into stillness

i said to my soul, be still
and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing
wait without love
for love would be love for the wrong thing
there is yet faith
but the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting

wait without thought
for you are not yet ready for thought
so the darkness shall be the light
and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Elliot

in the preceding programs we saw that the attentive abiding (shamatha) aspect of our meditation practice is an unceasing stability of attention, free from desire, aversion, and indifference. we slowly overcome the habits of reaction and distraction. and the awareness (vipashyana) aspect is clarity of awareness, unfixated, and free from distortion. when we allow things to be as they are, including the states, emotions, and thoughts we experience, and simply witness them, we discover peace and an expansion of awareness.

in every moment of meditation, we touch our full reality intimately, and are aware of all the nuances and changes. and then, we let go. we relax back into just awareness and settle in the next moment’s experience. at the root, mindfulness of this moment means that we’re aware of the thoughts, feelings, and identifications, and yet we still relax the tendency to be someone. we just remain attentive to the ongoing flow of the mind stream in an intelligent, open, and curious way. we may have insights, but even these are not important enough to pull us away from the sense of Being, found in the depths of what we call “self” or “i.” when this meditative state is known-felt inwardly, it becomes possible to see how mind operates, to know the nature of mind and the nature of reality. when we experience this Beingness it is directly known as our true identity, because it becomes clear how everything derives from it or takes place within it. this Source of stillness is prior to, and the origin of, our perceptions, actions, thoughts, and feelings.

there’s a great space in which this moment takes place. there’s a great silence that is listening to the thoughts.

Adyashanti

in our journey with meditation, we repeatedly disengage from the identified self, and remind ourselves of the broader experience of simply being. we may for example be aware of strong feelings, and at the same time be aware of the stillness of the space around us, the reality that nothing is wrong. there are just reactions, emotions, images, words, sentences, thoughts, a still and safe space surrounding the thinker, sounds from outside, and a normal day. the identified thinker is disturbed, and in awareness there is no disturbance. our first step is to establish this difference and become aware of the difference in experience between the thinker and awareness.

use your senses fully and let the alert stillness within you be the perceiver, rather than your mind.

Eckhart Tolle

slowly our attention increases and our awareness expands. we may notice that our senses are keener, and that there is a growing stillness where thinking usually resides. this stillness has nothing to do with a lack of sound. you may be right next door to a construction site, and yet this stillness remains, unless or until you have a thought like “this is terrible!” here again we see the difference between the thinking mind and intrinsic awareness. we learn to maintain the stance of an open and unmoving witness. in the traditional teachings the image of a mirror is often used. the mirror reflects all objects that appear in front of it, without in any way holding onto or trying to push anything away. objects appear in the mind all the time, clearly reflected by the mirror of awareness. and at the same time, nothing leaves a mark or can hurt this mirror-like awareness.

in the Mahamudra teachings of Buddhism this radical openness leads to many experiences of transmutation, self-transcendence, or pure presence. according to the Mahamudra we need to let go of whatever fixation or identification arises. this could be at the feeling level which means recognizing my attitude to the situation. whether i become attached, aggressive, withdrawn, or careless. at the mental level it means recognizing the mental process, the thoughts, interpretations, distortions. all of that is overcome, consciously, which allows us to abide with the situation wakefully. not as a someone but pure presence.

David Richo

what do we mean by stillness?

as we pointed out, stillness in this context does not mean the absence of sound. rather, it refers to the absence of thought, interpretation, and seeking. our thoughts and feelings are interpretations and habits, and are often self-sabotaging. unless we’re looking for them, we may not even be aware of our reactions, biases, moods, cognitive distortions, and emotional attachments. the stillness we are referring to is free of all of these. awareness is expanded to notice everything that happens, inside and outside.

reflect for a moment on the “i am” experience of simply being. i am prior to my thoughts, feelings, and actions. i am there even when there are no thoughts or feelings. i am also there even when the senses are removed. what is it that is there? it is not the “i” that refers to the separate self, that has a name, and is located in a body, and prefers vanilla ice cream over chocolate. yet can you see how it remains constant, regardless of all the changes in the mind? this stillness is the spaciousness of awareness itself. it is the space within which all the mental objects arise. and we can be aware of this constant awareness. we can be aware of this stillness which is our very Being and true identity.

becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness.

Eckhart Tolle

we are the awareness in which thought and feeling play, and therefore we can look into both. we can get to know ourselves by paying attention to the thoughts and feelings, rather than identifying with them. rather than being jealous, angry, depressed, etc. we can see the processes of the emotion and our relationship with it. that means we’re more than our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. they do not happen to us, but within us, or from us. we are their origin. this vast stillness within us, and as us, is always present, but is usually obscured by our distracting thoughts and feelings.

you are never more fully yourself than when you are still inside.

Eckhart Tolle

the view

in the deepest teachings of Buddhism, called Dzogchen or the Great Perfection, meditation is simply resting undistracted in the view once it has been introduced. there are no further instructions for meditation, as no effort is required. the practitioner has embodied meditation and no effort is made to attain a state of meditation or stance of witnessing. the person has the right view of life and experience, and this view is maintained. meditation has become “rigpa” or intrinsic awareness.

meditation consists of being attentive to such a state of rigpa [intrinsic awareness], free from all mental constructions, whilst remaining fully relaxed, without any distraction or grasping. for it is said that ‘meditation is not striving, but naturally becoming assimilated into it.’

Dudjom Rinpoche

so, what is this “view?” it is nothing less than seeing the actual state of things as they are, without any interpretation; it is knowing that the true nature of mind is the true nature of everything (nothing exists outside mind); and it is realizing that the true nature of mind is the absolute truth. 

the View is the comprehension of the naked awareness, within which everything is contained: sensory perception and phenomenal existence, samsara [suffering] and nirvana [peace]. this awareness has two aspects: ‘emptiness’ as the absolute, and ‘appearances’ or ‘perception’ as the relative.

Dudjom Rinpoche

this “nature” is not an object of thought, observation, or reflection. mind in its thinking mode cannot know the immediate suchness of things as they are. the mind only knows its interpretation of how things are. it is only in direct experience that we can know suchness or the essence of experience. focus for a moment on the word “nostalgia,” and allow yourself to touch the state that you know as nostalgia. this state experience, or suchness, is ineffable. notice how you may like or dislike the experience of nostalgia. this liking or disliking is an interpretation or judgment of nostalgia, and already a movement away from suchness, unless the suchness of liking or disliking is held in awareness, in which case we would immediately disidentify with our preference, if only for a moment. the word “nostalgia”, or our understanding of it, cannot describe the experience, it can only refer to it. the experience is directly known. one’s own nature is the way things are.

the Tibetan word “rigpa” is mostly translated as intrinsic awareness. it refers to pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, radiant, and always awake. this nature of mind, in its essence, is untouched by experience, and yet reflects experience with stability and clarity. it is the open sky within which the clouds of thinking and feeling appear. no matter what appears in the sky, it never mars the sky. the nature of mind is the very root of understanding.

realizing this view may initially happen only as glimpses, or as a gradually increasing sense of peace. as we’ll see in the Integral Theory section, it is the accumulation of these moments or glimpses that slowly leads to the embodiment of Being. as a species we’ve been subjected to our thinking mind for eons, and have become deeply identified with it. the realizations that we come to in the depths of meditation are profound, and transform our view of the world radically. instead of finding a separate self or subject in a world of objects, we find emptiness as the very nature of Being. thoughts and feelings are seen for what they are: fleeting emanations of mind, only subjectively real or true, and all held in the vast embrace of intrinsic awareness.

you look at the magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. everything is so intensely alive and there is only life, and the watcher is as dead as that leaf… utterly still, listening without a moment of reaction, without recording, without experiencing [interpreting], only seeing and listening… really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside, and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them.

Krishnamurti

who am i really?

who you are is not the unfulfilled longing; who you are, is the presence or the stillness around it. that is the shift.

Eckhart Tolle

we normally think of ourselves as separate subjects. “i’m John, and therefore different from Mary, the tree, the dog, and everything else outside of me”. the spiritual traditions have a very different view. Buddhism describes us, and everything else, as a conglomerate of five continually changing processes, called the “skandhas.” they are not things as much as processes made of parts that can be found in everything. our sense of self arises when we grasp at, reject, or identify with these processes:

form: where we distinguish ourselves as "i" as opposed to all others.
feeling: when we decide "i like" and "i don't like," or “i’m indifferent.”
perception: we identify with what we perceive and believe this makes up our identity.
mental formation: we tell ourselves this story over and over, or react based on old experiences.
consciousness: we believe that all the above is true.

what is in fact true is that these five aggregates are part of our sense-making process, rather than an objective reality. the reality is that we go through the process continually without realizing its nature. through meditation practice we have direct experiences of ourselves as we are beyond the separation, beyond the illusion of a permanent, independent self, or “i.” the patterns of behavior based on this false identity are slowly dismantled, and we become aware of the “i” as the product of thinking and conceptualizing. meditation practice also slowly brings us deeper into experience of Being, our true identity.

understanding at the awakening-being level is the end of the two illusions: the illusion that things are real and the illusion that things aren’t real. we see that all that arises is apparently real but that ultimately there is only the arising and that what we experience has no independent reality. the understanding of how things are finds natural expression in compassion. the experience of compassion and emptiness together is the essence of awakening-being practice.

Ken McCleod

as we enter more securely and deeply into meditation, we come to know this Being as essentially empty, translucent, and always already present. let’s look at each of these in turn.

emptiness

one of the most difficult things is to let go of is identification with the bodymind. and yet, when we look into awareness, we begin to see the non-self the traditions speak about. in the traditional teachings the self is seen to be empty, and knowing this emptiness moves us towards who we really are. for most people the word “emptiness” conjures loneliness, despair, falling into a void, and even dying. nothing could be further from the truth. the emptiness that we encounter is a field of potential, and the nothingness from which everything stems.

Ramana Maharshi, an Advaita Vedanta teacher, has an interesting practice to question our identification with a separate self. see each line below as a practice of looking into mind, and see if you can find the truth of the sentence in your experience:

the seer cannot be seen (that in us which sees is not an object)
the hearer cannot be heard (and so for hearing)
the feeler cannot be felt
the knower cannot be known.

who are you then?

when we try to find the seer, hearer, etc., we come up empty handed. we are directly aware of a sense of self, or a sense of presence, but it cannot be found in any of the processes we identify with. meditation is the space where we do nothing but give keen attention to what is happening, to direct and actual experience. the non-self we encounter is clear, but this encounter cannot be generated via thinking, including belief (“i believe the teaching of no self”), which is not considered very useful in the traditions. the thought-based self and the awareness-self are different.

the beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not ‘the thinker.’ the moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. you then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. you also realize that all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind. you begin to awaken.

Eckhart Tolle

at the most superficial level, emptiness can be understood as an emptiness of conceptualization. something happens in our world, but instead of seeing it as it is, we interpret, and end up with our concept of the world. the world that meets us in emptiness or formlessness is a different perspective. it is without the interpretation, psychological defenses, and distortions. we simply perceive directly, before thought and interpretation. the experience of emptiness comes only from repeated practice, a deeply quiet mind, and clarity of perception.

direct experience does not require thought. indeed, thought is what blinds us to it. as an example, read the following, then close your eyes and engage the practice: without looking at your hand, think about your hand for a moment. what is its shape? where is it? can you feel it without looking at it?

you are now aware of the image or thought-hand. and if someone were to ask you about a human hand, you would describe this thought-hand. you would probably say that your hand is at the end of your arm, that it has a five-fingered shape, and that it is quite possible to feel-know it without looking at it. now, let’s look into the experience that we can feel-know; the hand as it is, and not as it is conceptualized.

close your eyes and let yourself feel into the place you call “hand”. if you remain with the experience, rather than the image, you might say that you can feel it from the outside and the inside. that is an example of interpretive thought. in awareness there is no “inside” or “outside”. feel into your hand directly, without referencing thought, and notice that what you call “hand” is just a field of sensitivity. you may experience it as a subtle tingling or heat. if you look more deeply into this sensation, you may recognize that it has no fingers and no clear boundary. it is just an amorphous field of sensitivity. without referring to thought, or to the concept “hand”, and staying only with experience, we cannot find any of the thought-based ideas associated with “hand.” can you see how different the view of awareness is from that of thought? it is, essentially, the difference between relative reality and ultimate reality. we do not need to denigrate relative reality or subjugate it to ultimate reality. we need only recognize that conceptual or thinking mind is very useful for understanding and navigating relative reality, but it cannot be used to reveal, experience, or “understand” ultimate reality. in fact, if the view is held by the thinking mind alone, the result will be solipsism, a delusional condition in which we believe that the whole universe is created by our own conceptual mind. to experience ultimate reality, we need to step beyond thinking.

when we’re aware of the breath deeply sinking into the body, we can more easily notice or feel the entire field of the inner body. in our conceptual (thinking) mind we may see the body as its outline. reach deeper, directly feeling-knowing the sense of the inner body. we can merge with its sense of aliveness: an all-pervasive presence that is our essence, a presence with no clear outline or boundary. the ultimate answer to who we are cannot be found in thought. this alive presence is the answer. you can know that you are on the right track with this practice when you can sense the joy of being; not the joy of any “thing” but the joy of simply being. being that is conscious of Being is known by its radical goodness; nothing needs to be improved or changed in any way. this is the fulfillment of life in this moment. nothing needs to be added or taken away. there is completeness, and nothing to become. it is at once the fullness of the Kingdom that Jesus Christ speaks of, and the emptiness (within which fullness arises) of Buddhism. Eckhart Tolle calls it spaciousness. it is directly perceivable and known by its goodness and sense of well-being.

and we’ve already spoken the paradox. although we find emptiness when we look for a self, this very emptiness is the source of everything that arises in the spaciousness we call mind. the fullness of experience arises from the empty potential field of Being. we can live in a way that remains aware of our Being, even in the midst of daily experience. we can be aware of ourselves as the space within which experience arises; aware of the silent presence that we are, behind all the talk and action. it is the awareness behind the thinking, the stillness that allows experience, but is not touched or marred by any experience. there is not only a sense of stillness and peace, but also a sense of quiet joy, the joy of Being.

emptiness is seen not as a void or an abyss, but as the clarity of experience. the more empty i am of my notions, feelings, and thoughts, the more i can experience with clarity. nothing stands between us and direct awareness. in fact, we are the awareness. presence is resting in awareness, and resting in awareness increases our ability to see reality as it is, not how we think or conceptualize it. in the vast field of awareness, experiences arise and subside, but it is only conceptual thinking that differentiates between different types of experiences. what arises is nothing other than experience itself. we say “i see,” but who is the “i” that sees other than experience itself? is the “i” different from “seeing?” in the end, there is only awareness that is aware of awareness.

satori is a ‘direct seeing into one’s nature’ — as perfectly direct as looking into the microscope to see the cell nucleus, with the important proviso in each case: only a trained eye need look.

Ken Wilber

translucence

not only is “self” empty, providing the space for experience, it is also translucent, luminous, and radiant. we experience our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts very directly. we know (without thought) that they exist. and yet, none of the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts are visible in any way. the only way that we are aware of them is through their energetic emanation, or their radiance. only by observing the energetic emanation does the underlying feeling or thought become visible.

we typically identify with feelings and thoughts, and that is how most people go through life. it is who we believe ourselves to be, but it is not who we are in experience itself, or in the depths of our Being. meditation introduces us to a deeper identification, beyond the visible, or the thoughts and emotions. when we try to explain our being, we have to go beyond the objects of our experience. what we find is a translucent, luminous, and radiant Being. in Buddhism, this radiant Being is the source of the rainbow-body.

nothing of the presence that we feel directly is visible as a form, a color, or an object. in fact, it is translucent, self-illuminating, and clear. at the same time, all form, color, and objects can appear in this empty self-illuminating clarity. all objects that arise within the translucence of Being are rendered visible by the light of awareness. it is this light that is our knowing. whatever appears in bodymind can be known directly and intimately, as if the light of consciousness shines on every object, making it visible.

in reality, we don’t really know or experience objects as such. we just know our knowing or experiencing of them. the experience of ‘knowing’ is all we know of objects or the world. and the ‘knowing’ by which we know the apparent objects or world comes from our self. it is our self. it is the light of our own self, aware presence, that shines in the knowing or experiencing of any object.

Rupert Spira

always already presence

be an empty page, untouched by words.

Rumi

we do not need to think our reality, and this may be difficult to accept at first. when we identify with thought, it possesses us, making us believe that awareness is made of thought. in our practice we can be a mixture of thought-self and awareness-self. getting to know the difference and gradually siding with simple aware presence is the essence of meditation practice.

what we discover, besides the emptiness and translucence of Being, is that it is ever present. it is not something we have to conjure, attain, or develop. it is already and always fully present, whether we are aware of it or not. what we can do to recognize it is to disidentify from thought, or simply let thought be without it being our primary source of truth and focus of attention. direct experience is our aim, and we find an immediate presence behind our thoughts and feelings. we can be in thought, or we can be in awareness of thought. and this awareness is not an attainment, it is simple direct Being.

this deepest “i” is aware of all that is passing, and concurrently one with all of it. it is the ground of all experiences, which arise from it like dreams. it can be completely lost in the dream, living unconsciously, or it can be lucid and aware of itself as the illumination behind it all. it is prior to and beyond form, and the life out of which all forms arise. it is a presence that is always already right here and now. knowing all of this conceptually is not really transformative. being in the experience of it, the experience that is aware of the circumstantial “i”, and aware of the spaciousness and the light within which this “i” is arising, is what radically shifts our sense of identity. until we experience Being, it may all make sense intellectually, but if we stay at the intellectual level we will keep identifying with the thought-self, even if we know that not to be our true self, and even if we believe we are not identified with it. it is only through the consistent experience of Being that we gradually feel Being to be our identity. Ken Wilber illustrates why it is so difficult for us to know and accept this true identity:

but why is it, then, that we ordinarily don’t have that perception? all the great non-dual wisdom traditions have given a fairly similar answer to that question. we don’t see that Spirit is fully and completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is clouded with some form of avoidance. we do not want to be choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it, or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it, hate it, love it, loathe it, or in some way agitate to get ourselves into, or out of, it. we will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the present. we will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere, quickly. the Great Search is the game, in its endless forms.

Ken Wilber