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A PLACE IS INEVITABLY REACHED in the Buddhist path where we are challenged to go beyond the limitations of our normal egoidentity. We arrive at a threshold that requires that we relinquish our grasping at self and surrender its domination. Prior to this moment we may have had some intellectual knowledge of what it means to let go of the ego and realize emptiness. To be challenged to completely surrender and open is a transition to another level of experience, however, and it is best that we be well prepared. The guardians of this threshold demand a heavy price for us to cross over. Once we are ready, however, we can enter what could be seen as the most profound stage of our journey. We clear the veil that obscures our true nature.
There is a veil of ignorance that clouds our capacity to see things as they truly are. It separates our normal, narrow, limited, daily mind from an awareness that is clear of conceptual clutter, more spacious and open. While the veil is present, our world is bound by our hopes and fears, our expectations and dissatisfaction. We suffer getting what we don’t want and not getting what we do want. We see a world where appearances are held to be what they seem to be: solid, substantial, and self-existent. We are caught in an illusion. If we were to penetrate this veil of illusion, we would suddenly recognize the folly of this deception. We would see that the way things appear is not how they actually exist. What seems permanent and independent softens into a fluidity of interdependence and fleeting presence.
On one side of the veil, the world is caught in time and set into forms that crash against each other in an endless collision. This collision of cause and effect is the source of much suffering and gives rise to the constant sense that our world is deteriorating, wearing out. We inhabit a contracted, restricted sense of space and time that becomes ever more stressful and demanding. This is what we might understand as relative truth. As I pointed out in Chapter 3, the degree to which we suffer is relative to the degree of our tendency to contract. One could equally say that the degree of our suffering is relative to the discrepancy between our view of reality and the nature of reality itself. Our blindness to the true nature of reality leads us to endlessly struggle to make secure what is fundamentally untrustworthy. When we see through the illusion in which we are caught, we awaken to an insight that transforms our experience entirely. We can begin to rest in an entirely different way of seeing.
In the Tibetan tradition much emphasis is placed upon the distinction between relative and ultimate truth. While we are caught in relative truth, we are blind to the nature of ultimate truth. Our blindness to, or ignorance of, the nature of reality is called ma rig pa literally “not seeing,” in contrast to the state of insight or rig pa literally “seeing.” When we are in a state of ignorance, we hold relative appearances to be absolutes and are blind as to how they actually exist. We see impermanent things as permanent. We attribute qualities to objects and are blind to the fact that our exaggerated view of objects arises through our projections, not from the objects themselves. We attribute solidity and self-existence to a world that is fundamentally insubstantial and fabricated. Our blindness wants to see a world that is reliable, predictable, and secure, when no such reliability can be found. We live with an illusion about our reality that sets us up for suffering. When the world fails to live up to our false expectations, when the illusion crumbles, we feel disappointed, betrayed, insecure, or even angry.
In Buddhism the fundamental dichotomy is between ignorance and insight, as opposed to the struggle between good and evil found in most theistic religions. Blindness and ignorance may indeed lead to “evil” actions, but this is not to imply possession by some form of absolute evil. Insight into the nature of reality will change the very root of all of our actions. We may call this insight an “enlightenment,” but this term can be misleading.
The term enlightenment can be and often is used in ways that assume any number of possible meanings. Like the term spiritual it can be applied in ways that offer no clarity as to the nature of “enlightened” experience. Enlightenment for a Buddhist, however, is very specific. It is not the sudden understanding of some obscure truth. It is not the sudden revelation or awareness of the presence of some divine entity or godhead. Rather than a presence of something, Buddhist enlightenment, paradoxically, could be seen as an absence. It is, however, an awakening to an innate inner wisdom, a state of mind, rather than some kind of divine presence.
The Tibetan term usually translated as “enlightenment” is jang chub (Skt. bodhi), which is derived from two syllables: jang meaning “purified or cleansed of all defilements or obscurations” and chub meaning “to have total or perfected comprehension of the nature of all phenomena.” The Tibetan word for the Sanskrit buddha, which is sanggye is also derived from two syllables: sang meaning “cleansed or purified” and gye meaning “possessing vast extensive knowledge.”
These terms convey the sense of a state of being or a state of awareness that has two characteristics. One is the attribute of clearing or cleansing of all obstructions, and the other is the perfection of an expansive insight into the nature of reality. The enlightened state is one in which the veil of obscurations has been cleared of dualistic confusion and limiting conceptual clutter. Like the gradual clearing of disturbed or clouded water, this clarification leads to an expansion of awareness. The mind that was clouded and caught in the solidity of relative appearances and obsessive conceptual thinking expands and opens to the clear empty nature of all reality. This state of awareness is sometimes named the “ground of being” or the wisdom of dharmakaya and is often symbolized by the ocean and a deep blue color.
While this wisdom of ultimate truth is experienced continually by a Buddha, it exists for the rest of us as an innate potential we may glimpse on occasions when our minds open. While we are unable to penetrate the veil, this underlying wisdom remains an unconscious dimension of the psyche we may know only through its symbolic metaphors. It is perhaps more than just coincidence that we say things come out of the blue.
When our mind is prepared we may begin to penetrate the veil. The mist of our mind begins to clear and the solidity of our reality begins to soften. Through the cultivation of meditation and a process of purification and clearing of the mind, we may suddenly see through the illusion of reality. Like a thin film of tissue paper punctured with a glowing piece of incense, our mind can experience a “penetrative insight” (Tib. lhak tong; Skt. vipashyana). We have penetrated the veil and gained an insight that radically changes our understanding. Light shines through this opening and begins to illuminate our darkness.
It is important to recognize the difference between an enlightened experience and the state of enlightenment. To penetrate the veil is to see the nature of reality for the first time. This enlightened experience in the Zen tradition might be called a satori. This is a powerful shift of insight that shakes our reality. No longer can we live with the delusion we may have once held. Our solidly held concepts about reality begin to crumble. Samsara shakes, as Lama Yeshe once put it. This experience may not be comfortable. To come so close to this existential threshold challenges our secure sense of identity and can be frightening. Indeed, as a Tibetan lama once said, this fear is a sign that we are close to the edge. We are beginning to recognize the lack of substance of our ego-identity. Our “wisdom eye” has opened to a new truth—an ultimate truth, as opposed to relative truth.
When we penetrate the veil, however, the work is not yet done. We may have had an enlightened experience, but there is further to travel. As Gen Jhampa Wangdu once said while I was in retreat, it is not difficult to experience emptiness; the problem is holding it. For this insight to have its full effect, the mind needs to be able to sustain awareness for prolonged periods of time. Tibetan teachers will sometimes say we may hit the nail, but only with a quality of focused attention can we repeatedly do so. With the development of tranquil abiding, the veil can be cleared completely in the way the red ring of fire created by the incense burn slowly expands and consumes the entire film of tissue paper. The mind is gradually cleansed of the emotional turmoil and confusion that is generated by the misconceptions we have about reality.
As the illusion falls from our eyes, we see through the “hallucination,” as Lama Thubten Yeshe called it, we have believed for so long. The example that is often quoted in Buddhist texts is that of a person who, walking through a dark street, suddenly sees a coiled rope and thinks it is a snake. In a state of misapprehension, we will react with all the emotions that relate to the snake, until the true nature of the rope is perceived. This is true of our life as a whole. While caught in the illusion of reality, we react as though things are as they appear: solid, true, and self-existent. Once we recognize the illusion, our reactive mind is slowly pacified. There is nothing to react to; there is also no one to react.
This illusion can be just as strong in relation to our spiritual and psychological beliefs. While we cannot or do not distinguish between relative and ultimate truths, we may hold on to our relative doctrines and concepts about our spiritual life as though they were absolute, ultimate truths. When through ignorance, fear, and insecurity we turn relative doctrines into absolute truths, we create dogma and suffer the consequences. Clinging to spiritual beliefs rather than living with uncertainty or spaciousness is a fragile security. When threatened it can lead to the kind of violent defensiveness seen all too often in religious fundamentalism.
Our spiritual beliefs, therefore, can also be part of the veil. Like maps, they are not the territory. They are relative worldviews that help us to map reality on different levels. They enable us to have some way of conceptualizing and making sense of experiences that are often, in essence, beyond conception. The term “God” and all the concepts we may have about God are an obvious example. They are, however, still relative conceptual conventions that are not an ultimate insight into reality. Holding on to beliefs and doctrine, even within Buddhism, as Stephen Batchelor points out, is just as much a subtle level of blindness.33
When we are able to let go of holding any relative view as ultimately true, there is a greater freedom in the mind and our beliefs will not become part of the veil that blinds us. An important Indian Buddhist philosopher named Nagarjuna was the propagator of a philosophical view that became known as the Prasangika Madhyamaka. The term prasangika could be translated as “consequentialist” to imply that rather than proposing a particular view as correct, these practitioners would simply look at the consequences of holding on to any particular view. They would show that whatever views someone held would have a tendency to limit, polarize, or rigidify the mind. What they attempted to find was a “middle way” (madhyamaka) where dualistic polarities are resolved in a paradoxical middle ground that is neither one nor the other. Nagarjuna asserted that a bodhisattva should learn to tread a path that ceases to cling to any belief, view, or ideal as an absolute. If he or she can allow the mind to rest without grasping at extremes, there will be no reason to become caught in contention.
Living with these different levels of blindness brings endless confusion and conflict. Only when we lift this veil of illusion will we begin to face reality. But the illusion is deeply ingrained and is cleared only gradually. It is not so difficult to recognize that things are impermanent. We can see through much of our exaggerated projections upon objects that attract or repel us. It is less easy to see through the veil created by our beliefs and our sense of self-identity. It is even more difficult to shift the view of appearances as solid entities existing “out there” as separate, self-existent things.
The veil that separates us from an understanding of the true nature of reality is penetrated only by a particular quality of mind. Thinking endlessly about it and cultivating sophisticated philosophical and theological systems does not do the job. Indeed, it may even strengthen the veil. Insight (Tib. lhak tong; Skt. vipashyana) comes with the cultivation of a quality of awareness that is largely the result of meditation.
Our usual daily mind is busy and preoccupied with discursive chatter the Tibetans call namtok. We are constantly caught in thinking processes that actually obscure our capacity for insight. The concepts and beliefs we construct are also not easy to transcend. There may be flashes of insight that arise at certain times in our life, like Maslow’s peak experiences. Our reality may crack and open at certain critical times of crisis. A sustained state of being that is open to this insight, free of discursive thinking, is, however, gained principally through meditation. There are many different styles of meditation, but the one I wish to refer to, called Mahamudra, is practiced particularly within the Tibetan tradition.
Mahamudra emphasizes the nature of the mind, as opposed to the breath, feelings, or visualizations, as the primary object of meditation. The intention of meditation is to gradually cultivate a quality of presence that is clear and open. As awareness becomes increasingly quiet, clear, and free of discursive chatter, we will be able to remain present with the arising and passing of our experiences, whether they are feelings, sensations, thoughts, images, sounds, sights, and so on, watching their passing without interfering with them. With experience, the mind becomes gradually more relaxed yet alert and able to remain in a state of clarity and presence that is no longer disturbed by the arising of appearances, thoughts, or feelings. As this “bare awareness” stabilizes, we begin to see that the relative appearances that normally affect our mind are fleeting and insubstantial. They are an illusory play, like a dream or a mirage, lacking inherent solidity. In the language of Mahamudra they are recognized as the play of emptiness.
Through remaining present within our inner processes we will also begin to see the subtle pull of our emotional and feeling life. We will perhaps for the first time be able to watch the process of our emotions and the activity that arises from them without becoming caught in their compulsion. As we are freed from their power and influence, we may then also start to recognize that the ego that is held so strongly as a focus of being is also an illusion.
As awareness settles and opens to a more spacious presence in whatever arises within the body, feelings, and mind, it becomes apparent that there is no central, solid, permanent axis of awareness. Our sense of a self is insubstantial and momentary. It is a focus of attention that is created in each moment as a subjective self in relationship to objects of awareness. It has no continuity as a substantial entity. As meditation deepens and awareness opens, our sense of self becomes increasingly permeable, fluid, and spacious. Eventually, it becomes natural to experience a state of being that does not hold to a contracted identity at all.
This experience will contrast with that of the contracted, emotionally charged sense of self that can be felt to be a solid entity. As we have seen in Chapter 3, the “ego-grasping” that contracts around a “vividly appearing I” is the wounded sense of self we have developed from infancy. It will often carry fundamental emotional beliefs about ourselves—for instance, that we are worthless or unlovable—that are held as absolutes. At the core of all these emotional wounds we will also discover an underlying existential anxiety that is the essential emotional tone of ego-grasping. With clear, present awareness we will begin to feel the fleeting, insubstantial nature of this vivid “I” which, like writing on water, cannot ultimately be found. This may at first accentuate the sense of anxiety, as the sense of self we have held for so long begins to unravel. This is an important moment because we are on the edge of a profound shift in our inner landscape. If we stay with the process of opening, we can step finally into a space of no-self where the contraction and anxiety that has held on for so long begins to evaporate. We will be left with a deep sense of ease and spaciousness. There is no anxiety because there is no one to be anxious.
This is not to say that the “I” or ego does not exist or has no relative value. Although many people receiving teachings on Buddhism fall into a notion that the ego must be gotten rid of, this is a very misleading idea. Without a relative sense of ego-identity we could not function in the relative world. We are able to say “I sit,” “I eat,” and so on. This “I” is a perfectly valid expression of a focus of self-identity. It is, however, merely a label placed upon the whole of the person. To lose this label is to actually endanger our sanity. When we negate the relative “I,” we end up losing the thing that enables us to function and remain functional. Without it, there is the probability of psychosis. Essentially, we must have an ego before we can go beyond it.
Once we have established the nature of the functional ego or “I,” we can safely recognize its illusory nature without insanity. The Dalai Lama has said that a bodhisattva requires a strong ego to follow the path he or she is on. This does not imply that the bodhisattva is blind to the true nature of that ego. Instead, it is still possible to live with a strong, stable “relative I” while recognizing its ultimately empty nature.
The recognition of the empty nature of the ego will loosen the contraction around “I,” the ego-grasping that holds the “I” as something ultimately solid or true. This loosens the relationship to the core of our emotional life, as there will be less and less disposition to contract around emotions and create dramas out of nothing. Fear may arise but can pass through without anyone being caught in identification with its energy. Anger may come, but its energy can be allowed to pass through and be freed into its essential nature. This may bring a capacity to be strong and assertive without getting caught in egotism.
Penetrating the veil is the beginning of a process that cleanses the mind of all tendencies to be caught in dualistic thinking. Returning again and again in meditation to the spacious clarity of the original insight gradually clears the veil. As a result, the mind increasingly settles in a quality of tranquil abiding (Tib. s hi né; Skt. shamata). While the term s hi né is sometimes translated as “concentration,” this can be profoundly misleading. The experience is not of the mind concentrated like oranges in a bottle. Rather, it is a quality of mind that is naturally settling in a state of awareness that is neither too loose nor too tight. In the “Song of Mahamudra,” Tilopa describes how one should remain loose and natural, resting at ease so that the mind gradually settles into its pristine clarity.34
As the mind’s pristine nature shines through, luminous and free of duality, our normal, dualistic mind evaporates like clouds dissolving back into the blue sky. The veil clears and we open to nonduality, the ground of being. Once stabilized, this enlightened wisdom is known as dharmakaya, the “truth body” of a Buddha. The meditator’s mind has opened to the vast, expansive, empty nature of reality, within which appearances arise as the play of emptiness.
As we settle in meditation, we encounter a paradox at the heart of Buddhist understanding. We may practice a path that unfolds through life, and yet the primary ingredient of transformation rests in being utterly present. As a psychotherapist and Buddhist practitioner, I have often been torn between what at first seem to be two very different views of psychological healing. One view sees the unfolding of a process as the natural progression of change and transformation. The other sees that psychological healing occurs when we are able to remain present, open, and accepting, whatever is happening.
Our paradox remains: there is a path, a process that unfolds, and yet the truth that dawns is about presence. The Buddha’s most profound recognition, as a consequence of his own personal journey, was that there was really nowhere to go. He gained a state of awareness that was no longer endlessly drawn into the cycle of change and movement. In striving towards awakening he came to a place of sublime stillness and presence. He saw that the process of going somewhere was an illusion based on the premise of there being an inherent self or “I” that was going. The dawning of this realization brought him to the notion expressed in the Heart Sutra: “In emptiness there is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering and no path”.35
The Buddha saw that so long as we are caught in relative conceptions about our life we live in an apparent linearity of a process unfolding and are blind to the truth. We may travel a path in search of the truth, we may strive for self-improvement and realization; but when insight comes, the truth seems somewhat ironic. To paraphrase Chögyam Trungpa, we go around and around, trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we realize that the ambition to improve ourselves is itself the problem.36 Why could we not see it? In the present moment all is essentially empty, fleeting, and like a mirage. If we can rest in the present and let go of the self that is trying to understand and get somewhere, all is completely as it is. In the moment there is no separate, substantial person and no solid, inherently existent world of appearances: there is no split, no duality. Both subjective self and objective world are a fleeting play of appearances that are momentarily arising and passing away.
When we settle into this quality of presence we find a state of openness and acceptance of what is. Nothing needs to be different, as it is experienced with clarity and openness. In the Mahamudra teaching, the fruit of practice awakens as the realization that our essential nature is pristine, pure awareness, free of defilements. This has been there in the beginning as our essential nature; we have simply failed to recognize it in our busy, chaotic state. When we awaken this experience, there is nowhere to go as we remain in the unfolding of the present moment.
The shift of view from the unfolding process of our journey to a quality of presence can occur at any point (see Appendix). One could say that clear presence is the most profound way to relate to any experience in the path. We could be standing at a painful threshold in our life and shift the focus of our attention to exactly what is in the present moment and simply witness the fears, anxieties, or the excitement and anticipation of the journey. We could be in the wasteland in a state of utter despair and, in that instant, simply open our awareness to the clarity and spaciousness of the moment. This shift is simply our capacity to remain open and fully accepting of exactly what is in that moment. When we are able to make this shift of awareness, our emotional or felt relationship to what is happening is subtly transformed. Rather than being pulled along by fears and worries, we can open to the spaciousness that is there in clarity and presence.
In the experience of presence, the ego lets go of the tendency to interfere with the world and struggle to make it different. This letting go is a fundamental acceptance that all is as it is: no fighting who we are, no judging ourselves to be this or that, no clinging to beliefs about ourselves, no struggling to be different. Such thoughts and feelings simply solidify and close us to reality. We contract around that sense of self and get caught in the entire process of the need for things to be different. In present awareness we unfreeze our reality and enable it to unfold as it is. The mahasiddha Saraha likened our ignorance to a freezing wind that solidifies the waves of the ocean into solid, static entities.37 The wisdom of present, open awareness found in Mahamudra unfreezes these waves and allows the natural, unfolding play of reality.
As we have seen, psychological wounding comes from contracting around a sense of “I” that is actually an illusion. This emotionally charged, vividly appearing “I” has at its root a profound, existential anxiety that never subsides while we still remain holding on. The antidote to this anxiety is to cultivate a quality of presence that ceases grasping at entities. As if diving into space and remaining in free fall, the mind becomes accustomed to having no reference point. In that experience, anxiety may reach its peak and then evaporate as the mind lets go.
This experience became horribly familiar to me during periods of retreat in the high mountains in India at the time of the monsoon. For months at a time the place would be so entirely enveloped in cloud that there was no visibility whatsoever. This had a curious effect. I had nothing to visually hold on to, to distract myself. My anxiety levels would keep rising. The vivid sense of the fragility of my ego-grasping became so acute that I was forced to face a letting go I could hardly bear. Eventually, something did let go and the sense of spaciousness became a friend rather than an enemy. I was reminded of this again when, years later, I was attending group therapy training. Each week, the thirty or so students would sit in a huge circle for group therapy. The first ten or fifteen minutes of this meeting were silent, as seldom was anyone willing to be the first to speak. This silence was like once again staring into that gaping space. It would be either a terrifying, anxious black hole, or if I let go, just spacious and clear. I would just sit and meditate in the space, which I am sure was completely the wrong thing to do from the facilitator’s perspective.
As the mind opens to nondual presence, it rests in the place of the constant stream of creative manifestation. To use Saraha’s analogy, this is the moment waves come into being and then dissolve again. On this threshold, the reality we experience in our normal, relative world arises as a creative expression of emptiness. On this threshold between form and emptiness we will experience what in Tantra is called the sambhogakaya the vitality of manifestation. This threshold is where a powerful meditator can engage in reality in possibly the most creative and dynamic way. Without separating from the experience of emptiness and spaciousness, it is possible to engage in the constant movement of reality as it manifests spontaneously moment to moment.
In the natural experience of presence we will also discover our innate capacity for love and compassion. Like moisture in the atmosphere that forms droplets only when there is a leaf to settle upon, this moisture of unconditional compassion will respond when we come into relationship. It is this love and compassion that make us realize the importance of remaining in the world of relative appearances for the welfare of others—others who are genuinely trying to live their lives the best they can yet who are entangled in the illusions they are creating. Out of love and compassion, a bodhisattva returns from a place of profound inner peace and openness to enter the world of duality and conflict so as to bring a different message.