When I see that I am nothing, that is Wisdom; when I see that I am everything, that is Love; and between the two my life flows.
—Nisargadatta Maharaj
Not long ago, I dozed off in my armchair and dreamed that I was on a trip to outer space, but I turned around and came back. In the dream, someone asked me why I came back. I woke up with a jolt. I felt that in some way this was a profound and relevant question: Why do I come back? From deep space, or maybe from going beyond the world, from transcendence?
I thought of the Bodhisattva who refuses to disappear into nirvana until all beings can be awakened. I thought of my unrealized childhood dreams of being a doctor or a social worker serving the poor and the dispossessed. I thought of my political past, my caring for the suffering and injustices in the world.
And I thought of how I’ve moved over the course of many years into a nondual spiritual perspective that sees everyday life as either a dream-like movement in consciousness and/or as illusory forms, like those we imagine in Rorschach blots, in what is actually inconceivable, unresolvable, unpindownable, seamless flux. Either way, everything that appears is realized to be nonsubstantial and in some sense illusory. It’s never what we think it is. The so-called relative world of apparently stable, persisting, autonomous forms doesn’t actually exist.
This isn’t just an ideology or a belief, but a direct realization that arises from examining and feeling into present experience. But when it is taken on conceptually and not fully realized experientially, it can feel heartless and even repellent. Or it can sometimes serve as a kind of mental comfort blanket in the face of a world where there is so much suffering and cruelty, a way of turning away and closing our eyes and hearts. Many people balk at statements about everything being perfect as it is, or unconditional love being the fundamental reality. How can that be?
In my own life and in the private lives of every nondual teacher I know personally, we all care deeply about loved ones, have relationship issues, emotions, medical problems, opinions about world events, and all the things that make up ordinary human lives. Most nondual teachers don’t write about those things in the way I do, and most don’t seem troubled in the way I sometimes have been about any apparent discrepancy between caring for the world and seeing it as a kind of illusory appearance.
Maybe because of my background, I’ve never felt comfortable with dismissing the reality of our human experience with the realization that nothing real is being hurt or damaged, and that all of it is nothing more than a momentary dream-like movement of consciousness or inseparable waves of energy. I can certainly see it that way, and that discovery is indeed profoundly liberating, but I can’t dismiss the human level either.
I’ve found after many years of wrestling with this that when the nonsubstantiality of everything that appears is fully realized on the level of direct experiencing rather than being heard as ideology and belief, there is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever. So if these questions trouble you as they have troubled me at times, what I’ve found is that the resolution can only be found by tuning into direct experience here and now.
A few excepts from my last book, DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement, came to mind that might be relevant.
This first is from a chapter that describes one of the last retreats I attended with Toni Packer. It was roughly a year after my mother died, when I was still living in Chicago, and I had traveled to Springwater Center in northwestern New York for the September seven-day retreat:
Toni is like a fierce Zen master on this retreat, like Nisargadatta—ruthless. Anything you pick up, she says, throw that away. Anything she describes—wholeness, presence, whatever—she immediately says, throw that away, too. Don’t hold onto anything. She speaks of closing the book on the past, on the encapsulated little self. “Stop holding to this little thing,” she says. “You are vast. Close the book on this little thing, and in that closing, there is an opening—the empty page.” Freedom. Space. Vastness. Stop following the “yes, but’s” in the mind, she says. Close the book. Be the vastness you are.
The silence is so palpable, the immense quiet, the natural world so vibrant and full of depth. This fresh page, this empty mind is God: “A way of seeing in which everything is perfect,” as Toni put it. That seeing, that infinite intelligence, that unconditional Love, that vast awaring presence beholding it all—accepting everything and clinging to nothing—that is God. It’s not that the cruelty and horrors in the world are perfect as they appear to us; the perfection is in the way of seeing them, the unconditional love beholding them, the no-thing-ness of them, the seamless unicity in which everything goes together perfectly, the non-clinging to any viewpoint, any idea, any memory, any interpretation. Closing the book on all our ideas, not holding to anything, not knowing what anything is—that is God, that vast open presence, which is actually all there ever is. That vastness is free to take any shape, and no shape endures.
We are here together learning to close the book. We can’t really say how we do it, any more than we can say how we ride a bike, drive a car, lift our arm, open our hand, swim or walk. And closing the book is a newer, less familiar movement, like those we learn in Feldenkrais. We are learning slowly to open. The old habits return—grasping, clinging, controlling, defending, seeking, resisting—but the new possibility is also there, and gradually, over time, the balance shifts. And, of course, “we” aren’t doing any of this. It is all happening by itself. Ever-fresh. Ungraspable.
The fields are full of goldenrod and wild flowers, milkweed, buzzing insects, delicious fragrances. A few pieces of Mom remain on the wet earth in the north woods where I scattered her ashes, a few tiny bits of bone still discernible. But slowly, she is dissolving back into the earth, like a dream.
At night, sitting in silence, the delicious sounds of rain, wet and playful, soft, delicate, cleansing, opening the heart.
On the last day, Toni reads from Nisargadatta: “There is no progress in reality…the source of light is dark…seedless and rootless…without cause, without hindrance.”
Words, like the hands of a skilled bodyworker, can draw your attention to something previously unseen or overlooked. Something is illuminated, touched, revealed by the word as by the touch of the bodyworker—awareness floods the area, light comes into the previously darkened room, a flame is ignited in the heart. And then, throw that away, too. Don’t hold onto anything.
Whenever I get the urge to drop the whole spiritual thing altogether, which I periodically do, it seems to be one of those little dharma bells—ding ding—waking me up to the fact that I’m lugging around something that would best be dropped, and it might not be spirituality, but rather the ideas I have about it. After all, the real heart of spirituality, at least as I mean it, is about dropping everything, moment to moment. Not clinging to anything. So when I’m feeling fed up with the whole thing, perhaps it is a good time to ask myself what exactly I’m thinking “the whole thing” is.
—from Death: The End of Self-Improvement
This next except is from a chapter about a retreat I attended in California with the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Anam Thubten:
On the retreat, Anam Thubten talked about our humanness. He is so wonderfully down to earth and honest. “I’m distracted all the time during meditation,” he says. This isn’t about not having any more darkness, doubt or imperfection. And in fact, that’s exactly the place where we find the light. Perfection can only be found in the imperfection. Nirvana can only be found in samsara. He spoke of the importance of humor. Love is losing everything, he said. Any states of spaciousness or clarity will come and go. Not to attach to any of it. Non-attachment is not detachment, he says, and he speaks of the dance of attachment (or love) and non-attachment (or letting go, not clinging to anything). Awakening doesn’t mean pulling away from life—detaching or dissociating—it means loving fully, but not holding on, not clinging.
We do walking meditation outside as the sun goes down, single file down this country road. A horse gallops excitedly across a pasture to greet us. I feel my love for the beauty around me (attachment) and then letting it go as we walk on (non-attachment)—the dance of attachment and non-attachment, loving and letting go.
Joan Tolifson’s SAND talk:
Excerpts from Joan’s Substack.
