will disappear. Whatever comes can go again, and whatever goes, can always come back. But boundlessness is ever-present. That is all there is. There can be the idea of "your mind" and "your body" and "your free will" or your "lack of free will." But look closely and see if any of this is really here.

***

Zoom in close enough or back far enough, or turn attention to the source of seeing or to awareness itself, and you find nothing that you can grasp, and yet, you find everything! You know that you (as presence-awareness) are here, and you know this with absolute doubtless certainty. Being here is beyond doubt.

No word can contain or describe what has been called the Unborn, the Absolute, the Tao, Pure Awareness, Oneness, Buddha-Nature, the Self, Truth, Totality, the One Mind -- the words are only pointers. They point beyond conceptualization, to what is utterly obvious and omnipresent. They point to Here and Now, the One Eternal Present Moment.

And what is that?

Any attempt to grasp it ends in frustration. And yet, it's unavoidably right here. It is not something mystical and transcendental that you have to work very hard to see. It is this direct experiencing right now. It is seemingly obscured by the very effort to pin it down, grasp it mentally, conceptualize it. In that grasping and the ensuing frustration, we feel confused and separate. Waking up is simply relaxing that mental grasping. In the words of one Zen teacher, waking up is opening the hand of thought.

Buddha-Nature (or the Self) is actually omnipresent---it never really leaves us, even in the midst of grasping and seeking, for even the grasping and seeking is an activity of the same indivisible boundlessness. Boundlessness is the ever-present reality in spite of whatever form it appears to take, never because of any form it apparently takes. But whenever attention becomes absorbed in thoughts (mental movies, worries, obsessions), then it seems that boundlessness has been lost. It seems that "I" am a separate somebody struggling to regain "Oneness" or "awareness" or "the present moment," as if that were some object apart from me that I need to find, grasp, understand, experience, merge with, identify with, or become. The mental mirage-world fills the screen and the story seems utterly real, all-pervasive and convincing. And paradoxically, every attempt to resist suffering only seems to confirm the imaginary problem and make the suffering worse. Ultimately, there is no way out except to see that there is no need of a way out.

See how transparent it all is. These thoughts and the movies they unfold on the screen of awareness are simply secretions of the brain, conditioned habit patterns, mental weather -- there is nothing personal about them. There is no need to resist or vanquish them; simply see them for what they are.

Seeing the mirage-world of thoughts and mental movies for what it is gets ever more subtle. Being down on yourself for "thinking too much" is just more thinking! There is no "you" doing the thinking or the seeing; that "you" is only another thought, another mental image. Liberation isn't about getting rid of anything; it's about seeing that there is nothing separate from anything else. The "me" who wants to stop thinking is just another mental image, another thought, another movie character in another story.

Reality is unavoidable. It is right here in the smell of rain, the song of a bird, the whoosh of traffic, sensations -- the nondual absolute. Totally alive. Ungraspable. No final result, no finish line, no Big Bang event, no you -- just what is, as it is. No need for exotic experiences. Nothing to be eliminated or held on to, and nothing to be acquired or understood. Nothing excluded. Nothing singled out. Freedom is utterly simple and uncomplicated.

***

Although everything is seamless and without division, entrancement in the story of separation is a different experience from open, spacious, unclouded awareness. In the extremes of entrancement, people torture and exterminate millions of other people because it seems like a good idea. Naturally, we want to wake up from such entrancement on both the personal and global levels. But there's a very subtle catch here.

Resisting suffering or trying to wake up is itself part of the suffering, part of the confusion. It doesn't work because it is rooted in the illusion of separation, the same illusion and confusion that generates the suffering. Suffering can only end here and now with the total acceptance of what is. It is the very nature of Now (awareness, emptiness, beingness) to include and accept everything. Everything is allowed to be, obviously, because it's here! Everything is as it is, and could not be otherwise.

Taking action (or non-action) to relieve pain, heal injury, or correct injustice arises naturally. The universe acts. Ultimately, what is healed will be broken down again. All form is impermanent; it never even exists in the way we think it does. True freedom is recognizing the emptiness (or boundlessness) that is unborn and undying, the emptiness that is here regardless of relative circumstances and never because of relative circumstances.

If the movie begins playing in which "you" are trying to "get" this recognition, and feeling badly when it appears that "you" have failed, then simply notice that this is yet another movie, another dream-like appearance in consciousness, another story about the imaginary character. Emptiness is already here. It can't be lost (or found). Awareness includes everything and sticks to nothing. Clouds appear. Contraction appears. Pain appears. Resistance and tension appear. Expansion and relaxation appear. Mental movies appear and disappear. Dreams come and go. Everything disappears in deep sleep and death and reappears again in waking life. It's all a boundless ebb and flow that includes absolutely everything, even contraction and distraction and resistance and the appearance of separation and encapsulation -- even so-called "evil." It all is.

But that doesn't mean losing the ability to differentiate between clarity and confusion, nor does it mean not flossing your teeth or not working to correct injustice if you are moved to do so. Wholeness includes discernment and the ability to act. It includes the ability to notice errors and correct them. So awakening doesn't mean we have to sit back and do nothing about problems because we have the idea that everything is "okay" as it is. As my first Zen teacher told me: "You're perfect just as you are, and that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement." There's room for everything! But the true source of any action is the Totality, not the imaginary separate person. And whatever happens is a dream-like appearance. The last moment has already totally vanished into thin air! How real was it?

There is no distance at all between samsara and nirvana. The illusion of distance is samsara, and nirvana is simply the realization that this distance, or separation, is imaginary. Liberation is not about "you" getting from samsara to nirvana. That is illusion. Liberation is the absence of that whole story of separation and lack.

***

But as a belief, all this is meaningless. Liberation isn't about picking up a new belief system or a new set of answers (for example, that, "All is One," or "There is nothing to attain," or, "Consciousness is all there is," or, "There is no free will," or, "Everything is perfect."). Liberation is the aliveness and immediacy beyond belief. Liberation is when all the answers, explanations and positions disappear, and what remains is the open mind of not knowing.

Thus it has been said, if you meet the Buddha, kill it. If you find the answer, drop it. Yesterday's answer is today's dead meat. Let it go. There is no enlightened person. There is only enlightened seeing, enlightened being, enlightened consciousness -- impersonal clarity. There is no unenlightened person either -- only confusion and entrancement, impersonal obscuration. All of this is like weather -- it comes and goes -- and all of it is an aspect of the undivided whole, inseparable from every other aspect: the confusion, the clarity, the desire to wake up, the impulse to clarify and heal, the various forms of meditative inquiry and exploration, the practices, the waking up from practices -- all of it is what is.

If you try to make sense of all this and adopt some fixed position or view, sooner or later, the ground you imagine yourself standing on will be swept away. Liberation is not a matter of pinning down the "right" answer or the "correct" position. Reality cannot be pinned down or put into a box. Does waking up take effort or is it effortless? Is there a choice or is it choiceless? Is the world real or unreal? Does what happens matter or not matter? Will I still be here after death or not? Such questions defy answers because they are all rooted in trying to describe the indescribable, and/or they are rooted in conceptual fallacies, like flat-earth questions (What will happen to me if I fall off the edge of the earth? You and the edge are both imaginary; the question is based on a misconception).

As soon as we have words like "Oneness" or "Emptiness" or "Awareness," the word instantly creates the mirage-sense of an object. But that object isn't real, it is conceptual, and it isn't what these words are pointing to. Boundlessness is inconceivable, and yet it is visible everywhere, as everything.

***

Boundlessness, Oneness, or Non-duality does not mean that a bunch of separate pieces are now joined together. It doesn't mean that everything is made of one primal substance. It means that everything is equally insubstantial, that there are no separate "things" to be joined, that there is no substance to get hold of anywhere. And yet, that doesn't mean there is nothing. Emptiness does not mean voidness or formless nothingness. There is an old Zen story where a Master asks a student to grab emptiness. The student makes a gesture of grabbing a handful of empty space. The Master says, "That's nice, but there's an even better way to grab emptiness." He takes hold of the student's nose and twists it. Everything is emptiness! The sensations of nose twisting are emptiness. Your nose is emptiness. And emptiness is nothing other than your nose. Emptiness means everything (including your nose) is empty of solidity and permanence and separation. Form and emptiness cannot be teased apart except in thought. Truth is not something mysterious you need to search for. It is just this -- the computer screen, the shapes of these words, the roar of traffic, the gurgling stomach, the barking dog, your nose -- just this. No-thing at all!

Ultimately, the universe is a fleeting dream, a bubble in a stream. Wipe your forehead and you've killed and maimed billions of micro-organisms. Horrible events and misfortunes are often the source of tremendous wisdom, insight, compassion, and awakening. Light and dark are two sides of the same coin, and there are no one-sided coins. Seeing this, there is more acceptance of life as it is. Enlightenment is not about "you" getting to the sunny side of the street and staying there permanently. Enlightenment includes the whole picture. Groundlessness is everything, and everything is groundlessness. Enlightenment doesn't mean dissociation or lack of caring, for it is the realization that everything is myself. The dividing lines are all imaginary. Enlightenment is unconditional love. Each drop of dew, each snowflake, each piece of trash in the gutter, each human being is unique and precious, and it's all one seamless being, marvelously diverse but utterly without separation. When we really see that, naturally, there is compassion for all beings including ourselves. Sometimes the greatest compassion does not look like what we usually think of as compassion.

Whatever appears -- whether it is confusion, resistance, pain, pleasure, efforting, bliss, boredom, me-stories, clear skies or thunderstorms -- all of it is allowed to be Here, even judgments and preferences! It all is Here! There is space Here for everything.

***

If you're beginning to think that "awareness" is actually something (a Blank Screen, an Empty Container, or a Mirror), notice that these are all mental images, conceptual ideas, subtle imaginary objects. "Awareness" is a word that points to what remains when everything perceivable and conceivable falls away. Are you trying to see what that is? Can you see the joke in trying to do that?

Don't think that everything perceivable and conceivable has to disappear. But how solid is anything perceivable or conceivable (any image, any idea, any memory, any sensation, any thought, any emotion, any event, any object, any experience)? Where is your childhood or yesterday or a minute ago or the last second? On close inspection, everything is insubstantial, ungraspable, vanishing. The mind keeps trying to get a grip. It wants answers, certainty, a place to stand. What is this Whole Thing? The mind wants to understand. Thought imagines that "you" can step back and take a look at yourself, at Totality. But no matter how hard it tries, the eye cannot see itself. You already are what you are seeking. You always have been. There is no possibility of separation. You can't not be what you are.

***

Experiences come and go. This is not about having a special experience, a big event, a final breakthrough, or a psychedelic vision of some kind. It is not about regaining any previous experience or achieving something you've read about or imagined. All of that is in the world of dream-like appearances.

Simply notice that everything (mental movies, dreams, perceptions, thoughts, waking life, mirages, the I-illusion, apparent duality, time and space, chairs, tables, expansion, contraction, meditation retreats, traffic jams, everything) is without substance or continuity, and it all appears and disappears right here. Here is always here. It's always Now. Even memories of the past, fantasies about the future, and thoughts of elsewhere can only appear Here and Now. Awareness is always here, whether it appears clear or "clouded" by thoughts. In deep sleep, the entire universe disappears. All words and ideas disappear. Even the sense of awareness or presence disappears. The whole quest for understanding and awakening disappears. You (as anything perceivable or conceivable) disappear. There is no "you" left to notice that "you" have disappeared! Nothing perceivable or conceivable remains. Out of this vast emptiness, dreams arise, and then the movie of waking life. Wave after wave crashes on the shore, and the ocean remains, waving. People-ing is something that Being is doing, in the same way that the ocean is waving. There are no waves apart from the ocean, and no people apart from being. What is born and what dies? Boundlessness cannot be captured by the mind. Something is happening here, but it can't be grasped by thought. And it doesn't need to be grasped or explained! You can't find the Totality because you are the Totality. There is nothing other than the Totality. You contain the whole universe and the whole universe is showing up as you.

Awakening is never about achieving something that isn't right here, right now.

Ordinary present awareness. The shape of these words, the hum of the computer, the sound of the traffic, the listening presence, the sensations that appear and disappear. Only thought divides it up and tries to figure it all out. And that very movement of thought is itself only energy and vibration, another appearance, mental weather. No-thing at all.

***

So what to do? Effort or no effort, practice or no practice? The question is like a cloud floating across the sky. Practices may appear or disappear, efforts may happen or cease happening. Either way, there is only this one present moment, just as it is. So-called meditation (in the truest sense) is not about going anywhere or achieving anything. It has nothing to do with special postures, techniques, results or experiences. It is simply effortless awareness, awake to what is. It is the direct discovery that there is no meditator and no possibility of stepping in or out of the boundlessness of Here and Now. When that is seen, the whole concept of "meditation" falls away. What remains is not a new belief system, but rather, eveything, just as it is.

So, if you're feeling confused, trying to figure out whether or not you have free will, or whether or not you exist, or whether or not you should meditate or do nothing, or whether to believe this teacher or that teacher, simply wake up right now from these mental conundrums. Stop. Look. Listen. Hear the traffic, the birds, the wind. Feel the breathing. Nothing special. Simply the extraordinary miracle of what actually is.

All that (apparently) stands in the way is the story that this isn't it, that something more or less or different is needed. You can't make that story disappear because that very effort is part of the story, as is the "you" who longs to be free of the story. The stories and the illusion of encapsulation can only be seen for what they are, as they arise, here and now. If they are not seen through, then it may appear that "you" are lost or bound or in trouble. But is there really a "you" who is lost? Is the screen ever burned by the fire in the movie?

Words and concepts are complicated; reality is utterly simple. You can't eat the menu or live in the map, and these words are an invitation to see through all beliefs and ideas, even the very subtle ones from Advaita or Zen or this text. Truth is not in the future, but Now. Not hidden, but obvious and unavoidable. Not in concepts, but in actuality. When all that mental clutter of seeking and trying to figure everything out and trying to get somewhere is seen to be nothing at all (and nothing personal), when it is clear that you are beyond all appearances, and that all appearances are nothing but you, the One Mind, then there is no one left to awaken. This can be called liberation, but why call it anything?