Already Free, part 2, Hugh Byrne, Feb 18, 2024

 Live Session Summary, Sunday, February 18, 2024: It was good to be with you for our Live session today. The talk was on the theme of ‘Waking Up Here and Now.’ We continued the discussion of two roads—or two ‘ways of seeing’—that lead to awakening : 1) the Buddha’s gradual path of training leading to freedom from suffering; and 2) the approach I term ‘already free,’ shared by contemporary teachers of awakening who point to freedom, peace, and joy as being our true nature—who we truly are, rather than somewhere we are not that we need to get to. 

The specific teachers and books we have been discussing in this second way of seeing are:

• Adyashanti: The End of Your World

• Gangaji: The Diamond in Your Pocket

• Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now

I shared how it can helpful to view these two approaches as ways of seeing that lead to the same end—freedom, awakening, enlightenment, the end of suffering. Ways of seeing provide a framework, attitude, or lens through which we can experience or gain understanding of something. For example, we might try to understand a difficult relationship through the lens or way of seeing of ‘who’s right and who’s wrong?’ or the lens of judgment; on the other hand, we could look at the relationship through the lens of compassion and what we see would be quite different. 

I put forward the view, based on my own experience and understanding, that these two approaches can be mutually supportive and integrated into one’s practice. At times, it may be important to cultivate beneficial qualities over time—like loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity, and others; or let go of states such as clinging or aversion; at other times, remembering that freedom is always and already here can be a powerful spur to letting go and awakening. 

I shared these quotes that stress that freedom, peace, and joy are our true nature—who and what we already are:

• Adyashanti: “The great definition of enlightenment is simply the natural state of being” (The End of Your World, p172); and, “From the very beginning, there was only nirvana, as the Buddha would say. But we were misperceiving things… We didn’t realize that that nirvana is right here, right now, exactly where we are.’ (pp.169-170)

• Gangaji: “The search is over when you realize that the true and lasting fulfilment you have been searching for is found to be nowhere other than right where you are” (The Diamond in Your Pocket, p9-10); and, “What you have been searching for desperately, furiously, relentlessly, and with great frustration has always been present exactly where you are! It is present now, in you, and it can be revealed to you now as your own self.” (p35)

Another central focus of these ‘Already Free’ teachings is the emphasis on the present moment and what is alive and happening right now as the only place and time that we can be experience freedom, peace, and true happiness. We experience disconnection, division, and suffering when we are unconscious and living in a dream state:

• Tolle: “Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life—and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” (The Power of Now, p28)

• Adyashanti: “We may think, ‘So-and-so shouldn’t have said that to me,’ but the reality is that they did. As soon as the mind says something shouldn’t have happened, we experience internal division. It is immediate. Why do we experience division? Because we are in an argument with reality. 

This much is assured: if we argue with reality, for any reason, we will go into division. That is just the way it works. Reality is simply what is.  As soon as we have anything in us that judges it, that condemns it, that says it shouldn’t be, we will feel division…

We think of this divided state as the natural way things are, but when we come into “the deeper realms of realization: we realize there isn’t a justified reason to argue with reality, because we’ll never win the fight. Arguing with reality is a sure way to suffer, a perfect prescription for suffering.” (143)

• Gangaji: “Opening to whatever is present can be a heartbreaking business. But let the heart break, for your breaking heart only reveals a core of love unbroken… Recognize that the capacity to open to the truth of your being is always here.” (The Diamond in Your Pocket, p26-27)

I highlighted some of the other key understandings from these teachings:

• The distinction between context and content: between the awareness or consciousness (the context) that knows all experiences—emotions, sensations, thoughts, sounds, tastes, etc., but is not caught up in them, for example, when we are aware of fear, the awareness is not fearful; and the content, which includes everything that can arise in awareness—sights, sounds, tastes, emotions, thoughts, etc. This way of seeing invites us to give our attention more and more to the awareness, the knowing, i.e., the context, rather than being entangled in the changing, impermanent content of experience.

• A focus on truth and honesty—and the recognition that we cannot experience true freedom while we are not opening fully to the truth of our experience, when we are in denial or by-passing what is true in a situation or relationship. In Adyashanti’s words: “If you avoid those aspects of your life that are not in harmony—those where you may still be in denial—that kind of avoidance is going to hinder your spiritual awakening… To be anything less than real, to be in avoidance of anything at all, diminishes our experience of who we are.” (p79)

• An emphasis on self-inquiry—asking ourselves questions that can free us from our stories and narratives and bring us back to direct experience of our true nature, such as, ‘Who is aware?’ ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I?’ ‘Who or what is aware? 

I shared the poem, ‘I will not die an unlived life,’ by Dawna Markova; and some lines from the Rumi’s ‘The Guest House.’

I hope this is helpful. Wishing you a week of presence and joy--and see you next Sunday, February 25 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Already Free - Hugh Byrne, February 11, 2024

 

Live Session Summary, Sunday, February 11, 2024: 

It was good to be with you for our Live session today. The talk was on ‘Two Roads for Awakening to Freedom’—1) the Buddha’s gradual path of training and cultivation leading to awakening and freedom from suffering; and 2) a road shared by contemporary (and past) teachers that focuses less on a path of training and more on freedom as being always and already present—and how to realize what we already are.

Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems:

I began by highlighting the Buddha’s path to freedom, including his teachings on:

• the four noble truths that lead to awakening, or Nirvana/Nibbana; 

• the noble eightfold path (the fourth noble truth)—the training in ethics, meditation, and the cultivation of wisdom—that leads to the end of suffering; 

• mindfulness (one of the eight elements of the eightfold path) as a ‘direct path to liberation.’ 

These and other central teachings, such as cultivating the heart practices (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity) and the seven awakening factors, qualities that lead to enlightenment (mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity) are at the heart of the Buddha’s path to freedom.

All of the Buddha’s teachings are directed towards insight and letting go, leading to ending suffering in this life. The Buddha said, “All my teachings have one taste: the taste of freedom.”

Broadly speaking, the Buddha’s path to awakening is a gradual one. Like the approach of the second path we’ll explore, awakening always involves a breaking through to insight and freedom. It may happen more gradually or more suddenly (or a combination of the two), but there is always a breaking out of our everyday and mundane ways of seeing ourselves and the world. In Zen Buddhism, they say, ‘Enlightenment is an accident; practice makes us accident-prone.’

Since we regularly discuss the Buddha’s path, we will focus more in this and upcoming sessions on the second approach, which I call the ‘already free’ approach. Here I highlight some of the teachings and practices of three contemporary spiritual teachers, who teach from their own experiences of awakening. They are not Buddhist teachers, nor do they form a particular school or tradition, but I believe their approaches have common elements that are distinct from—and also complementary to—the Buddha’s path to freedom. And that we can benefit from integrating our practice in these two areas.

The teachers we discuss and a book that for each highlights some of their core teachings are: 

• Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

• Adyashanti, The End of Your World

• Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket

I shared some of the main themes of their teachings and quotes from their talks or writings: 

1) Freedom, peace, the deepest joy, are not ‘states’ that we need to reach or attain—i.e., something that we are not—but rather they are the essence of who we are, our true nature. We are ‘already free’ but we don’t know it since we think of freedom as being something ‘out there,’ something we need to get to or achieve. But, if freedom is who we already are, we simply need to let go of the stories, beliefs, and identifications that keep us from realizing our true nature, who we already are:

• Gangaji: “The peace, rest, and fulfillment you have been searching for outside, however exalted or sublime, are actually here now. If, in this moment, you can simply discard your outward reference points for what will give you peace, you might recognize that peace is already here, regardless of any internal or external circumstances.” (The Diamond in Your Pocket, p35)

• Adyashanti: “We are always and already whole and complete. We don’t become what we are, which is the ground of being itself.” 

• Adyashanti: “This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently.” (The End of Your World, p114) [I mentioned the similarity between this and T.S. Eliot’s lines towards the end of The Four Quartets where he says, “We shall not cease from exploration // And the end of all our exploring // Will be to arrive where we started // And know the place for the first time.”]

• Gangaji: “The truth of who you are is untouched by any concept of who you are, whether ignorant or enlightened, worthless or grand. The truth of who you are is free of it all. You are already free, and all that blocks your realization of that freedom is your attachment to some thought of who you are. This thought doesn’t keep you from being the truth of who you are. You already are that. It separates you from the realization of who you are.” (p45)

2) The way to freedom or awakening comes through being present here and now with whatever is arising—honestly and wholeheartedly accepting our experience and reality just as it is, without judgment, resistance, clinging, or avoiding:

• For Eckhart Tolle, to be fully present here and now is to be free. We experience suffering, disconnection, unease, anxiety, fear, when we live unconsciously, lost in our mind, in our stories and narratives, in the past, in the future, elsewhere: “The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.” (Tolle, The Power of Now, p19) “There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.” (p51)

• Adyashanti: “We may think, ‘So-and-so shouldn’t have said that to me,’ but the reality is that they did. As soon as the mind says something shouldn’t have happened, we experience internal division. It is immediate. Why do we experience division? Because we are in an argument with reality. 

This much is assured: if we argue with reality, for any reason, we will go into division. That is just the way it works. Reality is simply what is.” (p143)

3) A key to awakening is to stop—to cease searching for anything, trying to be anything, seeking to get anywhere… When we stop, we are brought back to the mystery that underlies who we truly are, the awareness that is our very nature:

• Gangaji spoke of her interaction with her teacher H.W.L. Poonja (known as ‘Papaji’): She said to him, “I want to be free of all my entanglements and misconceptions. I want to know if final, absolute truth is real. Tell me what to do.” He said, “You are in the right place. Then he said, “Do nothing. Your whole problem is that you continue doing. Stop all your doing. Stop all your beliefs, all your searching, all your excuses, and see for yourself what is already and always here. Don’t move. Don’t move toward anything, and don’t move away from anything. In this instant, be still.’ (p5)

I concluded by sharing my view that we can integrate the Buddha’s more gradual training to abandon harmful states and develop beneficial ones—inclining the mind towards the freedom that ends in complete letting go, enlightenment or Nirvana, with these ‘already free’ teachings that remind us that freedom is always here, available in any moment through letting go of illusions about who we are—and realizing our true nature. In the coming sessions, I’ll highlight other key elements of these ‘already free’ teachings and how we can integrate them with the Buddha’s path of awakening. 

I shared a quote from Maha Ghosananda, “If we are to uproot the landmines from the earth, we must uproot the landmines from our hearts”; and shared some lines from Dorothy Hunt’s poem, ‘Peace is this moment without judgment.’

I hope this is useful and look forward to continuing our exploration in the coming sessions. Wishing you a good week ahead and I look forward to our next live session, Sunday, February 18 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh  🙏🏻 💜 🌻

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself. ~ Galileo

Realization

Realization Is not about getting rid of anything.

Dharma Discourse: Where Is the Barrier by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei

No inside, no outside.  Nothing to 'find'; it is omnipresent.

Dharma Discourse: Where Is the Barrier by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei:

"Liang says, "So then knowing my fault I must change." Yuanwu says this response was undeniably extraordinary. Knowing my fault I must change. This is the great pivot point of spiritual practice, the beginning of being responsible for the whole catastrophe, as my teacher would often say. It is here that practice begins. When we don't understand, then both the problem and the solution are thought to be external.

Within adversity or injustice it is especially difficult to understand that if we want to get to the root of the suffering, we have to deal with both the creator and master of the suffering. It can be difficult when the problem seems so clearly located somewhere else. And, indeed, there may be a real problem. But if we want to get to the root of suffering, as Qinshan said, we have to bring out the master within that barrier. Because we'll find that even when injustice has been rectified, even when inequality has turned to equality, the root of suffering persists. This is what the Buddha realized. This is the First Noble Truth, "Life is dukkha.""

"Knowing my fault I must change." When we begin to really understand this truth, practice becomes easier, but it also becomes more difficult. It's more difficult because as we stop trying to locate the problem somewhere else, as we face ourselves more honestly, our lives can seem to get harder, more painful. But because we're now so much closer to the real heart of things, because we're being honest, now we can really practice effectively.

http://w.wzen.org/zmm/teachings/shugen/shugen45.php

'via Blog this'

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet nor is the water broken.
The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected
in dewdrops on the grass, or even
in one drop of water.

~~ Eihei Dogen, from the Genjo Koan

From Tricycle Magazine's Online RETREAT

Offered online in the first part titled 'The Result' by Pamela Gayle White and Khendrub Zangmo

Thank you so much for joining us! The poem is from Heart Advice from a Mahamudra Master, a book of Gendun Rinpoche's teachings. With warm wishes, Pamela and Khedrub

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and will,
but is already there, perfect and complete,
in relaxation and letting go.

Do not worry, there is nothing to do.
Whatever appears in mind has no importance,
since it has no reality.
Do not hold on to it, and do not judge.

Let the play happen by itself,
arising and passing,
without changing anything -
everything vanishes and reappears, without end.

Only your searching for happiness
prevents you from seeing it,
just like a rainbow that you chase
without ever reaching it.

Although happiness does not exist,
it has always been there
and accompanies you
in every moment.

Do not believe that good
or bad experiences are real.
They are like rainbows.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.

As soon as you relax this grasping,
space is there - open, inviting and joyful.
Make use of it.
All is yours already.

Do not search any further.
Do not enter the impenetrable jungle
to search for the elephant
that is already quietly at home.

Nothing to do,
nothing to force,
nothing to wish for -
and everything happens by itself.

The Point of Zazen

The Point of Zazen

realization is effort
without desire
clear water all the way to the bottom
a fish swims like a fish
vast sky transparent throughout
a bird flies like a bird

--Dogen

Competing With The Incomparable

Q and A with Michael Wenger

By Michael Wenger

When comparing yourself with others, do you usually find that you compare favorably or unfavorably? If you compare favorably, do you feel proud? If you compare unfavorably, do you feel devastated? Either of these reactions will keep you from seeing things as they are. If you are feeling competitive, the real question is, Who is it who compares? Don’t repress this feeling or tell yourself how bad it is, but study it as a foolish trait for which you have some affection.

Master Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, was asked by a student, “What should you do if you find yourself in an argument? Should you try to win the argument or should you concede, even though you feel you’re right?” Dogen advised neither path. Become disinterested, he told the student, and the argument will lose its energy. The same advice can be applied to feelings of competitiveness in practice: Let go of your attachment to appearances of one who wins or has “got it right.”

Practice just with what is happening in this moment, with your thoughts and sensations, your discomfort or your wandering mind - in other words, with whoever you are, right here, right now. This is the real work. Are you making your best effort?

The practice of the Five Perfections can help us realize this idea.

1. The perfect time to practice is right now - not tomorrow or next week or when you’re less busy, but right now. Nothing is lacking now: the dharma gate is wide open. All the “if-onlys” in the world are just excuses that keep you from meeting this moment.

2. The perfect place to practice is right where you are - not in an ashram in India, or in a monastery in Japan, or in a different meditation center in your town. You can always compare. Instead, practice right here, in earnest!

3. The perfect teaching is the one before you. Richard Baker Roshi once told of a dream he had: He was trying to find the answer to a question, and the telephone rang. He ignored the phone and focused instead on the question. On the thirtieth ring he picked up the phone, and the answer came to him through the receiver. What he had labeled a distraction was really the point.

4. The perfect teacher is whoever is in front of you. It’s a real relationship, not an objective measure of who is the best. You may learn more from a teacher who has faults and who practices with them.

5. The perfect student is you. You have within you all the ingredients you need to practice. You are in charge, and once you realize this, you will seek - and find - all the help you need. This is the most important of the Five Perfections.

Sometimes, though, comparing yourself with others can actually be helpful. There comes a point in practice when you have changed the things that are easy to change within yourself, but the more fundamental changes remain. When you feel that you have hit a wall in your practice and don’t notice any obvious progress, you can find encouragement in the growth you observe in your fellow practitioners, and realize you may also be growing subtly.

Again, “Who is it who compares?” The more you can come to see everyone as yourself, the more you will be able to use everything around you to learn about who you are, and the more you will be able to transform yourself and be an occasion for everyone else’s transformation. We are all sentient beings, and we are all capable of experiencing one another’s salvation. If you are only involved in protecting your small self, you are in constant peril!

The Point of Zazen

realization is effort
without desire
clear water all the way to the bottom
a fish swims like a fish
vast sky transparent throughout
a bird flies like a bird

- Dogen

Michael Wenger has practiced at San Francisco Zen Center for thirty-two years and still enjoys being on the cushion. He is currently in charge of development and dharma group support.