No-Duality, the Mind and Potato Salad

This morning, I made Potato Salad. The mind was very helpful in this endeavor. It measured potatoes, onions, dill pickles and all the rest of the things that went to make the salad. It did not fight me at all. I watched as it boiled and stirred ingredients using this body, that I also watched. A great team; the mind the body and I.

In non-duality, there is a tendency to label the mind as an enemy, a "usurper ". Many non-dualists would rather spend time in a state of imagined "silence " than live with this "enemy of the one ".

I say "imagined " silence because in the actual "state " of silence nothing is experienced, nothing is remembered. If we remember being in silence, we were in imagined silence. If we remember an experience, we remember a thought we have of an experience. We do not "know " silence, we can only have an understanding of it.

The difference between "knowing " and "understanding " is in the realm of what I call Nebulous Clarity. Knowing is always knowledge based; something in the mind. If we can explain it; describe it in detail, to ourselves or others, it lives in the world of knowledge, which is in the mind, the "mistrusted enemy" of the non-dualist.

Understanding is intuitive. It requires no explanation or experience. It just is. It is the "unknowing " talked about in the "Cloud of Unknowing ". In unknowing, we act, we love, we live, without knowledge, without memory. For unknowing "happens" only in the present moment. It is not only intuitive, but freshly born. Brand new like a Baby. It is outside the mind. Outside of memory.

This is really the point. The mind is simply another concept that is built totally out of what we call memories. These memories are impressions, thoughts, and conditioning. This can happen in an instant, as time itself lives only in the mind. This is why intuition is the real deal, as it does not depend on knowledge "suspended in time " for it's reality. It just is. It is outside of time; outside of memory.

As in the making of the potato salad, the mind is not an enemy. It lives in consciousness, as does the body, also not an enemy, even though it can be a burden sometimes. The mind is like a monkey. Wonderful to watch it move and behave in fascinating, even hilarious ways. But a monkey in the house, or anywhere it does not belong, can be a disaster. The mind in spirituality is very useful for getting to the door, but it does not have the key.

The key, easily enough, is in the "sacrifice " of the mind. This is why I have written elsewhere that the understanding that the substance of the Holy Eucharist, actually becomes the body and blood is based on intuition. The mind rebels, but must be "sacrificed ". The "oneness " of Christ, participant, and elements of the Eucharist are realized by this sacrifice of the mind. Just as in the Holy Eucharist, which is of course a ritual practice devoted to the celebration of "oneness ", life itself becomes one when we live in the intuitive unknowing that is always with us, fresh every moment.

When driving a car, mending a sock or fuse, or making potato salad, the mind is very useful. The mind is not unspiritual either, as it arises in consciousness like everything else. But as "non-dualists ", we want to live in advaita in it's truest meaning. There is not two. What we write, what we say is necessarily dual, for words are mind stuff, thoughts are mind stuff. Even silence as we know it, is mind stuff. If I would "teach " you, I must do it by being only. If you sense my love, my "meaning ", it must be by unknowing and entering the acceptance of nebulous clarity. This is a sacrifice of the mind, our useful friend; part of the team that makes us "human ", so it is a "real " sacrifice.

This is what acceptance and sacrifice are all about. It is not about making efforts, or not making efforts. It is not about rejecting the useful mind, but realizing it's limits. Living with thoughts and the mind involves acceptance that we can not kill an active mind, and must watch it's antics like those of the monkey. Sacrificing the mind means seeing it's limitations, and willingly going beyond them into nebulous clarity; that place of understanding without knowledge or explanation. That place where compassion becomes more important than our "selves". That place where the "other" vanishes along with us.

Peace

Living Accordingly - Life as "Practice"

"You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or no saint at all".

- Therese of Leisieux

When St. Therese wrote those words, she was not declaring herself a "saint", or saying that we can "become" saints, but pointing out that we must strive to reach the top of the mountain, and not be satisfied with half way up. In Spirituality there can be no half-way measures.

Therese of Leisieux knew from an early age that loving God, either thorough direct worship, or through service to "others", had to be a whole hearted endeavor. She gave her life very early to the singular worship and service to God. But it's not only Christian Saints who recognize that full devotion to the "task at hand"; the seeking, the longing for "closeness" to the source, is what is required. Similar to Paul's call in Philippians 2 to "...work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you", the Buddha said “Be a lamp unto yourself. Work out your liberation with diligence.” Diligence, like Nisargadatta Maharaj's often used word; earnestness is at the heart of the spiritual search, and a constant in the Spiritual Life.

What does earnestness in the Spiritual Life mean? What does it mean to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling? Earnestness and diligence are both words that speak of constant, serious attention. That's all. This sounds simple until you look closely at another passage from the Bible; Mark 12:

"The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

"All thy heart". "All thy soul". "All thy mind" "All thy strength". That's it. That's what is required for "salvation" or "liberation"; Loving "God" in "thyself" and in thy "neighbor", and consequently in all things, sentient or otherwise.

The "fear and trembling" mentioned in Paul's letter, refers to the inability of the mind to understand the workings of the heart. I go into this in another blog: Nebulous Clarity ( http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=118768064850624 ), but to put it simply, nebulous clarity refers to the state of acceptance of understanding, without the ability to articulate it to others or yourself. This "living without understanding" is the heart of sacrifice and acceptance. It is here, in the fear and trembling, that the conviction is tested. Do you live and move with the conviction that you are Love itself? Can you let the mind live in fear and trembling long enough for it to trust the heart? This is where earnestness and fearlessness come in. A single minded attention to the reality that you are is essential.

The Buddha, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Saint Therese had many things in common, but among the foremost was their single minded attention to the "reality" that they were. They did this, not by simply meditating, or engaging in recollection or prayer, but by living a life that was an integrated whole with their "spiritual understanding". Your "spiritual life" cannot be a separate life from your "daily life". Just as Therese says "you can not be half a saint", you can't be half in and half out of the spiritual life. You are either in it or not. The lives of these three "saints" of spirituality were a living testimony to their words. They all were of different "faiths" or "paths", but they were one in devotion, "earnestness", if you will forgive me one more time!

Living a life in "non-duality" does not require leaving behind the life you have. That would be duality. What is required is "integration". No matter how "non-spiritual" your life may seem, the Absolute, "God's" Love is all around you, flows through you, is you, and is available at all times and in all things. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a Carmelite Monk, is described in his famous work "The Practice of the Presence of God" as having an "aversion" to kitchen work, but used his work as a way of loving the Lord:

"So, likewise, in his work in the kitchen (to which he had, at first, a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God and asking for His grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during the fifteen years he had been employed there. He was very well pleased with the post he was now in. Yet, he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he tried to please God by doing little things for the love of Him in any work he did. With him the set times of prayer were no different from other times. He retired to pray according to the directions of his superior, but he did not need such retirement nor ask for it because his greatest labor did not divert him from God."

Living the truth; living as if we believe what the sages tell us is a great start. Nisargadatta says: "'If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illumines consciousness and its infinite content. Realize this and live accordingly." Live accordingly! This little statement, almost tacked on at the end, contains the method, the "practice" recommended by Nisargadatta. He goes on to state that if you don't believe him, you should engage in self inquiry and the "I am". But the "live accordingly" remains. Whether you trust the Guru, or find yourself on "your own", the living out the realization, is the realization.

A life of sacrifice need not be a life of pain or suffering, although that too will come, but it is a life of rejection of "personal" wants and desires in favor of universal Love. It is living in acceptance of nebulous clarity, and constant service to the reality that is beyond your mind's conception. The courage to live "as if" you understand, "as if" you always are "ready", always in the flow, is what is required for that "understanding", and even that "courage" to happen. For the "potential energy"; Love, to flow, there must be a connection to the truth, and a means to "express" it. The truth is in the expression, as that is all that exists in reality. We must give all we have. We must disappear, as must the "other", be it God, man or world, all that matters is the expression; the loving. The living.