Free Spirit of Inquiry

Because space and I are not different,

wherever I go,

that will be the place

where I am already present.

                                                                             Nisargadatta Maharaj

Because what we are and time

are not different,

everything that ever happens

is expressing our very Being.

John 3 16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that who so ever believes in him will not perish, but will have ever lasting life.” Who ever believes in Christ’s spirit, in the unconditional love that he prayed would flow through him to all of God’s sons and daughters, will realize spirit that isn’t born and will never die.

How many times have we heard about the deep unconditional love, and support of the spirit of inter being? It was never born, there was never a time it wasn’t right here, and there will never be a time that it isn’t right here, it knows no death. We are the sons and daughters born of that which was never born and will never die. For the source, or God, so loves us that she gave us to the world, is always giving us to existence, that we might freely awaken all hearts to the one deathless and timeless heart of the spirit of creation.

The power that creates all the galaxies, all time and space, gave us birth out of her love and infinite joy. Can it not be the truth? Where can the separation between what we think we are, and the reality of this spirit be found? Reality is always right here. Being reality, how can it not be here? Being as we are, we know that we are, how can we not be here? How can we not be reality? How can we not be the full expression of reality, right here, right now, just as we are?

Are we not here to bring the realization of the unborn into the world, so the world can be redeemed? Are we not here to offer everything to the timeless boundless nature, and so redeem all suffering so it can be seen as it really is? To see it as it really is, is to see it free of all labels, free of all confinement, free of all separation from the loving source of awareness itself. We are here to offer all of it to the Great Mystery, which transforms into the great affirmation of reality itself..

Our souls are not ours, they are God’s. We don’t know what they are, we only know that they are. Conscious breathing is the anchor in the center of experience, the energy allows everything to float free in the love of spirit. Feelings are like clouds in the sky; constantly dissolving, constantly moving, sights, sounds, and thoughts are also like this. They don’t belong to anyone but the unknowable. The unknowable is the true nature of reality. The unknowable is what we actually are.  We are unknowable, but we are.

The mysterious nature of experience is never more or less mysterious, no matter what type of experience we’re experiencing. This freedom from conceptual knowing expresses the full aliveness of spirit, which is always with us. We’re always experiencing THIS, freedom itself.  Gradually we learn we don’t gain or lose anything from experience, we are actually experiencing the innate freedom of spirit again and again in ever new forms. And realizing there is nothing to gain or lose, we learn to let go of our agendas with regard to experience.

As we are, we are the truth, what other truth could there ever be besides things as they are. When we understand this, things are as they are. When we don’t understand this, things are as they are. Reality, things as they are, includes all ideas that things could be different than they are. But things are still as they are, the love of it all is eternally being given to us, the sons and daughters of the spirit. As the sons and daughters of spirit we are always being invited to spread this love everywhere, awakening all beings to things as they are.

I was visiting my sister in Boulder a couple of months ago, and in a bookstore I saw a book titled the Dharma of Dogs. The subtitle is ‘our best friends as spiritual teachers’. The dog on the cover has an uncanny resemblance to my black lab Bruno, especially in the deep peace and unconditional acceptance that shines through their eyes.  I heartily recommend the book to all dog lovers on the path.

I love Bruno and Bruno loves me, sometimes I say it verbally to him though there is no need to do so. We both feel it in our hearts. When I’m alone with Bruno, I feel a deeper connection with the inner spiritual teacher, some like to call this our guru, or our original face. We sit outside together for an hour every day that we can, and this is a very special time for us. It’s a beautiful setting with the surrounding forest, it’s always a time for us to commune in a deeper way with nature.

It feels like outside with Bruno there is a higher vibrational energy that permeates my being, and when Bruno softly licks my hands and gazes lovingly into my eyes, I know that energy is what we actually are, and that we actually are love. All of my dogs lived for love, all dogs do. People do also, but we get distracted and confused about the main point. In these special moments with Bruno, it’s like he’s saying see? It really is all about love.

The most beautiful thing about Bruno isn’t his beautiful black shiny fur, or his bright eyes both of which make him a most handsome animal. The most beautiful thing about him is his loving heart. He’s totally in the here and now, he has no plans, and doesn’t care how successful I am, how well I get along with others, or if I’m enlightened or not. I feel that non judgmental acceptance, and we just bask in the freedom from all confines of thinking.

Nisargadatta says ‘Being free of attachment to thought in the waking state is the deepest devotion.’ That’s an extremely exhalted state for almost all human beings. For a dog like Bruno, it his natural condition 24/7. Meister Eckhart saw every creature as the Word of God. Who teaches and exemplifies that for us better than our own loyal dogs, living in simplicity and delight, reveling enthusiastically in the senses as in eternity, while loving the one who feeds them? A spiritual master gives himself to whatever the moment brings. He doesn’t think about his actions, they just flow naturally from the core of his being. Who better exemplifies this than a dog bounding after a ball or rolled up sock?

Bruno is the best kid dog I’ve ever known. My boys have been with him for about 4 and a half years, and he’s done such a wonderful job of being their play mate with unfailing devotion and the deepest love. In the spiritual context, devoted means one with. When I see how completely relaxed and devoted Bruno is in being intimate with my children, I know he’s teaching them things about the oneness of all life, about loyalty,  and unconditional devotional acceptance in ways I know I’m still lacking.

I remember a very wise friend said once in a discussion about dogs and spirituality: It’s people who tell us that dogs aren’t enlightened.

The world of suffering and discrimination is filled with the light of the rising sun

–The Refuge Chant

In Zen, gratitude is an important devotional practice. We can find a context for gratitude–which can make our practice come alive–by contemplating one of our Zen ancestors, Dogen Zenji’s sayings from The Shobogenzo: “When one attains the Way, the Way is always left to the Way.”  When the Way is left to the Way, there is no need to add anything, seek anything or move away from anything that is happening. We are totally immersed in the Way, with the vitality of awareness. The Way is also called the great emptiness or the great fullness. The great fullness is so full that we cannot find anything separate from it. We cannot find any thing at all.

Brother David Steindl-Rast describes gratefulness as great fullness. We are grateful that the Great Spirit shares its great fullness of life with us.  When we learn to receive the depth of this fullness, we simultaneously realize we can’t find our separate ego.  The ego can be thought of as a cipher, huge as an ocean within us that sucks up almost all of  our energy.  What a relief to release some of that pent-up energy and offer it to the universal heart we all share.  As profound as our offering, so inexhaustible is the gratitude of our true self for our willingness offer our lives to it. With enormous fullness,  spirit receives our offerings.

When we realize this, in the depth of our being we feel that all of our experience is welcomed as expressions of the wholeness of life. Realizing we are always unconditionally welcomed, we learn to welcome life unconditionally.

Of course there are some events we cannot summon up gratitude for; but these are truly opportunities to open up as much as we can to the great fullness. Regardless of our limitations, the spirit is just as thankful for our best efforts. From the viewpoint of the Buddhas or spirit itself, their fullness includes our limitations. We only need to cultivate the ability to see our catastrophes as opportunities.

So we leave the Way to the Way. And we can be grateful that the Way leaves us to us.  The sun is an equal opportunity provider, rising each morning, shining on everything with its peaceful warmth, revealing everything just as it is. Likewise the light of the Way shines equally on all its creations, leaving us to us. As we learn to expose ourselves more and more to the gifts of this life, we gradually realize our oneness. We realize that in leaving us to us, the Way offers us everything. Everything is filled with the light of the rising sun.

As we offer our own deluded fears and desires to the Buddhas, to the Great Spirit, we express our willingness to let them go.  By letting go, we are saying we no longer reside in them. How easy it is to assume we have accomplished this as a result of many long hours and years of contemplative meditation and prayer.  While our devotions do aid us greatly in deepening the ability to let go– absorbing ourselves in the mystery–we often delude ourselves into thinking we have arrived. Or that we have come further than we have.

When I look at the way I grab onto my ideas of how things should be, how I indulge my complaining mind, I frequently remind myself of an old Confucian saying: “When you see admirable behavior, emulate it. When you see despicable behavior, look at yourself.”  When a person repels us, that person only symbolizes a part of ourselves we do not like. Then we can be grateful for the opportunity to discover this, even though we are learning something we do not necessarily want to learn.

To the Buddhas, our indulgence in selfish behavior is an expression of the universal activity, nothing more, nothing less. They love it no more nor less than our feverish early morning devotional observances.

To the extent we are able to leave the Way to the Way, our patterns of denial are pushed out into the open air, awaiting our discovery.  Then we can more deeply look at our patterns of stinginess– how we do not want to see that we withhold ourselves from what is. Yet here is an opportunity to look at how we still build protective walls around ourselves, engaging and maintaining them, separating ourselves from others.

Let our gratitude extend to the opportunities presented by others. Let us see how upset and frustrated we still become when someone offends us in a way that pushes our buttons of pain and fear. Let us see how taking offense is the same as giving offense. So we can cultivate a spirit of thank-you-very-much for providing this opportunity, painful as it may be.  And thank you very much, Spirit, for providing others with a chance to give us these opportunities.  Thank you very much, Spirit, for giving us a way to overcome our fears of exposure to the great unknown. Thank you, Spirit, for giving others the opportunity to receive the gift of our response.  May they learn also to heed Confucius’ advice, and in their anger or denial, look to themselves.

The world of suffering and discrimination is filled with the light of the rising sun

–The Refuge Chant

In Zen, gratitude is an important devotional practice. We can find a context for gratitude–which can make our practice come alive–by contemplating one of our Zen ancestors, Dogen Zenji’s sayings from The Shobogenzo: “When one attains the Way, the Way is always left to the Way.”  When the Way is left to the Way, there is no need to add anything, seek anything or move away from anything that is happening. We are totally immersed in the Way, with the vitality of awareness. The Way is also called the great emptiness or the great fullness. The great fullness is so full that we cannot find anything separate from it. We cannot find any thing at all.

Brother David Steindl-Rast describes gratefulness as great fullness. We are grateful that the Great Spirit shares its great fullness of life with us.  When we learn to receive the depth of this fullness, we simultaneously realize we can’t find our separate ego.  The ego can be thought of as a cipher, huge as an ocean within us that sucks up almost all of  our energy.  What a relief to release some of that pent-up energy and offer it to the universal heart we all share.  As profound as our offering, so inexhaustible is the gratitude of our true self for our willingness offer our lives to it. With enormous fullness,  spirit receives our offerings.

When we realize this, in the depth of our being we feel that all of our experience is welcomed as expressions of the wholeness of life. Realizing we are always unconditionally welcomed, we learn to welcome life unconditionally.

Of course there are some events we cannot summon up gratitude for; but these are truly opportunities to open up as much as we can to the great fullness. Regardless of our limitations, the spirit is just as thankful for our best efforts. From the viewpoint of the Buddhas or spirit itself, their fullness includes our limitations. We only need to cultivate the ability to see our catastrophes as opportunities.

So we leave the Way to the Way. And we can be grateful that the Way leaves us to us.  The sun is an equal opportunity provider, rising each morning, shining on everything with its peaceful warmth, revealing everything just as it is. Likewise the light of the Way shines equally on all its creations, leaving us to us. As we learn to expose ourselves more and more to the gifts of this life, we gradually realize our oneness. We realize that in leaving us to us, the Way offers us everything. Everything is filled with the light of the rising sun.

As we offer our own deluded fears and desires to the Buddhas, to the Great Spirit, we express our willingness to let them go.  By letting go, we are saying we no longer reside in them. How easy it is to assume we have accomplished this as a result of many long hours and years of contemplative meditation and prayer.  While our devotions do aid us greatly in deepening the ability to let go– absorbing ourselves in the mystery–we often delude ourselves into thinking we have arrived. Or that we have come further than we have.

When I look at the way I grab onto my ideas of how things should be, how I indulge my complaining mind, I frequently remind myself of an old Confucian saying: “When you see admirable behavior, emulate it. When you see despicable behavior, look at yourself.”  When a person repels us, that person only symbolizes a part of ourselves we do not like. Then we can be grateful for the opportunity to discover this, even though we are learning something we do not necessarily want to learn.

To the Buddhas, our indulgence in selfish behavior is an expression of the universal activity, nothing more, nothing less. They love it no more nor less than our feverish early morning devotional observances.

To the extent we are able to leave the Way to the Way, our patterns of denial are pushed out into the open air, awaiting our discovery.  Then we can more deeply look at our patterns of stinginess– how we do not want to see that we withhold ourselves from what is. Yet here is an opportunity to look at how we still build protective walls around ourselves, engaging and maintaining them, separating ourselves from others.

Let our gratitude extend to the opportunities presented by others. Let us see how upset and frustrated we still become when someone offends us in a way that pushes our buttons of pain and fear. Let us see how taking offense is the same as giving offense. So we can cultivate a spirit of thank-you-very-much for providing this opportunity, painful as it may be.  And thank you very much, Spirit, for providing others with a chance to give us these opportunities.  Thank you very much, Spirit, for giving us a way to overcome our fears of exposure to the great unknown. Thank you, Spirit, for giving others the opportunity to receive the gift of our response.  May they learn also to heed Confucius’ advice, and in their anger or denial, look to themselves.

If one engages in meditation with a serious purpose of earnestness and devotion to the task of self realization, one will gradually begin to feel the pull of a tremendous force greater than our idea of being a separate body/mind.  There are many different variations of meditative practices to help us cultivate the necessary spirit of inquiry, but it is the intensity of earnestness and longing that really does all the work. What is important for us is the moment at which we will enter this tremendous force or current that is the movement of our true being, the going forth, in other words, the great pilgrimage.

When we’ve found certain practices that support our continued meditation, it’s important to spend regular hours every day if possible building the momentum of the practice.  In this way, try to bind yourself to the quest for God, for the source of all of our experience.  Wherever you may be, take refuge in your very being , let the Being we all share be your goal.  When by virtue of this endeavor you become deeply immersed in that current and devote ever more time to it, you will be transformed and your appetite for sense enjoyment will grow feeble; this is how to reap the fruit of accumulated efforts. In this context, current refers to the flow of the life force, the flow of our sensory experience throughout our body/mind.

The flow of the current includes thought, thought energy is just one manifestation of the current. It can be likened to bubbles floating on top of and popping on the surface of the current of a river.  But the current of the flow of our river of experience isn’t dependent on, or controlled by the thought bubbles, anymore than the bubbles on the surface direct or control  a river.

It is usually only after many long years of dedicated, earnest meditation, that there may also come a time  when you feel that the body is liable to depart at any time, that death may arrive at any moment. Many  students have fleeting experiences of this through extreme traumas, near death experiences, or psychedelic drugs. These are an intensification of the current, and they can be helpful for inspiration. For earnest aspirants on the path, there comes a time when they are no longer sought after.

Seeking extraordinary experiences is then realized to be an ego based obstacle to continual abidance in the current which is free from the self centered desire for transcendent experience. We gradually learn to leave the intensification and relaxation of the current to the flow itself, and more and more the impulse to control and possess the current of the life force within and without, falls away.

At this stage, one begins to feel an ever increasing pull from the current of the life force away from the confines of our personal body/mind, while still maintaining our connection with it, and maintaining the freedom to function as a human being. We then continue to surrender our self conscious efforts steadily without flagging, and yield to the infinite power drawing us more intimately into the actual feel of our true nature.  Gradually we are more and more deeply absorbed in feel of the flow – infinite consciousness alone will preoccupy our thoughts and feelings.  For the mind ever seeks that which gives it proper sustenance, and this cannot be provided by anything save the Supreme Being.  Then we will be carried away by the current that leads to our Self.

When we allow ourselves to deeply ask the question “What or who am I?” we are allowing ourselves to become what Zen master Hakuin called The Great Doubt: “At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.”

The Zen masters teach us that the fully awakened mind is always already fully present in its entirety, with nothing lacking. When I first started practicing Zen, this statement became the object of my own great doubt. My questioning brought me face to face again and again with the reality that my thinking mind did not, could not, fully believe this statement. Gradually it became clear that there was no way to do away with the doubt. Great doubt is one expression of what we are. It became clear to me that to deeply ask the question of “Who am I?” was to allow myself to become the doubt itself.

Eventually I realized I had thought all along that I was doubting Buddha nature, doubting enlightenment itself. But when I finally left my awareness to itself, including all my ideas about it, I realized what is actually here and now cannot be doubted. All this time, I had been doubting the truth of my ideas of reality. There is no truth to be found in the concept of enlightenment or Buddha Nature. So it is imperative to doubt the truth of our concepts about enlightenment, and at the same time to be aware what we are doubting.

Reality is not an it that can be doubted or affirmed. Reality cannot be grasped by making it into an object of thought. But we have to try. Indeed, our spirit of inquiry is deepened by our trying. It is deepened by our wanting to know. This is our role: not to know what reality is. Here and now is the source. Here and now is one hundred percent identical with every possible manifestation in the universe. If you doubt this idea deeply, you will awaken deeply.

Saint Augustine said start with general doubt, and doubt absolutely everything you can. You will find that you can doubt the reliability of logic (it might be wrong), you can even doubt the reliability of sense impressions (they might be a hallucination).  But even in the most intense doubt we are aware of the doubt itself; in our immediate awareness there is certainty, even if it is only a certainty that we are doubting – and we can never shake that certainty. Immediate awareness is always what is manifesting the concept of doubt.  Any truth in the exterior world can be doubted, but always there is the certainty of interior immediateness or basic Wakefulness; and God, said Augustine, lies in and through that basic Wakefulness, whose certainty is never, and can never be, actually doubted.

If you doubt these ideas of Augustine’s deeply, the certainty of the presence of immediate awareness, the certainty of the presence of God, can be deeply awakened to.