No-Mind:

Realizing Your True Nature

 

Andre Halaw

 

Copyright © Andre Halaw 2015

 

 

This book is dedicated to the loving memory

of Sarah LeBlanc (1/20/1978 - 6/4/2008).

Your heart and spirit will never

fade or be forgotten.

 

 

Special thanks to Jonson Miller for

his help proofreading. Thank you, my friend.

 

 

Buddha by nature is not a tree,

The mirror is inherently formless.

There is originally nothing,

On what, then, can the dust settle?

—Huineng [1]

 

Carefully observe, but see no dharmas (phenomena),

see no body, and see no mind.

For the mind is nameless,

the body is empty, and the dharmas are a dream.

—Sheng Yen [2]

 

Without defect, without dharmas,

No arising, no mind.

—Seng T’san, “Faith in Mind” [3]

 

Introduction

Despite what the title might suggest, this is not a Zen book, at least not exclusively. It is about realizing the Absolute reality that transcends cultures and spiritual traditions. I borrow the term “No-Mind” from Ch’an (early Zen) Buddhism because it perfectly expresses the awakened mind.  The teachings herein are not the property of any single spiritual tradition. I draw from a variety of sources, primarily Taoism, Ch’an, and Advaita Vedanta , though some of the practices are my own creation.

 

The Absolute has been realized by sages throughout history and across all contemplative cultures. It is known by many names, depending upon the culture where it is found. Hindus call it Atman or Brahman; to Buddhists, it is Nirvana, Buddha Nature, Dharmakaya, Rigpa, or Dharmata; to Christian mystics, it might be called Christ Consciousness, Noumenon, or God. In Taoism it is known as the Tao.

 

Throughout this book, I will refer to it as No-Mind, the Absolute, the Void, Nothingness, Not-knowing, Non-awareness, and Non-being.

 

All of these names point to the same fundamental reality. Though the way that awakened people understand and express their experience depends upon the culture in which it is realized, the truth remains the same.

 

The most important thing to remember always is that, regardless of what we choose to call it, the Absolute is utterly non-conceptual. All ideas about it must be demolished, destroyed, annihilated, tar-and-feathered, and ultimately transcended. I cannot stress this enough. If you want to realize the Absolute, you must be willing to abandon all conceptions of the Absolute, including those found in this book . Just as pole vaulters let go of the pole after they vault, use whatever techniques from this book you find helpful, then let them go.

 

Especially the concepts. If you have any ideas or opinions about Nothingness, you must abandon them because they will only become obstacles between you and the Absolute.

 

The non-conceptual Absolute gives birth to, sustains, and embraces all of existence. It precedes existence altogether and acts as the very basis of all ‘somethings’. It is the needle head upon which all of existence dances.

 

Most significantly, it is available right here, right now, as your and all beings’ true nature.

 

You are a manifestation of the Absolute, as is the entire universe. The Absolute is the only true reality. Everything depends upon it, is an expression of it, and thus can never be separate from it. Another, perhaps more useful, way of understanding the relationship is that the universe is what Absolute Nothingness does. We are the function of Non-being.

 

When we realize the Absolute present in the world around us, as us , doing us (so to speak), we awaken to No-Mind, our true nature.

 

In addition to laying the necessary philosophical groundwork, this book will provide you with concrete practices to realize No-Mind for yourself. Yet it does not develop in a strict, linear fashion. It’s more of a bombardment on the senses, like a boxer’s assault, than a systematic progression from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2, and so on.

 

I hope that you find the book helpful. May it benefit all beings.

 

 

- 1 -

No Mind

In Ch’an Buddhism, No-Mind means realizing our true nature, which is Buddha, Nirvana, Mind, or enlightenment. Derived from the Chinese characters 無 心 wu shin , No-Mind is the practice of penetrating to our deepest self, the fundamental ground of reality—the Absolute.

 

 

- 2 -

The Absolute

The Absolute is the root of all existence. ‘Existence’, in its broadest sense, refers to everything that is . Anything that we can hear, see, smell, taste touch, emote—basically anything that can be sensed or perceived—exists. The totality of all that exists composes ‘existence’ or ‘being’. This includes us and the world in which we live. Not just the material dimension, but all that is in the full existential sense of the term.

 

Yet, existence is not everything. There is more to reality than just what exists.

 

Enter the Absolute.

 

The Absolute is not the opposite of ‘being’; it is the very basis of it. Everything—from the moon and stars to a lump of coal—has the Absolute as it true nature. As Paul Brunton, student of the revered Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi, writes, “ Every conceivable kind of form comes out of the seeming Void into time and space.” [4]

 

Yet the Absolute itself has no features whatsoever; it has no form, taste, texture, sound, or smell. It cannot be perceived by the body or conceived by the mind. This explains why Brunton calls it the Void.

 

The Absolute does not ‘exist’ in any way, shape or form, for it transcends existence altogether. As the very basis of existence, the Absolute cannot be relegated to the realm of existence.

 

Things exist; the Absolute does not.

 

But neither does it not exist , at least not in the same way that a unicorn fails to exist. The Absolute is the vast, impenetrable Groundless Ground that precedes and predicates existence itself. It transcends all dualities, including existence and nonexistence. For this reason, I call it Absolute Non-being .

 

To quote Brunton again, “[t]his indescribable Void out of which the universes appear, this utter Nothing between and behind them, this unknown Power between and behind the atoms themselves, is God. ” [5]

 

Absolute Non-being does not have any form, for if it did, it would ‘exist’, and then by definition it would cease to be the Absolute. Form has limitations; Non-being does not. Yet form is none other than a manifestation of unmanifest Non-being.

 

To understand this truly—to realize that one’s own true nature and all of existence is the Absolute—is No-Mind.

 

In common parlance, this is Enlightenment.

 

No-Mind is the act of seeing past our false sense of a limited self, rooted in conditioned existence or ‘being’, and realizing that our and all beings’ true nature is the limitless and deathless Absolute.

 

 

This does detract from ‘being’; it places it in its proper context. The wind cannot exist without the sky. This does not devalue it; it merely delineates the wind’s true nature, which is dependent upon the sky for its own existence.

 

If there were no sky, there could be no wind.

 

Yet, in a very real sense, the wind is a manifestation and function of the sky, just as ‘being’ is an incarnation and function of Nothingness.

 

‘Being’ appears upon the sky of Non-being, and therefore has no reality whatsoever independent of its source. When we realize this, the world around ascends to the highest level of meaning and value, for we understand that our lives, just as they are, are actually the total manifestation of the magnificent Absolute.

 

In fact, there is nowhere that we can realize the Absolute but right here, on this earth, in this very life.

 

 

- 3 -

The Earth is the Ground

In the most iconic representation of the Buddha, entitled the “Earth Witness Mudra,” moments after reaching Enlightenment, the Buddha touches the earth for it to bear witness to his awakening. Traditionally, this gesture represents the ultimate testimony to his Buddhahood, as the very earth acknowledges his insight.

[6]

That is how the gesture is commonly understood, but on another level, the Buddha is pointing to his realization itself—the earth, the ground upon which people live, is the same as the Groundless Ground of existence itself. He has awakened to the fundamental basis of all existence, and it is right beneath him, beneath us all.

In his first teaching ever, even before he expounded the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha reaches to the earth to demonstrate the root of his Enlightenment. His gesture says, “This earth is Nirvana—the unconditioned, deathless. The Absolute is everywhere, right beneath our very feet.”

When we extinguish our attachment to and identification with the world of form, and see its true nature, we transcend form and thus transform it. Then the earth ceases to be merely earth. It is seen for what it truly is—a manifestation of the Absolute.

And when we finally see ‘being’ clearly, then suffering recedes like noise on a faraway TV .

 

- 4 -

Neti-Neti

Neti-Neti is one of the oldest meditative techniques used to reveal the Absolute. Meaning “Not this, not that” in Sanskrit, Neti-Neti cuts  through the entire realm of form by exposing that anything conceivable or perceivable is “not me.” Therefore, to realize Non-being, we discard everything that is not It.

 

The underlying principle is that in order to discover what we truly are, we must first realize what we aren’t. In the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj, the celebrated Indian sage, “Whatever you understand, you are not. In non-understanding, you understand yourself.” [7]

 

Using Neti-Neti, I can say, I am not my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind…

 

What remains —that which cannot be discarded or negated—is our true nature, Non-being.

 

 

Relinquish the idea that you are your body.

 

Abandon the idea that you are your preferences, desires, or opinions.

 

You are none of them.

 

Nor are you your thoughts, emotions, or perceptions.

 

You are not the social roles you play, your gender, social class, sexual orientation, or belief system. You are not your actions, your job, or the stories that you tell about yourself. The Absolute, your true nature, is Neti-Neti — “not this, not that.”

 

This series of negations naturally invites the question: Well then, what am I?

 

Some modern teachers say that you are consciousness —o pen and free awareness itself. Other popular words currently used by contemporary spiritual teachers include Presence, Being, or Witness, all of which point to consciousness or awareness in some form or another.

 

But these are not your true or final nature either.

 

You are not consciousness any more than you are your heart or spleen or kidneys.

 

Consciousness is only a portion of what you are. Y ou are not limited to your awareness, experiences, or consciousness. Below is a visual representation of your total self, where consciousness is depicted in white:

 

[8]

 

As you can see, the white comma-shape expressing awareness accounts for only a fraction of the total image. Just as most of the photo is black, the vast majority of what we are consists of Non-awareness .

 

Consciousness apprehends ‘things’ such as sounds, odors, etc., while Non-awareness is a type of knowing that does not rely upon forms, sounds, odors, flavors, objects, or thoughts. It is the darkness of Not-knowing . For this reason, I also call it Non-being, Non-existence, or even Nothingness, all of which point to the same reality—the formless, unconditioned Absolute at the base of consciousness and the root of all reality.

 

Non-awareness precedes consciousness, and in this way, serves as its basis. We function optimally when we allow Non-awareness to reemerge on its own when we have shed all sense of mind and self.

 

No-Mind represents the union of consciousness and Non-awareness , as the former realizes the latter.

 

 

- 5 -

Wisdom and Compassion

The goal of Mahayana Buddhism is to unify our ordinary minds with the Absolute so that we become fully aware of its underlying, unchanging reality, which is our and all of existence’s true nature. In traditional Buddhist terms, this process is known as prajna or transcendental wisdom.

 

To return to the photo, prajna emerges when the white conscious mind realizes the black backdrop of Not-knowing; when consciousness awakens to the fact that its true nature is none other than the black backdrop itself. No-Mind occurs when practitioners awaken to the Not-knowing Absolute at the base of their being.

 

The classic Taijitu , or Yin and Yang as it is commonly known, demonstrates this point by integrating a black circle inside of the white comma, and a white circle inside of the black comma. This suggests that the ultimate nature of consciousness, the white, is in fact the darkness of Non-awareness. Conversely, the white dot represents the conscious realization of Non-being, amidst and inside of it.

 

[9]

 

Therefore, No-Mind embodies the complete interpenetration of the white in the black and the black inside of the white. It is realizing the Absolute in this very body and form ; realizing that this very body, mind, and world are all actually manifestations of the Absolute.

 

For a practitioner, it represents the full penetration of both being and Non-being so that the mundane world is radically transformed and experienced in a completely new way. Rather than the world being transcended, as is the case in some spiritual traditions, when the realm of form is understood to be a manifestation of the unmanifest Absolute, the world is reborn. It assumes the highest value, as do all of our actions.

 

Despite its name, No-Mind is not at all passive. The companion to wisdom ( prajna ) is compassion. The world matters; so do we and all beings. We are all the Truth. Therefore, morality—right speech and behavior—become paramount.

 

People all around the world are suffering. Wisdom is seeing the source of suffering, and that it is an unnecessary side effect of ignorance. Compassion is helping others awaken to their true nature to relieve their suffering.

 

 

- 6 -

Non-awareness

We can experience No-Mind in an instant, simply by shifting our attention to the Non-awareness at the ground of our experience. That Non-awareness, identical with Non-being, is the true nature of everything.

 

 

No-Mind integrates both consciousness and Not-knowing at the same time. Another way of understanding this is to say that we experience Enlightenment when we are simultaneously conscious of ‘being’ and Non-being, ‘existence’ and Nonexistence, the manifest and unmanifest. It is to turn the light of consciousness back upon its source, Non-awareness .

 

To express this visually:

 

No-Mind = ordinary consciousness + Absolute

 

 

To clarify, I employ the terms “being,” “existence,” and “consciousness” interchangeably because they are three aspects of the same phenomenon —the manifest realm .

 

The same applies to “Non-being,” “Non-awareness,” and “Not-knowing.” These are all ways of understanding the unmanifest Absolute .

 

 

- 7 -

Consciousness

As I alluded to earlier, some spiritual teachers assert that “everything is consciousness,” that awareness is the single universal substance. To extend our analogy of the Taijitu (Yin and Yang): this means that everything is white. There is no circle at all, just whiteness. All is consciousness or awareness.

 

The problem with this approach is that it fails to account for the full depth of consciousness. It scrapes only the surface by limiting consciousness to awareness —to your faculty of apprehension which is occurring at this very moment as you read these words. However, this explanation does not allow for a deeper, more fundamental understanding of mind that includes Not-knowing. This is the result of a myopic view of reality that  recognizes only that which is at the expense of the formless source of that which is.

 

After all, we are not conscious all of the time. Our awareness dims and sharpens, expands and shrinks, dulls and clears. In fact, there are many occasions where we are not conscious at all. For instance, in a swoon, deep sleep, before we were born, and after we die. This is because consciousness is a feature of existence—like the color green on grass—and therefore comes after Non-being.

 

We can test this by inquiring into the nature of consciousness. Ask, is consciousness always the same, or does its quality change? Where was consciousness before I was born?

 

The truth is that there is no “thing” called consciousness because, as the Buddha pointed out, consciousness is not a singular occurrence. Our nervous systems weave together sensory data to create the appearance of a cohesive, singular experience that we call consciousness. But this singular phenomenon is illusory.

 

Take a human statue, for instance. Provided the statue is realistic, you will probably identify the features of a human face before you even realize it. Just as your mind effortlessly reads these very words, so too does your brain construct the image of a face on the statue. Before we even realize it, we see a face; however, a bird does not see the face on a statue, nor would a turtle. We distinguish a face because our brains automatically process and interpret sensory data.

 

This fact throws a boulder through the thesis that “everything is consciousness” (a philosophy called idealism), for the latter implies that, if the statue is consciousness, then consciousness is not tampering with the image in any way. In other words, idealists inadvertently suggest that there is a real, absolute face on the statue, for they must deny that the brain interprets, and in a very real sense, constructs, the face. For to do so would acknowledge that the brain and nervous system filters, interprets, and constructs this experience called consciousness.

 

If this point is still unclear, consider this: if I visited the rainforest in the company of a native guide, our experiences of the jungle would be radically different. What appears to me as senseless flora, bird calls, and jungle noises, all have meaning to the native. In most likelihood, I wouldn’t even be aware of the poisonous flowers and deadly spiders; to my untrained mind, all I would see is...jungle. The native, on the other hand, would recognize all of them, and therefore her experience would be acutely different from mine. In a word, the content of our consciousness are literally incongruent, in the same way as a child and a parent’s experience are regarding the same event.

 

A second major problem with consciousness-only advocates is that they cannot account for where consciousness comes from or where it goes. Where does consciousness go during deep sleep or after death? They dismiss the question with the reply that “it doesn’t go anywhere. After all, you cannot account for the lack of consciousness because in order to do that, we must be conscious to notice the lack.” Clever, but it still fails to address the daily fact that our consciousness winks out of existence every time we fall into a deep sleep. If consciousness is absolute, where does it go at night?

 

Without belaboring the point or your patience with the idealist’s retort in this hypothetical debate, I will just say that I have never received a satisfactory answer to this question. The reason is because consciousness is simply too small of a container. Idealists need to dig deeper and find the source of all existence, including consciousness.

 

Idealism—like most spirituality—acknowledges only existence or ‘being’ and fails to integrate Non-being. This is the equivalent of trying to map the earth by accounting for only the land masses and not the oceans.

 

Idealism needs a bigger container. And there can be nothing bigger than Nothingness.

 

When we truly understand consciousness, that it is conditioned by and arises from Non-awareness, we can then begin to use consciousness to realize its source. 

 

 

- 8 -

Nothing Mind

In addition to “No-Mind,” wu shin can be translated as “Nothing Mind,” for the Chinese character 無 ( wu ), also means “nothing.” The Tao Te Ching , the Chinese classic, speaks of the Tao as Absolute Nothingness or Non-being — wu in Chinese .

 

In this sense then, wu shin can also mean a mind that knows Nothing(ness) or its own Non-being. This is how I use No-Mind, as a pointer to the primordial Non-awareness that precedes awareness—to the non-phenomenal Absolute that is void of all characteristics. For this reason, Buddhists sometimes call it the Void because Non-being is utterly formless, limitless, spaceless, timeless, and conditionless.

 

When we become fully aware of the Void, by unifying our everyday consciousness with it, we embody No-Mind

 

 

Realizing No-Mind means peering into the darkness inside of ourselves and recognizing the total, ubiquitous Non-Awareness at our center. All beings’ center. All of existence’s center.

 

Non-Awareness is complete and uninterrupted, while consciousness flashes in and out of existence, winking too rapidly for the eye or mind to see, like a strobe light. This strobe effect gives us the impression that consciousness is, and thus we are, continuous, but it and we aren’t.

 

The entire universe is an appearance upon Non-being, or in the Buddha’s words in the Diamond Sutra ,

 

As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space

an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble

a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning,

view all created things like this. [10]

 

And consciousness is no different. It too is an appearance , subject to the same laws and limits of all conditioned existence. Like all phenomena, consciousness begins, continues for a time, then ends. It does not hold some privileged status, despite what idealists purport.

 

The Absolute, on the other hand, does not come or go, is not subject to conditions, cannot be located in time or space, and is utterly beyond all predication.

 

A useful way to think about the relationship between the Absolute and consciousness is that consciousness , like everything else in existence, is a movie appearing on the television screen of Non-being. Without the screen, there literally would be no film. The film issues forth from the screen in the same way that existence —time, space, form—arises from Non-being.

 

In the immortal words of the Tao Te Ching, “ Ten thousand things under heaven are born of being ( yu ); being is born of Non-being ( wu ).” [11]

 

And occasionally, with enough practice or perhaps by sheer dumb luck, we can glimpse momentary flickers of Non-being in between frames of the film.

 

Consciousness waxes and wanes, tapers with attention, dulls with drowsiness, and dilates during peak spiritual experiences; while Non-awareness, synonymous with Non-being, is still and ceaseless.

 

Non-awareness is always available to us, most obviously during deep dreamless sleep, when we shuffle off the mortal coil of consciousness and return to our most fundamental nature:

 

The Void , dark and silent and attributeless.

 

Fortunately, we do not need to wait until deep sleep or even intense moments of deep spiritual insight, called kensho or satori in Zen Buddhism. We can realize No-Mind at any moment.

 

Just concentrate on what you don’t know, for No-Mind is the Absolute available to us every moment of the day.

 

 

- 9 -

Hindsight

Here’s how. I call this Hindsight :

 

1. Close your eyes. Sit upright like the Buddha seated in deep meditation. Pay attention to all that you hear: the creak of the floorboards, the hiss of the radiator heat, the sound of laughing children, the groan of a failing car engine down the street.

 

Feel your breath fill your nostrils and chest. Allow it to sink and fill your belly.

 

Be aware of the cushion or chair beneath you, the air temperature and texture of your clothing against your skin.

 

All of these things ‘exist’. They comprise ‘being’, which is where all of our experiences occur, inside of existence. Everything that we know —which is not limited to conventional knowing, as in “knowledge,” but encompasses a much broader category that includes all that we apprehend—exists.

 

The Absolute, Non-awareness, Non-being, whichever term you prefer, does not. 

 

2. Now shift your attention to that which you do not know. This Not-knowing is itself the Absolute. With your eyes still closed, penetrate—not imagine or visualize, but penetrate—into what is behind your head. Maybe there is a wall or curtain or bookshelf, but since your eyes are closed, you have no immediate knowledge of their presence; therefore, you cannot say with certainty that they exist. Your senses are closed, so to speak, to any knowledge of their reality.

 

Good, so then what are you certain of behind you? What are you aware of back there? Behind you there is complete and utter Nothingness, which you experience through and as Not-knowing .

 

Open yourself up to this Not-knowing . This is No-Mind.

 

You will not be able to take hold of Not-knowin g i n the same way that you do an apple or a pleasing sound. These exist; Non-being does not.

 

 

Please understand that there is not anything special “behind” us. It is not some secret location that the Absolute prefers, like a mental shadow following us around, turning when we turn, always one step behind us.

 

Nor am I trying to suggest that the world collapses or ceases to exist the moment we turn our back on it. Rather, we are turning our conscious attention to the fundamental background of our being —Non-awareness.

 

This is simply a technique to discover the Absolute that is always everywhere.

 

Once we realize the Void that feels like it is behind us, then we can identify the Void that is right in front of us. The sky, the sun, our eyes, our ears. They are all it.

 

The world is manifest Non-being, and Hindsight is simply a technique we can use to realize that.

 

 

- 10 -

Ontology, Not Cosmology

To avoid confusion, it is important to pause and clarify what I mean when I say that Non-being is the Source.

Non-being is not an explanation of Creation; it is a visionary expression of the metaphysical reality underlying, or at the heart of, existence. The former is cosmological, or more accurately, cosmogonical; the latter ontological.

If we pay close attention to the rise and fall of thoughts, we witness creation from Non-being. Thoughts appear from the great Void of mind, linger for a while, as insubstantial as vapor, and then subside back into Non-awareness, from which they arose. This internal phenomenon can be verified only from our interiors (no known instrument can penetrate into the emptiness of the human mind); hence, we call Non-being an ontological feature.

It is entirely empirically verifiable — as the great sages throughout history can attest — just not a reality that can be measured in the same way that sugar can. We can determine the age of a star, but not Non-being; for it does not ‘exist’.

Non-being transcends ‘being’ and existence altogether.

Non-being is Not. That is the only way that we can hope to understand — or better yet, to realize — No-Mind. This approach is called apophasis , the utter negation of all attributes, even existence, until we arrive at sheer and utter Non-being. It’s also known as via negativa or Negative Theology. Neti-Neti also falls under this same rubric.

As we saw earlier with Neti-Neti, we systematically negate all features of ‘being’, as in the Heart Sutra ’s “no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no feeling …” All the way through existence itself until only the Absolute remains.

Clearly, this is not the realm of cosmology, for while we are negating phenomena, we are not interested in ‘being’ at all. We are transcending it in order to arrive at existence’s truest, most fundamental nature — Non-being.

That’s the domain of ontology, or more specifically, meontology , the study of non-being.

 

In a manner of speaking, the world of form is condensed Nothingness, and spiritual practice is a backwards journey from ‘being’ to Non-being. [12] Each stage represents a movement to a subtler level of reality:

 

First we relinquish our attachment to the tangible world of objects, then transcend our identification to an ego and consciousness (subtle), until eventually we awaken to utterly formless Non-being (the subtlest).

 

For what could be subtler than Nothingness? 

 

 

Your Non-Awareness, what some Ch’an Masters call One Mind or your Original Mind, does not, and cannot, disappear. Advaita Vedanta teachers call this Self ( atman ) or Consciousness ( cit ), but this is not to be confused with ordinary conditioned consciousness. The latter is bound to the body; it arises and retreats. The former does not. It’s our attention of it that appears and vanishes.

 

The world comes and goes, but not Non-awareness. For there is no “thing” to disappear. Non-being is the formless void from which all phenomena appear, and to where they all eventually return.

 

Not-knowing is still, silent, dark, and empty. It neither comes nor goes. In fact, it is our delusive insistence that we can ever be separate from it that leads us into all sorts of confusion and pain.

 

The world is the manifestation of the unmanifest, which is none other than Absolute Nothingness or Non-awareness. This is an extremely important point because any claim of an Absolute that is not present at this moment and during deep sleep is false, or at the very least, incomplete.

 

 

- 11 -

Dreamless Sleep

Our entire lives disappear nightly, during our deepest slumbers, when both dreams and consciousness have effaced themselves. At these times, we are in our truest state, our purest, most natural abode. When the ego and its childish impulses and demands have been shed, when the world recedes back into oblivion, there is only Absolute Non-being. During deep sleep, our Non-awareness, completely unmanifest, resonates purely, unobstructed by phenomena.

 

For millennia, sages and mystics have been pointing to deep sleep as a doorway to realizing the Absolute. The problem is that the very act of pointing can confuse people. When a guru says, “Where do you go during deep, dreamless sleep?” we don’t know how to answer.

 

Uhhmm… We draw a blank. Where do I go?

 

“Find That ,” they say, “and you shall find your true nature.”

 

So we instinctively imagine some Super-Mind—an intelligent, substantial entity—that rests at the core of our being day and night, like a mental lighthouse, forever emitting the warm, clear glow of consciousness. But the problem is that every answer we offer , every specter we conjure, exists in some manner, shape, or form. Even the soul, the ultimate spiritual phantom, is imagined to exist in some capacity, even if it is as an ethereal wisp of a spirit.

 

However, the Absolute does not exist in any conventional sense. It is utterly imperceptible and inconceivable. By its very definition, the Absolute must transcend our notions of existence altogether. (If it didn’t, if it existed conventionally like anything else, then it would not be the Absolute.) And yet, whatever the Absolute is , it must be fully present during deep sleep.

 

“But I don’t remember deep sleep!” we want to shout. Of course we don’t, which is why our first response to this quandary was the best one. When first posed with the question, we drew a blank.

 

Good direction.

 

What is the only thing that does not exist yet is absolutely present during deep sleep, and I might add, that we cannot remember?

 

Non-awareness .

 

When people posit consciousness as the answer, they inevitably fail because if the Absolute were consciousness, wouldn’t we be... conscious of it during deep sleep? By its very nature, conventional consciousness disqualifies itself because of our inability to recall it after we have awakened.

 

But Non-awareness neither exists—for if it did, it would be an existent and thus cease to be Non-being—nor is it conscious of anything. Yet, it cannot be said not to be present, for there is nowhere that we can point and definitively say, “That is not the Absolute.” [13] To say that a chair is not the Absolute is to impute limitations on the Absolute, which by its very nature has no form and thus no limits.

 

Our final litmus test is asking whether or not the Absolute is present right now. [14] And if it is, in what sense?

 

As it turns out, the Absolute is fully available to us at all times, not just when we are in a deep sleep. As our truest nature, it is always present, though not as we would expect it (as consciousness or something cognizable by consciousness), but instead as Non-awareness .

 

And Non-awareness is none other than the Absolute

 

 

This means that the Absolute —call it what you will: Noumenon, Tao, God, Buddha, Brahman, Atman, Nothingness or Non-being—is not hidden in any way whatsoever.

 

The Absolute is totally available to us at all times, though not as we think—as an object of mind. It is not consciousness or awareness, but Non -awareness .

 

Not-knowing is our true nature, not to be confused with a mental or sense faculty like thought, attention, or sight, for Not-knowing is more than an inherent aspect of the Absolute; it is identical with it.

 

Non-awareness is the same as the Absolute, which is why it is always present, in the same way that the number zero is present in all other numbers. [15]

 

We are continuously not aware . Non-awareness plays in the background of our experience, just as the television screen fades from view when we become engrossed in a compelling film. But without this pair—the TV screen and Non-being—the film and all of existence itself would be impossible.

 

Stated in positive terms: Absolute Non-being makes life and ‘being’ possible in the first place.

 

 

- 12 -

Tracing Back the Radiance

Don’t be misled by its name, for Non-being is not sterile or lacking in any way. If it is lacking anything, it lacks limitations or boundaries. It is the fecund source and root of all existence, the matrix from which all creativity springs, an empty womb pregnant with raw potential. 

 

That is what we truly are. Not-knowing —o ur Original Mind , our truest nature—is the creative principle of all of existence.

 

Here is an exercise to illustrate Non-being’s fertile ground. Named after the Ch’an practice (although it is found in nearly every contemplative tradition), it’s called Tracing Back the Radiance :

 

1. Again, sit in an upright position. Close your eyes and follow your breath until it slows.

 

2. Unlike in other forms of meditation where you intentionally “let your thoughts go,” now you are actually going to concentrate on thinking. Create an intentional stream of thought. I recommending asking, “Where does this thought come from?” Hear the words appear in your mind and observe them as they disappear like smoke. “Where does this thought come from?”

 

3. Trace the thoughts, in the form of words, to their source.

 

But we aren’t tracing the thoughts to any THING, for at its center, the Absolute is simply void. No qualities whatsoever are present. In Hindu thought, this is called Nirguna, meaning attributeless. The prefixal similarity ( Nir- ) to the Buddha’s Nirvana should not be overlooked, for both suggest formlessness and qualitylessness.

 

Ontologically, the Source radiates existence in the same way as the sun emits light. When we “trace back” our thoughts, or any phenomenon for that matter, we return to the wellspring that produces ‘beingness’ itself. This needn’t challenge empirical science; physical, chemical processes in the brain can still explain thoughts from an external perspective, i.e. ‘being’. But they cannot account for the internal ontological experience of Non-being. 

 

4. Trace back your mind, your consciousness, to where it originates. Observe each thought as it appears from nowhere —the deep, dark emptiness inside of you. This vast, formless reservoir is the source of all ‘being’; from here, existence arises. You are witnessing genesis in action as thoughts spring from Nothingness, e x nihilo , as philosophers and theologians call it.

 

5. Do not try to contain, capture, or grasp this emptiness. It is our very inability to seize or definitively locate Non-being that makes it what it is. Or isn’t. This ungraspability, this unfathomability, is the Absolute.

 

The problem is that we like souvenirs. We want something shiny to take back to our friends and family—or better, to the entire world—and show off. Look what I found! This is Enlightenment. What’s it like? Well, reaching inside of our mental pocket, it looks like ‘this’ and smells like ‘this’...

 

But that’s not how it works.

 

Non-being does not give us anything to hold onto. Quite the opposite. It leaves us with...well, Nothing . And it is that Nothingness—that blank, empty space—that is our true nature.

 

That is the Absolute, and when we witness it, we have returned to our true nature, Not-knowing.

 

 

I posed a question to an early Zen teacher of mine. “When I look inside myself, I can’t find anyone. Who is the one thinking this?”

 

He said, “I’ll save you some time: you’ll never find the source of your thoughts.” And that was the end of the subject.

 

This was an amazing opportunity to explore the vast emptiness at the base of the self and the world, but he brushed it aside to pursue other subjects.

 

His answer was correct; we will never find the source...because it’s not a thing. This very un-findability —the bottomless origin of all creativity and possibility—is the Absolute.

 

This is it. In theological terms, this vast, endless, broiling darkness is God.

 

 

- 13 -

Things Just Happen

Many sages teach that we need to relinquish our sense of volition or will in order to surrender to the great, spontaneous reality. What they mean is that, since Not-knowing is the Absolute, there are no individuals with volition. We as individuals never act. Things just happen without our interference.

It might be more accurate to say that we are the ones being acted. Sounds fishy, I know, but let us explore this for a moment.

If we try to find the source of our thoughts, we cannot. We peer deep inside, witnessing each thought being born like a tiny universe, and yet the source itself eludes us. It is impossible to pinpoint the thinker or one who wills us to action.

Things just... happen . Which is not to suggest that the universe is governed by fate or some cosmic will. Life is far more mysterious than that. “Things just happens” means that the Absolute gives freely and endlessly of itself, pouring its limitless creativity into this present moment as the world of form, thought, and imagination, and most significantly, as infinite potentiality that suffuses every unfolding moment. [16]

When a thought appears, it bursts out of emptiness, lingers briefly —not much more tangible than the Void itself—and then fades, returning to Non-being as ultimate potentiality.

Things just happen. As we seek the ever-elusive self as the originator of action, we come to learn that identity and volition are myths. When we settle into the deep silence and darkness of our true (non) being, we are greeted by the fathomless Absolute where ‘self’ and ‘do-er’ are meaningless concepts.

Skeptical? Just ask an artist, “Where does your inspiration come from?” Most will say, “I don’t know.”

Inspiration bubbles to the surface on its own. There is no formula to repeat creativity; it just comes from nowhere, or Non-being to be exact.

Artists, musicians, poets, and writers have often said that the idea just came to them, or that the art made itself. The sculpture carved itself. The book wrote itself. The song played itself. An expert martial artist doesn’t think about the next move in a fight; it just happens spontaneously.

Even as I write these very words, I have no idea where they come from. They simply flow from the Void into being. There is no do-er or volition involved. It happens on its own, issuing forth from the vast creative reservoir that is Nothingness.

Non-being is like the vast, open sky. Featureless and boundless, it is ceaseless and unborn, never coming nor going. It defies all description, limitation, and circumscription.

Existence, on the other hand, is like the wind : c onstantly changing, empty, conditioned and buffeted by other winds. The wind fills the sky and, in a very real sense, is the function of the sky.

It is what the sky does .

Likewise, 'being' is not at all separate from its source, Non-being. It is the manifestation of the Unmanifest in the same way as the wind is the embodiment of the sky. But to avoid reifying ‘being’, I think that understanding the world as the function of Nothingness is a more helpful perspective.

In this light, 'being' is what Non-being does.

This perspective severs our attachment to objects because when we view them as creative expressions — activities of — the Absolute, we tend to appreciate the world rather than need to possess, own, or dominate it. For we cannot possess objects any more than we can contain the wind. By their very impermanent and selfless nature, they are ungraspable.

The fact that 'being' depends upon 'Non-being' does not devalue it any more than a baby's dependence upon its mother denigrates a baby. It simply puts it in its proper place, as a dependent manifestation of the Unmanifest Absolute.

When we understand the world as what Nothingness does , we are free to appreciate the Absolute's creative expressions without attaching to them. Marvel at the wind as the free play of the sky — 'being' as the creative activity of Non-being.

In this way, we come to understand that when we see and hear and feel, it is the Absolute seeing and hearing and feeling. It's not that Non-being sees through our eyes as some teachers allege, for there is no us. Nothing can ever be separate from the Absolute. What we incorrectly call a self is really just Nothingness seeing and hearing and thinking.

This is how the Absolute is our true nature and how things just happen . For when the self dissolves into Non-being, there is no one left to act. There is only Non-being acting as ‘being’.

 

- 14 -

Consciousness is a Tool

In Buddhism, being (re)born as a human is considered a rare opportunity because humans alone can become aware of the Absolute. Consciousness perfectly symbolizes the intersection of ‘being’ and Non-being; for the human mind, grounded in Non-awareness, can apprehend its own source, the Absolute.

Consciousness is an exquisite tool—in fact, the only tool—that we can use to realize the Absolute. More poetically, it allows the Absolute to know itself.

In this way, consciousness represents the pinnacle of ‘being-ness’.

 

 

- 15 -

Becoming Nobody

All of the world’s spiritual traditions teach us to become nobody. Identical with No-Mind, ‘Nobody’ is the embodiment of Non-being. Shrug off your ‘self’ and plunge into the deep source at the center of ‘being’. It’s not that the self is false; it’s that the self as something with substance, independent of its base , the Absolute , is false.

Like everything else, the self —our sense of volition, experience, and identity—arises from and depends upon the Absolute. To offer a play on words: everything depends on Nothingness.

Becoming Nobody means to relinquish our petty need “to be somebody ,” as in someone important, and dive into the Void of Not-knowing. Since Non-being transcends and includes ‘being’, we cannot penetrate it through any conventional means. We cannot arrive at it from within ‘being’, using the tools in ‘existence’, any more than a boat can transport us up a mountain.

It’s a paradox: in order to transcend ‘being’, we need techniques that already transcend ‘being’. That would be a problem if the Absolute existed on some other plane, disconnected from our lives and ‘being’, but this world is the Absolute. We don’t need to go anywhere new; we just need to reaffirm what is already present.

Realizing our true nature is about understanding the world that we live in. It represents a radical reorientation of our lives from being consumed with the appearances on the metaphorical television screen to the screen itself. Humans obsess over details, details, details. We worry about getting promotions, raises, fame, recognition, fancy tech gadgets, respect, all of which are fine, provided we see them for what they are—pictures on the screen of Non-being. To borrow Buddhist terms, they are empty . Insubstantial. They have no reality of their own, any more than images on a screen can exist independent of the screen. No screen, no image.

When we become Nobody, awaken to our true nature as Non-awareness, we slough off our petty, clingy dependence on appearances and return to our source.

‘Being’ is an expression of Non-being, and as such, it cannot exist on its own.  Don’t misunderstand: it’s not that ‘being’ serves any purpose, as in the servant of the Absolute, for that is not the case at all. It is simply that existence is predicated upon Non-being in the same way that clouds need the sky. The sky acts as the container for the clouds.

The Absolute does not ask anything from us. It is not some jealous Creator who demands piety and subservience. One might ask, Then why does existence exist? That’s like asking why water is wet or why rivers flow.

Because that’s what the Absolute does. Existence can be understood as the function of Non-being .

Does it enjoy creating? Is the world some kind of cosmic game or dance, a divine form of hide-and-seek?

These are conceptual questions that paint a human face on the Absolute as if it had human motives. As long as we ask these kinds of intellectual questions, that means we are still absorbed with and mired in ‘being’. The rules of existence do not pertain to the source of existence, for the same reason that we cannot reach Non-being using practices rooted in ‘being’.

Being Nobody means fully accepting the fact that the Void is beyond all explanation, and that to assign any kind of attributes, qualities, or motives—to attempt to circumscribe it in any way, and thus place it inside of existence—is to limit it. We must be willing to dwell inside of the ineffable Void at our, and all beings’, core.

This is the blood and marrow of No-Mind.

All that being Nobody requires is courage and resolve. It is no exaggeration to say that we must be willing to die, to surrender all of our attachments to the realm of ‘being’, and plunge into the dark abyss that is our true nature.

Being Nobody costs the ultimate price; it requires that we cast our sense of a small, limited self into the endless abyss that is our true Self. But what it returns to us is infinitely more valuable—freedom, which is our birthright.

The irony of No-Mind or Enlightenment is that no one ever experiences it. It is no exaggeration to say that no one ever gets enlightened. The reason is that in order to awaken to our true nature, we must abandon our sense of self.

It’s like one of those homes that you cannot enter without taking off your shoes, except instead of shoes you must immolate your sense of self in order to enter No Mind.

In order to awaken, we must become Nobody. This should come as no surprise because becoming Nobody is Enlightenment.

So become Nobody, or rather, return to being Nobody. The true sage is no one special. This requires not only the death of the ego, but the complete sacrifice of our sense of self. There can be no “I” in Enlightenment.

 

What does this mean? And just as importantly, what does it look like in a real person living in the modern world?

 

Becoming Nobody means looking past this individual mind to its source. It’s a recognition that we are not our bodies, thoughts, emotions, experiences, personalities, identities, or even consciousness.

 

Enlightenment consumes all of our ideas about who we are. It extinguishes all of our false identities, including subtle ones such as the Witness, soul, or spirit.

 

We must be prepared to die, to cast ourselves into the pit of extinction, in order to realize that what we truly are can never die. Not because we are eternal or immortal, but because there is no “I” whatsoever.

 

There is only the Absolute —timeless, deathless, unconditioned, utterly beyond the scope and domain of existence.

 

When we are No One, we cannot die. In order for suffering to end, the false god “I” must be exposed as a grand illusion, an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. It must be cast inside of the bottomless pit of Non-being, the final and ultimate sacrifice.

 

Don’t worry, no violence is necessary. We do not need to exorcise the “I” because it isn’t real in the first place. When we cut straight through to the Absolute, Non-being permeates everything until only its truth remains.

 

 

- 16 -

Existence Itself is Dukkha

Western students of Buddhism often stumble over the First Noble Truth, the Buddha’s pronouncement that life is dukkha or suffering. “But life isn’t suffering,” they say. “Or at least mine isn’t.”

“Then why do you want to meditate?” I often want to chide them.

What the Buddha is referring to—the perennial state of dissatisfaction—is not a statement about life. It’s a statement about existence itself, a much broader category. When we fail to understand the true nature of ‘being’, then it feels like an awful burden. Just existing can feel like an exhausting task. For we must continuously defend our fragile ego and sense of self, feeding their ravenous appetites for physical, emotional, and psychological sustenance.

What the Buddha is expressing in the First Noble Truth is the insatiable longing that is hardwired into existence itself. As long as we know only ‘being’, we will suffer. Returning to Non-being refreshes and nourishes us like a direct pipeline to infinity. It revitalizes us better than the most satisfying night’s rest.

‘Being’ is needy, conditioned, and dependent. Non-being gives endlessly,  is unconditioned and selflessly empty. Embodying Non-being as No-Mind anchors us in the groundless ground ( ungrund in German) of reality, and bypasses our suffering because we are no longer dependent upon ‘being’ for our identity.

We don’t suffer (as much) because we no longer identify exclusively with our circumstances, thoughts, emotions, and body as who we are. Sure, they are important—I’m not suggesting that we abandon concern for our health or wellbeing—it’s just that we no longer need to obsess over them because we have come to realize that who and what we truly are is not limited to this body and mind. They are appearances, while our true nature is formless Non-being, Not-knowing, Non-awareness. We are beyond all conditions and suffering.

Not surprisingly, the Buddha called this realization Nirvana, which means “to extinguish.” To extinguish what, though? Nirvana is the extinction of ignorance—ignorance of our true nature. We will suffer as long as we identify with ‘being’, falsely assuming that it is absolute, or “is all that there is.” In other words, suffering results naturally when we believe that ‘being’ exists on its own, unconditionally, independent of the Absolute.

 

- 17 -

Nirguna Brahman

The greatest Hindu sages differentiate two aspects of God. The first is called Saguna Brahman , the God of religious folk. This God requires faith, devotion, and sacrifice. Saguna Brahman is the God of all major theistic religions. The Old Testament God of fire and brimstone epitomizes Saguna Brahman . This God has intelligence, volition, and perhaps even a personality. The last quality should come as no surprise since this God is the invention of person s.

According to Sankara, the most venerated Hindu sage of the past 1,000 years, Saguna Brahman’s purpose is as an expedient to lead devotees to realizing the true God, Nirguna Brahman . The latter cannot even be called a God at all, for it transcends all forms or qualities. As mentioned earlier, nirguna means attributeless.

Nirguna Brahman is the timeless, deathless, unborn, unchanging, formless Absolute. This is Non-being.

The path of yoga is to unveil the true nature of Nirguna Brahman to a yogi.

As the examples of Saguna and Nirguna Brahman indicate, the spiritual path to realizing true God—the Godless God beyond the God of ordinary people—consists of moving from the realm of form to the formless Absolute or No-Mind. 

 

- 18 -

Nirvikalpa Samadhi

The crown jewel of Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu thought focused on realizing God, is the practice of nirvikalpa samadhi . In this form of meditation, all forms drop away, all perceptions perish, all sensations cease. All that remains is the Self —t he true, unchanging, formless reality. Anything that does not persist during nirvikalpa samadhi is not ultimately real.

 

Only the Self is true.

 

Many people understand this form of meditation as the nondual unity of all reality. They call it Being with a capital B. But the problem is that this point of view is fixated on the realm of form or ‘being’. It fails to penetrate to the reality prior to form.

 

Contrary to how modern nondual teachers understand it, samadhi does not mean one. More accurately, it means none.

 

In nirvikalpa samadhi , just as in No-Mind, there are no forms. It does not point to an experience of unity or nonduality because there is no experience whatsoever in nirvikalpa samadhi. If there is anything that you can point to —anything perceptible at all—it is not true samadhi.

 

Here is how you can “reach” Nirvikalpa Samadhi:

 

1. Sit down in a quiet place and stare at an object. A pen or book will do. Avoid anything that is emotionally charged such as a photo or family heirloom.

 

2. Notice yourself watching the object. It appears in your consciousness, physically removed from you. Observe the natural sense that the object is separate from you, not only in terms of physical distance, but on a more fundamental level. You are the one observing it, not the other way around. That sense that you are seeing it actually allows you to observe consciousness observing the object.

 

3. Retreat into your skull, deeper into the witness state. Become the formless one watching the watching occur. Become aware of the witnessing process and realize that you are even prior to this state. States come and go, objects appear and disappear, witnessing begins and ends. You do not.

 

4. So who is the one observing your consciousness? Obviously you cannot be consciousness if you are witnessing consciousness, so who are you?

 

5. Take one more step inside, deeper into yourself, and drop all forms, visible and subtle ones. Let go of the object in front of you or close your eyes if you need to. Sink into the Non-existent Void where no forms exist, not even consciousness. Ontologically, you are prior to forms and consciousness.

 

Here’s a hint. If you think that you’ve found it, you haven’t. Nirvikalpa samadhi, No-Mind, Nirvana, all exist (for lack of a better word) before ‘being’. Therefore anything that can be experienced is bound to existence.

Go prior to experiences, before consciousness occurs. You are nirvikalpa samadhi or No-Mind right now. It is your true nature, not some meditative state to slip in and out of. Return to Non-awareness in this very body. Just as you traced back your thoughts earlier, trace back yourself.

Find yourself before ‘being’. Non-being, your true nature, is ever-present, and therefore always available. Keep penetrating deeper and deeper into your mind, into your experience, until “you” disappear altogether. Not just until your sense of self vanishes, but when all sense of ‘beingness’ drops away.

Don’t expect to know when you get there; you won’t, because there won’t be any “you” to do the knowing. When you lose yourself in Non-being, there will be no one to be aware of anything at all.

You’ll only “know” when you and ‘being-ness’ return, so to speak. It’s as I said earlier: No “I” can enter the Absolute.

 

No-Mind or nirvikalpa samadhi is like hitting a brick wall of Nothingness, a formless abyss that has no beginning or end. To say that the Void is vast is wrong because that implies space. There is no space in the Absolute.

 

Neither is there time, nor any qualities whatsoever. This includes consciousness. They all come after . Nirguna, after all, means formless or attributeless.

 

Since Not-knowing is the basis of consciousness, and of all ‘being’ for that matter, consciousness cannot enter there. It must be sloughed off at the door before you cross the threshold to the Abyss.

 

It’s as if a giant sign declares at the doorway, NO CONSCIOUSNESS ALLOWED! If mind is still present, then you know that you need to continue deeper until even consciousness fades.

 

Yet we can use consciousness as a vehicle to lead us to the Absolute. Just because you can’t drive a car across the Atlantic Ocean doesn’t mean you shouldn’t drive to the airport. 

 

 

- 19 -

Embody It

Slide back into yourself, into Absolute Non-being. Actualizing our No-Mind is to intentionally embody Not-knowing, becoming aware of it as the Source, right in the middle of our lives.

 

Despite the clichéd image of a navel-gazing meditator, when we fully embody No-Mind, we are fully engaged in our lives. Mowing the lawn, exercising, cooking dinner, whatever we are doing becomes No-Mind. It is to recognize the Absolute in everything.

 

Since Non-being is the true nature of all phenomena, No-Mind —being conscious of the Absolute—is the complete actualization of who and what we are.

 

We are the full manifestation of the Absolute.

 

 

- 20 -

Sat-chit-ananda

The classical Hindu description of Enlightenment, Sat-chit-ananda, commonly translates to “Being, Consciousness, Bliss.” But this pointer does not refer to ordinary being, consciousness, or bliss. Its referents precede these prosaic phenomena.

 

This Being completely transcends the limits of form, time, and space.

 

This Consciousness never dulls or wanes, is not dependent on the body, is not subject to birth or death.

 

This Bliss is beyond the vicissitudes of mundane happiness, joy, suffering, or love.

 

For this reason, I translate Sat-chit-ananda as “Non-being, No-Mind, and Freedom from both suffering and bliss.”

 

 

- 21 -

Synesthesia

What does your hand see? Not, what would it see if it had an eyeball on it, but what does it see? Obviously you don’t have an eyeball on your palm, so what does your hand, with its non-existent eyeball, see?

 

Nothing, of course. This is a shortcut method to No-Mind that I call Synesthesia . When we try to answer this question, our minds draw a blank. To clarify: non-existent sense organs do not sense or perceive Non-being; they are Non-being. Since eyes play such a central role in our experience, as most people are visually oriented, trying to conceive of what a non-existent eye sees can create an immediate experience of Non-awareness.

 

The same can occur if we try to imagine what our foot hears. Nothing, of course! This exercise is a direct conduit to Not-knowing.

 

Or try: what do my ears see? Or my eyes taste? This mixing of organ functions, called synesthesia, can be a very useful practice to help us return to No-Mind. For as we scramble our minds’ ordinary patterns of operation, we can immediately plunge into the realm of Not-knowing.

 

The goal of Synesthesia is not to imagine some creative new way to experience life —that’s the province of poets, artists, and perhaps mystics— but to shock your mental and sensory apparatuses to subside enough to allow your original nature to surface.

 

 

- 22 -

Farther Than the Eye Can See

Stare at an object. What do you see right beyond your peripheral vision? Don’t move your eyes to the right or left; concentrate on what lies in that blankness beyond the scope of your peripheral vision.

 

In this exercise called Farther Than the Eye Can See , as with earlier ones, Non-being awaits you. It is the black screen of Not-knowing upon which consciousness appears (see Iapetus photo on page 3). Again, it’s not that there is some magical Nothingness that follows us around, ever vigilant not to be caught in our vision. Non-awareness is the basis of all experiences. It predicates all of existence.

 

Witnessing Non-being is not some extraordinary feat. If it’s our true nature, why should it be?

 

 

 

- 23 -

Nobody’s Home

Stare at a picture of a face, preferably a stranger’s. Note its contours and features. Since it’s a photo or image on a computer screen, it is two-dimensional. You can also use a human statue for this exercise.

 

Now understand that it is not a person’s face you are looking at, but an image of one.

 

You can see the picture but it cannot see you. Let this idea settle for a minute. You are capable of sight and apprehension, but despite the photo having eyes, it cannot see you. Therefore, it does not possess consciousness or sentience. An image of you is not appearing inside of the picture’s mind because it is a picture and not a real person.

 

Bear with me.

 

Now ask: What do I possess that allows me to see this picture that this picture does not possess? What is this thing called consciousness that I have and this picture doesn’t?

 

The second question is the sharper of the two, so spar with that for a while. Chances are that your mind will seize like an overstrained engine. Instead of isolating consciousness, as the second question might suggest, more than likely you will bypass consciousness altogether and land directly in Non-awareness.

 

Consciousness cannot make itself into its own object of study, but it can turn its gaze to its own source, to Non-being. Then consciousness short circuits and only Not-knowing remains.

 

Practice Nobody’s Home . It is a shortcut to experiencing No-Mind.

 

 

- 24 -

Abiding Here

The challenge isn’t awakening to our true nature, but remembering it. A lifetime of mistaken identity can be very difficult to counter. It is like rerouting an entire river; for decades worth of ignorance and delusion, lashed to the false deity called “I,” make it very difficult to stay grounded in the knowledge of our true self.

 

Old habits are seductive. It is a truly rare individual who awakens once and never wavers. Most of us need to sharpen our minds through rigorous practice to excoriate all of the residual traces of the “I” delusion.

 

Korean Sŏn Master Pojo Chinul recognized this and coined the phrase, “Sudden enlightenment, gradual cultivation,” to explain our need to return continuously and consciously to No-Mind. Don’t underestimate how persuasive habits can be.

 

 

Abiding in No-Mind is not easy, yet it is possible. Many of the great spiritual traditions have developed practices to help guide our minds, speech, bodies, and actions to prevent backsliding.

 

Zen Master Ikkyu gave these very simple, yet challenging, instructions. When a student asked him how to practice Buddhism, he said, “Attention, attention, attention.”

 

 

- 25 -

Follow the Witness

Treat consciousness like a tool that we can use to clarify our experience of No-Mind. It is a lens that we can step back away from and observe, for contrary to popular belief, we can observe consciousness.

 

If we remember to return to that which is prior to consciousness, Non-being , then we are less prone to be sucked into the whirlwind that naturally attends ‘being’.

 

Existence is not your birthright, nor is consciousness; the Absolute is. ‘Being’ and consciousness come after and from Non-being. Just as eating lower on the food chain provides more nutrients, so too does accessing your true being at its fountainhead .

 

Non-awareness or No-Mind is always present. We simply are not aware of it.

 

Follow this practice called Follow the Witness:

 

1. Sit quietly in a space without distractions. Settle into the present moment, into the peaceful center of your being.

 

2. Become conscious of your awareness as a holistic experience. Be aware of sight, sound, feeling, etc., without concentrating on the specific sights and sounds themselves.

 

3. With your attention still focused on your awareness, try to imagine your sense of beingness extending beyond the periphery of your awareness. Like an ever-widening ripple in a lake, allow yourself to permeate in all directions.

 

Don’t expect to be conscious of being-ness extending beyond your conscious experience, but open yourself to the possibility that who and what you are is not limited to either knowing or even a knower . Since you are aware of consciousness, you are not consciousness. You transcend and include it.

 

There is a part of you—your true nature—that can never be located in time or space; that has no form, no color, no texture. This unknowingness is the basis for knowingness itself. It is the backdrop of all experience and all ‘beingness’.

 

4.  Without concentrating on either consciousness or No-Mind,

abide in the selfless, empty, limitless sea of ‘being’ and Non-being. You are the witness beyond the witness. Subside into That.

 

Buddhism calls this Thusness or Suchness—the realization of the interpenetration of the Absolute and the world of form. This present reality, which is always available, is itself utterly beyond description. It’s not some transcendental experience where everything melts into one glop of soupy ‘thingness’. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: ‘things’ soften altogether, leaving only Thusness. 

 

 

- 26 -

Eight Days Before

Who were you eight days before you were conceived?

 

This is a variation on a Zen koan, a puzzling logically-impossible question intended to propel us into the Absolute [17] . Nisargadatta Maharaj liked to pose this to students for the same purpose.

 

The question, when penetrated completely, leads us to our undying nature that was never created and will never cease. Who we were eight days or a billion years before our conception is exactly who we are now.]

 

Time has no province in Non-being. The question pulls us out of ‘existence’ and back to the timeless source. The rational mind cannot comprehend “eight days before” its notion of its own personal existence. It short-circuits as it tries to conceive of its own reality prior to its own ‘being’.

 

Do not underestimate the power of this question. If you could answer only question in your entire life, this should be the one.

 

No verbal or conceptual answer will suffice. You need to shrug off all notions of self and existence—transcend them entirely. Any objects of mind must be discarded, for they are all mental constructs and only serve as obstructions between you and your true nature.

 

Who were you eight days before you were conceived?

 

Don’t be satisfied with any conceptual responses. The Absolute is beyond and prior to all phenomena, so don’t confuse them for your true nature.

 

On the other hand, don’t be intimidated by the question and convince yourself that it will take you years to realize. It doesn’t have to. You can penetrate the koan in a moment’s flash.

 

It’s not the amount of time you spend on the koan that’s important; it’s your level of commitment and intensity that matters.

 

 

 

- 27 -

Soul Searching

If you’ve ever lost someone close to you, then you’re bound to have asked yourself, “Where are they now? What’s happened to them now that they’re dead?”

 

We are prone to imagine the person’s soul, a wispy spectral thing, floating out of the body until it reaches some celestial realm where it will spend eternity. But this mythology relegates humans’ true nature to a “thing”—albeit a fairly insubstantial one, but a thing nonetheless—contained within the realm of ‘being’. This is just sheer anthropocentrism, the mistaken belief that the universe centers around humans and follows human logic. 

 

No one “goes” anywhere after death because the Absolute, all beings’ original nature, remains unshaken. The body, the manifest form, dies; while unmanifest Non-being does not change at all.

 

As Nisargadatta says,

 

when a body dies, this basic principle —the pure Brahman (the Absolute)—does not leave and proceed anywhere, as an individual entity, simply because it ever pervades everything and everywhere. But, at the moment of “death” of the body, its expression through that body subsides then and there only. [18]

 

No one goes to heaven or is reborn after death. When conditions allow for life, there is life. When these conditions are no longer present, there is death. However, the Absolute remains motionless, eternal, unchanging, unconditioned.

 

If you want to know what happened to your loved ones, all you need to do is look inward at your serene, unmoving Non-awareness. How could that ever waver or disappear? For in order for it to cease, it must have a form.

 

But Not-knowing is beyond form.

 

To truly accept the deathless reality that is our true identity, we must relinquish our ideas about who and what we are. People are not substantial entities, but appearances—marvelous, irreproducible appearances—on the face of Non-being. Our true identity is not the people we take ourselves to be, but rather the everlasting, formless, attributeless Absolute.

 

This is wonderful news.

 

But in order to accept this fact, we must stop reifying humans and accept that what we all are is truly unknowable . We are not souls trapped inside of bodies, nor mere meat machines that think.

 

All beings are Not-knowing itself.

 

 

This is an exercise I call Soul Searching.

 

Ask yourself: What color is my soul: black, white, brown, blue? What does it look like? Have you ever seen it for yourself? If not, how can you be certain it exists?

 

Does my soul have a body or form? If so, what does it look like, the same body as you have? Is it naked or what kind of clothes does it wear? Where did it buy the clothes?

 

Can my soul see? Does it have eyes? If so, what color are they? Can a blind person’s soul see?

 

Can it hear? Does it have ears? If so, what shape are they? Can a deaf person’s soul hear? If so, how can it understand words that it has never heard?

 

Is your soul a male or female?

 

Can it speak and think? If so, in what language? Can it understand Greek or Latin or Sanskrit? If it is immortal, why not?

 

As you can tell, all of the answers to these questions are ridiculous; they completely orbit ‘being’. In fact, they simply mirror the physical world, albeit in an intangible way as if this imaginary spirit world followed the same rules and laws as our own. Is there gravity on the spiritual plane? Does a soul have hair? If so, where does it go for a haircut?

 

Souls are a preposterous notion, one of (if not the ) most damaging and dangerous fallacies humans have ever made. And yet we continue to insist—desperately cling to the idea—that we have some kind of ethereal ‘being-ness’ that transcends our body and survives after our heart stops beating.

 

Every single afterlife fantasy subscribes to the soul myth. If we truly want to know who we are and what “happens” to people after they die, we must bypass ‘being’ altogether. Relinquish our silly notions of a spirit or intangible self, including any correlates like consciousness, and dive into the ocean of Non-being.

 

Ask yourself these questions whenever you find yourself slipping back into the same mode of thinking regarding a substantial “I.” Because in actuality, that’s all that a soul is—a product of the mind, an idea.

 

Who and what you are transcends all ideas and, in fact, all of ‘being’ as well.

 

 

- 28 -

Meditating on Non-being

I bet that you were wondering when I was going to discuss meditation. What kind of Zen monk would I be if I didn’t discuss it? Zen meditation—called zuo chan in Chinese, shikantaza or zazen in Japanese, and cham-seon in Korean—is often misunderstood.

Meditation is commonly described as "just sitting attentively, allowing whatever arises to arise." Bare attention, just sitting, silent awareness. That's how it's described and taught to beginners in Zen centers and temples all around the world. And while this is a perfectly good description for someone who has never meditated before, it doesn’t do service to Zen meditation.

The problem with this description is that, like many forms of meditation are prone to do, it tends to aggrandize the mind or witness. As the meditator settles into the act of awareness or "being attentive to whatever arises," the sense of a witness strengthens. The sense of an "I" who watches the world occurring around its awareness can grow and appear to be absolute.

But it isn't.

At later stages in meditation practice, even the witness dissolves. This dropping off of the "I" is not merely the evaporation of duality as some proponents claim—the false separation of subject and object—but the full integration of the unmanifest and the manifest.

Stated another way, it is when we realize the ground or source of mind, Non-being, and fully actualize it at this present moment. In order to do this, the "I" subject must be sloughed off, which is why "being aware or attentive," as shikantaza is commonly described, is insufficient.

Attention must also be transcended, for awareness is simply another feature of consciousness.

 

Properly understood—and more importantly, practiced—meditation means to fully transcend everything, to embody the Absolute, in this very body . It represents the complete integration of the unmanifest Absolute within this life of form and matter. In the language of the famous Buddhist scripture, the Heart Sutra , shikantaza epitomizes the realization that the world of form—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind—is empty of its own being and relies upon the Absolute to exist; all while fully embodying form.

Shikantaza is often translated as "just sitting," an explanation that tends to relegate it to an exercise in awareness. This leaves the practice prone to elevating consciousness. And it is absolutely vital that we transcend consciousness, too.

To explain this, I draw upon the great 20th century Vedanta teacher, Papaji, who instructed his students to "stop everything." Stop all of our practice, efforts, and attempts to manipulate this moment into something special, or some ideal that we have.

Instead, just do nothing.

Stop exercising awareness and allow it to slip away. We are not our bodies, thoughts, minds, emotions, or even consciousness.

Allow all of them to occur inside of you. Become the eternal backdrop upon which they all appear.

In order to do this, you must relax consciousness. Allow it to dilate the same way your pupils do at the optometrist's.

 

Then as you sit, hands folded, legs crossed, you embody everything because you are not bound to any single one of them, not even consciousness or mind. Return and fully actualize your true nature—the Absolute Void manifesting at this present moment, as this very moment.

This approach to meditation does nothing, and thus embodies the true root of everything, Nothingness. In this way, we actualize everything—the true purpose of Zen meditation.

 

- 29 -

Authentic Practice

The ultimate goal of spiritual practice is to live in harmony with reality, the way that things are, doing as little harm as possible. Person suffering diminishes when we come to view all beings as extensions of ourselves, as expressions of the same fundamental reality, for there is no reason to fight and compete for objects or experiences when the entire world is our body. All of existence embodies the Absolute, thus all of ‘being’ is of supreme value.

 

Everything, from the lowliest slug to the loftiest super nova, is IT. Every atom and every being has ultimate value. Authentic spiritual practice aims to respect and love all beings, whether they are seen as identical with God, the Absolute, emptiness, or not.

 

Any practice that renounces the world of ‘being’, that fails to integrate existence back into our lives as the actual locale and basis for enlightened action, is incomplete. 

 

The final realization of No-Mind is that the Absolute is not separate from the world of form and humanity; Non-being is the basis of everything. Ethics becomes even more important, not as moralistic obligations, but as active expressions of the enlightened mind that sees all beings as the flesh and blood of the Absolute.

 

No-Mind fully engages the world. It allows for dynamic and creative functioning, not bound by form or conditions. It flows freely from event to event, not clinging to any situation. As Huineng says in The Platform Sutra ,

Non-form is to be separated from form

even when associated with form.

No-thought (No-Mind) is not to think

even when involved in thought.

No-abiding is the original nature of man. [19]

 

Authentic practice utterly transcends itself, leaving absolutely no trace of self-consciousness in its wake. Like a perfect fire, it utterly consumes itself until, there is no one to witness even No-Mind.

 

 

In Hinduism, gods often assume human forms, like Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita . These incarnations, called avatars, classically represent extraordinary figures like saints or enlightened sages whose goal is to teach humanity, but avatars needn’t be limited to this category. More broadly, and admittedly less conventionally, all beings are avatars.

 

Since the phenomenal world is the manifestation of the Absolute, the wind, bees, worms, and earth are the body and form of the divine Absolute most often called God. As unorthodox as this may sound, viewing all beings as the manifest flesh and blood of the ultimate principle, the Source, radically transforms our lives. 

 

If everything is the absolute, then we no longer need to struggle against life. Anger and other “unpleasant” emotions are no longer our enemy; they are as much the dance of the Absolute as love or compassion are. When we live No-Mind, we realize that we don’t need to amputate our emotions or thoughts, regardless of their content. They are all IT, too. Fear and suffering, sadness and anxiety, loneliness and grief, they are expressions of Non-being.

 

Consider this haiku by Basho,

Fleas, lice,

a horse pissing

by my bed

Nothing is left out, not even vermin and urine. The Absolute embraces everything, and so can we through No-Mind.

 

Exclude nothing.

 

We can only transcend suffering when we understand its true nature—that even it is an incarnation of the Absolute. When everything has the same taste, the same source, there is nothing to fear, even as we experience fear .   

 

Compassion and empathy naturally emerge from No-Mind, from the person who has realized the true nature and ultimate value of ‘being’. The world exists, not as a servant to the Absolute, but as a manifestation of it.

 

We come to view all beings’ suffering as our own. The most important concern then becomes, “How can I help others awaken?”

 

May you and all beings realize your true nature, end all suffering, and live joyously as embodiments of the Absolute. It can occur in a flash, in a single instant of Not-knowing.

 

 

 

Appendix

For convenience, I have reprinted the exercises throughout the book here. Although I do not like naming the exercises, it makes referring to them more convenient. By no means are the names final. Feel free to rename or adapt any of them as you see fit.

 

Neti-Neti

 

Until you realize your true nature as the Absolute, view everything you encounter as “not me, not IT,” the Absolute. When you are gripped by a strong emotion or thought, say inwardly, “This is not me.”

 

As you meditate, perform a body, mind, and emotion sweep, reminding yourself that you are none of the things you perceive. I am not my foot...my arm...my anger...my job….

 

Continue until you arrive at that which cannot be negated. That is your Original Mind.

 

For a more detailed discussion on this practice, I recommend reading my book Neti-Neti Meditation.

 

 

Hindsight

 

Close your eyes. Sit upright like the Buddha seated in meditation. Pay attention to all that you hear: the sound of laughing children, the groan of a failing car engine down the street, a dog barking in your neighbor’s yard.

 

Feel your breath fill your nostrils and chest. Allow it to sink and fill your belly.

 

Be aware of the cushion or chair beneath you, the air temperature and texture of your clothing against your skin.

 

Now shift your attention to that which you do not know. This Not-knowing is itself the Absolute. With your eyes still closed, penetrate—not imagine or visualize, but penetrate—into what is behind your head. Maybe there is a wall or curtain or bookshelf, but since your eyes are closed, you have no immediate knowledge of their presence; therefore, you cannot say with certainty that they exist. Your senses are closed, so to speak, to any knowledge of their reality.

 

Good, so then what are you certain of behind you? What are you aware of back there? Behind you there is complete and utter Nothingness, which you experience through and as Not-knowing .

 

Open yourself up to this Not-knowing .

 

Tracing Back the Radiance

 

Again, sit in an upright position. Close your eyes and follow your breath until it slows.

 

Unlike in other forms of meditation where you intentionally “let your thoughts go,” now you are going to concentrate on thinking. Create an intentional stream of thought. I recommending asking, “Where does this thought from?” Hear the words appear in your mind and observe them as they disappear like smoke. “Where does this thought from?”

 

Trace the thoughts, in the form of words, to their source.

 

Observe each thought as it appears from nowhere —the deep, dark emptiness inside of you. This vast, formless reservoir is the source of all ‘being’; from here, existence arises.

 

Do not try to contain, capture, or grasp this emptiness. It is our very inability to seize or definitively locate Non-being that makes it what it is. Or isn’t. This ungraspability, this unfathomability, is the Absolute.

 

Nirvikalpa Samadhi

 

Sit down in a quiet place and stare at an object. A pen or book will do. Avoid anything that is emotionally charged such as a photo or family heirloom.

 

Notice yourself watching the object. It appears in your consciousness, physically removed from you. Observe the natural sense that the object is separate from you, not only in terms of physical distance, but on a more fundamental level. You are the one observing it, not the other way around. That sense that you are seeing it actually allows you to observe consciousness observing the object.

 

Retreat into your skull, deeper into the witness state. Become the formless one watching the watching occur. Become aware of the witnessing process and realize that you are even prior to this state. States come and go, objects appear and disappear, witnessing begins and ends. You do not.

 

So who is the one observing your consciousness? Obviously you cannot be consciousness if you are witnessing consciousness, so who are you?

 

Take one more step inside, deeper into yourself, and drop all forms, visible and subtle ones. Let go of the object in front of you or close your eyes if you need to. Sink into the Non-existent Void where no forms exist, not even consciousness. Ontologically, you are prior to forms and consciousness.

 

Go prior to experiences, before consciousness occurs. You are nirvikalpa samadhi or No-Mind right now. It is your true nature, not some meditative state to slip in and out of. Return to Non-awareness in this very body. Just as you traced back your thoughts earlier, trace back yourself.

Find yourself before ‘being’. Non-being, your true nature, is ever-present, and therefore always available. Keep penetrating deeper and deeper into your mind, into your experience, until “you” disappear altogether. Not just until your sense of self vanishes, but when all sense of ‘beingness’ drops away.

Synesthesia

 

What does your hand see? Not, what would it see if it had an eyeball on it, but what does it see? Obviously you don’t have an eyeball on your palm, so what does your hand with its non-existent eyeball see?

 

What does your foot hear?

What do your ears see?

Or your eyes taste?

 

Farther Than the Eye Can See

 

Stare at an object. What do you see right beyond your peripheral vision? Don’t move your eyes to the right or left; concentrate on what lies in that blankness beyond the scope of your peripheral vision.

 

That is your true nature.

 

Nobody’s Home

 

Stare at a picture of a face, preferably a stranger’s. Note its contours and features. Since it’s a photo or image on a computer screen, it is two-dimensional. You can also use a human statue for this exercise; it’s up to you.

 

Now understand that it is not a person’s face you are looking at, but an image of one. Recognize that this is an image without sentience or consciousness.

 

You can see the picture but it cannot see you. Let this idea settle for a minute. You are capable of sight and apprehension, but despite the photo having eyes, it cannot see you. Therefore, it does not possess consciousness or sentience. An image of you is not appearing inside of the picture’s mind because it is an image and not a real person.

 

Now ask: What do I possess that allows me to see this picture that this picture does not possess? What is this thing called consciousness that I have and this picture doesn’t?

 

Follow the Witness

 

Sit quietly in a physical space without distractions. Settle into the present moment, into the peaceful center of your being.

 

Become conscious of your awareness as a holistic experience. Be aware of sight, sound, feeling, etc., without concentrating on the specific sights and sounds themselves.

 

With your attention still focused on your awareness, try to imagine your sense of beingness extending beyond the periphery of your awareness. Like an ever-widening ripple in a lake, allow yourself to permeate in all directions.

 

Don’t expect to be conscious of being-ness extending beyond your conscious experience, but open yourself to the possibility that who and what you are is not limited to either knowing or even a knower .

 

There is a part of you—your true nature—that can never be located in time or space, that has no form, no color, no texture. This unknowingness is the basis for knowingness itself. It is the backdrop of all experience and all ‘beingness’.

 

Without concentrating on either consciousness or No-Mind,

abide in the selfless, empty, limitless sea of ‘being’ and Non-being.

 

Koan

 

Ask yourself, “ Who was I eight days before I was conceived?”

 

Or: “Where are my dead loved ones now?”

 

No verbal answer will suffice. You must become the deathless, unconditioned, limitless Absolute answer.

 

Soul Searching

Whenever you catch yourself subscribing to the idea of a concrete self, ask: What color is my soul: black, white, brown, blue? What does it look like? Have you ever seen it for yourself? If not, how can you be certain it exists?

 

Does my soul have a body or form? If so, what does it look like, the same body as you have? Is it naked or what kind of clothes does it wear? Where did it buy the clothes?

 

Can my soul see? Does it have eyes? If so, what color are they?

 

Can it hear? Does it have ears? If so, what shape are they?

 

Is your soul a male or female?

 

Can it speak and think? If so, in what language? Can it understand Greek or Latin or Sanskrit? If it is immortal, why not?

 

 

Zuo Chan, Zazen, Shikantaza, Cham-Seon

 

Sit upright and be attentive to everything that you see, hear, smell, feel, emote and think. Allow all of these sensations and perceptions to occur without pursuing or holding onto them.

 

Then do nothing. Allow your awareness to loosen so that there is no focal point or center to your attention. Sit in this openness.

 

Become aware of your Non-awareness at the edge of your consciousness. At the periphery of your being, awareness dissolves into a limitless sea of Not-knowing. Abide in that.

 

When you get comfortable and stable in this practice, try it throughout the day when you are working, driving, and exercising. True meditation —like the Absolute itself— is unceasing.

 

Appendix II

 

Is Non-being Nondual?

This short section is bound to ruffle a few feathers. Perhaps that’s why I saved it for last, tucked far away in the Appendix.

 

Inevitably, given the plethora of nondual teachings pervading the spiritual marketplace, someone is bound to ask, is No-Mind the same as nonduality?

 

It depends upon how we define nonduality. If the term is understood to mean the realization that reality is one seamless whole, where everything is interconnected or non-separate (whichever you prefer), the answer is no. I call this phenomenal nonduality . It emerges after Non-being, and therefore is not what I mean when I write about No-Mind.

 

Since Non-being precedes ‘being’ and form entirely, phenomenal  nonduality arises from and depends upon the Void, not the other way around. Robert Powell, a student of Nisargadatta, states this succinctly, when he writes, “The Absolute, being attributeless and non-qualitative, cannot be said to be even non-dual; it lies beyond both duality and non-duality.” [20]

 

Any experience we have, no matter how lofty or profound, inevitably falls short of the Absolute because all experiences occur inside of the realm of ‘being’, which is dependent on the Absolute. Therefore, phenomenal nonduality is predicated upon the Absolute, and depends upon Non-being. Any experiences of phenomenal interconnectedness or Oneness are rooted in ‘being’, all of which emerge after and from the Absolute.

 

For this reason, phenomenal nonduality itself must be transcended in order to experience Non-being. Stated more directly, full awakening lies beyond phenomenal nonduality.

 

With that said, No-Mind falls into the category that I call noumenal nonduality , which means that ‘being’ arises from the Absolute, and thus is not different from it. All phenomena are expressions of Non-being, a realization that can only be actualized once ‘being’ has been utterly transcended and the Source completely penetrated.

 

The main difference between the two nondualities is that phenomenal nonduality does not acknowledge an Absolute, while noumenal nonduality does.

 

I plan to explore this subject further in a future work, tentatively entitled Beyond Nonduality. More of that soon. 

 

 

About the Author

Andre Doshim Halaw is a Zen Buddhist monk and teacher in the Five Mountain Zen Order. He is the guiding teacher of the Original Mind Zen Sangha in Princeton, NJ. In November 2012, he received inka (independent teaching authorization) from his teacher, Zen Master Wonji Dharma (Paul Lynch).

 

Andre writes a Zen Buddhist blog, www.originalmindzen.blogspot.com, as well as a blog about the Absolute as Non-being, www.absolutenothingness.wordpress.com.

 

He is the author of four other books: Neti-Neti Meditation, The Heart Sutra: A Meditation Manual, Brand-Name Zen, and God is Nothingness.

 

If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased it.

 

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[1] Two Zen Classics by Katsuki Sekida, page 161

[2] The Poetry of Enlightenment translated and edited by Sheng Yen, page 23

[3] Ibid, page 26

[4] “The Void as Metaphysical Fact - Notebooks of Paul Brunton,” 6.

[5] Ibid, 3.

[6] By Wikipedia Loves Art participant "UK_FGR" [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

[7] The Nectar of Immortality edited by Robert Powell, page xix

[8] Photo of Iapetus, third-largest satellite of Saturn, courtesy of NASA.

[9] Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_yang.svg

[10] The Diamond Sutra translated by Red Pine, page 27

[11] Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary by Ellen Marie Chen, page 152.

[12] This is a metaphor, for Non-being is utterly inconceivable. The biggest mistake that we can make is to impute a concept onto the inconceivable Absolute because it defies all of our ideas, even the most sophisticated philosophies. This is why I prefer to call it Nothingness, as the term is less prone to ideation than say “God.”  But ultimately even “Nothingness” must be jettisoned in order for us to awaken to Non-being.

 

[13] Remember, Non-being is not the opposite of existence, but rather its very basis .

[14] Although this is not part of the original sage’s question regarding deep sleep, it is just as important to ask as an addendum. For after all, whatever the Absolute is, it must be currently present and accessible, because if it isn’t, how can it be considered absolute? The logic being: anything that is not omnipresent must be limited, and therefore cannot be absolute.

[15] (9 + 0 = 9, 9 - 0 = 9)

 

[16] As earlier, this is an ontological statement, not a cosmological one. This does not refute cause and effect; it explains the interior experience of the Absolute at work inside the mind.

[17] See Case #23 in The Gateless Gate collection of koans: “Show me your Original Face before your parents were born.”

[18] The Nectar of Immortality, page 83.

[19] translated by Philip Yampolsky, page 138.

[20] The Nectar of Immortality , page xxi.