The Roller Coaster of Experience
La Montaña Rusa de la Experiencia
A student asks about the pull of focused attention on meaning during conversation, and whether one should try to shift into a more open, dispersed awareness. The teacher responds with the image of seeing as a camera or kaleidoscope, and explores how recognizing what we truly are dissolves the sense of threat.
The Roller Coaster of Experience
A student asks about the pull of focused attention on meaning during conversation, and whether one should try to shift into a more open, dispersed awareness. The teacher responds with the image of seeing as a camera or kaleidoscope, and explores how recognizing what we truly are dissolves the sense of threat.
When we are speaking, there is a voice and there is an interpretation of the meaning. The meaning is like thought, the interpretation. It grabs my focus. I'm concentrated through the meaning of the words, and my attention is not dispersed. There is also something that wants it to be dispersed, that wants to know how to be grounded in openness. But maybe there's no need to be grounded, because it's already here. Like you said before, samsara is also nirvana. So even in concentration, this presence is already there.
Yes. And also notice the attachment to a state, to things being in a certain form.
When you're talking about focus, this is the mind. The body-mind can focus. Think of it like a camera that zooms. The seeing is just seeing, and then the content shifts. The focus can shift, the sensations can change. In focus, there's more of a body-mind tension because there's effort in focusing. But to the seeing, to the camera itself, it doesn't matter.
The kaleidoscope of seeing
It's like a kaleidoscope: you look through it and you're turning it, and everything is changing, but the seeing is just seeing. It's empty. When there's an experience of focus, there's a certain flavor to it. When there's openness, there's a different flavor. Strawberry, banana, chocolate. What matters is to recognize: "Oh, I'm attached. I have a preference for this other flavor."
But to the seeing, it's all colors and shapes and flavors. To the seeing, they are all loved and accepted effortlessly. From the seeing, you can enjoy all tastes and all flavors, including the crazy mind, including the distressed body, the fear in the body. To the seeing, the fear in the body is like, "Wow, this is really intense."
That is such a funny thing.
That's why we go to movies that are scary, or ride roller coasters. Because when intensity is experienced from a knowing of safety, which is what a theater or roller coaster provides, the intensity of fear becomes a beautiful, fun thing.
Safety through recognizing no self
Now, how do we recognize safety in real life? Not by chasing a feeling of being safe, but by realizing that nothing of what we are is threatened. That is the realization of not-self, or no self. It can be said in many ways and it's hard to put in words, but the most blunt way is this: there is no thing that we are. We are not the body. We are not the mind. Nothing of what appears can be what we are. Therefore, only things that appear, things that have a beginning and an end, are threatened. But what we are does not have a beginning and an end, so the question of safety or not-safety is irrelevant.
Yeah.
From there, fear, distress, suffering is like a roller coaster ride.
So this desire that something should change is just appearing, and it's nothing, actually. Just an appearance.
It's just an appearance. It's just a sensation. It's just an emotion. It's just a thought world. It's all more appearance. And from the perspective of the empty seeing, from the knowing I was pointing to in the meditation, there is an indifference. A benevolent indifference. Because it's loving, it's embracing, it's fully immersed. It's like when you watch an amazing, intense movie: you're fully immersed, you forget about the world.
You cannot withdraw from what you are
This, right here, is full immersion. The suffering comes from trying to withdraw from something that is what we are. You cannot withdraw from life if you are life. You cannot stop seeing if you are seeing. And so trying to withdraw and control something, when immersion already is, creates chaos. Experience is completely, totally impermanent. It is always changing. Nothing is stable, nothing remains the same. There is nothing here that can be called "I." No thing can be called "I." Therefore, nothing of what appears, everything that ends, everything that changes, everything that begins in experience, none of it can I call "I." Therefore, there's no sense of any kind of threat, and whatever is appearing is embraced and appreciated and loved.
Beyond understanding
But this isn't something you can do. You can recognize it as being absolutely true, all the time. Even the understanding is just what's appearing: trying to understand. So it doesn't matter whether you understand or don't understand, actually. Once you see this at the level of seeing, it's fully seen. You don't need to see it over and over again. Understanding with concepts and words is unnecessary, actually. Concepts can help sometimes, but that's not really what this is about. You can see it fully and have no comprehension of it. And actually, if you see it fully, you will have no intellectual comprehension. Any kind of comprehension, you will know it's not it. You will know it's just an approximation in words. To see it fully is completely incomprehensible. That's why it was defined as "the peace that passeth understanding." It cannot be understood.
There is an imagination happening, something like empty space. But it's not empty space, because there is an imagination of empty space.
Even the notion of space is just a perspective. It's not really what it is. It's not really a space. It's not really empty. It's not really full. What is it? It's this, whatever it is. It's absolutely mysterious.
There is no way that things are
There's a phrase from a teacher you listened to recently. When he had a deep recognition, these words came to him, and I thought it was a beautiful way to put it: "There is no way that things are." For me, that's his way of saying that the Tao that is spoken is not the true Tao. And the Tao that talks about the Tao is also not the true Tao. All of it is imagination, and nothing but imagination.
Thank you.
Thank you. Lovely to see you.