October 2, 2021 Saturday Evening, Oakwood Retreat
Being Present With and Having Faith in the Process of Awakening; Mindfulness Meditation; Waking Up; Awakening Experience in Aaron’s Final Lifetime; Self and Essence; Stream Entry, Once-Returner, Non-Returner
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. So, thirty years ago, when Barbara first began to teach, I gave her a rather stringent dress code. No shirts with slogans on them. No bright colors that might distract from the dharma that was being shared. Clean and presentable clothes. This year she has said to me, “Aaron, nobody can see what I’m wearing from the waist down.” And I said, “The clothes still need to be clean and presentable.” Well, in all fairness, these jeans are clean. They don’t have holes, although her stockings have several holes—shhh! I’m giving away her secrets!
Barbara while reviewing: You do know that he is partially teasing me, very lovingly; and he also has taught me, when I teach (or channel him) I represent the dharma, and he expects me to treat that with respect.
I love you all very much. I’m so delighted that there is still a way for us come together this way for a week and share the dharma.
One of the questions that came up during John’s instruction was about my final experience of awakening and how this works together with the practices that we teach here.
First, each of you is unique. No one’s awakening is identical to anyone else’s awakening.
Second, we remember that awakening is a process and not an event.
The most important thing here is that you are on the path to awakening—not where you are on the path, or how many segments you get through in this particular retreat, because there are no segments. It’s not like steps— one step, two steps, 73 steps, 119…
You can move very, very slowly for— I was going to say for years, but really for lifetimes, and suddenly it all comes together, and you have deep insight that you did not have before.
This is perhaps the most important thing I have to share with you, to stop looking ahead, “What square am I on the numbers 1 to 100,000? What square is somebody else on?”, and instead, just to be present with your experience with as open a heart as possible, and to have faith in the whole process of commitment to awakening, practice leading to that awakening.
And what does it mean to be awake? Are you a little bit awake, having had your first cup of coffee? Or are you very awake after four cups of coffee? How awake do you want to be?
All of you are partially awake or you wouldn’t be here at this retreat. You have to be somewhat awake to know that there’s something you need to learn, to be humble enough to say, “Yes, I need to practice certain things. Yes, I am not yet fully awake.” Because those that say, “I know everything, and I’m in charge here,” they’re very much asleep.
The other important question is, why do you want to wake up? It’s so much easier, more comfortable, to lie in bed under the covers, warm and content. Why get up? Why get out of bed at all? What is your intention? If your intention is to be comfortable, you’ll probably want to close off the Zoom and just go back to sleep.
The things you’re going to practice in this retreat are not going to make you comfortable, most likely; at least not to begin with. They’re going to make you feel more agitated, because we’re asking you to look at things that for many, many lifetimes you have not wanted to look at.
I remember at a Buddhist teacher conference that Barbara attended back in the early 1990s, there was a wonderful elder teacher, a woman, who at that time was in her 80s, I guess, maybe 90. They asked her, “How do you sum up vipassana practice?” She said, “It is one insult after another.”
One insult after another. Insult—the whole idea that I’m not capable, I’m not bright enough, strong enough, clear enough. The whole idea that I’m a mess; that there’s somewhere I have to get to. You can think of a thousand insults. To be unworthy, to be unskilled, to be unteachable.
When you sit quietly with yourself, when you sit with vipassana and you bring attention to the present moment, it brings attention to all those ancient stories: I am unworthy. I am not lovable. I am not skillful. I am not truthful enough, not generous enough, not kind enough.
The first thing is to be aware of the stories. Step two, perhaps, is to see how you have always bought into the stories.
Perhaps greed has arisen in you, hoarding, not wanting to share. And then the story, “Oh, I am not generous.” But, my friends, right there with the greed that arose with conditions, right there with the hoarding that arose from conditions, and the unwillingness to share, is also the one who is connected to everything, is generous.
But how can you know that unless you look at the arising of the “I’m not generous.”? You begin to see that it’s an idea that arose from conditions, is impermanent.
You do not answer by saying, “I am generous. Look, I gave somebody a dollar,” or a hundred dollars. But what is this story? Who is this self to whom this story has attached?
We know that it arose from thousands of ancient conditions. Have you carried it around long enough?
So you have to see what stories you’ve been carrying for a long time. Then you must hold the intention, “I’m willing to let it go.”
But if you’ve been carrying it, there’s probably some reason you’ve been carrying it. A story, “I’m not generous enough.” Well, if one looks, one will see that there is fear, “My needs won’t be met.” And then, how perhaps you have shamed yourself, “I shouldn’t have this fear, so I should keep giving and giving,” or, “I can’t give because my needs won’t be met,” rather than stopping and saying, “Isn’t it interesting this story keeps arising and I keep getting caught in it.”
Then you begin to unpack it a bit, to understand it’s ancient and truly universal. And perhaps looking into this story takes you into a very painful place in this life where your needs truly were not met. Where you treated at best with unkindness or perhaps even brutality. It’s painful to see that. It’s easier for many to hold onto the story, “I’m just not generous. My heart isn’t in the right place. Something is wrong with me.”
But of course, nothing is wrong with you, you are just being human. It’s a hard job to be human, really to be any sentient being. It’s a very sacred task to move into a sentient life form with the intention of growing, opening and evolving.
So, you come to a retreat like this. John gave some very clear instructions about the primary object and predominant object. Most of you were here for his meditation instructions.
You can’t cling to the primary object to avoid the predominant object. You can’t cling to the predominant object to avoid the primary object.
Instead, see that you’re avoiding this or that, without any understanding of why. You don’t yet need to have any understanding, you just feel the resistance. So, you don’t go back to the breath. You do not hold to the predominant experience of a thought like fear. “If I give too much, I may not have enough for myself. I have to hold on to what I need for myself.” Fear, grasping. Primary object, the breath, and then grasping, with the thought, “Somebody is asking me to give them something.” Fear.
At that point, it’s useful to bring attention to the direct experience of resistance. What is this resistance? Where do I feel it in my body? Not intellectually but where am I holding it in my body?
Perhaps with resistance, down here in the belly. You can’t see my hands here, but holding around my waist. That’s for Barbara’s body, where she would be holding resistance; maybe up here.
Just feeling, “Here is resistance.” When you are present with resistance, know it has come as a result of fear and be willing to stay with that fear-resistance package, it reveals itself. This brings us back to that path of sacred darkness that most of you have worked on with me.
Resistance, resistance. Ahh… breathing in, I experience the resistance.
Breathing out, I release the resistance.
Breathing in, I notice space for the resistance.
Breathing out, I let resistance go.
Gradually there’s some revelation. It just comes to you, not because you’re going after it; not because you’re asking, “Why am I resistant?” Just, here is resistance. Ahh… And if you trust your practice, images and memories will come, maybe ancient karmic memories. Maybe not even personal but human race memories. Memories of devastation, of earthquakes, of bombs. Maybe not about you. Memories of places where you could not keep yourself or others safe. The despair, the grief. Why would you not want to protect yourself from that?
And so that protecting the self by trying to find THE practice—this practice will fix it for me, or that one—-it doesn’t work. Rather, there is an increased insight into the whole experience: I cannot keep anybody safe, myself or anyone else. I cannot control everything around me; I can only control what happens to me in this moment insofar as it relates just to me. I can’t control what’s happening with the person who’s about to attack me. I can’t control what’s happening with the fire that’s sweeping across the woods where I am. I can’t control the flow of the waves or the volcanic lava.
Then what does it mean to keep myself safe? At this point there can be some clarity: who am I trying to keep safe? This human, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But remember, if you took human birth, or even the birth as a tree or a flower or an ant or a giraffe, you’re going to die. The incarnation is impermanent.
If you can avoid dying in that moment, then choose it. If a big wave is coming and somebody comes with a boat and says, “Get on!”, you can get on. If a helicopter lands and says, “I’ll lift you up out of the fire that’s coming,” fine, do that.
But so often you cannot protect yourself against others’ unkindness, against physical dangers or against the arising of your own mind with all its stories. There’s a certain point where one finally says, “I surrender.” By which I mean the ego surrenders trying to get it right, trying to stay in control, and begins to know, “It’s okay to let go.”
By letting go I don’t mean just sitting there and watching—I’m thinking back here… Do you know of a place called the Bay of Fundy in Canada? The tide sweeps in very, very quickly. Barbara and Hal were camped above the Bay of Fundy. The tide was in, in the morning, and they were told what time it would be going out, and that they could walk far out into the floor of the bay.
They walked. They found things on the ground. It was beautiful. Suddenly people were racing back towards shore, and they looked at each other and said, “Why are they running?” Somebody said, “The tide’s coming in.”
“Oh, okay, we’ll turn around and walk back to shore.”
Somebody said, “Hurry! Hurry!”
Hurry? It’s just a tide. Then they could see the tide literally coming in and they realized they had to run.
So what I’m suggesting here is not that you say, “I can’t help it, I don’t control the tides.” If you see the tide coming in and you want to survive, by all means hurry back to shore.
Fear does not need to govern that; love governs that. “I choose to stay alive, not to see this body damaged or drowned. I stayed out too long so now I have to run to find safety.” It’s a movement of love, not a movement of fear.
Your practice asks you to be present, sometimes with the darkest places in human experience, as experienced through you or as you have seen them through others. To get out of the way of the tide but not to fear the tide. Perhaps to turn around a bit sooner the next day so you don’t need to run.
In metaphor, what I mean by that, when you see huge waves of anger or grief, if it’s too big for you, let some of it out. You don’t have to take it all on at once.
But it’s important that you be willing. As I said, it’s a sacred commitment to be willing to look not just at your human weakness and vulnerability, fragility, and so forth, but to look at it as, “This is what all sentient beings experience. This is not about me. This is the experience of grief, of vulnerability, of shame, of anger.” And finally, to stop personalizing it so you can see it for what it is.
This is a precious moment in your practice because when you can see it in this way, you finally see, yes, it’s arising from conditions and passing away. I must be present with it, but I don’t have to conquer anything, here.
This is the human experience of impermanence, of suffering, of old age and death. Until you can be present in that way, how can you be present with the magnificence of the experience of love? The experience of connection with every other sentient being? The experience of joy?
These are your birthright. Each of you carries a share of that birthright to realize the truth of who you are, and to let go of the old baggage that’s weighing you down. To truly wake up to the love that you are.
How did this work for me in my final lifetime? You know the basics of the story. I was walking down the path. It was pitch black. It was pouring rain. The mud was ankle deep under my feet.
I had made the error to leave where I was welcomed, to go back to my meditation hut, which was several hours through the woods. I had been in the village sharing some teaching and helping some people, people who were grieving with loss of a loved one.
I was talking with them, and a storm came up. They said to me, “Stay here in town.”
But I was a Buddhist monk; it did not seem appropriate for me to seek shelter in a home in the village. I said, “Oh, no, I can walk back safely.”
“Please stay with us.”
“No, no.”
So first there was some pride and some misconstruing of the monastic rules that I was to follow. The rules were never meant to endanger my life. I had to be just right; I couldn’t bend a little bit and stay where it was safe. I set out on what would have been a two hour walk.
The rain became fiercer, with thunder and lightning. Then I fell in the mud as a big wind was blowing, and the tree fell on top of me, the thorns just barely breaking the skin, enough to bring some pinpoints of blood, which scent carried to the tigress.
They scratched a bit; they were uncomfortable, but tolerable as long as I lay still—really, face in the mud—I could turn my face just enough, but I could not move my body at all without impaling myself on these big, big thorns.
So, I laid there. It was not hard for me. First, I knew all I was experiencing was wet, cold, rain, a little prickle of thorns. Unpleasant, unpleasant. Breathing in and aware of discomfort in the body. Breathing out and holding space for the discomfort.
After 15 or 20 minutes, even with the cold and the wet, I relaxed. I knew in the morning other monks would come along this path; they would find me. I could lie here for many hours. It wouldn’t be that long because it was already dark. Probably 6 or so hours. Just relax.
And then I heard the tiger growling, trying to find her way in. Fear arose. “She’s going to eat me!” After a few minutes of her trying to get in, I realized that the thorn tree that was holding me captive was also keeping her out. How long would it keep her out? Would she find away around some of the thorns? Was she going to eat my foot first, or my hand, or bite my head? I could hear her walking around me, around the tree. The rain had stopped by then. I was still in a deep puddle of water, but rain was not pouring down anymore. I could hear her growls, her frustration. She could smell the blood and a meal for what would be for herself and her cubs.
My first thoughts were, “How do I get out of here? How do I chase her away?” Then I began to see how I was separating myself from her— my need to be safe, her need to be safe. A moment of shame arose, that I was choosing myself over her. And then awareness: this is what a sentient being does. This is what it means to be a mammal.
Relaxing into two ideas: I do not choose to be eaten. Holding myself firm to that from a place of love, not a place of fear. I do not choose to be eaten. Second, with love for this tiger—and I didn’t know then that she had cubs. Tracking her a day or two later we could see that she was on three feet, so she was looking for me to be her food because she could not walk. Then we discovered that she had two very young cubs. So, she was starving. But I didn’t know it then.
I was still able to wish her well. “May you be strong and healthy. May you have a good life. And may you find something else to eat besides me.” I found how that could come from a place of love for both of us, not choosing myself over her but wishing us both well, truly deepening into metta.
The night wore on and she didn’t give up. I could hear her snarls. I could hear her becoming more frustrated.
I had a deep enough practice that I easily could have gone into some kind of blissful jhana state, totally avoiding the nirmanakaya, really almost leaving the body. “If she eats me, she eats me. I’m out of here”—spiritually, mentally, emotionally gone. Somehow, I knew that was not wholesome. I needed to stay present with her anguish, her anger and frustration and with my fear, to see them as part of each other.
I stopped trying to bring myself into a state of deep calm and bliss, and I stopped focusing on hearing her snarls and the reaction I had to her snarls. I brought attention at that point to contraction—not mine or hers, THE contraction. Her contraction from hunger; mine from fear and discomfort. What is the direct experience of contraction in a human, or in a tiger? Not trying to analyze it, where did it come from, etc., so I could fix it; just contraction, contraction. Breathing in, I am aware of the contraction. Breathing out, I hold space for the contraction. THE contraction, hers and mine. And probably a million other beings. Holding space for the contraction.
Resting in that spaciousness there was a profound shift in my experience. I began to see a whole flow of lifetimes— not trying to remember them; not who was this being or what was his situation, just people dying. Mothers dying in childbirth. Men dying in war. Animals and humans dying of starvation. People dying of old age. Trees dying of old age, crumbling and falling over into the dirt; decaying and giving rise to the earth that would support the new growth, the new tree growing from the seed of the original tree. Each of us coming and going and coming and going. The whole scope of dependent origination flowed before my eyes. It was not the first time I experienced this process, but it was the first time I allowed it in, in its fullness.
Coming into being, becoming. And from becoming, how we move into contact and consciousness, mental formations—I’m not being complete, here—but how we move through this whole flow of experience. Who is experiencing it? Because I could see so many beings I had been—insects, plants, animal, human. The whole idea of a “who” collapsed into a recognition of pure awake awareness.
I am that. This body is one of many. This mind is one of many. And it has been entrusted to me in this lifetime to take care of it as I am able. Never using it as harm to another, but to take care of it because it is the container in this present life for the essence that I am. But I am not this body, I am not this mind or any of the aggregates. I am this essence.
And what is this essence? Once there was release of all the old beliefs of who and what I was the essence was there. And it’s so beautiful. I wish I could show it to you. My words will not give it to you, only perhaps serve as a clue to a riddle. You are light. You are love. You are the whole flow of awareness, that is not your awareness, just awareness, presence. Love grounded in presence.
So much joy comes from the knowing that you don’t have to keep doing anything; because you are awake, you will choose to. That old chop wood, carry water, chop the wood and bring it to those who have no fuel, carry the water and bring it to those who are thirsty, out of love.
There is no one way to practice. John gave instructions that were very clear and helpful. But don’t get locked into, “Oh, I’m doing it a little different from what John suggested—I must be doing it wrong.”
Be present. If your experience leads to greater awareness and to an opening heart, to a sense of release of some of the habitual contraction you have carried forever, good, go with it. If it leads to increased contraction, increased fear, increased stories, stop and note, “I’m getting myself into a tight place.” Note my phrasing there: “I am getting myself into a tight place.” Who is this self? Who am I?
Ahh, getting back into that story again. Well of course you are this person and this person and this person right now; who were you a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago? I knew some of you in my final lifetime almost 600 years ago; who were you? I knew some of you at the time of Yeshua; who were you? Were you anything different than you are now? Perhaps male versus female, bigger or smaller, but the essence was and always is the same. Who are you?
This is where our practice leads us. To be human is a very challenging job. Nobody told you, “Go be a human.” There was karma to resolve but it could have waited a hundred or a thousand years. You could have just stayed where you were. Eventually your own aspiration to growth and to service, especially to service, to awaken to your truth—to THE truth, really—this led you to say, “Okay, I will go.” And to find what kind of life situation might be most suitable to what you wanted to learn in this lifetime.
All of you chose life situations that could give you the space and ease in your life to practice the dharma, as opposed to being someone in an area of deep starvation with 11 children who had to constantly be trying to feed the children, could never stop for a moment. You co-created life situations that included an opportunity to hear and practice the dharma and whatever your spiritual practice, whatever you may want to call it. But you also invited the situation that would lead to insight and to resolution of the karma.
By dharma I simply mean the truth of how things are, the truth that you are already awake. You are radiant beyond measure. You are light and you are love. Wake up.
There’s a poem from Rumi, I believe. I don’t know the whole thing, but one line of it says, “Wake up! Wake up!” (Ahh, I don’t remember the details…) “Wake up! The beloved one, the spirit one, the teacher is near—wake up! You have slept for thousands and thousands of years. Why not wake up this morning?” I’ll leave you with that thought.
We have a little time here so let’s open to a few questions, if there are any. If there aren’t, that’s fine.
(long pause)
You are all looking very serious. To wake up is a wonderful thing. And it is not a matter of, “suddenly I’m awake”. After that awakening experience, I still needed to tend to old residue, to watch some of the old habitual patterns that still arose, and to stop and, resting in what I now understood, to go back and see how I was still holding those patterns subtly in place. Looking at them, it was not hard to invite their release.
What’s so important here is patience and kindness with yourself combined with the deep aspiration not to end YOUR suffering but to help alleviate suffering for all beings, because only in that aspiration to you break down the whole self structure and come to the innate One Who Knows, the one who is already awake there within you.
I hope you meet that awake one this retreat. But if you don’t that’s okay; you’ve come a step or two closer to that meeting, introducing yourself and allowing the awake inner spirit to introduce itself.
(John speaks; not recorded)
Thank you, John, for a helpful question. Stream entry. Almost all of you have experienced this. It’s the point where you suddenly realize that you’re caught up in this whole progression of self stories, separating yourself and living in duality. Most often it comes through meditation experience but not always.
Once there is that stream entry experience—first, the stream entry experience may seem to come several times but of course you can only enter the stream once. After that, you’ve simply been wading in the stream; you’ve already entered it. You’re wading through it.
The once-returner experience—I’d rather think of this not as once-returner but as only a few returns left. People think you have a once-returner experience—”Ah, that’s it! One more awakening experience and I’m out of here!” If you think of that, you’ll never get out of here because there’s still a strong self saying, “I need to get out of here!”
The once-returner experience is, I would say best described as an experience of coming to see the true essence of yourself in the way I’ve been talking about it yet still not being stable in that experience.
It may come in deep meditation. It may be blissful; it may be alarming. If it’s alarming, it probably will pull you back into a self. If it’s blissful and there’s grasping, it will pull you back into a self.
The point with that once-returner experience is to step back from the picture and see how the wheel is turning. Maybe not yet fully extricated from walking through that wheel, that cycle, but you get it, you see it.
The period of time between stream entry and once-returner experience can be like that (snap), or it can be lifetimes. But most often, for people who have a committed practice, with a deep intention that the practice be for the service of all beings, not caught up in, “Me, I need to get out of here,” or even, “Me, I will awaken to save all beings,” which is just as ego-driven, the stream entry experience releases many layers of conditioning and propels you along.
“I choose to awaken for the highest good of all beings, to help alleviate suffering in this human realm and throughout the universe. I choose to use the gifts of my practice including that stream entry experience to progress in a wholesome, balanced way. And I choose to allow myself to be patient but not stalling.”
In other words, sometimes there may be movement to a point where, going from that once-returner experience into waking up, there’s the fear, “I’ll annihilate myself.” You must know who and what you are before you can move further.
What does it mean to be a non-returner? What will be left? I am a non-returner. I’m here to tell you it’s safe. I have not annihilated myself.
But I wasn’t in a rush to get here. I lay under that tree knowing, “Whatever will be, will be. My practice has led me to a place where I am ready for what comes next. And I cannot make what comes next happen; I can only get out of its way. I choose not to be eaten by a tiger, but if that will come next, that’s what will come next. And I consecrate this body, offer this body for the highest good. But I choose not to be eaten because my intention is to further wake up and there is need of this human experience as the pathway to awakening.”
And I think it was that letting go that allowed me to move from once-returner to non-returner.
The arahant, as we’ve talked about it, is the one who moves from 6th density on. At the edge of 6th density is that point where I drop off everything to move into 7th and 8th density, which means no mental body, which means I cannot talk to you in this way.
I am not attached to having a mental body; it would be an ease and a joy to more fully dissolve into light. But I am committed to serving this suffering world. There’s no ego in it; there’s joy and there’s commitment. And my teachers suggest to me, yes, you can do good in doing this. You can serve others. So, it brings joy and I do it.
Eventually it will be time to drop of all the bodies, and then I will have what you call the arahant experience.
I hope that answers your question. I see it’s after 8pm. I’d be happy to talk further about it at another time, if there are further questions, but I want you to have time to stretch and then to sit.
Sitting is the path. Sitting, walking, meditation, singing, dancing—whatever you’re doing is your meditation, not listening to old Aaron talk. (smiling) I love you all, and I look forward to seeing you again in the morning. My blessings and love to you.