Emptiness

People, have you had enough posting old rock songs you've enjoyed?  Can we get back to discussing this?

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How about an emptiness song?

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Pretty cool, huh?

Well, I saw Adyashanti the last couple of evenings, in the Hemingway Museum in Oak Park, Illinois, where Hemingway was born and grew up.

Adyashanti was not too particular about names or intepretations of it, though he had been a Zen Buddhist for fifteen years.

He did mention a few things from Zen, however, for example the idea that teachers of emptiness are like people selling water by the river, only worse, he said: it's more like they're trying to sell water in the river.

He drew an analogy of a fish swimming around asking other, wiser fish where he could find some water. It was a spiritual fish, seeking emptiness.

He calls his organization Open Gate Sangha, a name that reinforces the same idea, that there is nothing keeping anyone from emptiness, no gate. In Zen they call it the “gateless gate.” It may feel as though there is a gate, but eventually one realizes that there was no gate.

Rumi had a poem about this:

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I am more and more intrigued as I hear of Adyashanti and his teachings. He sounds so real, so no-nonsense.

Thanks, David, for this.

Love,

Nicole

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Hey David, thanks for the reference.  I think I'll attend!

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Sounds really good. I really like these words:

”for example the idea that teachers of emptiness are like people selling water by the river, only worse, he said: it's more like they're trying to sell water in the river.

He drew an analogy of a fish swimming around asking other, wiser fish where he could find some water. It was a spiritual fish, seeking emptiness.”

and Rumi's:

“It opens. I've been knocking
from the inside.”

Don't they just say it beautifully, on both accounts. I think Adyashanti should come and do his thing in le Wirral, for purely selfish reasons. :) It's really not that common to get that combo you talk of David, is it? - a teacher with genuine deep realisation, a serious dash of intuitive mind & who is excellent with people.

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That's very well said, Lisa. Maybe you'll have to come here.  :)

Here is a really superb video by Adyashanti.

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Screw Adyashanti! Screw Rumi! Screw you all! Nagarjuna is the ONLY saviour! :D

You were right, Tom. I think we got a bit carried away in the other thread… to discuss anything other than emptiness in these forums should be strictly forbidded, preferably by permanent IP-ban!

:((((

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Without a doubt Adyashanti is superior to Nagarjuna. Here is an essay that testifies to that, but I wouldn't read it without also listening to the video/audio I posted above.


Radical Emptiness

To the extent that the fire of truth wipes out all fixated points of view, it wipes out inner contradictions as well, and we begin to move in a whole different way. The Way is the flow that comes from a place of non-contradiction—not from good and bad. Much less damage tends to be done from that place. Once we have reached the phase where there is no fixed self-concept, we tend to lead a selfless life. The only way to be selfless is to be self less—without a self. No matter what it does, a self isn’t going to be selfless. It can pretend. It can approximate selflessness, but a self is never going to be selfless because there is always an identified personal self at the root of it.

Being selfless isn’t a good, holy, or noble activity. It’s simply that when there is no self, selflessness happens. This selflessness is very different from having a moralistic standpoint. When action is selfless, it tends to do no harm. It tends to be the salvation, the secret alchemy that awakens and removes conflict. It’s a byproduct of not having a self. It just so happens that reality is overflowing with goodness and love.

This is radical emptiness—where everything is arising spontaneously. There is no more need to discriminate with the mind between what seems to be the right thing or the wrong thing to do. In ego-land it’s helpful to have an ego that can discriminate between right and wrong, but at a certain point, that’s not what you are operating by. You are operating by the flow of the Tao, which is a higher order of intelligence. You don’t need to intellectually discriminate anymore because the Tao discriminates without discriminating; it knows without knowing; it moves without moving. There is no sense of being enlightened or unenlightened. Since there is no self, there is nothing to be enlightened or unenlightened.

We can talk about enlightened beings and non-enlightened beings, and conceptually that has a use. But when there is no self, when there is radical emptiness, the whole enlightenment thing is sort of irrelevant because reality has become conscious of itself, which is enlightenment. That’s what is often missed. People believe that enlightenment is an improvement on reality, like becoming a super human being or God-knows-what. But enlightenment is when reality is awake to itself as itself within itself.

© 2006 by Adyashanti.

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I think he should have called that talk, Radical Premodern Metaphysics

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I think we should talk about emptiness until we all go fully insane, until we have worn out all words and thoughts and there is nothing left but, well, emptiness. Then we should sell it, our communal methodology, in board game form, and retire to Hawaii. or even better here where some of you will go insane with boredom, which will leave just us urban recluses. Perfect. :) What a plan Lisa! On second thoughts, that's too much hassle. I'll just come over there. :) Solved. :)

Love that bit on Radical Emptiness. Superb! Digging the lack of fixation the video discusses.

''Premodern'! - swearing won't be tolerated here. :) Watch your 'p's' & 'p's (perceptions & perspectives)! :)

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Oooh, an empty island?  I've stayed on a couple of those before … mighty nice!  For awhile.  Moonlit open beaches, the sussuration of the sea…

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with small  e m p t y  boats swaying in the breeze…

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… and an e m p t y martini glass, and a radio with e m p t y batteries.  Hey, didn't Tom Hanks have such an experience of emptiness?

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Adyashanti: “When action is selfless, it tends to do no harm. It tends to be the salvation, the secret alchemy that awakens and removes conflict. It’s a byproduct of not having a self. It just so happens that reality is overflowing with goodness and love.”

Note, that is GREEN selflessness. Here's some AMBER selflessness for you:

“If ordered to march: tramp, tramp or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest wisdom of enlightenment. The unity of Zen and war … extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war now under way.”

- Zen Master Harada Daiun Sogaku.

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Breathes new life into the phrase 'enlightenment club.'

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Nicole, yes, I think he is a very fine teacher. I'm glad you like it.


Lisa: Love that bit on Radical Emptiness. Superb! Digging the lack of fixation the video discusses.


Yes, it's things like that that lead people (Wilber, Mokshananda) to say things like he is “implicitly integral.”


Bruce: I think he should have called that talk, Radical Premodern Metaphysics.


I don't think he has given it the finest postmetaphysical interpretation that is possible, and one could even interpret those words as metaphysical. Taken in the context of everything else he has said I don't think his interpretation of the deeper psychic is that bad, though. I don't think it's Wilberian, but I don't think it's Amber Advaita a la Ramesh Balkesar either.

I don't think we look for him for the ultimate postmetaphyiscal interpretation, but we have to be careful about coming to the conclusion that he's not capable of something along those lines. In Advaita it's thought that taking a very passive attitude can result in meditative breakthroughs. There's evidence that this can be very successful, as it was with Andrew Cohen, for example. (As Andrew believes, however, I don't think it will have lasting effects for most people.)

You might be objecting to lines like this:

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“Also, Nagarjuna apparenly knew nothing about the Tao, nothing about the third face of god, nothing about the second, nothing about third tier. Adyashanti does, along with a whole lot of understanding that an educated 21st-century person has and a 3rd-century person wouldn't.”
 
N did not primarily deal with conventional reality, he dealth with reality. So if you define the quality of a spiritual teacher by how much conventional knowledge they have, I'm sure pretty much every modern teacher are better than N. N did not know about modern items like science, psychology, social structures, etc. Things that are commonplace today. Viewed from this perspective, he sucked as a teacher.

But for me, concerning spiritual practice, I'd like to know reality and the end of suffering. Not stories arising in reality, however important they may be conventionally. (When I want conventional knowledge, I look elsewhere.) Therefore, I like N. He doesn't compromise; he says it like it is. You can't take it? Go hang out at the Ontology & Consolation Club down the beach. They serve the drinks just the way you want it, and all your beliefs remain safe and intact. When you walk home you still feel like piss, but hey… buy that new book, attend that cutting edge seminar, go to that luxury retreat, evolve a bit more, stay awake all through the sleep cycle, and perhaps then you'll get IT.

:)

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Is: N did not primarily deal with conventional reality, he dealt with reality.


I think Reality includes both conventional reality and what you are calling reality, by which I think you mean nonduality, the absolute truth side of the two-truths doctrine.

In any case, all Nagarjuna offers us is an interpretation of the absolute truth. He doesn't offer the absolute truth at all, just a way to interpret it. The absolute truth is totally beyond words and must be discovered for oneself (through zazen, sesshin, self-inquiry, etc.).




Is: But for me, concerning spiritual practice, I'd like to know reality and the end of suffering. Not stories arising in reality, however important they may be conventionally.


All we find in Nagarjuna's books are stories arising in reality. In any case, I think Hokai makes an important point about this here:

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“I'm not buying this Macho Madhyamika story, that the only really hardcore practioners are Madyamaka Buddhists who don't believe in any existence (which of course is a misunderstanding of the Middle Way).”

You forgot to insert whether you meant 'inherent' or 'conventional' existence. If you meant that they don't believe in any 'inherent existence' then that's right, but they don't deny any conventionalities, like muffins or evolution. Words can be important sometimes.

“The absolute truth is totally beyond words and must be discovered for oneself”

Right, that's what he says in a way that makes it clear that it actually is totally beyond words and concepts. Yet still you cling to the Soul, the Psychic Being, Eros, The Primordial Pure Witness, etc etc, as if they were actual things lying around in the kosmos, just waiting to be known.

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David: The absolute truth is totally beyond words and must be discovered for oneself.

Is: Right, that's what he says in a way that makes it clear that it actually is totally beyond words and concepts.


He is simply talking about the absolute truth here, for one thing. He is answering the Who am I? question, not the How do I live question? I don't think that one is more important than the other.

For both sides of the street I think concepts are important. For the absolute side, the understanding that the absolute truth is beyond all concepts is really an addition to either a nihilistic approximate ultimate or bridging metaphor (like emptiness or non existence) or a reifying approximate ultimate or bridging metaphor (like awareness or consciousness), or some combination of the two (like the Yogacharra empty consciousness or empty space, which I think is the best being paradoxical—it is closer than a nihilistic-sounding metaphor like emptiness).

Without those bridging metaphors, the idea that it is totally beyond concepts is useless. If someone came to a satsang, and all the teacher said is that it is totally beyond concepts people new to the whole thing would have no idea what he or she were talking about. Even for someone who began with these other concepts and then learned Middle Way distinctions the bridging metaphors still play an important role, leading the person up to the Middle Way interpretation and then perhaps an actual experience or realization (which of course has nothing to do with the Middle Way, which is just another concept).

With regard to the How do I live? side of the street, concepts are even more important (though eventually it is beyond concepts at least in part vertically as well). Dwelling exclusively on the idea of shunyata as one goes about their business is not a particularly good idea, as far as I can see. In fact, it does seem to pave the way for postmodern narcissism—if there is no “ontology” then I can do what I like.

In that case people are confusing states and structures, thinking that because there is no metaphysical ground, my ego must be the captain of my ship. It may be the captain of their ship to a large extent, but I don't believe it ever is entirely, and it certainly doesn't represent their highest potential in action.


Is: Yet still you cling to the Soul, the Psychic Being, Eros, The Primordial Pure Witness, etc etc, as if they were actual things lying around in the kosmos, just waiting to be known.




The Soul, the psychic being, Eros are all relative phenomenon, on the How do I live? part of the street, at least as they are currently interpreted, by Ken Wilber anyway, it appears. So the Madhyamaka analysis doesn't apply unless we are discussing the absolute truth. If we are discussing the relative side of the street we drop the Madhyamaka analysis and, if we are Buddhists, pick up those parts of the Noble Eightfold Path that apply to action rather than meditation.

All this soul/psychic being bussiness can simply be seen as an elaboration of the eightfold path, those parts of it that involve the interpersonal, for example. Surely if Buddhism continues to evolve there will be an eloboration of this path to include those things in one form or another. Right now it's basically an ego/absolute model—one body, a gross body, and the absolute. Almaas does discuss some Buddhist concepts of soul in Inner Journey Home; I could quote some of it if you like. Maybe it's those concepts that would be developed or emphasized more (we can do all that without any ideas of transmigration, if you like; it doesn't depend on the idea of transmigration).

In other words, the madhyamaka analysis applies to he horizontal axis of the Wilber-Combs Lattice, and Eros/the-psychi-being applies to the vertical axis. The latter are enacted in certain worldspaces.

However, it can be said that they subsist before they exist (are enacted). That is to say, it can be seen that they subsist even where the subject isn't aware of them.

When we discuss them, we are enacting a different worldspace, applying a different methodology, a different injunction than the nondual, state-training injunction.

We need to make a distinction between our academic ideas about shunyata or nonduality and human realization of that nonduality. We can realize nondualty with an Amber structure, an Orange structure, etc., and things like the deeper psychic can be realized as a stage at the higher structures.

As Wilber has said, there is more than one realization out there. There is the nondual realization that everyone knows about, and then there are these third-tier realization that very few know about, including very few of those claiming nondual realization (many of whom have an Amber structure, an Orange structure, a Green structure).

The third-tier realizations are every bit as profound as the horizontal realizations and arguably more so. I think what troubles some people is that they are discussed with spiritual language or sound like they may contradict ideas about nonduality. They don't contradict those ideas if we're clear about the difference between states and stuctures and the difference between interpretations of nonduality and realizations of nonduality (nondual in action, etc.)

In other words there is a big difference between nondual (on the far-right side of the Wilber-Combs Lattice, along the horizontal axis) and Clear Light (at the top of the vertical axis) though they are both “nondual.” [1]

Re: Emptiness