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Buddhism 3

Tripping with the Buddha

February 28, 2015 Mindbuddhism, psychedelics, tripping buddha, zen priest

Kokyo Henkel: My name is Kokyo. I’ve been a Zen Buddhist priest for 18 years in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and San Francisco Zen Center, mostly living in monasteries or similar environments over the course of that time. Around the same time as I was beginning Zen practice, some psychedelic experiences were really formative for me. I think it was a significant condition for giving my whole life over to Buddhist practice.

James (Jim) Fadiman: I’m Jim and in 1961, I started working with psychedelics with Richard Alpert, now Ram Dass, and then with the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park while I was earning a PhD in Psychology from Stanford. Until I first experienced the effects of psychedelics, I had no interest in Buddhist practice. However, explorers in the psychedelic realm, doing formal or informal research, became aware early on that there were experiences that apparently overlapped the core mystical experiences of many spiritual traditions. That is more true today. I recognized that my central concern is helping establish the proper place of altered states of consciousness in contemporary society.

Kokyo: Let me set the stage for the Buddhist perspective with one of the major issues that people have in Buddhism around this topic, which is what we call the ethical precepts that go all the way back to early Buddhism. They include not killing living beings, not taking what’s not given, not misusing sexuality, and not lying or speaking falsely. The fifth one, as originally worded in the Pali and the Sanskrit, is “not to consume alcoholic beverages that lead to heedlessness or carelessness.” I think it is interesting that the first four precepts are not explained. It’s obvious why these actions are harmful to others, so in the original language they are very short. But the fifth precept is longer since it includes the reason for it. We often interpret the fifth precept as not intoxicating body and mind, or not taking intoxicants, which at the time meant alcohol. The main issue here is: Does psychedelic use lead to harming others? Does it lead to carelessness and heedlessness? Do we start disrespecting others through having altered our mind in this way? So if we do use psychedelics, this would be the bottom line: Is it harmful to others or harmful to ourselves?

I think that’s a good context to look at the use of different substances. Do we think that it would be beneficial to our self and—from a bodhisattva perspective, being beneficial to our self is not the foremost thing—is it beneficial to our deeper unfolding of realization so that we can help others more fully?

Jim: The serious question seems to be: Does having psychedelic experiences improve or degrade my practice? This isn’t yet looking at the inner framework, or the life situation of the person. This question, “What does it do to my practice?” is still internal. I’d like to share some stories that have helped my understanding.

Near the end of his life Alan Watts was asked by a young man, “Is it worthwhile to take LSD?” After pondering a bit, Alan replied, “That’s like asking me if life is worthwhile.”

Next is a quote from the website DMT-Nexus:

“I can says this after a lifetime of meditating and only two trips on psychedelics, that they are not just a trip. The lasting effects are huge. The changes in me have been profound and seem substantially permanent. I agree; it is best to work on yourself using all available methods.” And finally this from a professor, speaking of a high dose experience: “After the collective purification ended, I was spun into the radiance of what, using Buddhist vocabulary, I perceived to be the domain of diamond luminosity. I’ve known light many times before, but this was an exceptionally pure light. Its clarity was so overwhelming, its energy so pure, that returning to it quickly became my deepest agenda for future sessions. After my first initiation into this reality, it took five sessions of intense purification and surrender before the doors were opened again and I was returned to the diamond light, now experience at a slightly deeper and even purer form.”

 

For me, these reports bring up very practical questions: Are psychedelics beneficial in the sense of moving you towards living a life more life a bodhisattva? Are they good for you right now?

trippingKokyo: One place we can go is to talk about what qualities of psychedelic experience could be in accord with Buddhism—because there are lots of things that happen in a psychedelic experience that have nothing to do with Buddhism.

A basic Buddhist teaching is that the root of all our problems is the belief that things are separate, outside us, and things substantially exist in and of themselves. So the profound insight that those are actually illusions can release one from all kinds of suffering, if it’s deeply realized and integrated into one’s life. But going beyond this, in Mahayana Buddhism the purpose of that very insight is not even for our own liberation from suffering; it’s so that we can really help others, and really meet others with complete openness and a sense of non-separation. That’s the bodhisattva path. So, there can be realization of nonduality, of non-separation, that people aren’t who we think they are. And to realize that people aren’t who we think they are is very beneficial to those people who we meet.

There may be—lastly, and maybe most importantly—persisting positive changes in attitude and behavior after a psychedelic experience is over: Changes in attitude towards oneself, toward others, towards life and towards spiritual experiences. Deep meditation practice and psychedelics can both bring up unconscious problems or issues, karmic patterns, and enable us to really look at them in a caring and therapeutic way. More sensitivity, tolerance, openness, and love of others, with lasting change, can occur through a psychedelic experience. Vocational commitment and appreciation of all life can be strengthened.

Audience: Either with psychedelics or practice, how do we get past the problem that, once we’ve seen something, we want to get back there, and we’re grasping, and we’re looking for it, and it’s hard to get there because it’s a state of innocence?

Kokyo: That’s a great question. We have a wonderful experience that we feel is really beneficial, and then we wonder how do we get back there? It’s a state of innocence, so any movement or wish to get back to that state of innocence is already not innocent. This is a major issue in Buddhist practice, maybe not talked about so much in psychedelic practice but I think should be. That’s what we call grasping or attachment, saying, “I gotta get that again.” That is the definition of discontent in Buddhism.

Jim: It’s not talked about in psychedelics enough. It is that wonderful paradox of, “I just did this and then this incredible wonderful thing happened. And, I want it again.” The question all too often is: “What drug should I take, and do you have any?” instead of the questions we are asking.

In an early chapter of my book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, I say that after you have a major experience, if within the first six weeks after it you feel you have the need to get back there, what you are doing is avoiding working with something in yourself that has come up. [sigh from the audience] The advice is wait another six weeks.

We know from the meditative traditions, if you get out of the way, the universe brightens. Here is what interests me: if “I,” Jim Fadiman, want that experience, and the “I” that wants it is going to be diminished, then if I get it, “I” can’t get it. The me that needs to get out of the way can never get it. But maybe, of course, if I had the right psychedelic [laughter] or the new ones maybe [laughter], it would be different. You see the problem.

Kokyo: A quote comes to mind from Dogen Zenji,

“Buddha-Dharma cannot be realized by a person . . . Only a Buddha can realize Buddha-Dharma.”

 

Jim: Let me ask a question: Whatever that highest and most amazing experience is, let’s call it unity, where there is no division between you and the universe, and that you understand that there’s no distinctions of time and space, and that while your personality and body are mortal, you’re not. How many people have actually experienced that? [looking around, many raised hands] So, here we are, everybody came back. Many of the people I have guided have this question when they come back. “Why did I come back into this body, with all of its neurotic problems? When I was out there, it was clear that I was not necessarily attached to it.”

Kokyo: In ultimate truth there is no division, just complete unity; there’s no self and no other. Emptiness. The conventional truth is where there is the appearance of self and other; those two truths are not separate: the conventional and the ultimate truth. Of course, most of us live in the conventional truth, the conventional world, almost all the time. We need to realize the ultimate truth, but as Nagarjuna, one of the great Indian ancestors, says, “in order to realize the ultimate truth you must be completely grounded in the conventional truth,” which means the precepts of ethical conduct, and so on. If we neglect how we are taking care of ourselves and other people, then it is actually impossible to realize the ultimate truth, at least in the Buddhist view. Now, in the psychedelic world, some of us might say, “Let’s bypass the conventional and go straight to the ultimate.” This can be a problem.

Audience: I wanted to ask about the practice. In your experience and the experience of people in the room, how can psychedelics be used as a practice, as an ongoing process of spiritual maturation?

Kokyo: Maybe part of that question is implying that there are two different types of psychedelic use, especially in relation to Buddhism. I think we could look at a psychedelic experience as an initial opening, like you have an insight into non-separation for example, and then you pick up a meditation practice or some other method to sustain and develop that insight. Another use would be to use psychedelics as an ongoing path of practice. One problem with an initial experience is that you “see” a certain realm of reality—you “see” it; just that very language implies there may be a subtle duality there, that you’re seeing “something.” It might be very, very subtle, but the emphasis is on seeing a realm. In my tradition of Soto Zen, Dogen Zenji criticized the term kensho, which means seeing the nature of reality, seeing nature, seeing buddhanature. This is usually said to be the goal in Rinzai Zen, seeing your nature. Dogen, with his emphasis on nonduality, was critical of that term because it’s putting something out there. Dogen is always talking about manifestation or becoming. So you might say that it is not a matter of seeing your true nature. It’s about becoming that, manifesting your true nature, which you might not even realize is happening as some objective thing. It’s easy to make the enlightenment into something and try to get it.

Jim: You mean it’s not a thing? It’s not a destination? It’s not a realization that colors the rest of your life? It’s not a sense of awareness that pervades more and more of your life? We’re asking what’s the purpose of psychedelic experience? When is it appropriate? When is the correct time in one’s life to do such and such? Those questions must occur in Buddhism. There is something about timing, what the Sufis call, “a sense of occasion” and what therapists call, “a teachable moment.” Kokyo, you have devoted your life not to just work on yourself, but to working on yourself in the service of others. Most people who talk psychedelics don’t say that. They do say that they are working on themselves, and want to make the world a better place. But there is still a lot of self that is primary, and that may be a difference.

Kokyo: Myron Stolaroff in his essay, “Are Psychedelics Useful in Buddhism?” said that another thing they both do is dissolve mindsets. Any kind of fixed mind set, cultural and societal assumptions—a lot of things we just take for granted—one can see through, with both of these technologies. And that’s part of the reason, some people have theorized, why most of these substances are illegal, because they threaten the very fabric of society as we know it.

Jim: Kathy Speeth, a gifted teacher, had a wonderful saying: “Enlightenment is always a crime.” What she was saying is that every culture wants to remain stable and wants its institutions to be supported and believed in. Enlightenment, from any tradition, cuts through that. What she was pointing out was that it is culturally correct to define enlightenment as a crime.

 

Tripping

Kokyo: To add to the discussion about ritual settings for psychedelics, and to bring Buddhism and psychedelics together, you might be surprised that there’s an experiment scheduled to begin this year by a friend of mine. Vanja Palmers is the senior dharma heir of Kobun Chino Otagawa Roshi, who taught at Santa Cruz Zen Center many years ago. Vanja is a longtime, very serious Zen practitioner and priest. He lives in Switzerland most of the time, and he got permission from the Swiss government to do an experiment during a sesshin. Sesshin means to collect the mind, to gather the mind. It’s the Zen name for an intensive meditation retreat. In a five-day sesshin, you’re meditating basically all day, completely in silence; from 4 or 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. there is sitting meditation, interspersed with walking meditation. The experiment will be that on the fourth day of sesshin, twenty people will take a medium does of psilocybin, and twenty won’t, in a double-blind experiment, and basically see what happens—particularly around mystical experience. Vanja is hand selecting the people, inviting particular longtime experienced meditators, who ideally also have some experience with psychedelics. He’s doing interviews with them beforehand and following up afterwards for at least six months, and maybe longer. In the “Good Friday Experiment” in the Christian tradition that I mentioned earlier, they followed up with the subjects six months later, to see how many of the changes had lasted. And they admitted that six months is not very long. So in this case they may check after six months, maybe longer, to interview people regarding the lasting effects of the experience.

This may be the furthest that this kind of experiment has gone, integrating serious intensive Buddhist meditation with psychedelics. Part of this particular experiment is a medium dose. People often have mystical nondual experiences with a high dose but without meditation. So part of the proposal of the experiment is to see if after four days of all-day meditation, can a similar thing happen with a smaller dose?

Audience: I have a question about Buddhism. Could you compare something like the jhana states with the psychedelic experience?

Kokyo: The jhanas are different levels of concentration, or states of absorption, particularly emphasized in Theravada Buddhism. They are deepening levels of withdrawal from the external world, or more simply, becoming more and more absorbed in nondual concentration. These jhanic states were taught by the Buddha, not as enlightenment itself, not as insight, but actually as concentration practices to develop a stable body and mind in order for insight to arrive. The jhanas are not the main point. They are part of the path, and many traditions don’t practice them methodically. The practice of withdrawal from the external sensory world is one way to develop these jhanas.

That’s often the case with psychedelics as well. Part of the setting, with psychedelics, is whether the eyes are opened or closed. With eyes closed, there can be an internal unity experience, a whole internal world going on, where one is not really relating to objects. With eyes open, one is still visually relating to the apparently external world. Then there’s the unity of self and sensory objects, an experience that happens in a so-called mystical experience. Jhana is maybe more related to the inner unity as opposed to the external unity.

Audience: Can you talk about the role of satsang [spiritual community] in Buddhism and how community can be used in the integration process in the psychedelic experience?

Kokyo: In Buddhism, sangha is the spiritual community and it’s very important, one of the refuges to rely on. We rely on the spiritual community to help sustain our practice and encourage us. So practice is not just an individual thing; we do it together. Especially in the Zen tradition, meditation practice and retreats are very much a group thing. We’re in silence, but in very close quarters, sitting right together, and it’s very interactive, with lots of rituals. We serve food to each other in very particular ways in the silence.

The spiritual community in Buddhism is very important, because part of what we’re realizing through practice is non-separation and intimacy. The realization is that we’re all completely intimate beyond our imagination. Psychedelic work tends to be more individual, even if people are tripping together. On the other hand, I have had experiences with psychedelics that were excruciatingly intimate; for example, at a Grateful Dead Concert. [laughter] We are one being! [laughter] That is one example of a communal ritual that has been commonly used in the tradition.

Jim: There are communities that help their members with integration. The one that is most developed is the Burner community. Burning Man is one of the closest replacements we have to Grateful Dead concerts, and it lasts for a week, not an evening. If you look at this stage of development, and compare it to Buddhism in the first 50 years after Buddha’s death, which is where we are with psychedelics in this country, we may be doing all right. Buddhists have had a lot more time to work out some of the problems.

Kokyo: May we all stay connected and realize our intimacy. As we often do at the end of dharma events, let’s dedicate the merit, any positive energy that was generated by this discussion, to the benefit of all beings, to the awakening and freedom of all beings.

I’d like to finish with a classic quote from Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of Soto Zen:

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly.

 

 

Source: tricycle.com

Why Leave Cyclic Existence – and Emptiness

February 20, 2015 Consciousnessbuddhism, buddhist, cyclic existence, ego, emptiness, karma, mahayana, meditating, path to enlightenment, sunyata, theravada, tibetan buddhism

Is suffering something to be avoided? Do we have to want to leave cyclic existence as Buddhists?

Most people aren’t really driven to leave cyclic existence. Traditionally most Buddhists were only invested in getting a good next rebirth – you know, by ethics and generosity. So if you can live with that option, you’re still a Buddhist in my book.

If my ‘self’ is empty, does that mean that helping people is useless too?

I can tell you that a proper understanding of emptiness doesn’t deny the conventional self. It merely addresses the story-telling self, the Ego if you will. That voice in you that interprets reality according to how your desires want it to be and sets itself up as an authority on your life – that self is definitely denied by Buddhism. That is: it isn’t what it seems. It doesn’t even have to be killed or anything. It really just doesn’t exist the way it appears. When you see that fact, realizing it deeply, the Ego loses much of it’s power.

The self that buys groceries? That self is totally fine. In fact, it exists the way it appears and it is necessary.

Don’t feel pressured to believe in something that is beyond you. Emptiness has always been an elite thing. Most Buddhists throughout time were illiterate farmers. They did not think about selflessness. They thought about how to get their rice to grow.

And hey – if it turns out you’re not really a Buddhist – as long as you make sure to guard your karma, you’re still fine from a Buddhist perspective.

shinto buddhismThe basic instruction in the Gelugpa interpretation of Emptiness (which includes 4 different interpretations in it’s turn) is that when you come upon an interpretation of emptiness that makes you doubt cause and effect, back-paddle. Cause and effect (which includes working for a better world) is more important than emptiness.You’re questioning your understanding of emptiness because you feel doing actual good in the world is more important. Which it is. It only interferes with selflessness if you start thinking ‘hey, look at me doing good’. However, if you notice that in yourself, don’t stop doing good. Just use it as a tool to remind yourself that you’re not quite a bodhisattva/arhat yet.

Emptiness is a very complicated topic. Do take other people’s interpretations of it with a grain of salt. I studied for over a decade and I still don’t have more than a grasp of the basics.

I grew up on a farm. My neighbors were great. They were real altruists and definitely selfless.

Selflessness in the ethical sense has very little to do with selflessness as in emptiness. It’s great when people are altruistic, of course. Great karma for them and great blessings for those around them. However, that doesn’t mean they have realized emptiness. So don’t get your terminology mixed up: people being altruistic is another topic than selflessness in the Buddhist philosophical sense.

In Mahayana Buddhist terms there are two things: (1) the method side of the path: things like ethics, kindness, generosity etc. That’s what those farmer neighbors of yours had and what you are probably doing fine on as well.

(2) The other side is the wisdom side – this is where Buddhist philosophy comes in. And on that side it really takes quite a lot of work. Not that living an ethical life isn’t work – but it’s a very different story. To realize emptiness fully is to have both an intellectual understanding AS WELL AS using that understanding to clean up your own personality. When that realization occurs, that is when the end of cyclic existence comes into view.

But why bother with wisdom at all?

buddha boy walkingFrom a traditional Buddhist perspective – Mahayana or Theravada – Without wisdom we’re stuck in cyclic existence. The Tibetan tradition would add that without wisdom kindness is often counter productive. These are two very different reasons. Many people are more ready for the second type than the first. Which is fine.
Why is wisdom important for me personally? Well, meditating on emptiness and applying it to my personality has helped me deal with a few self-delusions.

Kindness without wisdom leads to all kinds of problems. People giving unsolicited advice, for instance. Giving help short-term that only creates problems long-term. This is a very common mistake among amateur bodhisattvas (as one teacher of mine called us).

Buddhists I know often seem to use Buddhism to escape their situation. This denial of the inevitability and importance of suffering feels like a denial of the first noble truth of Buddhism. In my experience, allowing myself to suffer helps me learn. When I cover it up, I stagnate.

Buddha too wanted to escape suffering. So in itself that is not a problem. What happens is that when people use the dharma to escape suffering, they are just covering it up, instead of using the dharma to deal with it. The story is that the Buddha rooted it out completely. You can’t root something out without confronting it.

When thinking about the path to enlightenment, I get confused. It feels like there is this huge distance between my situation now and Awakening. I like the idea better that I already have everything it takes and need only see it.

You are coming up on one of the things that differ between various traditions within Buddhism. The ‘you need only see it’ approach is very much Zen (also Dzog Chen). The path approach is more classical, so most Tibetan traditions as well as Theravada are on that line. It is just a preference, not an essential difference. You would not deny, for instance, that you still have personal problems, I think. So there is a path in the sense that you’re not a saint just yet and yet you have the potential to become one (using very Western terminology for once).

So why should I want to leave cyclic existence anyhow? Do you honestly want to leave cyclic existence?

If you think the system through consistently, you will see that – once karma and rebirth are accepted – the urge to leave cyclic existence is really quite rational. If you take people in poverty, dealing with disease without proper healthcare, in war zones etc. into account, most of them would probably think it a nightmare to be asked to return again and again.

cosmic buddhaHowever, from the position of relative wealth still prevalent in the West, this urge is definitely not one that comes naturally. That is the Buddhist answer.

As one of the topics of meditation in the Lam Rim I have trained to try and get a feel for it. I can’t honestly say I have internalized it. However, I do see that if karma is true, and rebirth is true, then the chances of being reborn as favorably as I was this time aren’t that good. I may be building enough good karma to prevent an unfortunate rebirth, but I can’t be certain.

Why would you meditate on such a depressing topic?

Good question. Because if karma and rebirth are facts, then cyclic existence is a problem waiting to be solved. Just because my current life is too comfortable to make that too deeply felt, doesn’t make the problem less real.

However, as I started out saying: nothing is mandatory. Meditating on cyclic existence isn’t mandatory either. You are completely free not to be a Buddhist, and if you are, to be your kind of Buddhist.

 

 

Conclusion

The above is clearly only a summary of the doctrines of emptiness and cyclic existence. It may be enough to meditate on, but it certainly doesn’t replace the libraries of books written on each in Indian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism.

Tibetan Buddhism divides the philosophical interpretations of emptiness into four schools. However, each of these is separated into at least two others – with often diametrically opposed viewpoints. Japanese Buddhism made no attempt to simplify the topic into a mere four schools. Instead they have about a dozen main interpretations.

If you haven’t been confused by emptiness, you haven’t even begun to understand it.

 

Some emptiness terminology

Anatma (Sanskrit) = Anatta (Pali) = literally NO (an) SELF (atma)

The no-self doctrine. As you can see above, the translation of anatma with ‘selflessness’ ads to the confusion about the topic. I prefer the translation ‘no-self’. This doctrine is common to all types of Buddhists, though the precise interpretation varies.

Sunyata (Sanskrit) = Sunnata (Pali) = literally ZERO (sunya) NESS (ta – merely a suffix).

Emptiness. In Mahayana discourse ‘emptiness’ has come to refer to the lack of a ‘self of phenomena’. In other words: it refers to the fact that nothing exists the way it appears to us, not merely the Ego. 1) Phenomena don’t exist the way they appear to our senses and 2) we don’t really look with our senses all that clearly. Instead we see the world through the filter of our conditionings.

Ego

I am using the word Ego here the way it is used in common discourse. Don’t get Jung or Freud involved when thinking about Emptiness.

When we say ‘he has too much Ego’, we mean that he takes himself too seriously. The male Tibetan gurus who came to the West were quite confused by their, often female, students. Instead of having too much ego, they didn’t have enough: they lacked self-confidence despite all their accomplishments. In time the teachers found a way of fitting it in with their worldview as follows: the Ego of a lack of self-confidence.

I think this is quite useful. Lack of self-confidence is a sense of ‘poor me’. We tend to see it as humility, but the effect isn’t good. Lack of self-confidence makes us avoid trying things we may be able to do. Humility on the other hand can co-exist with achievement quite peacefully. It merely means that we don’t make our accomplishments an Ego-thing.

With this addition, Ego becomes something everybody has. Everybody has a story-line about themselves that is off from the reality. In my understanding, that is the ‘conceit of I’ that the realization of no-self will get rid of.

 

 

 

Author: Katinka Hesselink

Source: contemporarybuddhism.com

How Does an Awakened Person Perceive the World?

February 19, 2015 Soulbuddhism, buddhist, christianity, eden, emptiness, eternity, light ecstasy, mystic, sufism, taosim, Thomas Traherne, transcendence

“The eye is made to wonder, just as the flower is made to bloom.” ~ Claude Nurdisany

Obviously, that’s an important question for nondualists including Advaitins and Buddhists. ‘Waking up’ – attaining moksha or nirvana, experiencing satori, realizing your true nature, etc. – is the ultimate goal for both, and we naturally want to know what difference that makes to one’s perceptions. In what ways is the experience of someone who is Awake (the literal meaning of ‘a Buddha’) transformed?

Curiously, the best description I know is not from a tradition that we normally think of as nondualist. It’s in Centuries of Meditations, by a seventeenth-century English clergyman and poet named Thomas Traherne. His book was not published until 1908 but has since become widely regarded as a mystical masterpiece – and for good reason. The fact that Traherne was a Christian cleric, and apparently unaware of Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, Sufism, and so forth, is important because it reminds us yet again that no religious tradition has a monopoly on spiritual insight.

The passage below is one of the classic passages of world mysticism. It employs some old-fashioned language and requires some reflection in order to appreciate its deeper meaning. In particular, two words in the first sentence need some explaining. An outdated meaning of ‘corn’ is ‘grain’, which is why Traherne can say that the corn he saw was wheat. And ‘orient’ is used in its old meaning of ‘iridescent’ or ‘lustrous’, one of several references to the luminosity of the world he describes so wonderfully.

“The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die. But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared; which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it… So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.”

I first read this description many years ago, but reflecting on it from a nondualist perspective has unlocked treasures unappreciated earlier. I am eager to share it because it is so similar to basic Advaitic and Buddhist claims about the nature of reality, when we experience the world (including ourselves) as it really is. Here are the main aspects that stand out for me:

 

Light and ecstasy

The world that Traherne describes is incredibly beautiful and blissful. The trees ‘transported and ravished’ him, their unusual beauty made his heart leap ‘and almost mad with ecstasy.’ And he is specific about the nature of that loveliness, referring again and again to the luminosity of things: the corn is ‘orient,’ the young men ‘glittering,’ angels ‘sparkling,’ and playing children are ‘moving jewels.’

Mystics in many traditions have emphasized the world’s radiance: things that we usually perceive as solid objects now glow. A distinction that we normally take for granted, between physical objects and the light that they reflect, no longer applies. The difference between them is actually something that has been constructed: it is a product of our ways of thinking about the world, including the names that we assign to things. I overlook the radiance when I see that as simply ‘a cup.’ I don’t really pay attention to it: it’s just something I use to drink my tea. That is how we learn to grasp the world, yet that habitual way of perceiving can also be unlearned. When we see things as they are, without unconsciously distinguishing between objects and the light they reflect, the visible world is no longer a collection of fixed, material, self-existing things but appears as a confluence of interacting, luminous processes. The cup on the table next to my computer is not just a piece of molded baked clay that just happens to be there. Its being-there is an activity. And such processes are not self-sufficient: they manifest something, which Traherne later points to.

Time

Religions tend to be preoccupied with immortality – helping us qualify for an eternity in heaven with God, for example. Traherne describes a different type of ‘everlasting,’ which is not about surviving death and living forever into a never-ending future, but experiencing here-and-now in a different way: dwelling in what is sometimes called an eternal present. His most wondrous line begins:

“Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day…” The ‘immortal’ wheat he sees was never sown and will never be reaped, having stood there ‘from everlasting to everlasting.’ In that regard Traherne doesn’t distinguish between wheat, stones, trees, or humans: not only are they all radiant, each abides eternally insofar as it manifests the Light of the Day. In another Centuries of Meditations passage, he declares: “All time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath.”

Nondualist traditions such as Buddhism emphasize realizing the ‘deathless,’ and often mention ‘the unborn’ as well. What would it mean, to transcend life and death? Do such claims refer to an afterlife? Traherne’s account suggests a different perspective. It’s the nature of all living creatures that they are born at a certain time and sooner or later die at another time. Buddhism does not offer an escape from such impermanence. But if living beings, like all other things, are not self-existing – if they too are interdependent processes that manifest something – then perhaps they cannot die insofar as they were never really born in the first place.
Manifest what? According to the Buddhist tantric tradition, our minds have three inalienable and inseparable aspects: they are luminous, blissful, and ‘empty’ (shunya).

Emptiness

“Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared…” Traherne does not mention God, except at the very end when he refers to becoming a little child again so that he might enter the Kingdom of God. The only other place in this passage where he perhaps alludes to God, or to some other spiritual reality, is this ‘something infinite.’ We are reminded of a better-known aphorism by William Blake:

“If the doors of perception were cleans’d, everything would be seen as it really is, infinite.”

 

What is striking about this infinity for both Traherne and Blake is that it is not described as existing separately from perceived things. If things are really unborn – because they do not self-exist but are always just manifesting something else – then the infinity they manifest is not something experienced apart from the ‘empty’ things that manifest it. The Heart Sutra says it better: “Although form is not other than emptiness, it’s also true that emptiness not other than form.”
Mahayana Buddhist teachings sometimes talk about ‘the nonduality of emptiness (shunyata) and appearance.’ The distinction between the conventional or relative ‘lower’ truth, and the ultimate or absolute ‘higher truth,’ is the difference between how things usually appear to us, and what they really are. But the term ‘appearance’ can be misleading insofar as it seems to imply that the world we normally perceive is nothing more than a dream-like illusion.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche clarifies the Mahayana understanding of the relationship between manifestations (which we usually misperceive as separate, self-existing things) and that-which-they-manifest:

‘Appearance’ is a funny sort of word. It means some kind of surface thing, but with something else called ‘reality’ that is behind it. ‘Presence’ is a much better word. Something is presenting by itself, whose essence is emptiness. What appears is the phenomenal world, but it is empty because it has no real substance (in “Empty Splendor,” Buddhadharma Fall 2013).

Presence is perhaps the best English word to describe what Traherne is pointing at. What we normally perceive as solid objects, is the luminous presencing of something infinite — something not-finite, un-bounded – which is manifesting in these ways. This ‘empty’ infinite has no name and form: it is literally nothing in itself, or, better, a no-thing that therefore can presence as anything.

Transcendence

awakenedReligious dogma often postulates a cosmological dualism: the duality between this created world and God in heaven is a common example, and the Buddhist distinction between samsara (this world of suffering) and nirvana (the Buddhist goal) is another. Salvation usually means escaping from this vale of tears by attaining access to the ‘higher’ reality. Such an orientation inevitably involves some devaluation of this ‘lower’ world, and encourages us to turn away from its problems. The spiritual path is not about fixing this world but transcending it.

In contrast, Traherne does not allude to any other reality that transcends the magnificent world he describes. The implication of his account is that this is ultimate reality. It can still be understood as transcending the way we usually experience this world, but it is still this world. As Nagarjuna put it: “The koti of samsara is the koti of nirvana.” The place that we usually experience as a realm of suffering is not other than what we seek, nirvana itself – when we see this place, right here, as it really is. Traherne makes the same point by referring to Eden and Heaven: The city he tells us about, which usually appears to us so commonplace and unremarkable, now ‘seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven.’ There’s no need to aspire to anyplace else, for he doesn’t need anything more than what’s already here.

Nonduality

Traherne’s account builds upon itself, becoming more moving and profound, until it reaches a climax: “The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.” What are we to make of this mine-ness? Is his experience solipsistic?
It depends on what we mean by solipsism. It is usually defined as the belief that the only reality is the self, yet that claim can be understood in different ways. To insist that atman (the true self) is brahman (the ground of the cosmos), as Vedanta does, is to assert that the self is the only reality – but we need to realize what the true self really is.
Buddhism emphasizes that there is no self, but if the basic problem is a sense-of-separate-self confronting that which other than itself – inside vs. outside – there may be no difference at all between an experience of all-Self and the experience of no-self. What’s important in both cases in that the delusive duality between self and other has been dispelled. Nisargardatta has made this point better than anyone else: “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love. Between these two my life turns.”

The difference between these nondualist traditions and Traherne is that nondualists usually prefer to say that ‘the streets were me, the temple was me,’ etc. I am reminded of Zen master Dogen’s description of his own enlightenment experience: “I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.” It seems to me, however, that the difference between their accounts is less important than the similarities. Both have transcended the usual dualism between an alienated and anxious sense of self that is trapped within an external, objective world.
Yet Traherne says that he was ‘the only spectator and enjoyer of it.’ Doesn’t that still dualize between the seer and the seen? No: the mind that Dogen refers to still sees itself from a particular perspective, the presencing we call Dogen. It is the same with Traherne’s account: it is with him – or, better, as him – that the ‘empty,’ infinite Brahman/nondual mind awakens to its own true nature. For a while, anyway.

The Fall

Traherne’s exalted depiction concludes with a sudden deflation. The experience he has just described to us has been lost, for he ‘was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world.’ But there is hope: those devices he can ‘unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.’ The allusion is to Matthew 18, where Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This verse is normally understood to refer to where we might go after we die, but we do well to remember something else Jesus reputedly said: “Behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21; more familiar to most of us is the King James version: “The kingdom of God is within you.”). In the context of everything else that Traherne has just written, his desire to enter the Kingdom of God should surely be understood in the same way. The point is not to attain some otherworldly salvation, but to ‘return’ to the beautiful, luminous, blissful, eternal, nondual heavenly world he has so poetically depicted for us.

awakening‘Return’ is in scare-quotes because he has not really lost it. He cannot lose that world, because his experience was a glimpse into what it really is, whether we are aware of it or not. Having had a taste of it, Traherne knows what he has to do: to unlearn the ‘dirty devices of this world’ – the world, that is, as normally experienced by ‘corrupted’ people. It’s not obvious what he means by corruption and the world’s dirty devices. We may suppose that he is referring to immoral behavior, and that dirty devices are the ways people deceive and abuse each other. Yet corruption here might also include the types of delusion that the nondualist traditions also emphasize. Delusions collude with cravings to reify the sense of a self that feels separate from the world it is ‘in.’ Then I am motivated to pursue my own supposed self-interest indifferent to the well-being of others. Grasping at things in (what we understand to be) the world, we lose our birthright: the world that Traherne so lovingly portrays. But we can always return to it, because it is always there. It becomes here whenever we open up to it.

It is important to notice also what Traherne does not mention. Everything he describes is visual: what about the other senses – such as the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, and the laughter of the children? Were they also ‘mine’? We wonder if he heard them nondually, like T. S. Eliot’s ‘music heard so deeply/ That it is not heard at all, but you are the music/ While the music lasts.’ And we don’t read anything about how Traherne’s bodily awareness may have changed.
The biggest lack in Traherne’s account is perhaps something that he would not consider a shortcoming – and that some nondualist teachers would also not emphasize. In Buddhist terms, the ‘higher truth’ that he describes so well is sundered from the conventional ‘lower truth’ that we are more familiar with. Traherne’s world has no problems: each luminous thing is a way that ‘empty infinity’ presences, including the children playing in the street… but do they go to bed hungry at night? Although everything manifests eternity in the Light of the Day, in his day most of those particular manifestations died before their second birthday. Yes, the ‘higher truth’ is that they didn’t really die because they had never been born; from the perspective of the lower truth, however, there is birth, and death… and suffering. Traherne’s society was organized hierarchically, for the benefit of those at the top of the class pyramid. Patriarchy and slavery were the norm.

To dwell blissfully in the world that Traherne describes so well, while ignoring such problems, is ‘clinging to emptiness.’ It is important for us to experience the infinity he refers to, and not to rest there. We all start from an awareness of the ‘lower truth:’ the world as a collection of separate things, including me, anxious and insecure within it. We are eager to become enlightened and realize the true nature of the world, including ourselves: the empty infinity that presences as you and me and everything else. But it is just as important not to devalue those presences – in Buddhist terms, the forms whereby emptiness (shunyata) manifests. As William Blake also wrote, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” Empty infinity is in love with its presencing! Because they aren’t really separate from each other.

The spiritual challenge is to realize that these two truths are two sides of the same coin, and to live in the light of that realization.

 

 

Author: David Loy, scienceandnonduality.com

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