True emptiness exists when the mind
is clear and all forms have vanished.
This is a condition one achieves first
by determined and disciplined sitting
in meditation, zazen. With practice and
perseverance, the condition extends its
effects into all of one's living, still or
moving, awake or asleep, working or
relaxing.
Externally, one perceives no objects.
There is no sensation of physical body.
Internally, there is no mental activity, no
thinker, no thoughts. Nothing exists, not
even emptiness. Not time, nor space,
nor gravity. Nothingness.
Immense and infinite clarity, pure
awareness without any object,
without any knowing thereof.
The cloud of unknowing.
But there is ' something '....
Immensely important, immensely
interesting and significant. Immensely
potent, wondrous and awesome.
True emptiness is impossible to explain
with words, but it is universal. There
are reports and descriptions of its
achievement from every time and from
every culture. From Meister Eckhart to
the Kabbalists, from Gautama Buddha
to Leonardo da Vinci, from the Shamans
of Siberia and South America, to Nagarjuna,
to Plotinus, to Patanjali, etc., etc., thousands
and thousands of individuals, from all around
the world, for thousands of years, have striven
to explore and describe mystical experience,
essentially indescribable, within the limitations
of their particular conceptual and linguistic
frameworks.
Because of the great differences between
cultures resulting from historical events,
temporal and geographic location, social
and philosophical traditions, political and
sectarian rivalry, there is much confusion
of terminology, every tradition having
its own preferred map of the one
territory, often delineated in obscure
and archaic technical language.
Whether you talk about jhanas or lokas,
whether you talk about Ain Soph, nirvikalpa
samadhi or the Celestial or the Immaterial
Realm, whether you talk about sunyata, or
the Ground of Being, Chakras or Sephiroths,
Brahman or Allah, God, Tao or Dharmakaya,
whatever, it is all entirely, totally, absolutely,
decisively, emphatically irrelevant to the
actual real physical and spiritual work
involved in the direct and real experience.
Got that ?
' It ' has no name.
There is a reason why it has no name , and
the reason is this. Because that portion of the
mind, of the brain, the aspect of one's self, the
level of consciousness ( or whatever type of
terminology you prefer ) which names things
and which is forever prattling away to itself
using the things that we call thoughts, - that
part is not operating, is switched off, asleep, or
suspended. You do this every time you fall
asleep. Not a big deal, really. It means you can
explore without the distraction of the 'monkey
mind ' which is forever jumping from one
thought to the next. Asleep, but very wide
awake, simultaneously. It is an entirely natural
faculty, lost to most because it is not culturally
understood, supported or endorsed.
So, that part of the normal person which is
a cognitive construct, a mental model of the
' me ', or ' self ', or 'ego', ( or whatever is your
prefered term ), built up by the thinking mind,
the bit which thinks of itself conceptually as
" I am < insert your name here > ", the ' me ',
can never have this particular experience,
because that particular mental faculty ceases
operation.
Hence Nirvana defined as a cessation.
Think of it as turning off loud music, so that
you can hear the whispering wind outside, or
switching off your bright electric lights, so that
you can see the twinkling stars.
Thus,' nobody ' can ever have this experience.
But that does not mean that the experience
cannot be had. It just means that the intellect,
the rational thinking mind, is not the tool for
the job. And since Western culture is built
upon exhaltation of the rational mind, in its
arrogance and conceit, it finds it impossible to
comprehend anything else, or even to admit
the possibility of anything else. Sad, really.
The people who are too lazy, ignorant, defiled,
misled or confused to do the work, like to
quarrel and fight over the words.
They are no better than poultry squabbling
over a piece of dirt, and one must pity them.
' What exactly do you mean by ego ? ', they
say.
That does not matter. The dividing up of
reality into 'the ten thousand things' with
scientific precision, is another arena, the rational
domain, a kind of bureaucracy which wants
everything labelled, pigeon holed and entered
in the ledgers under the right heading.
All well and good, if you are a taxonomist,
a lexicographer, or want to argue all day
whether a rose is a rose is a rose or not.
But no use at all for following the Way.
Some people call it ego death, some call it
transcendence, rapture, out-of-the-body, etc, etc,.
There are dozens of terms, but all of them
useless, because none of them will assist you
in the slightest towards having the actual
experience, which is what matters. Not words.
They are all a hindrance.
Loss of ego, a silent mind, being without
thought, etc, is a beginning, but only a
beginning. There is much further to go.
Taoism distinguishes three levels at the
high end of the human condition.
These divisions are largely meaningless,
because if you do not experience them
directly, they remain metaphoric, poetic,
merely ideas. And if you do experience
them, and are sufficiently advanced to
discern the boundaries, there is no need
to label them analytically, as it serves
no useful purpose so to do.
The lowest grade of enlightenment is
called the High Pure Realm. From this
status, one exists in harmony with
nature and people, and is considered
virtuous in human terms.
The next station is called the Most Pure
Realm, where subject and object, self
and other, are still differentiated, but
are both experienced as integrated into
the Tao.
The ultimate level is called the Jade Pure
Realm, where one has achieved wu chi,
complete union with the Tao.
If you really want to find this ' thing '
you don't need to concern yourself with
ANY of the cultural traditions.
' It ' does not care whether you are a Jew,
a Sikh, a Buddhist, a Quaker, a Pagan, Jain,
Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Hindu, or any
of the myriad human categories.
The Universe, the source of our being, is
not the property of any particular
school of thought, belief system, ethnic
group, world view, cosmology or religion.
It does not sell franchises.
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