Second of Four Dharma with Barbara Evenings - October 17, 2005

Barbara: This fall I'll be giving 4 talks, one a month. The first talk was planned as just a one-time talk. People have often asked me what is the nature of my practice, so I talked about that. As I gave that talk, I saw that there are really 3 legs to the practice, wisdom, compassion, and non-duality, so I decided the other talks will be on those 3 subjects. However, we must recognize we can't really talk about any of these subjects while excluding the others. Wisdom is a ground for compassion and compassion is a ground for wisdom. Non-duality floats through each. I'm talking about wisdom-related practices here, but wisdom without compassion is not real wisdom.

So what is wisdom? I want to start with the Heart Sutra, which to me exemplifies the deepest wisdom in this tradition.

Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra (Heart Sutra)

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion
from the deep practice of Prajnaparamita
perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas
and delivered all beings from their suffering.

O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness,
emptiness no other than form.
Form is emptiness, emptiness form.
The same is true of feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness.

O Sariputra, all dharmas are empty.
They are not born nor annihilated.
They are not defiled nor immaculate.
They do not increase nor decrease.
So in emptiness no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness.

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
no form, sound, smell, taste, touch or objects of mind.
No realm of sight; no realm of consciousness.

No ignorance nor extinction of ignorance,
no old age and death, nor extinction of them.

No suffering, no cause of suffering, no path to lead out of suffering;
no knowledge, no attainment, no realization
for there is nothing to attain.

The Bodhisattva holds on to nothing but Prajnaparmamita.
Therefore his mind is clear of any delusive hindrance.
Without hindrance, there is no fear.
Away from all perverted views he reaches final Nirvana.

All Buddhas of past, present and future
through faith in Prajnaparamita
attain to the highest perfect enlightenment.

Know then the Prajnaparamita is the great dharani,
the radiant, peerless mantram, the utmost supreme mantram,
which is capable of allaying all pain.
This is true beyond all doubt.

Proclaim now the highest wisdom, the Prajnaparamita: Gate, Gate / Paragate / Parasamgate Bodhi, Svaha!

There are three so-called Dharma Gates to liberation, the gate of suffering, the gate of impermanence and the gate of no-self. The passage through these gates is the arising of wisdom, as phrased in the sutra. Let's explore these three gates more deeply as we read the sutra.

We won't take this sutra in order, but select parts to examine. "…delivered all beings from their suffering." First we need to ask, what is suffering? The Buddha did not use the word "suffering" but dukha, a Pali language word. Dukha means the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned experience. In actual translation, the word "ka" means the hub of a wheel and "du" means off-center. So with dukha we have the wheels that are off-center on the axle. They're on a cart. If the wheels are off-center, the cart lurches. We expect it to run true; we expect everything to be just perfect. When it's not perfect, then we suffer. It's as simple as that. We grasp at things to be different than they are, and we suffer.

I had a very moving conversation today with one of our sangha whose baby is quite sick and will need open-heart surgery. He said when he first heard about this, he was devastated, thought, "If anything happens to this child, I really couldn't live." But as he took it deep into his practice, he said the practice held him so strong, seeing right there that in the grasping was the suffering. In this moment he had his baby in his arms and the baby was okay. The chance of success with the operation is very, very high, 80% or more. He could see how the mind was launching into stories and right there was suffering. Right there was grasping. We see the mind that can let go and deal with things in each moment. Now, a week into this information, he was feeling more peaceful about it. So it was very beautiful to see the strength of his practice to carry him through this.

My first understanding of this, of grasping as the cause of suffering, came with my deafness. I lost my hearing in 1972 just after my first child was born. I was furious and terrified. "Why me?" There was so much grasping, so much fear. I struggled with it for years. I condemned myself and said, "I should be able to deal with this," I judged myself. When I saw 2 people talking and I couldn't hear them, so much grasping came up. "What am I missing?" I can remember one friend inviting me to lunch for my birthday. I came into the restaurant and saw there were 3 or 4 people there. They said, "Surprise!" "Surprise!" And my heart just sank because one-on-one I could talk to people. They would stop and write for me. But with 3 or 4 people, I only got bits that were signed to me People were so careful to include me; many people already finger-spelled, right back in the first year of this. But one person would turn to another, pointing to the menu, probably asking, "Are you getting the tuna fish or the egg salad," and "What are they saying?" came up with such grasping. Each time people spoke and I didn't get it, I felt excluded, abandoned. I thought that the cause of the suffering was my deafness. If only I weren't deaf then I wouldn't be suffering. But of course if I weren't deaf, I'd just be grasping at something else. They still might be whispering to each other. And, "What are they saying" might come up. Grasping. The intensity of craving is so painful!

When I met Aaron, I asked him, "Why are you here?" He said, "You asked for help," which I had. I asked, "How are you going to help me?" He said, "You're suffering. Let's start there. Let's look at the nature of the suffering." He made that so clear as he kept pointing out, "Right now, what's happening? Is the deafness the problem? No. Is the grasping and fear the problem? Yes."

Soon it became so clear to me that the issue had little to do with the deafness but my fear and anger about the deafness, and the need to get everything, the fear of being excluded. Once I looked at the fear carefully and understood, "It's just fear, it's just habit energy," I found I could just sit and breathe and not hear. Then it was okay.

After working with Aaron on this for a few months, I got a flyer in the mail for a workshop given by Stephen Levine. I had read one of his books and was very moved by it so I decided to go down to North Carolina and attend the workshop. A friend went with me with the idea that she would take notes for some of it, but of course there would still be a lot I couldn't get. So I wrote to Stephen and I said, "I would like to come to your workshop." I explained the situation, said, "I'm deaf, and I'm not coming to hear what you're going to say, I'm coming to not hear." He understood perfectly. He said, "Come and we'll put you in the front row where you can watch everything, and you can not hear."

The first day was very hard. So much grasping came up; my friend wrote a lot for me but as Stephen led guided meditations, she just did the meditation. I had read these in his book and I also had Aaron to kind of lead me in my own meditation. But grasping came up.

Saturday it got a little easier. I just sat there watching each time grasping came up, noting "grasping, grasping." I became more comfortable with the energy of grasping, how it felt in the mind and body. Breathing and aware of not hearing. In not hearing, just not hearing. In grasping, just grasping; seeing how the stories came not out of the not-hearing but out of the grasping. It wasn't a story of "Oh, I'm missing something," but a story of, "I'm excluded. I'm unworthy. Something's wrong with me. If I were good, I would be able to participate in this." There were so many very old stories. They just tumbled out, and eventually they exhausted themselves. By Sunday, I just sat there and watched Stephen talk. I told my friend not to take any notes. The miracle was not that I could hear, the miracle was that there was somebody on the stage talking and somebody sitting there not hearing, and there were no stories. There was just not hearing.

So this deep insight into the nature of dukha is one component of wisdom. Maybe it has to come first. I think we have to have some insight into the nature of suffering before we're ready to look at impermanence and the no-self nature of things, otherwise the look into those 2 pieces of it become academic. We have to have some insight into the nature of suffering.

The second leg is impermanence. What does it mean that things are impermanent? Here we get into the skandas.

"…Perceived the emptiness of all five skandhas" and "No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind." Is this a nihilistic doctrine? What does this mean?

When we look at the body and mind, at what we think of as self, we arrive at the 5 "skandhas" or aggregates: form, feeling, thought, impulse or perception, consciousness. In Pali,

Rupa (form)
Vedana (feeling)
Sañña (perception)
Sankhara (mental fashionings)
Viññana (consciousness)

When we examine these, it's hard to find anything we can say, "That's me." It's all changing. We think that's me but then it changes, and it keeps changing and keeps changing.

We're very caught in self-view, in the Pali language, sakkaya ditthi, self-view. This is considered to be the primary entrapment that keeps us turning on this wheel of samsara. The Thai teacher Ajahn Chah put it very simply, "No self, no problem." But we've got this whole idea there's a self, so we've got a lot of problems. It's very hard to release this concept of self and so we suffer.

Everything arising out of conditions and passing away. As we work with vipassana, we watch physical and mental objects arising out of our experience and can really see that arising and passing away. Are there are some of you who are new here tonight? Do you know anything about vipassana practice?

With this meditation practice we start with the breath, and then as objects introduce themselves on our experience, like hearing a sound or smelling something cooking on the stove, or a thought arising, we bring our attention to that object of body sense or mind, whatever is predominant in our experience, and just stay there with it, hearing or remembering or whatever the object might be. As it changes or dissolves, we come back to the breath. As we do this we see that everything is impermanent. It arises in our experience and it passes away.

It becomes so clear that there's nothing we can hold on to, and that we don't need to hold onto anything. That it's simply whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. Things arise because the conditions are present for them to arise, and when the conditions are past, they fall away. When the atmospheric conditions are correct for it, it rains. When the atmospheric conditions change, the sky clears. It all is the outflow of conditions, and we can't find any permanent self in it. But the first thing that we learn is simply, everything changes.

For me, a very profound insight into impermanence came sitting with a dear friend on his last night of life. Some of you knew Carl. Carl gave me an enormous gift with his dying, simply watching his whole process of acceptance of impermanence and letting go. He was in hospice. He was in quite a lot of pain. They were keeping him as sedated as they could, but he still had some conscious awareness, able to recognize people coming in.

I had the middle of the night shift from about midnight to 5AM. I was watching his very labored, rattle-y breath coming in and going out. They had said he could go at any time, so it was clear to me that each breath really could be his last one. I was watching my grasping. I loved Carl, wanted him to stay there, and also needing to give him conscious permission to go. So I was talking to him and telling him, "It's okay if you're ready to leave now. You've done everything you need to do. It's okay ." As I talked to him that way, and did metta out loud with him, his breathing quieted some.

It was a profound experience watching him. He didn't finish the transition while I was there, he died about an hour after I left. But watching him move through the stages of transition and really seeing deeply into the impermanence of the body, was profound. It is just there on conditions and it will go. Letting go. Letting go.

I had been with people dying before. I think the difference with Carl was that we had such a deep dharma friendship, and that even there as he was dying, I knew he was doing the practice right there with me. So this was an enormous gift, very deep insight into impermanence.

No self. This is often the most difficult gate. People get terrified. "Does this mean I'm going to be annihilated? If there's no self, do I exist? Will I be destroyed, will there be nothing left?" People come to this and it's very scary.

I found here a dialogue I had with Aaron in May 1989. This is from my journal. First just my talking and then some dialogue with Aaron.

"This has been a restless month. I cannot get into a deep meditation. I watch my thoughts and restlessness tearing around my head. Hindrances. Barricades seems to be more like it. I understand what I'm afraid of but I can't seem to get past it. It all comes back to fear and this question of no self. When I get to that clear space where I used to be able to find such peace, I'm suddenly aware this isn't the end. I have the image of sitting beyond the clouds in a vast blue sky that once seemed unlimited. Now I poke holes in that sky and understand that there's infinite space beyond it."

So there had been a very peaceful image of floating. It was a very comfortable space but there was still a me!

"Now I poke holes in that sky and understand that there's infinite space beyond. It terrifies me. In that space I must give up all self to acknowledge my own unlimited nature. I understand that each step beyond the known experience of mind and body is just one more step. None is larger than any other. I've taken so many of these steps. Why does this one seem larger? Aaron says I need to love enough to give up the image of self? How? I know this is a wall of my own making. What do I expect to find on the other side? What do I have to give up to get there? All my attachments to who I think I am. All self, all ego. I need to give up the limits, all the things I've defined myself by. What am I when I go beyond all the illusions I've created a self? I identify with my hopes, fears, ideas, actions. Through meditation I move beyond this, but I see I haven't really let go of my attachments."

Aaron said to me, "Why choose to identify with this physical self when you know you are spirit simply residing in this body?" I replied, "It's safer, Aaron. I see that I'm retreating, I'm hiding, like a snail retreating into a shell. He said, "Is the snail the shell? What can it touch of experience when it hides in its shell? What can it learn? You must venture out if you choose to live."

In my journal I said, "We have talked on and on about moving beyond the self. Aaron repeatedly tells me to do this through mindfulness, through constant watching and acknowledging when these feelings arise. "Mindful awareness of feelings, thoughts, and sensations will guide to you to the self-identification that precedes separation."

So what he was saying is when a feeling comes up, if I'm mindful I see that step that says, "Ah, my thought." As opposed to "thinking." "My sensation." I feel that subtle contraction of energy with "my" and I can see how that "my" creates separation.

Aaron said, "Then take it a step further. Ask yourself, 'Who is attached? Barbara? Who is Barbara?' When you are able to let go of attachments on the physical plane, all that will be left is love and awareness. These are they keys. They will take you home."

I replied, "So I'm supposed to let go of all this, and then all that will be left is love and awareness?" Aaron said, "I wish you would drop 'supposed to' from your vocabulary. When promptings come from your heart, there is no 'supposed to' but simply the path that leads you where you know you are to follow. 'Supposed to' feels other-imposed to me. The choice is always yours. Follow your heart, not your mind, child, and you will always know where you must go."

Another conversation about giving up ego. Aaron said, "It is not a matter of giving up anything, you will simply grow beyond the need of it. You cannot move beyond ego until you accept ego. Remember, to move beyond your deafness and truly learn to hear, you first had to acknowledge that you were deaf and investigate the pain of it. To move beyond ego, you must accept the ego self, its pleasures and its pain. Examine ego with honesty each time it arises. Look for its origins. Then you will cease to identify with it."

Through that summer I continued to work with this, still feeling quite stuck. Then in the fall I went on a camping trip with my son's class to Point Pelee in Canada. This is a narrow point of land that extends a long distance southward, out into Lake Erie. At the end it's a long, narrow spit of sand narrower than this room. If the wind is coming from the east, big waves come up on the eastern side. The sand was about 3 feet above water level. Picture waves from the shore coming up just over people's heads, then down to the other side.

So I was lying on the ground on the leeward side of this spit of sand. There were quite large waves breaking, rushing up and hitting the sand. My head was at the top, and they looked like they would come over me. But of course, by the time they came in they lost some of their force. They just sank into the sand and disappeared. They had such a solid-looking form, but they were just coming up, hitting and disappearing, hitting and disappearing. This is a September '89 letter to John.

"Let me describe a very simple experience on Saturday. It was not a deep or profound meditation, and what I learned seemed so simple that it seems almost ridiculous to share, but it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. Like someone had just hit me on the head with a hammer.

"I spent most of the day on the beach walking in ankle-deep water for miles, slowly, and alternating that with sitting, interspersed with watching the waves and meditating. Finally I was out on the very tip of the long sand spit surrounded by water. I sat there for about an hour meditating with eyes open. The waves were coming in almost at eye-level. Big, solid-looking waves, white foam on top. They would break 20 feet away and rush up the beach to the crest of this little hill where they were above my vision line momentarily. As they came over the crest, they sank into the sand. The water would run toward me for 3 or 4 feet and then disappear. I was sitting on the sand dune and seeing the wave come up and just the last little lap of it come over the top of the hill and disappear.

"It suddenly occurred to me that I was seeing something solid, but it was only water. In other words, impermanence of form very clearly displayed. It's hard to express this clearly, but simultaneously with this understanding, I saw that I was treating consciousness the same way, that it had no more solidity than the waves. I realized it's not the object itself that has substance but our way of relating to it that gives it substance. I am giving my consciousness a solid form and that makes it substantial. That makes it something I must relate to and deal with, external to me and creating a duality.

"Through this analogy to the waves, I finally saw consciousness for the first time as completely without substance, solidity, or self. I began to look at the other skandhas from this direction. It all fit together. I've already understood the impermanence of the others but looking at them helped sharpen what I was seeing about consciousness.

"Emotions, just energy coming through. Anger, whatever, a wave, but we watch it and it's just water, transparent. No substance. It's not the anger which has substance and creates a battle but our relationship with the anger. The anger itself is just energy; water. Mental formations, thoughts, fear, all water we're seeing as solid waves.

"When we feel hungry, we don't solidify the feeling, we just notice it and eat, a skillful action when there's hunger. There's nothing to catch us. When we feel angry, we don't just notice it and, say, feel the anger and respond skillfully. It's our relationship to the anger that catches us and creates a solid object and a self. That's what creates the dualism. 'I' am angry. I feel guilty, righteous, scared, whatever. I get caught in the conflicting emotions and completely lose sight of the fact that the anger isn't solid to begin with, it's just a form of energy, and as energy I can transmute it and use it. It's part of the manure pile that's just more rich soil for growth. So we don't have to do anything about the anger at all. Then there's no duality.

"Taking this back to consciousness, by interacting with consciousness, I'm creating the dualism that gives it power over me. I'm letting it be a big wave, not just water. Consciousness, too, is just another form of energy. There's no need to do anything with it, any more than I need to anything with fear or anger other than notice them. It's just part of what's passing by."

When I use the word consciousness, let's take this back to the vipassana practice for a moment. The sense organs are eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, the mind in this teaching being one more sense organ. Each organ, sense organ, takes an object. The eye touching the rug, the nose touching something cooking in the kitchen, the body, the buttocks touching the cushion, mind touching a thought. When there's contact in this way, sense organ to sense object, consciousness arises. We call it seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, thinking. It's simply the movement of conditions, the outplay of conditions, and when we watch it carefully, we can see that's all that's there.

Where I was getting stuck around the skandhas of consciousness back then. I could see in the skandas of form as the physical wave, changing; feelings, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes neutral, just feeling. Thoughts, the various kinds of thoughts that arose, just mental formations arising and passing away. It's pleasant and a thought of wanting more of that comes. It's unpleasant and an aversion kind of thought comes. Just the flow of conditions. Perceptions, seeing what it is, all conditioned by my past experience with it.

The one that was trapping me was consciousness. I could see the impermanence of the others and that they were not self, but if consciousness is not self, then all I could come to was nihilism. At this point I finally began to understand this difference between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is a function of the conditioned mind. Supramundane consciousness or awareness touches the Unconditioned. I'm reading a book by Ajahn Sumedo called Intuitive Awareness, which is the title he gives supramundane consciousness. Tibetans use the word rigpa, non-dual awareness.

This is different than consciousness. Awareness also needs an object, but the object of awareness is the Unconditioned itself. There's no self in it. There's nobody who is aware, we're just opening into this vast field of awareness. So I watched the conditioned object of the waves coming over and over and over, and saw it all as impermanent. There was equanimity with that state of impermanence, and the question, if consciousness is impermanent, then what's left? And suddenly I really got it. This vast awareness, this unlimited awareness is the Unborn and Undying. It was so clear to me that I was not that awareness, that I was graced to enter into the space of already-existent awareness in which we all rest. Coming into that vastness and radiance. Just awareness, no self. At first it was just an edge of the space, conscious mind still asking "What is it?" Awareness takes consciousness as object and lets it go, as the astronaut lets go of the tether, into free fall. What remains. Peace, The stillness devoid of conditioned objects that arise and pass away leads to a peace beyond peace. Joy, Light, Love. After several incursions into this space, awareness begins to see the relationship of conditioned and Unconditioned, leading to insight into karma and dependent arising. Thus, wisdom is here too.

So for me this was the move into this experience of understanding "no self." No self is a scary way to say it. This is the way it's shorthanded. What it really means is that there is no separate self, separate from anything else. It doesn't mean there's nothing, just nothing separate.

I'm reading again from that same letter.

"I realized I haven't been relating honestly with consciousness because of the fear of no-consciousness, all the fears of annihilation that came with 'no-self.' If I relate to anger, for example, with this fear of anger, then it's solid. But I see that consciousness is just another wave, just water, just energy. So I allow the consciousness to be just energy, to be transmuted, to not be solid. Then on a very basic level, what's left? And I'm back to awareness and the very real difference I'm beginning to see between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is like mindfulness, an activity, a doingness. It demands a doer. It's noticing, seeing what's there. But moving past the watcher that Aaron's been talking to me about the need to transcend, awareness is just there. It knows everything as energy including noticing the watcher. So there's no duality, no doing, just being. Mindfulness sees anger like a cloud on the horizon and notices it. But we still have to decide what to do with it. Still a someone to do that. With awareness, mind is past identification with it, it's just anger. Just an energy coming through. We no longer have to do anything with it. We're free of being tangled with it in a dual way and simply act appropriately. Appropriate action happens, free of a doer. Thus, no karma.

"We can't start with awareness, we can only get to pure awareness via the route of mindfulness and finally seeing that even the watcher is just another conditioned object with no solidity. The watcher here is consciousness. So we haven't gotten rid of the watcher, the consciousness, because there was nothing solid to get rid of. We've just recognized it as not solid.

"Then we're simply left with awareness, awareness that watches consciousness, and all things, seem to arise and pass away, and then cease such seeming arising and passing away. There is nothing else."

Let's return to the Heart Sutra. "The bodhisattva of great compassion, from the deep practice of prajnaparamitta, perceived the emptiness of all 5 skandhas and delivered all beings from their suffering." Here is the emptiness of the 5 skandhas, of form, feeling, thought, perception, consciousness, arising out of conditions and passing away, empty of self. This is what he perceived. "Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form." Here is the wave just sinking into the sea. Wave, a big impermanent form, empty of any self.

"…The same is true of feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness." Nothing solid there.

"…They are not born or annihilated." When certain cloud conditions come together to create rain, is something born? It's not like something is created that was not there before, simply different atmospheric conditions come together and at a certain point, they express the present structure as rain. Nothing is born. It's just an ongoing process of change. When the rain stops we can't say it's annihilated; those atmospheric conditions just have changed. Everything is constantly changing. Nothing is born or dies.

"…They are not defiled nor immaculate." Certain conditions come together and stimulate anger, and anger arises. Then we say, "That's a defilement." But it's not, it's just energy and conditions coming together. And if we're in a different place so those conditions come and no anger arises, we can't say that's immaculate, just certain conditions are operating. Not defiled, not immaculate, just things as they are. Sometimes skillful or unskillful, capable of causing great pain. But not good or evil.

"…They do not increase or decrease. So in emptiness, no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness. No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or objects of mind." He's not really saying these don't exist, he's just saying, "Now eye, what is the eye? It's just a series of different cells that come together in such a way that we get what we call vision. Is there any self to the eye? Is there anything you can point to and say, 'This is the eye'?" I have trouble with my vision in this eye right now. It's changed. It's still an eye, it's just different.

No form. What is a form? Eye looking at the wave, what is it looking at? Everything changing, just the process of becoming and passing away. We're back to impermanence. "…No realm of sight, no realm of consciousness." Again, he's not saying there is no seeing consciousness or any other kind of consciousness, only, even consciousness is simply a conditioned object that arises and passes away. It's impermanent, it's not self. There's nothing there we can point to, say, "This is it," and control it.

"…No ignorance nor extinction of ignorance." We all think that we're ignorant and someday we'll become realized beings. And yet, at another level, we're already realized, we just haven't quite gotten that. There's a beautiful phrase in Flight of the Garuda,

Butter is made of the essence of milk,
But if the milk isn't churned, the butter won't form.
Sentient beings are made of the essence of perfection
But if they don't practice, they won't be enlightened.

So there's nothing to attain. There's just the need to practice to know that pure awareness, to see our true nature, to open into it fully, and to relax around the rest and still take care of things. If I knock over my cup of tea, I'm just going to pick it up and take a towel and wipe up the spill. No stories of good and bad. We attend to what goes on in our lives but we don't have to create a solid self always watching, fixing, tight, tense, around this or that.

"…No suffering. No cause of suffering. No path to lead out of suffering." That's a powerful one. We've been talking about the dharma gate of dukha and understanding the nature of dukha. But on this level there is no dukha. So there simultaneously is dukha and there's not dukha. It comes back to what this father was saying today: the enormous suffering at first when he thought about his child and the surgery he was going to have to go through, and the possibility of losing him. And then, no dukha. Realizing deeply the whole process of how mind grasps and coming into this spacious mind that can just say, "Ah, so, this is how it is right now. And it's okay ." However it is, love bears with it.

I was talking also to L today who said something very similar. L just last week donated a kidney to her dying brother. They both are recovering from the surgery, and he's doing very well and she's doing well. She said she was looking right there at the enormous joy and freedom of being able to give in this way. No giver. There'd been all these stories about "I will donate the kidney" and suddenly there was no giver, just being. No suffering.

"…The bodhisattva holds on to nothing but prajnaparamitta." The perfection of wisdom. "Therefore his mind is clear of any delusive hindrance." No longer is there the delusive hindrance of "I can't hear" or "What will happen to my baby?" with fear and grasping. Just spaciousness.

"…Without hindrance, there is no fear. Aloof from all perverted views, he reaches final Nirvana. All Buddhas of past, present, and future, through faith in prajnaparamitta attend to the highest perfect enlightenment." It's interesting that further up he has said there is nothing further to attain, and here he says, "attained to" in the translation.

"Know then the prajnaparamitta is the great durani, the radiant peerless mantrum, the most supreme mantrum which is capable of allaying all pain. This is true beyond all doubt. Proclaim now the highest wisdom, the prajnaparamitta. Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi, Svaha." This means, gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the whole sense of self-identification with the form, the feelings, thoughts, perceptions, consciousness, and into this vast spaciousness which still is able to come back and respond skillfully and lovingly in the world.

I want to close with a very short verse of sutra from Udana 8:1:

"For one who clings, motion exists, but for one who clings not, there is no motion.
Where no motion is, there is stillness.
Where stillness is, there is no craving.
Where no craving is, there is neither coming nor going.
Where neither coming nor going is, there is neither arising nor passing away.
Where neither arising nor passing away is,
    there is neither this world nor a world beyond nor a state in between.
This, verily, is the end of suffering."

Thank you.

Break; now questions and discussion

Q: It created more questions and then, not ever having thought about it. I think that because of my upbringing, my belief system believes that I am a unique individual who is upon this earth in a way that no other person can be. And yet at the same time, share a deeper life or a common life, a life beyond the physical. And so for me the struggle is a both/and rather than a no-self. And I spend a lot of time trying to accept this self and love it and think it's okay . And it's very tempting to say, "Well there isn't a self so <sounds like 'there with that'>." But there is somebody here. It seems like you'd almost have to anesthetize me for there not to be a me. And yet that me is always connected to a larger reality. Maybe this is one of the points where it is a belief that is not compatible with my faith beliefs. So I have a conflict. And I can also see myself telling my mother, "No-self did it!" It always has seemed to me that this is somewhat like enlightenment. I don't have to worry about that. I'm just really on the beginning road and trying to do a practice, etc, and that people who have arrived, that's where they are. Is there anything Barbara can say in response to these reflections?

Barbara: First, this is where tonight's talk needs to be taken as one piece of a 4-part talk, because we have to get into the last talk on non-duality to speak in depth to your question. Your "both /and," is the closest thing that I come to. I don't like the term no-self, but that what arises is empty of a separate self.

There is this unique individual, each of these unique individuals around the room here. The opening line of a beautiful poem that somebody once taught me reads: "I am the place where God shines through, for God and I are one, not two." We're each that place where God shines through, each this unique expression of the divine. This is real. We're not saying there's nobody here, only no separate self.

For me it's like, sometimes you see the sun behind a cloud and you see all the separate sunbeams, and sometimes you can see one that seem to be coming to the ground next to you. That sunbeam hitting those leaves. But of course there's nothing there but the sun itself. It's not separate. Another example is to look at a forest, There are separate trees, Many are probably the offspring of an older tree, now dead, and carry that tree as what gave their seed, but also is now decayed into the sol in which they live. There are separate trees; there is just one tree. Both/ and.

For me, I understand the concept you're expressing. To me it's more a conceptual conflict. What happens for me in the deepest meditation is that everything that I've thought of as self dissolves. Awareness is left. But there's no sense of any ego. The body has dissolved. There's a sense of interbeing with everything, no separation. That doesn't absolve me of responsibility for this body and its thoughts and actions. So it's both.

But when we get into trouble and the suffering arises is when we self-identify with self as if it's disconnected from the All. So coming from the place of knowing the innate connection and that everything that arises, including a thought of good, bad, including likes and dislikes, judgments, opinions, all of these are simply the outflow of conditions.

Does that help to answer your question?

Q: I think that the both/and helped me a lot. I think of this concept as being a wave in the ocean, but yet this wave is frozen in time, almost like solid in form and yet still a part of a larger reality.

Barbara: And the wave on the ocean may gently rock a boat in a very soothing motion or it may come up and sweep over and overturn a boat, so we can say it's a pleasant or an unpleasant wave, a "good" or "bad" wave, but there's nothing there but water. Both are true: the wave has overturned the boat so people drowned, and also there's nothing there but water.

Q: It seems more like I'm a wave in slow motion, very slow.

Barbara: The thing is, if the wave could know its identity as water, then it wouldn't get caught into the stories. It would know, "The wind and currents shaped this water into such and such form that swamped the boat." There is no, "I'm bad," with a self-image. It's just the outflow of conditions. However, as human beings, we are able to work with the conditions, and we still have the ability to say no and not react to our patterning. This is where our free will and ability to make a more skillful loving decision comes in. So just because the wind and current force us into a certain position doesn't mean we have to strike out. We can respond in a more appropriate way.

Something that's been helpful to me is Aaron's pole image, of keeping your feet rooted in relative reality and your head up there in ultimate reality, and not losing either. We really have to hold both grounds because if we're just in ultimate reality, we can do enormous harm in the world by not being grounded in the reality we all live in. And if we're just in relative reality, we can do enormous harm because we don't understand our interconnection with everything else, and we create constant dualities.

New Q: One thing I encountered a couple of years ago is a kind of clinging that the human does. It is the desire for meaning. And this is very paradoxical because what are humans without meaning or purpose? But I saw the mechanism of applying meaning as a way that self-identification is reinforced. So sometimes in my practice I watch that craving, that desire to have meaning. It seems the strangest paradox to me because meaning is as vital to the human, as instinctual as our desire to survive.

Barbara: I see in my own experience what I call a mundane and supramundane level of meaning. On the mundane level, that desire to survive, to be somebody, to have a purpose, all that doing and creating a somebody. On the supramundane level, let's put it this way, resting in that place of deepest pure awareness, I find something I can only call love, although love is a very poor articulation of it. It's not "me" loving "that", it's a very non-dual love. It's a total openness and flow and interconnection, really pure being.

There is an inherent meaning in it, it's not me trying to find me, it's simply resting in spaciousness and joy. But when I come out of it, the mundane mind says, "Ah, that's it." It's the mundane mind's trying to make some kind of story about it. And yet, still in the supramundane level, it still exists. It's just there's no way to articulate it on that level because there's no self, there's no way to talk about it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Do you find that also?

Q: Yes. The experience has qualities of space and lightness and light. If we're talking about a similar plane!

Barbara: What I call love is free of contraction. What I call fear always has contraction in it. So when I use the term love, what I'm really talking about is this contractionless, infinite spaciousness. It's the heart just fully interwoven with everything, no self or other. Just dancing in all those expressions of the divine. Dancing together.

Q: Is the one who then labels that experience as the truth or the better or the real, the divisive, craving human?

Barbara: Part of the human search for meaning moves into labeling and concept because we're not content to just rest in that space and leave it unlabelled. This is the way the human is. But we move deeper and deeper into the truth of the, "That which is aware of the impulse to label is not self-identified with labeling." And we start to be able to rest in that pole, in both, seeing the impulse to label and resting in the spaciousness beyond words.

Q: So it seems that the balance is the dance between self and no-self. The complete acceptance of self is part of that?

Barbara: Here is Aaron's phrase, "you must accept ego before you can transcend ego." We accept it without creating a real thing out of it, just seeing the human impulse to keep creating this object that we're going to call self. But awareness is what watches that and doesn't get caught in the story.

Q: I think the human in me wants to take dancing lessons, wants to be taught the steps of this dance. The irony is, there are no steps to the dance, no self dances in flow. It's not choreographed.

Barbara: This is to me why the vipassana practice is so valuable, because increasingly we see that which is aware of consciousness. First we watch consciousness arise--mind consciousness, body consciousness--and we just note, and there's a noter. But then there comes this breakthrough where we start to rest in that which is aware and not to self-identify with the consciousness but to see the consciousness itself just arising out of conditions, and to slip back into that awareness. And then at a certain point the noting stops, in formal terms. There's still awareness of things arising and passing away but there are no words necessary.

It's like the ocean, the wind blows and the waves form and nothing has to contract around it. So we move further and further into that spaciousness, which is the direct experience of the realized mind, the direct experience of resting in awareness, of true nature.

For me, I find sometimes I can go in everyday life doing things sometimes for hours really just resting in rigpa, in this spaciousness, no stories coming up, just attending to things, and then something comes along and hooks me. The more mindfulness is established, the quicker I catch that swoosh. Suddenly instead of the water just being the dancing water, I become that wave. "Watch it! Big wave! Good wave! Bad wave!" And then just mindfulness dips in and says, "Watch it. Here's self. Come back into the space again."

Q: It becomes a more delicate and precise awareness of the subtleties.

Barbara: It just keeps deepening. And no matter how skilled we get at resting in that spaciousness, there are always going to be those things that hook us. And being hooked is just something else that awareness can watch. That which watches the self being hooked is not hooked, that awareness. Others?

Q: I was Plum Village this summer and something that was really emphasized was happiness. And that was really useful for me because I didn't see any other point of doing meditation or being spiritual except for being happy. So if that's my main motivation and intention right now, does that sound healthy?

Barbara: It sounds perfect. But then eventually you have to get to the point of asking about what happiness is, and "Who is happy?" In the quest for happiness we can create enormous suffering because there's so much grasping and constantly needing to keep things right, to build mundane-level happiness. But the peace that transcends happy and unhappy can see difficult things come up without losing happiness. I'm equating happiness here with that joy and spaciousness, free of grasping. Just resting in spaciousness. Thay's (Thich Nhat Hanh, the teacher at Plum Village) teaching of just being present in this moment, mind not going off to this or that, plans, fears, etc, right here in this moment, brings us back to awareness, just pure presence, things just as they are. The wave, not good, not bad, just at ease.

I'm glad you were at Plum Village. Did you enjoy it?

Q: (Yes.) (Barbara: How long were you there?) A week. (Barbara: It's a beautiful place.) It was amazing. I would say I've had 2 experiences in my life that dramatically changed my life and got me into spirituality. And the first one was very intense and kind of spectacular. And Plum Village was much subtler. Just not as dramatic. But it taught me more about the value of feeling peaceful as opposed to being kind of wowed by spirituality. That was very helpful.

Barbara: The most powerful thing I experienced at Plum Village was sitting morning after morning facing a stone wall in the women's meditation hall. It's a very ancient stone wall and all the stones are piled in such a way that if you took any one stone out, the whole wall would collapse. It gave such a vivid experience of not-self, nothing separate. Here is the wall. We can't say the wall is these stones; without any stone you don't have a wall. It all collapses. Seeing the integration of it. And I was working in the same way with the skandhas, looking at that wall. And any time a sense of self would come up, just really seeing that as one stone in the wall. This thought, my thought, good thought, bad thought. One stone. Just all of these conditions creating this wall I'm calling Barbara. There's no self to it. It was very powerful for me.

Others? (no questions)

There's so much to talk about in terms of wisdom. Bringing this back to mundane vs. supramundane. We have to live the wisdom of our practice. I know this takes us back to somebody with a purpose. How do we really live from that deep loving place? In meditation we experience impermanence, understand the nature of suffering, deeply experience what no-self means. What does this translate to in our daily life? And M, I think, said it's easy to escape into no-self and just dismiss the difficult thoughts and feelings that come up in daily life. We can't go there. That's artificial. It's just another hiding place, then. The practice has to keep coming back to daily life experience.

There may be no self but still in this moment, is there skillful action? Is there skillful speech happening? Is what is being done and said coming from a place of love and connection? And if not, can awareness focus on the experience of fear that's creating a self that's driving this instead of its moving from spaciousness and love?

We really start to feel these innate qualities in ourselves. We don't say, "This is my peace, my happiness," just we touch in on this deep current of happiness. It's wonderful just to ride along on that current. Then we can live from that current, and it's skillful. I find as soon as I move into a place of fear and grasping and start to react from that place, I'm not very skillful.

So the practice always has to be looked at in terms of, what are the results here? Are there wholesome results to my practice? Self or no-self, am I able to live in the world with more wisdom and kindness? Most of us find as we do this practice, we are thus able.

For me, the biggest thing in the deepening of wisdom has been that I no longer live my life with fear. I talked about this last year when I was having such serious vision problems and there was a lot of terror. Will I be blind and deaf? What will happen? The deep practice kicked in, knowing "things will be as they will be. Don't make stories. It's not helpful. Just rest in the spaciousness that in this moment, this is how it is. And be with it with as much love as possible." I get back to Ajahn Chah's, "No self, no problem". When there's no strong Barbara, filled with "What will happen to Barbara?" and all those stories, then there's happiness, there's peace, there's ease. And whether it's easy or difficult, there's still ease. Things are just as they are.

Good night.

Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Brodsky