Awareness is love. A love that is not possessed by an owner that stands autonomous and alone. Rather, love is a flow, a dance with no centre or periphery, yet is personally and particularly responsive in the non-prejudicial space of shared awareness. When the owner and the owned collapse into the ground of awareness, there opens up the possibility of true connection. For this is a ground all individual persons share, regardless of the content and trajectory of lived experience. This sharing, mingling, connecting on the ground is love.
Personal Love?
Love is often regarded as possible only between persons, not impersonal objects. Persons are generally conceived as autonomous beings with unique personal attributes and histories that set one substantially apart from another. There is thus no love to speak of between impersonal things or events. Love is only possible between substantially existing, autonomous persons. Is this assumption correct? Is it possible for love to exist between persons but of a different kind - the non-substantial, non-autonomous kind?
When I speak of awareness as love, I am speaking precisely of this kind of love. This is love between non-substantial, contingent, non-autonomous persons who are real but merely in a relative sense. On a relative level where conventional language operates, a person does indeed exist. Such a person exists but never apart from context or independent of conceptual imputation. For such a person, his/her context would comprise material, spatial, temporal, cultural, linguistic, social, historical, and ecological environments that condition the person. Furthermore, this person cannot exist divorced from the conceptual and linguistic imputation applied to the totality of conditioned psychophysical processes that together constitute the basis of that person. Concept and name co-create the identity of the person on the basis of the totality of conditioned psychophysical processes in context. In other words, the person is a contingently and nominally existing one. This is true on the level of relativity and conventionality. Ultimately though, the person cannot exist in any inherent or autonomous way. The person's relative identity concocted by language, conception, and a basis of conditioned psychophysical processes embedded in context is therefore ultimately empty of any inherency and isolated autonomy. It is precisely because a person’s identity is constructed from multiple factors (especially the factor of imputation by language and conception) that it is ultimately devoid of substantial, autonomous, inherent essence. Rather the person's ultimate identity is spontaneously free from or empty of any inherent essence. The person is primordially pure, not in a moral but ontological sense—that is, the person is unstained by any trace of inherent existence from the primal beginning. In a nutshell, therefore, the person is ultimately and primordially empty of inherency while relatively and temporally distinct as a nominally-designated person.
Between such ultimately empty and relatively unique persons, there can be possibility of genuine contact and connection. Such contact and connection is not barred by the walls of substantial difference or inherent separation. Rather, there can be mutual openness and permeability between contingent persons in resonance with one another. Metaphorically put, we can see persons as distinctive wave-like streams that can interact freely and resonate deeply one with another. Such resonance beyond borders is love.
Triune Love Beyond Measure
In the dissolution of inherent subject and object into the ocean of blissful, empty, luminous, open awareness - a microcosmic reflection of the great "I am" - there comes the actuality of non-egocentric, self-emptying, other-filling love unbound by the constricted calculus of self and self-based agendas. In the absence of grasping at inherent self and other, real contact between two persons is possible. On the contrary, an inherent self and inherent other will have no basis for genuine contact given the impermeability of two concrete isolated identities. Hence, love is only possible in this ground of empty open awareness where nominally real persons flow and resonate with one another unobstructedly. In a sense, this is the love that is shared between the three Persons of the Godhead - Father, Son, and Spirit. In this communion dance of love in the Triune, there is no inherent One to defend or inherent Other to subordinate under - only a free unimpeded flow of outpouring energy that is giving, caring, sharing, participating, and accommodating without measure. For there to be such outpouring love, no frozen isolates of consciousness is required, only nominal Father-Son-Spirit deriving the identity of One from the Other in a beginningless and unending spiral of love. Even so, such description fails in the final analysis to capture all there is to know of the Triune Mystery who is irrevocably and ontologically Other than creation.
As fallen humanity, we are able to experience this relational participation and intimacy of the Triune only because of Jesus who lived and died for us. By assuming and redeeming our fallen human nature in His very nature, Christ drew us into the very love that He embodied so perfectly. By absorbing upon Himself all the judicial punishment of Father that we deserve, Christ Himself became the Door through which we can enter into this amazing immaculate love of the Trinity. Awakened to this incomparable divine love; tasting and relishing this supreme sweetness and delight; and being filled to the brim and beyond into overflowing, we can be living vessels of the same love pouring out to all. We can love one another but not with a self-generated love we each possess. Rather, we love from the very ultimate ground of Being in the Triune Life who is profoundly personal, inexhaustibly full, and inconceivably empty all at once. Awareness is. Love is. Christ is. In Christ we live and love and share our being.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
On Emptiness
Emptiness is not mere nothingness or voidness or non-existence. Saying so is a common and pervasive misunderstanding especially among non-Buddhists. It can become a straw-man argument used by those seeking to discredit Buddhism as pessimistic or nihilistic. Emptiness is a teaching, a pedagogy that serves as strong medicine for a serious ailment of the mind. This ailment is perhaps the single most important cause of suffering in our lives - the ailment of misapprehension of and mis-response to reality.
Reality Missed
Reality that is by nature inconstant and stressful is misapprehended as worthy of being grasped and clung onto. Reality that is misapprehended creates mis-response on our part. We mis-respond by reactivity centred around a sense of ownership and independent agency. Reactivity in terms of our emotions and intentions forms and further solidifies this sense of independent ownership and agency. We can all identify our sense of 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine.' This instinctive sense presupposes a truly existing subjective self and truly existing objective things that belong or not belong to the self. We, perceived as true centres of self and experience, either desire or reject the things we like or dislike. As we do so, the seemingly valid sense of a real concrete self bifurcated against a real concrete world of things is intensified. Experience becomes dense and thick, laced with reactivity and prone to affliction.
This manner of misapprehension and reactivity exactly opposes the manner of experiencing we call "emptiness." Here, when we say "emptiness," we are not so much describing the nature of reality per se as we are drawing out the act of wise responding to experience. In other words, "emptiness" is a way of relating to oneself and the world experientially with non-clinging, spaciousness and lightness, and open contact with the present. Technically, we say that emptiness is not so much ontology (or how things exist truly) as it is epistemology (a way of knowing) and phenomenology (a way of experiencing). With emptiness as mode of experiencing ourselves and the world, we realize the direct and immediate freedom of non-clinging.
The autonomous self and its separate world of objects are but precipitations out of the open field of awareness, our primordial nature. This experience of emptiness as non-clinging foreshadows the dissolution of the precipitated self and object of experience. By no longer being engrossed in story-making of self and world, but by seeing through the empty concocted nature of experiential duality, we begin to dwell in the non-clinging space of awareness. Emptiness, as insight into the concocted nature of dualistic experience is indivisible from awareness, bliss and luminosity seamlessly united.
Reality Realized
Like undivided awareness-bliss-luminosity, emptiness as non-clinging and open responsiveness without affliction is intrinsic to our fundamental nature. Yet, the fall of humanity in Adam wrecked this intrinsic spontaneity of freedom in spirit. It took the incarnation and atonement of the One who was enfleshed in grace and truth to radically and subversively recreate this freedom for us. On our own, we could never have attained this freedom by our striving and effort. We may think we could but in reality we could not. This is because the root of our self-grasping and pride opted for inherent autonomy over primordial relational dependence on God. As a result, original harmony and goodness was shattered into pieces and our life-giving connection to the uncreated ocean of awareness, bliss, luminosity and emptiness that is of God was irreparably severed. From that moment on, the chaotic torrents of brokenness and sin continued to multiply and grow unabated.
Until Jesus. He came into our world; He assumed our human nature so we could participate in His divine nature. He bore the penalty for our sinful rebellion. He made a way when there was no way. Now we are invited to enter the unimpeded sky of awareness, bliss, luminosity and emptiness beyond compare in and through the Son who is Christ. The incarnation of Christ occurred at a specific point in historical time. But that did not mean the restorative and saving effects of the incarnation were limited to and accessible by humanity only after that point in time. Rather, the eternal purpose of God could be effected in a way that transcended historical time though operating within it. Thus, with respect to the historical appearance of Christ, potentials for humanity coming to realization of emptiness existed albeit in a different manner pre- and post-incarnation. But for those who received and believed into the Christ who came, the gift of regeneration of spirit was actualized. By grace alone, our spirit regenerated by the Spirit could respond with faith in Christ as our Messiah and Redeemer. Then, in our new life of faith in the Spirit, the superlative mind of Christ that freely responds to all in non-clinging emptiness is ours to partake and enjoy. Emptiness as teaching and pedagogy reaches its climactic fulfilment. In Christ alone.
Reality Missed
Reality that is by nature inconstant and stressful is misapprehended as worthy of being grasped and clung onto. Reality that is misapprehended creates mis-response on our part. We mis-respond by reactivity centred around a sense of ownership and independent agency. Reactivity in terms of our emotions and intentions forms and further solidifies this sense of independent ownership and agency. We can all identify our sense of 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine.' This instinctive sense presupposes a truly existing subjective self and truly existing objective things that belong or not belong to the self. We, perceived as true centres of self and experience, either desire or reject the things we like or dislike. As we do so, the seemingly valid sense of a real concrete self bifurcated against a real concrete world of things is intensified. Experience becomes dense and thick, laced with reactivity and prone to affliction.
This manner of misapprehension and reactivity exactly opposes the manner of experiencing we call "emptiness." Here, when we say "emptiness," we are not so much describing the nature of reality per se as we are drawing out the act of wise responding to experience. In other words, "emptiness" is a way of relating to oneself and the world experientially with non-clinging, spaciousness and lightness, and open contact with the present. Technically, we say that emptiness is not so much ontology (or how things exist truly) as it is epistemology (a way of knowing) and phenomenology (a way of experiencing). With emptiness as mode of experiencing ourselves and the world, we realize the direct and immediate freedom of non-clinging.
The autonomous self and its separate world of objects are but precipitations out of the open field of awareness, our primordial nature. This experience of emptiness as non-clinging foreshadows the dissolution of the precipitated self and object of experience. By no longer being engrossed in story-making of self and world, but by seeing through the empty concocted nature of experiential duality, we begin to dwell in the non-clinging space of awareness. Emptiness, as insight into the concocted nature of dualistic experience is indivisible from awareness, bliss and luminosity seamlessly united.
Reality Realized
Like undivided awareness-bliss-luminosity, emptiness as non-clinging and open responsiveness without affliction is intrinsic to our fundamental nature. Yet, the fall of humanity in Adam wrecked this intrinsic spontaneity of freedom in spirit. It took the incarnation and atonement of the One who was enfleshed in grace and truth to radically and subversively recreate this freedom for us. On our own, we could never have attained this freedom by our striving and effort. We may think we could but in reality we could not. This is because the root of our self-grasping and pride opted for inherent autonomy over primordial relational dependence on God. As a result, original harmony and goodness was shattered into pieces and our life-giving connection to the uncreated ocean of awareness, bliss, luminosity and emptiness that is of God was irreparably severed. From that moment on, the chaotic torrents of brokenness and sin continued to multiply and grow unabated.
Until Jesus. He came into our world; He assumed our human nature so we could participate in His divine nature. He bore the penalty for our sinful rebellion. He made a way when there was no way. Now we are invited to enter the unimpeded sky of awareness, bliss, luminosity and emptiness beyond compare in and through the Son who is Christ. The incarnation of Christ occurred at a specific point in historical time. But that did not mean the restorative and saving effects of the incarnation were limited to and accessible by humanity only after that point in time. Rather, the eternal purpose of God could be effected in a way that transcended historical time though operating within it. Thus, with respect to the historical appearance of Christ, potentials for humanity coming to realization of emptiness existed albeit in a different manner pre- and post-incarnation. But for those who received and believed into the Christ who came, the gift of regeneration of spirit was actualized. By grace alone, our spirit regenerated by the Spirit could respond with faith in Christ as our Messiah and Redeemer. Then, in our new life of faith in the Spirit, the superlative mind of Christ that freely responds to all in non-clinging emptiness is ours to partake and enjoy. Emptiness as teaching and pedagogy reaches its climactic fulfilment. In Christ alone.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
On Luminosity
Preamble
Ajahn Thanissaro is a Buddhist monk and teacher in the Thai forest meditation tradition. In his talk on levels of the breath, he made several insightful remarks that I would like to share here (in paraphrase) together with my comments.
Thanissaro speaks about how we all bring our stories into meditation. Thanissaro says that the Buddha has done that too on his night of awakening - he brings all his narratives of past pleasures, pain and suffering, physical appearance and food (physical and psychological) to his meditation. The Buddha deals with his story in two ways: generalizing and deconstructing. He generalizes by seeing how his story is not unique in its process though its content might be. He sees how all beings go through the same process of pleasure and pain, appearance and food, in much the same way as he did. Doing this reduces his enmeshment in his own suffering. It creates space and lessens suffering. He then brings his attention to the present, seeing how story-making constructs suffering right now. He sees how thoughts and evaluations, feelings, perceptions and intentions, appearances and food act to create a sense of self - the process of 'I'-making, 'my'-making, and 'mine'-making. Seeing thus enables deconstructing of the story. Deconstructing enables letting go of the constructed and constricted self, freeing consciousness from the precipitation of suffering rooted in self.
Seeing clearly the workings of the breath takes us away from fixation on stories to a more stable place for consciousness to dwell - the reality of this moment, the present. Breath itself is a bodily fabrication. Thoughts and evaluations are verbal fabrications. Feelings, perceptions and intentionality are mental fabrications. Fabrications (sankhara) are what are made up, concocted, composed, and constructed in the flow of experience. They are precipitations of consciousness, so to speak. But we can make skillful use of the bodily fabrication of breath to allow the mind to dwell in a more stable place. As we attend more and more to the breath, taking genuine interest in the breath, we can see how breath operates on different levels.
First, there is the coarse movement of in- and out-breath, with all their associated sensations in the body. Second, there is the subtler movement of breath throughout the whole body, through the nerves and vessels and intensified in various nodes of the experienced body. Third, there is the still breath, where coarse and subtle movements cease and yet a still vibrancy remains. We need to give ourselves the permission, time and space to learn more about the breath, to make friends with the breath, to experiment and improvise on the breath. This allows us to come to intimate knowledge of how the way we breathe correlates to how we feel, experience ourselves and the world, and how we create and heighten or de-escalate and cease suffering in our lives.
Gift of Uncreated Luminosity
At the crux of these creative insights is the fact of clear seeing. Clear seeing means there is unobscured observing and realizing, in this case of the truths of our experience. What makes this clear seeing possible? How is it possible for us to know, to be aware of the workings of the breath and experience? Yes, awareness is the essence of our identity as sentient creatures. But apart from awareness, apart from our knowing capacity that is consciousness itself, there is also luminosity. Luminosity is the bare fact of appearance of everything that is experienced or experiencable. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, feeling, thoughts, evaluations, intentions - all fabrications - appear as experienced or experiencable data of consciousness. Like awareness that sees and knows its data, luminosity (of the data) makes it possible for these fabrications to appear and be seen and known. Luminosity is indivisible from awareness.
Awareness itself is luminous, but not in the sense of being knowable by something else. Rather, awareness is luminous by virtue of it being self-luminous. Awareness cannot be known as an object of consciousness, but is itself the source of light that emanates and knows. The luminosity of awareness makes all appearances as experiencable data possible. Luminous awareness, while never known, is ever-knowing and ever-present. We do not achieve luminous awareness. We are luminous awareness. This we know by being who we are, not by attaining who we are not.
Resting and abiding in the luminosity of awareness (that is not knowable as an object) is moving beyond place of mind to ground of mind. Like awareness that is never stained by whatever appears within it, luminosity of all that appears is never differentiated into good or bad, pure or impure, and is not born nor does it cease. Luminosity, like awareness, just is. Yet, like awareness, luminosity can never be save for the ever-present Presence - the infinitude of awareness and luminosity beyond human conception, beyond universal creation itself - that first breathes His luminosity and awareness into created humanity. There has never been a time when luminosity and awareness did not exist. For luminosity and awareness cohere in the very Being of God who has no beginning or end. For humanity, eternally abiding luminosity and awareness was given to us as an act of creative grace from the Triune God who gratuitously grants us life by His Spirit.
Broken by the fall of humanity in Adam, we lost access to this knowledge of luminosity and awareness in our being. All this changed with the incarnation of the Son - the Word made flesh - that assumed and redeemed our fallen humanity and His passion on the cross that removed all judicial barriers to full participation in the Triune dance of love inseparable from luminosity and awareness. In and through Christ who is truly God and truly Man, we are now brought into the eternal vibrancy of luminosity and awareness shared by Father, Son and Spirit in timeless love. In and through Christ, we can now rest in our ever-present luminous awareness - our spirit - cradled by and ensconced in the ever-present Triune Presence of luminosity and awareness who is love. This is wonderful news indeed. The gift of uncreated luminous awareness, restored to an unprecedented quality of being. In and only in, through and only through, Christ.
Ajahn Thanissaro is a Buddhist monk and teacher in the Thai forest meditation tradition. In his talk on levels of the breath, he made several insightful remarks that I would like to share here (in paraphrase) together with my comments.
Thanissaro speaks about how we all bring our stories into meditation. Thanissaro says that the Buddha has done that too on his night of awakening - he brings all his narratives of past pleasures, pain and suffering, physical appearance and food (physical and psychological) to his meditation. The Buddha deals with his story in two ways: generalizing and deconstructing. He generalizes by seeing how his story is not unique in its process though its content might be. He sees how all beings go through the same process of pleasure and pain, appearance and food, in much the same way as he did. Doing this reduces his enmeshment in his own suffering. It creates space and lessens suffering. He then brings his attention to the present, seeing how story-making constructs suffering right now. He sees how thoughts and evaluations, feelings, perceptions and intentions, appearances and food act to create a sense of self - the process of 'I'-making, 'my'-making, and 'mine'-making. Seeing thus enables deconstructing of the story. Deconstructing enables letting go of the constructed and constricted self, freeing consciousness from the precipitation of suffering rooted in self.
Seeing clearly the workings of the breath takes us away from fixation on stories to a more stable place for consciousness to dwell - the reality of this moment, the present. Breath itself is a bodily fabrication. Thoughts and evaluations are verbal fabrications. Feelings, perceptions and intentionality are mental fabrications. Fabrications (sankhara) are what are made up, concocted, composed, and constructed in the flow of experience. They are precipitations of consciousness, so to speak. But we can make skillful use of the bodily fabrication of breath to allow the mind to dwell in a more stable place. As we attend more and more to the breath, taking genuine interest in the breath, we can see how breath operates on different levels.
First, there is the coarse movement of in- and out-breath, with all their associated sensations in the body. Second, there is the subtler movement of breath throughout the whole body, through the nerves and vessels and intensified in various nodes of the experienced body. Third, there is the still breath, where coarse and subtle movements cease and yet a still vibrancy remains. We need to give ourselves the permission, time and space to learn more about the breath, to make friends with the breath, to experiment and improvise on the breath. This allows us to come to intimate knowledge of how the way we breathe correlates to how we feel, experience ourselves and the world, and how we create and heighten or de-escalate and cease suffering in our lives.
Gift of Uncreated Luminosity
At the crux of these creative insights is the fact of clear seeing. Clear seeing means there is unobscured observing and realizing, in this case of the truths of our experience. What makes this clear seeing possible? How is it possible for us to know, to be aware of the workings of the breath and experience? Yes, awareness is the essence of our identity as sentient creatures. But apart from awareness, apart from our knowing capacity that is consciousness itself, there is also luminosity. Luminosity is the bare fact of appearance of everything that is experienced or experiencable. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, feeling, thoughts, evaluations, intentions - all fabrications - appear as experienced or experiencable data of consciousness. Like awareness that sees and knows its data, luminosity (of the data) makes it possible for these fabrications to appear and be seen and known. Luminosity is indivisible from awareness.
Awareness itself is luminous, but not in the sense of being knowable by something else. Rather, awareness is luminous by virtue of it being self-luminous. Awareness cannot be known as an object of consciousness, but is itself the source of light that emanates and knows. The luminosity of awareness makes all appearances as experiencable data possible. Luminous awareness, while never known, is ever-knowing and ever-present. We do not achieve luminous awareness. We are luminous awareness. This we know by being who we are, not by attaining who we are not.
Resting and abiding in the luminosity of awareness (that is not knowable as an object) is moving beyond place of mind to ground of mind. Like awareness that is never stained by whatever appears within it, luminosity of all that appears is never differentiated into good or bad, pure or impure, and is not born nor does it cease. Luminosity, like awareness, just is. Yet, like awareness, luminosity can never be save for the ever-present Presence - the infinitude of awareness and luminosity beyond human conception, beyond universal creation itself - that first breathes His luminosity and awareness into created humanity. There has never been a time when luminosity and awareness did not exist. For luminosity and awareness cohere in the very Being of God who has no beginning or end. For humanity, eternally abiding luminosity and awareness was given to us as an act of creative grace from the Triune God who gratuitously grants us life by His Spirit.
Broken by the fall of humanity in Adam, we lost access to this knowledge of luminosity and awareness in our being. All this changed with the incarnation of the Son - the Word made flesh - that assumed and redeemed our fallen humanity and His passion on the cross that removed all judicial barriers to full participation in the Triune dance of love inseparable from luminosity and awareness. In and through Christ who is truly God and truly Man, we are now brought into the eternal vibrancy of luminosity and awareness shared by Father, Son and Spirit in timeless love. In and through Christ, we can now rest in our ever-present luminous awareness - our spirit - cradled by and ensconced in the ever-present Triune Presence of luminosity and awareness who is love. This is wonderful news indeed. The gift of uncreated luminous awareness, restored to an unprecedented quality of being. In and only in, through and only through, Christ.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
On Bliss
Awareness is intrinsically bliss. This may not be immediately apparent. For we are generally quite unaware. And generally not blissful. We inhabit the realm of mental rumination so much, so often, so immersively, so unconsciously that we have little insight into who we are or what is really happening in our experience. We get swept along the torrents of experience as in a torrential flood beyond our control.
We assume we live in a world out there, in a body in here. We assume we are the life spark of mind that dwells somewhere in this body, perhaps somewhere in the head. Especially in this information and digital age, our cogitations fill much of our experience and our heads feel heavy. In the thick and dense fog of semi-consciousness, bliss eludes us. There is no experience of our being as bliss.
Yet, shards of bliss softly shine into our experience from time to time. We long for bliss. Not mere bliss but bliss that truly and lastingly fulfils. We seek for things, situations, places, and persons that we think can give us bliss. We crave for them when we cannot find them or lose contact with them after we have found them. There is craving in the dark of semi-consciousness. Where craving is, suffering follows. Affliction and anguish arise.
But what if we assume wrong? What if the world is not out there, the body in here, and the mind inside the body in the head? Is it possible for us to wake up to reality by observing closely? Observing the body closely to see it as mere mixture of images, sensations, and perceptions? Observing the world closely as none other than a mixture of images, sensations and perceptions seamless with the body? Radically piercing and releasing the observer so that the observer - the finite mind - disassembles into awareness that is without boundary, reference points, or centre? For the finite mind (the observer) is none other than a coalescing or localizing of unconfined awareness.
Can we see how as the world dissolves in our experience when we sleep, the same happens with the body? That as we dream, our dream world is always experienced from the vantage point of the dream 'I' or 'me' within that world? In waking or dreaming, we experience our world as the finite mind, the finite experiencer we take to be who we really are. In dreamless sleep, both the dream world and the dream self disappear from view. In fact, in dreamless sleep there is a view from nowhere, a view of no-view, so to speak. No world. No experiencer. No view.
Even so, as we emerge from deep dreamless sleep, we sense a refreshment and recharging of our being. We feel rested. There is a bliss of restedness. Where is the source of that bliss? Exploring this further in waking experience, can we consciously enter into awareness so that its ocean of knowing is lit up rather than immersed in darkness? Can we begin to glimpse the mystery of awareness devoid of being something yet is not nothing? Awareness shining as our innermost presence? Awareness as bliss?
When the torrents of thought and thinker, feeling and feeler, experiencer and experienced dissipate and finally dissolve in their own place, reactivity and craving also cease to be. Suffering, affliction, and anguish stop. At the very ground of that still forest pool where torrents dissipate into the water of awareness, only bliss remains. When constriction and condensation are absent, only freedom that is bliss abides and percolates.
Echoes of that bliss filter through our localized mind and body, enough to remind us of that possibility of bliss in the centreless awareness beyond constructs. For that reason, we are beings innately primed for bliss. Beyond even this innate bliss is the supreme and sovereign bliss of our God from whom all blessings flow. He is a loving Father who pursues us and calls us to enter into His bliss through His Son who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Deep calls unto deep (Psalm 42:7). And into the Deep our deep awareness that is bliss flows. - CK
We assume we live in a world out there, in a body in here. We assume we are the life spark of mind that dwells somewhere in this body, perhaps somewhere in the head. Especially in this information and digital age, our cogitations fill much of our experience and our heads feel heavy. In the thick and dense fog of semi-consciousness, bliss eludes us. There is no experience of our being as bliss.
Yet, shards of bliss softly shine into our experience from time to time. We long for bliss. Not mere bliss but bliss that truly and lastingly fulfils. We seek for things, situations, places, and persons that we think can give us bliss. We crave for them when we cannot find them or lose contact with them after we have found them. There is craving in the dark of semi-consciousness. Where craving is, suffering follows. Affliction and anguish arise.
But what if we assume wrong? What if the world is not out there, the body in here, and the mind inside the body in the head? Is it possible for us to wake up to reality by observing closely? Observing the body closely to see it as mere mixture of images, sensations, and perceptions? Observing the world closely as none other than a mixture of images, sensations and perceptions seamless with the body? Radically piercing and releasing the observer so that the observer - the finite mind - disassembles into awareness that is without boundary, reference points, or centre? For the finite mind (the observer) is none other than a coalescing or localizing of unconfined awareness.
Can we see how as the world dissolves in our experience when we sleep, the same happens with the body? That as we dream, our dream world is always experienced from the vantage point of the dream 'I' or 'me' within that world? In waking or dreaming, we experience our world as the finite mind, the finite experiencer we take to be who we really are. In dreamless sleep, both the dream world and the dream self disappear from view. In fact, in dreamless sleep there is a view from nowhere, a view of no-view, so to speak. No world. No experiencer. No view.
Even so, as we emerge from deep dreamless sleep, we sense a refreshment and recharging of our being. We feel rested. There is a bliss of restedness. Where is the source of that bliss? Exploring this further in waking experience, can we consciously enter into awareness so that its ocean of knowing is lit up rather than immersed in darkness? Can we begin to glimpse the mystery of awareness devoid of being something yet is not nothing? Awareness shining as our innermost presence? Awareness as bliss?
When the torrents of thought and thinker, feeling and feeler, experiencer and experienced dissipate and finally dissolve in their own place, reactivity and craving also cease to be. Suffering, affliction, and anguish stop. At the very ground of that still forest pool where torrents dissipate into the water of awareness, only bliss remains. When constriction and condensation are absent, only freedom that is bliss abides and percolates.
Echoes of that bliss filter through our localized mind and body, enough to remind us of that possibility of bliss in the centreless awareness beyond constructs. For that reason, we are beings innately primed for bliss. Beyond even this innate bliss is the supreme and sovereign bliss of our God from whom all blessings flow. He is a loving Father who pursues us and calls us to enter into His bliss through His Son who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Deep calls unto deep (Psalm 42:7). And into the Deep our deep awareness that is bliss flows. - CK
Monday, March 11, 2019
Why Awareness?
Awareness - simple, ubiquitous, unassuming. To experience is to be conscious. To be conscious is to be aware and alive. In the present and to the present. Life is thus experience, conscious and aware, ever presently.
Does this mean that when we are neither awake nor dreaming, we are no longer conscious? For if so, we would no longer be alive but dead. In deep dreamless sleep, are we not devoid of awareness or consciousness? Does that mean we are dead when we sleep dreamlessly or when we are in a coma?
No. For if so, we would not be able to wake up in the morning. The fact that we awaken from sleep to live another day is proof that we did not die the night before. This is obvious. But what exactly is the nature of deep dreamless sleep if it is not death? The answer is simple yet not immediately apparent. We are resting in the unlit ocean of consciousness - pristine awareness - that is our innermost nature.
Awareness is without duality, boundary, demarcation, devoid of qualities yet intrinsically us without being autonomous and isolated from everything else. Awareness spontaneously modulates into all that is seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, felt, thought, and willed as well as the presumed knower who sees, hears, smells, tastes, senses, feels, thinks, and wills. Awareness is ever-present yet at the time of dreamless sleep not vividly known or brightly appearing to us. For awareness can never be known as an object. Awareness is simply there as the backdrop to all experience of knowing and the known. Awareness coalesces into the knower and the known, illustrating its dynamic effulgent play. Awareness is the nondual knowing that is never known yet vividly bright in waking consciousness while dazzlingly dark in dreamless sleep. Awareness never ceases nor can it ever cease (except by sovereign divine will).
Awareness is the very quality of our being alive. Awareness pure and pristine, naked and free. Awareness that is sometimes called our spirit. We can say that our spirit, our innermost essence, the fundamental ground of our being, is but a stream of living breath from God (see Genesis 2:7). For in Him we live and move and have our being (see Acts 17:28).
Can we be aware in every moment? Not dimly or inchoately but fully and brightly? Can our awareness be so vivid that - though never known as an object - is always freely self-knowing while nakedly resting within its own place? The place of no-place? In simple naked awareness lies the potential for a life that is free from suffering though not without suffering, and free to flourish though not without responsibility. Awareness gives a chance at life that is spontaneous and significant. Awareness offers us a chance of in-breaking grace from an hitherto unknown God - our Triune God who knows us and calls us into His knowing - that will set us absolutely free. For this reason, awareness is and ever will be. By His grace. - CK
Does this mean that when we are neither awake nor dreaming, we are no longer conscious? For if so, we would no longer be alive but dead. In deep dreamless sleep, are we not devoid of awareness or consciousness? Does that mean we are dead when we sleep dreamlessly or when we are in a coma?
No. For if so, we would not be able to wake up in the morning. The fact that we awaken from sleep to live another day is proof that we did not die the night before. This is obvious. But what exactly is the nature of deep dreamless sleep if it is not death? The answer is simple yet not immediately apparent. We are resting in the unlit ocean of consciousness - pristine awareness - that is our innermost nature.
Awareness is without duality, boundary, demarcation, devoid of qualities yet intrinsically us without being autonomous and isolated from everything else. Awareness spontaneously modulates into all that is seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, felt, thought, and willed as well as the presumed knower who sees, hears, smells, tastes, senses, feels, thinks, and wills. Awareness is ever-present yet at the time of dreamless sleep not vividly known or brightly appearing to us. For awareness can never be known as an object. Awareness is simply there as the backdrop to all experience of knowing and the known. Awareness coalesces into the knower and the known, illustrating its dynamic effulgent play. Awareness is the nondual knowing that is never known yet vividly bright in waking consciousness while dazzlingly dark in dreamless sleep. Awareness never ceases nor can it ever cease (except by sovereign divine will).
Awareness is the very quality of our being alive. Awareness pure and pristine, naked and free. Awareness that is sometimes called our spirit. We can say that our spirit, our innermost essence, the fundamental ground of our being, is but a stream of living breath from God (see Genesis 2:7). For in Him we live and move and have our being (see Acts 17:28).
Can we be aware in every moment? Not dimly or inchoately but fully and brightly? Can our awareness be so vivid that - though never known as an object - is always freely self-knowing while nakedly resting within its own place? The place of no-place? In simple naked awareness lies the potential for a life that is free from suffering though not without suffering, and free to flourish though not without responsibility. Awareness gives a chance at life that is spontaneous and significant. Awareness offers us a chance of in-breaking grace from an hitherto unknown God - our Triune God who knows us and calls us into His knowing - that will set us absolutely free. For this reason, awareness is and ever will be. By His grace. - CK
Friday, March 8, 2019
Remembering Godwin in 2019
In about two weeks, on March 22, it would be the 19th death anniversary of my dear teacher and spiritual friend Godwin Samararatne (1932-2000). In the past nine years or so, I've found my appreciation of Godwin growing and growing. To this day, Godwin remains the most Christ-like person I've ever met in my life - luminous, empty, selfless, light yet immensely warm, attentive, kind, and gentle, with all the time in the world for the person he was with, at any given moment.
A simple, honest, transparent man with no agendas to impose, no empire to build, only an outpouring awareness and love for all he met. Indeed, he embodied perfectly the Buddhist concept of kalyana-mitta (spiritual friend). Godwin has been significantly formative in my own life and spiritual ministry.
As a Christian now, I can say he was and still is my heart-teacher, a spiritual companion without peer, who lived the Dhamma wonderfully and who beautifully exemplified the Spirit-filled life I hear or read much about in Christian circles. While nominally a 'Buddhist,' Godwin was never into labels and sectarian identity. He was a good friend to anyone and everyone of any religion or no religion. He admired and respected the Buddha, that much I know. Yet he also spoke of how much Jesus on the cross affected and inspired him, especially how the Lord asked His Father to forgive those who knew not what they were doing.
Much food for reflection on the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit who blows wherever and as He wills. More on Godwin Samararatne at https://www.godwin-home-page.net/.
A simple, honest, transparent man with no agendas to impose, no empire to build, only an outpouring awareness and love for all he met. Indeed, he embodied perfectly the Buddhist concept of kalyana-mitta (spiritual friend). Godwin has been significantly formative in my own life and spiritual ministry.
As a Christian now, I can say he was and still is my heart-teacher, a spiritual companion without peer, who lived the Dhamma wonderfully and who beautifully exemplified the Spirit-filled life I hear or read much about in Christian circles. While nominally a 'Buddhist,' Godwin was never into labels and sectarian identity. He was a good friend to anyone and everyone of any religion or no religion. He admired and respected the Buddha, that much I know. Yet he also spoke of how much Jesus on the cross affected and inspired him, especially how the Lord asked His Father to forgive those who knew not what they were doing.
Much food for reflection on the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit who blows wherever and as He wills. More on Godwin Samararatne at https://www.godwin-home-page.net/.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)