The Peace That Knows Both Sides
La paz que conoce ambos lados
A student explores the trap of choosing between thoughtless peace and identification, and the teacher points to that which is prior to both.
The Peace That Knows Both Sides
A student explores the trap of choosing between thoughtless peace and identification, and the teacher points to that which is prior to both.
Whatever happens, I try to use it for this. If some energetic, ecstatic thing arises, I enjoy it, but it's not about that. And if something is a big bummer, then I use that too. Everything is so useful. The ecstatic thing is gone like that, so that's not it. And the bummer: use it to wake up. Everything is useful; it just depends on our attitude.
Yes. And to the question of the orb: I would say it is the energetic that all of this is, which at one moment might be more directly palpable and known to me. At the same time, it's you, it's me, it's us. It's the "third." And at some moment, it seemed like you tapped that directly, and that's when things shifted for you. But it's you, too.
Things can get refined from there. In words, you could say, "I am also this person," or "This person is a part of me," and that language works. But consider a metaphor. Assume that what I am is this body. How much of my hand is the essence of what I am? I can lose my hand and still be completely, one hundred percent here without it. So the hand isn't essential to what I am; it's a part of me. In the same way, using it as a metaphor, your character, your personal self, is the hand. The whole of the personal self can go, and you will still remain.
Working through identification
Now, what's different here is the approach. In the earlier case, the work on that irritation was through psychological, emotional, and energetic work, along with some work on identification. That has gone far. Now it's better to see the identification directly and work through that. For you, you've worked directly on the identification.
So this seeing attention moving out of thought: it's another thought. The "third" seeing is already a thought. It's a thing I can see. The thought "I can see attention forming and moving out of thought" is itself a thought. The whole thing is just a thought. And I believe in it.
Yes. And thoughts are thoughts, sensations are sensations, perceptions are perceptions. All of it is you. All of it is Buddha nature, at peace, already, now.
So when I think I can choose to stay out of thoughts, that is just a thought.
Choosing creates the duality
Yes, because choosing to stay out of thought is a thought, but it is also going to solidify that which can be in and out of thought. You're still manipulating the experience, treating thought and no-thought as two separate realities.
Right. Just to stay with it until I feel fine.
Yes, but also see that the experience of thought and no-thought are the same thing. It's all empty and full, the same substanceless substance. It's all made out of the same no-thing: emptiness, fullness.
Yes, totally.
From that point of view, to have a problem with thought versus no-thought, to want the habit of "the thought is appearing, the thought is going away," and then to be involved with the dimension of thought and no-thought, identification and no-identification: that involvement is a choice. You are choosing to focus on it. And that choosing is a subtle identification, but it is also highlighting and creating the very duality.
The trap of battling thought and peace
For you, you've discovered the thoughtless peace. But now, when thoughts appear, there's the absence of that peace, and there's identification. So now you're trying to battle between these two, to get more of this and less of that. What needs to be seen is that when the habit is appearing, when the personal self is appearing, it is literally the same as the peace. But to distinguish them as two requires an identification. It requires making something real, and something is happening there. That is a choosing, an energizing of the duality between peace and no-peace, identification and no-identification.
This is no different from "there's a musician better than me," and now my whole well-being depends on being better or not worse, and I'm manipulating the whole notion of how good I am. If I go practice, I feel good, and then the whole thing spirals. It's the same kind of clay.
So to see them as the same thing: is that to really sit with it until it goes?
Nothing has gone away
Once you discover the peace of disidentification and the thoughtless peace, the work is to see that in the identification, in the habit, in the personal self appearing, nothing has gone away. The peace is there as well. Because these two dualities, these two things, keep you in a paradigm of turmoil.
Yes. And to see them as the same thing is to stay with it, sit with it.
Yes, stay with it. But more specifically, see that there is no difference essentially. It is the same. This is it. There is something prior to both.
The only thing that's complaining is the notion. And once that's seen, there's just no problem.
That which knows the difference
There is something prior to both. That which knows the difference between the thoughtless peace and the identification is not the peace. That which knows the difference is what's truly at peace.
When the personal self appears and there's contraction, that which knows that is at peace. When there's no thought and there's phenomenological peace in the experience, I am also at peace. When the personal self appears with habits and contractions, I am at peace. That which knows all of it is at peace.
This has been described as the realization that nirvana is samsara, and samsara is nirvana.
Yes, it does. It really clears it up. Thank you.