In psychological parlance, the term “cognitive dissonance” refers to the mental stress and consequent dysfunction experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or who holds a belief and nevertheless performs a contradictory action or reaction. For example, an individual is likely to experience dissonance if he or she is addicted to a destructive habit (such as drugs or alcohol) and continues to indulge that addiction, despite the fact that they know it is seriously harming them and their relations.

In her remarkably insightful book “Application of Impossible Things”, Natalie Sudman employs the term “Contraries” to describe that same process in which we sabotage ourselves by holding simultaneous contradictory beliefs. To illustrate how that happens, she uses the example of someone who desires to attain wealth, but also carries a hold-over belief from their early Christian indoctrination regarding how difficult it would be for a rich man to get into heaven — a challenge comparable to a camel fitting through the eye of a needle. As a result, their belief undermines their intent, and they fail to achieve the financial success they desire.

The point here is that our thoughts are energetic phenomena that create effects. All that we experience is the result of attention combined with intention. If there is some kind of internal conflict in that regard, we will invariably reap confusion and suffering. Indeed, this condition of internal discord is at the source of much of our frustration with life, wherein we are prevented by our own conflicted thoughts from accomplishing our goals and fulfilling our purpose.

In my essays “As We Think” and “How To Change”, I investigate the power of thought in the creation of our life and environs, but in this consideration I am exploring how we specifically sabotage ourselves in our life and relations by clinging (either consciously or unconsciously) to contradictory thought forms.

In his monumental opus “I Am That”, Nisargadatta Maharaj made a keen observation on this subject when he said:

“The real world is beyond the mind’s ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes. Look to the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them – your very seeing them will make them go.”

In other words, if we wish to align harmoniously with our heart’s deepest yearning, we must first inspect our motives to the point of recognizing where the contradictions lie. For those of us who have visited the many shops in the spiritual marketplace, we might notice that as a result of these visits we are now carrying around a big stew of conflicting messages. For example, we are attracted to the concept that we are already free, that everything is perfect, and that there is nothing to do, and yet we have to strive for liberation and practice as if our hair is on fire; or that there is a true and immortal Self, and yet it is all a dependently arising mental projection; or that we must become detached and aloof, but also compassionately engaged; or that there is only consciousness, and yet the truth is beyond consciousness, and so forth and so on.

Furthermore, merely becoming cognizant of the contradictions, though a good first step, is going to be rather ineffectual in terms of real transformation, unless we follow up by thoroughly rooting them out. In other words, clear seeing requires a component of actualization in the way we live and act. That is the art of life, and calls for a mature and balanced vigilance. By combining unswerving attention plus intention, there is nothing that we cannot do, but that demands a purity that does not come easily to the human animal. However, by resorting to the expanded awareness available to us as immortal spiritual beings temporarily inhabiting these human bio-vehicles, we can tap into the resources we need to release our cognitive and emotional knots and fulfill our purpose for incarnating here.

In any application of that conscious process of recognition and liberation, we will eventually have to confront and acknowledge the limitations inherent in any self-image we hold about ourselves. Indeed, it is only our self-centered story (the narrative of me & mine) which we are always trying to assert and defend that stands in our own way. Certainly, even our most positive self-images ultimately need to be relinquished, if we are to truly awaken to who and what we really are. Nevertheless, in regard to cognitive dissonance, it is our negative self-image which obstructs many of us on our journey. As the American spiritual teacher Adyashanti points out:

“When most people begin to come into contact with the true nature of their own self, they have such a hard time accepting that they could naturally be something positive and beautiful. In the West, many people struggle with negative self-image. I have seen that negative identity held onto even in the midst of profound revelation. It so easily contracts back into, ‘It couldn’t be me. It couldn’t be who I am; it’s just too good.’ [There is] an unwillingness to admit that all the avenues that we try to pursue to make us happy don’t ultimately end in happiness. Yet, we continue to insist that they do in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Once we understand where the dis-connect originates, we can begin the process of clarifying our intent. Otherwise, we will forever be at the mercy of uninspected elements of the psyche, aspects of our being that clash and generate stress and dissatisfaction. In any case, there are no victims. By our choices we created the conditions for dissonance, even if it involved something as seemingly unavoidable as buying into the fear and guilt-based religious stories we were told as innocent and receptive young children. Since the disturbance is ultimately our own creation, it is also our responsibility to both recognize it at its root, and then to let go of it, as part of the conscious process.

Because these areas of dissonance are typically buried at the core of our assumptions about life, we must delve deeply into that core to root them out. The practice of True Inquiry can address them systematically, but to activate such a process requires both persistence and consistence – it cannot be accomplished half-heartedly. If we are truly interested in freedom, we need to tap into our natural devotion. In other words, sincerity and determination cannot be faked. Earnestness is not a superimposed artifice, but must arise from a core impulse to awaken to our true nature, which also includes recognizing all of our forms of avoidance.

Fortunately, we are each and every one of us endowed with just such an impulse, or else we would not have put ourselves into such challenging and potentially rewarding circumstances as these human incarnations. Although enlightenment is indeed our prior condition, we have set that aside to enter into these human births, with all the amnesia that entails, just for the enjoyment and thrill of expanding our self-awareness to the point of re-cognizing our true nature, again and again. From our human perspective, we might scratch our heads at such a proposition, but what we are is much greater than the human mind could ever hope to comprehend.

When we hear the phrase “God works in mysterious ways”, we can understand that the “God” referred to is actually who and what we are. It is only accumulated knots of contraction such as cognitive dissonance which impede and obscure that recognition. Thus, as part of the conscious process of re-discovering ourselves – our true nature and bliss — we are called by our Whole Being to see through and release all such limiting and contradictory beliefs, ideas, and assumptions.

Nor need it be some grim slog through layers of psychological muck. Rather, it can be a deeply enjoyable process, if we approach it with humor and humility. That means to not take ourselves so seriously. Someday, we may come to the happy recognition that it is all good, all of it. As Ramana Maharshi smilingly noted: “A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

In the meantime, it helps to remember that whatever appears is mind. Moreover, whatever stories or thoughts are arising in our mind right now, we can also recognize that there is an awareness of them. If there is an awareness of them, then it follows that we are not the thought, not the story, but rather that spaciousness in which the whole drama is appearing. In other words, we can take one step back, in a manner of speaking, to a purely witnessing position. I say “in a manner of speaking”, because ultimately awareness is inseparable from experience, just as the ocean and the wave are indivisible. However, by assuming the temporary witness position, we can provide a fresh perspective and also give ourselves some space from the clinging and fixating activity of our conflicted consciousness, and its troubling case of mistaken identity with all that is impermanent, or non-self.

Now, we have often heard the suggestion from meditation teachers to “look at that which is looking”. Of course, this suggestion will stimulate the mind to try and turn back on itself, like the eye trying to see itself. However, can the mind ever make an object of itself? If the perceived cannot perceive, then any motion on the part of the mind to grasp itself instantly creates a false duality. After all, the mind cannot be used to grasp mind, nor can awareness make an object of itself in order to realize itself. All of the various so-called “spiritual” efforts to do so are in effect mental strategies that only serve to prolong one’s sense of dilemma, contributing to more cognitive dissonance and frustration.

Interestingly, when that fact is directly seen, then there can follow a spontaneous letting go, and paradoxically, in that surrender of the struggle, our true nature – what we truly are — emerges from the background to shine as the presence of awareness itself. That is also the moment when all past efforts are seen for what they were, provoking the humorous response that Ramana alluded to in the quote above. Indeed, in that timeless moment, we have finally ceased to sabotage ourselves, and now can get on with the adventure of this life, freed from self-conflicted programs of the search to become what we already are.

“Where O where can I be safe?

Only in giving up all wanting and trying!”

~Rumi

In Buddhism, “Taking Refuge” is a formal, ritualized gesture, indicating an aspirant’s commitment to and reliance on the “Triple Jewel”, which includes the Buddha, His Teachings (Dharma), and the Community of fellow practitioners (Sangha). Buddhists take refuge in order to gain relief from all afflicted states (or mental and emotional disturbances), as well as freedom from re-birth in this troubled realm (Samsara). Traditionally, it is an initiatory ceremony undertaken to confirm one’s status as an official “Buddhist” (in a somewhat similar vein as the Catholic ceremony of Confirmation, or the Jewish rite of passage called Bar or Bat Mitzvah).

Regardless of one’s religious intent, however, how often does “taking refuge” turn out to be just another strategic effort by the ego-mind to superimpose yet another layer of identification onto the architecture of the self-image (even if its ultimate purpose is the attainment of liberation)? In such a case, the new refugee may be nominally confirming their allegiance to a Buddhist affiliation, but perhaps that’s just one more label, and one more bit of baggage, that will need to be seen through and discarded eventually, if they are to truly realize who and what they are, prior to any name or limiting categorization.

In fact, everyone — Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike — is always seeking refuge as a matter of reaction to life. It’s a primary game of human consciousness, with numberless sub-forums devoted to this or that variation on the motive to have things be otherwise than they currently are perceived to be. We might prefer that life be happier, healthier, or holier. Perhaps we wish for more certainty and security, more order and control. Certainly, most of would like life to be less stressful, painful, or boring. We might hope to be more aligned to some consensus program promising redemption, salvation, enlightenment, or maybe just guaranteed a good seat in our fantasy of heaven when this life is done.

Some of the more enthusiastic players may even pride themselves on having found the one and only superior vehicle, and so dedicate themselves to this or that ride of conditional preference as the confluences of compounded hoohaw play themselves out, but how about this: no refuge, no path, no person walking any path. No progress and no deviation. Nothing bound, so nothing to flee. Already free, already free. Before any pursuit of refuge, already free!

On the other hand, maybe that’s all a bit too radical, leaving us with nothing to hold onto or cherish as a means to find shelter — no merciful raft to carry us across the river that we believe separates us from the other shore. Of course, the notion of some “other place” we supposedly need to get to can be investigated too. For example, is it true: do we actually need to go somewhere else, especially when we don’t even know where we are in the first place?

If we earnestly inspect our motives, our chronic and habitual dissatisfactions and complaints that prompt our seeking for refuge, we can notice a relentless mechanism in operation. Specifically, we can observe how we are perpetually setting ourselves up, dividing ourselves in two — first creating our own unhappiness via the play of comparative mind, and then seeking for some refuge from our own disturbance. It’s a vicious cycle that we are constantly reinforcing from moment to moment, extending even into our dreams at night, and certainly into all of our relationships.

Even for those who imagine that taking refuge in systems like Buddhism will yield some secure and peaceful retreat from the challenges of this world inevitably discover a “catch”. As the Tibetan teacher Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche notes: “It is such a mistake to assume that practicing dharma will help us calm down and lead an untroubled life; nothing could be further from the truth. Dharma is not a therapy. Quite the opposite, in fact, dharma is tailored specifically to turn your life upside down – it’s what you sign up for. So when you life goes pear-shaped, why do you complain?”

Maybe a wiser approach would be to stop chasing an escape hatch and instead take the time to investigate what we are always doing to ourselves — what are we always up to? Stepping back a bit, we can notice how we typically make ourselves crazy buying into the conflicted propaganda of this world. For example, many of us first invest in borrowed (religious) beliefs about what miserable sinners we are, and then feel compelled to seek redemption from our own guilty self-images — some refuge from what turns out to be our own self-made nightmare.

Really though, what is so difficult about letting go of that stressful struggle – the incessant war with ourselves — and relaxing into the ordinary happiness of just being? If one could give up all wanting and trying in this very moment and directly recognize that everything is already and always spontaneously perfected, illumined, and unfettered — just as it is — then what need would there be for some further desperate search for refuge or saving grace? Rather, in such profound surrender, the whole phenomenal display could be appreciated from the free position of relaxed not-knowing — that place of pure wonder and grateful acceptance of the mystery of this vast Infinity.

In the eyes of such child-like innocence, what is, simply is – there is no need for fight or flight, much less any fixed conceptual designations in which we mentally fabricate a prison, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to escape it.

The Unknown is not a threat – it is our own backyard, where we can dance and play and love, or just lie back and quietly gaze as the white clouds of thought lazily drift through skies of bright blue, with no compulsion on our part to claim, identify with, or manipulate any of them.

Still, because we humans are the way we are, it seems we won’t truly let go and find lasting peace at heart until we discover this truth directly for ourselves – borrowed notions (regardless of their seeming authority or appeal) just won’t cut it. Thus, we might adopt various “expedient means” as tools along the way, such as taking refuge in an illusion in order to vanquish a more harmful illusion. This is the classical case of employing a thorn to remove another thorn. In any event, once it has done its job, it too is fit to be discarded (but not until then).

Among the various time-tested “expedient means”, True Inquiry/Meditation can be particularly effective, especially when supported by the discipline of silence and the practice of non-dwelling. Moreover, for the vast majority of aspirants, the services of a qualified Guide can prove indispensable. We all have our blind spots, and so a good teacher can help to point out certain critical aspects along the way that we might otherwise tend to overlook or ignore.

One issue that some aspirants face in regard to notions of progress, however, is the tendency to assume that they are finished and “done”, when they are actually not even halfway “there”. They may have an experience of the concept of freedom, but the actualization and embodiment of liberation is invariably another matter altogether. Pride can blind one to their own mirror, and so a grounding sense of humility will prove the best antidote.

Indeed, even harboring the notion of a “someone” having “arrived” or attained some state or condition of personal completion is an indication that one has still not really understood the utter emptiness of the self-image. Moreover, as Dogen Zenji sagely remarked: “There is no beginning to practice nor end to enlightenment; There is no beginning to enlightenment nor end to practice.”

Consequently, we find in the traditional literature all kinds of talk about levels and stages, partial and full realizations, exoteric and esoteric programs, revealed and secret teachings, schemes and devices, initiations and transmissions – all culminating in the confounding (to the ego-mind) Recognition that there has been nothing to seek for in the first place, no refuge to take, not a thing to attain, nor anything to grasp or turn away from. It is all empty and marvelous, with not a hair out of place. All along, a child has been assuring her doll at night that everything is going to be alright.

Nevertheless, until the maturity of that transparent state of fresh natural spontaneity is fully realized, it seems that there must be effort in some form or another. As Sri Nisargadatta noted, only “hard facts” can reveal the absolute nothingness of our self-image, and so we have work to do, even though, paradoxically, there is nothing to be done. He compared spiritual Awakening to a frayed rope eventually snapping. Our work, he said, is at the strands. If we are earnest and devoted, unraveling each fiber of the self-delusion with alert attention and persistence, the break is bound to happen, and Realization will be inevitable.

In any case, we need not postpone our happiness until some indefinite time in the distant future, when real happiness might somehow miraculously come along and find us. We can do the work, and still be happy now. Indeed, happiness is our work, and that work, that inquiry, includes recognizing all the ways in which we are habitually abandoning our natural happiness.

In other words, it is not about adding some happiness that is not already true of us, or escaping some unhappiness with which we believe ourselves to be cursed. Genuine Awakening is informed with the realization that we are not here so much to take refuge from unhappiness, as we are to discover that prior happiness which has never been lacking, never been threatened – our own true nature and condition.

“Happiness is our real nature.

That happiness does not depend on

our possessions or achievements.

Existence is the same as happiness

and happiness is the same as being.

That which is called happiness alone exists.

One’s own reality, which shines within everyone

as the heart, is itself the ocean of unalloyed bliss.”

~ Ramana Maharshi

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

~Edgar Allan Poe

, 

This universe of phenomena is a grain of sand on an infinite beach, and this beach is but a grain of sand in the totality of manifestation, which is itself of the same nature as last night’s dream. In this 3-D realm of apparent phenomena in which we find ourselves, there is nothing but delusion, which itself is utterly empty of any inherent self-nature. In other words, nothing is what it seems. Nothing has any independent existence. Regardless of how solid any particular phenomena may appear, the appearance itself is deceiving, since it is actually compounded from other dream-like phenomena, which are themselves compounds, and so on ad infinitum.

Nor can we ever “see the bigger picture” while we are fitted into the human body-mind-organism, because the bigger picture is bigger than anything the human eye can perceive or intellect grasp. All efforts undertaken by seekers to have it be otherwise are ultimately exercises in futility. No matter how heroic, glamorous, or brilliant our dream characters may appear, and no matter how seemingly earnest in their pursuit of truth and certainty, they all vanish upon awakening, along with their dreamy attainments.

Moreover, as one sage noted, it cannot be proven that, having removed delusion, there is no longer delusion. The poet Ghalib expressed a profound insight in that regard when he wrote: “All that can be seen is nothing but a dream; and even when we think ourselves awake, we have only wakened in a dream.” Because delusion is pure by nature, it is self-illuminating. Because that is so, all manifest and unmanifest phenomena — even the most subtle sense of beingness itself — are essentially props in the dreamy projection of mind called self and world. Because that is so, phenomena appearing in various ways simply represent the synchronous opera and engaging delight of That which is dreaming all of this, and of which we ourselves in our various costumes are innocent dream projections.

Because that is so, we can give up the struggle to figure it all out with the limited human intellect, and relax into the natural happiness of not knowing, without worry or regret, or any anxiety to name and confirm it. We can forgive the dream, and in fact, that is the key to its eventual undoing, because as long as we are holding on to any passion about it — pro or con — we are still trapped by it. However, when even That, the universal witness, is recognized as inherently empty, we are left with nothing to name or claim, and so are set loose into the vastness of what we are — unspeakable, unknowable.

In that regard, Sri Nisargadatta made a potent observation:

“Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you were born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so. The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay; see all as a dream and stay out of it.”

Indeed, this entire psycho-physical realm itself is nothing but a virtual reality — a non-binding, transient, and dependently arising modification of consciousness. Why not make the most of it by inspecting it to the point of recognition, recognition that the entire dream (including our dream persona) is nothing but a momentary creation, a holographic projection of mind? Indeed, its very impermanence is proof of its unreality.

As the Buddha himself proclaimed (in “The Supreme Jewel Mound”): “My form appeared like a dream to sentient beings who are like a dream. I taught them dreamlike teaching to attain dreamlike enlightenment.” The Zen patriarch Dogen echoed that sentiment when he noted that “the truth of the Buddha’s and ancestors’ realization consists invariably of what a dream makes within a dream.”

Just as the causes and results of a dream appear individually, under the power of complete imputation, determined by one’s particular angle of vision, filters, memory associations, preferences, and so forth, the individual appearances of phenomena are like flowers planted in the air, consisting of nothing enduring or substantial. Still, what a captivating fragrance! In fact, so alluring is the aroma of the dream creations that we are led around by the nose from flower to flower, entranced by the sensations arising in the body-mind, and perpetually craving for more.

Only when the spell of enchantment with the possibilities of experience has worn off do we become available to the morning sun, shining through the curtains and rousing us from the dream. As long as we are identified with the character in the dream, the one we currently believe ourselves to be, we cannot awaken. However, when that intoxication dissipates to some extent, we might be moved to investigate the nature of our own appearance, suspecting that things aren’t really what they seem. This inquiry can in turn start a chain reaction, letting in even more light.

When our attention eventually shifts from the objects in the dream to the Dreamer itself, a breakthrough in consciousness is possible, and our eyes begin to open. What then do we see? For one thing, we see that our belief in the enduring substantiality of the one who would awaken is the very delusion that has precluded any real awakening all along.

Nevertheless, and even though every moment of our lives is really a miraculous gift, ego mind by nature tries to cling to what it interprets as “good”, based on memory associations, and avoid what it is conditioned to regard as “bad”. However, all such preferences are just provisional thought forms. Recognizing that, we can let go of those thoughts, once we realize that none of these conditional interpretations on perception and experience affect our real being.

Whether we believe that there is an objective truth, or that truth is only subjective, doesn’t matter. Whether we believe there is a God, or some final Nirvana, or reincarnation — none of that really matters here and now. Right now, those are just more thoughts. Birth, death, and everything that transpires in between are just thoughts. Can we grasp or hold on to any of it? That is one reason for the comparison to dreams.

However, instead of wringing our hands and fretting about all of that, we have the innate freedom to let go of it all and just relax into the spacious feeling and pure awareness of simple being-ness. This is the great gift which we have been given, the awareness of this naked present moment. Why add stress and doubt to this innocence? That is just ego mind doing its thing, superimposing its willfulness in efforts to confirm its existence. It has been playing the same hand all along, and we keep falling for it, believing that it amounts to the totality of who and what we are.

Certainly, ego has a place, in that it keeps us from walking out into the middle of traffic, but we need not imagine it represents who we really are. That is simply a case of mistaken identity. When we begin to awaken to who and what we truly are, we realize down to our very cells the great sufficiency of being– that we are OK forever, and that there is not the slightest thing that can actually harm us. In that light, we discover that these bodies are like ingenious space suits we have donned to explore the physical dimension, but what we really are and always have been is nothing less than immortal Spirit.

We came to awaken, but when we opened our eyes we began to fall asleep. The more we looked around the sleepier we became, until we were only dreaming. Dreaming is a kind of mind magic where we create intriguing characters to inhabit and then pretend to be. Experience follows, based on causes and conditions, which in turn modify the dreaming, spawning further causes and conditions. It’s mesmerizing! When it ceases to be mesmerizing, there are infinite versions of costumes to try, and usually we succumb to their fascinating allure, but there is also an opening, a portal for us to awaken within the dream itself, until we realize that, all along, we’ve been only dreaming.

At that moment, some might laugh, and some might cry, but all would likely agree with Rumi (in Moses and the Shepherd): “When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, “This is certainly not like we thought it was!”

“From moment to moment you are renewing the dream. Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion, the loss of interest in the dream itself.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

See also: https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/rhapsody-on-the-perfect-enjoyment-of-delusion/

When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits.

~Sri Nisargadatta

In the conventional waking state, it’s typical for seekers to measure themselves in terms of past and present, and then to project their ongoing development, or personal evolution, into the future. Indeed, we can become quite impressed with our accomplishments, all the mountains we’ve climbed and obstacles surmounted on our road to perfect happiness, peace, and enlightenment. Conversely, depending upon changing circumstances and events, we may become somewhat dismayed and depressed about our seeming lack of progress, and so re-double our efforts to “make good”, and have things work out in tune with our conditioned ideals of how life should be.

What’s quite rare, in either case, is to actually question our core narrative – our very sense of personhood – the one who seems to be trudging along on an idealistic path from a somewhere perceived to be lesser, to somewhere else projected to be greater. Rather, we go along with the typical assumption that we are the ones that we take ourselves to be in the waking state, and so struggle on day after day to achieve our provisional goals and satisfy our conditional desires (including our desire for spiritual enlightenment).

However, when we enter into the dream state at night, all of our carefully detailed plans and notions about our “progress” evaporate, as if the person who harbored them never existed. While asleep, we may find ourselves playing all sorts of roles, often utterly dissimilar from our waking persona, and this may be exhilarating or disturbing, and even disorienting, depending on the particular dream scenario we happen to find ourselves in.

Still, whatever dramas we may have entertained in our dream state quickly fade into the ethers upon awakening in the morning, and though we may momentarily ponder our dream adventures, they nevertheless have little if any impact on our “normal” waking consciousness. Rather, we invariably return to our everyday sense of personal continuity, complete with measuring, concepts of time, schemes of evolution or regrets about the past, convinced that we are this person appearing in the waking state — the one making all the efforts at transcending illusion, and striving to create a better, more prosperous, and enlightened version of oneself.

Ramana Maharshi made an interesting observation regarding these perceptions:

In saying “I had a dream; I was in deep sleep; I am awake”, you must admit that you were there in all the three states. That makes it clear that you were there all the time. If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state; this becomes hidden in the dream state; and the dream state disappears when you are in deep sleep. You were there then, you are there now, and you are there all the times. The three states come and go, but you are always there.

It is like a cinema. The screen is always there but several types of pictures appear on the screen and then disappear. Nothing sticks to the screen. Similarly, you remain your own Self in all the three states. If you know that, the three states will not trouble you, just as the pictures that appear on the screen do not stick to it.

On the screen, you sometimes see a huge ocean with endless waves; that disappears. Another time, you see fire spreading all around; that too disappears. The screen is there on both occasions. Did the screen get wet with the water or did it get burned by the fire? Nothing affected the screen. In the same way, the things that happen during the wakeful, dream and sleep states do not affect you at all; you remain your own Self.

Consequently, from the “Self” position – or ground of awareness itself – all three states can be recognized as manifestations of an illusion that is nevertheless invariably mistaken as reality. Indeed, in a kind of cosmic twist of irony, the enthusiastic one who would make some sort of progress in freeing themselves from the illusion turns out to be part of that very illusion. Moreover, it is our fixation on and clinging to that very person, so carefully fabricated and nurtured, defended, and confirmed, that ends up representing the main obstacle to real awakening.

Conversely, upon genuine awakening (that is, when the fictional, contracted self-center drops away), the natural state which has never been implicated by the illusion born of the three states is at last revealed to be who and what we really are. To arrive at such realization, however, requires that we relinquish our tight grasp on the self-images by which we have habitually defined ourselves, recognizing that they are more like costumes that we try on, or acting roles in a theater production, rather than a reflection of some substantial and enduring person. In other words, to truly begin to know ourselves, we need to let go and forget our self – the person we have imagined ourselves to be, the central character in the absorbing narrative of “me”.

Paradoxically, we actually incarnated in this physical dimension to have and enjoy the experience of being a human, a person, so wanting to discard it is like going on a vacation to a campground and then wanting to leave right away because we don’t like camping. The only real “problem” is when we identify so much with being the camper that we forget it is only a vacation experience, and so cling to that identity to the extent that we come to believe it represents the totality of who and what we are.

In other words, to the degree that we cling to a fixed identification with a sense of self, believing that we are the body-mind-complex exclusively, we can never truly understand what it is like to live without that illusion. After all, to us in our “amnesia”, it is not an illusion – it seems very real. If we cut ourselves in the kitchen, we suffer the ensuing pain and disturbance. When someone speaks ill of us, we keenly feel the hurt. Consequently, how do we go about seeing through the trance of separate and enduring personhood, when everything seems to conspire to convince us it is real?

For all but the rarest individuals, it is just about impossible to instantly penetrate the formidable trinity of “I, Me, and Mine”. Rather, that whole artificial edifice requires being dismantled, or systematically deconstructed, brick by brick, until the “Architect” is at last revealed. That one too, the Dream Weaver, must be seen through and let go, if we are to finally awaken to our true nature and condition. Moreover, although the intellect is a great and necessary tool in this process, it too must ultimately be exceeded. Otherwise, our realization will always remain at the level of conceptuality, denying the heart its true peace and satisfaction.

Thus, we need to begin with what we have, and start where we are, by working directly with our thoughts and emotions. By quietly observing the mind, we can see that everything proceeds from our thinking. Indeed, Buddha preached that all beings are sustained by thought, and so this is where we begin – right where the whole case of mistaken identity is born.

If we are persistent in our investigation, we can notice something very interesting. What we presumed to be a continuous stream of thoughts is recognized to be not so continuous after all. In other words, there are gaps, gaps where the sense of self, of “I am”, is momentarily absent. If we “enter into” those gaps — the space between thoughts — we are treated to a sudden glimpse of open spaciousness, pure awareness free of any encumbrance. That revelation both attracts and frightens us. It attracts us because it is peace, but scares us because of its implication, the possibility that there is no solid person, no enduring and concrete “me”.

Disturbed by the pending loss of confidence in the reality of our self-image, the mind’s initial response is typically some effort to distract ourselves by exploiting all manner of experiences, attempting thereby to confirm our existence. We may spend quite a long time in such efforts, before finally realizing that experience itself is simply mind modifying itself, endlessly, but to no lasting effect. When the fascination with mere experience wears off, we become available again, but this time at a deeper level.

It is at this next level where we confront the emotional contraction, which is even more intimately entangled with our self-sense than our conceptuality. It also happens to be the area that is most by-passed by spiritual seekers, in attempts to avoid facing and acknowledging the painful wounds at the heart that so characterize this human experience. Most of those knots are active at a sub-conscious level, and so our cleverness and intellectual acumen will serve us little as we move to address the hard armor which we have grown around our heart to shield it from the implicit threat perceived in life and relations.

There is an old saying: “Only love can break a heart, and only love can mend it again.” Just so, in the course of our lives, we have all felt the wound of love, and most of us invariably react by shutting down emotionally, in the belief that we would be safe from further hurt that way. What we can notice, though, is that all we have done in the process is confirm our separation from life and relations, and that is the greater suffering.

However, if we can let this recognition in and acknowledge our habitual contractive activity, we will begin to become vulnerable and open again, softer and more yielding, and in turn feel the contraction loosening. We realize that we have within us all the love necessary to surmount any fear, if we can simply step out of the way and let that love function naturally. Finally, we can recognize that our true nature is love, and it is only when we contract back upon ourselves in fits of selfishness that we impede love’s full expression, which is happiness unlimited.

Once we have recognized the awake aware space between thoughts, acknowledged the futility of mere experience, and begun to untie the knot at the heart, we still must come to terms with the “fraud” of consciousness itself, which binds together the whole case of our mistaken identity and infuses the basic storyline of “me and mine” with the aroma of reality. The late Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa astutely noted:

“Consciousness consists of emotions and irregular thought patterns, all of which taken together form the different fantasy worlds with which we occupy ourselves. These fantasy worlds are referred to in the scriptures as the “six realms.” The emotions are the highlights of ego, the generals of ego’s army; subconscious thought, daydreams and other thoughts connect one highlight to another. So thoughts form ego’s army and are constantly in motion, constantly busy. Our thoughts are neurotic in the sense that they are irregular, changing direction all the time and overlapping one another. We continually jump from one thought to the next, from spiritual thoughts to sexual fantasies to money matters to domestic thoughts and so on. The whole development of the five skandhas — ignorance/form, feeling, impulse/perception, concept and consciousness is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality.”

In other words, it is consciousness which makes it all “personal”, and so it is consciousness itself that we must penetrate, if we are to recognize the utter nothingness of the self-image, and thereby awaken to our true nature. To that end, Sri Nisargadatta points out:

“Consciousness is an itching rash that makes you scratch. Of course, you cannot step out of consciousness, for the very stepping out is in consciousness. But if you learn to look at your consciousness as a sort of fever, personal and private, in which you are enclosed like a chick in its shell, out of this very attitude will come the crisis which will break the shell.”

In order to break free then from the trance of separate and enduring personhood, and all the confusion and suffering ensuing from the belief in some independent self, we need to first pay attention. It is not necessary to jump through remedial hoops pursuing a ritual of strategic maneuvers. We simply need to recognize the mechanism of identification and fixation that we ourselves have created and stop fueling it.

This is what true inquiry and meditation is all about, as is the discipline of silence and the practice of non-dwelling. It is not adding another “doing” to the already busy and over-complicated mix demanded by the “me-project”, but rather a cessation of doing, a letting go and relaxing into the spacious transparency of our native awake awareness.

As the great sage Milarepa suggested, “Whatever appears is mind. Throughout day and night, look at your mind. When you look at your mind, you don’t see anything. When you don’t see anything, let go and relax.”

Fully embodying this sense of relaxed awareness and freedom from personal fixation in all of our life and relations is the mark of true spiritual maturity, and it is also what makes true love and compassion (which are the manifest fruits of selflessness) possible. Moreover, it does not require years of struggle and effort, but is immediately accessible here and now. Indeed, most such efforts and struggles merely serve to obscure the innocent truth of our natural state.

All we really need do is simply relax and take a moment to sense the clear knowing space in which everything is appearing, allowing the focus of attention to rest in and as that empty awake awareness instead of being distracted by the parade of appearances.

When all attainment agendas and self-absorbed efforts at practice are left at the door, so to speak, then only a clear, spacious, and empty awareness remains. That is the essence of mind — silent, impersonal, and radiant with clear light knowingness, unobstructed by any external object or internal subject, or any substantial doer at all. By returning to this open and transparent awake-ness again and again, what we truly are will spontaneously reveal itself as indivisible Reality Itself.

“Ask yourself: ‘To whom does it all happen?’ Use everything as an opportunity to go within. Light your way by burning up obstacles in the intensity of awareness. When you happen to desire or fear, it is not the desire or fear that are wrong and must go, but the person who desires and fears. There is no point in fighting desires and fears which may be perfectly natural and justified; It is the person who is swayed by them, that is the cause of mistakes, past and future. The person should be carefully examined and its falseness seen; then its power over you will end. After all, it subsides each time you go to sleep. In deep sleep you are not a self-conscious person, yet you are alive. When you are alive and conscious, but no longer self-conscious, you are not a person anymore.
During the waking hours you are as if on the stage, playing a role, but what are you when the play is over? You are what you are; what you were before the play began you remain when it is over. Look at yourself as performing on the stage of life. The performance may be splendid or clumsy, but you are not in it, you merely watch it; with interest and sympathy, of course, but keeping in mind all the time that you are only watching while the play — life — is going on.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

When the mortal mind appears, buddhahood disappears. When the mortal mind disappears, buddhahood appears. When the mind appears, reality disappears. When the mind disappears, reality appears.”

~Bodhidharma

 Mind cannot be used to grasp mind. Still, for the sake of the following consideration, here is a view: Mind is thought-energy, limitlessly potent. Awareness is mind without objects. Consciousness is mind with objects. What appears to the human perception as physical matter is the dense outer layer of consciousness, the end result of a series of energy interactions occurring in unseen dimensions. This interdependently originating continuum of energy creates and sustains the entire multidimensional multiverse in an exquisite choreography beyond human comprehension.

In reality, nothing is what it seems to the limited mortal perceptive capacity. Not a single thought, conception, sensation, or experience, high or low, is anything but a modification of dreams, a kind of hallucination. It is all a conjunction of wave patterns in vibratory frequencies, typically appearing very elusive to perception in the denser realms of the ordinary senses, where thought-energy (intent) rigidifies momentarily into seemingly solid objects. Nevertheless, there are no enduringly solid objects. This so-called world is a phenomenon of luminous interweaving energetic interactions — a radiant play of light — and yet apart from thought, there is no independent world, play, or self.

It is always an event in Consciousness, in the vastness of which everything that appears is simply a modification. In the first verse of the Dhammapada (quotations from the Buddha) it states: “All things are preceded by the mind, led by the mind, created by the mind.” However, when mind attaches to or fixates on any of these endlessly arising objects, conditions, or their effects,  then those objects, states, or conditions are mistaken as “real” by the process of identification and differentiation. In other words, we grant them an enduring substantiality apart from ourselves, and thus create a stressful internal division based on this erroneous interpretation on perception. This why the old masters, such as Dogen Zenji, advise sincere aspirants: “Your only concern should be, as thought follows thought, to avoid clinging to any of them.”

Through clear seeing inspired by true inquiry, that perceptual presumption of duality — of self vs other — can be recognized as the activity of separation and delusion itself, and thereby can begin to be undermined by refusal to continue granting such mental fabrications any substantial reality. In the process, these billion upon billion appearances once more become non-binding, fluid, and transparent as mere conceptual designations, with no inherent solidity. The whole adventure they imply – in whatever realm, heaven and earth or hell and high water — is thus recognized as an empty expression of the dream, having no defining or ultimate significance, but only as the play of Mystery in the vastness of the Unknown Itself.

As the late great adept Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche noted: “If you believe there is a thing called mind, it is just a thought. If you believe there is no thing called mind, it’s just another thought. Your natural state, free of any kind of thought about it—that is buddhanature. Mind is similar to space, in that it is insubstantial, not material. Isn’t it quite amazing that something that is insubstantial is also able to experience?” 

Another Master, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, elaborated on the usual mind this way: “What we normally call the mind is the deluded mind, a turbulent vortex of thoughts whipped up by attachment, anger, and ignorance. This mind is always being carried away by one delusion after another. Yet, however strong these thoughts may seem, they are just thoughts and will eventually dissolve back into emptiness. Once you recognize the intrinsic nature of the mind, these thoughts that seem to appear and disappear all the time can no longer fool you. Just as clouds form, last for a while, and then dissolve back into the empty sky, so deluded thoughts arise, remain for a while, and then vanish into the voidness of mind; in reality nothing at all has happened. All thoughts in their infinite variety – devotion, compassion, harmfulness, desire – are utterly without substance. There is no thought that is something other than voidness; if you recognize the void nature of thoughts at the very moment they arise, they will dissolve. Attachment and hatred will never be able to disturb the mind. Deluded emotions will collapse by themselves. No negative actions will be accumulated, so no suffering will follow.”

The human mind thinks up all sorts of stuff to entertain and astonish itself. It is really quite amazing in that regard! It would like to confirm its existence, but never quite can, so back we go to more thought stuff, even though fundamentally we do not know what any appearance is!

Certainly, we can construct and then expound all sorts of notions about phenomena, yet still not know what a single thing actually is. We literally cannot differentiate ourselves from a single thing, any more than wetness can separate itself from water. There is no definitive explanation for any of it, nor is there really any need for one, except to the discursive mind born of false dilemma.

This is not a matter of belief or speculation. It can be directly verified when one stops and simply contemplates the mystery of one’s own appearance here. In effect, there is the awareness that we Are, but “What” is aware is always unknowable, since it can never be an object to itself. The eye cannot see itself. Whatever is, simply is. Is. We can only be that.

What we know of dreams can serve to illuminate our “position” in the so-called waking state. In either, we are in exactly the same situation – we appear to create our environment in both conditions, as well as our sense of being an independent “I”. We can describe it as a play of thought energies, or a coordinated firing of neural synapses modifying sensory impressions to fabricate a view, but all we can really be sure of is that we Are. There is awareness. Everything else is subject to interpretation, but the simple fact of Awareness is our irreducible inheritance.

By allowing attention to rest as this Awareness itself, rather than dwelling and fixating on the objects and events that appear and disappear in the absorbing play of thought-energy, something quite interesting is revealed. Clearly the dream is a creation, an imaginary product of our own consciousness — who makes this dream but us? And yet we don’t know what we ourselves Are, except for the fact that we Are.

Even those philosophies that claim we are not an entified self, but rather a mindstream or stream of being which repeatedly incarnates, are only pointing to a more subtle form of identification, and hence limitation. In fact, the mindstream is not our identity, but our display — a creative projection of consciousness into the virtual reality playground of space-time. Radiant emptiness momentarily reflects itself as the “me-experience”, in the same way our subconscious manifests dream characters.

The mindstream is not who we are, any more than last night’s dream characters. There is an awake aware (knowing) space in which the stream of being appears, transforms, and disappears. It is the same with thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, and perceptions. None of it is who or what we are, any more than the blood traveling through the veins, or the neural impulses flitting about in the cerebellum. All of that is what changes, but what we truly are does not change. Awareness itself is motionless, timeless.

The American teacher Adyashanti made a relevant point in this regard when he noted: “Within this consciousness, within this space of stillness, many thoughts can and do appear. Many emotions can and do appear . . . but really, it’s all imagination. How do we know it’s all imagination? Because when we stop imagining, it disappears. When we stop naming ourselves, who we think we are disappears until we begin to name ourselves again. But when we stop and we look, what’s obvious is that there’s just the looking, an open space of awareness, and nothing more, because the next thing is simply the next thought.”

When we let this realization in, our experience is freed from the confines of conceptuality and conflicted movement, with no judgment or measure of inside/outside, better or worse, higher or lower. Rather, there is an open transparency, like space, in which no separation between the experiencer, the experiencing, and the experience can be found, except as an imaginary, or conceptual, designation.

On the other hand, though dreaming arises in consciousness and dissolves “there” just the same, can we even call it “our own”? When we awaken, we realize the dream has no concrete substantiality, except what we might attribute to it by virtue of conceptual designation. This activity of superimposing fantasies of interpretation on perception is itself a kind of humorous pretense that is nevertheless still taken quite seriously. So seriously, in fact, that when differing dream states (i.e. interpretations, or beliefs) clash, further confusions, contentions, and even wars follow. Who would imagine that both personal as well as global conflicts find their origin in dreaming?

Just so, this waking realm can be seen, not as a place or world, but as an indefinite dimension that is not concrete or independent like any apparent object, but fluidly manifesting as a play of infinitely inter-connected and dependently-originating possibility. As such, all conditional viewpoints and positions can be submitted to a conscious process of recognition and grateful release – recognition of our true nature, and release of all limitations the mind of grasping and aversion would seek to superimpose on our own native innocence.

Such a process in turn can inspire a truly heart-felt relationship to the wonder of this mystery, without the terrible burden of loveless alienation and persistent sense of dilemma, or even any humorless concern about the implications of the dream world itself. Once liberated from the deluding influences of greed, envy, hatred, and ignorance of one’s true nature and condition, the energy and attention that constitute our mental and emotional functioning are naturally transmuted, becoming more and more characterized by spontaneity, wisdom, clarity, and above all, compassion.

As this liberating process proceeds, we can become consciously responsible for our divisive tendencies and contractive fixations, which are the real creators of every circumstance of the dream, and the source of our chronic sense of stress and dis-ease. When the sages urge us to let go of the mind, it is that mind to which they are pointing – the dreaming mind of fixation and separation, addicted to fantasies of control and self-confirmation.

Moreover, the dream itself does not have to be accepted or rejected in terms of any of its content. It resists definition. Where do we dream? Where is a “place”? When we realize that there is, at last, nothing to grasp at, cling to, or flee, we can forgive the dream and relax into the “Unknown”. After all, it is our own habitual activity, born of ignorance, which has been separating, contracting, seeking, suffering, imagining, and thereby investing the illusory with a sense of substantiality. Upon awakening, we realize that we have been pinching ourselves in our sleep.

When this complex mechanism of suffering is thoroughly recognized as our own creation, seen through as the error in judgment and appreciation which it is, and fully released, then our inherent happiness and fluidity, so long obscured, eventually shines through as the ordinary and natural state of being-ness. Nothing ever needed to be added to that — we simply needed to stop granting reality to the unreal.

“The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And the habit into character.

So, watch the thought and its ways with care
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all Beings.
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become.”

~ Dhammapada Sutra

“If you let go of everything,

everything, everything —

that’s the real point!”

 ~Patrul Rinpoche

 A relatively descriptive phrase became popularized in the American vernacular in the last century: “getting hung up”. It signifies an uncomfortable condition of neurotic absorption in and obsession with an object of attention. A compulsive attachment, hard to break, it interferes with one’s ability to function normally and effectively in the objective world. If we investigate the situation in the most relevant context, we can recognize that, for most of us, the dominant object of attention which both fascinates and disturbs us, the prime addiction that hangs us up, is the one appearing right in our own mirror – the one we think of as “me”.

The irony of this predicament is that the “me story” is the one thing we cherish above all else, what we most seek to assert, nurture, and defend, and yet it is not even real. No image of ourselves — good, bad, beautiful, ugly, old, young, wise, foolish, loveable, hateful, ascending, descending, smart, stupid — is real. Rather, this sense of self with which we are so preoccupied night and day, year in and year out, is simply a procession of thoughts, dependently arising and dissolving based on various causes and conditions, with no inherent substance, and yet, amazingly, we assume that it all amounts to some concrete and enduring person.

Rather than recognizing the body-mind-complex as a temporary vehicle by which consciousness expresses itself in this three-dimensional realm, we identify with it to the extent that we are convinced it is who and what we are. Furthermore, because it changes, and because it suffers the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, and most of all, because it is bound to age and drop away, we live in a constant state of fear and worry.

Even our most exuberant joys and triumphs are tinged with the intimidating fragrance of impermanence, and the fretful challenges and struggles of just maintaining some sort of equilibrium in the threatening environment that passes for our living circumstances are such that we can never fully exhale, relax, and rest.

Even the intellectual acknowledgement that we are not the body-mind-complex will do little to assuage our anxiety, because such recognition is still at the level of conceptuality, and so is not really capable of bestowing any lasting peace at heart. Indeed, there is no strategy by which we can manipulate experience, no formula that we can employ to modify our mind, which will in any significant way alter the looming sense of dis-ease we feel, just by virtue of our taking a human birth.

Anything we add to consciousness merely compounds and complicates our presumed condition, until we finally wake up enough to see that it is all baggage. Even the most profound remedies suggested by the Great Ones to heal our sense of chronic unhappiness are ultimately nothing but added burdens, as long as we still cling to a sense of separate and independent existence.

Interestingly, it is that very sense of failure — the failure of all methods and schemes we have engaged to buttress our “me-story” and control life and relations – which creates an opening for us to finally let go of the struggle. Ego-mind is a clever critter. If we honestly inspect our motives, even our highest so-called “spiritual” ideals, we invariably will find self-interest at the root.

This is why we can’t “do it”, we can’t storm the gates of heaven. It is only in recognizing the failure of all our plans and schemes about liberation that an availability opens up for genuine recognition. With the end of that futile effort to project and protect our dreamy masks and self-images, there is the immediate possibility for us to awaken to that deeper, spacious peace which has been true of us all along.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is not a matter of trying to “be still”. That’s just another hopeful strategy – another doing — which only really serves to reinforce the self-sense. After all, who is trying to be still? Indeed, the one who would surrender is the very one keeping true surrender out of reach.

On the other hand, if we let go of the “me-project”, with all of its props and supports, imperatives and protocols, juggling acts and charades, we can discover something that we have been overlooking for a very long time. We can discover our own inherent peace and stillness, that which has only been obstructed, but never truly threatened by the impermanence and fragility of the body-mind-self. In fact, it is prior to that little drama, and always has been. As it so happens, we have been focusing on what changes, and so have missed that which never does.

The conventional wisdom is that we need to do something, change or fix something, make something happen, fight the good fight, in order to attain freedom. We chase after the latest guru on the satsang circuit, buy up all the recommended books and tapes that promise a glimpse of freedom, fold our legs into pretzel shapes and bow in prostration thousands of times while mumbling esoteric formulas, change our name, our costume, our address – there seems no end to the hoops we jump through.

As noted earlier, even the motive to surrender is actually a strategy of ego-mind. After all, who is the one trying to let go, if not the one who believes themselves to be bound? In reality, there is no bondage, and thus even “freedom” is ultimately recognized to be a mental fabrication, a designation that applies to nobody. Nobody surrenders. Only surrender surrenders, which is why it cannot be brought about by egoic effort. As the sage Lao Tzu wrote: “By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.”

Indeed, any effort to liberate oneself turns out to be just the desperation of the fearful mind, the mind of ignorance, the mind that avoids true self-recognition while claiming it as its goal. In reality, peace is not an attainment, but the actual nature of who and what we are. What can be let go is any effort to manipulate life and experience, and instead just leave everything as it is. After all, what effort is required to notice things exactly the way we experience them?

All we need do is stop putting energy and attention on the imaginary, which includes the dream character we have taken ourselves to be, with all of its complicated patterns of craving and avoidance. Rather than fueling and strengthening our presumed shackles through struggle and resistance, we can let go of the whole premise that there has ever been anyone bound by simply recognizing the place or space within us where that is true, where we already always prior to any struggle — that timeless peace.

When we sit quietly and observe our mind, we can notice a steady stream of thoughts that vie for our attention. However, if we let go of them as they arise, they will eventually diminish. Our normal inclination is to be seduced by our thoughts, constructing a sense of self in the process, but there is a greater wisdom in not believing everything we think. Moreover, denying attention to the passing parade need not turn into a big project or complicated scheme.

In that regard, the Burmese master Ajahn Chah wrote: “The heart of the path is quite easy. There’s no need to explain anything at length. Let go of like and dislike and let things be. That’s all that I do in my own practice. Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.”

Indeed, by refusing to be drawn in by the neural sirens that obstruct clear recognition, a spaciousness replaces the busy-ness of our internal chatter. This sky-like spaciousness in turn allows our true peace to emerge from the background, and thus, little by little, take its proper place as the foundation and guiding light of our life and relations. As Pema Chodron said so succinctly, “We are the sky, everything else is just weather.”

When we recognize the peace that has always been true of us, the ego-mind surrenders the throne, but is not banished from the kingdom. Rather, it naturally assumes its appropriate role as servant, rather than master. We need the self-sense to function in the objective world, and it can act as a valuable navigation tool, assisting us in discovering what we’re made of (which is, after all, a good part of the reason why we took these human forms in the first place). It’s really now a matter of refusing to dwell on any thought, sensation, emotion, memory association, or pretense of knowledge. All that arises is self-liberated by non-attachment, letting go, surrender. This is a great relief!

As one sage remarked, “Thoughts arise and pass away. If the succeeding thought does not arise, the preceding thought cuts itself off.” In that way, the struggle is never given an opportunity to take root, because it is constantly being undermined by the natural attitude of surrender, non-dwelling, release. What might begin with some effort eventually will become spontaneous, if we refuse to fall for the tricks of the mind, and its trap of identification with and fixation on the figments of its own confused designs.

Truly, all that is required is to stop investing our attention and belief in the unreal. Letting go of the unreal includes refusing to grant any enduring reality to anything that we can think, feel, know, or imagine. Ultimately, that simply means seeing what is, as it is. Nothing needs to be given up, except our habitual tendency to fall for the story of me and mine, with all its ensuing strife. When the motive to know and control it all is seen through and released, we can allow ourselves to be lived by the Mystery, which is none other than Love Itself.

We don’t need to run off to India or Japan, or to some monastery, ashram, or temple. We don’t need to spend years at the foot of some bearded guru, tying ourselves in yogic knots or coughing up endless fees for initiations and empowerments. Our happiness, peace, and freedom are already true of us, it’s just that we have been mesmerized by a fable of self-existence that has blinded us to our actual nature. Recognizing that story as just a story, we can let it go right now. Losing oneself to find oneself is more than just a pious cliché, but literally describes the actual process of Realization. Why postpone?

Once Hotei, the legendary “Laughing Buddha”, encountered another sage on the road. The sage asked him, “What is the realization of The Buddha Way?” Hotei immediately plopped his sack down on the ground in silent answer. “Then,” asked the other, “what is the actualization of The Buddha Way?” At once the Hotei swung the sack over his shoulder again and walked on.

Contrary to the relentlessly intimidating propaganda of this world, as well as all that seems threatening to us by virtue of our mere existence – of just having shown up here naked and wailing — we actually have nothing to fear. Believe it or not, it’s really true: when we finally awaken to how things really are, we are unmistakably made aware that all is well, all is perfect just as it is!

Why then is nearly everyone still afraid? In fact, fear is hard-wired into the human genome. Why? Fundamentally, it’s there to keep the system alive and undamaged. The program is always running, though it’s usually known by another name — the “survival instinct”, and no doubt it serves a critical purpose in the scheme of manifest existence, action and reaction.

Another seeming contradiction is that, even though everything changes, humans desperately resist change. Whether or not we are happy with the way things are, the prospect of confronting the unknown is typically quite challenging for us, and usually quite frightening. Everything changes, and so we fear what might happen when anything does. Maybe we won’t get what we want, or maybe we won’t like what we do get.

Most intimidating of all, we can’t help but notice that other people die. They are dying all the time, individually, or in groups. Based on the unavoidable evidence (which we’d really rather avoid considering), we too will surely die, survival instinct or not, and so how can it be claimed that all is well?

Indeed, at this very moment, death is stalking us, and so we are always anxious, even when things seem to be going along pretty well. We might make all sorts of efforts to avoid that fact, acquiring fortunes, relationships, pleasures, and distractions of every kind, but we know at some essential level that we are not going to make it, no matter what, and that itself is enough to leave us in a perpetually anxious state.

The fact is, the body comes with an expiration date, and that makes us very nervous. Every aspect of our life and relations is infected with this fear, whether consciously or subconsciously, and so in reaction we might turn to strategies that promise some form of longevity (like popular health regimens), or even a variation on immortality (courtesy of some hopeful religion or anecdotal reports).

In other words, even though we are fearful right now, if we can manage to convince and fortify ourselves with some kind of hopeful faith, and follow the instructions that come with our faith manual, we eventually won’t have to be afraid. Thus, relief is projected sometime out into the indefinite future, based on the implementation of a prefabricated scheme or salvation agenda.

Despite how things might appear, we’ve got a plan, a get-out-of-fear card snugly tucked away in the pocket of our chosen belief system. It might even come complete with a Savior who will ferry us across the river to a promised land of joy and delight, if we are good and play our cards right!

Alternately, there will be those who say, “To hell with it — let the chips fall where they may, we’ll grab what we can while we can! Life is short anyway, so why not savor every kind of indulgence possible? We’ll worship at the church of egotistical self-interest while ruthlessly trying to control the chess pieces, and thus avoid our fear by exploiting all the possibilities of experience until the curtain crashes down. Whatever harm we may do to ourselves and others in the process can be chalked up to being just part of the game of life, because when you’re dead you’re dead.”

Nevertheless, neither strategy – that of the hopeful believer, nor that of the nihilistic hedonist – can truly succeed in quenching the fear, because real release is neither a matter of working up some kind of enthusiastic idealism, nor does it consist of the raw exploitation of experience, both of which are ultimately mere impotent distractions. Even the intellectual effort to rigorously deconstruct it will typically fall apart when confronted by the visceral quality of living fear, because fear is stronger than reason.

When all other options are at last seen through and discarded, the only way we’ll find to skillfully address fear is to sit right in the middle of it, open-eyed and awake at the heart, directly recognizing that which is both prior to its inception and likewise present after the dissolution of all fear – our true nature and primordial condition. Returning again and again to rest in the sky-like spaciousness of our own awake awareness, both fear and hope are rendered moot – they have no place to attach and weave their stories.

As long as we are identified with the body-mind-self complex, however, it is virtually impossible to experience a direct insight into who and what we really are. The program runs deep, and is rooted in the subconscious.

On the other hand, we may suspect that such a discovery requires a kind of death to all that we currently take to be ourselves, and so the fear of letting go and losing that image of ourselves which we cling to and cherish stymies us.

Indeed, all we are ever really trying to protect and defend is some image of ourselves, and so it is counter-intuitive to surrender it, even though we may have some conceptual inkling of its fraudulence.

In order to resolve this dilemma, one skillful approach would entail taking a step back and assuming a position of detached witness, simply observing the mechanics of how we construe a fearful self-sense. If we are able to do so from a posture of equanimity, we can notice how fear chronically rules our lives, informs our thoughts, poisons our relationships, and sabotages our aspirations.

Even when things seem conventionally agreeable, we are still afraid of losing what we imagine we possess, not to mention the conditions of real and imminent threat which prevail on much of this planet and bedevil so many of its inhabitants. It certainly seems that fear runs the show and calls the shots on both the macro as well as the micro level.

If we persist in diligently inquiring into the matter, however, there is something else we can recognize. That is, there have indeed been times when the fear has been transcended, perhaps only for a brief moment, but nevertheless, it has happened. What stepped in at that time, causing our fear to shrink and recede? What else could it be, but love?

Upon clear inspection, we must realize that it is only love which is stronger than fear. It is love which draws us out beyond our reluctance, beyond our resistance, beyond our self-absorption, and beyond our suit of emotional armor which we have clothed ourselves in to defend against the fearfulness of embodiment.

Indeed, more than anything else, we can recognize that love is the reason we took form here, just as it is only love (or our failure to love) that we take with us when we move on. The more profoundly we allow love to rule our life and relationships, the more effectively the fear will be seen through and released, until “all is well” is no longer just a hopeful slogan, but the actual perception of how things really are, and how we really are, as unique expressions of love itself.

Love makes it possible to appreciate this human experience in whatever form it comes, without having to run away in fear of life into fantasies of escapism. True and complete fearlessness can only be the case when we let love live us, and so that’s the essential thing – to be Love, and not at some fictional time when everything else falls into place, but here, now, and always.

In that regard, the contemporary teacher Anam Thubten wisely writes: “May we now have the inner wisdom to love this precious human life. Not from these deep seated karmic habits but from this pure, intelligent, compassionate awareness, so that we can respond to every situation not with fear, not with hatred, but total love and courage. So we can wake up again and again a thousand times everyday day and to be enchanted by the unfathomable, the sacredness, the great mystery of everything.”

It’s been said that our ultimate desire is to be free of desire itself, yet here in this moment, heart to heart, it’s clear that all we really want is to love and be loved. This yearning for deep intimacy is at the core of all, in this and any possible worlds as well. Our self-consciousness holds us back, but love will exceed such fear.

Everything is only Love seeking for itself, and finding itself in everything. Nothing is at last immune to Love. This recognition will crack every heart shell open in its own sweet time. Why wait, when there’s an open invitation now? Even the burden of our fearful intolerance is but Love’s teasing play with itself for the joy of intolerance dissolving in Love.

Mystery begets Love for the sake of its own enjoyment, expressed as the infinite forms of you and I and everything. It is the simple innocent truth of our being, prior to any adventure of knowledge or experience. We are Love, and we are here to know and be it –hearts and souls together. The illusion of separation is just that.

Love will always outshine any fear, though some might imagine otherwise, as a way to test Love. What remains when imagination is itself surpassed by Love, but Love? All that we truly have is what’s here, now — this is everything, this is all the worlds, appearing and disappearing simultaneously with us in Love in this moment with no beginning and no end.

When we are humbled enough to relinquish our resistance to what is, what is reveals itself as Love. The awesome mechanics of the universe forming itself into the unique expressions of each one of us is beyond human comprehension, yet at the heart, Love is no mystery. It’s what’s most true of all of us, and ever so shall be.

“All a sane man can ever care about is giving Love!”

~Hafiz

“When we’re deluded there’s a world to escape.
When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape.”

~Bodhidharma, Wake up Sermon

One common aspect of the religions of this realm — both western and eastern – is that they all seem to arise based on a dissatisfaction with things as they are, with life as it is, and consequently generate a substantial arsenal of schemes, methods, and strategies in an often desperate effort to escape from this “vale of tears”, as one faith characterizes life on earth. Prayers, meditations, competing therapy programs, and complex rituals of every sort are recommended by the various priests and gurus as remedies to the perceived horror of just appearing here in the first place, and so a pronounced aversion more often than not seems to be the chief form of reactivity to the very fact of human birth.

Ironically, the hard lesson most of us must eventually learn is that running away from the world is a sure way to reinforce the oppressive sense that we are trapped by it, and thus in our failure of balanced appreciation and accurate discernment we prolong an illusory dilemma that, although fueled by the propaganda of religious conditioning, nevertheless has originated and been kept alive in our own mind.

From the moment we entered this arena, we have been taught that we are sinful, diseased, deluded, separated from home, and in need of a lot of salvific help, simply by virtue of acquiring a human body. In fact, it’s typically been suggested that the wisest thing we could do is to get saved, redeemed, enlightened, and basically just get the heck out of Dodge as fast as possible. To that end, our various religious teachers have assumed the role of parent/doctors, diagnosing our presumed illness, and prescribing a life-long treatment regimen consisting of regular doses of their particular holy oil, the secret recipes for which have been handed down from one venerable salesman to the next in what they call the “transmission of their lineage”.

So convincing is the traditional consensus spin about life on earth that very few of us ever stop to question, “Is it true, are we so utterly screwed up that only the most heroic efforts can hope to save us from the great misfortune of mere existence? Are we really patients in need of a cure, prisoners in a jail, sinners in need of a savior, hapless victims of bad karma?”

If we inquire deeply, one thing we can notice is that, to the extent that we buy into the “official story”, the longer we will be destined to wander in a desert wilderness of our own confused design, fearful, self-conscious, and distrustful of life itself. Suspecting that we are inherently unworthy of present happiness, based on hearsay and religious cautionary tales, we find ourselves condemned to endlessly searching outside ourselves to attain or reclaim it.

In the process, we invariably consign ourselves to the dead ends of perpetual doubt, despair, and stress, convinced that freedom is somewhere else, in the hazy distant future perhaps (if we scrupulously adhere to the prescribed redemptive regimen of choice), or maybe up in distant heaven, but never here, never now, never already and always the case.

How strange then, to encounter teachings which claim that everything is perfect, just as it is. Really? How can that be, one might ask — just look at all the suffering, pain, and evil in the world. How can one accept life as it is, surrender and even enjoy it, with so much trouble and sorrow reflected in the daily news, so much cruelty and disappointment? Honestly examining our own lives, we can easily find plenty of causes for dismay.

Conditions here are far from satisfactory, and in fact humanity itself may even be on the verge of self-extinction at the pace we are going, with environmental destruction, an endless parade of regional wars, and the ominous threat of thermonuclear or biological destruction always on the horizon. It would seem that only a blind fool would claim that everything is perfect just as it is, and that we are already happy and rich beyond the grandest imagining. Such outrageous propositions could only come from someone in a state of deep denial, according to the conventional wisdom.

As it so happens, what’s missing from the conventional wisdom is wisdom itself. Instead, the usual view relies on the assumption that we are the body-mind self, and thus subject to its destiny. If that were actually the case, then we would all be facing dreary prospects indeed, for whatever is born must die – that is the law of impermanence – and so even the most valiant efforts to insulate ourselves from that reality are bound to fail, sooner or later. All the treasure we could accumulate, all the pleasurable relations we could establish, all the good stuff we struggle to gain and maintain will ultimately turn to dust, and even the memory of our appearance will fade and eventually dissolve into nothingness. Who then could really enjoy a magnificent sunset, a lover’s embrace, the laughter of children, the lingering finish of a great wine, realizing that it is all so pointless, so fleeting and empty of any inherent substance?

It’s no wonder that religious belief systems would come along and preach an aversion to this life, suggesting instead countless avenues of escape and salvation from the implications of our fateful arrival on this challenging stage, with all its intimidating props and pratfalls. Breeding on humanity’s addiction to hope and fear, each sect claims that they possess just the right ticket, recipe, or magic that can liberate us from the frightful burden of just being human.

On the other hand, if we are not really the body-mind self, but merely occupying a dreamed creation in order to enjoy and learn from the amazing varieties of human experiences (in much the same way that we might temporarily identify with a fictional character in a virtual reality video game), then any effort to escape from the game would be rather contradictory and counter-productive, if not downright absurd.

Essentially, the rather prevalent theme among religionists that the human realm is a place from which we need to escape is a negative projection of mind based on concepts fabricated by the limited and ambivalent human persona. With the benefit of expanded consciousness, however, we begin to realize that there is actually nothing in need of fleeing, but only of being recognized and appreciated for the opportunities the physical dimension provides for our Spirit’s infinite expansion in Self-Realization.

After all, we came to play the game, why then turn and run away from it? It is only through the gift of our momentary amnesia that we tend to take it all so seriously. I say “gift” (although there are many who would call it an impediment) because without the amnesia, the game would have a lot less impact, and so wouldn’t yield the same vivid results of increased levels of awareness about what we are really made of — recognition that can only come from full immersion in the incarnational adventure.

In other words, we don’t require being saved from the game via some human-based religious solution, but simply need to learn how to play the game properly, and that knowledge begins to arise in us when we stop trying to change the game, and instead let the game change us. That’s what it is for, after all – to draw us out of our self-conscious absorption and contraction at the heart, and reveal to us the unconditional love that is at the very core of our true nature and condition.

In the light of that recognition, aversion towards the world is merely another failed strategy that can be released, just like all the accompanying armor with which we have clothed ourselves in our presumption of independence. Indeed, we have never been nor could we ever be separate from our Source (of which we are beloved expressions), except in the trick of imagination which would have us believe that we are some lost and lonesome body-mind self, adrift in a hostile landscape, in need of holy redemption.

With the benefit of clear seeing, how can we not love the world, with all its tender frailty and delicate beauty? We may even come to the recognition that the world of which we are aware actually arises within us, as our own projection. In reality the world is always being recreated within mind and by mind. The great Persian poet Rumi wrote that we are robbing ourselves of our true being, as long as we are attempting to be nothing before we know who we really are. In the same sense, so too must we come to respect and appreciate the world for what it actually is, rather than hatching futile schemes to escape it. In reality, the world and ourselves are not two, and we cannot escape ourselves.

Still, if we allow such understanding to go to our head, fixating on it there as if it were some final revelation, rather than letting it penetrate our heart, then we have merely added another story to the useless collection of shiny, empty bottles on the crowded shelf of ersatz enlightenment. In this game, everything must be surrendered, especially our presumptions of wisdom. Indeed, as a sage once noted, one could possess a whole library of spiritual knowledge, and still not have the faintest clue as to who and what they really are.

True liberation from ignorance is not a static accomplishment, nor a goal to be attained by some ego-mind after a long march up the mountain. It is already true of us from the very no-beginning — our primordial nature and condition. Moreover, it is an activity first and foremost — the functioning of an inconceivable love that will never abandon the world, regardless of its apparent problems and challenges, because the world has never been other than ourselves.

Even though it is ultimately a realm of imaginary playmates, we are drawn by the wisdom of the heart’s call to submit ever more deeply to an unconditional loving of this dew drop world, until all sense of apparent separation is seen through and released, and we recognize in full that we are That.

Moreover, we cannot even stop there, nor linger anywhere along the way – an ever-expanding journey which runs on to an immense infinity beyond our comprehension, dropping blossoms with every step, and blessing all without hesitation or regret.

See also: https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-paradox-of-inherent-perfection/

In these essays on the Conscious Process, I have often talked about the various obstructions to human development and liberation, chief among them being selfishness (greed), hatred, envy, and ignorance. Transcending these poisonous mind states signals the emergence of true maturity and emotional intelligence, and indicates that one has accomplished the necessary pre-conditions to move up and onward to higher levels of adaptation, beyond the elementary educational circumstances this earthly realm represents.

Many human wisdom systems have suggested antidotes to the aforementioned poisons, such as the Golden Rule of treating others as oneself, but here I am going to focus on four noble and sublime virtues called Brahma Vihàras, or Divine attitudes, which the Buddha recommended be cultivated and practiced as skillful means in all relations and under all conditions. These four Brahma Vihàras are loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

Now, with the advent of internet search engines, one could easily access and read numerous articles by all sorts of authorities that delve into Brahma Vihàras in great detail, and I do intend to offer my own modest understanding in a moment, but there is a good question that I would like to explore first. That is: why bother trying to cultivate such virtues at all?

Well, the negative consequences of our behavior are felt directly in our emotional life, and not just in this current human life, but also in all future lives as well, until the emotions are at last resolved. The emotional baggage we accumulate must be sorted out until all the lessons have been learned and traumas healed, and we have proven ourselves ready to engage a higher curriculum than the one which prevails on this comparatively primitive level of universal possibility.

Moreover, the influences of greed, hatred, envy, pride, and ignorance that we indulge have a more immediate effect on our living environment here on Earth by creating an atmosphere poisoned by violence, cruelty, fear, and misery. Literally, what we do to others we also do to ourselves, since in reality there is no separation. As the legendary Chief Seattle remarked: “All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons [and daughters] of earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”  

In that sense, we are responsible for creating our own destiny, on both the individual as well as the collective levels, which indeed are not two separate things. If we create our own prisons, for example, then it is likewise our own responsibility to free ourselves from it. The Brahma Vihàras (both as subjects of contemplation as well as principles to be actualized) are tools in this respect, and very effective ones. Properly utilized, they constitute a veritable “karma repair kit”.

In previous essays, I have expressed my understanding that every moment of life offers us a choice. We can choose to live in fear, anxiety, and existential despair, as if we are a helpless victim, or we can choose to learn from our experiences and self-correct, in the light of love and understanding. Indeed, it is appropriate that the first Brahma Vihàra is Loving-kindness, which is a sure foundation for all other virtues which complement it, and a perfect antidote to the poison of greedy selfishness.

Of course, it is easy for us to love the people that are attractive to us and return our love, but much more difficult to love those for whom we have some conditional aversion, or who are mean and threatening to us. Thus, to really embody the attitude of Loving-kindness, we need to be able to include all beings in our embrace, extending the same unconditional loving regard to everyone and everything with both intention and attention, recognizing all as mirrors of ourselves, manifestations of the same Source in which we all inhere, beyond any apparent separation. Its hallmark is the sincere desire for the happiness of others, without any expectation of some reward in return. In that sense, it is truly free of the taint of self-interest, which pervades the lesser forms of love.

With true Loving-kindness, there is no desire to possess or manipulate, since it is characterized by selflessness at its root. It is the perfect cure for the emotional contraction at the heart, because it is fearless in its free and open loving, neither grasping nor turning away, and always ready to exceed itself in service to love. It begins with learning to love oneself, and then extends that love to others, eventually encompassing the whole totality of universal manifestation with no exclusions in unconditional loving regard.

To get a more comprehensive view on the practice of Loving-kindness, one might investigate the readily accessible works of the contemporary Buddhist writer Sharon Salzburg, including her books “Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness” (1995), and “A Heart as Wide as the World” (1999).

The second Brahma Vihàra is complementary with Loving-kindness, and that is Compassion. Compassion is our empathetic response to the world’s suffering, both within individuals, as well as collectively. It is truly a divine attitude in its most evolved form, in that it is totally non-judgmental and non-withholding in its tender and vulnerable regard for the distress that plagues and even characterizes existence in this realm. The great Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche characterized it this way:

“Compassion comes from clearly seeing the state of how others are. Shifting your attention away from being concerned with merely yourself, you begin to tune into how other beings feel. Soon you realize that their aims and what they actually manage to achieve are in a total contradiction. Everyone wants to be happy and free, but the involvement pursued through thought, word and deed for the most part created future pain, future entanglement. When one really sees this clearly, the sense of compassion becomes overwhelming.”

The quality of Mercy radiates an intention from the very depths of our heart in all directions that every being be freed from pain, sorrow, and anything that causes suffering. This genuine concern for others is embodied in acts of charity and selfless service, and is prompted by a deep insight into the causes of human suffering – the afflictive poisons such as hatred, of which compassion is the most excellent antidote. Like Loving-kindness, it must eventually extend without limit to embrace all life and beings, and is a mark of a true Bodhisattva, who is moved by Compassion to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings.

Among contemporary writers, the 14th Dalai Lama has written comprehensively on the subject, practice, and implications of Compassion as one of the four “Immeasurables” (Brahma Vihàras), and his books can be found here.

As an antidote to the poison of envy, the third of the Brahma Vihàras is Sympathetic Joy, and is characterized by an authentic appreciation and pleasure in the well-being and success of others. It is the altruistic smile, even in the presence of doom-sayers, and accounts for the happiness experienced when others are happy. In its meditational application, it serves to counteract feelings of resentment and jealousy. Even when facing difficulties ourselves, we can let go of our personal self-interests and celebrate the achievements and joy of others when we have truly integrated this attitude into our view.

Of the four Vihàras, it might just be the most difficult to fully embody, since envy is perhaps the most pernicious of the vexations afflicting us in this human realm. This is due in large part to our competitive nature born of deep-rooted survival motives, and compounded by the type of conditioning and socialization so prevalent in these times, which stresses the predominance of self-interest, even at others’ expense. In fact, it has been noted by astute observers of the human animal that people are much more ready to sympathize with the misfortunes of others than to rejoice with them.

The ability to feel a genuine joy in another’s happiness, equal to one’s satisfaction with one’s own, represents a rare state of mind, and hence qualifies as one of the four sublime attitudes. However, since all the Brahma Vihàras are inter-dependent, one must be able to access a genuine affection for others, characterized by both the friendliness of Loving-kindness and the empathy of Compassion, for this quality to take root and mature into one’s everyday consciousness. Likewise, without such Sympathetic Joy, the other qualities might be mere empty shells. All three require a sincere and even profound opening at the heart, and likewise, all three must be supported by the fourth virtue – Equanimity.

The contemporary Buddhist author and teacher Pema Chodron offers this description of Equanimity: “Training in equanimity is learning to open the door to all, welcoming all beings, inviting life to come visit. Of course, as certain guests arrive, we’ll feel fear and aversion. We allow ourselves to open the door just a crack if that’s all that we can presently do, and we allow ourselves to shut the door when necessary. Cultivating equanimity is a work in progress. We aspire to spend our lives training in the loving-kindness and courage that it takes to receive whatever appears—sickness, health, poverty, wealth, sorrow, and joy. We welcome and get to know them all.”

Real understanding regarding the nature and purpose of our appearance can only be skillfully utilized when one is stabilized in Equanimity, and so in this anxious and conflicted realm we call “the world”, such actionable wisdom appears to be very rare. Moreover, none can claim it, for to make such a claim is itself a symptom of understanding’s absence. Every claim, every concept, falls short of true understanding. Every concept pointing to some self-image is a form of stress and dis-ease. In order to deconstruct the fortress of Ignorance, we require real Equanimity, born of non-attachment, and informed by Recognition.

When we are anchored enough in Equanimity to let our vision grow so large that we begin to recognize the nature of consciousness itself, we can readily observe that consciousness has a stressful quality. Even in the most conventionally desirable and pleasurable circumstances, we can see how a subtle sense of dissatisfaction permeates our felt experience of life. Even the most intense joys are fleeting, and all that we might cherish is ultimately impermanent. Painful situations of course are self-evidently stressful. In fact, Buddha’s First Noble Truth is that life is dissatisfying, stressful, suffering (Dukkha).

The poet-sage Eknath, when contemplating the arrival of consciousness, exclaimed, “I am stung by a scorpion!” Invariably, when mind appears, there is perturbation. Conversely, when mind dissolves in true understanding, there is rest. Relaxed and at rest in the midst of perturbation is true understanding, true equanimity. However, from a less than comprehensive perspective, it may seem for us as if there is only perturbation:

one endless stretch of falling dominoes, movement always in reaction, whittled down to the fine mind bones of a core contraction — this troublesome trick we call “myself” — so that we never come to peace at heart. In that story, there seems to be a matrix of enduring identity, of unbroken continuity, that feels just like “me”, trapped in a play of ambivalent circumstance that changes like the shifting schemes of shallow sleep we twist in while we dream.

Looking further into this apparent dilemma through the power of True Inquiry, anchored in Equanimity, we can realize that it’s not so. No such actual character can be found – nothing but a cobble of thoughts and memories that we’ve taken to be a self. It’s like a story we’ve been telling ourselves, a meaning we’ve superimposed on life, in order to avoid the looming emptiness of how things seem, and hence distract ourselves from our primal boredom, doubt, and discomfort. The obvious problem with such a strategy, however, is that it comes back to bite us, and thus we suffer the futile fruits of our own would-be escape plans.

Still, the one who seems perturbed, entangled, stressed, and in perpetual dilemma is not the end of the story. It actually is the story, and nothing more that: a fanciful narrative that is purely a product of the imagination – a fabricated mind state — and therein lies the clue to its undoing. With the benefit of true Equanimity, and supported by the other three virtues of Loving-kindness, Compassion, and Sympathetic Joy, we have within us all we need to see through the self-delusion and realize genuine liberation from the poisons of Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, and Envy. May all beings be happy, may all beings be free!

“The activities of enlightenment go far beyond ordinary concepts. According to both Mmahayana and Vajrayana, the purpose of accomplishing enlightenment is to benefit all sentient beings. An enlightened being does not selfishly retire from the world, but becomes busier than before, without feeling even slightly burdened by the activities. Since enlightenment is all-pervasive, enlightened actions are as effortless and spontaneous as the light shining from the sun. Buddha activity transcends all ordinary ideas of effort and accomplishment.”