…brings temporary clarity for the journey
Traveling at thirty thousand feet the dharma wanderer once again reaches for the keyboard to digitize reflections arising from the surrounding emptiness. This arose after reading a short translation of Namkhai Norbu’s clear wisdom. This brought temporary clarity to what has been an intermittent mystery in a life filled with suffering and its dissolution.
That momentary clarity fades, but what remains?
Only the present moment, the sensation of fingers on keyboard keys and the dull roar of powerful jet engines projecting a silver cylinder through empty space.
The dharma wanderer waits for that which has no name to rise. Some call it awareness. Dzogchen practitioners call it rigpa. This is simply a word, a name, like the empty names of the ten thousand things. There is an inherent deception that knowing the name enables a knowing of what it is. This is the dualism of the knower and that which is apparently known. The subject who is knowing and the object that is named, seen, observed.
This dualism is said to be the primordial cause of pervasive suffering. Dualism gives rise to attachment. Attachment to what is, to what is believed to be true, to what is wanted, desired, to any thing. Attachment to what is or what seems to be is fruitless, because it is forever changing, impermanent. It can only be a fleetingly perceptible moment in a life filled with moments.
This conundrum arises for every being. For some, it leads to the question: how to be free? Is there a way to free oneSelf from suffering? To be liberated from attachments? To establish equanimity amidst turbulent chaos?
There is a paradigm, a strategy, even a testable method that offers an actionable path forward. From suffering to moments of freedom, clarity, no thing, no thought, no feeling, just is-ness.
Sitting still. Relaxing. Focusing on the breath. Noticing thoughts, feelings, sensations. Returning that awareness to the breath. This is the beginning practice. A method that separates the observer from that which is observed. A dawning awareness that creeps into the practitioner’s consciousness. This can enable a glimpse into temporary emptiness.
From this emptiness it may sometimes be possible to manifest some portion of the practitioner’s intention. That wanting of that which is not, but might become that which is. If intentional manifestation appears, it can bring surprise, delight, discovery, a sense of power, plus a risky strengthening of ego.
Then comes more suffering, more sitting, more meditative movement, more awareness, more emptiness. A repeating cycle of pleasure and pain, loss and gain. More dualistic observation of thoughts, feelings and behavior. A gradual refinement of perception. A dawning awareness that emotion can bring its reflected experiential return from the universal karmic mirror of a singular life.
This is simply a sample from all lives. All emotions. All reflections arising from the quagmire of human suffering.
That apparent recycling of reality strikes a gong of recognition. A reminder that emptiness brings peace, serenity and equanimity. A portion of the mystery of one life’s journey is thus momentarily dissolved. This repetitive message is grokked once again, penetrating the tissues within an aging body, coursing through the fascia of beingness, terminating in the fingers on the keyboard, as the dictation master speaks through those fingers.
Is this the primordial wisdom spoken of by the Dzogchen master, Dudjom Rinpoche? The dharmic questioner asks, and waits for an answer. Dualism arises once again. But there is also the breath, the inhale and exhale. Oxygen for the tissues, the cells, the metabolic processes of the body. Oxygen for each cell’s mitochondrial ATP, the output from the powerhouses that drive thousands upon thousands of energetic exchanges within trillions of cells within a single body.
The physical body must be cared for, fed, rested, moved, exercised. Observation of the body, the muscles, the pain and discomfort, the kinesthetic sensation of movement, all this creates the deception: I am this body. This is me. This dualism reinforces the apparent separation between me and you, mine and not mine, us and them, this and that.
Ultimately there is no separation, because all of the deceptively separate items are, in fact, connected. Thich Nhat Hanh frequently spoke and wrote about what he called interbeing. Just as all the apparently separate external beings are interconnected, so are the trillions of cells inside every plant and being also interconnected.
This molecular mass vibrates with the energy of beingness, each cell living, dying, and being reborn in the miracle of unending life and then passing on once again to dissolution, the never ending dust of apparent finality, and then springing forth once again, a rebirth of no-thingness.
Amidst this chaotic interconnectedness, human consciousness winds it way through hurdle, barrier and calamity into moments of freedom from suffering. These moments of flow brings those who have momentarily awakened into a rich aliveness, an intensity of living, breathing and moving without thought. Pure being brings the clear light of awareness. Words subside. There just is. Here, right now, no there, no that.
So what? Why so many words? Why so much rambling from here to there and back again.
Why not? The dharma wanderer answers.
What else is there to do, but read and write and reflect about this amazing opportunity to live and breathe and be with all that is.
Ahhhhhhhhh, yes.
It is so.
🙏 💕 🌎
ib