The Tao of "What Is Real"

A good man is not aware of his goodness, 
And is therefore good. 
A foolish man tries to be good, 
And is therefore not good. 
A truly good man does nothing, 
Yet leaves nothing undone. 
A foolish man is always doing, 
Yet much remains to be done. 

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone. 
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done. 
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds, 
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order. 

Therefore when the Dao is lost, there is goodness. 
When goodness is lost, there is kindness. 
When kindness is lost, there is justice. 
When justice is lost, there is ritual. 
Ritual is the dead shell of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion. 
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of the Dao. 
It is the beginning of folly. 

Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface, 
On the fruit and not the flower. 
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

-- Lao Tzu, 'Tao Te Ching', Verse 38

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More so than most of the world's great religious or wisdom traditions, Taoism (or Daoism) as expressed in Lao Tzu's classic "Tao Te Ching" is unrelentingly paradoxical. ("A truly good man does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone.") Like quantum mechanics, it's "methods" are expressible but an ultimate "understanding" or "meaning" are beyond the rational capacity of our ordinary consciousness and language. Famously, Lao Tzu starts the "Tao Te Ching" by declaring: "The Dao that can be told is not the essential Dao."

Even the greatest of enlightened teachers - the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, etc. - can only offer a flavorful "taste" of what the ultimate "essence" of "reality" is like. The essence of "what is" - the Universe, God or Allah, Buddha-nature or Nirvana, Brahma, the Dao, however one wishes to describe "It" - remains "ineffable" and beyond the power of pictures, poetry, or prose to fully describe.

The danger of such "ineffability" is that over time even the greatest religions and wisdom traditions, almost inevitably it seems, devolve and become to most of their adherents mere "dead shell(s) of faith and loyalty." The generation of religious belief, religious faith, religious knowledge, even religious adherence, are in most instances relatively good things for both individuals and society, but unless a religious or spiritual path generates transformational inner and holistic religious experiences it becomes "a dead shell" (above) in which "the salt loses its savour." (Matthew 5:13). This, Lao Tzu observes, "is the beginning of confusion."

The spiritual seeker who aspires to a truly transformational religious or spiritual experience will not be satisfied with the rote teachings and empty rituals offered in many a dormant religious community which seeks to promote merely outwardly-focused behaviour and moral conformity. He or she must, exercising great discrimination, first find and then dwell upon and in "what is real and not what is on the surface."

"Every object, every being," Rumi points out, "is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur," he advises, "and taste with caution."

"Any wine will get you high," the great Sufi poet notes. "Judge like a king and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency of 'what's needed.'"

Just as the pollinated flower of an apple tree turns into the fruit, so the seemingly outer rituals, teachings and practices of a true wisdom tradition, when seeded by true experiential insight, will effect an inner transformation and the attainment of a new state of consciousness and being.

Therefore, advises the great Daoist master, one should dwell "on the fruit and not the flower . . . accept(ing) the one and reject(ing) the other."

Lao Tzu: The Taoist Sage

"Outside the universe, sages see without discussion. Inside the universe, sages discuss without deliberation. When it comes to the passing times and generations and the records of kings of yore, sages deliberate without debating."

"Therefore there is that which distinction does not distinguish, there is that which explanation does not explain. What is it? Sages take it to heart, average people try to explain it to each other. That is why it is said that there is something not seen by explanation."

"The Great Way is not called anything: great discernment is unspoken; great humaneness is unsentimental; great honesty is not complacent; great bravery is not vicious."

"When a way is illustrious, it does not guide; when humanitarianism is fixated, it is not constructive; when honesty is puritanical, it is not trusted; when bravery is vicious, it does not succeed. These five things are like looking for squareness in something round."

"So we know that to stop at what we don't know is as far as we can go. Who knows the unspoken explanation, the unexpressed Way? Among those who do know, this is called the celestial storehouse: we can pour into it without filling it we can draw from it without exhausting it; and yet we don't know where it comes from. This is called hidden illumination."

[Thomas Cleary, "The Essential Tao," p. 76.]

Thomas Merton: On Zen Insight

In his book, "Mystics and Zen Masters," Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton had the following observations to share about the "insight" grounding Zen Buddhism:

"The Zen insight . . . consists in a direct grasp of "mind" or one's "original face." And this direct grasp implies rejection of all conceptual media or methods, so that one arrives at mind by "having no mind" (wu h'sin): in fact, by "being" mind instead of "having" it. Zen enlightenment is an insight into being in all its existential reality and actualization. It is a fully alert and superconscious act of being which transcends time and space. . . . The Zen insight is the awareness of full spiritual reality, and therefore the realization of the emptiness of all limited or particularized realities."

"One might ask," he continues, "if our habitual failure to distinguish between "empirical ego" and the "person" has not led us to oversimplify and falsify our whole interpretation of Buddhism. There are in Zen certain suggestions of a higher more spiritual personalism than one might at first sight expect. Zen insight is at once a liberation from the limitations of the individual ego, and a discovery of one's "original nature" and "true face" in "mind" which is no longer restricted to the empirical self but is in all and above all. Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us."

"This is not," Merton notes, " a pantheistic submersion or a loss of self in "nature" or "the One." It is not a withdrawal into one's spiritual essence and a denial of matter and of the world. On the contrary, it is a recognition that the whole world is aware of itself in me and that "I" am no longer my individual and limited self, still less a disembodied soul, but that my "identity" is to be sought not in that separation from all that is, but in oneness (indeed, convergence"?) with all that is."

[Thomas Merton, "Mystics and Zen Masters," pp. 17-18]

In the short, yet insightful introduction to Zen Buddhism, below, it is observed that "the search for self-realization is powered by our anxieties and our fears which feed our ego, causing frustration with our daily life: selfishness, jealousy, anger and hate which unconsciously serve to protect us, and in doing so set us in opposition to everyone and everything. To awaken to this realization is the practice of Zen."

An Explanation of Suffering

"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."

-- Thomas Merton--

In an ecumenical message, below, which encompasses spiritual teachings from a wide range of sources - ranging from the Bhagavad Gita, to the teachings of the Bhudda and the 'Beatitudes' of Jesus - spiritual teacher, Pradhanath Swami addresses the existential question of 'why' there is suffering.

Like the teachers of all ages, Pradhanath points out that suffering may be a hidden blessing in that it helps us to overcome our egoism and compels us to search deeply within for the higher, transcendental consciousness which is at the heart of all the world's great wisdom traditions.

"In many ways," he notes, "the sufferings in this world are blessings because they help us to take very seriously - if we make the choice to really understand - what is deeper, what is higher than all these temporary pleasures and pains: honor and dishonor, happiness and distress, health and disease, success and failure, birth and death."

"The nature of the world around us," he explains, "is constituted on the basis of dualities. One brings pleasure, one brings pain. And, to the degree that we are attached to something that gives us pleasure, to that same degree we suffer when it is lost. And, ultimately, because everything is under the consumption of time, everything will be lost."

So going through these experiences," he observes, "thoughtful people contemplate: 'Is there something higher? Is there something deeper? Is there something more to life than this?' And," he points out, "all the great saintly teachers, and all the great saintly scriptures . . . are leading us in that direction."

"This world," he points out, "is just a temporary place, but this world can be a launching pad to help us to realize the inner treasures within our own heart. And it is usually the sufferings of this world," he notes, "that serve as an impetus for us to not just theoretically try to understand what is beyond, but to feel the urgent need to do something about it, to realize and experience the essence of the Self."

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.]

Enlightenment: The Tao of Now

"(A)wakening to our original enlightened nature," suggests Robert Holden in the Huffington Post, "involves interrupting the ordinary flow of linear, language-based, thinking so that we can rediscover "the mind within the mind"."

"Focusing on external circumstances or teachings is not what triggers the moment of enlightenment," writes Holden, an author with a decidedly Taoist bent, "(r)ather, it is focusing on the absence of internal commentary. Because it is impossible to "think" without words," he notes, "this practice of stopping the flow of running commentary on our lives involves cultivating a mindset of no-thought (wu-nien) in an attempt to experience each moment as it is without silently talking to ourselves about it."

Holden puts forward the following recollections of nature as doorways into "a wordless space of wonder at the profound transparency of nature," in which, "overwhelmed by awe in the face of creation, the boundaries between self and world dissolve in a mystical union transcending conscious thought."

•  "A white pelican sails south across the darkening sky, heading deeper into the high desert marshlands."
  
• "The first warning drops splash dust on the washboard road as a flock of ibis flap madly against the north wind."
  
• "A yellow-headed blackbird throws its head back over its shoulder, singing ecstatically from its perch on a swaying cattail."
  
• "The sun blinks through thinning clouds, throwing off a triple rainbow like a casual afterthought."

Each haiku-like observation of the pervasive, yet largely unobserved, face of the world around us, Holden suggests, "offers the perfect opportunity for a higher integration of one's original nature with the eternal Way (Tao) that gives rise to everything from within."

Thoreau's Walden Pond

In "On Man & Nature," the great Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau observed: "I want to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me."

"Between Heaven and Earth," says the Tao-Te-Ching, "there seems to be a bellows: It is empty, and yet it is inexhaustible; the more it works, the more comes out of it. No amount of words can fathom it; better look for it within you."

"Paradoxically," writes Holden, "awakening to the perennial truth leads experiencers to see absolute truth and conventional truth as one, not two. This is part of the experience of swallowing the whole of the river in one gulp, wherein all dualities are united within the individual. This grasp of the non-duality of reality and appearance is expressed in the analogy of the statue of a golden lion: its form is that of a lion but its substance is of gold. Because its nature is that of a golden lion, its lion-form cannot be separated from its gold-substance. This analogy hints at the experience of non-duality that lies at the heart of enlightenment, in which the boundaries between self and other, inner and outer, collapse."

"In eternity," observes Thoreau, "there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are here and now. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us."

"Man follows the ways of the Earth," says the Tao-Te-Ching. "The Earth follows the ways of Heaven. Heaven follows the ways of the Tao. Tao follows its own ways."

Aldous Huxley: Annihilation of the Ego

What is the ultimate benefit of a contemplative practice? Is it not to come to a unitive state of consciousness and being, in which we realize that we, too, have broken the strong attachment chains of the ego and have become a conscious part of the divine, non-dualistic Ground of Being? Certainly, this is what the sages past and present seem to assure us.

John of Ruysbroeck

 The Flemish mystic, John of Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), observed:

"(In the Reality unitively known by the mystic), we can speak no more of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature, but only one Being, which is the very substance of the Divine Persons. There were we all one before our creation, for this is our super-essence. There the godhead is in simple essence without activity.

[Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," p. 31.]

Similarly,  in a description that is markedly similar to the Eastern process of negation, found in both Buddhist and Vedantist teachings, the renowned German mystic, Meister Eckhart, remarked:

"Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness."

[Ibid., p. 32.]

Sri Nisargadatta
(1897-1981)

"Our usual attitude is of 'I am this," the modern Indian sage, Sri Nisargadatta, observed. "Separate consistently and perserveringly the 'I am' from 'this' or 'that', and try to feel what it means to be, just to be, without being 'this' or 'that'. All our habits go against it and the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a lot. The clearer you understand that on the level of the mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of you search and realize your limitless being."

[Nisargadatta, "I Am That." pp. 59-60.]

Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)

 "(T)here is a hierarchy of the real," Aldous Huxley observes. "The manifold world of our everyday experience is real with a relative reality that is, on its own level, unquestionable; but this relative reality has its being within and because of the absolute Reality, which, on account of the incommensurable otherness of its eternal nature, we can never hope to describe, even though it is possible for us directly to apprehend it."

"In the phrase used by Scotus Erigena," he notes, "God is not a what; He is a That. In other words, the Ground can be denoted as being there, but not defined as having qualities. This means that discursive knowledge about the Ground is not merely, like all inferential knowledge, a thing at one remove, or even at several removes, from the reality of immediate acquaintance; it is and, because of the very nature of our language and our standard pattern of thought, it must be paradoxical knowledge. Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the 'thou' from the 'That'."

[Huxley, supra., pp. 33-35]

I am neither 'this' nor all attachments and forms; neither name, self-image, feelings or thoughts; nor the ego. "I am That" - the divine Ground of Being.

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.

Tolle and Adyashanti: What is Enlightenment?

The man or woman seeking meaning in their life is bound at some time to hear of enlightenment. But what is enlightenment, really? And where are we to find it? At the feet of a guru? Perhaps? At the top of a mountain? Maybe. In a corner bar, a bottle of pills, a love affair or a new car?  Highly, highly unlikely.

Andrew Cohen, Editor-in-chief,
of EnlightenNext magazine.

The enlightened spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen, wrote an entire book called "Enlightenment is a Secret." In it, he remarked:

"Enlightenment is a secret that very few people know about and even fewer understand. Why is it a secret? Because Enlightenment does not exist in time. That why it's a secret and that's why it will always be a secret. Enlightenment is a vision that cannot be held or grasped in any way. Beyond this world it's a mystery that is exploding. A fire that is burning. It's a fire that a person is either going to jump into or run away from. This fire burns beyond the mind. No-time is the place where this secret abides. Realize that and you realize the Self you are when there's no mind and no time. Realize that and cling to that alone as your own Self.

The  great Sufi poet and teacher, Rumi, asked us to judge the moth by the worthiness of the candle it immolates itself in. "Enlightenment is not far away," Cohen insists. "It does not need to take time."

Below, two modern enlightened teachers, best-selling author of "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle and the neo-Buddhist teacher and author, Adyashanti, tackle the question of just what enlightenment is.

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

Eckhart Tolle

Enlightenment, or the egoless state, "cannot be achieved in the future, or in time," Eckhart Tolle notes. "It is only by looking through it now, that the egoless state is here, now."

"A state that you want to achieve is a mental concept that is endowed with self," he observes. "And, as such, you can never reach it because it is an abstract concept of 'who I want to be,' not realizing you are it already."

"So the egoless state does not lie in the future. It has nothing to do with the future," he says. "You cannot make it into a goal. You cannot make - whether you call it the egoless state, or whether you call it enlightenment - you cannot make it into a goal. 'Goal' implies future," he observes, and "the very entry point into the egoless state or enlightenment is the present moment."

"If you make (enlightenment) into a goal you want to achieve," says Tolle, "you miss the entry point, because you are looking to the future."

"That is the dilemna of all spiritual seekers," he observes. "Because they listen to a spiritual talk or read a spiritual book and say, 'There is such a thing as the egoless state, or the enlightened state, and perhaps I can achieve it too.' And immediately they make it into a goal (and) project it away. It becomes mind, a mental image of 'who' I want to 'be' (in the) future. And (they do) not realize that their very search to actualize that image prevents them from being it, now. Because the entry point is here, (in) this moment only. The ego can only be transcended through accessing the power of the present moment." There is, he says, "no other way."

"Enlightenment is only in the power of the present moment," Tolle notes, "nowhere else. It is only humans who give up the search who realize it is already here. So you have to, one way or another - either because you are totally frustrated with the spiritual search, or because you suddenly see the truth of it -  give up the  search, as if (enlightenment) is in the future."

Adyashanti

"Enlightenment," says Adyashanti, "is simply not perceiving through ego. It's not seeing life or any thing - self, others, your tennis shoes, your cat, your dog, your livelihood, anything - it's just not seeing the world, not seeing everything through the distortion called the egoic state of consciousness. "

"That is why," he observes, "(enlightenment) is likened to the natural state. Natural, meaning its not an alternative distorting lens, it's just perception without a lens, without a distortion. Ultimately, that is what enlightenment is. It is perception without distortion."

Cautioning his audience that enlightenment is not an unending blissful experience of what Zen Buddhists call satori, Adyashanti observes that, "in the end enlightenment has very little to do with enlightenment experiences. It is simply not perceiving through the lens of ego."

'There is no doubt, he says, "that it is pretty good not perceiving through the lens of ego, it's happiness, it's peace, it's the end of your search. Not that you find anything, except sanity. Not that you attain anything, except seeing things as they actually are. And that's what nirvana is, seeing things as they actually are."

"Enlightenment," says Adyashanti, "is the unaltered state of consciousness. Consciousness needs no alteration to see that everything is one. Since everything is one, you don't need an unaltered state of consciousness to perceive that everything is one. You need an altered state of consciousness to see that everything is not one."

'One-ness,' Non-Duality and Perception

"There's many mystical states of consciousness," says neo-Buddhist spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, "but in terms of spiritual awakening they are relatively irrelevant."

"One-ness," says Adyashanti, a master of non-dualism, "is actually an unaltered state of consciousness. People think its some whacked out state of mystical consciousness." But it's not, he insists. "Everything else is a whacked out state of mystical consciousness. One-ness is just the way things are. Its just the restoration of clear, simple perception."





"Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an  experience," Adyashanti writes in his essay, 'Realizing Your True Nature.'

"What is it that is feeling," he asks? "What is it that is thinking or sensing? This is not about coming up with the right name for it, so don't name it for a moment. It's about just noticing, just experiencing.  Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it. Spiritual awakening is realizing what  occupies the space called 'me.' When you listen innocently, you'll see that there really is something more here than a 'me.'"

"Your 'me' might call itself Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Advaitan, atheist, agnostic, believer, or nonbeliever, but no matter what your me is identified with, when you become very open and relaxed, you can suddenly be aware that  something else is occupying your body-mind. Something else is looking out from your eyes, listening from your ears, and feeling your feelings." 

"That something," Adyashanti notes, "has no qualities. Realizing your true nature is  realizing what is present without qualities. We can call it the emptiness of consciousness, the Self, or the No-Self. To directly  experience this emptiness, 'the aliveness of it,' is spiritual awakening. It is to realize yourself as beautiful nothingness, or more accurately, no-thing-ness. If we say it's 'nothing,' we miss the point."