Empty

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I’d like to talk about emptiness as a way of perceiving. The writer Gay Watson explores a translation of sunyata—first offered by T. Stcherbatsky—that is far richer than the mere lack that “emptiness” connotes: relativity. All phenomena arise in dependence, or relative to, conditions; or, per one interpretation of quantum theory, they exist solely in relation to being observed. Since, according to this interpretation, our act of perceiving is fundamental to the fabrication of our constructed reality, I wonder, could this be one reason the Buddha included perceiving (samjna) in the five aggregates as an essential constituent of our conscious experience?

The word emptiness tends to bring up an image of a dark abyss, a black hole, and people think, “There’s nothing! It’s all empty.” Or worse yet, “Nothing matters.” But relativity, as this translation suggests, means that what we perceive is relative and relies on our framework of recognition (e.g., biological, evolutionary, cognitive, psychological, and sociocultural). It also depends on all the causes and conditions that have supported its existence.

Nikki Mirghafori, Dreaming Together, Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2023

When I first encountered the Buddhist concept of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda, in Sanskrit) many years ago, it was one of the things about the philosophy that made immediate sense to me. Of course all things depended upon preceding causes – people aren’t born unless their parents met; they wouldn’t have met without being in the same place at the same time, which in turn relied upon chains of other events and conditions stretching back into a seeming infinity of past time – and of course everything done today has consequences far into a future of which we have only the faintest idea. And this being the case, all things and processes are empty (Śūnyatā) of independent self-existence: everything that is only is relative to something else, and will in itself give rise to conditions which we think of as “the future”.

During the long years that I was more or less involved with the Christian contemplative tradition, this was one of the things that left me constantly slightly uneasy. I knew of nothing that directly – at least in terms of orthodox doctrine – corresponded to Śūnyatā. Deep in the teachings of Meister Eckhart, of course, there is that sense of radical interconnectedness – that we are only what we are as we are related together in God – but that was beyond my pay grade at the time!

As Nikki Mirghafori points out, the relativity within which all phenomena arise is also relative to our own perception of it; there is nothing of which we can speak as if it were what it is except as we perceive it. It doesn’t make sense to think like that. We are ourselves part of the web: things are what they are relative to us, just as we are who we are relative to them. There is nothing else; no thing else. We, and all that is or has been, rest in the open ground, which is no thing at all. What matters is to be still enough to see.

Tao is empty – its use never exhausted.
Bottomless – the origin of all things.

(Tao te Ching, tr. Addis & Lombardo, 1993)

Home again

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We’ve been away in Durham, visiting old haunts, and we’re just beginning to pick up where we left off. In the meantime, some words from Bankei, who always manages to surprise me:

Don’t hate the arising of thoughts or stop the thoughts that do arise. Simply realize that our original mind, right from the start, is beyond thought, so that no matter what, you never get involved with thoughts. Illuminate original mind, and no other understanding is necessary… all you’ve got to do is acknowledge with profound faith and realization that, without your producing a single thought or resorting to any cleverness or shrewdness, everything is individually recognized and distinguished of itself. And all because the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind is unborn and smoothly manages each and every thing.

…that which isn’t concerned with self-power or other-power but transcends them both is what my teaching is about. Isn’t that right? When you listen this way with the Unborn, you transcend whatever there is. And all the rest of your activities are perfectly managed like this with the Unborn too. For the man who functions with the Unborn, whoever he may be, all things are perfectly managed. So, whoever he is, the man of the Unborn isn’t concerned with either self-power or other-power, but transcends them both.

Peter Haskel, Bankei Zen, Translations from the Record of Bankei

Turning the light around

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Turning the Light Around is a simple yet powerful Taoist meditation that you can easily explore on your own. The “light” that’s referenced here is the light of awareness—the very awareness that is aware of these words right now. And turning this light around means withdrawing the focus of awareness from external phenomena and toward progressively more internal phenomena until, eventually, the light of awareness is shining on itself alone, like the sun illuminating only itself.

Here’s how:

1. Instead of paying attention to the sights and sounds of the external world, turn your attention—the light of your awareness—inward to the movement of breath in your body and other physical sensations. With your eyes closed—and preferably sitting in a relatively quiet place—feel the breath and other internal sensations for a couple of minutes.

2. Now, become aware of the awareness that’s doing the noticing (of breath and physical sensation). Shine the light of awareness on awareness itself. Actually, there is just one awareness, like there’s only a single brightness of the sun even as it illuminates itself.

3. Simply rest in this awareness, which is the light of Tao, shining through your human body-mind.

Elizabeth Reninger, Taoism for Beginners

This radically simple but actually profound teaching from Elizabeth Reninger echoes Sam Harris’ basic introduction to Dzogchen (“looking for the one who is looking”, Waking Up, pp.138-140). Harris points out that such teaching is traditionally given by direct instruction from a qualified teacher; but he himself, on the Waking Up app, gives the instruction very clearly and usably in one of his guided meditations as part of the introductory course – this needs absolutely to be taken in sequence – and discusses the consequences for our sense of self in rather greater depth.

Harris points out,

Given this change in my perception of the world, I understand the attractions of traditional spirituality. I also recognize the needless confusion and harm that inevitably arise from the doctrines of faith-based religion. I did not have to believe anything irrational about the universe, or about my place within it, to learn the practice of Dzogchen. I didn’t have to accept Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about karma and rebirth or imagine that Tulku Urgyen or the other meditation masters I met possessed magic powers. And whatever the traditional liabilities of the guru-devotee relationship, I know from direct experience that it is possible to meet a teacher who can deliver the goods.

Waking Up, p.136

Actually following one of these techniques as part of one’s own spiritual practice does however give one great respect for those who insist on the traditional teacher/disciple relationship. Simple as it may appear when explained by Reninger or Harris, it is hard to overstate the profound effect it can have not only on one’s sense of self but on one’s whole perceptual system; on one’s “benign user illusion”, to borrow Daniel Dennett’s term. In my own experience, this can, especially if it occurs concurrently with any other profound spiritual or emotional upheaval, like grief or bereavement, lead to a spiritual crisis that, while it may ultimately be deeply healing, can in the short term be anything from disconcerting through to terrifying. (The parallel with psychedelics here is not lost on me!)

High-octane though I may have made these techniques of radical nonduality sound, they are in themselves utterly simple, and accessible to anyone within the framework of a stable contemplative practice. They are not esoteric, nor are they in any sense unnatural; to recover the direct realisation of one’s fundamental lack of separation from the open ground of being itself – the Tao, Eckhart’s Istigkeit – is the source of unshakeable peace and wholeness. Sitting still, the bright plane of what simply is, and holds all that comes to be, opens out; somehow, it is not other than limitless love itself.

[If anyone has been affected by anything in this post, or merely wants to be prepared, there are hopefully useful links to the Spiritual Crisis Network and other resources on my own advice page on this site.]

Simple presence (republished)

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I was planning this evening to write a post on the radical simplicity of practice, and how it actually doesn’t need most of the religious and organisational trappings that have accumulated, like barnacles on a ship’s hull, over so many years, when it occurred to me that six months ago I had written precisely that post. Here it is again:

—

Achieving or revealing spontaneous presence is not about striving or effort but about relaxing deeply into the natural state of mind. It’s like a river flowing effortlessly down a mountain—there’s no force or control, just a natural movement in harmony with gravity. When we stop trying to control or manipulate our thoughts and experiences, we allow awareness to flow naturally. By simply resting in the present moment, without grasping or pushing away, we recognize that this spontaneous presence is always there, like the river’s flow…

Achieving spontaneous presence is not about adding something new but about recognizing and resting in the innate clarity and awareness that is already there, ever-present, like the sun behind the clouds.

Pema Düddul, ‘Finding Presence: A teaching and practice on the Four Yogas of Dzogchen Semde’ in Tricycle Magazine, October 2024

This teaching carries so many echoes of shikantaza, of what we know of the simple practices of classical Taoism, that it reminds me of the essential plainness that seems to me the truest contemplative practice. I have long felt that the complexity of religiosity, with its rules and rituals and its levels of attainment (whether Christian or Buddhist or whatever else) is – at least for me – the enemy of the contemplative life.

Earlier this year [2024] I wrote:

Words, when it comes to spiritual things, are signs only in the sense we mean when we speak of hints and premonitions as “signs”, not in the sense of street signs, or signs on office doors in a hospital. They are not, by their very nature, precise and prescriptive; it is their very vagueness that allows them to be used at all, for they can do no more than offer us a glimpse into someone else’s experience – a window, if you like, into that which it is to be them.

We risk all manner of missteps when we conflate the term “spirituality” with concepts like religion, or the supernatural; and we risk worse when we consider it intrinsically opposed to science, or to critical thinking.

As I get older, it increasingly seems to me, perhaps counterintuitively, that religion itself only gets in the way of the spiritual life. Doctrine, scripture, tradition: they are beside the point, mere distractions. Elizabeth Reninger: “The only thing that needs to die is our mistaken belief in separation, the habit of seeing our human body-mind as existing separate from the ever-transforming patterns of the cosmos as a whole.”

Stillness, the open awareness of what simply is, would appear to be all that is needed: only to give up all of our effort and striving, and quite plainly and naturally rest in the vast openness of what is – which is all we ever were or could be. It really is that simple.

Quietism, merely

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I have written on several occasions before – most thoroughly perhaps here – about quietism on this blog. But what exactly is it?

Quietism, as a contemplative tendency – it is too diffuse in time and background to be called a movement – is usually described as “that [which], in general, holds that perfection consists in passivity (quiet) of the soul, in the suppression of human effort so that divine action may have full play. Quietistic elements have been discerned in several religious movements, both Christian and non-Christian, through the centuries…” (Britannica)

Quietism, despite having a chequered history among Christians – it was often spoken against as a way of passivity, an accusation levelled at Christian Quietists from the C12 Beguines right through to William Pollard and Francis Frith among nineteenth century Quakers – is a no more than a basic and essential practice of simple unknowing in most schools of contemplative life, from the early Taoists in China,  through the Zen pioneer Dogen’s teaching of shikantaza (just sitting) in thirteenth century Japan, to the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti in the twentieth.

Of course in times of great peril and anxiety such quiet may seem an odd response, but as Andō pointed out in her post I reproduced yesterday, it may be the only true response. Hidden within the darkness and distress there is peace, and the coming light; but it can’t be seen from a place of fear and anger. From the standpoint of a febrile activism it truly appears not to be there. Only in absolute quiet, in an inward listening for the silence between appearances, can we touch the still point of the turning world (Eliot).

In some way that I struggle to explain in words, we deeply need those who, like Andō, have the courage to sit still in silence. To merely wait, hidden, in the “vast and shining presence” (Tara Brach) of what is, is perhaps the single most powerful thing that any of us can do.

Brass rings?

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Following a contemplative path outside of any formal tradition has many benefits, as I have often pointed out here; but it has drawbacks as well. There are pitfalls in the contemplative life that a good teacher would be quick to point out, but which we might struggle to recognise for ourselves. (This is one of the many reasons I so depend upon what I have called contemplative reading.)

One of commonest problems – one that more or less everyone encounters sooner or later, especially if they enlist the aid of psychedelics at any point in their journey – is mistaking spiritual experiences for spiritual realisations. Traleg Kyabgon:

The distinction between spiritual experiences and realizations is continually emphasized in Buddhist thought. If we avoid excessively fixating on our experiences, we will be under less stress in our practice. Without that stress, we will be better able to cope with whatever arises, the possibility of suffering from psychic disturbances will be greatly reduced, and we will notice a significant shift in the fundamental texture of our experience.

There are many accounts in Tibetan Buddhist literature of how spiritual disturbances may arise, but all point to fixation on experiences as the cause. Fixation on our experiences is seen as another variation of fixation on the self.

Kyabgon underlines, of course, how this discernment is embedded in Buddhist teaching. Cynthia Bourgeault puts it from a distinctively Christian perspective:

So here’s a tough one: suppose, going back to that metaphor of boats on the river [thoughts arising during practice], you were suddenly to see amid the flotilla Jesus Christ himself calmly walking toward you on the water, smiling as he reaches forth his hand. The mystical brass ring! What do you do now? Put Centering Prayer on pause and grab it, right?

Wrong. The instructions remain the same. “If you catch yourself thinking, you let the thought go.”

Ouch!

What should we do as solitary contemplatives? It’s impossible to list all the potential missteps on the way, even supposing I were myself aware of them all. I can only reiterate the immense depth of wisdom available in the literature already, not only in books such as I have listed, but online, for instance at Tricycle Magazine (Buddhist) and Contemplative Outreach (Christian) . Serious, attentive reading is an essential part – for me at least – of practice. It really is that important.

Out of great darkness (a reblog)

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The endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light.

— St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul.

For those finding themselves lost in the darkness right now…

Does a seed know darkness, or miss the light, before it even breaks the surface, to grow and bloom?

Hidden in an empty field — ten thousand unborn flowers.

Is it already growing, reaching for the light, already there, hidden, unseen?

Look for yourself, enquire within, turn your attention away from the world, and to the depths of your very being, and you will find the light, masked by this darkness. It is not gone, it is merely hidden behind a veil of disbelief.

Knowing that this is so, reflect on your own seasons of darkness and light, and how they move you, shift you, and so much more is revealed by them.

Hidden in great darkness — great light.

[This is a straightforward reblog: words and image by Andō]

To sit quietly

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Some of our most commonplace concepts are so ubiquitous and pervasive that we lose sight of the fact that they are actually concepts. “The world,” “the body,” “the mind,” “the self,” “consciousness,” “awareness,” “nonduality” – we throw these word-concepts around without ever stopping to wonder what we are actually talking about. And next thing we know, we’re lost in some conceptual confusion, very much akin to wondering what will happen to me if I step off the edge of the flat earth. That’s an imaginary problem, as all of us in the 21st century realize, but for people in earlier centuries, it seemed quite real. And our own conceptual conundrums seem equally real to us. “Will I still be here after I die?” or “Am I enlightened yet?” or “Do I have free will?” can seem like perfectly sensible questions, but they are every bit as absurd as wondering what will happen to me when I step off the edge of the earth…

When we try to figure out “the meaning of life” or “the nature of reality,” or when we try to come up with a conceptual understanding of Consciousness, Totality, God, or the Ground of Being, we inevitably end up frustrated and confused. Any conceptual picture of reality is always subject to doubt, and no metaphysical formulation ever satisfies our deep longing for Truth.

What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the attempt to make sense of everything. Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t still make relative sense of things in a functional way in daily life. But we stop trying to take hold of Totality, or grasp the Ground of Being, or figure out the meaning of life. Instead, we relax into simply being life. We learn to recognize (to see, to sense) when we’re beginning to grasp or fixate, and in that recognition, quite naturally there is an ability to relax and let go. When we stop trying to figure it all out, we discover that it doesn’t need to be figured out, and in fact, can’t be figured out! When we stop desperately trying to get a grip, we find nothing is lacking and there is nothing to grasp.

Joan Tollifson, Nothing to Grasp

The stillness of practice is exactly that: stopping trying to get a grip, stopping the discursive mind’s continual clutching after things to store away. “Aha!” it wants to say, “I’ve got this!” It wants to collect the Point of It All, and shelve it under Essential Facts, or something equally pointless. But it can’t.

The stillness of practice heals all that. It doesn’t solve problems or supply solutions: it lets them go. To sit quietly is all that is needed, truly. This is not inaction; it is the place where right action starts, if action is needed. Surprisingly, often, it isn’t. The way opens out of the stillness in its own time, and usually it has nothing to do with anything we think. As Tollifson says, it doesn’t need to be figured out.

In the stillness, we become aware of awareness; and it isn’t other than the ground, that is no thing, and is before, and holds, all that comes to be. There is nothing to choose, nothing to find. Be still, that’s all.

Listening in the silence

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So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self — behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream — a gap of “no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

This inward listening of which Tolle speaks is truly, as he himself says a few pages later, the preliminary state for becoming aware of the present moment as it happens. In his own words,

Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

Simply to sit still, listening, is really all we need to do. The arising of thoughts then becomes thinking no longer, but just another appearance in the bright field of open awareness. We can listen to the thoughts bubbling up and falling away, without feeling that we are thinking them, just as we can listen to the cooing of the wood pigeons in the trees across the garden, the rising and falling of traffic sounds, or our own breathing.

Listening is an entirely open attention – undefended, accepting – to what may come. Aside from the strange moments of illumination sometimes hidden within great trauma and shock, there is no other time we are so open to what actually is. It may be the truest state we humans are heir to. And it is important to realise – which is why listening is so powerful a practice – that this is not something we achieve, or do: it is something we allow.

It seems to me that at its heart, all true contemplative practice is a way to this acceptance, as Tara Brach so memorably pointed out; which is why the radically simple ones appear to be the best, whether just sitting (shikantaza), naked intention (Centering Prayer) or some kind of repetitive practice such as hesychasm or the Nembutsu. All of them, when practised faithfully, lead to silence and to listening.

Listening for the silence

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Waiting is a deep acceptance of the moment as such, even when we are actively practicing meditative inquiry. Part of Son [Korean Zen] involves asking, “What is this?” of our experience, but without any interest in an answer. We’re not waiting for something, we’re just waiting. We realize that our longing for an answer undermines the authenticity of the questioning itself. Can we be satisfied just to rest in this questioning, but in a deeply focused and embodied way? Can we wait without any expectations?

Going hand in hand with this waiting is also a quality of listening. Rather than just listening more attentively to the crows in the trees, the noises in the room, or the quiet hush of silence, think of listening as a metaphor for meditation…

With listening, rather than narrowing your attention on a particular sound “out there,” you open yourself up to allow the sound to enter you. The internal posture you assume is not that of a detached observer looking out onto something, but rather a completely vulnerable and open attention that allows sounds to stream into you from every direction. That’s a very different inner stance. Your physical posture might be the same, but your mental posture is the opposite to that of looking at something.

Stephen Batchelor, Tricycle Magazine March 2020

Listening has become a favourite metaphor for me, too; though it’s more than a metaphor, really. To be aware of sound in meditation, as with physical sensation, is an opening of oneself to what is coming to be, quite simply. There is no anxious reaching for understanding, nor any attempt to impose any kind of religious or psychological interpretation on what is perceived.

Listening, though, is also an inward discipline – an openness to quiet inklings that otherwise are drowned out by the usual internal chatter. It begins, sometimes, with an unsought willingness to hear the call to the contemplative life in the first place:

To know such a call is to feel its insistence. Having felt it, one can hide by running to distractions of one kind or another, but whenever there is a pause in the business of life, it is there awaiting our response. This call is the greatest blessing imaginable, and it sometimes feels like torture. Even though it makes so many demands, we would be bereft without it.

Daishin Morgan, Buddha Recognizes Buddha

But like so many things in this life, it is never simply a stage we pass through. The call is ever present, always renewed. It is always the same; and different, sometimes radically different, each time. If we are listening, we will find ourselves called deeper into the wilderness, away from the well-trodden places we may have become used to. For me, it has, as I said yesterday, led increasingly to quiet, and away from organised religion altogether.

Listening has become a listening for the silence that underlies audible sounds, beneath the birdsong and the distant clatter of the Bristol train, beneath the background hush of the breeze in the leaves. The silence holds the sound, infinitely precious and detailed, as the open ground itself holds all that comes to be, all its loveliness and horror, all its endless opportunities for being loved.