Circle 7 - Realizing Freedom

Before engaging in the meditation at the end of this material, please spend one full day just absorbing what is written below. There are many ways to approach this same level of awareness.

Questions

It may be helpful to your practice and development to ask yourself these questions.

1. Have you had what you believe to be a direct realization or a brief glimpse of Ultimate Truth?

(If yes) How would you describe that realization?

2. When that realization was occurring, how did you know that it was happening? (You would not know at that time – only in retrospect)

3. What have been the consequences of having had this realization? (Look for transformations in perspectives, perceptions, relationships and living in the relative world)

4. What are the steps to recreating that experience? (There are no steps – it was not an experience that is based upon cause and effect)

5. What is the difference between you, the Buddha and all other realized beings? (There is no ultimate difference - just a difference in personality, perspective, experience, and so forth)

6. What does it mean that all experience on the relative level is actually “a play of consciousness?”

7. What about wars, criminals, hunger, and so forth? If it is all part of the play of consciousness and in perfect balance, is there no need to do

anything?

8. What is the difference between life being meaningless and life having no intrinsic meaning?

9. What does it mean to be nothing and everything?

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As you read this material, please watch the mind for judgments, disappointments, comparisons and confusions. Following the description of this 7th Concentric Circle, there is a practice that can possibly enable you to realize all that has been described. Please read with an open mind and heart.

It is impossible to truly describe this stage of awareness. It is beyond all concepts so words cannot capture its essence. It is so far removed from the thinking mind and the ways in which life is typically perceived, that it cannot even be embraced by one’s imagination. It is also not an experience since there is no “one” present to experience it.

There can be a glimpse of this reality at any stage. However, living one’s life from this perspective is quite another thing!

The Buddha spoke about this reality in terms of what it was not. He said it was the unborn, the unformed, and the undying. Saying what it is not can sometimes be more helpful than trying to point to what it is.

This stage represents a significant transformation. One comes face to face with their own true reality and it affects every aspect of their lives.

The great paradox is that to be free you cannot “know” that you are. If you are everything that there is, how could you step out of being everything to know that? And if the one who would “know” is empty of any inherent reality, “who” could know that? (Emptiness is another name for this same level of understanding)

What one does know is that who they had previously believed themselves to be was pure imagination.

Although there is no “knowing,” a tacit understanding of the truth of our inherent freedom is present.

This is the Presence about which every mystic has spoken. Whether it is called nirvana, moksha, the kingdom of God or liberation, all words are just pointers to this ineffable reality.

For some, this realization comes like a strike of lightening. It can feel this way since there was no context within which the realization emerged.

For others, after years of practice, the realization arises in more fertile ground and arises more organically. For them it is like walking through a misty evening and without realizing it they have become soaked through and through.

There is a spiritual misapprehension that along with realization comes a saint-like character. There is a difference between a saint and a sage.

A saint is someone who has purified his “I” process through various forms of asceticism and practices. He comes to realize a state of purity. His needs are reduced to a minimum, he is chaste, eats little, lives in contemplation and prayer. But fundamentally the saint still remains an “I” process; the center of his personal consciousness remains intact. The saint does not transcend his ideas of self.

The sage, on the other hand, does transcend the illusion of self and the “I’ process. There is no longer a difference in the sage’s mind between himself and non-dual reality. (Non-dual reality is another name for this same level of understanding)

The saint submits himself to discipline. The sage has passed beyond all disciplines. He is a portal through which truth is expressed within the world of form.

At this point along the path, no matter what we are engaged in doing, this tacit understanding of our true nature is always present in the background. It is similar to gravity. We are always acting as if there is gravity but the thought that gravity exists may never cross our mind. It is a knowing that requires no mental review.

The personality and the conditioned thought process will still arise, but there is no longer an identification with the play of mind. A gap in memory is not a gap in awareness.

Prior to this stage, the recognition of selflessness is like a bucket with a handle that although completely submerged in water, it can be pulled back out by the rope to which the handle is attached. When certain circumstances occur the belief in self can still arise.

Now the mind is fully submerged into its non-dual nature. It is like a bucket that is submerged in the depths of the ocean without a handle or rope. There is no way for the bucket to be retrieved. No matter what occurs, the belief in self will no longer be the guiding principle in our lives.

Life is now lived spontaneously. There is no more rehearsing before engaging in whatever life has to offer. There is a sense of wonder because we do not know what we will say before saying it, and we do not know what we will do before doing it. There is total trust in the wisdom of each present moment.

What is present is a profound sense that, for the first time, one has really come home. The realization is that our present life is merely a thought in the mind of the Absolute.

There is one final fear that everyone on the path must deal with. This fear must be encountered and seen to be the illusion that it is. It is the fear that by acknowledging our inherent freedom, that both delusion and enlightenment is part of the dream, we may be wrong, confused, misguided, or actually reinforcing a more subtle sense of self.

But being wrong, confused, misguided and reinforcing a more subtle sense of self is also part of the dream. Can you see that?

One ultimately discovers that the greatest freedom is freedom from the illusion that we are not already free.

Inspired Quotes (These are not to be “thought about!” Just “be” with them several times and let their truth soak within your being)

Give up those erroneous thoughts leading to false distinctions! There is no self and no other. There is no wrong desire, no anger, no hatred, no love, no victory, and no failure. Only renounce the error of intellectual or conceptual thought-processes and your nature will exhibit its pristine purity.

There is nothing that has absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold, nothing on which to relay, nothing in which to abide, nothing subjective or objective.

The relinquishment of everything is the Dharma…but the relinquishment of all delusions leaves no Dharma on which to lay hold.

The arising and the elimination of illusion are both illusory.

If you have the merest intention to indulge in conceptual thinking, behold, your very intention will place you in the clutch of demons (delusions); Similarly, a conscious lack of such intention (the decision not to indulge in conceptual thinking), or even a consciousness that you do not have any such intention (that you realize that there is the absence of the intention not to indulge in conceptual thinking which is another conceptual thought), will be sufficient to deliver you into the demon’s power (the power of delusion). But these delusions are not from the outside – they are self-creations of your own mind.

Huang Po

Rid yourself of thoughts involving the dualism of opposites such as love and hatred, self and other.

Dwelling upon nothing means that the mind is not fixed upon good or evil, being or nonbeing, (life and death), inside or outside or somewhere between the two, void or non-void, concentration or distraction.

The mind needs to be free from ideas of both purity and impurity.

Nothing to perceive” means being able to behold men, women and all sorts of appearances while remaining free from grasping or aversion as if these were not seen at all.

Opposites are seen as void. However, this is realized without any thought of “now I see that opposites are void,” or “now I have relinquished the idea of opposites being void.

The Zen Teaching of Hui Hai: Five Points on Sudden Illumination:

Wishing to entice the blind, the Buddha playfully let words escape from his golden mouth. Heaven and earth are filled, ever since, with entangling briars.

Dai-Okokushi

The truth indeed has never been preached by the Buddha, seeing that one has to realize it within oneself.

Lamkara Sutra

What is known as the teaching of the Buddha is not the teaching of the Buddha.

Diamond Sutra

What is the ultimate teaching of Buddhism? You won’t understand it until you have it.

Shih-t’ou

Eleven Warnings from the Zen tradition:

1. There is no need to annihilate deluded states of mind – whose mind is it and who is doing the annihilation?

2. We do not want to add knowledge to ignorance which is just more ignorance.

3. To keep regulations and observe rules and rituals is to tie oneself without a rope.

4. At the same time to act unrestrainedly is to fall into the abyss of ignorance.

5. To try to purify the mind is false Zen.

6. To sit blankly trying to have a quiet mind is the practice of the dead.

7. If one proceeds they will go astray, if one retreats they go against the truth, if one neither progresses nor retreats they are a dead person breathing.

8. Spiritual discipline can become like gold dust in the eyes – gold dust is valuable but if you get it in the eyes it hurts.

9. Do not expect a to cause b to cause c – the sequence of events has nothing to do with being in the moment.

10. Any effort to change what is takes you out of the moment.

11. When the realm of enlightenment is reached throw that away and keep going.

Five Principles of Non-Duality from the Tibetan Tradition

1. There is unceasing realization of the union of appearance and its intrinsic emptiness.

2. We drop our identification with both the objects of consciousness and with the frames of consciousness that are observing the objects.

3. Meditating or not meditating is no longer a meaningful distinction

4. We are left with a silent spaciousness that is beyond the concepts of silence and spaciousness. There is awareness present but there is no “one” who is being aware. This awareness is so empty of concepts that it is no longer considered to be awareness. We no longer cling to anything – not even to not clinging.

5. Non-meditation is beyond all forms of thought construction, and even beyond the idea of stillness. There is no “doing it right.” There is no center or edge to this practice or experience. The moment we believe that we are practicing non-meditation, we are no longer practicing it. Non-meditation and ultimate freedom are one and the same.

Please practice the following meditation throughout the week. Either record it and play it back to yourself giving enough time to be with each phrase, or have someone read it to you. It is not possible to read this meditation as you try to practice it!

Non-Dual Meditation #1

Please close your eyes and follow your breath as a way to center yourself in the present moment.

There is actually nothing upon which to meditate.

You are the space within which everything unfolds.

Don’t try to imagine space or emptiness since that would only be a thought about space or emptiness.

Let space remain without imagining.

Remain free from identification with any sense experience that arises.

It is impossible to fixate on anything while being present with Non-Dual Truth.

At the same time there is the knowing of whatever takes place.

When everything is left wide open, free from clinging and aversion, the concept of perceiver and perceived naturally subside.

Do not project outwardly, do not withdraw inwardly, do not place your attention anywhere in between.

The moment conceptual mind dissolves into non-dual awareness, there is no confusion left to be rejected and no freedom to be accomplished.

All mind difficulties are resolved when realizing Non-Dual Truth. It is like crossing a hundred rivers over one bridge.

Be careful – please do not think that if you rest in non-dual awareness that you are going to see something or feel something-something special.

If you do see something, that is just another object, another feeling, another thought, another sensation, or another image.

All objects that can be seen are not the true Seer.

As you rest in pure awareness all you will notice is a sense of freedom, a sense of liberation, a sense of release; release from the constriction of identifying with finite objects, the body, the mind, and the sense of self.

And within this freedom the entire manifest world arises.