When the World's Suffering Feels Incomprehensible
Cuando el sufrimiento del mundo resulta incomprensible
A question about struggling with the reality of war, and whether nondual teachings can become a way of denying what is actually happening.
When the World's Suffering Feels Incomprehensible
A question about struggling with the reality of war, and whether nondual teachings can become a way of denying what is actually happening.
I have been troubled by the war in Ukraine. I have been struggling to understand what it is I feel about it, to a point where it seems like it's not actually happening.
Only to the degree that nothing is happening. The war in Ukraine is not happening only in the sense that nothing at all is happening. We have to be careful with pointings, teachings, and language. There is a level at which that is true, and it is relatively true in the way that "the Tao that is spoken is not the Tao." So to say the war is not happening is only relatively true, and only in the sense that nothing else is happening either.
But where there is something happening, which is the universe, then the war in Ukraine is happening. People are dying. And not only in Ukraine: many other wars, many other battles, many of them not even captured in media or given any attention, where many more people are dying and nobody is caring or paying attention or making news about it.
Any awakening conversation or spiritual conversation that supports the denial of this is not one I will be present for.
The danger of spiritual bypass
So nonduality could become a denial of what is happening?
That is a spiritual bypass, yes. It is an avoidance of something, and that will never lead to true nonduality or true realization.
Then what is happening is all a subjective view of what is happening.
What is happening is what is happening. It cannot be named. But yes, there are multiple subjective views, and all of them are relative, partial, and not true. They are only interpretations. The more those interpretations are believed to be reality, the more problems they cause, because they are born of suffering. And whatever is born of suffering will create more suffering.
Reality is not reducible to interpretation
So this is the point: whatever is happening, it is all different interpretations of what is happening.
No. There is what is happening, and then there are the interpretations. It is not the case that what is happening consists only of interpretations. We cannot reduce what is happening to merely the interpretations of what is happening. That would be reducing reality to only mind. There is reality first, and then there is mind, within or as part of that reality, which interprets that reality.
I struggle with that, because I do not actually know what is happening. I can hear the news, but the news is just being told to me.
Yes, of course. We cannot know, at the level of the world, everything that is happening, the reality of it. We can only interpret.
So then the only true thing is direct experience: directly hearing sounds, colors, lights.
Yes, but you can also listen to the news, which is direct experience. You can have conversations, which are direct experience. You can speak, which is direct experience. It is all always direct experience. Nothing can ever happen outside of direct experience.
And hearing the news: does it turn into a belief that this is what is happening?
Thoughts as interpretations, useful or otherwise
That is the problem with believing mind, with any thought. The news is a thought. It is mind-stuff, as much as our own thoughts are. But it is information, and it can be useful.
If I have a thought that over there is a squirrel and there is not one, that is a problem. But if I am feeling thirsty and I have a thought, an interpretation, that what is over there is a bottle of water, that mind-construct is relative. It is an interpretation, because I could reach for it and discover it is actually kerosene. Someone put it in there and I did not notice. But my interpretation is that it is a bottle of water, and that thought-construct helps me soothe my thirst.
All thoughts have this nature of being interpretations. Seeing them as thoughts, always only as thoughts, helps us discern which thoughts are useful and worth paying attention to, and which to ignore and let be part of the movie.
This is very applicable to the world, to the wars, to all of what is happening. We can create maps around what is happening. For example, I can speak about a very philosophical generalization of what the world is going through right now. I can speak of collective forces of denial, of the battle between responsibility and victimhood. That is an interpretation. It is a map. It is not absolute reality. But I think it can at times be useful for understanding the incomprehensible, the ultimately incomprehensible.
The sanity of finding madness incomprehensible
That you find it incomprehensible is, to me, a sign of innocence, a sign of sanity. When one is exposed to madness, it is incomprehensible. That is, by definition, what madness is. If it were rational, it would not be defined as insane or mad. And if it were rational, we would comprehend it.
What is at the root of it all? I can say it is illusion. It is the avoidance of fear and pain. I very much understand that, and I very much know that I have had a privileged life. This body has not been exposed to the horrors that most people have. I think a majority rather than a minority have been exposed to more horrors in this life than I have, that their body-minds have suffered more trauma than mine has. But I also remember prior lives where I did go through those horrors, and those were carried into this life. So I do know a little of what it is like.
I struggle with that, because I have never believed in prior lives.
It does not matter. I am not making a claim that demands your belief. I am speaking from my experience: to the degree that this life is real to me, it is real that I remember previous lives in the same way I can remember this life. In a sense, they are equally real. The only thing that is absolutely and inarguably real to me now is this, what is happening now. Everything else is memory. Memory of this life, memory of a previous life: to me, they are not that different. They are different forms of memory, and there is no control over how they arise. It is just how it happens.
The teaching of "no control" as a corrective, not an absolute
In a sense, but that is where you are trying to define things, right?
And so that definition is only partially, relatively applicable and real. There is no control, yes, and there is control. This is where common, popular nondual teachings can be useful in certain contexts. For example: when a society is collectively hypnotized by the belief that there is an alien race on the moon about to attack, and suppose there is no such alien race, then the teaching is, "There is no alien race about to attack." That teaching is brought in to address a false belief.
But if no one had ever imagined an alien race about to attack, and then somebody starts going around saying, "There is no alien race about to attack," it is senseless. And if that is spoken of as truth, it is absurd.
So to say "there is no control" is only useful when there is a belief in absolute, total control. Otherwise, if one believes there is no control, it becomes the alien race: it becomes the belief "there is no control, so I cannot do anything, I cannot control anything."
That is exactly what it feels like when I hear that there is no control.
Exactly. Because it has become a belief. That teaching is only useful if you already hold the opposite belief.
It is all negation.
That is why I am challenging it. That is why I am saying there is control, because I am intuiting that you are taking these teachings, believing them, struggling with them, and adopting them.
I can see that it is just a belief, and still it holds.
You will prefer to believe it if it serves you in avoiding something.
Right.
If you are afraid of something in your life and you hear great spiritual teachers saying there is no control, you might say, "Perfect. Then I have to do nothing and face nothing, because I have no control. The great spiritual leaders have said so." And every time you try to fix something, you tell yourself it is all out of fear. But that statement, as an absolute truth, is false. Sometimes when you try to fix something it is out of fear. Sometimes, possibly, it is not, if you are acting from wisdom.