Understanding Non-Duality: What Does it Mean to be Everything?; Heart Sutra; Q&A on Enlightenment

March 28, 2023 Tuesday Evening, Living Awake Class

Understanding Non-Duality: What Does it Mean to be Everything?; Heart Sutra; Q&A on Enlightenment

Barbara: Good evening to everybody. The sun is shining in my window with real warmth, and it’s very nice to have such sun coming in after a very cold winter.

We talk a lot about non-duality. It’s important that we really understand what we mean by non-duality, and how that supports our practice. Aaron, John and I will focus a bit on that tonight.

We have the retreat the first week of June. What we seem to be trying to do in the last classes are to put together the building blocks that will allow us to go deeper in the retreat. A lot of what we do, of course you’ve heard before, but it’s still worth sharing. I know I seem to hear things a number of times before I finally have it.

I’m remembering a senior student—not here tonight—in a class some years ago. I gave her instructions, and she thought about it and she said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that before? That makes so much sense!” Well, it was something that had probably been repeated twenty times over the years, but she was ready to hear it. Sometimes we’re just not yet ready to hear it.

Non-dual: not two. I want to start by reading you from the Heart Sutra. I’m not going to read the whole Heart Sutra, but part of it.

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion

from the deep practice of Prajnaparamita

perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas

and delivered all beings from their suffering.

Aaron has asked me to start and then he’s going to come in. He says, ideally what I say would fit into the middle, but it’s very hard for me to come out of channeling and speak. So, you’ll get this out of order a bit.

“The emptiness of all five skandhas”. The words skandha and aggregate are the same thing—different words, same thing. The aggregates of form, of feeling, of thought, of impulse, of consciousness.

We all know we have a physical body that carries us around. We have a mental body, so form, feelings, thoughts. We have feelings, by which we mean feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. In this traditional format the next is called impulse, and consciousness.

These arise out of conditions and pass away. They have substance. They have no ultimate reality but a mundane reality. And they are not self.

When I learned deeply about “emptiness of the skandhas” many, many decades ago, I was sitting by Lake Erie. Big waves coming in; it’s like an ocean. Watching the waves, Aaron asked me can you see the form? Yes. Does it have any separate existence?

We’re going to screenshare, here—waves rolling in… (video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_2t83JsbGI

The waves clearly have form, and yet they’re arising and passing away. This closest one to shore, it comes, and it pretty much disappears into the ocean. Where is it? It’s gone.

Look way out at the furthest waves that you can see, with big whitecaps. This next wave is building up, cresting into a real but ever-changing form—the aggregate of form, the ocean expressing as form, and it’s gone. Let’s just look at it for a minute. Is there anything separate in that wave? It’s all just ocean.

Moving on to the view from above; this one shows it so beautifully…

https://www.pexels.com/video/waves-on-the-beach-kissing-the-shore-2812061/

Just the aggregate of form. There’s beach, there’s water. You can see the sand mixed in with the water. Watch it again—can you see the sand mixed into the water? No separation of shore, sand and water. As you watch the froth, you can see the air in there too, nothing separate.

I love that last one. I find it really evokes non-duality for me.

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion

from the deep practice of Prajnaparamita

perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas

and delivered all beings from their suffering.

He’s speaking to someone named Sariputra.

O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness,

emptiness no other than form.

Form is emptiness, emptiness form.

The same is true of feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness.

O Sariputra, all dharmas are empty.

They are not born nor annihilated.

They are not defiled nor immaculate.

They do not increase nor decrease.

So in emptiness no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness.

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

no form, sound, smell, taste, touch or objects of mind.

No realm of sight; no realm of consciousness.

No ignorance nor extinction of ignorance,

no old age and death, nor extinction of them.

No suffering, no cause of suffering, no path to lead out of suffering;

no knowledge, no attainment, no realization

for there is nothing to attain.

That’s as far as I’m going to read right now.

What does he mean by “No suffering, no cause of suffering, no path to lead out of suffering, no knowledge, no attainment, no realization, for there is nothing to attain.”? If there’s nothing to attain, what are we doing here in this class? It’s called “Living Awake”. We are asleep, and we are awake. We learn to rest in the middle of the bridge, able to honor both. And here’s where Aaron has asked me to share this personal bit.

Like all of you, sometimes I struggle in my life. I feel sadness. I feel body pain. I feel confusion. I feel anger. I feel bits of disillusionment. I’m 80 years old, and this body can’t do things it could twenty years ago. That can be frustrating!

I wanted so much to get out there and ski on the snow in my yard this winter, just walk on my skis. I can’t do it—I don’t have the strength or the balance. Last summer, at the lake, we put my little sailfish in the water, and my grandson was happily sailing—oh, I wanted to sail! But I can’t do it. I can’t move my body fast enough to balance on the boat. I can’t do it.

Hal and I used to be active. We’d take long walks. We’d ski. We’d go canoeing. We traveled a little bit. We watched movies together and talked about them. Now I have a husband who’s half-paralyzed. He can’t even stand up on his own; he has to have people lift him and help him to transfer. He can’t talk. His mind works well; it’s clear. But if we see a movie and I ask him, what did you like about the movie, he can’t respond. I have to ask him, “Did you think the character portrayal was good?” Yes. “Did you think it was an honest movie?” No/yes. His mind is clear, but we can’t talk the way we used to. It hurts. I feel sad.

So, anger comes up, sadness comes up. And yet, right there with anger… I can sit right there next to him watching a movie, and there’s maybe something romantic on the screen, and he’ll reach out his hand and take my hand. He’ll hold my hand. In the sweetest places, he’ll squeeze my hand, and I’ll look over to him and he’ll smile. Sometimes he’ll wink at me. He’s right there; he’s loving. Hal is right there. But it’s not the way it used to be. If I want it to be the way it used to be and I grasp, I will suffer.

No joy, no sorrow. Joy and sorrow are one, non-dual.

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

I have an ear. It doesn’t hear. I suffered so much in the beginning because my ears would not hear.

No form, sound, smell, taste, touch or objects of mind.

There is a realm of hearing, and there is not a realm of hearing. On the relative level, we hear. We are here in these human bodies and all the senses are active. On the ultimate level, if we could go back to that overhead wave again and play it a few times. Just watch this. Watch the individuation of the aggregates disappear. No surf, no sand…

Watch the breakers emerging. Out of the water comes this white foam, and the power of the waves, the big waves. Do they exist? On the ultimate level, they are not there. There’s no separation, just the interplay of the elements…

That’s enough, thank you.

I find that short video really powerful, because you can see the sand, you can see the sand mixed in with the water. You can imagine from different perspective you might see the sky as well. Just the outplay of the elements.

So, when we talk about non-dual, we’re not saying that the mundane aggregates do not exist, only that they have no independent separate reality.

What exists? What remains?

Many years ago, I wrote a short chapter for an anthology (called Being Bodies) that I entitled “No Eye, Ear, Nose, Tongue, Body”, about losing my hearing. They are publishing a new version—not updated but completely new. They’ve come to me, asking me how it is now, twenty years later. I have no limit on length. I’ll write it this summer.

So, I’ve been reflecting on what I want to say. What does it mean to totally live in our bodies, in our minds, be fully present on the mundane level, and yet not attached to it as having any ultimate reality? How has that changed for me now, twenty years later? And it has; it has deepened. This is so much about that resting on the bridge.

Aaron is going to come in and talk now. Aaron, have I shared everything you wanted me to share? He says yes, thank you. He will speak. That’s all from me.

Now he says I haven’t quite finished. He is asking me: the sorrow and the joy, how does it work for me?

Anger arises, frustration arises. I want to hear. I want Hal to hear. I want to be able to get up and be active. I want him to be able to be active. And I see that this is just desire arising. It is the mental aggregate, feeling aggregate, form aggregate. I can see that all arising and passing away. It arises, it passes away, it’s not self.

As our practice deepens—and all of you have had this kind of experience—you see that the thing that you’re grasping at has no substance, and you suddenly say, “Ah, what was that about?” Everything is fine, and there’s a sense of joy and presence and no suffering. And then something else comes up, and we grasp again, because this is part of what it is to be human.

We learn to cherish ourselves, these human selves. They grasp and suffer. We learn how to move through, using vipassana as a platform. John is going to work more with you on this tonight. Objects arising and passing away; dependent origination. Access concentration becomes strong. There’s a spaciousness. We move into awareness, into the spaciousness. The one who isn’t grasping is right there with the one who is grasping. And there’s not much self-identification with either; just seeing the one who is grasping is arising from conditions. Let it arise; let it go.

The one who is not grasping—it’s based on a different kind of condition. It’s based on the Unconditioned. Tonight, and in the coming weeks, we want to talk more about the shift of moving through access concentration, which for many of you has become stable.

But access concentration is not an end in itself. What comes after access concentration? How does that serve as a doorway into deeper experience, into deeper truth?

Okay, I’m going to give you Aaron. Thank you.

Aaron: My blessing and love to you. I am Aaron. As Barbara just noted, access concentration is just one dip of the path. When you’ve been looking for a door, and you finally come to the door, you don’t say, “Ah, I’ve made it! I’ve found the door!” Well, you might, for a moment. But then you begin to ask yourself, what is this door? To what does it open? If I open the door and walk through, what will happen?

So, tonight and through the rest of the classes, to some degree (and especially at the retreat, when you have time to go deep in your practice), I want us all to gain more skill at not just finding the door but opening and walking through.

In order to walk through, one has to be somewhat at ease in the light—not carried away by the light, not swept into it, but with joy for it, and somewhat at ease with the darkness—not terrified and running the other way. Knowing light has arisen; darkness has arisen. Spaciousness is there. Contraction is there. Joy is there. Sorrow is there.

So, the work is in finding the wholeness of human experience and how not to be trapped in self-identification with any of that experience. All is simply arising from conditions.

And in each finding better balance on this bridge. Not being swept away by the nirmanakaya; not being caught up into the Dharmakaya. The non-dual of knowing both, holding space for both, this is what I hope for, for you all.

I know you’ve heard the story of my lying there under that thorn tree on a stormy night. A tiger was crawling around my feet; held at a distance by the thorns, but truly wanting me for dinner.

Thorn tree, rain, mud, tiger, that monk that I was, we were all part of each other. Just as that video from above, watching the waves break and pour away; awake, break and pour away.

Everything in your human lives is just the ongoingness of the waves and the spaciousness and profundity of the Unconditioned.

The joy of approaching the Unconditioned, and the terror of approaching it. Emptiness—no self. What do we mean by ‘no self’?

Be one of those waves breaking—”Oh, aren’t I glorious! Look how far I go! Look how high, how powerful!” Slapping down on the shore and disappearing. No self. Who are you when the aggregates disappear?

You’ve heard all of this before from me, from Barbara, from John. The form, the feeling, the thought, the impulse, the consciousness—it arises. It has substance in that moment, and it dissolves.

To what does it dissolve? Where does the flame go when the candle blows out? Does it cease to exist? Where do you go when you die? Do you cease to exist? Where does the autumn tree go after all those radiant colored leaves fall off?

The leaves, of course, become part of what feeds the earth, to give the energy for next summer’s tree. In the same way, as you deepen in love and in light, as you expand your knowing of what you are when you cease to be the aggregates, you help bring that energy and love literally into the earth, feed it out into the skies. It’s everywhere.

You are in the water you drink. You are in the carrot you eat, or the chicken. You are in the tree, blossoming, tiny leaves opening. And you’re in the tree with those leaves, much later in the season, falling to the earth and decaying into the soil.

What does it mean to be everything?

As long as you’re attached to an idea of who and what you are, you are not free.

As long as you have that limiting thought of, “I am a kind one, a generous one, a loving one,” you are not free, because right there with that kindness is fear and anger.

And if you are not free to watch those arise out of conditions and pass away, you are not yet free.

To have an emotion like fear, greed or anger arise does not mean you have to enact that emotion. But if the conditions are present for it to arise, it will arise, and it will pass away. It arises; it passes. Something else arises. Who are you? What remains? What is your true self?

Reading from the Heart Sutra.

The Bodhisattva holds on to nothing but Prajnaparmamita (the highest perfection);

Therefore his mind is clear of any delusive hindrance.

It does not say no delusive hindrance arises; he is not possessed by it. Not identified with it.

Without hindrance, there is no fear.

Lying under that thorn tree, listening to the tiger, I was terrified. Because of the power of decades of practice, I was able to watch that fear arise, that aversion, even the aversion to being eaten, with compassion for myself. Thorn tree, tiger and I ceased to be separate. I loved the tiger, and I loved the man pinned down by the tree.

Resting in that spaciousness of no simple, succinct identity, I could see the thousands of beings who may have died in that forest, the remains of their bodies dissolved into the earth. I could see the thousands of trees that had dissolved into the earth, the thousands of tigers, and the rain soaked into the earth.

And there was love, the kind of love Barbara is talking about, when she’s sitting next to Hal and she wishes so much she could talk to him about the movie they’re seeing. And then he reaches out and squeezes her hand and smiles at her. The separateness dissolves. The self, saying “I need this,” dissolves. There’s just presence and love.

And this, my dear ones, is why you have come into the incarnation: to wake up to know the true self as the essence of love. This is the power that you have, to be love and implant that love into all around you, even when there is fear, greed, or anger. It’s not one or the other; it never is. This is where your practice will take you.

The path that we’ve been walking together—Vipassana, Pure Awareness, and the Brahma Viharas—this is a beautiful and complete path.

When objects dissolve and there’s a pause, and then something else arises and you’re present with it and it also dissolves, and again, and again.

And the one who would control dissolves. The one who is afraid dissolves. The one who has to be the good one, or the awakened one, dissolves.

And there is just presence. And the essence of that presence carries what I would call love. What is love? An expansiveness, a connection. A knowing of the self to be beyond any boundary or edge, pervading everything. This is what you are.

Our practice is so beautiful because it can take you there, to a place of true awakening. And it’s not going to be a “Wow! I’m now and forever fully awake!”; probably not. It will be more an “Oh, I see it differently. But where did that insight go? I had it just a minute ago. Now it’s gone.” And then it comes back. And it deepens, it stabilizes. So, the practice that we teach, this is what will take us there.

Many decades ago, when we talked about what to name this center, we came up with “Deep Spring Center for Meditation and Spiritual Inquiry.” We cannot ignore the meditation; that’s our tool. And the spiritual inquiry is the willingness to shine the light. (shines a very bright light) Here we go—shining that light!

You are light. The thinner the self, by which I might say the thinner the self-identification with the aggregates—which thinness you come to through your practice— the thinner the self, the brighter the light. The brighter the light, the more it shines everywhere on the earth, bringing light where there is darkness, fear, and hatred. You have that capacity. And you don’t have to be fully awake to shine that light, only to hold the intention for it.

Be willing to do the hard work. If I could bring Barbara back, I would ask her to speak about, through these five years since Hal’s stroke, the hours, the days in which there has been anger, contraction, fear, suffering. Go back to her deafness at the very beginning. “Why me? I don’t want this deafness.” Ah, but this is what is given. This is what has arisen from conditions.

The path of sacred darkness, we’re going to keep working with this. Sacred, because it is what heals and awakens us.

You cannot awaken by being only in the light and denying the darkness.

How do you open yourself to be present in the darkness, knowing, “I don’t want it. Take it away.” But, here it is.

Yeshua’s famous words: “Take this from me. But, if it must be, Thy will be done.” And this is not saying YOUR will out there, but the Divine of which I am a part. The divine will of which you are all a part.

The will to see into the darkness and the light and not to create two, just one. Light and darkness.

When it’s dawn in your backyard, it’s sunset, dusk, on the other side of the world. When it’s dusk and night is coming, the day will come. No duality.

I want to challenge you, in the coming two weeks, to think of what duality you most frequently get caught in.

I asked Barbara that, and she said she thought it was a duality of wanting a body that was pain-free. Wanting a husband who could participate with her. Wanting a world that was peaceful. Seeing these as end objects, rather than recognizing right here, in this moment of darkness, there is light. In this moment of pain, there is freedom from pain. In this moment of sorrow, there is also joy. How do I not focus just on the sorrow, but see the joy right there with the sorrow?

A very deep joy for Barbara and Hal are the ways that they are learning to communicate despite her deaf ears and his absence of voice. How do you communicate when you can’t talk and can’t hear? Who communicates? What is communicated?

We’ll talk more about this so-called duality. Let’s have a few minutes for questions, before we pass this on to John.

(Question not recorded.)

Aaron: Thank you, Q, I hear your question. I think you’re familiar with the traditional statement of those stages of enlightenment.

As we begin to wake up, we become increasingly aware of that which is awake within, right there with that which is not yet awake, the separated self. But it’s still philosophical. This is why I want to focus during and approaching the retreat on the experience of access concentration—knowing access concentration as a door, and asking, what does it open?

In specific terms, access concentration is the level of consciousness where there is a shift from that which is capable of only perceiving the mundane to that which is capable of perceiving the supramundane. Kuttara citta and lokuttara citta. That which is capable of perceiving the supramundane, that citta, lokuttara citta, that can perceive the supramundane. The supramundane has always been there, but you’re so busy looking at the mundane that you can’t see it.

We keep doing this exercise. (Holding hand open, fingers spread) Stare at your fingers. Wiggle your fingers. Hold them up. Stare at them. Wiggle them. Don’t look through them. Pretend there’s nothing beyond them. And then, tired of looking at the fingers and coming to know, finally, “What I seek is not here in the fingers. Where is it?”

Look through. Oh! That moment of realizing there’s something beyond. That first moment of awakening. And then we come back to looking at the fingers again—maybe caught in them for weeks on end, again. But we keep coming back to this doorway where the lokuttara citta are accessible and inviting the conditions that allow us to look through.

Seeing through… Then we perceive there is a conditioned realm and there is an unconditioned realm. You are still not stable in the unconditioned, but you know there is an experience of the unconditioned, and you begin to trust it ever more deeply. It’s a gradual process. It’s an amazing process.

For me, I had had many experiences, glimpses of the Unconditioned before that night with the tiger. If I had not had those glimpses, I would not have been able to awaken that night.

Step by step. Coming to a readiness to trust the direct experience of emptiness of self, emptiness of the aggregates. Then to perceive what I am when I am not the aggregates. It’s astonishing; it’s wonderful. And it does become increasingly stable.

We practice with it in many ways—through vipassana, through Pure Awareness, through the opening of the heart. It keeps becoming more stable.

So, Q, you asked what is it? What is a being like the Buddha or Yeshua, who is fully awakened?

Nothing and everything. Just exactly what you are, except they are no longer caught in the illusion that they are the small self. As long as there is a small self, wanting to be safe, wanting to be powerful, wanting to keep others safe, you’re caught in that small self. Break through!

Let me find a poem, here, “Cultivating the Empty Field”… This is by the Zen master Hongzhi. There are several beautiful ones here. I’m going to read you two of these.

The Bright, Boundless Field

The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image, upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear. The deep source, transparent down to the bottom, can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces, and mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally, mind and dharmas emerge and harmonize. An ancient said that non-mind embodies and fulfills the way of non-mind. Embodying and fulfilling the way of non-mind, finally you can rest. Proceeding you are able to guide the assembly. With thoughts clear, sitting silently, wander into the center of the circle of wonder. This is how you must penetrate and study.

Simply Drop Off Everything

Silently dwell in the self, in true suchness abandon conditioning. Open minded and bright without defilement, simply penetrate and drop off everything. Today is not your first arrival here. Since the ancient home before the empty kalpa, clearly nothing has been obscured. Although you are inherently spirited and splendid, still you must go ahead and enact it. When doing so, immediately display every atom without hiding a speck of dirt. Dry and cool in deep repose, profoundly understand. if your rest is not satisfying and you yearn to go beyond birth and death, there can be no such place. Just burst through and you will discern without thought-dusts, pure without reasons for anxiety. Stepping back with open hands, (giving up everything) is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world. Merge together with all things. Everywhere is just right. Accordingly we are told that from ancient to modern times all dharmas are not concealed, always apparent and exposed.

It’s not something we can really talk about, and that’s why we encourage practice, and especially the deepening practice of a retreat. I know without a retreat center, from your home it’s harder. And yet, you can do this from your homes and greatly benefit by such home-centered practice..

As you practice it from your daily life, it helps you break through all the obstacles of home, family, work, obligations. Meeting those commitments from the personal, human perspective and yet not caught in, “I have to do this or that, and then, finally, I can be free.” Who has to do it? We break through.

It’s after 7pm. Let me pass this on to John. Thank you all very much. We’ll talk a lot more about it. For now, I ask you just trust the practice.

In those days, I didn’t know Pure Awareness practice; I just had Vipassana. It’s easier for you now. You have more practices that bring more balance. We’ll put it together.

What does it mean to let go of the self-identity—the eternal self-identity, so it sometimes seems—of being the ‘good’ one, or not being the ‘bad’ one, or even of being the ‘bad’ one? What are these self-identities? Do you really need them anymore? What purpose do they serve? Let go! Wake up!

Quoting the Buddha, “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.” Thank you. I’ll return the body to Barbara.

Walking meditation is the shallow water:

https://www.pexels.com/video/person-walking-on-seashore-6756531/