No Travel, No Destination

 

 ** The most profound journey is not one that involves traveling to exotic lands, but rather the path of unfolding discovery that allows us to clearly see what is always and forever right in front of us. ** 

When I was very young, maybe eight or nine, something extraordinary happened. But it wasn’t in the form of an event in time or a notable experience. It was instead something that just sort of arrived on the scene unheeded and didn’t ever depart: curiosity took me by the throat and wouldn’t let loose.

What a glorious friend to have, and she went everywhere with me. “What is this; why is that; how does this thing connect to that other thing?” she would whisper. “What are all those things that are not plain to the sight and which remain unseen?” was her higher-level examination question. This urge to look under every rock simmered for a while, but at some point it boiled over, and its beckoning call would eventually dictate the arc of my young life.

Yes, such a brilliant guide to have, growing up as I did in the segregated South with all sorts of inherited assumptions about race, gender, class, acceptable behavior and supposed success. One day, sitting in a classroom at Myers Park High School, a thought arrived in my mind stream, “They haven’t told us everything.” I knew at once that the way I was being educated by the society around me could not be the be-all and end-all.

But where to turn? Who would know whatever it is that “they” haven’t told us? The books and professors at my university were a support along the way, but my search wasn’t satisfied by learned lectures. “Well, the folks up north at those prestigious universities, maybe they know.” Not really. “Well, maybe it is in Europe; they’ll know what it is.” But it was more of not really knowing, just with a different accent.

Fortunately, the loyal sister of curiosity is persistence. Looking, looking, looking—being intensely interested, picking up each rock, examining it carefully, not finding what was being sought, putting the rock back down and going to the next one. Over and over again, and again, and again. Lots of questions, thousands of books, many stamps in a passport, numerous brilliant conversations, endless retreats and meditation sessions . . .

As I move into old age, there is not one speck of regret for any of that, because you see, I have been allowed an insight. Every bit of my seeking and longing has led me to where I am today: clarity that this journey I have been on is not to a place, or a state of mind, or to a finish line where there is total certainty. No, none of that. I walk in different shoes now.

The most profound journey is the path of unfolding discovery that allows us to clearly see what is always and forever right in front of us. A key part of this discovery is becoming aware of the miseducation which initiated us into a confused world of hearsay and misperception. In seeing this, we can relax our grip on all the misbegotten concepts and presuppositions that have solidified in our lives. We become humble enough to not-know-but-what-to-know. We are alert to what teaching each moment brings, and we are courageous enough to heed what is being revealed. No goal, no destination—no travel needed, no further knowledge required. Resting as pristine primordial awareness for short moments many times, we are all already fully arrived.

 

 

    

     

 

 

 Unexpected Gratitude

 For all of us around the world, my goodness, what a time it has been over these past years and what challenges we have all faced. And yet, even amidst overwhelming anxiety, care and worry, let us not forget:  there is a place of rest for us---ever-present, ever-available and untouched by any of the descriptions we could apply to it. To be able to rest in this basic space of bliss, peace and clarity for short moments many times is a blessing beyond compare. In the great natural abundance which is our birthright, we are embraced by beauty, and not only reminded of our many gifts, but brought into full appreciation of them.

   On this beautiful morning in this beautiful place, I am surrounded by the reminders of these gifts.

   So, so many things that we can't even account for which have been given to us...... A man whose head is being held underwater for minutes has forgotten everything else but breath, and once his head emerges from the forced imprisonment of the water, he breathes with delight and joy, gasping in appreciation for something that he had taken for granted for the whole of his life.

   A village woman in a war zone in the Sahara gets up early each morning to fetch water from a well six kilometers away and hopes to avoid the rape, robbery and murder that could await her along the way. Upon her safe arrival back home, she revels in the good fortune of the tenuous safety that has been provided to her on that one day. She would have difficulty imagining people whose source of water is only a few footsteps away and whose access to it is without any impediment.

  There are circumstances in which one feels trapped and limited and unhappily dictated to by the course of fate, and possibly in that circumstance cannot see the benefit. And yet, AND YET, as we look back on those same circumstances that had been labeled unfortunate or sad, we can come to feel gratitude for all that we were given---even if those gifts were hidden from us as they were being given.

  As we continue on our way and our vision becomes clearer and less distracted, we won't have to artificially create thanksgiving and fix it for a time or place. We will become closer companions with the wisdom which embraces us and the sweetness of experience unfettered by wish or expectation, and the fragrance of these blooms will be so present and evident for us that no summoning will be necessary. 

May it be so. May we rest in our essential being.

  

                                                               Abundant Life

 “To live life more abundantly.” Isn’t this a call that so many of us want to heed? In all the many shapes it takes in our lives, don’t we hunger for greater meaning, understanding, love, insight and connection? Even in the misshapen forms that seem so foreign to genuine abundance—greed, mindless consumption, utter self-focus, competition—there is the same wish to live more abundantly . . . only misperceived.

Throughout our lives we have been so grossly miseducated about our true being and what this “abundance” is that we are searching for. We have been trained to seek within the limited context of a mere human individual looking out at a separate world of objects. We have been trained to think that we are enclosed within this skin suit of a body and that we were born, live and then will die within that body. But, dear ones, is this ultimately true?

I have no conclusive or satisfying answers to give you, no guaranteed steps to take. All I can offer is an invitation, to myself and to others, to simply be humble and open. Humble and open. Maybe also courageously available to the possibility of being shocked into recognition by the wonders that surround us—hidden as they have been by the erroneous, inherited assumptions we have cultivated.

Yes, open to what we don’t already know, and extremely skeptical about what we think we already know. To be gifted with the amazement that comes from gently resting moment-by-moment as the settled basic state of infinite intelligence, where there is no goal to be accomplished, no improvement that needs to be made. We can take instruction from a rainbow which both is, and is-not. Teachings surrounds us on all sides. We are not lacking.

I See You

 Almost a decade ago I was writing a blog titled "Read, Relax, Recognize," and then somehow I fell out of it and moved to other things, but these present times are so fraught with conflict and confusion---it's time to get back to work!

And so, with that short introduction, here we go again!

                                                                  "I See You"

Many years ago I was on the adventure of my life, driving in a VW van with friends across the Alps, through northern Italy and into southern France. On the Saturday night before Easter, we arrived in the beautiful ancient city of Arles. We parked the van and quickly found a seat in a café in the main square, close to the ancient Roman amphitheater, very eager to observe the holiday crowd doing all the interesting things that crowds do.

Many of the local men had been drinking heavily throughout the evening, and all around us was noise and mayhem. Suddenly, two guys began shouting at one another, and as they grew angrier and angrier the conflict escalated into a right violent fight with lots of flying fists. As they were too drunk to land many blows, they ended up grabbing one another’s shirts and continued the struggle that way.

Both of the men were completely lost in their anger, and this sad episode was surely not meant to have a peaceful outcome, but then something quite extraordinary happened. One of the men happened to glance into the eyes of the other, and then amidst the struggling, he kept looking. His opponent could sense that the other man was actually seeing him for the first time---not as an enemy but as another person. At once both men looked deeply at each other, they held their gaze, smiled, gave up their struggle and began to dance together in one another's arms. Yes, they danced together in one another's arms!! How amazing and unexpected a change of attitude it was. 

In the whole of my life I will never forget this, and it is not only because we were saved one bloody fistfight on an Easter evening, but also because this is such a grand metaphor of how life can be. When we actually SEE one another as fellow human beings, our apparent differences look a lot different. We can have wildly divergent opinions, be of different ethnicities, have opposite views of politics and have no language or culture in common, but we can surely see one another despite all of that.

There is a beautiful greeting in the Zulu language: “Sawubona.” It means “I see you,” but this lovely phrase is not meant only in the common way of, “Oh, there is a body standing there,” but rather, “I see you in all your humanness and in our commonality as people.” When we see another in this way, we are seeing the essence, and we are not being distracted by all the labels and distinctions. When we have this clear vision, we allow our recognition of the oneness of all things to be sustained. We hold this truth to be self-evident---that there is only One thing here, and when we see, that One-ness is what we are seeing.

“Namaste” is another lovely greeting that exemplifies what I am pointing to. This is a greeting used in India; the word comes from Sanskrit and is a combination of “nama” and “te.” "Nama" means to bow, make reverential salutation or have adoration for, and “te” means “to you.” Its deeper meaning is “the god in me bows to the god in you,” and the greeting is done with the two palms brought together in front of one’s heart to symbolize the oneness. How wonderful a way to greet and be greeted, and how brilliant a reflection of the way things really are! 

As noble and as inspiring as these customs are, it is so easy to forget this practie of clear seeing, isn't it? Surely we need reminders as we move through our day-to-day existence. We are constantly coming into contact with people with whom we wildly disagree, people who we feel are getting it totally wrong, and we sense the need in ourselves to make them see their wrong-ness. It may well be that at some level, yes, they are getting it horribly wrong, but where is our attention directed? Are we seeing only our disagreements and their wrong-ness, or are we truly able to SEE them as essentially non-different from ourselves?

When we observe a passenger at the airport shouting and cursing at the employee because the plane was late, we can be pretty sure that the passenger has lost sight of what really matters. If, however, we can bring forth loving support, respectful relating and gracious kindness---even in the midst of grand disagreement or upset---then we can be equally certain that the important things are being acknowledged.

I look at the present political landscape in the US and I observe people expressing points of view or supporting theories that seem to me, well, crazy. But I have to pause. My first reaction upon hearing these things was to resist and make the people wrong and to get angry that they could think and behave in this way. Then, thank goodness, this practice of seeing somehow came to the rescue. I could still disagree with them, but I did not need to disdain them or make them "other." Instead, what I found myself doing was introspecting: "The things these folks support truly do seem crazy to me, but, BUT, what are the ways in which I am equally deluded?" Seen from the vantage of absolute clarity and wisdom, how many of my long held assumptions are crazy, that is, totally misaligned with reality? Humility is crucial; we should never assume that we have it absolutely right, for who knows how very much we don't know?  

When I first came to study, live and work in Germany, it was only a few decades after the war. The older Germans I was meeting who were so kind to me, what had they done in the war? Likely many of them had personal stories that they were not very proud of. The priest in the Catholic dormitory where I lived had been in the Wehrmacht and in an American internment camp. The administrator at the tennis courts where I taught tennis in Munich had been in the SS on the Eastern Front. What horrors had he seen, and committed? It was an education for me. I could condemn the actions and want them to take responsibility for what they had done, but I could not hate the person. 

And now for the most extreme example; please bear with me. This horrible war in Ukraine which Russia has unleashed not only on Ukraine, but in a sense, on the whole world. We see Russian soldiers committing atrocities; we see civilians dying in the streets, children blown apart by bombs, the grandmother of a friend of mine, 91 years-old, killed by shelling in Mariupol. I am struggling here; how can I make peace with the anger I feel for the Russian soldiers and their leaders who are doing these horrible things? 

A friend recently posted a YouTube video of 220 Russian musicians really rocking out to the song "The Final Countdown" in a park in Moscow last year, before the war began. Look at all of these beautiful young people and this gloriously happy scene, viewed 2.7 million times by people from all around the world. These young Russians are laughing, singing and playing their hearts out. We can all share their joy and feel the commonality with them. And yet, maybe some of these same young Russian musicians have been conscripted into the army, and they are the ones who are now raining death and destruction on civilians in Ukraine. I surely cannot justify or support their actions, but no, I can't hate them. In my mind's eye I see them there playing their instuments in the park in Moscow---living a human life with all its twists and turns. I know there are many ways to respond to the tragedy that they are participating in, but hatred is not the way.

As with all things, the decision to maginalize, or to include, is a choice we have. No outer circumstance can force us to forget our commonality; we decide that for ourselves. As for myself, I know for sure that I want a life that is filled with joy and peace and which aspires to find the end to conflict, both in the world and in myself. Only by each of us making that choice in each moment and in each encounter will the war-ravaged world we live in be transformed. 

Hmm, better to dance than hate, wouldn’t you say!

Baking Cookies

Sometimes the simplest of acts can be the most instructive. We can surely appreciate the grand and dramatic gesture now and again, but for me, simple is best. And along with “simple” as a totally admirable descriptive quality, I would also add direct, skillful, clear, beneficial and absolutely appropriate.

As we rush about with our busy minds, we often pass over what is plainly obvious and right in front of us. Unless we are careful, we can become like inattentive, phone-obsessed teenagers who are oblivious to anything else that passes in front of them. We may also be blinded by inherited notions based on conventional thinking; we may not be able to see how we have been boxed into corners by thousands of years of conditioning and practiced habit.

Everyone reading this article knows very well where they were when they heard about or saw the horrific events occurring in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. The sight of airplanes flying into buildings and then those buildings disappearing into the ground was not anything that one would easily forget. People were completely transfixed by shock and did not know where to turn. There was no precedent for something like this, and no one had a script for how to respond.

One response was from people who immediately wanted revenge. There were shouts of, “Go bomb the bastards,” and “Kill all the rag heads.” Some version of the theme was heard over and over again, “We have been hurt, and now we need to hurt back.” People who looked “foreign” were singled out and threatened or even physically attacked on the streets.

But other people had a different response. For them the choice was not to lash out in hatred, but to ask themselves, “How do we deal with our own pain and the pain of others; what can be done to help those in need?” Some people actually got in their cars and drove up to New York to get right into the work of recovery.

I heard a wonderful story about a woman who, like everyone else, saw those images of airplanes flying into the twin towers and was shocked, and like so many people she wanted to do whatever she could to help. Now for her, New York was very, very far away and there were immediate obligations that needed to be dealt with in her own place, but still the movement was there to somehow offer help in this trying time.

So, what did she do? Well, she baked cookies. Yes, she baked cookies and then took them around to offer to people. Now, I suspect that it was much more than cookies that she was offering when she went around, as I should think that she wanted to find a way to comfort, reassure and console people who could certainly use a dose of that. I feel fairly certain that this notion to bake cookies for people arose quite spontaneously and without great planning, and it was done in an effortless and unpretentious way.

When I first heard this story, it just warmed my heart. Of course, it is not so much about the cookies--and I am a big fan of cookies, I might add!--but about the skillful means in time, place and circumstance. It need not be, as I said before, a grand gesture. Something simple and kind in a completely ordinary way can be the most helpful response.

I have found this example so instructive, and I am eager to find ways to put the same wisdom to work in my own life. What I do know for sure is that being a part of the solution sure beats being a part of the problem! That would mean, for instance, that if one is attacked or defamed in any way, the most helpful response is not to do the same in return. It is clear that Gandhi’s quote in this regard is so relevant. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

It may even be that no response at all is the best response, but there is no rulebook for any of this. If we are truly relying on open intelligence, there is no predicting what the response will be. Everything is discovered spontaneously, and everything is ever new in each appearing here-and-now. I am so cheered and encouraged to look around me and see the kindness, benefit and graciousness that come from people doing just that. The world is so filled with negativity, selfish concern, close-mindedness and intolerance, but how beautifully these noble traits shine in contrast.

We are the ones who create the world we live in, and each and every moment provides us a choice as to how we will receive that moment. What joy it is for me to see the choices that more and more people are making to love one another into being. Yes, truly, there are a lot of cookies being baked out there.

Authorship Thinning into No-thing

When anything is said or written, where does it come from, and who says or writes it? Who can claim authorship, and how verifiable is that claim? The answer on a conventional level would seem to be so very obvious: “Well, I said it; I am the author!” But like all things that seem so obvious, there is another way of looking at this, and it is a fortunate person who is led to ask these deeper questions and to keep asking them until the “obviousness” of the usual answer becomes less certain.

In order to look into this inquiry deeply, we need not formulate any grand philosophy; we only need to closely observe our own experience. In any given moment, when a person becomes very settled, rested and still, when they want nothing and know nothing and are freed of the need to defend or defeat, then an authorless place is allowed to appear. From that authorless place, one is not speaking from memory or relating the present to the past. The complete reliance on the here-and-now in that immediate time, place and circumstance invokes an intelligence from which the ever-new can appear.

The speaker in that case would be hearing what is being spoken as if it were spoken by someone else; the speaker would be the first one instructed by what is being spoken. That is to say, the speaker is being educated and enlivened by what they themselves are speaking---how extraordinary! One cannot actually identify the source, as what is being expressed is not limited to the personality of the one expressing it. This need not sound odd to anyone of us who has ever found speech or writing occurring completely spontaneously and openly, without preparation or goal.

This authorless expression is not something that is cultivated, contrived or aspired to. It may seem to be a rare thing only because of our lifelong allegiance to the rumblings of the mind: the thoughts, emotions, experiences and stories that have seemed to be so very real for us. When we relax our hold a bit and allow all of these things to be as they are, we then allow this intelligence to reveal itself that is not bounded by the thoughts, emotions and experiences. The mirage created by thought is seen through, and once we are no longer transfixed by the mirage, something quite marvelous occurs.

For short moments, many times we continue to allow this authorless place to become unconcealed. This movement of unconcealing may happen sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but this doesn’t matter. We persist, never letting loose of our genuine enthusiasm and courageousness. We are sustained over and over again by the brilliant practice of short moments many times, the skillful means of a loving teacher and a direct teaching, and the support of a community of fellow discoverers.

We gain more and more confidence through our own direct experience that this authorless place is ever present and ever sustaining and is not something that we need to earn or acquire. When words are authorless, then the perceived gap between speaker and listener is given up, and no one is a stranger. Authorship thins into no thing or no person in particular, and what seemed impossible for a person before is now gloriously possible.

Exaltation

Exaltation: now there is a word that does not generally come up in polite conversation! To exalt others, to exalt ourselves and to exalt the lives we are living is, well, not generally on everyone’s daily to-do list. For many of us such a thing might appear to be not only mightily inappropriate but also totally impossible. “What, me exalted? Come on now.”

We have grown up with a barrage of perceived limitations, wrongdoing, faultfinding and diminishment, such that we would find it difficult to imagine a life free of such things. Quite apart from what we might hear, for example, in church or synagogue, totally permeating all of society is a pervasive flavor of original sin, of being flawed, of being thrown out of the garden. This same mind set might be extended to include karma and reincarnation and other beliefs that diminish us. We have been trained up in and grown so accustomed to these powerful forces of internalized oppression that there seems to be no other way of being.

We can easily recognize externalized oppression in countries with dictatorships, tyranny, political repression, extreme class, ethnic or gender bias and overt discrimination in its many forms, and we can not only recognize these things but also acknowledge the total revulsion we have for them. However, within ourselves, these profound levels of internalized oppression are just assumed, sustained and perpetuated from one generation to the next. “Wrong, wrong, wrong; bad, bad, bad; insufficient, insufficient, insufficient.” Ironically, even in cases where the opposite seems to be manifested--“I am the greatest; look at me”---there is nevertheless still a basic sense of wrong-ness present.

Well, what to do? My experience has been that there is nothing to be accomplished by trying to talk ourselves out of this. We can do all the positive affirmations we want, but at some point that is going to break down. We could undertake massive self-improvement projects, but as long as the basic, underlying configuration of negativity is in place, the methods that are applied will always be arising from the same flawed context which they are meant to defeat.

Ah, but there is a way out! Or, better said, there is actually no way out and no way in, because we have never been apart from that which is totally untouched by any of this---the pure, pristine, primordial open intelligence that pervades all things. We are resting in that intelligence at all times and have never left it; we have only been distracted by things that caught our attention over and over again. So, instead of constantly focusing our attention on the flaw, we simply let things be as they are. Without grasping, without improving, we simply let things be as they are for short moments many times. Without seeking or wanting anything, we rest and relax into the pervasive open intelligence that becomes increasingly evident once we choose to put our attention there.

This is such an incredibly simple practice and is sure to bring the result. It is a time-tested method that actually works; the benefits are not theoretical but actual and provable. This simple practice of relying on open intelligence for short moments many times is the first of four sustaining foundational mainstays. The second mainstay is to be supported by a person who has more experience in this practice and who knows all about the things we will be going through along the way---so, a teacher or trainer who helps bring us along. The third is a sustaining training with media that elucidate and reaffirm and clarify at every step. Whether the message comes through texts, audios, videos or direct trainings, it is an unvarying beacon towards truth. The fourth mainstay is a worldwide community—a community that no one need join and from which no one can be excluded.

So, now we come full circle back to the original theme: exaltation! Through a simple practice and the support of all these mainstays, a crack begins to appear in the bastion of wrong-ness that has so dominated our lives. We just relax, and then we relax again, and by doing so we are pulled out of the mud and our eyes are opened to possibilities never before imagined. We see the exaltation in ourselves and in all of life that is unearned and unaccomplished---the exaltation that is the natural luminosity of open intelligence.

Our vantage shifts almost without our noticing how or when; where once we saw flaws in ourselves and others, we see exaltation. Life has a spark and a power that it seemed to have lacked before. We are not embarrassed by the idea that we are indeed exalted beings whose birthright is one of joy, courage, wisdom and ease of being. We never meet a stranger, and what we see in ourselves we see in others. We discern that no matter what possible criticism can be leveled because of claiming these things to be true, we know our own experience and we are undaunted.
Exaltation, exaltation, exaltation.