Entries from November 2006 ↓

First, I would like to clarify. Neither of these posts are attempts to intellectualize formlessness, though it probably can be seen this way. I should probably learn to channel my energy into poems to avoid this confusion. What I am really trying to do with a lot of my writing, is turn awareness toward recognition of the limitations of conceptual mind, and in so doing, provoke a glimpse into Tao. Arguably a pretentious undertaking, I admit. Some immortals are probably just laughing and pointing at me.

When I was very very young, I was obsessed with two questions. One of them was, what is nothing? I became so frustrated with the fact that anything I came up with was just a mental representation of nothing. The deepest black abyss, is … an attempt to visualize nothing as a deep black abyss. I would lie in bed at night trying to find something, anything to be nothing for me.

This is what I was trying to get at here in my first post. The density and subtlety of forms we witness is only relative. On the surface we can say something like, “Zen Buddhism is more formless than Tibetan Buddhism”. And it makes a certain sense in communication. Everyone knows what you mean. Tibetan Buddhism is filled with elaborate rituals and visualizations and meticulously defined stages of progress. Zen attempts to cut away the extraneous and approach awakening directly. But here is the whole point - attempting to cut away the extraneous and approach awakening directly is, itself, a form. It has a very specific structure that excludes other structures. In a way Zen is even a very culturally Japanese form.

Imagine manifest reality is a canvas. Anything whatsoever that you paint on this canvas is … paint on a canvas. No matter how you limit your palette, no matter how abstractly you paint, your painting is not ever closer or more accurate a representation of no-canvas than anything else. Actually, even this is not a reliable statement. We are back to the deep problem of visualizing nothing. Anything our mind conjures to represent nothing is something. The concept “nothing can be said about nothing” is something. It’s another mental form. It’s apparently a very seductive form too, at the root of modern philosophical disasters such as postmodernism. This is why I don’t entirely disagree with someone reading part one of this article, and answering “yes” to the first set of questions I proposed. “As above, so below”. I am just approaching this from a different side, most likely for my own benefit.

In the relative there does appear to be an unfolding to Enlightenment that seems to take a predictable sequence. Prior to awakening contemplatives tend to seek solitude and a simpler, meditative lifestyle. Many contemplatives don’t find a state of emptiness when say, dancing, so they seeks silence and zazen which it’s more easily sensed. This is great. It’s very natural and I am not suggesting this be changed. I am asking: is this feeling state of emptiness or awareness found in meditation really literally closer to Truth than the feeling of boredom we have at work, or hunger before dinner, or fear before a presentation? It’s a real question. I certainly don’t know the answer. But think about it. Is Enlightenment just a feeling we get in deep meditation? Is Truth just a temporary state we can drop into sometimes? Is Awakening separate from our moments of sleepiness, anger and sadness? Is our hope, perhaps secretly, that one day we will have practiced enough so that we get Enlightened and finally find ourselves always on the free-of-suffering side of the fence? What are the assumption here? That Truth is dualistic. That Tao is temporary and mysterious and difficult to access. That what you truly are is a separate little human and if you just say the right prayers and sit the right way and breathe properly and pay careful attention you will get enlightened? That there is a bigger better you that is awake but right now you are asleep in a dream and if you do these funny little dances within the dream you will eventually wake up?

I yearn to ask, what has no preference for the pleasures and sense of progress meditation gives over any other activity and its associated feelings? What has no preference even for whether you have a preference or no preference? What is Always Already Awake?

What if what you truly are, right now in this very second, is Awake Awareness itself. And it just so happens that Awareness is playfully, like an innocent child, watching a dream called “you as a separate self”. And there is nothing “you” can do about it. Awakeness is already 100% present in every moment whether “you” notice or not, and what “you” think “you” are doesn’t even get a choice nor have any power to control whether this dream called “you” notices the “big picture”, ever. Because really there is no you and there is no big picture. Big picture, little picture - black paint, white paint, red paint. It’s all just more pictures on the canvas. What gives birth to the canvas and to the paint itself remains unborn. Unfathomable. Nothingness. We watch what is born but cannot turn to see, in the way a human eye cannot turn and see the source of it’s own perceptions.

What I am pointing to here, in a way, is humility. I’m turning the arrogance of my own intellect on itself. I really don’t know anything. I don’t even know if I don’t know anything. In fact, often I think I know a lot of things. But my intelligence is really just a measure of how long I can go on about something before I hit I don’t know, which is the ground. I don’t know why I am a spiritual seeker. I have no clue what really compels me to seek this ineffable Tao that often seems to be the next step from my grasp, and in other moments is the very eyes I am looking with.

Is wind more formless than water or rock?

Is a blank sheet of paper more formless than a canvas with art on it?

Is the beautiful little blissful bindu you feel in your deepest meditation more formless than your loudest sneeze on a crowded subway?

Is any perception, no matter how subtle you imagine it to be, ultimately any more formless than a perception filled with bold color and feeling?

Relatively speaking, the concept of formless only makes sense contextually. Something can be said to lack form only in relation to something else that has particular qualities conceived of as representing form within that context. For example, improvisational dance might be said to lack form. But this only makes sense in relation to other forms of dance and only within a context where, perhaps, structured rules of dance is being used as a definition of form. In reality, improvisational dance is full of form. It has as much form as any other style of dance or anything for that matter, its forms are merely invented spontaneously as opposed to being derived from previously designed choreography.

Gradients of form and the relative absence of form can be conceptualized, but, again, the absence of form only makes sense contextually. An empty pocket does not have emptiness in it. It just lacks materials we expect to find there, ie: coins, wallet. An empty vase is not filled with nothingness. It’s filled with air, a very real substance in a gaseous state. It’s this less solid quality, relative to the material of the vase, which encourages us to say there is nothing in the vase. There is a conception here of solid as representing form. The vase is the solid, so it’s the form, air is gaseous, so it’s formless; it’s nothing. And deeper still, how often is it useful to discuss the air in a vase? How often do we succeed in focusing our eyes on air in a vase? These are also conceptions of form; that which is useful and capable of being distinguished. Oddly enough, perhaps it’s for these very reasons that air, or more accurately, the space within a container, is frequently used as a metaphor pointing to an insight of formlessness. Formlessness is not useful in any kind of conventional sense. Formlessness is impossible to separate and focus on, since anything we can differentiate and focus on is, by definition, form. So air makes a great metaphor. But air is not literally more formless than anything else. True formlessness, like emptiness, infinity, enlightenment, Tao and God are beyond, while still including, what our mind’s can conceive and grasp.

Yet how often are we under this misconception that we can somehow conceptually grasp formlessness and put it to work as a means of classification? How often do we classify the forms of spiritual traditions and their practices into a hierarchy of sophistication based on an imagined measure of so-called formlessness? Really, I am asking - how often do we do this, am I just speaking for my own silliness here? :)

Is sitting in the posture of zazen more formless than dancing?

Are spiritual traditions that directly discuss an idea of formlessness as a concept more formless than spiritual traditions that do not?

Are experiences from spiritual practices that explicitly attempt to experience formlessness actually more formless than spiritual experiences richer with imagery and meaning?

Is Zen Buddhism more formless than Christianity?

Is a stark room with no furniture, just a zafu and an austere monk closer to formlessness than a room filled with furniture, toys and a family playing?

Via Yoga of the Mahamudra

Mahamudra, literally “the great gesture,” is looked upon within the tantric traditions of Tibet and Northern India as the highest manifestation of consciousness known. In Yoga of the Mahamudra Will Johnson explains that the body is the vehicle that brings the ecstatic energies of God to earth. To arrive at the entrance to higher consciousness, one must first establish a great gesture of the body–physical balance–which is best expressed through spontaneous movement and dance. By utilizing the mystical yoga of balance one can create what he calls the embodied cross–an embodiment of free-flowing and unfettered life force–thereby opening the door to higher consciousness.

He presents three simple yogic principles from Tilopa’s “Song of Mahamudra.” The first principle, “do nothing with the body but relax,” forms the vertical axis of the embodied cross. It is an internal process that focuses on the upright structure of the body and opens up our relationship to the divine source. The second principle, “Let the mind cling to nothing,” allows the horizontal flow of energy to our mind. This horizontal axis represents our relationship to the world: what we see and hear, and what our mind does with the objects we perceive. The establishment of these vertical and horizontal flows of energy allows us to embody the third principle, to “become like a hollow bamboo.” In this way the body and mind become extraordinarily fluid, surrendering to the currents of the life forces that constantly flow through them like air through a flute. The author concludes with a number of somatic koans, ecstatic exercises that allow the direct experience of balance and provide the practitioner with a palpable embodied awareness of his or her fundamental union with the Divine.

Manifestation is a song sung mysteriously by no one.

Something like meditation often arises prior to what is called an enlightenment experience. Yet correlation is not causation. Perhaps meditation is merely a symptom of an inconceivably deeper process.

My sense is that it’s through Grace alone that real spiritual “progress” occurs.

God, The Tao, playfully moves, and on the surface of the lake we see and feel what only appears to be a self even, engaged in the very serious discipline of meditation and waking up.

Via Apophatic Mysticism

Honest selfishness

“Fully provided for by heaven and earth, by giving away to others, he only gets even more for himself.”
— Zhuang Zi.

Here there is not the idea of selflessness, putting others first, or sacrifice. There is no need for Zhuang Zi to kid himself and think he is not interested in pleasing himself. He allows his motivation to be transparent.

What Zhuang Zi has realized are the dynamics of qi. There is a reciprocal exchange and increase of qi when qi is concentrated and expressed outward. This is why Lao Zi says, “Don’t honor the sage.” The sage is no less selfish than you or me, she has simply learned a much more enlightened selfishness.