Month: October 2023

1. If you feel in your very bones that dukkha is profound, pervasive, and central, then you’ll naturally long for liberation.

2. You won’t settle for “contingent happiness” (in the words of Shinzen Young) because contingent happiness will subside and then contingent misery will arise. And this is just more samsara.

3. To long for liberation is to want, singularly and without any competitor, to know what abiding happiness really is.

4. But abiding happiness can’t be found in any objects: not in wealth, status, sensuous pleasure, experiences, relationships, accomplishments, and so on. It can’t be found “on the horizontal plane.” Abiding happiness can only be found “vertically.”

5. But then how is abiding happiness to be found? It is to be found through Self-knowledge. 

6. Ponder: what is the connection between Self-knowledge and abiding happiness?

7. If sweet Sri Ramana is right, then Self-knowledge is a necessary condition for abiding happiness. Indeed, later on in his essay “Nan Yar,” he’ll also say that it’s sufficient.

8. But what is Self-knowledge? It’s, roughly, whatever it is that remains in the absence of all “sheaths” or “kosas.” And what is that truly remains? Being-Consciousness-Peace. While Being-Consciousnes-Peace is mistakenly believed to be “three things,” they’re really just human expressions of three aspects of the same, complete Reality.

9. How is Self-knowledge, so understood, to be discovered? Through Self-inquiry.

10. But why Self-inquiry? Well, because it’s the only method that foregrounds–puts, so to speak, right in your face–the principal question: What is this “I” anyway? Where did this apparent localized “I” come from? And what is its true nature (svarupa)? 

An illustration: suppose you’re driving your car, and suppose a fear of being in an accident arises.

Let’s say that you use some form of cognitive, or reason-based, therapy to talk this through. You might note that accidents, in some grand sense, rarely occur. You might note that you’re a meditator who is keenly observant; that your driving skills fall at least into the range of competence; that these roads are well-built and that this afternoon it’s stunningly sunny (not rainy, not windy, not snowy); and that drivers are at least able to a high degree–see Harari’s Sapiens–such that they’re not engaging in outright violent acts. And so on.

Let’s say that this approach, in a certain sense, works. The fear subsides, and you’re able to focus pretty well on getting to your destination.

So, where’s the criticism?

It’s this: You haven’t actually seen, understood, welcomed, and allowed to naturally dissolve that ego-form on whose behalf the fear was arising in the first place. Let’s call that particular ego-form “the powerless little boy.”

Let’s call the arising of fear “experience 1.”

Instead, the reason the rational approach seemed to work, I’ll argue, is that the one speaking or thinking–let’s call this ego-form “the wiseman”–is addressing a second, imagined ego-form–let’s call this one “the sensible adult.” And let’s call this–that is, the wiseman speaking to the sensible adult–“experience 2.”

This is Advaita Vedanta Lesson 101: when experience 2 arises, necessarily experience 1 has subsided (since there can only be one experience at any one time). Therefore, obviously the fear, which is arising on behalf of the deducible powerless little boy, has disappeared. Meanwhile, experience 2, which involves two different characters, works inasmuch as the car is operated well enough.

In short, it’s a bait and switch.

Now, does this approach actually lead to the end of suffering (nirvana)? Hardly. In fact, it’s just the prolongation of samsara by other means. To be sure, it may be pragmatically efficacious, but in the long run the fear, on behalf of the powerless little boy, will arise, intermittently, again and again and again. Sure, you won the battle, but you’ll keep losing the war, so to say.

What’s a more skillful approach, then? Clean Up. Perhaps take a cue from Internal Family Systems (IFS): gently open to, even dialogue with the powerless little boy (*). By virtue of opening to while understanding the latter, it will slowly merge into the Awareness that we ultimately are.

Note

(*) A pragmatic remark: if it’s necessary to talk oneself out of fear in a given situation, then fine. But use the “echo” of the experience to revisit, here, the powerless little boy so as to go to the heart of the matter. Let Cleaning Up be in the service of Waking Up.

Overview

My understanding of Cleaning Up (to use a neutral term here) is encapsulated by the following:

1. The “primary datum” is experience: that is, a direct experience of a hurt or a titillation. This is where we must (logically speaking) begin.
2. Then we can use whatever method we wish to understand that hurt. A shortcut will involve tracing that hurt or titillation back to at least one ego-structure. Any method that offers a shortcut will do just fine.
3. That hurt will also be traceable back to a comparable (dyadic) ego-structure. If the first one is “I am powerless,” the second one could be “I am successful” (or powerful, etc.).
4. What we’ll begin to notice, if we’re mindful enough, is that hurt X can be traceable back to the deduced ego-structure A. On some occasion, we’ll also notice, though, that A may “tag in” not-A. Or we could notice that hurt X is traceable back to not-A on some other occasion. What I’ve found is that it’s quite important to notice how a particular hurt “yields” or “gives rise to” at least two different codings. Like: “I am insignificant” and “I am the wiseman.”
5. Over time, whatever the Cleaning Up investigation specifically looks like will lead to the creation of something like “a map.”

Cues

You can use any number of “cues” or “error messages” to initiate the process of Cleaning Up. These include:

• Strong likes and strong dislikes
• Wishes and complaints
• Strong negative emotions like anger, sadness, and fear
• Any particular strong urges
• Any feelings of guilt

Even more generally, the basic 3 categories:

• Recurrent thoughts or feelings
• Stuck energy
• Chronic physical contractions/tensions

Fear, For Example

Starting to notice that fear preponderates is a good thing. 

Exposure therapy, however, won’t work. “If it scares you, do it.” It can’t work because it will simply enable a second ego-structure to be, e.g., the courageous one.

That said, if you regard facing your fear as an opportunity to see how the entire mechanism works (i.e., the hurt plus the ego-structures A and not-A), then you’re golden. You can use “exposure” as a forcing function to initiate a deeper Cleaning Up investigation.

Two Basic Approaches: Ad Hoc And Echoes

How, specifically, does Cleaning Up get under way?

1. Well, life works in an ad hoc way to reveal to you any hurts. If you pay close enough attention, on any given day you’ll see “lights coming on on the dashboard.” These “error messages” are indicating that it would be good to investigate here and to Clean Up.

2. Additionally, you can sit quietly and call back any “echoes,” i.e., any memorably vivid experiences. You can use thoughts, images (more thoughts), or the felt sense of something inside the body to do so. Then you can do anything needful from here: feel without concept, inquire, listen, dialogue with this ego-structure (see IFS), simply witness, etc. All of these approaches–and others–will point to the same truth: this can be fully embraced, and at the same time my essence is not this.

Completeness

You know that the Cleaning Up investigation is complete when most of the territory is mapped. This means at least two things:

One, you don’t discover any more ego-structures that have not been discovered already.

Two, you can account for the lion’s share of rising hurts in any given situation by regarding it as coming from some already discovered ego-structure.

To speak more experientially: you’ll notice that “reactivity” ramps up and ramps down much more quickly. This easy, gentle, natural ramping up and ramping down signifies that the Cleaning Up investigation is more or less complete.

Dear So-and-so,

Dukkha Is Almost Universal

Begin by reading my post on the near-ubiquity of dukkha.

It’s especially important that you “click with” the First Noble Truth.

Like: “Oh, this isn’t just fear. And that over there isn’t just anger. They’re all instantiations of dukkha! Whoa, the Buddha was right!”

Once this really clicks into place, then there will be an easing of involvement when it comes to issue X or problem Y. You’ll take your blinkers off, and begin to see X or Y in a totally new, panned-out light.

Indeed, there will be a great openness to “going back” to find out whence the dukkha arose. I’ll say more about that below.

Dukkha As Error Message

Here’s how not to understand dukkha:

1. It’s something to be gotten rid of.
2. It’s something to suppress.
3. It’s something to “think your way out of” (a version, really, of 1).

Instead, regard dukkha as an error message. It’s like a yellow, orange, or red light appearing on your dashboard. What’s it saying? You’ll have to inquire to find this out.

But, again, it’s not telling you to do 1 (get rid of), 2 (suppress), or 3 (think through) above. Instead, it’s inviting you–as if it were a helpful riddle–to go back and discover the apparent, or relative or believed-in, source of the dukkha.

Where Dukkha Shows Up Specifically

1. In recurrent thoughts (or recurrent feelings).

2. In stuck energy (on this, see, e.g., qigong, Tai Chi, acupuncture, Reiki–in short “energetics” or “energy work”).

3. In chronic physical tension

I suggest setting aside 2 for now, and only looking at the “error messages” when and as they appear in 1 (thoughts or feelings) and 3 (physical tensions). 

How?

Regarding recurrent thoughts, gently see each, note that recurrence signals an error message, and find out the samskaric source.

Regarding chronic physical tensions (like the strong ones in your chest and solar plexus), gently see and–without expectation or end-gaining–invite release.

Problems

Problems are like thick clouds that appear to occlude our vision of the boundless sky. And yet, the thick clouds aren’t real.

When problems arise in sadhana, find out on whose behalf they arise. Is there a problem after all? For whom does there seem to be one?

Just carry on until it’s clear that there are no problems.

Sudden Awakening: Rinzai Zen

Imagine that the boundless sky is covered, through and through, by clouds.

Then there’s a break in the clouds. It’s as if there’s a “breakthrough,” a “popping through” to the empty sky.

This is sudden awakening. Hey, good start. Now carry on with post-satori sadhana.

Gradual Awakening: Soto Zen

Imagine that there’s a boundless, self-radiating sky. Imagine, further, that there’s a very thick fog such that the boundless, self-radiating sky isn’t visible.

“Just sitting” or Silent Illumination is like the fog becoming less and less thick. Gradual awakening refers to the fog totally lifting. The self-radiating sky has “burned away” all fog.

Sahaja Samadhi

When it’s totally clear that I am, and have only ever been, the boundless sky, then this is what Sri Ramana Maharshi calls “sahaja samadhi.”