The Two Sides of Every True Teaching
Las Dos Caras de Toda Enseñanza Verdadera
A student discovers that being told the practice is "a waste of time" can itself be liberating, opening a conversation about why all genuine teachings must hold two truths at once: that nothing the mind does will succeed, and that there is still a direction worth following.
The Two Sides of Every True Teaching
A student discovers that being told the practice is "a waste of time" can itself be liberating, opening a conversation about why all genuine teachings must hold two truths at once: that nothing the mind does will succeed, and that there is still a direction worth following.
When you mentioned wasting time, you blew my cover. It was great. I didn't even know that was such a constant pattern for me. I can see how, as you say, there's nowhere to go, but this process is just uncovering, uncovering, uncovering. There's something that feels so good about it. Lifting up those stones and seeing all the bugs underneath is somehow very freeing.
I was feeling quite playful. In fact, I was on the edge of cracking up during the meditation. But at moments I'm also speaking directly to the mind, to the "I." It's not fun. It's where all our resistance lives, where all suffering is.
I was speaking a little 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 graciously enough so that ultimately the mind can integrate it rather than completely resist it or experience it only 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.
Two flavors of "nowhere to get to"
"There's nothing to do, nowhere to get to" can have two flavors. One is relief: "Ah." The other is: "I can't get anywhere. I can't achieve. It's just failure. Whatever I try to do, whatever I try to gain, it's ultimately always going to fail."
And that is a good pressure cooker. That's the beauty of life, in a sense: it is so deeply known that we will die. So death is the pressure cooker of a process that can lead to disidentification from that which dies.
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 so 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. "I've been caught." And then there's this direct experience: the mind can't be in charge here. It is very helpful. The levity is very helpful sometimes.
Yes. And in fact, every promise from every true teaching, every directive, every point, every recommended practice, all of it, when it's pointing to truth, is an attempt to gently bring that seeing. It needs to be approached gently enough so it can be received. It's a fine line, because what is being pointed to is ultimately something the mind cannot bear: 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's the ultimate koan for the mind. The mind, the "I," the "me," that which feels like a separate self, will always fail in the deepest sense. It can achieve in conventional terms, 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 virtually every person who describes realization speaks of a dark night, a torment. It is almost always preceded by darkness, despair, because it's the seeing that nothing is working and nothing will work.
But if I only describe it that way, then it's just poor guidance, because there is a process and there is another side. Conversely, if the only guidance given is "do this and you will get to that, see this and you will arrive there," then that is also poor teaching.
It is truer that everything will fail when there is identification with doing. And because identification with doing is the norm, it's generally truer that everything will fail and there's nothing that can be done. That's why more complete teachings must hold these two sides together. One is the absolute impossibility of getting anywhere, achieving anything; everything must be lost. And the other is direction, ethics, how to act, which is the best way.
The structure of great teachings
You can see this very strongly in the teachings of 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: all of the directives of balance, right action, right seeing, right doing. But it's 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, that can do anything. But you need both.
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 bonds 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 directly. But he was acknowledging the ending of that relationship. He is not a son, because that label defines and confines something.
One of my favorite passages is "Seek and you shall find, and when you find, you will be troubled." What you are looking for is going to trouble you. It's the end. It's failure. But he says: those who seek, keep on seeking. That's 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 right action. He was very ethical. He brought ethics to the West, which started with Moses and the Ten Commandments, but Jesus was a revolution in ethics. And it's all about how to act, how to live, because without that, "everything will fail" becomes "nothing matters," and nothing matters is anarchy. So those both 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, on relationships, all of that is very 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 what, exactly? Psychology? Relationships? Emotional intelligence? Being in the world?
Yes. Obviously it's on a case-by-case basis, but as a general principle, that work is very important. If a group, an individual, or a social context starts to ignore the importance of it, then that is the most important thing to attend to. And vice versa: when society, a group, or an individual starts to ignore that which is harder to point to (that nothing of what you do will ultimately get you what you want), then there is a loss of being, and that becomes the most important thing.
It's the balance. In my own process, for many years I did a ton of work on my psychology, my emotional difficulties. Then I came to this path of non-duality, and I found I needed to do more of that inner work as well. But the difference is incredible. It seemed necessary to clear things out of the way in order to come to this path, but now that I'm on the path, it's so much more effective to work on those same things. They're meeting hand in hand. They're just so connected.
The ceiling of development
Exactly. And ultimately, the work on developing, on getting somewhere with the body and mind, has a ceiling that cannot be crossed. There is a limit unless being is realized. By saying "being is realized," I'm setting it as a black-and-white thing, but there are degrees of realizing and integrating. That ceiling is simply something that cannot be developed any further unless there's work on being.
And when you say "being is realized," what do you mean by that?
You could call it awakening.