The Two Sides of Every True Teaching
Los Dos Lados de Toda Verdadera Enseñanza
A student describes the surprising relief of being "caught out" by the teacher's remark about wasting time, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of why the mind must ultimately fail, and why both emptiness and ethical development are necessary.
The Two Sides of Every True Teaching
A student describes the surprising relief of being "caught out" by the teacher's remark about wasting time, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of why the mind must ultimately fail, and why both emptiness and ethical development are necessary.
When you mentioned wasting time, you blew my cover. It was great. I didn't even know that was such a constant pattern. I can see how, as you say, there's nowhere to go, but this process of uncovering layer after layer feels so good somehow. Lifting up those stones and seeing all the bugs underneath is very freeing.
I was feeling quite playful. In fact, I was on the edge of cracking up during the meditation. But I also know that at moments I'm speaking directly to the mind, to the "I." It's not fun. It's where all our resistances live, where all suffering is.
I was speaking a little bit in the mind's language. From one side, this is freedom, which is outside of the mind. But for the mind, for the "I," coming close to that will not be instantly known as freedom. It will be experienced as emptiness, death, depression.
The dance of unwinding
So in a sense, the dance in this work, the part of it that is a process, is how to unwind that in a gracious way so that ultimately the mind can integrate it and not just completely resist it or experience it as darkness and emptiness. It's a subtle line, because if something is approached too quickly, too abruptly, it might contract back into "I don't want this." And it's true: the mind doesn't want that.
That's why the process is really one of identity. As we disidentify from the mind, we no longer react to that emptiness, because we are that emptiness. But when we are identified with the mind, coming close to that emptiness is literally the end. It's loss. That's why the words used are "surrendering" and "letting go." It's not something the mind, or us as identified with the mind, can do, because the definition of the mind is to resist. That's all it can do. And so it is surrendered, not done.
Two flavors of "nothing to do"
That was what I was pointing to. There's nothing to do, nowhere to get to. That can have two flavors. One is relief: "Ah, there's nothing to do." The other is: "I can't get anywhere. I can't achieve. Whatever I try, whatever I try to do or gain, it's ultimately always going to fail."
And that is a good pressure cooker. That's the beauty of life, in the sense that it is so deeply known that we will die. Death is the pressure cooker of a process that can lead to disidentification from that which dies.
So the experience you're describing, that it felt good in some way, is a good sign. It means the process is leaning on the side of being. Being is hard to describe, but being is being.
The element of surprise when you said "it's a waste of time" was striking. There was this sudden "what?" and then recognition. It caught the mind unaware. You found me out, and then there was nothing to hold on to. The mind can't be in charge here. It's very helpful. The levity is very helpful sometimes.
Every promise from every true teaching, every directive, every pointer or recommended practice, all of it, when it's pointing to truth, is an attempt to gently bring about that seeing. It needs to be approached gently enough, and it's really a fine line, but ultimately it's untrue. There is nothing you can do. There is nowhere you can get to. Everything will fail when it comes to being.
The ultimate koan for the mind
That is the ultimate koan for the mind. The mind, that which feels like a separate "I," will always fail in the deepest sense. It can achieve, but not in the sense of what it ultimately wants. It can only realize what it wants through absolute, complete, total failure. That's why nearly every person who describes realization speaks of a dark night, a torment. It is almost always preceded by darkness and despair, because it's the seeing that nothing is working and nothing will work.
But if I describe it only that way, then it's poor guidance. There is a process and there is another side. On the other hand, if there is always only the guidance of "do this and you will get to that, see this and you will get to that," then that too is poor teaching.
It's truer that everything will fail when there is identification with doing. But because identification with doing is the norm, it's generally truer that everything will fail and there is nothing that can be done.
The completeness of great teachings
That's why teachings that are more complete must have these two sides. One is the absolute impossibility of getting anywhere, of achieving anything: everything must be lost. And then there is direction, ethics, a way of being in the world, the best way to conduct oneself.
You can see this very clearly in the great teachers. The Buddha says life is suffering, there is an end to suffering, and here is the way. But the way is toward emptiness. And then there are ethics: right action, right seeing, right doing. All the directives of balance. But it is also toward emptiness. Emptiness is the pointing toward "nothing will work." What you are is empty. There is nothing that you are that can get anywhere or do anything. But you need both sides.
And Jesus speaks of so many things that are simply loss: the destroying of all relationships. The father must be against the son, the son against the father, the brother against the sister. All of those must be ended. He declared to his mother's face that he was not her son. In a sense that could have been a mistake, because perhaps it was not right for that to be expressed to her. But he was acknowledging the ending of that relationship. He is not a son, because that defines something.
One of my favorite sayings is: "Seek and you shall find, and when you find, you will be troubled." What you're looking for is going to trouble you. It's the end of something. It is a failing. But he says: those who seek, keep on seeking. That is the direction. Keep doing it. It's not "stop seeking." You will find that you cannot find, and that will trouble you. That is the dark night. And then you will reign. Then you will be. Then there will be being.
And then there is right action. He was very ethical. He brought a revolution in ethics to the West, which had started with Moses and the Ten Commandments. And all of it is about how to live, how to act, because without that, "everything will fail" becomes anarchy. Both sides need to be married.
Why psychological work matters
And that's why psychological work is important. That's why working on the body and mind and relationships is important. When someone begins leaning toward the view that such work is not important, then that work becomes the most important thing.
So it's important to work on psychology, relationships, emotional intelligence? In terms of being in the world, you mean?
Obviously it's on a case-by-case basis, but as a general principle, that work is very important. If a group or an individual or a social context starts to ignore the importance of that, then it is the most important thing to attend to.
And vice versa: when society or a group or an individual starts to ignore that which is harder to point to, which is that nothing of what you do will ultimately get you what you want, then there is a loss of being. And then that becomes the most important thing.
It's the balance. In my own process, for many years I did a great deal of work on my psychology, my emotional difficulties. Then I came to the path of non-duality. And I found that I needed to do more of that psychological work alongside this path. The difference is incredible. It seemed necessary to get things out of the way before coming to this path, but now that I'm on it, working on those same things is so much more effective. They meet hand in hand. They're deeply connected.
The ceiling of development
Exactly. And ultimately, the work of developing, of getting somewhere with the body and mind, has a ceiling that cannot be crossed. There is a limit unless being is realized.
When you say "being is realized," what do you mean by that?
You could call it awakening. By saying "being is realized," I'm setting it up as a black-and-white thing, but there are degrees of realizing and integrating. That ceiling I'm pointing to means there is simply something that cannot be developed any further unless there is work on being.