It was time to leave, and for a brief moment I was certain that no one in the room had understood, despite the few who had participated. But then the truth arrived, and did so on the wings of the bodhisattva vow: “A bodhisattva vows not to take enlightenment until all others are enlightened” (even though a bodhisattva knows quite well that there are no others).
And so I looked back at what I was looking out of, here where I see no face, no head, only awareness—empty, pure, singular, first-person-present-tense awareness, which I saw, literally saw, nowhere else in the universe, and I knew in that momentary vision of Oneness that everyone had both spoken and heard every word and that all was perfectly timed and perfectly executed for the only audience, that of Oneness.
And I left the way I entered, through the door.
Or rather, here in the stillness of awareness, I watched as the door approached and grew larger, then vanished into this vast and empty awareness that I am.
SO WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE?
In the last chapter I mentioned a road trip and stopping for a cup of coffee at an inn. It was hopefully a workable example of the principle of Oneness, how everything is interconnected in an intricate web of relationships in such a way as to defy the notion of separate parts, or of any parts. But isn’t it also a fine example of what we know as Grace, the freely given gift of a fully alive and perfectly functioning universe by, as, and for Who We Really Are, this wide awake Single Eye, this conscious empty Capacity for everything that is found only right here and right now?
To say that Seeing Who You Really Are—actually looking back at what you are looking out of and rediscovering the boundless awake emptiness at the heart of the world—to say that this Beatific Vision can engender gratitude is an understatement of the grandest proportions. I don’t know why. The Vision itself is neutral. After all, it is empty, is not an object, has no qualities, no boundaries, altogether defies description and cannot be compared to anything whatsoever. It is pure Subjectivity and is therefore beyond thinking and feeling which are “downstream” of it, and yet gratitude radiates from it freely.
The Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast said: “Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.”
He didn’t say that good things are gifts and bad things are not. He said that everything is a gift.
Seeing that you are empty, seeing that you are pure awareness, is to enter the second step of the Buddha’s formula: 1.) First there are mountains and rivers (ordinary, or relative seeing); 2.) Then there are no mountains and rivers (seeing Who You Are as empty awareness); 3.) Then once again there are mountains and rivers (seen as an aspect of Who You Are).
It is the second step that is the entrance to wisdom (and a trap if you remain there), but it is the final step that is true awakening, and it is available if you look, if you drop what you have learned as a child from others (parents, teachers, friends, all of whom were never where you are at the source), and instead go on present evidence, on what you and you alone actually see.
Try this (and reading about it will do nothing; one must actually do it): First, point at where you think (!) you have a face and look in the direction your finger is pointing. In other words, look back at what you are looking out of. See—on present evidence―that you have no face, that indeed in place of a head there appears the world (the scene, whatever is viewed at that moment). Notice that the empty awareness is open for the world, that there is no boundary, no dividing line between the one and the other.
Notice also that the world easily fits within this awareness that you are, that awareness is boundless and infinitely vast and that all scenes, no matter what, easily fit within it, and that it has always been this way. Awareness and the world are always one, right where you are when you are, and that includes whatever thoughts and feelings that are attached to the scene, be that scene current, or be it memories or expectations attached to visualizations. The world is awareness, and awareness is the world.
This is the recognition of Oneness. There cannot be a second, never has been and never will be. Seeing this is experiencing this, being this. It is the recognition of Who You Really Are. It is grace, in that everything is your own gift to yourself. There is no benefactor and no recipient other than You, and from this recognition springs gratitude, and from gratitude, joy, the sort of joy that has nothing to do with having gotten what you want or having something wonderful happen. This is the experiential apprehension of Indra’s Net, the God-Hologram. This is seeing Awake No-thing here filled to the brim with all that you once mistakenly thought was “out there.” This is Void and Form as one, Awake Nothing appearing as the scene and the scene appearing as a manifestation of Awake No-thing, as One.
It may seem odd, therefore, that almost every day I recite what I am grateful for, as if there were two, me and whatever or whomever it is I happen to include. I do this out loud. The list includes friends, events, places, and things, but inevitably it leads to a gratitude that cannot be accounted for by people and things. I end it by simply saying, “I am grateful for THIS!”
Why do I recite what I am grateful for? Because I find that giving thanks is the natural result of seeing Who I Am. Here, THIS, is magical. That people and things appear at all is profoundly astonishing. There could be, and perhaps should be, simply nothing, no space or time or matter, no universe at all. But that THIS, this Awakeness, this Empty Consciousness, this Boundless Eye that both simultaneously creates and is capacity for a universe of everything—and is unquestionably present as Who I AM―this truly is the Great Mystery, one that revels in its creation and erupts in gratitude and veneration. Here, where the end of the list is reached, gratitude cannot be distinguished from Love.
And as David Steindl-Rast made clear, everything is a gift. Oneness reveals this. The universe itself is a gift—it is what you are—and you are the giver, the gift, and the receiver. There are no separate parts. Everything is freely given and freely received. There is no quid pro quo exchange. There are no debts, no requirements to respond in like kind. “We” who are not “we” merely function as THIS—Awakening―passing it forward, knowing that everything appearing, that which is referred to in Zen as “the ten thousand things,” is THIS, What I Really Am. We may think that receiving a gift dictates that we respond in some way, but this is false thinking based on the premise that we are intrinsically separate beings living in a world of separate parts “out there.” In reality, “we” are this one Awake Space appearing as everything, and seeing this, who could there be to be a benefactor or beneficiary, who could be the giver and who the receiver, and of what?
And so we act our part in this great drama of love; we pass it forward. We are the agents of gratitude, the jewels of Indra’s Net reflecting all the other jewels, each one the manifestation of a universe of infinite gifts. We receive, and we give. We give, and we receive, and never do we owe. We simply pass it on, and this, ultimately, is Who You Are, passing to Yourself. As David Steindl-Rast also said, "As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center."
In the mornings when I open the drapes in my room, I see a flood of green, a spacious back yard overgrown and bursting with tall grass, wildly unkempt bushes, and trees with leaves so numerous the neighboring houses have disappeared. There are tunnels of overhanging foliage, and hardly a foot of the back fence is visible. Beyond, the creek murmurs, winding nearly unseen through a riot of weeds on its bank.
Although I began my practice of gratitude in prison several years ago, in these several months since my release I am experiencing gratitude in a new and inspiring way. These mornings are sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful, and gratitude brings tears.
Stepping outside, the awe of placing my hand on the trunk of a tree, something I hadn’t done in 35
years, the scent of wildflowers from the hill beyond the creek, my slippers wet with dew, this dazzling scene in the morning sun immediately replacing me— how could this be paid forward? How can anything be paid forward?
My only answer is: by Seeing. Seeing Who I Really Am pays everything forward, and to Itself. Seeing provides the urge to “do” what we “are,” and to choose what we See. Gratitude is so deeply linked to Who I Really Am that at times I can no longer distinguish between the two. And of all the endless gifts presented moment by moment, the fact that they appear here not only for but Aware Presence—this is the Final Gift, right where I am. THIS is where it begins and ends, where it all originates and never left.
And for all the men I knew in prison, and for all the men and women in prison everywhere, here is David Steindl-Rast again:
“If you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not a sense of scarcity, and you’re willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.”
TWO-WAY SEEING
“Above all, this meditation, Janus-like, faces both ways. Simultaneously looking in at the Seer and out at the seen, it takes in and makes sense of the seen because it puts No-thing in its way—and gives priority to this No-thing. Seek the 1st person and the 3rd shall be added. Seek the 3rd, and even that shall be taken away.”
―Douglas Harding
With one hand, point back at what you are looking out of, at where you thought you had a face, and notice there is nothing there but empty space, awake to its own emptiness. With the other hand held next to the first, point out at the scene.
You are now simultaneously looking in at empty awareness and out at the scene in front of you. Notice that there is no dividing line between the empty awareness and the scene, the nothing and t he something. They are united, right here where you are.
This is Oneness, void and form as void/form, what you truly are. Another way to say it: As Source (pure awareness, empty of all objectivity), you are void appearing as form. You are empty awareness manifesting as the changing scene.
They are not different. They have never been different.
You are the absence of time, always now, manifesting as passing time, appearing as the “past” (thoughts and memories), the “present” (which is already the past by the time you register it), and the future (expectations and imagination), all of which happen in awareness now.
There is no time other than the immediate presence of awareness (always now), and there is no space other than that same awareness in which every scene appears and disappears (always here). This coming and going is true of your flesh body, your thoughts, your feelings, and ultimately the universe—anything and everything appears in and as awareness. All are objects appearing inside What You Really Are, which has been called Pure Subjectivity, spaceless and timeless and fully aware, aware even of being aware. It is simply a matter of coming home to what you already are. You’ve been away, living “out there,” pretending to be someone you’re not, someone you thought you were, but it was never true. You are not the body and not the mind. The body and mind happen inside the timeless and spaceless Awareness, the Consciousness that you truly are.
THE FOOL
The Fool is not who you think you are.
The Fool is not who you look like to other people from where they are, “over there.”
The Fool is not what you see in the mirror; it too is “over there.”
The Fool is at no distance from where you are, right where you are.
The Fool is not an object, not an image, not an appearance.
The Fool turns who you think you are inside-out and upside down.
The Fool is no one, no thing, and no thought.
All those appear inside the Fool, by and as the Fool.
The Fool simultaneously creates and experiences the illusion of space and time, yet occupies neither.
The Fool is anywhere imaginable, yet never moves.
The Fool is always Here, which is nowhere, no matter where.
The Fool is always Now, which is nowhen, no matter when.
The Fool is timeless, prior to time.
The Fool cannot be named, yet manifests as anything and everything.
The Fool is empty, yet is not nothing.
The Fool is awake, aware, yet cannot know what it is because it is the knowing of what is known.
The Fool is pure subjectivity.
The Fool may be said to be One in that there are no other Fools, but the Fool is not singular either.
The Fool was never born and can never die.
YOU are the Fool. Be THAT. You might as well. You cannot not be THAT!
PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS
“All problems have but one universal solution.”
―Anandamayi Ma
So what could be the “problem?” Nearly every day I run into something called a problem, then come to my senses and have to smile. How could I possibly call something a “problem?” Who is this so-called “me” that thinks there’s a problem? Am I stuck in the small scheme of things? Are we really separate individuals briefly existing in an indifferent universe too vast to comprehend? Am I no more than a zeptosecond of meaningless dust confronting one problem after another until my demise?
Or am I what I actually see here at my core: this boundless, awake Emptiness, this capacious creator of all things, all time and space? Which is it—that which I see—the picture worth a thousand words—or that which I think? Is it available right now when I reverse my attention and look at what I am looking out of, or is it something I learned as a child and have repeated ad infinitum, the lie of duality handed down from the generations, the “original sin” of separation?
There aren’t any so-called problems, of course. They are illusions, part of the game of what we call “life.” Let’s first see them for what they are: negative thoughts attached to scenes. And properly understood, let’s then realize that they are gifts, reminders of what we are not, and then by contrast, of what we truly are, which is No-thing Here and Now, and never some-thing there and then. Thank God for problems, I say, and the tip-off is the feelings they bring with them, alarms that tell me that I’ve lost the center, that I’m mired in thoughts attached to the things of this world. There are days when I seem to have more than my share of them, and then, often in retrospect, I marvel at the intelligence of this Empty Awareness that came up with this ingenious method of coming Home. It’s an astonishing bargain, and it never fails to bring wonder accompanied by laughter—that Who I Really Am could create Itself posing as who I am not for the purpose of recognizing Who I Really Am! And the beauty and genius of the Headless Way is that this recognition is so vividly confirmed by the senses, so “on display” merely by looking to see, no matter the situation or mood. Look back, and notice Space here, world there. Which am I attending to? Or am I attending to both?—Space here filled with the world, as One? Have I not created this marvelous union of Self appearing as other, yet seeing only One (and not even that!)? Are you not, as the One (and anyone can say this) living in a world of only Yourself? How could it be otherwise?
But wait, here it comes again, the movie of my life, filled with all sorts of characters, the usual twists and turns and unscheduled arrivals, scenes of laughter and joy and the occasional adventure, and of course, the problems, some without apparent solutions.
Which reminds me of a passage in the Bible: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all shall be added unto you.” Caught by the movie, or worse, caught in the movie and thinking I’m one of the characters (the leading man, of course), I am seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. There is no way out of this lifetime seesaw—without it there’d be no world—and as time passes, I find myself more and more on the downside because of old age.
Unless, of course, I turn my attention around 180 d
egrees and first look Here, then see that There has been added into the bargain, appearing inside Me. Here—Awareness. There—the “ten thousand things.” And every one of them appears inside this Awareness that I am. It was in this manner when I was in prison that I discovered I wasn’t in prison―prison was in Me. And in the same way, I now see that this keyboard and monitor and the words on this screen are inside Me, as well as any and all thoughts that are attached to this scene. Because this has been my experience in the past every time I’ve looked, I expect it will be the same in the future when I look (although both the memory and the expectation are Here/Now). Because others say it is the same for them when they look, I am warmed by the connection, especially knowing that there are no “others,” nor any such monstrosity as “multiple awarenesses.” There is only Awareness, and it is no-thing, and it is What We Are.
Coming to Nothing and Finding Everything Page 8
