Practicing…to realise the actuality of being.
Paraphrasing what I’ve understood from the teachings… our artificiality arises from a sense of loss, a momentary obscuration of connectivity with our ground, our ‘great mother’ of primordial purity…
It’s just a momentary disorientation, and we could relax back into her arms, but in the confusion of that sense of loss of integrity we find ourselves feeling as if we were a seemingly separated some’thing’ …and then some’thing’… amongst a myriad other some’things’
This occurs through reification… and in the effort of trying to make sense of every apparent ‘thing’ the separating and solidifying activity of discrimination, offered by the thoughts of consciousness is employed. So we then take ourselves and other illusory appearances to be real and self-existing, with inherent self-natures…
Feeling alienated from the contentment and completion of our natural integrity we imagine that our sense of lack, of things never being quite right, will be assuaged by finding and keeping, adopting or being adopted by… the right ‘something’.
So we are unsettled and wander…like ‘ugly ducklings’ trying to find our right mummy….or dummy…
As we rely on our thoughts about appearances to tell us the truth of these ‘things’, confusion is followed by attachment to some particular ‘things’…which are actually not as we imagine they are…and so there is suffering…
Relying on invested thoughts and concepts as a map to guide us, and blind to the truth of the impermanence of whatever ‘thing’ we might find… a ‘thing’ that we imagine offers what we seek…
we’re navigating using dodgy dualistic bearings…which will keep us lost …
‘everybody’s looking for something’
But with no sense that we are.. not actually… some ‘thing’ with a lack… we press on…
Lifetime after lifetime …of accruing endless karmic ‘cards’ which keep our show on the road one way or another driven by the five poisons.
What a great wonder that our great good fortune brings us into connectivity with the dharma!
James once said to us in Macclesfield ‘you’re tired of travelling’… it resonated deeply… with a profoundly easing sense that… with the wisdom of the teachings he offered with such great kindness and humour… ‘journey’s end’ might not now be so very far away…
And it might not be…because, thanks to extraordinary wisdom and kindness of those like him, who have understood and explained to us how we got lost… we can stop where we are…relax and release where we are…and be at ease …
We don’t need to go anywhere ‘special’ to find our innate integrity…nor do anything ‘special’…
As all our dis-ease started with a momentary confusion…followed by a misinterpretation of our situation… there never is, nor was, a true separation …we are always at home within and as the truth of ourselves…
However it doesn’t feel like this because we feel at home (even if it’s very dysfunctional) in the familiarity of duality.
We are entrained by our beliefs about the truth of our nature as ‘me’, and the inherent importance of thoughts feeling and sensation which arise in relation to this… into being seduced by the display, fascinated by the transient movements, of the mind.
So ‘I can’t get no-o satisfaction…though I try and I try…’
With the dharma explanation we can see why this investment of our life’s energy, in the hope of satisfaction, is doomed to fail!
We have heard that ‘we can’t think our way out of samsara’…and see that the grasping effort to get some thing is an endless false road.
And it becomes clear that the true and open road to realising the no-thingness…which is the truth of every apparent something… is a matter of relaxing out of the desirous grasping at arising phenomena through relaxing out of grasping at ‘me’ as a self-existing entity, as if it were the truth of my being.
The process by which confusion led to delusion can be reversed by practicing desisting from the maintenance of the delusion…
And as our fused involvement with the contents of the mind decreases so more of the stage, the spacious empty openness, is revealed.
With this, the relationship between the unmoving aspect of the mind, the ground, and its effulgence is recognised… as it’s play or display
Remembering that the dualistic involvement of relative reality arises from reification discrimination and attachment to appearances
And that, in truth, all are the self-arising, self-vanishing display of awareness,
of presence… non-dual with the primordial purity of the mind itself
In the meditation:
Dissolving attachment to whatever arises …
Relaxed and at ease… as presence,
releasing out of involvement with arisings…
Resting
with the presence of awareness, the non-duality of open emptiness… and ceaseless unobstructed appearance become clear.
Maintaining
this openness as you get up and engage with the forms of the world…
We lucky ducks who’ve heard the dharma call… can but try to bring this into practice and into life …but we can practice…and if we do, with the right view…then slowly or quickly ‘things’ become clearer ; )
This section was inspired by James’ writing ‘Orienting ourselves in the dharma…a collection of key points for practitioners’ 29.05.22 (you can use the search bar on the simplybeing website to find this if you wish).
His latest book ‘The Deep and Vast freedom of the Dharma’ – the first recommendation on his reading list– is related to these writings.