Dropping Thoughts — Misses the Boat
Eckhart Tolle’s message of ‘dropping thoughts’, along with many other pop-spiritual teachings of dropping concepts, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs, ultimately is a distorted one.
Supreme wisdom is the realization that thought and no-thought are non-separate. This is a relating process more than a dropping process.
Non-separation isn’t realized by dropping thoughts or projected barriers. Non-separation is realized by relating thought to no-thought.
That’s one area that the whole pop-spiritual movement misses the boat on. This leads to spiritual pursuit itself becoming a perversion of life.
Perhaps this ‘dropping’ is a necessary step along the journey…perhaps not. Nonetheless, some ancient teachings capture the highest truth, like the Zen 10th Ox Stage, and much of Nagarjuna’s work. These teachings bypass the dropping (or adding) of anything.
Nagarjuna says the following:
“Where there is neither an addition of nirvana nor a removal of samsara; There, what samsara is discriminated from what nirvana?
Dustmapper
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Shredding of Assumptions
When one steps on the spiritual path, one often comes to the point where their lifelong assumptions are challenged. This can be very disconcerting for many of us, causing us to retreat back into our comfort zone. But gradually, and eventually, we come to realize that Truth is impossible to escape from, and we start to shred our old perspectives in favor of refined ones.
We know this, all of us have faced this, but the bitch of the spiritual path is realizing this doesn’t just happen once. This happens over, and over, and over again. All our cherished notions – all our cherished spiritual notions – get continually ripped apart, ripped apart again, and ripped apart yet again.
Our ego – the quality of ourselves that holds onto expired perspectives – resists constantly, unrelentingly, in this process. But ultimately the process itself of seeing through this each and every time is the salvation itself – this desire ultimately pushes through resistances.
Dust Mapper
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Even ‘transcendence’ is misleading
For a long time, I assumed the phrase ‘transcendence’ was the best to describe the spiritual process – transcendence of experience, after all, appears to describe the spiritual journey in a nutshell. But even this word, I have to admit, is misleading for many reasons. Three of them are:
- Transcendence connotes ‘loss’. While the true definition of transcendence is not about loss, but about gain, there still is the association that transcendence somehow means or involve some sort of loss. In truth, only the sense of loss is lost, nothing more, but the connotation still stands.
- Transcendence connotes we can exist outside ourselves – a transcended state so to speak. However, that connotation is wrong. Neither we, nor any object, exists outside of itself.
- Transcendence connotes escape – escape from the here and now. It requires no elaboration that the spiritual journey, ultimately, is not about escape at all.
So, what word is a replacement for transcendence? I’ve determined ‘relationship’ is the best one. Relationship doesn’t insinuate an escape from the current situation, nor does it connote any existence outside of current circumstances and objects, nor does it connote loss. If we focus on relating to each and everything, transcendence takes care of itself, needing no extra attention or even definition whatsoever.
Dust Mapper
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Titles, Vows and Precepts: Silent Trappings
I recently discovered that several months ago, the founder of an important Zen offshoot was found to have been involved in several extra-marital affairs, including one with his senior student. This is not the first spirituality sex scandal, and certainly not the last, and I am not judging his behavior – but what’s the issue here?
In my opinion, it’s not the act, but rather the pretense and vows – including the pretense of being a ‘spiritual master’ – that are the real issues at stake.
I recently received an email from his organization positing three ways I should consider reaching out to him to join his rank of students. Ugh…no. If they asked me if I’d like to share insights and discoveries with him and his group, I’d say sure! But by continuing to insist that his role is strictly as Zen Master whose role is to teach the lost, confused masses, I feel he’s doing his own growth a disservice.
He does seem to be seeing himself more as a human being, less as a Zen Master, so I do sense this might be changing (see Returning Home). Nonetheless, there’s still a long way to go — I feel the next step is for him to simply drop the remaining trappings of the title and aura of ‘Zen Master’, as well as open up the two way street of discovery. The problem is that he’s still too enmeshed in the whole buildup around himself as Master..
Spiritual titles and vows I feel serve to create the grounds for hypocrisy, pretense and denial – little more. Our journey takes us through consistency and contradiction, joy and suffering, experimentation and application, virtue and sin – this is the case for each and every one of us. When we put ourselves, or allow ourselves, to operate from an “elevated position”, we are simply asking for nature to pull the chair from under us. The sooner titles, ranks, vows, and precepts are stripped from spiritual movements, the purer the spirituality becomes.
Ultimately, I’m not saying everyone’s words are equally insightful, or that all behavior is equally intelligent. What I am saying is that our spiritual contributions should be self-evident, not self-proclaimed…unless, that is, we want to sell something. And that is a different topic altogether.
Dust Mapper
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Middle Circle Transcendence
Someone shared with me a quote pulled from a post on the Meditation Insights blog, in a description of the book “Face to Face with Fear: Transforming Fear into Love”
Our ignorant habits occur on the outer circle. This includes defensiveness, posturing, avoidance, clinging, and the like. We often skate on the outer circle till we might reach a tipping point – some sort of suffering, frustration, dissatisfaction with how we’ve been living all along.
At this point, we shift gears to seek great change in our life. We now try to directly tune into our core. We take great efforts to ‘be equanimous’, ‘be still’, ‘be present’, ‘be in-the-moment’, ‘be honest’, ‘be aware’, ‘be noble’, etc. However, sooner or later this effort also falls apart, and falls apart hard.
Experience has taught me time and time again that ignorance leads to great suffering. However, tying to life with full passion, honesty, awareness and presence also is great suffering. Why? Simply because such an effort is based ultimately on chasing our imagined idea of such ideals, bringing dissatisfaction to the states and situations we are currently in.
So then, where do we go from here? Well, the answer is the middle circle. The brilliance of this insight is that it’s the middle circle, not the core, where optimum life is lived. That’s where life works. That’s where grace exists. That’s what we tune into, and tune from.
The middle circle is just vulnerable enough, just safe enough, just sharp enough, just painful enough, just comfortable enough, to be ridden. This is sustainable everlasting transcendence. The middle circle provides the tangible gradient through which not emotional joy but transcendent joy springs forth.
Dust Mapper
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Meditation and Calm Appearance — Unrelated
This is a myth I’ve touched on a couple of times before, but I am compelled to touch on again — the notion that meditation and our appearance of calm are linked.
There is this image that meditators are calm in word, demeanor, action, presence and so forth. While a meditator might naturally have all of these qualities, or explore these qualities along the way, the explicit quality has little if anything to do with true meditation itself, unless of course a calm demeanor is an image a meditator might be playing into.
I think Hindu deity depictions are great. You got both gentle and terrifying versions of deities, signifying the full range of expressions of the divine. Though worshipers pray to both the violent and serene forms, many fail to make the connection that spiritual maturity involves far more than simply appearing calm, gentle and harmonious at all times.
Note: As before, there are multiple definitions of the word ‘calm’. I’m not referring to transcendent ‘inner calm’. Here, I’m referring to any explicit visible quality that one might observe and typically judge as calm. If you look at the picture of Kali Ma for instance, you see pure rage, though her inner light might be pure equanimity.
Dust Mapper
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Interpreting Pain for Growth
Pain can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. The standard interpretation of pain is that it interferes with our life flow, preventing us from experiencing the lifestyle we want. This immature interpretation of pain is called dukkha — suffering.
The mature interpretation of pain is that it represents nature communicating something to us — typically that our ego is interfering with the natural flow of life and it, not the pain itself, is the source of suffering. This realization is called panna — wisdom.
Pain thus has two possible interpretations — one is dukkha, one is panna. The more instances we realize dukkha and panna are linked, the more transcendent our life.
Now this is all nice and good, but in real-life, we might find it impossible to simply ‘reinterpret’ our way through suffering with wisdom — it’s far, far more involved. Why? Well, let’s try and delve into it a bit.
Pain, especially chronic pain, physical and psychological, is often searing, unrelenting, non-stop, suffering, 24 hours/day. It requires a corresponding mind of such unrelenting diligence as to transform our perception each and every moment. That is where meditation comes in — not just meditation a few minutes or hours a day here and there, but a 24-7 meditation process that covers each and every moment, and micro-moment, during the day, whether we’re awake, asleep, eating, drinking, walking, talking, crying, laughing, drinking, smoking, relaxing, or sitting.
Dust Mapper
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Constant and Neverending Maturity
There’s a famous self-help principle called ‘Constant and Neverending Improvement’. I think it’s a great ideal, though for the purpose of meditation, I like to tweak it and say ‘Constant and Neverending Maturity’ is what we’re looking for.
Ok, so what’s the difference? Well, maturity, ultimately, is the consummate fulfillment of our life experience. It involves seeing our actions and their reverberating consequences with clarity. I feel it is synonymous with wisdom.
As for improvement? Well, we can’t really count on it. In fact, we can probably count on a wide variety of factors worsening over age — our brain, our organs, our vision, our hearing, our stamina, our endurance, our strength — virtually all our faculties gradually start to decline after the age of 30. Sure it is admirable to want to maintain these capacities as long as possible, and if science brings us to the point where we start reversing these trends, all the better. Ultimately, however, the nature of our mind and body is that our faculties decline, not improve.
Maturity however doesn’t necessarily decline over time. We can continue to mature in our understanding of ourselves and the world till our last breath. The caveat is that maturity doesn’t necessarily develop. We’ve all met children more mature than adults. Maturity could develop over time, depending very much on the person, but there is no guarantee. If we are able to turn this quality into our goal and driving force, then we have a sustainable motive that we can ride for our entire life.
Dust Mapper
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Blanket Gratitude is Perverse
For years I’ve held blanket gratitude to be one of our highest virtues..a quality I felt linked to transcendence itself. But over the last year or two, this quality has changed its timbre for me.
The first question is what should we be grateful for? Are we grateful for positive experiences? If so, we’re denying the gift of negative experiences in helping us grow.
Or are we grateful for negative experiences? Then, we’re denying the gift of positive experiences in our life in helping us grow.
Are we grateful for all experience, negative or positive? If so, then the value of gratitude is rendered useless – there is no alternative.
A second note is that gratitude can distort our interpretation of an experience. Reframing abuse, trauma, calamity, and torture as somehow being blessings is perverse, needing no elaboration.. Sure we learn and grow tremendously from such experiences, and in many cases grow even stronger and more grounded than before. However, it reeks of perversion to be grateful for these types of experiences themselves.
As a courtesy and as an human, social emotion we feel, gratitude is incredible and essential. It’s still beautiful and feels nice to express and feel thanks. However, as a divine quality that highlights certain experiences to be grateful for, as well as perversely reframing others, blanket gratitude is not the answer.
Dust Mapper
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Only Correlation, No Causation
This realization simply flies in the face of pretty much all of mainstream science and popular spirituality as it exists at the time of this writing. However, it’s what I find to be the bedrock of truth after years of the deepest contemplation and meditation:
There is no causation, only correlation.
Nothing causes anything.
Rather than expound of this realization, and all the ramifications (which even I have barely scratched the surface of), I’m going to do something different – I’m going to just let this principle sit there, like a rock. I’ll get to it over the course of this blog, surely, but for now, I’m just stating this. Nothing more.
Well, I will do one thing – I’ll share Buddha’s Law of Dependent Coarising once again.
Dust Mapper
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Concept Disclaimer – Please Read