The Peace That Knows Both States
La Paz Que Conoce Ambos Estados
A student describes clearly seeing through identification as a habit, yet struggles with the pull of thought versus thoughtless peace. The teacher points to something prior to both states.
The Peace That Knows Both States
A student describes clearly seeing through identification as a habit, yet struggles with the pull of thought versus thoughtless peace. The teacher points to something prior to both states.
I had a direct investigation where I very clearly saw that I can't find the "me." I really have this experience of not finding the self I believe in. Yet everyday life still reinforces this idea of a separate person. I feel it is a strong habit. My identification is automatic and immediate, dancing along with whatever is happening. It takes a strong break from these habits, every single time realizing it, choosing to stay with just the awareness of what's going on, seeing thought as thought.
I started trying to break this habit of going to the mind by keeping my attention on something that isn't imaginable by the mind. For example, this screen we are seeing: it is immediately seen, and the thought "I am seeing" always comes later. So it is very clear that seeing is happening with no distance. There is no distance in the awareness of any object. I feel I am able to break the habit of mind-identification. It is purely just a habit.
I understand what you're describing. If you could really briefly state the problem, what is the problem?
The problem is the habit of thinking, the habit of the mind's identification.
I suspected that was your answer. So now the question is: why is that a problem?
It reinforces this idea of the person.
And why is that the problem?
It's not, actually. To me, it's only a thought. The idea of a person is only just words. I don't deny that there's some sort of feeling of somebody doing things experientially. But I feel like I can choose not to stay with the idea.
Locating the actual problem
I'm focusing on the problem because, for example, your fellow student shared that he's been having spells of irritability. That is the problem. The irritation seems like something he wants to stop. So the approach with him was: you've been doing all this work directly with the irritation, now look at the identification that's the cause of it.
What you're sharing is different. The problem is not that straightforward. I'm wanting to see if you could refine, in your experience, what the problem actually is, because you're not clearly having a problem, or I'm not understanding it.
I feel like I can choose to not stay with the mind, and I can see thought as thought.
The first thing that came for me to say to you as you were speaking is simply: stay with this knowing. Ignore the habit. Because if you're trying to stop a habit, you're reinforcing it. You can't fight with a habit. The habit will last the time it lasts on its own, because it's like a momentum. If I throw a ball down the road, it has a life of its own. If I'm trying to stop it, I'm actually pushing it.
What happens is I can feel this pull of thoughts, and I can actually feel attention forming. I can feel that I can choose to direct my attention onto something else rather than thought.
Manipulating appearances
I still think you're fighting. You're trying to manipulate appearances. Because you're describing how the habit of thought still forms, and you keep working to counter it. But I think for you, the approach is to realize that the appearance of identification is also empty. There's no need for it to stop.
There is an experience of thought each time, relating to thought. I know it's empty. Eventually, the experience of thought is nothing more than just emotion, just that. I totally agree they are empty.
But then why the attempt to stop it or get rid of it?
It's because I can feel the difference when I'm in thought and when I'm not in thought. I can feel the contrast.
One feels more pleasant than the other?
Yes. When I'm not in thought, I feel more peaceful.
The underlying sense of victim
So in a sense, now that you say that, it is similar to what your fellow student was describing, just different in form. He worked on irritation through psychological, emotional, and energetic work, as well as work on identification. That has gone so far, and now it's better to look at the identification itself. You, on the other hand, have worked directly on identification. You're seeing the process of identification, how it comes and goes. And when identification comes up again, you feel the loss of that sense of peace.
Now, for you, what is similar is that instead of putting the energy on further clarifying that there's no one there, instead of continuing that process of seeing and seeing and seeing, look directly at the choice. There is a choice.
You mean that when I say "I'm in thought" or "I'm not in thought," these are just thoughts? When I feel like I'm in a thought, it's starting to unravel.
It's working with the experience of choice. It's the same as working with the experience of will, of independent will. While you experience an independent will, you use it and work with it. While you experience a choice, you look at it and work with it.
What I'm pointing to is that there's a choice that is the root of the problem. Instead of working on clarifying the thing that's appearing, the thing that seems to take over, notice this: you're saying sometimes identification comes and sometimes it goes, there's peace when it's one way and not the other. You describe the habit of identification, the thoughts coming up. But the underlying thing you're describing is that this is happening to you.
Yes, absolutely.
So there is still this "me" that this is happening to. That's where the identification is. Now, instead of looking further into where that identification is, notice that there's a choice. This is not happening to you. It's being chosen, and you could also use the word "created." You are creating the dynamic you're struggling with.
I'm not very clear on that. The dynamic I'm creating?
The choice that creates the duality
You can say it's a habit, but then there's a separating there. There's a thing that's happening and it's happening to me. So now we're in a paradigm of things happening from an independent will, happening to me, and I have no control. That's not the true "no control." It's an identified no-control. The antidote is to see that you are the creator of that, that you are the choosing of that.
When the habits are happening, your experience is "it's a habit, it's just happening." But the need for that to be different is a pushing and pulling with the experience. There's a separating and identifying. Otherwise, the habits are not a problem. The conditioned energies have a momentum, and you observe them, and they will slowly wither and dissipate. There's a complete non-interest, no attachment to that process. It's simply on the way out; you're just saying goodbye.
But the need for it to stop, the pushing and pulling with the habit, the contraction, the identification, the process you're describing where you're trying to see more clearly so that it stops: there is a deeper place where identification is operating, and there is a choosing of this whole dynamic.
So this seeing of attention moving out of thought is itself another thought? The seeing itself is already a thing I can see. The whole thing is just a thought. And I believe in it.
Thoughts are thoughts, sensations are sensations, perceptions are perceptions. And 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's just a thought.
Yes, because choosing to stay out of thought is a thought, but it also solidifies that which can supposedly be in and out of thought. You're still manipulating the experience of thought and no-thought as two separate realities.
I just want to stay with it until I feel fine.
Stay with it, 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.
Something prior to both
From that point of view, to have a problem with thought versus no-thought, to want the habit to go away, to be involved in the dimension of thought, no-thought, identification, no-identification: that involvement is a choice. You're choosing to focus on it. And that choosing is a subtle identification, but it's also highlighting and creating the whole dynamic.
It's as if you've discovered the thoughtless peace. But now, when thoughts appear, there's an absence of that peace, and there's identification. So you're trying to battle between these two to get more of this and less of that. What needs to be seen is that the identification, the thought, the habit appearing, is the same. It is literally the same. But to distinguish them as two requires an identification. It requires making something real that isn't truly different. That is a choosing of this duality, an energizing of it: the peace and the no-peace, the identification and the disidentification.
This is no different from the musician who thinks someone is better than them, and whose whole well-being depends on being better or not worse, and who manipulates the whole notion of how good they are. If they go practice, they feel good; if not, they suffer. It's the same kind of dynamic. "I'm disidentified, I'm in peace" follows the same pattern.
So to see the identification as the same thing as the thoughtless peace is to really sit with it until it dissolves, to see it as the same.
Once you discover the peace of disidentification, the thoughtless peace, the work is to see that in the identification, in the habit, in the contracted self appearing, nothing has gone away. The peace is there as well. Because keeping these two as separate dualities keeps you in a paradigm of turmoil.
Yes. And to see them as the same thing is to stay with it, sit with it.
Stay with it, but more specifically, see that there is no essential difference. 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 no problem.
There is something prior to both. That which knows the difference between the thoughtless peace and the identification is not the peace itself. That which knows the difference is what's truly at peace. When the contracted self appears, that which knows that is at peace. When there's no thought and there's phenomenological peace in the experience, that knowing is also at peace. Habits, contractions: that which knows them is at peace. And 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.