Emptiness and Dependent Origination: "Truth That Sets You Free"

"Emptiness," "insubstantiality" and "co-dependent origination" are fundamental concepts in Mahayana Buddhism, yet these concepts are also recognized realities in Daoist teachings, the teachings of many Indian philosophical and yoga schools, and - though not specifically referenced - most of the world's great wisdom traditions.

What we know of the origination and vast emptiness of the universe, as well as the mechanics and profound emptiness of the atom, makes these ancient philosophical realizations particularly relevant to all of us, although the Western worldview, to a large extent, still clings to its traditional materialist view of man, mind, the world and the cosmos.

In Chapter II of the Dao De Jing, we read:

"The thirty spokes converge at one hub,
But the utility of the cart is a function of the nothingness inside the hub.
We throw clay to shape a pot,
But the utility of the clay pot is a function of the nothingness inside it.
We bore out doors and windows to make a dwelling,
But the utility of the dwelling is a function of the nothingness inside it.
Thus, it might be something that provides the value,
But it is nothing that provides the utility."

[Ames and Hall, "Dao De Jin: A Philosophical Translation, page 91.]

"There is nothing," said Tzu-ch'i, "that is not a 'that' and nothing that is not a 'this.' One does not see from the standpoint of another knowing by oneself is knowing something. Therefore it is said: ''That' comes from 'this,' and 'this' is based on 'that.' This explains how 'that' and 'this' arise simultaneously."

"But when there is arising," he continued, "there is passing away; and when there is passing away, there is arising. When there is right, there is wrong; when there is wrong, there is right. By affirming we deny; by denying we affirm."

"Therefore," he notes, "sages do not go this way but perceive it in the context of nature. This is also based on an affirmation."

"A 'this' is also a 'that,' and a 'that' is also a 'this,' he concludes. "'That' is one judgment, and 'this' is also one judgment. Ultimately, are there in fact 'that' and 'this,' or are there no 'that' or 'this'? Nothing can be opposite to 'that and this' - we call this fact the pivot of the Way. When the pivot is centered in its hub, thereby responding infinitely, then affirmation is one infinity and negation is also one infinity."

[Clearey, "The Essential Tao," page 72.]

Vedantists, and other Indian philosophical and yoga schools, label this concept of "this and that,' or 'neither this nor that,' "sunyata" - a transcendental  state in which neither 'this' nor 'that' exists absolutely. In "The Spiritual Heritage of India," Vedantist scholar, Swami Prabhavananda, suggests that these concepts extend to all the world's great wisdom traditions, including Christianity, and that the transcendental reality in which this is experienced can be attained by all.

"The nirvana of Buddha," writes Prabhavananada, "is . . . not a state of annihilation but the attainment of the unchangeable reality, which can be positively described as the eternal peace. But what this peace really is, no words can define; all definition can be only symbol and can offer only a vague suggestion. Buddha employs negative terms for its description, such as freedom from misery and death, freedom from sensuality, from the ego, from delusion, from ignorance."

"This state of freedom is attainable by the 'noble kind of wisdom' - a phrase already quoted from the Buddhist scripture and signifying what the Vedanta calls transcendental knowledge. The wisdom meant is not a wisdom of the intellect, which implies a knower and an object, but rather a state, sunyata, in which no subject-object relation exists, and in which one transcends both intellect and mind - these two words representing, in Hindu psychology, separate entities."

"Christ refers directly to this transcendental wisdom when he says: 'And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.' It is identical with perfection, the same perfection that Christ has in mind when he says: 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' It is, in brief, the direct, immediate knowledge of that which is timeless unconditional existence."

"The 'noble kind of wisdom' is attainable by 'the noble conduct of life' and 'the noble earnestness of meditation.'"

[Swami Prabhavananda, "The Spiritual Heritage of India," page 186.]

Andrew Cohen: "Enlightenment Is a Secret"

Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-chief,
http://www.enlightennext.org/EnlightenNext magazine.

Perhaps the first post-modern spiritual teacher, leading-edge "guru," Andrew Cohen, teaches a brand of radical non-duality he calls "Evolutionary Enlightenment." In doing so, he transcends his roots in the Advaita Vedanta lineage of Ramana Maharshi, and charts a path for our active participation in humanity's evolution and the evolution of the 'kosmos.'

Cohen's vision includes the following five "top-down" tenets for living an awakened life, here and now:

• Clarity of Intention: One must be 100% committed to the one intention of waking up to the spiritual reality of what and who we are.

•  The Truth of Impersonality: In a cosmos of 100 billion galaxies and 100s of billions of stars in such galaxies, it is sheer narcissism to focus our consciousness on what we are feeling and thinking from moment to moment; yet that is what the vast majority of us unwittingly do.

•  Face Everything and Avoid Nothing: To attain enlightenment it is necessary to face, and face down, the fears and desires of the Ego and attain to one's Authentic Self.

• The Law of Volitionality: We do not do or say anything (or omit doing or saying anything) without a voluntarily intention to do so. All of our actions are of our own volition and, thus, we can no longer foster a 'victim mentality.'

• For the Sake of the Whole: In a post-modern world, enlightenment for one's own sake is irrelevant; it is only when we attain "autonomy in communion" with others that enlightenment is an effective and true evolutionary tool.

"Realization of the Absolute," writes Cohen, "is the most demanding and all consuming form of meditation that a human being can pursue. . . . Any trace of self-interest of any kind in any form instantly corrupts (the) most perfect purity and automatically, although usually imperceptibility, taints its reflection." ("Enlightenment Is a Secret," p. ix.) Thus, he stresses, one has to get out of the way to let the Absolute manifest:

"There is a secret that is infinitely greater than anything you have ever known. It is real and it exists and if you make room for it - it will overwhelm you.

You have got to get out of the way. You have to abandon everything you've been taught and everything you've been led to believe - all those limiting, confining, imprisoning, denying ideas and concepts that you have picked up along your way. You have to make room for that which is unbelievable. You have to get out of the way. "Oh my God!" you'll say, "I didn't know it could be like this."

If you want to be Free you have to open yourself to the unthinkable possibility. You have to allow yourself to consider that which is immeasurable. You have to rise up. You have to open your mind, open your heart, and renounce the past completely."

[Cohen, "Enlightenment Is a Secret," pp. 12-13.]

In the following video, Cohen describes "Evolutionary Enlightenment" and how it builds upon and surpasses traditional Eastern teachings of personal liberation. In some sense, his teachings of radical transpersonal enlightenment make him, perhaps, the first post-modern Bhoddisatva.

Nottingham and Krishnamurti: The Fractured Human Psyche

One of the most insightful and informed ministers active today is the Reverend Theodore (Ted) Nottingham of Indianapolis' Northwood Christian Church. In a video that directly addresses the human condition, Rev. Nottingham examines the duality and multiplicity of the human psyche in view of the world's great wisdom traditions.



"If you've had a bad dream," Nottingham explains, "if a thought goes through your head in the shower, your state changes. We are very fragile in that way. We are fractured. We are multiple. We are legion."

"The whole purpose of true teachings," he notes, "is to reunite us so that we can bring together the core of our true self, rise up out of that brokenness and enter the nobility of truly being creatures of free will, creatures in the image of their Creator. One of the blinders for us," he explains, "is that we have a strange psychological way of not seeing these contradictions."

"This is the condition of the human being," Nottingham observes. "This is everybody. It is a condition that many teachers have called 'asleep,' because we are so unaware, (because) our attention is so diverted and fragmented and there is nobody home to be present to our reality."

"There has to be a step back," he notes. "The mystics call it 'detachment,' a position of conscious presence that is not dragged around by what is going on, that does not have the rug pulled out from under it at any moment, and that is dependable both for God and for ourselves."

The ability to detach from outward phenomena is possible, Nottingham notes, but it "has to be created," through practice in mindfulness. "We don't come with that," he warns, "and life conspires to keep us from that place of centering. All the spiritual disciplines return to this. Meditation, prayer, all of these methods and habits and ways of life offered to us by the teachings lead us into a centeredness within, in a place of inner quiet, an inner sanctuary that is sealed off from the outside."

"In the world," Nottingham notes, "we are in exile. Spiritual beings lost in a world of materialism, disconnected from our source, no longer dependent as we should be on that which is greater than we are, thinking that we are independent, (we are) cut off."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

Another great spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, made the same observations and voiced the same warnings regarding the many split off 'selves' that can exist within the human psyche.

"We are many and not one," Krishamurti observes. "The one does not come into being till the many cease. The clamorous many are at war with each other day and night, and this war is the pain of life. We destroy one, but another rises in its place; and this seemingly endless process is our life. We try to impose the one on the many but the one soon becomes the many."

"Our problem," he observes, " is not how to hear the one voice but to understand the composition, the make-up, of the many which we are are." Yet, this is exceedingly difficult, he notes (as so many other teachers have), because the parts - each with its myriad of desires - cannot undertand the whole. Thus, like Nottingham, he concludes that it is in understanding desire itself, and detaching from one's desires, that one comes to wholeness.

 "The voice of the many is the voice of the one," Krishnamurti writes, "and the one voice assumes authority; but it is still the chattering of a voice. We are voices of the many, and we try to catch the still voice of the one. The one is the many if the many are silent to hear the voice of the one. . . .

"To be aware of the whole, the conflict of the many, there must be an understanding of desire," he notes. "There is only one activity of desire; though there are varying and conflicting demands and pursuits, they are all the outcome of desire."

"Desire may not be sublimated or suppressed," Krishnamurti cryptically observes, "it must be understood without him who understands. If the entity who understands is there," he warns, "then it is still the entity of desire."

Complete detachment from desire through the experiential realization of one's wholeness, or centeredness, without any fractures, seems to be what is required. To see one's desire with one's very being, devoid of the raucous narrations of the many smaller 'selves' we each possess, is the way that leads us out of the mind trap we have created. For, "(t)o understand without the experiencer is to be free of the one and the many," Krishnamurti notes.

"In the awareness of this whole process," he writes, "there is a silence which is not of the experiencer. In this silence only does understanding come into being."

[Krishnamurti: Commentaries on Living: First Series," pp. 37-38.]

"

"The mystics," Nottingham notes, "tell us that you must be emptied, so that you may be filled . Meaning that it is possible, by eliminating the many false 'selves' of the psyche, for us to become "transparent to the divine," as the great 20th-century Christian mystic Karlfried Graf von Durckneim put it.

"Self-Awareness Allows Us to Become Conscious"

Rev. Theodore (Ted) Nottingham

In a timely, yet timeless, message, aimed at those of us struggling with the reality of difficult times, Pastor Ted Nottingham of Indianapolis' Northwood Christian Church, a prolific author and inspired teacher, asks: "(H)ow can we apply in a practical way the great teachings of spiritual masters throughout the ages to the here and now, to this 21st-century malaise, this troubled living that so many of us are in and (can) seem to find no way out of?"

Reverend Nottingham, one of the most informed and transformative voices in America's religious life, draws on the vast teachings of the Orthodox Church and its great spiritual teachers, as well as other esoteric wisdom traditions, to inform his brand of enlightened Christianity, a brand of faith based on the vast untapped, and perhaps unknown, potential of the individual.

"Self-awareness," says Nottingham "allows us to become conscious of who we are in the midst of our external circumstances. Because just by that separation of attention of yourself and the external world, you begin to pull back some of that energy and attention caught up in the struggles of the outer life."

"Through self-awareness," he says, "you are calling yourself home, you are coming back into yourself in a place that is, in some ways, beyond time." The timelessness of the Eternal or Spiritual, being, of course, at the heart of all the world's great religious and wisdom traditions, and it is the essential teaching of Christ's message that Nottingham continually brings home to his audience

"God or Spirit," doesn't just drop into our existence," he notes. Indeed, he points out, "we have to reach up to it metaphorically through consciousnsess, through expanded awareness."

"Most of us," he rightly observes, "are tunnel visioned, funnel-visioned, hypnotized by the outside world, and therefore full of fears (and) full of helplessness, really, in this global meltdown."

"The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation: Neither shall they say,
Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold,
the kindgdom of God is within you."

-- Luke 17: 20-21 --

"My suggestion to you," he advises, "is to separate out, where you can find some peace within that is not completely flooded by the tsunami of the outside world. And from that first step into a place of peace, you can expand into (a) spiritual awareness which give us strength and courage that we knew not that we had; that gives us hope when there seems to be no hope around, (and) the courage to make it through another day."

"This teaching of detachment, he observes, "of recollection, of mindfulness, of remembering the deeper self, all place us in a new relationship to our circumstances."

"Let (these) be teachings for you now in this hard time," Nottingham urges. "Find that peace that you can't find any place else; find that strength that is your spiritual self and ability of your true identity; and, with God's help, may you find your way through these difficult times."

What Is Required to Become a True Human 'Being'?

"Relieve me of the bondage of self . . ."

What is required of us to 'slip the bondage, of our narrow, egoic self-consciousness, to be come true human 'beings' rather than human 'thinkings'? For most of us, the problem is the continual 'inner dialogue' of our rudimentary "self" consciousness, what the pioneering psychologist, William James, dubbed the "stream of consiousness."

We miss the wonders of life - indeed, the wonder of "life" itself - through our continuous identification with, attachment to, and fixation upon this narrow, self-centered identity and attachment. As Einstein noted:

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

While Einstein believed that no one may break out of this "prison" completely and permanently, he observed that, "the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." Many others - from all traditions, places and times - do believe that a complete liberation (in the form of enlightenment, mystic union, moksha, nirvana, or whatever you may call it) is possible, but that it takes great effort. 

"Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by consistent daily application of the the best you have within you. To change one's life for the better, to resurrect one's body and mind from living death requires many positive steps, one in front of the other, with your sights always on your goal. . . . The means of transportation, and the power to break your intertia must be generated by forces long dormant but still alive within you."
                               (Og Mandino, "The Greatest Miracle in the World")

One of the most renowned spiritual teachers ever put it this way: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few". (Matt. 9:37) Or, as Don Juan, the Native American nagual who was Carlos Castenada's teacher, observed: "The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

And there is the consensus of the many different paths to spiritual enlightenment and liberation from Einstein's "optical delusion." One must work on one's spiritual condition and the level of one's consciousness continuously, unrelentingly, and with great effort in order to attain liberation from the ego.

For as Sri Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "(O)ut of thousands of people only one will seek Me, and out of thousands who seek Me only one will perceive Me as I Am."