THE SECRET OF BEING CONSTANTLY AWARE

There is nothing as good, and as useful, as the ancient wisdom. We think we are so smart today, but have we really discovered anything as important and wonderful as what was known to the wise and holy men and women of old? I think not.

Mindfulness is all about being choicelessly aware of what is happening, inside and outside of us, from one moment to the next. Unless we are capable of doing that well, we are not truly present, that is, living in the now.

Here’s a snippet of wisdom from Tao-hsin (Dayi Daoxin) (Japanese: Dōshin) (580-651) [pictured right], who was the fourth Chán [Chinese Zen] Buddhist Patriarch:

Constantly be aware,
Without stopping.
When the aware mind is present,
It senses the formlessness of things.
Constantly see your body as empty
And quiet, inside and outside
Communing in sameness.

Constant awareness. Hmm. How often we drift off into mental movies of our own making! You know what I mean. We see something, or think of something, or something happens, and … a mental movie begins in which we are the star, bit player, director, producer, writer, cinematographer and editor. The result? We are no longer aware. Yes, we have lost direct and immediate contact with the here-and-now. We have stopped observing. However, if we can just look and see, that is, observe … without judgment, analysis or interpretation … what happens? Well, as Tao-hsin says, when the aware mind is present—choicelessly aware---we come to see the ‘formlessness of things’.

Now, what does ‘formlessness’ mean, I hear you ask? Well, ordinarily, the conditioned, undisciplined mind wants to attach itself to something, that is, some object or thought. It is wants to grab hold of something. Actually, your mind is pure consciousness or awareness in it pure, unconditioned state, so that when you truly observe there is not you, the observer, as well as the thing observed, there is just awareness—pure unadulterated awareness. Is that possible? Yes, indeed, but it takes practice. That’s where the practice of mindfulness comes in handy. When you learn to give your full attention to this moment—by simply removing the hindrances or obstructions to your so doing---you will find that your mind is really formless as are all things. You see, that is, really see … and perhaps for the very first time in your life there is just the seeing! That is what Tao-hsin is talking about. When we attach ourselves to things—including our very own thoughts and feelings—we are living in a world of forms. However, if we can look and see without attachment, that is, give our full, undivided attention to what is directly and immediately present, we come to see and experience what Buddhism refers to as the formlessness of things, including the formlessness of our own mind. Emptiness is another word.

Begin now. There is no time like the present. When you look, just look. When you hear, just hear. When you smell, just smell. When you taste, just taste. When you touch, just touch. Avoid the temptation to grab hold of something, that is, attach your mind to something. In truth, your mind can never attach itself to the present. If you try, you will always end up losing direct and immediate contact with the present moment as it unfolds ceaselessly into the next present moment, and so on.

And what of ‘communing in sameness’. What the hell does that mean? What is ‘sameness’? Is it something like formlessness or emptiness? Well, yes, more-or-less. Actually, in both Buddhism and Taoism (Daoism) sameness and difference go together. You can’t have one without the other. They coexist. In a very real sense, they are one and the same. Things are many and yet one; they are one and yet many. I am not you, and you are not me; and yet we are all one in essence. We all live and move and have our being in the one life which flows through all things and is the very ground of being itself. Non-duality, some call it.

Stop seeing yourself as separate from all other living things. In truth, you are not. We are all part of life’s self-expression. The life in you, expressing itself as you, is the very same life that is in me, expressing itself as me. It is the very same life that is expressing itself in and as all other living beings as well. The form that each one of us presently takes has changed many, many times in our lifetime, and it will change many, many times hereafter as well. Forms come and go, wax and wane, but the life in us … well, it is ceaseless …

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;

Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever.

Those wonderful words come from Sir Edwin Arnold’s beautiful poetic version of The Bhagavad-Gita dubbed ‘The Song Celestial’. I often use them at funerals. The words are very powerful ... and very meaningful, and true, too.

The spirit of life is indeed formless and empty. It is the same wherever there is life, animate or inanimate. At its very heart, life is consciousness, and mind is consciousness. Look beyond the forms. True reality is formless. All things are interdependent and commune in sameness. We are immersed in a world of largely indeterminate flux—‘mind stuff,’ or ‘dream stuff’ in the words of the Polish-American physicist Wojciech Zurek—consisting of seemingly endless possible actions and a quantum field of potentialities. What emerges from that quantum field depends to a very large degree upon---consciousness! Yes, mind or consciousness is primary and fundamental, ‘the creator and governor of matter’, in the words of that great English physicist of yesteryear Sir James Jeans. And mind is formless and empty—well, the unconditioned mind is. How conditioned is your mind?

In the words of Tao-hsin, start sensing the formlessness of things. See your body as empty … and quiet inside and outside. Commune in sameness.

Calligraphy [below]: Emptiness.

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MINDFULNESS IS SIMPLE: JUST BE THE PRESENT MOMENT

Here’s a simple description of mindfulness, without all the ‘bells and whistles’. Mindfulness is the presence of choiceless awareness of the content of the present moment from one such moment to the next. Here's an even simpler description. Mindfulness is ... you ... as the present moment.

Why ‘choiceless’ awareness? Listen to these words from the Indian spiritual philosopher J Krishnamurti:

Choiceless awareness -- do not condemn, do not justify. Awareness works only if it’s allowed free play without interference.

To understand, surely, there must be a state of choiceless awareness in which there is no sense of comparison or condemnation, no waiting for a further development of the thing we are talking about in order to agree or disagree -- don’t start from a conclusion above all.

Awareness simply isn’t awareness when we are engaged in judging, analyzing, interpreting, filtering, condemning, comparing and contrasting. The moment we do any of those things we are no longer living in the now. To live in the now all likes, dislikes, opinions, views, biases, prejudices and predilections must be forsaken. There can be no compromise on that matter.

‘Xinxin Ming’ is a poem attributed to the Third Chinese Chán (Zen) Patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan (Chien-chih Seng-ts'an) [pictured below]. The essence of the poem is this: our true self (‘true mind’), which is self-existent be-ing-ness, is perfect as it is. 

However, as soon as we form a liking or disliking to some person, thing or idea, or form a view or opinion of any kind, we create a ‘false self’ -- a ‘false view’ or ‘false mind’, in the language of ‘Xinxin Ming’ -- with which we tend to identify, and which we mistakenly believe is our true self. Our ‘false views’ obscure the true mind's inherent perfection. Here are some quotations from ‘Xinxin Ming’ that illustrate the point I am trying to make:

Any degeneration of your previous practice on emptiness [the true nature of things and events] arises because of false perspectives. There is really no need to go after the Truth but there is indeed a need to extinguish biased views.

Do not dwell in the two biased views. Make sure you do not pursue. The moment you think about right and wrong, that moment you unwittingly lose your true mind.

The Great Way is not difficult, just don't pick and choose. If you cut off all likes or dislikes, everything is clear like space.

Now, I do not think that it is humanly possible to give up all our views, opinions, likes and dislikes. However, let’s face it. Do we really need to overlay those things on our moment-to-moment experience of life? The moment we do that, we are no longer living in the now. Instead, we are back in the past and in the mental realm of conditioning. To experience the now in all its directness and immediacy we must look, really look at the right-here-and-now. We must listen, really listen to the right-here-and-now. We must smell, really smell the right-here-and-now. We must taste, really taste the right-here-and-now. And we must touch, really touch the right-here-and-now. We can do none of those things properly—or even half decently—when we are stuck in our own headspace. Being right-here-and-now, and experiencing right-here-and-now requires us to … drop, let go and desist our ‘false mind’.

The Diamond Sutra says, ‘The past is ungraspable, the present is ungraspable, the future is ungraspable.’ The past is gone. It is ungraspable. The future is not yet here, so it too is ungraspable. But how is the present ungraspable? Well, we are not in the present. If we are, where is it to be found? Point to it, please. Grasp it. You can’t. It’s impossible to measure the present, see the present, or define it. It cannot be pinned down. The so-called present moment, ever so short and ephemeral, has its unfolding in and as the now. The now is the portal through which we experience the present moment, indeed every moment … but only one moment at a time. It is always the present moment. 

Here’s something else that is terribly important—we are the present moment. Yes, the present moment is what, in truth, we are. And the present moment is---our ‘true mind’! In truth, you are the present moment. It is not something happening around you. It is you. The present moment requires your consciousness and awareness in order for it to be what it actually is--the present moment. Without your full and total presence (that is, choiceless awareness), the moment you experience will not be the present moment. It will be a past moment, or some anticipated or hoped for future moment, but it certainly won’t be the present moment.

These are my favourite lines from ‘Xinxin Ming’:

Words! The Way is beyond language,

for in it there is

no yesterday

no tomorrow

no today.

Stop picking and choosing. Abandon your false mind. Just be the present moment.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT?

'If you can't find the truth [that is, enlightenment] right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?' 

They are the words of Dōgen (1200-1254) [pictured right], the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan and the original establisher in Japan of traditional sitting zen.

You don’t need to go to some remote place, or travel to Nepal or Tibet, or wear saffron robes, or meditate to for intolerably long periods of time, in order to achieve enlightenment. It can happen right where you are now, even in the middle of a busy street.

Actually, enlightenment is not something you ‘achieve’ or ‘gain,’ whatever those words mean. Enlightenment happens freely, and more-or-less instantaneously and of its own accord, when you remove the obstacles to its manifestation. 

First and foremost among those obstacles is self-will---indeed, the very notion of ‘self’ itself. The ‘self’ that wants to be enlightened is the very same ‘self’ that prevents it from happening. All your ‘selves’ are mental constructs. They wax and wane with more-or-less continuous regularity, although some are more persistent than others. The latter are the ones that tend to cause us so much suffering and misery—for example, the ‘insecure self’, the ‘frightened self’ and the ‘angry self’. You are on the path to enlightenment when you come to understand that all your mind-generated ‘selves’ --- there are literally hundreds and thousands of them --- are illusory in the sense that they have no separate, independent or permanent existence in and of themselves. None of them are the real person that in truth you are.

Temple on Mount Takao (Takaosan), in the city of Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan.
Photo taken by the author.

What, then, does it mean to become, and to be, enlightened?

Being enlightened means doing away with self-delusion---indeed, doing away with all illusions, beliefs, opinions and dogmas. All of those things prevent you from living fully in the now. I like these words of the third Chán (Zen) patriarch Seng-T'san (529-606 CE) [pictured left]: 

'Do not seek the truth, cease to cherish opinions.' 

Are you prepared to give up all of your illusions, beliefs, opinions and dogmas? It’s not easy but it is possible. By the way, giving up beliefs, opinions and dogmas will not prevent you from affirming the truth of convictions in the nature of self-evident truths or what may be called axiomatic eternal verities. We all need values, but they must be objectively based and not a matter of subjective belief.

Only an enlightened person is truly free---free from self-bondage, free from self-will run riot, free from beliefs, dogma and superstition, and free from the past and all conditioning. The Buddha said, ‘Once a person is caught by belief in a doctrine, they lose all their freedom.’ Yes, they're in bondage -- self-bondage -- to the 'believing self'. 

One more thing. If you---like millions of so-called religious people---are seeking some supposed 'reality,' whether in this life or in some supposed life to come, ‘promised’ or preached by others, then you are definitely not in an enlightened state of consciousness. Enlightenment, in two words, means this---'Wake up!' And it helps to stay awake, too. From moment to moment. 

A pupil said to his Zen master, ‘Master, what happens after enlightenment?’ The master replied:

'Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment chop wood, carry water … but no longer trip over things at night.'

In other words, you do the same things that you did before but you ‘no longer trip over things at night’. Of course, that is metaphorical language, but I think you understand what is being said. The things that worried you before no longer do. You don’t become perfect. You may still get angry from time to time, but your anger will be controlled and directed at things about which we should be angry -- things such as the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor, religious extremists and climate change skeptics.

There’s a saying in twelve-step programs, ‘It’s not the really big things that trip us up, it’s the broken shoe laces.’ That’s so very true. Enlightenment means that the broken shoe laces of life---again, that’s metaphorical language---don’t trip us up as often.

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