By Dr. Tan Kheng Khoo
Adyashanti, the man,
the human and the process of his enlightenment
Born as Steven Gray, Adyashanti studied Zen for 14 years
under the guidance of his Zen teacher Arvis Joen Justi. Adyashanti was
regularly sent by Arvis to Zen sesshins where he also studied under Jakusho
Kwong
Roshi of the San Francisco Zen Centre. At the
age of 25 he began experiencing a series of transformative spiritual
awakenings. In 1996, around six years later, he was invited to teach by
Arvis Joen Justi.
He was
born to a great family with two sisters, one older and one younger than he.
His parents were good people.
His childhood was extraordinarily happy. Although his family was not
particularly religious, one of his grandparents was very spiritual, and thus
spirituality and religion were often part of the discussion. As a child he
did not partake of any of the talks, but he merely listened with
fascination. So there was this early attraction to spirituality and
religion.
As a
child he used to experience some mystical phenomena. A ball of white light
used to visit him at the end of his bed. He found it intriguing but not
unusual. He would find himself merging with his dresser drawer. Again, he
found it pleasurable and intriguing but not unusual.
During
his teens, ‘in one of those days’, he would wake up and find that everything
that he sensed was one thing. And sometimes it felt like something different
was looking through his eyes. This mysterious something was very ancient and
eternal. He had to be careful not to look at people too closely, as this
power through his eyes would shock the people he was looking at. The other
people became afraid and looked away. This phenomenon would last one to
three days, during which he felt eternal and timeless. These episodes would
occur three to five times a year. He never talked to his parents or teachers
about them.
At one
time a thought would push a child aside in the playground. It felt like his
eyes were that of eternity: it was ancient and yet young and innocent. This
was really startling and it lasted for a day. He was about eight or nine
years old then. The experiences were foretastes of awakening, glimpses of
certain aspects of awakening.
He was a
loner and quite different from other children, although he played on the
bars and always had a few friends. When he was in grade school, he was
diagnosed with dyslexia. He could not concentrate very well, but had a lot
of energy. His mother had a great sense of humour. She used to tell him that
the whole family was weird, and being weird is wonderful.
When he
was about 19 years old, he read a Zen book about enlightenment. This turned
him on like a light bulb. This was because he had a great-great aunt who was
very psychic and was able to astral travel. She was spiritually awake and
knew when people were to die or if they have died. Adyashanti tried to
astral travel and failed. However, in the endeavour to do out of body
experience, he had to sit in meditation. And in that meditation he touched
on something very fascinating. This led him to start reading books on the
subject. Within a few weeks of meditating, he woke up one morning to realize
that his life was not his. His life belonged to this enlightenment state.
Wherever it wants to go or to lead him, he had no choice. From pursuing
something, that something had taken over him and it was in control. And this
will continue for the rest of his life. It was a little frightening and yet
exciting. That was the moment his life turned and he did not try to escape
suffering. Although he had difficult moments in his life like everybody
else, his main concern was what does enlightenment to do with truth or
ultimate reality.
He went
to college for a while, and ended up at a community college for five or six
years. He first tried psychotherapy, but gave up the idea of being a
psychologist. Then he tried sociology, but gave it up after a few classes.
Then he took up an Eastern religious class, but also found that it was not
it. Although he was good in philosophy, he just bumbled around for five or
six years and then stopped going to community college. This is when he was
24 years old: he was working in a bicycle shop, but was intently working
towards the quest of enlightenment.
He found
a Zen teacher, Arvis Justi, when he was 20 years old. She was teaching in a
simple house in his neighbourhood, ten minutes away from his home. He
thought that this elderly lady could help him look for enlightenment. At the
first meeting he was asked at this unimpressive house to go through the back
door. In spite of this humble environment, he continued to meditate in her
living room for many years. During these years she sent him to other centres
for long retreats, but after several long retreats he discovered that this
humble teacher was exactly what he needed. She is very ordinary and without
airs. And she was the one he wanted. He stopped going away after that. After
her retirement she went and labelled tapes in Adyashanti’s office.
In his
early twenties, he built a little zendo in his backyard, in which he
meditated from two to four hours daily, reading hundreds of books plus
writing a lot in journals.
The
First Awakening
At his
first breakthrough he was twenty-five years old. It came after
six to eight months of pushing and intensive striving. He was nearly going
crazy. So he sat down to meditate, stuffing five years of effort into one
minute. After muttering, “I can’t do this” several times, everything started
to relax. In this relaxation, an inward implosion occurred. It was like
being plugged into a wall socket when the heart was beating louder and the
breathing got more laboured. He felt like dying. At that point, as soon as
he did not mind dying, all the energy disappeared and he was in space. He
became space and there was a fantastic amount of downloading of insights
into his system. The downloading was so fast and furious that he could not
decipher what they were. This downloading of insights went on for a while
and then it stopped. Then he got off his cushion, and he bowed to the Buddha
figure. After that he laughed loud because he realized that he got what he
was chasing. He was chasing what he already was. This was the first
awakening.
Once he
stepped outside, a voice kept on informing him that, “There’s more to this.
You haven’t seen the whole thing. Keep going. Don’t stop here.” From that
moment onwards, his spiritual seeker energy disappeared and never to come
back any more. Why try so hard to become what he already was. He was it, but
he must find out what was this? So he continued meditating a lot. In the
next five to six years what happened spiritually to him was not when he was
meditating. The spiritual improvement was actually happening in his daily
life. He was still training as a competitive racing bicyclist, which gives
him a good self-image, as a high-calibre athlete. He was still domineering
toward people in this competitive racing.
At
twenty-six years old, he developed an obscure illness. This put him to bed
for six months. He was rather dysfunctional during this period. So at the
end of the illness he gave up the idea of being an athlete, which is very
liberating. A year later, he went on the binge by training again. Another
six months of illness came again: sinus infection, lung infection and
mononucleosis. This time the school of hard knocks really make him let go of
this self-image, but not the meditation.
During
the same time, he went through an unhealthy and ridiculous relationship. It
gave him an image of being a nice, good person and a helper. It was phoney
and false. So he broke up this relationship. And together with the last
illness, he was free again. It was wonderful to be empty in space again.
He got
married at thirty-three years old, and took on a real job apprenticing
himself with his father’s business. Having to put his life on hold until now
because of his chasing for enlightenment, he decided to get on with his
daily life. This is his personal spiritual progress. Two months later, his
second awakening happened. His marriage provided the stability for his
inward journey.
Second
Awakening
The
night before the happening he was sitting on the edge of the bed, a thought
came through his mind. It said: “I’m ready”. This started the happening, but
he went to sleep. The next day, when he started to meditate, within thirty
seconds, he heard a bird chirp. And spontaneously a question arose: “Who
hears this sound?” At that moment of this question everything went upside
down: the bird, the sound and the hearing were one thing. Literally,
they were experienced as exactly the same…the hearing was no more he than
the sound and the bird and anything. It was very quick, very sudden, and it
was just one.
The next
thing that happened was some distant thought. He cannot remember what the
thought was about, but he knew that the thought was not him. He knew that
the thought and the awakened self are completely separate. There was zero
identity in the thought. After a few minutes he got up to check the rooms
and the contents of the house and his wife sleeping. They were all part of
him. However there were no joyous emotions in this awakening. After these
movements consciousness woke up, but it was completely separate from the
body. Now he realized that all those trapped images were not his previous
incarnations. He was asleep during those incarnations. He is now awake and
all the previous forms including the present one were not real. Now this
awakeness has no form, no shape, no colour, no nothing. No location but
everywhere. This awakeness was everything and yet beyond everything. If all
the forms and everything that he saw disappeared, this that he
realized will not diminish one bit. This is the result of his awakening.
He now
felt the sense of being bigger and outside the body. He also felt that body
was within this awakeness or spirit. When the awakeness or consciousness
came back into the body, it is also outside: so it is both outside and
inside. He now also realizes that this current incarnation was merely a
clothing to wear this time, and he was to function through this form. He now
felt a great joy with this body/incarnation. Now with this awakening the
very first step that he took was like a baby’s first step! This is a
miracle. This is heaven: this life, this body. The great joke is “he was
walking in god’s hand looking for god”. He now knew that there was no
necessity to experience anything extraordinary. This ordinary life is
totally satisfying and is a sort of a miracle.
From now
onwards there was nothing to be searched any more and no more question to be
answered. The outcome of this achievement is that there are no words like
‘wisdom’ or ‘love’ to epitomize it. It is as if he had reached the source,
which turned out to be the unknown. The unknown in Buddhism is emptiness or
void or sunnata. So now he knew what he was and he was emptiness, a mystery.
It is like the “ I AM” in the bible, and there is no explanation on what
this “I AM” is.
When a
book or a phrase sparks something in one, it is at the level of insight, not
the mind. His body then sings with the insight. All words and books can
carry some transmission of the author to the reader. Sometimes the
transmission can be very powerful: it is because of the author’s words,
especially when there is a resonance to what is offered. The resonance
ignites a potential, which then has to be worked out by the recipient, not
the author. We have to become responsible for our own transformation.
Adyashanti’s
Teaching
He has written four books.
They are:
1)
The Impact of Awakening. 2000.
2)
My Secret is Silence. 2003.
3)
Emptiness Dancing. 2004.
4)
True Meditation. 2006.
Out of
these four, the best is “Emptiness Dancing”. This is his most comprehensive
and thorough book on enlightenment.
Emptiness Dancing
Awakening
Enlightenment is awakening
from the dream state of separateness to the reality of One. It means waking
up to what you truly are and then being that. Realize and be. Realization is
not enough. After Self-realization one must act, do and express what one has
realized. This is a whole new way of life----living in reality instead of
living out the programmed ideas, beliefs, and impulses of your mind.
The
truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God
with his eyes. This truth is so simple, shocking and radical that it is easy
to miss among one’s flurry of seeking. He is here to shake his students
awake and not to ask them to dream better. We must wake up to the fact that
we are all already living Buddhas. We are the emptiness, the infinite
nothing. Let go of all ideas and images in our minds: they come and go and
are not even generated by us.
Awakening is only the end of seeking and the end of the seeker. It is the
beginning of a life lived from your true nature. It is a life of oneness, a
human expression of oneness. There is no question of you becoming the One;
you are the One. Are you a conscious expression of the One? Are you
living consciously as the One? All his talks are about awakening of life
lived after awakening.
One
morning sitting in meditation, he heard the chirping of a bird, a
spontaneous question came up to ask: “What is it that hears the sound?”
Suddenly he realized that the sound, the bird and the hearing were the
manifestation of one thing. Then he opened his eyes to find that he and the
wall were the same one thing. Then he walked around the house just to find
that everything in and around the house was part of the One. Then in the
middle of a step, ‘his’ consciousness left him as if it was a separate
entity. His consciousness is not he. Next, numerous images arose as if they
were his past incarnations as far back as he could see. He exclaimed: “My
God, I’ve been identified with various forms for umpteen lifetimes.”
Suddenly he realized his consciousness or spirit had mistaken all the
previous forms as his previous incarnations.
Now he
realized that consciousness was not confined to a form: it was existing
independently. Consciousness or spirit is no more defining itself by any
form, a body, a mind, a lifetime, a single thought or a memory. These two
experiences happen together. The first is that he became Oneness of
everything, and the second he became the consciousness or spirit that
totally woke up out of all identification, even out of Oneness. When the
Oneness dropped away, there was still a basic awakeness, but it had two
different aspects: he was either everything or absolutely nothing. This was
the awakening, the realization of Self. Then he took an ordinary step, which
felt like the first baby step of his life. Then the next step and the next
and every step is a new one.
In each
“first “ step, formless consciousness and Oneness just merged together so
that the awakeness that had always identified itself as form was actually
inside of the form, unidentified. It was not looking through any thoughts or
memories of what had come before, just through the five senses. With no
history or memory, every step felt like a first step.
Thus he
realized that when he awakened up he woke up out of everything, including
all the things that had brought him there, including Zen. So, he wrote a
letter to his wife who is still sleeping: “Happy birthday. Today is my
birthday. I’ve just been born.”
We
humans define ourselves basically by the content of our minds, feelings and
history. Many forms of spirituality try to get rid of thoughts, feelings and
memories---to make the mind blank. This is not wise. It is better to see
through thoughts and to recognise that a thought is just a thought, a belief
is just a belief, a memory is just a memory. Then we can stop binding
consciousness or spirit to our thoughts and mental states. What was looking
through his eyes and senses was awakeness or spirit rather than conditioning
or memory. This same spirit was actually looking through all the other pairs
of eyes. It did not matter if it was looking through the other conditioning;
it was the same thing. It was seeing itself everywhere, not only in the
eyes, but also in the trees, the rocks and the floor.
It is
paradoxical that the more this spirit or consciousness starts to taste
itself, not as a thought or idea or belief, but as just a simple presence of
awakeness, the more this awakeness is reflected everywhere. The more we wake
up out of bodies and minds and identities, the more we see that bodies and
minds are actually just manifestations of that same spirit, that same
presence. The more we realize that who we are is totally outside of time,
outside of the world, and outside of everything that happens, the more we
realize that this same presence is the world----all that is happening and
all that exists. It is like two sides of a coin. This experiential awakening
is not rare, and no one teaches it to you.
When we
are no longer functioning through our conditioning, the sense of “me” is no
longer there. What really runs and operates this life is love. And this same
love is in everybody all the time. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is
essentially the manifestation of this love. Now in order to find out ‘what
am I’ one will find that “I” am the silence between two thoughts. You are
nobody. You are this openness, this presence. You are not a creation of
thought, belief or faith. It is free of all identity. It is the uncreated.
Trying
to hold on to one’s identities, even if it is the holiest of identities, is
like shoving a camel through the eye of a needle. However, if one is pure
space, one can push it through the smallest of eye needle. Not a shred of
self-centred identity can go through, only nothingness can.
When we
passed into our own nothingness, heaven is our experience. In our own
awakeness we see that we are pure spirit with no form. This formless spirit
is the essence, the animating presence of everything. This is being in
heaven because, in each step, spirit and essence are occupying our body.
That is the true meaning of being born again. Being born again is not just a
religious conversion, it is being unborn when we realize that eternal
nothingness is actually living this life called “my life.”
Being
awakened spiritually does not mean that from now onwards we are going to be
in good fortune. No. Being nothingness in the ocean, the waves may be high
or low, we will not be affected by the waves. Within this awakeness is the
peace that surpasses understanding, and our life does not need to be doing
better. It can just do what life does: it just flows. We do not care.
The mind
is dreaming. The awakened spirit is not dreaming. The mind tells all sorts
of stories and wants to know whether you are progressing. But when you are
awakened, you realize that all is a dream and it is not true---it is just a
thought. Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and is not
going to change awareness one bit. The body may be sad with a sad story or
good with a good story. When enlightened, you wake up out of your mind, out
of your dream. You do not awaken. What has eternally been awake
realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Satsang
We meet
here together to recognize the Truth that is eternal. To be in satsang
means to be in association with Truth. In satsang you will ask “Who am I?”
or “What am I?”, without any script or role, without the story about who you
are. Our roles and stories are not what we are. Truth is who you are without
your story or script, right now. Awakening is a radical shift in identity.
You think you are you, but you are not. You are eternal being. The time to
wake up is now. Not tomorrow. Now.
The
blessing here is to be disarmed without any advantage, without any script.
The mind itself is clueless when it is totally disarmed. “Me” is the actor
that is acting out this up to now. We look and search, but we cannot find
anything or anyone behind the “me.” There is only an empty echo. In this way
when you let go more and more you will not find any actor behind the role.
This is wordless experience of being. What you are is prior to your
idea of you. Those who know who they are, are the ones that are awake
without a script or a story.
Even an
experience of awakeness can be claimed by the mind in order not to be
further disarmed. So even the most sacred concept can be used as a subtle
defence against the state of being, which cannot be fixated in a
concept. “Who am I” is the living state of being that you always have
been and are right now. You are not a human being, you are being
appearing as human. The more you experientially enter the unknown, the more
you become disarmed. Right in the middle of the unknowing there is a vivid
radiant awakeness. By allowing the recognition of that awakeness in you, you
can awaken as that.
The awakeness, which is in
you, has an agenda of its own. It could not care less about your agendas. It
is moving according to its own movement. So be grateful about it.
In these circumstances of
being totally disarmed and letting go of all concepts and scripts, you might
think that you benefited nothing from this awakening. It does not solve any
problems. It does not get you anything. The important thing is that you no
longer cared. In satsang one awakens to what one is eternally and one can
have a true life.
Openness
Openness
is everywhere, and that is our true nature. It is not in opposition to
anything. Whatever is happening in the openness is perfectly all right and
if we are in it, we can respond to life in a spontaneous and wise way. Truth
is about remembering, recognising or realizing your true nature. Truth may
just come to you after you relax a little, and in one moment you
self-realize yourself. You feel the experience of openness here and now. It
is felt inside, outside and everywhere and let the word ‘openness’
disappear. The experience gets deeper and deeper and becomes more wordless.
The letting go deepens and it may feel as if you are falling into the
unknown by the mind. The mind then tends to conceptualise and limit it. In
truth it is a deeper knowing experience of being itself. You then
start to realize you are this openness. You also see that this is what
others are. When you liberate yourself, it is the Self that is
liberated. You are remembering everybody’s Self because it is the same Self.
When this is realized, it enables the total transformation of human
interaction.
As a
child, you were endowed with a self-image, which you thought that it must be
protected. This self-image will be enlarged and consolidated, and the
protection is correspondingly increased. So when you drop the protection,
the remembrance of your true nature quickly jumps in to remove the
protecting wall and the self-image. The protecting wall also provides
suffering. One can see that the self-image is not real when the wall comes
down. So when the intellectual wall opens up, you become open-minded. When
the emotional wall opens up, you become open-hearted. When realization of
the truth removes the limited me, there is suddenly no self-image—but only
total presence. This openness is present and imageless. There is no need to
protect it. Somebody can yell at it, and the sound goes through space.
Somebody can love it. That is nice, but it does not add anything to it or
subtract anything from it.
This
imageless Self is also called awakeness or awareness or openness and it is
very quiet. The more you are into openness the more the body knows that
there is nothing to protect. This openness will also acquire wisdom, which
will be fascinated without losing oneself in an identity, and therefore
cannot be threatened. Now the Self can live a life of freedom without fear.
The quickest way to this openness to your true nature is through the five
senses and not through the mind. For example, you do not just listen to a
noise with the ears, but feel the entirety of the moment, you will
feel beyond the limited space of the me. This feeling is not just the
quietness and the birds and finally you also feel the sound. When the five
senses are opened up, you will realize that 99 percent of your problems are
confined and focussed in one direction. When you focus only on one thing,
you suffer. It is not true that you perceive all of these experiences, but
rather it is the whole that perceives itself.
Innocence
When one
has a deep awakening, these three qualities arise: wisdom, innocence and
love. Wisdom means realizing the Truth. This truth realizes what one is,
what the world is and what reality is. Truth is far beyond philosophy,
science, faith, belief or religion.
The
second quality is innocence. This produces an ever-present newness in life.
As the brain is no more working as before: no more noticing the experience
and comparing with the previous ones. “Done this and been there” are the
usual comments. Whereas now there is no more any comparison and every event
is new.
The
third quality is love. After awakening, what is born is a love of everything
or what is. It is simply a love of everything that exists e.g. bed-sheets,
strands of hair. Loving life as it is makes us realize that all and
everything is the One.
With a
deep awakening, whatever one experiences it is not related to the personal
self. Thoughts, feelings and what ever happens in this world does not relate
to oneself. So now love and innocence replaces the attributes of the
personal self. Seeing our true nature we realize that there is no self. In
the past love and innocence were covered over by our selfish thoughts and
feelings. But now, our innocence is limitless: no matter how deep our
spiritual insight is the more the innocence will grow. With the ego, the
more we know, the less innocent we feel. But to the true nature, the more we
know, the more innocent we feel. Being innocent means being unguarded,
because we do not know what is going on and this is the wonderment. This is
because the experience bypasses thought. It is not filtered and that is why
it is innocent.
Perceiving things through innocence will automatically bring forth the
deepest wisdom of the moment. This is “heart wisdom” which is called
prajna in Buddhism. It is a wisdom that belongs to the whole of
existence. The other quality that arises from awakening is love. This is a
love that loves to live this life because in life it is actually meeting
itself moment to moment. We are nothing and everything simultaneously. Love
is meeting itself every moment, even though it may be a rotten moment. So it
is the One meeting itself, realizing itself, experiencing itself.
The more
one lets go of the sense of personal self, the more innocence creeps in. The
more innocence there is, the more love comes in to experience life. So as
one is more open, the more wisdom becomes available. So wisdom and innocence
deepen, and this will in turn lead to more love. More love will also lead to
more wisdom. And so on.
Harmonization
The
Buddhist “Middle Way” is the harmonization of body and mind or spirit and
matter. When this happens, inherent oneness is realized. Spirit and matter
are two aspects of the One, and this is our true nature. Humans are
identified with matter, which includes subtle and gross manifestation.
Matter is anything that can be touched, seen, felt, perceived or thought.
Feeling and emotion are both matter.
The
essence of matter is spirit. Matter is animated by spirit, by the life
force, and they cannot be separated. If we take away the life force, there
is no matter. When we advance spiritually, we are moving from identification
with matter to identification with spirit. True enlightenment is when matter
and spirit are in harmony. This is oneness. The harmony is deeper when we
realize that we are spirit. That means we have to expose ourselves to the
teaching. It is like exposing ourselves to what is or the source. But we
have to be completely naked to be awakened in a natural way. When we relax
and allow this natural harmonization there is a deep awakening to the beauty
of our environment and our own selves.
When you
start to see the light that you really are, the light waking you up in you,
the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you. It has no
intention to harmonize. It has no agenda. It just happens. The truth is the
only thing you will run into that has no agenda. That is why the Truth is so
powerful. Give up your agendas and continue to expose yourself, and
harmonization will naturally occur.
Freedom
Freedom
is the realization that you are this deep peace and unknown. Everything else
is an extension of this unknown. Trees, your thoughts and feelings and
finally the universe are all extensions of the unknown in time, in form.
This huge unknown is also very quiet. In order to reach this unknown, one
must pull out all the roots of the weeds. It is no use removing only the
surface weeds, as they will grow up again in no time.
The root
of “me” is when that innocent, wordless fascination and love that is in love
with what is to identification with what is thought. The freedom is
lost when the above movement took place. This happened in the beginning of
time, and is also happening right now. So now as the mind has taken over, it
keeps on saying: “That’s mine. That’s my thoughts. That’s my problems.” At
this point, lies the genesis, the root, of all suffering and separation.
Your
true self is different from experiencing with thought. You are the mystery
and you cannot look at the mystery, because you can only look from the
mystery. This very awake, alive and loving mystery is looking through your
eyes at this moment. That is what is hearing through your ears. Turn around
to encounter this mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you
are. This mystery always takes care of itself as long as we are not addicted
to concepts. In order to remain as the mystery, one must totally clean up
the self-image until it is nought. There should not also be any personal
agenda. So when we see the truth it will set us free. So wake up and find
out what you eternally are.
All of
us would like to self-liberate. If you are holding on to something static,
ideas or memories (it could be something big 20 years ago or something very
small last week), it is not possible to liberate yourself. Thus one can stop
holding on to these stories by de-framing and not re-framing
them. It is not to modify but to totally de-frame and de-construct our views
so that we can wake up from the dream state of separateness. So we must let
go of all mental constructs and structures in order to wake up to our true
nature. There is no such thing as a true belief: all beliefs are false.
Silence
True
silence is quite different from manufactured silence. The former is the real
state of our empty consciousness. Manufactured silence is that that is
obtained through a manipulated meditation. Real silence is not due to
manipulation or control. Real silence is our true nature. We are not silent.
We are silence. The difference here is like between bondage and
freedom. Do not look for silence. When we are receptive and allowing, we
will return to our natural state of being very quiet.
Meditating students may be fully concentrating for some length of time and
end up in a type of quiet, but this is not it. This is the manipulative
type. The right way to is allow the thoughts in the mind to flow without
apprehension or forcibly pushed away. Do this until the thoughts stop by
themselves. This will end up in a deep, quiet silence and that is your true
nature. This is the deepest Self, which is freedom. This state has to be
arrived at effortlessly, and does not require maintenance.
At this
juncture, when you enquire: “Who am I”, the brain cannot answer and
therefore you enter into silence very quickly. This quiet is rich and vast.
It is very open and receptive. This is your true nature, which is quietness
or nothingness. It is a transcended quietness. There is a palpable presence
in this quietness. This presence is inside of you as well as outside of you:
it is everywhere. In this atmosphere, it is bright and awake with a deep
sense of being alive.
When you
enter into your true nature, you cannot avoid any part of your experience.
There will be a struggle only when the mind or ego that does not want to
return to its true nature. However, when you are in that deep quiet, you can
see that a thought arises in the emptiness. Do not accept it as true. It
will straight away land you into a seeker’s struggle and you have lost. From
this silence you will be able to see that all the mind’s movements have no
reality to it. It becomes real only when you believe in them. Thoughts have
no power. Not until you believe in them.
You
cannot enter into silence with something. It must be nothing. You cannot be
somebody: you must be nobody. You can give away your ideas, beliefs, heart,
mind and soul, but the most precious commodity is nothing. Only the nothing
can get into the door, the rest cannot. If you want something from silence,
you are refused entry.
Silence
reveals itself only to itself. We must enter as nothing and remain as
nothing. Then silence will open its secret, which is itself. So all the
teaching, all the teachers, and the books can only bring us to the door, but
not into it. At the door, we will the feel the presence of silence very
powerfully. This sacred invitation will arouse a spontaneous arising to
enter as nobody. Inside one will find that silence is the final and ultimate
teacher and teaching, and one’s humanness will have to be on one’s knees all
the time. Here, in this sacred place, we are totally humble.
Silence
is the best teacher, because it is welcoming and because we are most humble
and totally devoted to Truth. Silence is the only teacher that is there all
the time.
Consciousness
There is
not a problem if consciousness or spirit wants to manifest as an object---a
tree, a dog, a car or a stone. However, when spirit manifests as a human, it
always gets lost. This is because when consciousness enters a human, it
tends to be self-aware. In this process there is almost always the loss of
identity. When the human tries to be self-aware he commits a blip in trying
to be self-conscious. Consciousness loses itself in what it creates because
it identifies itself with that creation. This is the human condition.
The
first mistake is to identify itself with a human being. That is like the
wave thinking that it is different to the ocean. It forgets its source. The
great delusion is that he thinks that he is just a wave, when he is
actually the ocean. Being conscious of itself on the limited surface, he
will suffer because it is not true. The suffering is due to ignorance. This
mistaken identity started as an innocent act, but as it gets further down
the line, it becomes not so innocent.
This
natural part of the human condition is the evolutionary development of
consciousness through a human being. The obvious process is from a child
through adolescence up to an adult. One can pick holes in this growing up
process, but that is wrong. That process is normal for everybody.
Spiritually, the human condition is a natural part of the evolution of
consciousness through a human form. It takes itself to be the form, rather
than the source of the form. This misidentification leads to separation and
to loneliness and that they are different from everybody else. This is in
spite of how much they are loved and how much they are surrounded.
As this
is only a blip in the development of consciousness, and when one wakes up
from that blip, that person wakes up to beyond the blip of separation. He is
now a matured consciousness and is awake. He is a liberated human being. He
is liberated from false identification and separation. Only the human being
can wake up out of the illusion of being separate being, and this in turn
can wake itself up in a much larger sense. Now he realizes that he is not a
wave, but an ocean of being, he can use that wave to deliver a message---to
wake up other waves.
Depth
The spiritual seeker normally
starts with the mind by collecting spiritual material. He does it by
reading, going to lectures by gurus and possibly by meditating. This is a
horizontal movement. This collection of ideas, beliefs and information will
get us nowhere. In order to obtain the Truth, one must literally wake up. As
with the mind, we collect experiences with our emotion. This accumulation of
the body and mind will get us no nearer to freedom. We just carry more
baggage until our minds are overloaded with beliefs, teachers’ information
and techniques. There is no upward improvement: we are stuck at the same
level.
However,
there is a transcendent state beyond which one cannot go. This is the true
spirituality. One must walk through the wall and leave the mind behind and
not to come back to the wall. One feels insecure at this stage of letting go
of all the accumulated knowledge. The mind cannot fathom that there is
transcendent intelligence beyond thought and acquired knowledge. So if you
go to God, you go to God naked. That means one cannot go with any
accumulated knowledge to the unknown transcendent.
Now one
is in a different dimension. The mind is not noisy any more, as pure
consciousness is no more bothered with the chattering of the mind. Therefore
the awareness just goes pass that wall of knowledge into this very quiet
state. In this quiet state, one knows nothing as the mind is not used as a
reference point. As one goes into the depth of the unknown, one is in this
mysterious state, and it also means one must let go more if one wants to go
in deeper.
As one
leaves all acquired knowledge behind, one literally leaves the self behind.
But one is still here and now. On top of that, one is totally empty except
for consciousness. Not even that because that is just a word. None of one’s
identities exist until one thinks them into existence. The problem comes
only when one adds on to that existence in one’s mind.
In this
emptiness, one tastes the experience of being. It is awake and alive
even before one becomes somebody. Everything else changes all the time
except this awakeness or consciousness. Being is the one constant---that
which is always awake. Spiritual awakening means shifting one’s identity
from me-self to no-self Self. One can still use the knowledge acquired
before the awakening: one can still drive a car or use the computer. Nothing
is lost except the false identity. The un-awakened state tend to project
that the awakened state is imbecilic and therefore is unable to function.
This is one fear towards crossing the barrier. This is not true. Finally, we
recognize that what is right here is eternal consciousness, pure spirit.
Transcendence will erase all conceptual knowledge, but will still be able to
see that one is a man or woman. However, as a good actor, one recognizes
that one is not what one is appearing as. Everything that exists is eternal
consciousness or the God appearing as such and such. The Buddha called it
no-self. When we see this, we see Unity or Oneness. Now we see God appearing
as the wall, the floor, the human being etc.
No
knowledge, no statement of the truth touches what is eternal, what you
really are. No statement can get you there either. The most enlightened
being cannot speak the Truth. Only an arrow can point to beyond the wall of
concepts, but it cannot tell you what is beyond the wall. Therefore there is
nothing to know if you want to be free. As long as you know something you
are not enlightened. As soon as you absolutely know nothing and there is
absolutely nothing to know, you are enlightened, because all there is is
being. When there is Oneness, who is the One going to know about?
The One knows only “I AM THAT I AM”, ‘I am this. I am that.’ This is true
awakened knowledge.
You now
look for the Truth in what you are. It is all One: if you know what
you are you would know what everything else is. Your focus of inquiry shifts
from thought to being.
Ego
This is
a mental construct of the mind. There is no such entity in reality. Every
thought, emotion, predisposition or suffering that happens is blamed on the
ego. Being a figment of imagination, the ego definitely does not exist. All
spiritual seekers tend to blame the ego for their own non-progress on the
path. Poor ego, which is non-existent, is constantly blamed as a fall guy.
It is always taken as the cause of emotional expressions like anger, joy,
depression and bliss, but the ego is never found. A thought is just a
thought, a feeling only a feeling and action is just an action, with no ego
in it. When the individual claims this emotion or feeling, it concedes it to
the ego, a manufactured entity.
One
method of eliminating the ego is to deem it irrelevant. One also has to get
rid of all the conditions that go with the ego.
Love
There
are many types of love and it maybe expressed in numerous ways. One may love
a person, a country, a piece of music, or a book etc., but it is not the
true love of essence in its most profound form. It is a vital aspect of
Truth: without love there is no Truth. Without Truth, there is no love. Love
transcends all experiences and emotion. This love is present even if you are
not in a feeling mood for love. When you truly have this profound love, you
know that this love transcends all experiences. It is like when a mother
loves a very difficult child. She loves that child even though the child is
giving her hell.
This
true love is indiscriminate. It is always on. It loves saints and sinners
equally. That is real love. It is synonymous with Truth. It is no different
from Truth. This deepest essence of love does not fall in and out of love.
Love is, period. It loves people whom your personality does not like. This
is because whomever one meets it is oneself. So love applies to whatever one
meets: it is like meeting the person who is also be. So this love
coming directly from our-selves is in love with whatever it meets. This deep
love is synonymous with Truth. When Truth is present, this deep love is
present. This is a love that is pre-existing and has always been here. It
does not depend on whether one becomes noble, holy, or worthy.
You find
that you love all sort of things and people whom your mind would rather not
love. This is the beginning of the end for everything in you that thinks it
is separate. True love has nothing to do with liking someone, agreeing with
him or her, or being compatible. It is a love of Unity, a love of seeing God
wearing all the masks and recognizing itself in them all. Without it, it is
not real Truth. When you are awakened to this love that transcend every good
and bad moment, a radical revolution occurs in your relationship with life
itself. This is a love that has no opposite, such as hate, but is present
through everything, in all moments. This love that you are loves the
unlovable, loves what you are not supposed to love or what you were not
allowed to love culturally, you realize this is a different kind of love.
This love is timeless and is uncontained.
Control
It is
only when one is able to give up completely to control everything on every
level, that one can be spiritually free. It must include the most powerful
type to the subtlest form of control. The release of control must be
absolute and complete. The remaining desire to control is equivalent to the
unwillingness to be awake. When one is fully enlightened, one is fully
mutated to live a life totally free of the will to control. It is like
death, when one completely loses control in life. Control is attained even
as early as two years old, as one controls one’s parents. So to be awakened,
one must completely let go of control of everything in life.
Letting
Go
Let go
of your demand at this moment. This is because demand to get or remove
something is suffering. Your demands keep you chained to the dream state of
conditioned mind, because you miss what is now. Letting go must include
every demand, even including love. Stop chasing peace and love and your
heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person and stop trying to
forgive and you will be a better person and forgiveness happens. Stop and be
still.
Sudden
realization is just dropping every demand on your-self and on others, but
drop it indefinitely. The beauty of Self is intrinsically what you are and
not the matter of acquiring anything held in high regard or being noticed.
Your intrinsic beauty is your inner blessedness. You cannot touch your
blessedness, but your essence is not hidden. It is overlooked because we are
looking only at the mind structure and missing what makes the structure
possible. Our structures of belief, disbelief, and emotions---all of our
inner and outer, come and go. Only the space that is awake remains. And
there is more space in you than there is structure.
What you
are is the only thing that you cannot acquire. You are God, and you can
acquire everything but God. You cannot acquire God. It is the ego that is
always trying to acquire something---Love, God, money or a new
toy---something that will make you happy. It can acquire a million things,
but it cannot acquire what you are. You cannot acquire your own essence, the
only thing that is going on. Seeing this is realization of what you always
had and what you are and always will be. This gives you a shock.
When you
are self-realized, you will be happy and liberated, but you will be like a
new born baby. Your first steps will be wobbly with the feeling of
insecurity, but do not go back to the old forms of self-protection and
seeking again. It is strange but faintly familiar to be a lover of what is.
It has always been this way, because it is ancient, and yet it is just born.
Enlightenment
Most
people searching for enlightenment do not know what they are looking for.
Not knowing how to get to the Truth, they go and look for spiritual
experiences and also to sustain those experiences. In this vein they look
for higher and higher conscious experiences even with ascending kundalini
energy. But enlightenment is a demolition project: everything one believes
in was not true. What ever you take yourself or others to be, whatever yours
or their self-image is not true. Whatever you think about God is wrong.
Whatever your thoughts about God or whatever the divine is are not true. The
world is not what you think it is. Similarly, whatever you think what
enlightenment is, it is not accurate.
Enlightenment is a removal project. It removes everything. The removal must
be complete, otherwise it is not liberating. If there is even one idea or
belief, liberation cannot happen. Human beings mostly try to avoid the
Truth, because it is emptiness. We do not want to see that we are
nothing, and everything we believe is wrong. We do not want to know that
whatever we think about God is not right. We do not know what Buddha meant
when he said that there is no self. We do not want to see that there is a
gaping void at the centre of our existence. In this world all spiritual
teachings never went near the Truth, except for Buddhism. The Truth is:
‘there is no self.’ Buddhism does teach that, but it is mostly the 5
precepts and other moral teaching that is emphasised. This is because the
teachers themselves do not know what is the Anatta doctrine. Anatta means no
self. Truly, the Truth shall set you free! Many Buddhists believe that
praying to Buddha or doing thousands of prostrations will set them free. It
is a lie. One has to give up everything that is not the Truth and one does
not want anything back in return. The absolute letting go is letting go of
the one who is letting go.
Enlightenment is realizing that there is no separate self. Also, whatever I
take as gospel true is also not true. No separate self means Oneness, which
does not merge. If it is merging, then it is an illusion, because it means I
will be merging with the absolute, or infinite or with God. These mystical
experiences are not enlightenment. Oneness is there is only This. This
can only be realized when everything else is demolished. This awakening is
outside of everything that comes and goes. It is a total waking up outside
of time. It is just like waking up of a dream at night. It proves to be the
fact “ I am not.” There is still a body, a mind, a personality and a sense
of self. Otherwise consciousness could not work through the body, like
someone calling you.
There is
definitely a sense of self after enlightenment, otherwise one cannot
function. There is total emptiness with its infinite display of itself.
Enlightenment is very liberating because it steals everything from you. You
are left with only That. That means you are free from the endless
twoness. When we are in our true nature there is no one looking out at
emptiness. It is only emptiness looking at itself. There are no enlightened
individuals, there is only enlightenment. Everybody is inherently
enlightened, but there is no individual. So it is only true that
enlightenment is enlightened. After enlightenment, there will be no ideas,
no beliefs, no identity, and one is entirely happy as one could not care
less at the situation. One has become a robot with a computer brain.
However,
there are also many positive aspects of enlightenment. Being endowed with
love, one loves the world and the people as they are. There are no
preconditions to this love.
Implications
All is
one and you are One. Many have the awakening experience, but only few of
them become free. This is because they missed the revelations of perfect
Oneness---you are the ultimate source. The awakened person does not have a
really clear perception of the perfect unity, which is inherent in the
awakening.
It is
like taking oneself as the character in the dream, but finds out on waking
that one is not the character. One is the dreamer or the source of the
dream. Everything in the dream comes from you. There is no such thing as an
“other.” There is no one else because it is all ultimately one’s own self.
That means there is no personal relationship. But if one or both persons do
not take seriously that there is no other, everything becomes a dream all
over again. Awakening is like a personal experience of the big bang. This
little awakening will finally change our perception of the whole universe.
This realization destroys all sense of separateness and also destroys all
that which is not true. So do not try to stuff the whole infinite into one
limited life. Throw your life into Truth.
True
Meditation
One may come to the
meditation cushion with previous experiences of either watching the breath
or using mantra or visualization techniques. All these have to be discarded
for the following method, which is from the natural state of being. In True
Meditation, we start from the foundation of letting everything be as it is
from the very beginning: we do not move toward the natural state, or trying
to create the natural state. This is done by letting go of the meditator,
the controller. If one sits down and allow everything as it is, one will
find that the peace and stillness is already there. One does not have to
attain them. At the beginning of the sitting, one may feel peaceful or
agitated or disturbed. Let the experience to be as it is, and soon an
underlying, uncontaminated normal state of consciousness will arise. This is
an innocent state of consciousness because it is not derived from effort or
discipline. This is not an altered state of consciousness. This state has
great potential for a spiritual awakening. It awakens you to what you and
everything actually is, the oneness of all.
Enlightenment is also not an altered state of consciousness. Through
meditation one can occasionally enter into an altered state of
consciousness. The altered states of consciousness are: depression,
happiness, sadness, merging with the cosmos, expanding one’s consciousness
etc. Enlightenment is actually a natural state of consciousness, the
innocent state of consciousness. This state is uncontaminated by the
movement of thought, uncontaminated by control or manipulation of mind. This
is really what enlightenment is all about. We can only do this by allowing
ourselves to rest in the natural state from the beginning. The mind cannot
be in control when meditating. We must be detached from the mind. An insight
may arise when the mind is empty. We must also let go of effort and
discipline. A certain vitality can be seen to arise into this consciousness.
It is as if a light is turned on: it is beautiful, innocent and
uncontaminated. This arises on its own and all by itself and is the natural
state. So, sit down and let everything be as it is. You will find that the
peace and stillness are already there.
Commentary
To
me, Adyashanti is truly awakened. He started as a Zen student at twenty
years old. He had his first awakening at twenty-five years. He got married
at thirty-three years old and experienced his second awakening three months
later. From his writing, one can discern that he knows the state of
enlightenment thoroughly. In fact the whole book, Emptiness Dancing, is to
tell us how to de-condition ourselves so that we become naked before we
enter the realm of Truth. The erasure of the trimmings of the self-image is
very thorough and complete. Step by step, system by system, he meticulously
teaches us to rip off all the coverings and colouration of our self-image
until there is no self and no image. We can only enter the eye of the needle
when we have become totally empty and void. There should not be any beliefs,
ideas and doctrines of any religion or spirituality. The mind would have to
be destroyed. The ego is found to be non-existent. The body is only a
nondescript robot. It is the spirit that provides the life force.
Everybody’s spirit is the same---it is the source of all beings. All our
lives and stories are our dreams. One must wake up from our dreams and
realize that there is no one there. This empty space is the interval between
two thoughts. This empty space is the source. It is silent and peaceful.
When you find that you are the space you are truly awakened. You will find
that you are always that emptiness, but you do not know it. All your past
lives are actually your separate dreams.
Once
you are fully awakened, you will be endowed with love, innocence and wisdom.
You are enlightened. The awakening may take more than one step. It may take
several steps to be in the realm of Oneness. After the initial awakening,
some individual may fall back to be separate again. This is because at the
beginning, the state of non-duality is quite frightening, and insecurity
drives one back to the separate dream state again.
His
explanations are clear and lucid. He certainly sounds like he has been
through all the stages himself. He is meticulous in destroying all the
coverings and conditions of the self-image. Then after the full awakening,
he went on to describe in great detail the fruits of enlightenment: love,
innocence and wisdom. Of course, there is usually peace and stillness in
normal situations. He may have to get use to being selfless and there being
no other. A quotation from the Buddhist teaching may be appropriate here:
Anatta is
Sunnata
Selflessness (anatta) is Emptiness (sunnata). The
Theravadin emphasizes on anatta, whilst the Mahayanist accentuates on
sunnata. Both are the same. According to Huang Po Sunnata is the Dhamma
(truth), Sunnata is the Buddha, and Sunnata is the One Mind. Inner
Sunnata is the natural and normal state of mind that is not scattered and
confused. When the mind is not grasping or clinging and not attached to
anything it is Sunnata (voidness). When voidness is practiced to the utmost
it becomes Nibbana (heaven). We must empty the mind of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ until
it is absolutely void. Then Nibbana (heaven) is there. Dukkha (suffering)
arises because we cling to ‘I’ and ‘mine’. If we comprehend this, then we
can empty the mind of dukkha. If this happens, we will see dhamma, which
becomes Sunnata. Sunnata is Nibbana. To remedy mental dukkha, we should
continuously see our thoughts: they are either painful or pleasurable.
Whether painful or pleasurable as long as we do not cling on to them, there
will not be any dukkha. This is the process of cure by the method of sunnata.
Anatta is the voidness of self. When there is no self, there is no egoism;
there is no selfishness and there is no clinging to objects and concepts. If
this is the case the doctrine of anatta contributes to Nibbana, which is
also Sunnata. Sunnata is eternal and immutable. It is forever, unlike other
dhammas. Sunnata is neither born nor dies. Once absolutely seen in its
purest state it will remain forever. There is no more rebirth. Buddha said
that ‘You should look on the world as being void. When you are always
mindful of the Sunnata of the world as being void, death will not find you.’
The point emphasized here is that the fundamental nature of all things and
all mental states is void, Sunnata. The spiritual realms are also Sunnata.
It also means that if you take yourself as anatta and the world as sunnata,
you will be free of dukkha (suffering). As Buddha said:
Nibbana is the supreme voidness
Nibbana is the supreme happiness.
Having learnt that grasping and clinging are the cause of
dukkha, we must be mindful not to allow grasping and clinging to arise ever
again. This alone will release us from dukkha and we can remain in Sunnata----Nibbana.
References
1)
Adyashanti.
The Impact of Awakening.
Open Gate Publishing. Los Gatos, California. 2000.
2)
Adyashanti.
My Secret is Silence.
Open Gate Publishing. San
Jose, California. 2003.
3)
Adyashanti.
Emptiness Dancing.
Sounds True, Inc. Boulder CO.
2004.
4)
Adyashanti.
True
Meditation.
Sounds True, Inc. Boulder CO. 2006.