Standing As Awareness

by Greg Goode

  The seeing side, definitely. I feel that I’m looking at this marble. So how can I be over there inside the marble?

  OK, the seeing of the marble – think about this seeing. As the seeing arises, does the seeing have a location?

  No, it isn’t experienced as being in a location. I can say it must be in the brain, but that’s just an idea. The experience itself doesn’t have any location at all. Aha!

  That’s it! Nothing else has a location either. And that awareness in which these arise is your Self. It is the non-separate Self of all.

  And in the midst of this realization, there’s no desire to experience anything else. It doesn’t make sense that experience is anyplace or happening inside anyone.

  Wanting an Enlightenment Experience

  I read about the life-changing enlightenment events that people write about – and I haven’t had one. Does this mean I’m not “done” yet?

  What is it that you’d like to be “done” with? Do you want what you’re calling an enlightenment event because it might feel good, or to confirm something?

  Suffering. I don’t want to suffer any more.

  How do you visualize this non-suffering?

  Like not having any problems anymore.

  Life without death? Health without disease? They contain each other. You can’t hold a one-ended stick. The famous stories we read are not about life without birth, illness, death, or unpleasantness. How can there be life without its ups and downs? Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramakrishna, Suzuki Roshi were all struck with cancer. Many teachers and expositors of profound nondual teachings have had family problems, financial problems, health problems, emotional problems.

  OK, then what are they talking about? Nisargadatta had cancer, but he’s also famous for saying, “In my world, nothing goes wrong.” It makes me want the same thing.

  Good point! Depends upon where you, the interpreter, place the “I.” If you place the “I” at Nisargadatta, then there was a body, with cancer and pain. If Nisargadatta (or any person) is the center of that world, then there is a lot wrong in it. But if you place the “I” at That which witnesses what occurs, then there is nothing wrong. Nothing happening at all. And nothing missing. It isn’t personal. This “I” is the being of Nisargadatta, you, me, all else. This is where the “I” has always been. It is pure and untouched, and always available.

  Is there any way I can really see or know this “I”?

  You can’t see it – it sees you. Awareness sees you. It is happening now, and has always been the case. Just like you see your arm, Awareness sees the body/mind you take as yourself. Just like your own seeming passage from waking to deep sleep and back to waking. In deep sleep, there is no evidence that the world or the body is present. That is, the body can’t be said to be there. Yet there’s no sense that “you” are ever missing. Your true “I” does not depend on phenomenal activity to be present. Actually, your true I is not really “present” as in the opposite of “absent.” Rather, it is Presence itself.

  But some people seem to know this, and others don’t.

  There’s no need for this to be known by a person. There is actually no possibility that this can be comprehended or held by a person. Personal grokking is just another comingand-going experience, like a mood or a runny nose.

  I think I understand that, but it doesn’t make the desire to know go away...

  Yes, this inquiry is about knowing. It’s not about feeling or possessing. It’s not about having only certain feelings or desires and not others. If you seek this intimate knowledge, then do what so many others have done – inquire deeply into the supposed makeup of a person. Inquire into the makeup of life, death, into that which you consider to be yourself. Inquire into that which would supposedly benefit by “knowing.” Be as intensely motivated to look into these matters as you would be to gasp for air after being held under water. Look everywhere. Don’t stop if it gets rough. The search is sweet, but it is not always comfortable or reassuring to the assembly labeled as the person. Be unafraid of what might come up.

  And then what?

  If this is truly what you want, then you will find it. Two ironies. One, when it “happens,” you’ll see that it really didn’t happen. Two, during this inquiry, you weren’t looking for “enlightenment”!

  I hear what you are saying, but I must admit, I really do feel like I would like to have the same kind of experience I read about others having.

  I understand this. Many people feel this way – even those who have been asked to teach by their teachers. One teacher asked my advice on this. He really wanted to have this kind of transcendent mountaintop experience, but he never did. The best he was able to come up with was this – he looked at the history of his seeking. He counted up the peak experiences he had, and they came to about 12 or 13. He wondered, if he added those together, could they equal one large experience? He had internalized a notion that to be a well-known teacher you had to have a dramatic enlightenment story in your toolbox.

  Funny, he wasn’t interested at all in Buddhism. If he had been, he would have felt better to hear about Shunryu Suzuki, one of the most famous Zen teachers in the English-speaking world. Huston Smith, the famous religious studies scholar, once asked Shunryu Suzuki why satori (i.e., enlightenment experience) didn’t figure in Suzuki’s famous book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Suzuki’s wife replied with a smile, “It’s because he hasn’t had it.”

  These experiences sometimes called “enlightenment events” are ironic. They never come when you look for them. If they do come, they come while you are looking in another direction entirely. They usually disappear before you get the chance to talk about them! They never last. And nothing is made true or authentic by these experiences. And looking for these experiences actually serves to push them away.

  Looking for enlightenment itself is like looking for the golden egg. Instead, look for the goose.

  In this case, what is the goose?

  The truth of yourself. Once you find it, you won’t think of enlightenment in the same way. It won’t seem like a special power, a state of being, or a set of qualities.

  Seeking special effects will inevitably sidetrack you. The various nondual teachings all agree that these experiences are beside the point. You can have blisses and buzzes without understanding, and vice versa.

  Identifying “enlightenment” with a feeling or experience coopts the notion into serving a personal agenda. The same for “being done.” But in any of the great descriptions of enlightenment, your freedom is never a personal or political freedom. It’s not about being a person free of needs. A person needs air and nutrition and love.

  You can see these things poetically, metaphorically. You can see these everyday needs as clues to your nature, as met by your nature as awareness. You are not a person, but the awareness in which the person arises. Awareness doesn’t feel these needs because it is not a person. An organism has a need for air, but awareness doesn’t have this need – you as awareness are like air itself, totally clear and uninterrupted, without borders. An organism has a need for nutrition, but awareness doesn’t have this need – you as awareness are the sustenance of all that appears. A person has the need for love, but awareness doesn’t have this need – you as awareness are like love itself, totally open and generous, never saying “no” to anything that arises. There is no requirement to “possess” this in any way. The person is actually “possessed” by this openness, this sustenance and this generosity. No experience proves or establishes this. No experience can overturn it.

  Why Wasn’t I Enlightened at Satsang?

  I have been attending satsangs for years. I’ve gotten very close to enlightenment. In fact a few times the teacher told me I was actually There. But then it seemed to go away. This has happened to lots of others too. Why?

  Many satsang attendees report this. It seems like this experience came, then went, correct?

  Yes!

  This coming and going is called the �
��fl ip-flop.” It’s one of the main dynamics at most satsangs, as well as their main problem. It is the onset of a very transcendent experience, followed by its departure.

  Yes, that’s right.

  Now at satsang, didn’t the teacher tell you that it is not about having an experience?

  Yes. They all say that.

  And yet you are wondering about the onset and disappearance of an experience.

  Uh, I guess so. (smiling sheepishly) I think it is because at those times, I am in contact with my true nature.

  And at other times, you are not, correct?

  Yes, that’s right. It is blocked.

  This is due to some of the satsang teachings themselves. One well-known teaching is that at some moments there is a direct, experiential, knowing contact with your nature, while at most other times this knowledge is veiled or confused by story, belief, doubt, fear, anger or scattered-mindedness. According to the “veil” teaching, there are certain moments at satsang where the student has heart-opening, oceanic, loving, emotionally blissful experiences. It is taught that during these moments, the normally occluding veils have dropped away, giving the student a direct experience of their true nature. Sometimes it’s called a “free sample.”

  Not all satsangs teach this. It’s less common than it used to be, as some of the teachers seem to have recognized problems with it. But the veil teaching sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

  Yes, this sounds pretty familiar. And I must say, it sounds pretty good, too. Are you saying that something is wrong with it?

  It tends to identify the timeless truth of your nature with a coming-and-going experience. And it is based on the false assumption that there are times in which you are not in direct contact with your nature. It creates the expectation that to be enlightened, to be free, one must perpetually have the same blissful, expanded experiences. Because all experiences come and go, this impossible expectation leads to repeated frustration and actually borders on nihilism.

  The teaching that a veil can come between you and your nature, and that you peek through the veil at those times when you feel open confuses a particular feeling of openness with the openness from which feelings arise. You are always in direct contact with your nature as awareness. Enlightenment does not reside in a feeling; it is much vaster, sweeter and more effortless than this.

  There is deep irony in this. In the satsang teachings, these oceanic states are usually not seen as experiences, since satsang is primarily interested in coarser and more tangible experiences such as emotions. But since they come and go, they are experiences. So when the satsang teaching fails to see these more subtle happenings as experiences, it privileges them by converting them into impossible experiential goals. This makes the goal just another phenomenal experience. A subtle one, but an experience all the same. What the nondual teachings speak about is more subtle and infinitely more pervasive than this.

  Do you mean I am in contact with my nature even when I have doubts and confusion?

  Yes. Doubts are simply passing objects, just like bubbles of bliss. They all come and go. Their arising and passing are directly noted by awareness – there is never a veil or covering.

  You as awareness certify this at each moment.

  Is there a way for me to be as sure of this as you seem to be?

  Look very deeply. The Awareness that I’m speaking of isn’t the activity of the brain. It is That to which appearances appear. Can you find a time when awareness is out of touch? When awareness is not present? Even in deep sleep, you are there as awareness, registering the fact that there are no objects at the time. Awareness is present – you are presence – in the midst of objects, in the absence of objects, and beyond all objects. Try to find a time when there is an object arising, pain, pleasure, bliss, anger, depression – when awareness is lacking.

  Hmmm. So how does this mistake actually get made in satsang?

  It often goes like this – it actually emerges in the teacher’s performative cues as well as in the language. Let’s try something, and I’ll demonstrate what I mean.

  OK.

  So now close your eyes. (speaking very slowly) You may have questions or anxieties about your state. (pause) You may have yearnings to have a feeling of knowingness, a sense of security about yourself. Let these questions and yearnings arise in this very moment. (pause) Let them come up and be seen in the full light of your awareness. Don’t solicit them, and don’t chase them away. Rest in openness... (pause, about half a minute goes by)...

  Mmmm...

  Where are the questions and yearnings now?

  There are not there.

  That’s it! Now open your eyes.

  But I know the questions and yearning will come back.

  Exactly, and what we just saw in our mini satsang emulation is just how the confusion arises. This very same procedure has been used in satsangs dozens of times. You attend the meeting with certain experiences you wish to transcend, including your doubts and questions. You are encouraged not to push these experiences away, but to open to them. A gentle frame of mind ensues, in which the undesirable experiences are not present. The teacher points to this moment by saying, “That’s it!” or “You are there!” She may add that at this moment you are directly in touch with your true nature, without veils or coverings of any sort.

  OK, so what’s wrong with that?

  Through the teacher’s endorsement of this one moment, you are led to believe that the experience during this moment has a special, perhaps enlightened status. You end up chasing more moments like it, motivated by the impossible hope that they last forever. Because of the teacher’s congratulatory remarks, you become dissatisfied with any other experiences.

  But it wasn’t an experience, it was a moment of direct seeing, wasn’t it?

  No more direct than barking your shin on the coffee table. It was a particular pleasant experience in which doubt wasn’t present, but a feeling of spaciousness was. In satsang, the feeling of spaciousness tends to be misunderstood as the spaciousness which gives rise to all thoughts and feelings. So when the feeling of spaciousness is not present, you come to judge yourself as being out of touch with yourself. But you as pure spaciousness are never out of touch with anything. Passing feelings are just objects. You experienced the object of a phenomenal pleasantness which consisted of the lack of doubt and yearning. And the absence of one object is merely the presence of another object. Absences are a bit more subtle, so might not be treated as experiences in the same way as the emotional experiences favored in satsang. The very subtlety of the expanded feeling is responsible for its mis-characterization and the demand that it be present 100percent of the time.

  I see now...

  This misunderstanding is endemic to most of the satsangs I have seen or heard about. With teaching like this, the flip-flop is inevitable. No wonder you feel an intense desire to replicate those “That’s it!” moments.

  So what should the teacher do? How could he or she teach this kind of thing?

  By reducing the felt distinction between moments, not increasing it.

  How?

  By piercing the myth of filtered access to your nature. This dualistic model is an introductory teaching metaphor, but at a certain point it was taken literally and became another piece of baggage. You can see through this myth by being true to your experience and checking for evidence of anything that blocks awareness. Can you find any such thing? And if you find something, consider this – its very ability to be “found” certifies it as not being apart from awareness. So just where is the block? Comfort is not the criterion of being in touch with awareness, and discomfort is not the criterion of being out of touch with awareness. On the contrary, any thought or feeling is brilliantly lit up by awareness, as awareness.

  You will come to see that every moment is exactly like your “That’s it!” moment.

  You will find that you are always thoughtless just like in the satsang moments. This is because your nature is that space within which th
ought arises. Thought is free to arise, or not. And you are always in direct contact with awareness, because there is nowhere else to go, and nothing else available that can serve as a veil between you and awareness. There is never anywhere else for you to be. You are in unbroken contact with awareness because you are awareness. “You” and “awareness” – two words for the same thing.

  And what is enlightenment?

  The unshakeable knowledge that your nature as awareness has never included separation. Enlightenment is when the difference between enlightenment and unenlightenment drops away.

  The Social Construction of Enlightenment

  I must admit, when I think of being enlightened, I don’t imagine myself at work on the midnight shift at the local 7-11!