The High Indifference
La Alta Indiferencia
A student describes a pattern of oscillation between open, alive expansiveness and a tense pulling back into a sense of center, and asks whether this movement signals something wrong. The teacher explores how identification shapes experience and points toward a depth where the fluctuation itself becomes irrelevant.
The High Indifference
A student describes a pattern of oscillation between open, alive expansiveness and a tense pulling back into a sense of center, and asks whether this movement signals something wrong. The teacher explores how identification shapes experience and points toward a depth where the fluctuation itself becomes irrelevant.
I noticed something during the meditation, but it's actually been happening throughout the day. Things can feel very diffuse energetically, and then something still holds, a sense of holding or "here-ness." From what we've explored together, when I notice that holding, or the wanting to keep a center, it feels like a "no." What we've talked about is savoring that, being with it, feeling into it, and also noticing that this too is known. It's simple, really: just noticing.
The key is in how you spoke just now. You said, "I notice." There are two aspects in that phrase. One is the noticing; the other is the "I." There is an understanding that what notices is what the "I" is pointing to. When we say "I," it is, as Francis Lucille puts it, the reality that is hearing these words. That is what we are referring to when we say "I," and it is that knowingness aspect that matters most.
The beliefs we add to knowing
The trouble is that we then define this knowingness and assume we can know its nature: what its origin is, what it's made of, how it comes about. Those are all beliefs. The sense that "that which knows" is emerging from the body-mind is a belief. So when we say "I notice," it is also a form of speaking. What matters is whether those words are coming from a position ("I, body-mind") or whether that position has been seen through and "I" is used simply as a tool of communication, a role through which I can speak to you.
We do this all the time from very young, and then we come to believe that the "I" which knows is defined by that role. But anything that defines it in our experience is itself known, and therefore cannot define it. When that becomes so absolutely obvious and clear, it cannot be reversed.
I think what I'm noticing is the energetic aspect of all this. Sometimes there is an openness. The sensations are alive, everything is just as it is, and it feels very clear and vivid. But then sometimes, like in the meditation or in a group I'm part of, I can feel this pulling back. It's like, "No, I don't want that." And then it can get quite tense again. I guess what I'm getting at is: even if there is that tensing back, that doesn't mean something is wrong. The temptation with the tensing is to think I need to do something. So it's just seeing through that.
Exactly. There are aspects of this that have to do with process: how habits take time to settle or become undone. I think that's part of what you're describing. The pulling back, the vivid aliveness, and then it becomes more dry or monotonic or more depressive. Often, if something has been stable one way for a long time (say, dry for a year), then something needs to be looked at. But when there is this much movement and constant shifting, it simply points to the body-mind adjusting to the consequence of deeper seeing.
The body-mind adjusting
When deeper seeing happens, there is a consequence to the body-mind's habits. That consequence, in a sense, has nothing to do with you. There is nothing you need to do about it. But obviously a part of us will attach: "It seemed like I was closer to something. It seemed more like how it's supposed to be, more like how they say it is all the time." And so there is grasping at states that seem more peaceful, more expanded, more alive, more beautiful.
In my experience, and from what I've seen and heard from others, that kind of movement happens until there is a moment where the movement becomes completely irrelevant. Whether it's more expanded, tastier, more peaceful or not becomes so irrelevant that a last shift occurs: no matter what is happening, it is alive, it is seen through, it is radiantly clear. And it always has been.
The ocean and the boat
It's not something you arrive at. Think of a boat on the ocean. Your experience is all of the movement on the boat. That is what experience is: all of this movement. At the depth of the ocean, metaphorically speaking, there is darkness and no movement, so it goes unnoticed. What gets noticed is everything happening on the surface: now it's stormy, now it's sunny and clear, this constant back and forth. So when somebody speaks of peace, you refer to it as the calm ocean with the sun shining. But what is actually being referred to is the peace that is always there at the bottom of the ocean, from which the rocky movement up on the surface isn't a big deal. You know when it's rocky that it will settle. You know when it's settled that it will get rocky again. And it's fun, and beautiful, and alive.
That word "alive" really resonates, because whether there's that pulling in or whether it's all open, it's all alive. I can sense into it not really mattering. And what I notice in my experience is that if there is that pulling in, like there was last night with a lot of tension and less expansiveness, it's just futile to try to manage it. It's wasted effort and it misses the whole point. So it's just, "Okay, this is here."
That is where the whole conversation on identification matters. You could say, "I'm experiencing," and refer to "I" as the boat on the ocean. Or you could say, "I experience," and refer to that knowingness I was pointing to. If you were able to taste that in the meditation, it is a knowingness coming from the depth of the ocean, which is actually what really knows. But then we interpret through thought that it's coming from a location limited by the body. That is where the struggle begins. That is where the interest in stabilizing something more comfortable arises.
The high indifference
There is no difference between something stable and comfortable or not. That is a whole other level of comfort, if you want to call it that: when it doesn't matter whether it's expanded or not, stable or not, comfortable or not. But it's not that it doesn't matter out of resignation, nihilism, or not caring. There is a teacher who, in my interpretation, referred to exactly this when he called it "the high indifference." It is not indifference. It is the high indifference. You have tasted suffering; you have tasted nirvana. And there is no difference. From that no-difference, there is this indifference. But it is high indifference. It is not uncaring. In fact, you can now dive deeply into caring far more, because there is no resisting.
I like the word "aliveness" or "freedom." When there is identification and we're trying to tinker with experience, things seem to become deadened in a way. When we're talking about that deeper "I," there is a sense of aliveness that feels so much more genuine.
There is something very valuable and important about aliveness. But there is a risk that part of that response is an attachment to a certain state. The true aliveness you are seeking is not state-dependent. There is a deeper answer where, whether it is more alive or bleak or dry or depressive, it doesn't matter. Not in a nihilistic, uncaring way, but in a deeply accepting way. From there, the sense of aliveness and beauty shifts completely, because even depression can be savored as absolute aliveness, which dissolves it instantly.
You cannot have depression if you are mesmerized by deep, absolute aliveness. You cannot have true suffering if, in a moment of great distress and pain and all kinds of challenges, there is this deep sense of beauty and love for what is happening. At one level you could speak of something as suffering, but not really. Not as it was when all there was, was struggle and distress.
That's a relief. I can feel into that just in talking about it.
What I am pointing to is here. It is always here. It is knowingness. What changes the experiential context is what we define ourselves to be: the identification. When we define ourselves as that which is limited, then things are a big deal. To the boat on the surface, the storm is a big problem. The peaceful ocean with sun is a big relief. As that boat, yes, it is a big deal. But for the bottomless ocean, the movement on the surface is beauty, whichever way it is, even when the boat is suffering or struggling. It is aliveness, even when it is dark and gray and drizzly and depressive. It is aliveness.