The Ring and the Gold
El anillo y el oro
A student describes encountering resistance when trying to understand the emptiness of objects and the distinction between the knowing of beingness and the knowing of the mind. The teacher addresses this resistance directly, pointing to what lies beneath it.
The Ring and the Gold
A student describes encountering resistance when trying to understand the emptiness of objects and the distinction between the knowing of beingness and the knowing of the mind. The teacher addresses this resistance directly, pointing to what lies beneath it.
During the meditation, when you were speaking to another student about the emptiness of objects, I had a similar feeling. Specifically, when you were speaking about the knowing of the mind versus our beingness. I was wondering if those two things are linked, because I was surprised: for me, the knowing only comes from beingness. I didn't have a feeling that there was a knowing of the mind. It struck me when you said it, and then when the other student spoke, I had the feeling that maybe that's what she was referring to. I'm not entirely sure.
Yes, that is right. But we get into semantics when communicating. I'm playing with breaking it into two.
The knowingness you're speaking of, which comes from beingness, is truly the only knowing there is. But what I'm referring to as the knowing of the mind, you could call it the false knowing, the knowing where illusion is created. We can get lost in what I'm calling the knowing of the mind when we make what the mind interprets into something real.
The only true knowing
It is linked. When I say "this is a ceramic cup," it's true. There is a knowing of the ceramic cup, which is a knowing from beingness. And there is a knowing of the calling of this "a ceramic cup," which is also knowing of beingness. But now, the knowing of mind, which I was referring to, makes this absolutely real: all it is, is a ceramic cup. I know what it's made of, it's ceramics, and that's all it is. That kind of knowing is what the mind interprets.
The mind is a tool. It creates a map of all the experience that is happening. It finds forms and names them. The form of this voice is named "sound," is named "voice." The words, through the form of the sounds, are named and then known as concepts. Beingness is knowing all of that, and that's the only true knowing.
Map-making and forgetting the territory
But when the map is made to be absolutely real, that is what I was referring to as the knowing of the mind: the mapping of reality, finding forms and naming them. It is only beingness that knows the naming of forms. There is no other knowing, and that's true.
I wanted to separate what sometimes appears to be knowing, which is the mapping from the mind. That mapping is a beautiful thing. But what happens is we focus on the map and forget the raw experience of what is being mapped. It becomes a kind of second-degree knowing, and the knowing of the mind makes everything into objects. That's what the earlier conversation was about. Instead of breaking up the knowing into two kinds, I could call it something else. I often call it "map-making" instead of "the knowing of the mind."
There is something that doesn't want to go through right now. I felt it also while you were speaking to the other student, this idea of the emptiness within the knowing of the mind. But somehow it feels so much closer. There's a knowing of the knowing of beingness, but the experience seems to be more of a knowing of the mind somehow. I feel there is something there for me, but it's not going through completely.
There could be many things. One could be that the way I'm pointing to this is just not the best way for you to hear it. It could be a language thing, a style thing. But there could also be a resistance.
I feel it's more the resistance. I found you very recently and I feel the way you speak is very straightforward and very easy for my mind to understand. I just sense that there's something in this for me.
The sense of self under threat
I'm going to the core of it. I don't do very well with little steps and slow progression. I go straight to the core. And it's the most difficult thing, because once you see what I was talking about with the other student, something in us, our sense of self, is under enormous threat. There's beingness, and then there's a sense of self. That sense of self is going to resist this, because if you fully see through it, the sense of self is made of it.
That's exactly the other thing. When you said earlier to someone, "Go and see through it," the mind was just like, "How do I go through it?" I noticed that was a thought and tried to let it go, but I can really feel the resistance of trying to understand and not wanting to understand at the same time.
It takes time and contemplation. It's also something we can talk about in many different ways. I always say, don't rush it. But it's really great that you pick up the resistance and know it as resistance. That's really important. That's very rare. It's more common to just disagree. The fact that you recognize the resistance means you've already seen through something.
But the resistance comes at the same time as a very strong feeling of, "Wow, there is something in there." When you were speaking to the other students, there was also this sensation in the body: "This is it, and I'm so close." That's why I can see the resistance, because I know I'm close and I'm just not somehow getting through.
What you want most and fear most
It is the thing you want the most and the thing you're most afraid of.
Yes. A bit frustrating.
I know. That's why I say: fear and pain, fear and pain. Frustration is anger. It's pain-based. All difficult experiences, you could just say, are fear and pain. And the practice is simply to swim in it and not stop, because in fear and pain there is sensation. It's all made of the same thing.
The only thing that is difficult is that the sense of self is under threat. And it's always about something ending: the sense of something ending, of dying, of disappearing. All resistance is placed on that. And what I can say is nothing truly ends. It changes.
The gold cannot die
If I have a golden ring and I turn it into a necklace, the ring is dead. But the gold cannot die. What I'm pointing to is this: the sense of self says, "I am a ring." And it's starting to get heated up. And the ring says, "I'm a ring." And it feels like dying. It's not dying. It feels like ending. It's not ending.