Quiet Wanderer

“If we were to dye a piece of cloth we’d have to wash it first.” – Ajahn Chah

I Am That

In teaching, there is a difference between general discourse and guidance given specifically from a teacher to a student or practitioner. A discourse is universally true and the consumer receives the teaching with the perspective that it is simple truth which needs to be understood but which may or may not have particular applicability to the practitioner at that moment. Guidance contains a specific message for a specific person in the context of a particular need or difficulty, and is meant to illicit a certain response in the student. While truth in guidance is still pristine, the custom packaging may shade this truth and even make it appear to conflict with other teachings from the same teacher. The truth of guidance lies in how well it fits with the need of a student and causes that change, shift, opening, understanding, insight or alteration of practice which the seeker needs at that point.

It is probably of some value to remember this when reading a book like “I Am That” which is a collection of teachings given each as guidance to an individual seeker. The guidance holds truth, but the knife may be twisted to create a specific incision, and the underlying truth may not be something I need at the moment or may not be packaged in a way that has meaning for me. The same is probably true of the open satsang format. Of course, I must still be on guard for the false and remember that real truth is known, and proven, experientially.

Words are words; teaching is teaching. The adage that tells us we cannot attain enlightenment from reading books is meant to say that seeing the truth, knowing truth, is experiential. But, the words of teachers, masters and gurus, whether spoken or written, help me evolve towards enlightenment. A teacher once said that meditation does not cause enlightenment, but it makes it more likely. So, while experiential practice is paramount, I should not discount the conditioning, the training and preparation of the mind. I believe it is a necessary component and, anyway, it improves my odds.

OK, once and for all (for now) I reject the position that the existential self does not exist, is not real, is not tangible and significant within the confines of birth and death. The existential self is real, if only existentially so, and the constant effort to disintegrate the self by stealing all relative words into a new language of not self, non-dualism, or any other perspective is an annoyance that is, for me, distinctly counterproductive. It is a bit like being hoodwinked while being aware that the smiling culprit is blowing smoke up my ass. You can introduce new terms or phrases, or even specify that you are using words in a special context where they have a peculiar inference, but you cannot subordinate the entire English language to your narrow purpose. Harrumph!

If, instead of these games, I simply imagine myself as a temporal manifestation of the unmanifest beyond, then my mind, at least, can dislodge and move forward. It raises several questions or perspectives that become interesting to me, at least intellectually.

The first question is an old question: if the temporal self is a manifestation, then when it dissolves into the unmanifest, bliss will be constituted in the total absence of self (consciousness, experience, etc.) and if I am not there to enjoy it, then why do I want to quit this bundle of experiences, however tumultuous and inadequate they may be?

If we are all manifest from the same beyond, then we are all one in one beyondness. Looking at it from the perspective of the unmanifest, we are each just temporary manifestations from the one, pervasive I Am. From the viewpoint of individual manifestations, there is duality and multiplicity and we are each unique individuals; but from the perspective of the unmanifest, everything conjured up by consciousness is part of the oneness and not differentiated – there is no duality. This suggests that enlightenment is both coming to know this truth and also fundamentally changing one’s perspective from that of the individual to that of the unmanifest.

This perspective of the unmanifest also suggests that for me to become liberated is a trivial, even inconsequential attainment because the ocean is full of waves and perpetually raises up wave after wave. Since we are all I Am, then I Am can only become liberated when all manifestations both dissolve and stop being reborn. Nisargadatta’s I Am is stuck in a relentless suffering unless every manifest being becomes liberated. Let the last one out of the room of the manifest turn out the light of consciousness. What a hopeless proposition for I, I Am, and all manifest beings! Excuse me, would you all kindly start meditating so I can one day be liberated?

OK, so lets’ state it again differently and see if it gets any better. Nisargadatta’s I Am is at lest an inference to the unmanifest beyond. So, regardless of our multiplicity and duality as existential beings, if we each investigate the source of our selves, we will all discover the same unmanifest reality, the source of all conditioned reality, and, therefore, the selfsame I Am. And in that moment of realization, advaita is proved – that we are all manifest of the same I Am is obvious and the implication is that thereafter, when I consider my existential self from the perspective of the I Am, then I can no longer be substantively differentiated from every other manifest being for all are I Am. Further, no self has any more or less value than another self, and the acts between the manifest selves are the I Am acting on the I Am. I cannot harm another because there is no other for me to harm. I Am all and I Am all I Am.

So what?

Well, first, this knowledge, if it is even true, is of limited value because it is not experiential. Just as the finger points at the moon, and we need teachers and their words and guidance in whatever form or medium, so knowledge, however acquired, helps us on our path. For me, knowledge and understanding help to remove obstacles to progress. Every change in perspective gives me the chance to see another door, another passage. Perhaps this is the cultivation of the Buddha’s Right View. However, I do believe that just as insight opens the mind, it is experience of truth that will drag me across the threshold. It is the unexplainable yet unquestionable experience of the ineffable reality that will bring absolute liberation…

… of the self. Holy shit! I Am can realize myself and disintegrate into I Am but I Am not free of these manifest warts until all of you do the same! We are like a rash on the butt of the unmanifest: we may cure a spot, but meanwhile the rash keeps spreading and getting uglier and we need to treat, to cure, the entire rash. Oh, sigh!

I wonder if a spot of the rash can be cured in such a way that the cure sort of infects more of the rash? The Buddha infected a big chunk of the rash and still the rash is far bigger now and the cure has been almost lost. What am I left? The hopeless path of the Bodhisattva or the insignificant attainment of self realization, of my own, minuscule liberation?

Perhaps when pulling weeds in the strawberry patch, it is best not to cogitate on the entire farm – just keep pulling weeds.

“All the dreams are superimposed over a common world. To some extent they shape and influence each other. The basic unity operates in spite of all.” – Nisargadatta, I Am That

While Nisargadatta is a non-dualist, statements like this leave me really wondering. Most often I understand him as saying that everything that is manifest exists in duality and only the un-manifest is non-dual. He also says that everything, the world and everything in it, is “I Am” and that without manifestations from his “I Am-ness”, the world and everything that is manifest dissolves. But, here, I read that there is a common world that is apart from all that we manifest. Hmm, or that what we manifest overlaps – and when the last person leaves the room and turns out the lights, the manifest world goes dark. But, doesn’t that mean the world manifest in I Am affects the world manifest in You Is? That makes me think of dualism. Or, more likely, the more I try to understand Nisargadatta, the more confused I become. Sometimes, the gurus talk in koans: the understanding is in realizing one cannot understand and the only nonsense is in trying. Other times, I think they just start talking in metaphysical babble and lose contact with their audience. At least, they loose me.

“A man who claims to know what is good for others is dangerous.” – Nisargadatta, I Am That

The world could use a heavy dose of this message. I’m sure it would be good for them!  🙂

I read Nisargadatta and try to understand his image of non-duality, but I don’t. The notion seems to be that if we are all of the unmanifest, then in that context we are all one and everything is of the unmanifest non-dual real. Thus, “I Am” implies the beyond, the unmanifest. I guess each of us, in our I Am-ness, is the same beyond, therefore we are all one in the context of the beyond. In fact, we are not We Are, but the undefinable unmanifest.

However, to me, in our state of being manifest, we are in a temporary state of duality. I can accept that when the wave crests and many drops of water are cast up into the air as individual drops, they are all still of the ocean, a great oneness, and that when they fall back into the ocean they loose their individuality but not their separateness, their duality, even though they do not loose their absolute essence because they are and always were the ocean. Still, in that temporal state, they are, in my mind, separate.

That still leaves the notion of a non-dual, non-state that is absolute reality and is beyond, far beyond, completely beyond consciousness. OK, I will accept that as a stipulation. But, it still leaves me that nagging question. If the unmanifest is beyond consciousness and there is no concept of self or awareness of self, how does it differ from the fundamental notion behind nihilism? If I am not aware that I am in bliss, what is the difference and why do I want to go there?

I have come to think that one problem I have in understanding the wise – gurus, realized or enlightened individuals – is that they take words that have definite meaning to me, change their definition, and then try to bend my mind to this new meaning.  My mind resists perhaps not because it has difficulty with the new concept but because it must first invalidate a concept the mind knows to be true in a specific context.  For example, let us consider what is real.  Thus far in life I have worked with the understanding that what I can see, touch, hear, perceive or scientifically detect, if not presented by some trickery of illusion, is real.  But, a guru will tell me all this is not real; rather it is all illusion or delusion.  Such a guru will say that if we remove all that the mind can detect, perceive, conjure or imagine, then what is left is real.  To accept this notion, I must first accept that the world, the universe, indeed all of us and everything are not real.  I want to suggest instead that all I have until now considered real continues to be real, but only in a temporal, changing, impermanent and insubstantial reality; that due to its inherent inadequacy, this existential reality is fraught with suffering and happiness is fleeting and fragile.  From this perspective, I am now able to more easily consider that there is another reality that is unchanging, beyond mind, self and consciousness, free from sense and sense object, from comparison, judgment and emotion.  Thus, it’s not necessary for me to tear apart and invalidate the reality I know to be true in this world, but merely to tame this reality, to moderate its significance and open to the concept of what is unchangeably real; to a profound reality where truth is exactly one.  An ineffable non-state beyond the supramundane, where the only reality is truth and the only truth is what is real.  We agree that words are inadequate for such discussions, so let us not make the discussion conceptually impossible.  We could use different words.  We could differentiate the absolute from the existential and absolutely real from existentially real.

Let us presume that I am consciousness.  Consciousness is bound to the senses and their interaction with sense objects.  Through them, consciousness becomes intertwined with likes and dislikes, craving and aversion, desire, hate, ill-will, greed.  Thus, from consciousness springs happiness, the quest for happiness, unhappiness and fear.  If it turns out that I am not consciousness, that I am only temporarily experiencing consciousness, then I am-ness might become free of consciousness, and with it craving and desire and aversion and hate and fear.  What is left?  What is I am?