The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Awareness can never be described or quantified and attempting to do so is futile. The function of a pointer is to indicate what cannot be named and can only be alluded to. The ancient sacred texts are full of such indicators and they also appear through forms such as poetry, music, painting, and film - all windows into the unnamable.
The limit of the unlimited is called ‘fullness’
The limitlessness of the limited is called ‘emptiness’
In itself it is neither fullness or emptiness.
Whatever we call it, the I, the self, the ego - it is not real. The continual re-investing of belief in it gives it a seeming reality.
During the decades of actively seeking, looking for meaning of life, searching for enlightenment, the concept of a me doing the searching was always assumed and unexamined.
The I that we imagine we are is just a constellation of thoughts. You cannot find the beginning of the thoughts nor where they go. They cannot be located or grasped. All that can be said is thoughts appear and disappear.
In taking a look, the ongoing questioning creates a seeing-through, a perceiving of what is, the spaciousness in which the thinking arises.
Non-conceptual awareness, cognizing emptiness, space-like awareness is all there is.
The great joke is the simplicity of it. The now is always here. The concept of a journey, a desired future-state clouds the appreciation of what is here and now. The belief in an entity that will achieve something in some future time precludes fully experiencing the present. The notion of a me and the thought of a future absorb our attention and distract us from the immediacy.
The appearance just arises. It is appearing in space. Everything is in space and space is in everything. The eye cannot see space so it deletes the space leaving the appearance of a seemingly solid world.
Some interesting questions: Who or what is looking? Where is the looking from? The answer is the emptiness is looking. We are that space-like awareness, the frame that looks and the cognizing-emptiness the world appears in.
Nisargadatta recalls his guru telling him “You are That”. He accepted what he was told and then discovered the veracity of the statement. We are non-conceptual awareness; you cannot be out of the awareness. It is missed simply through our investment in the thinking. This attention to the conceptual distracts from seeing what is.
Paradoxically the seeking of it, the grasping of it, the attempting to hold it or maintain it are obstacles to the experiencing. The activity of seeking, holding, or grasping recreates an I and an I cannot experience it.
You cannot understand this with the mind. The mind cannot understand, just as the eye cannot see the space that is everything.
The mind is a collection of thoughts that appear and disappear. Everything is manifestation of thought. Thinking is not the problem. All thoughts are the intelligence energy and thinking is an expression of that one intelligence energy.
The thinking translates and creates distinctions always oscillating and pulsating into opposites. Good and bad, day and night, up and down, light and dark, joy and sorrow. If left alone, thoughts move on freely like the oscillations in nature: spring to summer, full moon to new moon. It is only the grasping, the hanging on and the resisting and pushing away that creates an apparent bind of psychological suffering.
The analogy of the iron in the fire is often used to point out the distinction between what we truly are and the thinking. The iron resting in the fire glows red and gives out heat and light. It looks just like the fire and burns like fire, yet it is not the fire. When removed from the fire, it will simply cool because the iron is incapable of generating energy. Likewise the intelligence energy is the source from which thoughts arise. In actuality they have no volition or power of themselves.
Bob Adamson sometimes invites seekers to simply full-stop the thought-stream by encouraging them to repeat a word and then suddenly stop. In that brief moment after stopping, before another thought appears, there is a taste of non-conceptual awareness.
The assimilation of all experience to the one taste:
In the imagined field of empty delusive appearances,
Whatever appears, let it rest in its uncontrived singularity,
And in that moment it dawns as brilliant emptiness.”
Choices are made, yet there is no choice-maker.
A thought comes up to do one thing and then another thought says to do something else instead. Thoughts happen and they are acted on or not. A choice is seemingly made yet there is no me making that choice.
The breathing, heart beating, food digestion all continue automatically.
In the face of danger the body acts spontaneously. It’s only when we are out of danger can we reflect on the situation. Numerous experiments confirm that thought actually comes after the volition to act, the thought functioning as a rationalization. Thought follows activity - it doesn’t initiate the activity. The hand simply swats the mosquito, the arms reach out to steady the balance; no thinking is involved and no decisions are made.
Recognising that life lives us and that there is no choice-maker changes everything, yet nothing changes. Responses happen spontaneously yet they are not fed. A seeing-through arises.
“In that place there is no happiness or unhappiness,
No truth or untruth.”
There is no doer. There is just an apparent field of patterns interacting with no central controller. The field moves spontaneously like a swarm of bees.
Nature abounds with metaphors. The flight of geese moving together in perfect formation across the sky, the colony of ants wending their way through a gully. Ants forming a bridge over the water ensuring the survival of the rest. No one is in charge, the movement happens spontaneously.
The notion of being the doer of any activity is just that – a notion. The doer is thought, it is imagined. It is the I thought that is born; the actuality is we are birthless and deathless.
“There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you…nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.”
There is no separation. There is no seer or seen, only seeing. There is no speaker; speaking simply happens, interactions happen. There is no doer yet activities seemingly happen.
Seeing what is, as is.
Our judgments and preferences colour the seeing, blinding us to the unfolding is-ness of the moment. Whatever is appearing is what is and is a manifestation of the intelligence energy that is pulsating and forming into the myriad of shapes and expressions.
In leaving what is as is without judging, labelling or dividing it in any way, then in the words of Huang Po,
“Understanding comes through an inexpressible mystery. A sudden comprehension arises when the clutter of conceptual thinking and discriminating thought-activity subsides.”
The journey that is no journey is a ½ metre long: from the head to the heart
Getting out of the head and residing in the heart, moving from mind identification to re-cognizing that you are the cognizing-emptiness.
The Dzogchen Buddhists speak of being utterly awake with the five senses wide open. The habit of thinking draws the attention away from the other senses experiencing. Shifting attention to the senses takes the focus from the thinking. In staying equally with the seeing, the smelling, the hearing, the tasting and the touch-sensing, there is a taste of the singularity, the oneness that we are. The salt doll goes for a dip in the ocean.
Uncaused joy: a spontaneous sense of compassion arises of its own
“Everything comes from love.”
In oneness, when there is a dissolution of the sense of subject and object, when there is no separation between this and that, a natural sense of compassion simply arises. There is a spontaneous response of warmth towards whatever is in the field of awareness. Whatever is appearing rests in the singularity from which it springs.