Tag Archives: dzogchen

What is awareness?

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Sitting quietly, it becomes apparent that awareness is not the same thing at all as thought. It’s not the same as physical sensations, either. Thoughts and sensations are objects within awareness; things seen, perhaps, against stillness. Awareness is no thing; it can’t be the object of any subject whatever, it seems.

Try it. Try merely being aware of awareness. (It’s much the same as Sam Harris’ introduction to the practice of Dzogchen – “looking for the one who is looking”.) You will find that there is no self to look, nor a self to be looked for, There is only awareness – and that is, after all, no thing.

To sit like this, merely aware – of thoughts just as much as sensations, of sounds, and of the body’s weight sitting – you might begin to be aware somehow of awareness itself; not as a thing among other things, but as the bright field within which things come to be. Somehow awareness itself is not other than the open ground of all that is – isness itself.

This seems to be a big metaphysical bite; but it is not to be chewed, not to be thought through. Leave the thoughts where they fall. Sit in plain awareness, and all the mind’s anxious grasping will eventually fall away like leaves in autumn. The bright field of awareness is all that is; in fact, it really is all that is. Time and place, things and thoughts, are all simply ripples on that bright surface, nothing else.

Sit still. Be quiet. There is nothing you need. Let the bright field be your only home; it is, anyway.

Self and stream

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We are, says Daniel Dennett, illusions. Benign user illusions, but illusions nonetheless. Our minds construct our sense of self in order that we may see how we relate to others, to objects, to ourselves; but we are not what we think we are. If we look closely within, “look for the one who is looking”, in Sam Harris’ version of the Dzogchen pointing-out instruction (Waking Up, p.138ff), we find no one.

We are waves – modes in Spinoza’s terminology – on the stream of becoming, nothing more. We arise, travel a little distance, and subside. But we are never separate from the stream, nor are we, ultimately, other than the other waves: we are all the stream itself, streaming. Our sense of self, of being discrete, separate, independent is a useful feature of our minds, but as we became civilized it came to be more of a bug than a feature. We have actually come to believe that we are separate; and we have come to treat others – human and otherwise – as though they were separate from us, as though they could be found and lost, bought and sold, fought and exploited, loved and abused at will. But they are more than our sisters, more than our brothers: we are, literally, the same substance as each other.

To touch the edge of what is, to glimpse the living expanse of Istigkeit, the endless ground, cannot be unseen, un-touched. To be still, if only for a moment, is to see that we can never become un-waved – we may be wind-blown, scoured by cross-currents, but we are still waves, no more; and no less than the stream itself.

Otherness

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In my last post, I mentioned my sense that in situations of what I called transcendent powerlessness we can touch – or be touched by – something electric and quite beyond ourselves. In that post I wrote,

…something may sometimes happen in situations of extreme danger and radical insecurity that may not be unlike finding one’s finger in the spiritual power outlet. Something just as shocking; something with just the same sense of encountering a force from somewhere else…

I sometimes think that the technology of contemplation – the methods of meditation, the years of study and discipleship – are nothing more than means, sometimes elaborate means, of bringing about the very experience of powerlessness I have been describing. Of course, such experience can be misunderstood, can be fled from, rejected in a myriad ways, while its subject retreats either back into everyday life, or into some kind of addiction. But if the tide is taken at its flood, if the powerless moment is embraced as gift, coming in some strange way from elsewhere, then anything can happen.

What is happening here? Throughout the years philosophers, from the ancient Taoists to Spinoza, have found themselves unable to avoid treating the necessity of what could otherwise seem raw causality with something close to personification.

There is something undifferentiated and yet complete.
Which existed before heaven and earth.
Soundless and formless.
It depends on nothing and does not change.
It operates everywhere and is free from danger.
It may be considered the Mother of the universe.
I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25 (tr. Chan)

God is the Determiner (but not a Planner): God/Nature is the immanent (indwelling) and necessary cause of all things. God doesn’t stand outside the world creating and planning by free will, like the personal, transcendent God of traditional religion. Instead, the order and regularity of the universe—the natural laws—are God’s nature.

Google Gemini, in conversation with the author on “Spinoza’s Determinism and God”

In contemplative practice one may occasionally find the sense that, in the sheer powerlessness of sitting still, something breaks through that Dzogchen practitioners would call Rigpa, “the ‘pristine awareness’ that is the fundamental ground itself.” (Stephen Batchelor). Somehow this is always unsought – you cannot bring it about, and trying is entirely counterproductive.

Of course the parallel immediately appears here with the traditional Catholic concept of infused contemplation – “…a state that can be prepared for, but cannot in any way be produced by the will or desire of a person through methods or ascetical practices” (Burke & Bartunek).

As I wrote yesterday, there is nothing here but grace. One can go so far in faithful practice, in preparedness and in waiting, but no farther. Even Spinoza wrote of the “intellectual love of God”, his term for the highest spiritual attainment, as intuitive rather than rational. I think we experience the ground of being, especially when encountered unawares, as so profoundly “other” because its immanence and necessity are so far from our own state as one of the “ten thousand things” (Laozi); and yet we are not other. We did not plan our birth: our very existence rests in the ground itself – we are from being itself, and that by sheer grace.

Sky gazing

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Occasionally, throughout my life, I have found myself gazing into the open sky, vast, unbounded; and I lying beneath, like an ant at the bottom of a measureless funnel of bright air.

The first time I can remember was at the age of five, lying on an old rug in the orchard at the back of our house, recovering from a long illness. (I have written more of this in the introduction to this blog.) The blue vault of the sky stretched over me, seemingly limitless, threaded by the distant sparkling motes, high overhead, of aircraft heading out over the English Channel towards Europe.

There were other, less striking occasions during my teens and twenties; it did not come again, recognisably, until some time in my thirties, lying – once again in an orchard! – with friends late at night at an isolated farmhouse near Poitiers in central France, far from any human lights, gazing up at the Milky Way stretching far into the interstellar distances, sparkling with uncountable stars. The sense of self and place, the voices of my companions, the night sounds of insects and owls, all fell away. I was alone in a timeless immeasurable distance; only I was not. All there was was light; light beyond light, without place or end or source.

It was many years again before I stumbled across the fact that in Dzogchen there is a long-established practice actually known as “Sky-gazing” (Tögal), which delineates, in typically precise Tibetan fashion, exactly what had been happening to me on these occasions. (See also Matthieu Ricard, p.93ff)

It isn’t necessary to lie out under the open sky – though it is beautiful and profoundly healing when it can be done – but merely to gaze up into the interior of one’s vision (usually, I find, with closed eyes), or even into a patch of sky glimpsed through a window, Thoughts, sensations, dream states (hypnogogia) will inevitably occur, but they can safely be allowed to pass. All that is necessary is to lie still.

A barking dog. Green leaves dancing in the sunlight. The listening silence. Open. Vast. Limitless. Just this!

This is not like anything else. It is as it is. How is it? It’s not any particular way for it is always changing…

The real message is what remains after the ink has vanished. But if you are looking to see what that is, you will never find it, for you are looking for an object. Presence is not an object. It is the openness that beholds it all.

Joan Tollifson, Nothing to Grasp, p.34

No one there

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In his brief introduction to Dzogchen, Sam Harris (Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion), pp.18-140) writes,

Think of something pleasant in your personal life—visualize the moment when you accomplished something that you are proud of or had a good laugh with a friend. Take a minute to do this. Notice how the mere thought of the past evokes a feeling in the present. But does consciousness itself feel happy? Is it truly changed or colored by what it knows?

In the teachings of Dzogchen, it is often said that thoughts and emotions arise in consciousness the way that images appear on the surface of a mirror. This is only a metaphor, but it does capture an insight that one can have about the nature of the mind. Is a mirror improved by beautiful images? No. The same can be said for consciousness.

Now think of something unpleasant: Perhaps you recently embarrassed yourself or received some bad news. Maybe there is an upcoming event about which you feel acutely anxious. Notice whatever feelings arise in the wake of these thoughts. They are also appearances in consciousness. Do they have the power to change what consciousness is in itself?

There is real freedom to be found here, but you are unlikely to find it without looking carefully into the nature of consciousness, again and again. Notice how thoughts continue to arise. Even while reading this page your attention has surely strayed several times. Such wanderings of mind are the primary obstacle to meditation. Meditation doesn’t entail the suppression of such thoughts, but it does require that we notice thoughts as they emerge and recognize them to be transitory appearances in consciousness. In subjective terms, you are consciousness itself—you are not the next, evanescent image or string of words that appears in your mind. Not seeing it arise, however, the next thought will seem to become what you are.

But how could you actually be a thought? Whatever their content, thoughts vanish almost the instant they appear. They are like sounds, or fleeting sensations in your body. How could this next thought define your subjectivity at all?

It may take years of observing the contents of consciousness—or it may take only moments—but it is quite possible to realize that consciousness itself is free, no matter what arises to be noticed. Meditation is the practice of finding this freedom directly, by breaking one’s identification with thought and allowing the continuum of experience, pleasant and unpleasant, to simply be as it is. There are many traditional techniques for doing this. But it is important to realize that true meditation isn’t an effort to produce a certain state of mind—like bliss, or unusual visual images, or love for all sentient beings. Such methods also exist, but they serve a more limited function. The deeper purpose of meditation is to recognize that which is common to all states of experience, both pleasant and unpleasant. The goal is to realize those qualities that are intrinsic to consciousness in every present moment, no matter what arises to be noticed.

When you are able to rest naturally, merely witnessing the totality of experience, and thoughts themselves are left to arise and vanish as they will, you can recognize that consciousness is intrinsically undivided. In the moment of such an insight, you will be completely relieved of the feeling that you call “I.” You will still see this book, of course, but it will be an appearance in consciousness, inseparable from consciousness itself—and there will be no sense that you are behind your eyes, doing the reading.

Such a shift in view isn’t a matter of thinking new thoughts. It is easy enough to think that this book is just an appearance in consciousness. It is another matter to recognize it as such, prior to the arising of thought.

The gesture that precipitates this insight for most people is an attempt to invert consciousness upon itself—to look for that which is looking—and to notice, in the first instant of looking for your self, what happens to the apparent divide between subject and object. Do you still feel that you are over there, behind your eyes, looking out at a world of objects?

It is possible to look for the feeling you are calling “I” and to fail to find it in a way that is conclusive.

That insight – that there is nothing there in the place where we have been accustomed to find ourself – can be profoundly disorienting; if fully realised it can be alarming, perhaps even terrifying. I think this is one reason – apart from the fact that it can actually be remarkably difficult actually to carry out the seemingly childishly simple act of looking for the observer within – why traditionally Dzogchen has been a teaching delivered only in person, and only to advanced students of meditation.

But Sam Harris explains it very well here – and teaches it explicitly and effectively as part of his more advanced “Deconstructing the Self” practice on the Waking Up app – and it is an essential tool if we are directly to investigate for ourselves Daniel Dennett’s “benign user illusion” metaphor for consciousness.

Elizabeth Reninger, in her brilliant Introduction Taoism for Beginners, explains in rather less dramatic terms a traditional Taoist practice for achieving the identical realisation:

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.

These spiritual shortcuts (the Dzogchen practice is actually described as trekchod, “cutting through” the illusion of self and other) are probably only effective for those who have some solid experience of a practice like vipassana or shikantaza, and may actually, for those experienced practitioners prove to be unnecessary after all. But they are very powerful tools in themselves, and can seem irresistible to those navigating the inner waterways of the mind.

Scary though such techniques of radical nonduality can sound, they are in themselves utterly simple, and accessible within the framework of a stable contemplative practice. Despite the  impression you may get from reading some of the popular introductions to Vajrayaàna, 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 opens out; somehow, it is not other than limitless being itself.

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

Waves and the ocean

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…[T]hink of the vast ocean. There are waves that are catastrophic, there are little ripples, there is water crashing on the shore, but it’s all unquestionably ocean. The ocean is whole. I think this is one of the reasons humans love to look at the ocean: somehow the usual sense of “me” and “that” dissolves naturally. There’s still some kind of subject-object sensibility there, but it softens. And there’s something about that that we as a species fall in love with. We love that vastness, and there’s actually a very deep yearning for it. [We’re] nourished by the experience of wholeness.

Anne C Klein, Tricycle Magazine, August 2023

It is hard even to write of these things without sounding slightly silly, but somehow the image of waves and the ocean has, for as long as I can remember, had for me this sense not only of wholeness, but of ultimate security. The wave cannot fall out of the ocean; however much “subject-object sensibility” it manages to retain, it remains water. The awareness with which we are aware – of sense impressions, thoughts, emotions, whatever, even when we are asleep and dreaming – is the awareness within which all appearances arise.

To be still, listening, beside the open ocean, is all it takes; then our fretful wavelets still for a moment, if only between one breath and another, and we can sense the non-differentiation of Istigkeit, the unending of no thing. We are not other than what is.

Release

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One of the English translations often offered for the German philosophical term Gelassenheit is “releasement”. Martin Heidegger seems to have used Gelassenheit to indicate both a “releasement to” and “releasement from”: in contemplation we are released from our need to classify and arrange our experience, but we are released to the mystery, the wordless isness beneath all that comes to be.

“It is in meditative contemplation that we are open to Being, and in the steadfastness of being open, are exposed to it (i.e., Being). What reveals Being, is therefore, as Heidegger would say, an ‘in-dwelling’ in Being itself.” (Viktorija Lipič, An exploration of Gelassenheit through Meister Eckhart and Martin Heidegger) This seems to me remarkably close to the Dzogchen concept of Rigpa – beyond attributes, the clear and undisturbed awareness of the ground.

Even in our own practice, this releasement from and releasement to takes place almost without our taking note of it. We are released from the need to solve our thoughts, satisfy our longings, escape our fears; and released to the stillness of open awareness, the radical acceptance (Brach) of what actually is. It is just that simple, for all the high-flown words we are tempted to decorate it with.

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.]

Lathe biōsas

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Epicurus promoted an innovative theory of justice as a social contract. Justice, Epicurus said, is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed, and we need to have such a contract in order to enjoy fully the benefits of living together in a well-ordered society. Laws and punishments are needed to keep misguided fools in line who would otherwise break the contract. But the wise person sees the usefulness of justice, and because of his limited desires, he has no need to engage in the conduct prohibited by the laws in any case. Laws that are useful for promoting happiness are just, but those that are not useful are not just…

Epicurus discouraged participation in politics, as doing so leads to perturbation and status seeking. He instead advocated not drawing attention to oneself. This principle is epitomised by the phrase lathe biōsas (λάθε βιώσας), meaning “live in obscurity”, “get through life without drawing attention to yourself”, i.e., live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc.

Wikipedia

I have written here before about the benefits of living a quiet life. I am not necessarily prescribing this as a universal panacea, of course, but I am saying that it is necessary to me. I have come to realise increasingly clearly that Epicurus’ “live in obscurity” is exactly the dictum for me. The tiny daily accidents of life, the passing sounds and impressions observed during practice and after, are infinitely precious and worth attention. Birdsong, the particular exhaust note of a motorcycle on the road at the end of the garden, the half-unconscious inflection in one’s partner’s voice – all of them perfect just as they are in their crystalline presence. Things like this are simply not accessible to one who is on a mission, busy making a name for themselves.

Silence and stillness are quite different from “perturbation and status seeking”; which goes a long way to explain my own reluctance to engage with social media, with activism and campaigning, with banging and shouting in all their increasingly prevalent forms. However good the cause, anger seems only to beget anger, and violence, violence. Unkindness of whatever sort is never the way to an increase in kindness.

For myself, there is no other way than to keep still, to remain alert to the smallest things: to the leaves and the snails, to the minute changes in the weather, the slight ticking you hear as the thermostat balances the warmth of the room. Practice is no more than a way to awareness itself, to the limitless ground. Be quiet. Be still. Nothing else will do.

The open door

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Thought is the result of the past acting in the present; the past is constantly sweeping over the present. The present, the new, is ever being absorbed by the past, by the known. To live in the eternal present there must be death to the past, to memory; in this death there is timeless renewal.

The present extends into the past and into the future; without the understanding of the present the door to the past is closed. The perception of the new is so fleeting; no sooner is it felt than the swift current of the past sweeps over it and the new ceases to be. To die to the many yesterdays, to renew each day is only possible if we are capable of being passively aware. In this passive awareness there is no gathering to oneself; in it there is intense stillness in which the new is ever unfolding, in which silence is ever extending with measure.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Transcript of Talk 10, Ojai, 29 July 1945

To remain still, to turn from knowing to simple awareness – without choosing, without direction, in open unknowing – really, that is all that is needed. It is so simple, so unproblematic, that we find it the most difficult thing, simply because it seems too good to be true. And yet it is the truest encounter this life affords; it is the open door to “the original primordially empty Body of Reality, the ultimate truth of the expanse” (Longchenpa). In the end, there is nothing else.