April 24, 2002 Wednesday Evening with Aaron
Heavy Emotions: the Balloon, the Porcupine, and the Armadillo
Aaron: Good evening. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. My dear ones I hope this spring day has made your heart sing, as it has mine. You may wonder at that because I don’t have a physical body, and yet I do experience energy. The energy of this new life bursting forth from the earth is so full of love and hope and courage. It does make me smile.
It takes enormous courage to move into incarnation. It takes a willingness to come back and do again and yet again the work that has proved hardest in the past. It is different work for each of you but always that one step beyond where you have been before, coming forth with a willingness to let go of old limits and emerge into the fullest expression of your fearlessness and radiant beauty. I honor each of you for your willingness to be here in this body, doing your work with so much love. I say that regardless of whether you feel you are succeeding or not, for from my vantage point you are all succeeding. That is, you are all learning what you came to learn, even if sometimes it feels as if you are not.
This morning Barbara and I began to review several hours of conversation from last week with the visiting monks and nun. They are all very steeped in the Theravada Buddhist tradition and in the current presentation of that tradition. We talked at length about these pure awareness teachings and how they fit into that tradition.
One of the Ajahns commented that the Buddha did not teach pure awareness. While he did not find it contradictory to anything the Buddha taught, he felt some kind of conflict because it was not the specific path the Buddha presented and in which he had been trained. I noted that the Buddha was teaching in Hindu India of 2500 years ago. The predominant Hindu spiritual practices were a devotional practice invoking the various Hindu gods, putting faith in those gods to save them and also a high concentration practice, jhana practice, moving into very powerful altered states of being in which there was profound bliss and peace.
The Buddha, in his wisdom, noted that while there was bliss and peace while resting in those states, when one came back into one’s everyday mind and body, the bliss and peace were not retained. Defilements or heavy emotions still arose, not while one was resting in those states that are secluded from such emotion, but afterward. So one was not karmically free of this whole cycle of becoming, of rebirth.
The Buddha’s work 2500 years ago was to invite people to come more into their everyday experience as spiritual practice. His teaching of vipassana was a way of inviting people to come into the mind, to come into the body and note the arising and playing out of the conditioned realm. His statement was that freedom does not lie in escaping from this mind and body experience but in being present with it until the wisdom develops to note its conditioned nature and to deeply understand the interdependence of all things, to know that nothing is separate. Only then can one move deeply into the original state. Here, while present with the mind and the body, one notes true nature so clearly one is no longer contracting around mind and body experience and begins to realize the ground out of which all this conditioned realm explodes, and into which it sinks again. The trick is not to choose one over the other but to understand that you must experience both.
The reason I offer these pure awareness teachings and practices side by side with vipassana is that for the most part in your culture, you do not have a background that introduces this true nature. Your culture is very much involved in control. Many of you are not so much in your bodies but the mind is constantly spinning, trying to control the different conditioned experiences that come your way.
For balance’s sake then, it’s much easier if you find this spaciousness and begin to understand that it’s always there. So I told these respected monks that I did not feel that this practice was contradictory in any way, but complementary.
My question to you tonight: where are you, each of you, in this balance? Some of you may have a preference for moving out of your body into blissful experiences, and may have learned certain techniques that allow that. Fine; enjoy it. But know also that it is not freedom, but just a nice vacation. Some of you may be very focused in this more traditional path of practice, being present with all of the arisings of the mind and body. If there is any distortion to the practice, you may feel overwhelmed by the constant process of arising and ceasing of conditioned objects, distortion because you have not been taught to see the space between objects and to rest in that space. . There’s no space, there’s no joy, there’s no light or peace in your practice. If so, the balance needs to extend out to more spaciousness. Then the pure awareness practices become very supportive, bringing balance.
I would ask you to look deeply at whatever spiritual practices you pursue ands note if the spaciousness of which I speak is present along with the conditioned world. There’s an exercise we do here sometimes, a very simple exercise. I invite you to do it with me here a moment. Hold your hand up 8 or 10 inches in front of your face, eyes open. Stare at the fingers and wiggle the fingers. Move the hand gently, fingers in motion. Focus on the fingers, only on the fingers. If the head needs to turn up and down as the fingers move, do that. Keep focused on the fingers. You can’t see anything beyond that, just the fingers.
When I tell you to do so, I want you to keep the fingers moving but I want you to shift your gaze and look through the fingers. Do it now.
See how you can take in both? The fingers don’t disappear, they’re still moving but the background is there, the space in which the fingers move. Both are present. What would it mean if we asked which is real? Both are real. The space is real and the objects that move into and out of that space are real. When you fold your fingers on your lap, the space does not cease to exist. When you raise the fingers and move them again, the space does not cease to exist. The space remains. Fingers come and go. Right hand, left hand, right hand again. You can draw your attention back to the fingers and lose the space temporarily, but it doesn’t cease to exist.
In a similar vein, think of a boat sailing on the ocean. You sit on shore and watch this large ship pass. It’s an interesting ship and it catches your attention. You may be focused on the ship in such a way that you cease to notice the ocean, but the ocean doesn’t go anywhere. The ship goes across the ocean and then passes away out of your view. The ship may go into port. Maybe it’s an old ship and they dismantle it, cut it with a blowtorch into little pieces. So the ship can cease to exist. The ocean remains. Maybe a different ship comes out, this time, a wooden schooner. The objects appear, the ocean remains. Even if you are riveted in attention on the ship, the ocean remains.
This is the balance required in meditation practice, whether you are working with vipassana or some other form of meditation. There must be awareness of arising of conditioned objects of mind and body and how you relate to those objects. This is necessary if wisdom about the phenomenal world is going to develop. Furthermore there must be a very specific kind of attitude toward what arises, one of presence, but not one of control, only kind, spacious awareness. It is only out of that kind presence that compassion deepens so that the heart is able to hold any object, lovely or difficult, and give it space. The space in your heart is not different than the space of the sea or the space beyond the fingers because your heart is infinite. Your heart is part of this Divine or Unconditioned.
When it is no longer your heart but THE heart, you rest in that spaciousness. But you cannot escape into that spaciousness and avoid your relationship with the conditioned realm. If it’s an ugly old garbage scow and it heads toward the beach right where you are, you’ve got to be aware. It stinks, it’s unpleasant. If it’s a little rubber dinghy with 2 children in it and they scream for help, awareness and kindness go out into the water and help them. Nobody is saving somebody, just kindness flowing.
So there is activity and attendance in this awareness. Watching whatever arises, aware of the conditioned object and that space. We do many different exercises to help you understand the nature of the space. Some of you have done a formal pure awareness or dzogchen meditation. Some of you have worked with the sound of that space, the sound of silence, nada. Some of you have worked with the radiance of it. Some of you have worked with a simple awareness practice such as noting, “That which is aware of anger is not angry. That which is aware of greed is not experiencing the greed, just watching it”. You are not disassociated from it or you could not attend to it skillfully. Just watching it. Present!
With metta and awareness, nothing is labeled as good or bad, right or wrong. Some acts or words may be unskillful; you attend to them. But there’s no self to be bad and nothing bad coming from the self. This is the heart of your practice. Because you are all so deeply conditioned to these old mind states and the dualistic idea, “This is bad. I must take a stick and beat it until it leaves,” equanimity has not developed. The self stays firm. Here we witness the ancient controlling aspect of the mind, which has created an imbalanced practice for you and denies spaciousness. When you can rest in the space, seeing old conditioned beliefs and attitudes, and holdings of the body arise, that presence so deeply helps you to relax with what has arisen, even if it’s very unpleasant, so you do not get caught in a war with it. And it is only in this state of non-war that there can be the resolution of karma.
Some of what you work with is very difficult for you. I said earlier that you each come to the edge of your prior experience and ask yourself to let go and step into the unknown, and that that takes courage.
In your culture, work with heavy emotions is one of the predominant parts of your practice. Of course, working with difficult body sensations is also a strong focus for some of you, but I think emotions in your culture offer an even stronger focus. So many of you were raised with the belief that you should not have certain kinds of emotions, that you were bad to have those emotions. You have devised elaborate systems to avoid, deny or suppress such emotions. There is a lot of fear for many of you in your relationship with others. For some, fear that you will not be loved, heard, or understood, for others, a fear that you will poison others by your own anger or other negativity.
In the realm of heavy emotions, you seldom rest in a spacious place watching the emotion arise, but rather, when it arises, greet it like a garbage scow. You jump aboard ready to burn the garbage or to cover it up with huge tarpaulins. Hide it out of sight. Sink the scow!
How can we bring these heavy emotions more into our practices, and with kindness? This week I talked to a few of you using a metaphor, or illustration, of the balloon, the porcupine and the armadillo. You all know the rock, paper, scissors game. The scissors will cut the paper. The rock will break the scissors. But the paper will cover the rock. It’s the same with balloon, porcupine and armadillo. The porcupine has sharp prickle. When something threatens, his spines raise up leaving a sharp defensive surface. He warns in that way, don’t come too close.
At first glance the balloon may seem to be defenseless. Think about this carefully. If the porcupine has no qualms about harming another then the balloon is defenseless. That is true. If the porcupine does have a deep intention to non-harm but also a deep intention not to be hurt itself, and its conditioning still raises its quills, what happens? If we have 2 porcupines who confront each other in an angry way, if one raises its quills and the other sheds its quills, dropping them off so all that’s left is a surface like a balloon, soft and tender, what will happen?. As long as the other’s quills are up, the first one can stand on its own ground, making a show of its strength. But when the other one sheds its quills and is soft, if our porcupine with its erect quills approaches he sees, “I’m going to puncture him. I’ll damage him.” If he’s angry enough and does approach and harms the other, then he may feel shame. So in a sense the one who has gone soft and lets go of his quills has power. Can you see how that works?
This is part of the power of non-violent action, although I’m not going to explore that theme tonight. The dropping of one’s quills can be done in a deeply loving way, accepting that one takes responsibility for dropping those quills and forgives the other before any damage is done, for the possible damage. It says, “I see your sharpness. I understand that in letting go of my sharpness, I am in some ways permitting the possibility of your damaging me. Because of the force of your thrust, I recognize that may happen, and I forgive you.”
When done in this way, as what Gandhi called satyagraha, or soul force, it is a loving power. But it can be done in a much more manipulative way, breeding unwholesome karma, a way that says, “As soon as I see your prickles, I become helpless, knowing that your impetus is going to roll you into me. You’ll hurt me and then you’ll feel such disgrace, such shame, and then I have the power. And all I have to do is be willing to suffer some pricks from your quills, to bleed a bit. But I’ll have the power.”
So we have the porcupine and the balloon or quill-less porcupine. What about the armadillo? These fellows, they can curl up in a ball, completely covering any sensitive, soft area. They look almost like you can roll them when they’re curled up, just a hard spiny exterior. No quills. They can’t damage anything. They can’t be damaged. They cut themselves off entirely.
Let’s imagine here an imaginary creature, a porcupine who had the ability to lay his quills down smooth and flat and make an armored coating like an armadillo. If you imagine that creature, then consider these 3 different sorts of porcupines: one with quills that pop out when he feels endangered, one who can lower his quills and become an armored hulk, and the one who can drop off his quills, and if done in a self-centered way, become powerful through appearing to be vulnerable.
Each of you has certain patterns that you follow when you feel threatened. You become one of these porcupines. Yet rarely do you stick just to one pattern. Most of you go through all 3 at one time or another, although one will be predominant. Different situations will lead you to withdraw, to armor yourself, and separate yourself, to arm yourself, ready to fight with sharp points, or to move into an appearance of helplessness, thus putting the other person in a place of full responsibility instead of acknowledging your shared responsibility.
When there are strong heavy emotions, and especially anger, and you move through these 3 different patterns, look in yourself and see how you usually respond when anger is present. I ask you to look not with the idea “I must fix this” but simply become aware of this and aware there’s a choice. Whatever patterns you habitually follow, if you’re locked into old habit, you’re not free. Fear is impelling the habit rather than lovingkindness.
How does this connect to the earlier part of my talk tonight, to spaciousness? When you lock yourself into an identity with any of these habitual faces of the porcupine, you’re stuck. Looking back you may feel remorse. But right then, you’re stuck.
Dare I repeat myself once more? That which is aware of presenting itself as a porcupine with quills does not need to engage those quills? That which is aware of its tendency to roll itself up out of harm’s way and disappear is able to stay present. That which is aware of its habitual tendency to control through a guise of helplessness need not manifest that aspect of itself when it sees that it is unskillful and unwholesome. This spacious awareness is what gives you the ability to be present even with the most difficult emotions without getting caught in them. It is not something that comes easily or quickly. One must be very persistent in one’s practice. See how easy it is to get lost in the emotion, with the force of old habit. From a ground of practice come back to the breath, bringing awareness to the anger and knowing that which is not self-centered and identified in the anger. I’m using anger as an example but it can be any heavy emotion.
The heavy emotion is an object like the fingers. Awareness is the space. When your practice develops in this way, slowly the identity with the movements of body and mind falls away, and the ability to respond appropriately emerges. This ability is the fruit of your deepening wisdom about the nature of conditioned arising and about the nature of what I would call true self, this innate goodness, kindness and radiance that is your true being. You do not hide in that goodness in denial of the arisings of negativity, nor are you prompted to grab a club and beat the negativity into submission. And here at last is, I wouldn’t call it balanced practice but balanced living, balanced relationship. From this place of equanimity, deeper insights can emerge; a deeper peace can build.
I thank you for allowing me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you. That is all.
(Reviewed to here)
Barbara: So Aaron says, how many quilled porcupines, how many spineless porcupines and how many armadillos are here tonight?? Rock, paper scissors. He is asking for your questions.
Q: If we balance the pure awareness practice with the vipassana practice, is it 50/50?
Barbara: I’m paraphrasing Aaron, he says vipassana is predominant. The pure awareness practice is part of vipassana practice. He’s saying in vipassana practice we know whatever is present. The space is an object. Look at the fingers. Look at the space. It’s just we’re choosing one object over the other. We’re choosing this and neglecting that. So he’s saying don’t make it a separate practice. Just know that the space is just an object. When there’s no sound but the sound of silence, be with that sound, with nada. When there’s a breath, breathing in and breathing out and then that space, be in that space. This is vipassana. Vipassana is to be with whatever is predominant. Simply to recognize that the non-object, that we don’t see just because it’s everywhere, is also there. And realize the significance of that. And that this, he says at first it’s a conditioned space, we see it just as this much. And then we see it as infinite.
He’s saying it’s like looking through a doorway: at first you only see what the doorway frames. But then if you step a little closer it opens out. It opens out and opens out. Don’t say it’s just this. But it’s not different than vipassana practice, it’s just becoming aware of the spaciousness as object within vipassana practice.
Q: I was thought he was referring to dzogchen practice.
Aaron: I am Aaron. Dzogchen, the tool of dzogchen practice, is one of the ways you come into recognize the spaciousness. You can’t bring it into your practice until you recognize that it exists. Dzogchen focuses your attention on that spaciousness. It helps you to know this pure awareness mind which is capable of recognizing the spaciousness. But then it falls away as a separate practice. The discursive mind is there. Hearing a bird, itching a mosquito bite, and so forth, and the pure awareness mind is there.
The discursive mind is also an object of investigation, that which perceives. That which experiences sensation and thought. And the pure awareness mind is the spaciousness.
There’s an interesting progression. First, space as an object, but as you see the infinitude of that space, it becomes a non-object. Unless there has been direct experience of the Unconditioned, you still don’t know that space as the ground; it’s still an object, it’s just space. But as I just noted, standing in the doorway you start to see how far out it goes. And then you stop making limits. Then it becomes a non-object or objectlessness, just presence. Do you understand? I pause.
Q: Not quite.
Barbara: He says, what confuses you about it?
Q: It reminds me of an art class in which we are asked to draw not the object but the space around the object.
Barbara: He says but in that case the space is still an object. But then you start to see, this space and that space, how are they different? This space and that space are separate figures and yet they flow together. I can’t really color this one blue and that one yellow, they’re the same thing. Where is it going?
Q: It’s as if that fell off the page.
Barbara: Does that help? (Yes.)
Q: The distinction of discursive mind and pure awareness mind is sort of new for me to think about. Two minds.
Barbara: The discursive mind is the brain tool, the senses, the eyes touching object. It’s part of the whole conditioned realm. The pure awareness mind is a container in which the discursive mind functions, just like the vast space and then there’s this line of a tree branch or a finger. The space exists and the object exists. The discursive mind exists. And this whole infinite ground of pure awareness exists.
One is just like the fingers and the background exists; the discursive mind is thinking, “Oh, I like that, I don’t like this,” and pure awareness is there. For most of us it’s the experience of the ship on the sea where we get so involved in the ship we don’t notice the sea. But the sea hasn’t gone anywhere. The pure awareness mind is there. But the discursive mind in its busyness captures our attention so we fail to notice the pure awareness mind. And we also can get lost in the pure awareness mind and lose the discursive mind, lose the body, experience great bliss, floating out there, but we can’t really function on earth as we’re doing that.
Q: When Buddha or Aaron asks us who is observing, who is doing that, is that the… I think that takes us to the…
Barbara: …when you ask that question…
Q: … that leads us to both minds.
Barbara: Because it shatters the self-identity. The who makes us aware that we’re working this discursive mind and caught up in it with self-identity and it shatters that identity and takes us back into poof, no body.
Q: I just wanted to ask, I just finished a book called The Holographic Universe. I forget the name of the writer. He talks a lot about the hologram and how you see the world through that particular theory. It’s an amazing book, by the way. But I just wondered, what exactly is a hologram? Is it everything now, co-existing at this moment? Is that what it is?
Aaron: I am Aaron. I have not read the book. I have no idea what the author intended by that term. My interpretation based simply on my understanding of the English language is that this is a vision of the universe which brings into balance the personal and the selfless, the conditioned and the Unconditioned, relative and ultimate. Not choosing either above the other.
The image that would come to my mind would be one of an infinite universe with planets, other solar objects, spinning up until they fill the screen and then spinning away again until they’re a mere speck in the distance and disappear. Other objects coming forth, everything coming forth and then fading away, and the space in which it all exists. I pause.
Barbara: I’m paraphrasing him. He says, and in this situation as the Earth comes forth, then suddenly for a moment in the middle of your screen is you! (Standing there running.) Filling the whole screen. And then just as rapidly it spins away. You dissolve into a tiny speck, then the Earth dissolves into a tiny speck, and it’s gone off over the horizon and something else comes forth. All these conditioned objects, immense and tiny, resting in the infinite spaciousness of being.
He’s saying so he has no idea if that’s what the author intended but he would interpret that term.
Q: Is our pure awareness mind the part of us that’s eternal or divine or one with all?
Aaron: I am Aaron. Yes and no. I’m reminded of the image of snowmen, children building snowmen or snow people: dogs, men, women, cows, forts. From the children’s perspective each is unique. No one would mistake a fort for a dog, for a snowman. But from the snow’s perspective it’s all just snow.
I’m not comfortable with the terminology “everything is one.” Even from the pure awareness perspective, fire is not ice and ice is not fire. A loud noise and a singing bird, a car backfire and a singing bird, are distinct sounds. They are unified in that they arise out of conditions and fall away when the conditions cease, and that each of them is interdependent upon other objects for their being.
But if you’re going to tell me that your delicious cooking, D, and the dogshit in the back yard are one, pardon me but I will not come to your house to eat! I pause.
Q: I’m not sure you heard the question.
Q: I was asking about pure awareness mind. Is it the part of us that is divine or is eternal or unified among everyone?
Aaron: I am Aaron. Again, yes and no. There are 2 aspects to this: the pure awareness mind itself and the objects which it holds. All I have responded to, perhaps mistakenly, was the objects of pure awareness. On the one level, shit and delicious food are one and the same, just organic objects arisen out of conditions, and passing away. Impermanent and not self. And yet, on another level, even resting in pure awareness there is a distinction. This is the nature of conditioned objects.
To answer your further question, one needs to understand the nature of pure awareness, and to ask the question, is pure awareness conditioned or is it an expression of the Unconditioned? What does it mean when we say, “expression of the Unconditioned”?
Conditioned objects such as the dog feces in the yard take as their conditions for existence other conditioned objects. Thus they are the conditioned expression of other conditioned objects. Sankhara, that which arises out of conditions and is in itself the condition for future arising.
Pure awareness and other what we call signs of the Unconditioned, such as the sound of silence, nada, are also conditioned expressions but they do not depend on any conditioned object for their arising, but only on the Unconditioned. Since the Unconditioned is infinite, unborn, undying, unlimited, those objects which arise taking only the Unconditioned as conditioned share with the Unconditioned those aspects, infinite, unborn, undying, unlimited. They are not the Unconditioned, they are expressions of the Unconditioned. The Pali word is namitta. Signs of the Unconditioned. Yet they still share a distinctness, they still share a quality of being distinct. Nada is nada. Grand luminosity is grand luminosity. Pure awareness is both an object and a kind of consciousness. As a consciousness it has a thingness to it and needs and object. So, pure awareness is aware of suffering but when we speak of resting in pure awareness its subtly different. I’m sorry to be so complex here but I want to give a very clear answer.
It’s the difference between being awareness and doing awareness. There are not 2 different words in English and we need 2 different words. I’m not going to bother to give you the Pali words but being awareness, when you are there then yes you are resting in this place of total non-separation. When you’re there and I’m there we’re in the same place. But if you are doing pure awareness practice, then there’s a somebody involved and your own particular tilt, bias, to your pure awareness practice, which is subtly different than mine. In other words, the human conditioned expression is subtly shading or altering the pure awareness. Then it’s not the same thing.
Q, perhaps such detail is not useful to you but several others of the group are raising the question and that’s why I am going into it in such detail. What I want to offer you here, D, is a question. Resting in pure awareness, mind open and spacious, no doing happening at all. What happens at that point if you become aware of raindrops on your face? Just resting in the spaciousness, getting wet. No ripple of disturbance around getting wet. And then there’s a cold chill. Still resting in awareness, the decision to get up and close the window.
The whole thing is done from this place of pure awareness. I’ll close my window on my side of the room; you close yours on your side of the room. Neither of us left this spaciousness of pure awareness. We’re in the same place. We’ll come back and sit, but each of us has been subtly shaken out of our practice. Just a little bit chilled, wiping off the water.
You sit down and think, “Now I’m going to do dzogchen again.” Can you see the subtle shift? For that moment you’ve come back to the discursive mind. Then you begin to do this pure awareness practice. You are not resting in pure awareness, you are doing a practice.
It’s a bit like turning on a light with a dimmer switch. Because we have a human, even resting deeply in pure awareness, there is always a hint of humanness, the light is never fully on. Doing pure awareness practice, the light is very dim. As you begin to simply rest in that space of pure awareness, the discursive mind settles down. The clarity of pure awareness opens. And then we come to that point where we’re in the same space. I pause.
Barbara: He says, so you can’t say it’s this or it’s that, it’s just this spectrum. He says, a good example here would be, on a day when there’s a cool breeze and a hot sun. You sit in the hot sun, “Ah..” and the cool breeze comes. He says the hot sun hasn’t gone anywhere but suddenly there’s this cool breeze. And then you relax and open into the hot sun again. Kind of opening and closing. Okay?
Q: It sounds like consciousness is correlative with… you can’t say you’re conscious unless you’re aware of an object. I remember one experiment you performed a number of years ago. You were telling a story and suddenly you clapped your hands abruptly and loudly. What I experienced was myself hearing the noise and not jumping, but then a couple of milliseconds later I jumped. So I was aware of your clapping and my reaction and I was also aware of myself then reacting with a jolt to your action. And what it taught me was that there’s something aware that I’m not conscious of. Something inside of me aware of what’s going on that I’m not conscious of at all. Is that pure awareness?
Barbara: Yes, awareness and consciousness are 2 totally different things. In the Buddhist teachings there’s a whole section called Abhidhamma which is a very specific study of the nature of consciousness and experience, very precise. The word citta translates to consciousness. There are 89 categories of citta: the mind consciousnesses, body consciousnesses. When there’s contact, for example the eye touching an object, then seeing consciousness arises. A whole group of these 89 consciousnesses are mundane consciousnesses. They’re based on the experiences of mind and body. They’re further categorized by, I think of it like an adjective, that which modifies the consciousness. So seeing with spaciousness, seeing with tension, seeing with anger, seeing with grasping. Different textures of seeing. The technical word for this modifier is cetasika.
So we have the objects. You’ve heard the terms I think nama and rupa. Rupa is materiality, nama is mind. These are things. The eye is a thing. The cushion here is a thing. They don’t have objects, they’re just things. The eye touches the cushion and results in the consciousness hearing (seeing?). When contact occurs, eye touches object, seeing arises. This mind consciousness, nama, of seeing arises with the contact, simultaneously with the contact. Without the contact, there can’t be seeing. If the eye touches the object and the seeing consciousness does not arise, there’s still no seeing, there’s just the eye touching the object and nothing’s happening.
So there is this whole category of mundane consciousnesses based on mundane experience of one of the sense organs touching an object or the discursive mind touching a memory or planning, touching something.
Then there are those consciousnesses which arise beyond the mundane realm. One of them are called jhanna citta. These are the consciousnesses we have of extreme bliss, rapture, peacefulness, the body dissolving. They are still consciousnesses though. They’re not pure awareness. They still need an object and it’s still a conditioned object even if it’s an object like bliss. So we’re still in a realm of conditioned objects whether it’s mundane citta or jhanna citta. Then there’s a third category of citta called the lokuttara citta. These are the citta which are capable of seeing in the Unconditioned. There are far fewer of these.
This is where the shift comes from consciousness to pure awareness. Consciousness is not capable of taking a supramundane object as its object. Only pure awareness is capable of taking a supramundane object as its object. One of the things that happens for us in meditation is after however long of watching the whole flow of conditioned objects arising and dissolving within the mundane realm, whether it’s mundane or jhanna, it’s still conditioned objects dependent on other conditioned objects for their existence. After awhile we start to see the space. At first the space, as Aaron just described it, is conditioned, it’s just that space. But as long as you’re looking only at this, it’s limited. When you look at this at first it still seems limited because you’re only seeing that much of it. But then you start to look out. Then there’s that shift from conditioned perception, consciousness, into this supramundane awareness.
Consciousness can only see that. Awareness sees this. Within the meditation practice that shift will happen. This is part of the reason for bringing up this, not just this but this to our attention, with the different kinds of pure awareness practice, because it helps us to see the difference between mundane consciousness and pure awareness. Then we start to see that the mundane consciousness can exist and the vast space noted by the pure awareness also exists. Does that answer your question?
Q: I have not come often here but when I have come I have moved through some very, very painful experiences. I’m very grateful for what has been given to me when I do come. My husband has passed away.
Barbara: He died in an accident, didn’t he? (Yes.) I remember that.
Q: My life with him was not really that normal. We were a very different type of couple. I don’t understand that when I was so uncomfortable with him when he was living, why am I so uncomfortable without him? I sometimes have the emotion that nothing is satisfying or meaningful. We had our children together and since his accident I still am unable to be reunited with them. No matter how hard I try, it seems like a terrible, impossible, meaningless and rather cattish and evil experience. I don’t understand.
Aaron: I am Aaron. I hear your pain, my sister. All of you are living out your karma. You and your husband were drawn together by that karma, not in a negative way but with the intention to resolve certain personal and shared karma. To grow and help each other to grow.
At times the work was very difficult but there was commitment to it. As an aside, we cannot say why he left when he did, only that in some way it <> probably to both of you that the work was not going as well as you had hoped it would. We talked about this once before and about the whole karmic situation of the accident. This gift to the others involved in the accident. What strikes me here, though, is that because he died so suddenly there was no chance to resolve anything. Soon after the accident you came to me with the statement that you felt there was so much left unfinished and you didn’t know how to resolve that pain and anger and confusion.
My conjecture here is that you have not allowed yourself to know the extent of your anger. Your anger is not bad. It’s easy to say, “How can I be angry at him? It’s not his fault he had this accident.” And then mind jumps to, “Why wasn’t he more careful?” Then the shame, “I shouldn’t be accusing him,” and this is just a repetition of what you did in your lives together.
So now, my friend, can there be a spaciousness which acknowledges pain, anger, confusion, grief, a sense of unfairness, without having to make any of those feelings right or wrong, they’re just feelings. It doesn’t matter whether they’re “appropriate” or “inappropriate.” Everything is appropriate; it just arises. Nothing is good or bad here.
You cannot let go of him for the same reason you could not with full accord live with him, because there is so much judgment against the feelings that come up. It is not your relationship with him that needs to be resolved so much as your relationship to yourself and the unceasing judgment of the self of what you should or should not feel. There is such a deep intention to do no harm and such a deep guilt when negative thoughts arise. And until you forgive yourself and then, going beyond forgiveness, come to that place that recognizes there’s really nothing to forgive, to that deep place of compassion. Until you do that and resolve your relationship with yourself, you mind, your body, your feelings, you cannot resolve your relationship with him and so he figuratively haunts you; you can’t let go.
So I think you’re spinning in circles here. I also think you came here tonight because you’re ready to stop spinning in circles. I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t already know, I’m just reassuring you that your own intuitive sense of what you need to do is correct: to begin this process of healing by opening without such judgment to all of your own feelings, grief, anger and so forth, and trusting that you have the spaciousness to hold them until they resolve. This is what you came to practice with your husband.
Perhaps one great gift he gives you is the need to continue the practice without him, and in some ways it may be easier to practice it without him because there is not a constant catalyst of your sometimes abrasion of each other, or an ongoing sense of guilt that you can’t do it better. But the same situation exists: how do you open your heart to yourself and stop condemning yourself? How can there be more kindness for this human, acknowledgment of the various experiences without judgment of them, but a sense of spaciousness. I pause.
Q: I think I have the feeling that I miss him and I don’t like interacting with anybody else. I feel angry when people around me keep insisting that I find other people to interact with.
Barbara: Aaron is saying, you miss him and interacting with him because on such a deep level there was trust that you could interact and bump into each other and know both that the other was strong enough to take that bump and that the other would not hold that against you. So there was the constant bumping into each other but there was also a deep sense of trust. He says, but you can learn to develop that trust in others through developing the trust in yourself. He says, start right here with your statement, “I’m angry.” Let Aaron speak.
Aaron: I am Aaron. The statement, “I’m angry”-good! Go with it. What is the experience of anger? Can there be anger and simultaneously compassion for the human that is angry? If judgment arises at the angry thought, and if the clear-seeing of the nature of that judgment as the fruit of old conditioning, going beyond judgment to compassion, how does anger feel in your body? Where does it settle? I think in your throat more than any place else. Don’t be afraid of the anger. Don’t be ashamed of it. Use it as part of your spiritual practice. Right there with anger is that which is not angry and it is begging you to discover it. But you cannot go to that which is not angry and deny the anger. It’s just what we’ve been talking about tonight: the conditioned experience of anger and the <sounds like “unmet”> spaciousness of that which is not angry. Can you find the place where they come into balance here? I pause.
Barbara: There are some people here tonight from out of town who have not asked questions. I’d like to invite them to ask, if they have questions.
Q: I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about nada and how to recognize it.
Aaron: I am Aaron. What we call nada is simply the sound of silence. It’s the sound between the sounds. I’m going to ask Barbara to clap her hands twice. Listen to the first clap and then observe that there’s a space before the second clap.
(Clap)
(Clap)
Just that minute space. Another example of this. Listen to the bell and as the bell fades away, stay with it before any other sound in the room such as coughing or rustling of clothes arises. At the time when the bell fades away, this non-sound has its own sound.
(Bell)
Some call it the great…
(At this point something happens to the recording and there is only a very loud high pitched tone for a portion of the tape. Then taping resumes.)
Aaron: I am Aaron. Very <thin> light. I don’t mean imagine light but know the light that surrounds you and breathe it in. But if you do not directly experience that light it’s fine to imagine it. Feel it coming in through the crown chakra, moving into your body, feeling (it). Exhale. Breathe in again, drawing in more light. Feel as though you are sitting in a cylinder of light.
Sit up straight, spine erect so that the chakras are more open. Breathing in and light coming in all the way down to the base chakra. Into each of the chakras in turn. Breathe it into the heart and into the throat. Breathe it into the belly. Not your light or my light, just light. Breathe in light and as you breathe out, release that light through your hands to the persons sitting next to you. They are doing the same. Breathe in light, breathe it out. Feeling the tingling of energy in your hands. Again. So that your hands begin to feel charged, high with energy.
Now, retaining the hands clasped together, bring them slowly forward in front of you. Breathe in light, breathe it out into the hands, feeling the power of that energy. Do it for a few minutes, holding the hands out, and as you do, if the energy in those hands wants to release, offer it out for the good of all beings, for wherever that energy is most needed. Toward peace, toward love, toward healing. I’ll be quiet while you do this. Just breathing in light with the exhale, bringing it into your hands and releasing it to your partners. Them doing the same and that charge that comes out, offering it out for the good of all beings. Silently then.
(pause)
Whatever beings there may be in this circle who have needed this healing energy, take it in to you. There’s more than enough for you and all beings. If you wish to partake of it, as you breathe in, draw in not only light through the crown chakra but through your hands. Draw the energy and light of the whole group into you with the stated intention, “May I be healed. May I find the healing that I seek.” Feel the power of that loving energy and invite it into your being. And then when you’ve had what you need, just come back to the practice of offering it out to all beings.
(pause)
Let there cease to be any differentiation, offering it to all beings and to yourself, are one and the same thing.
(pause)
May all beings everywhere find freedom from suffering.
(Bell)
May all beings come to know their true nature, their infinite power, wisdom, compassion, their unlimitedness.
(Bell)
Knowing this true self, we transcend the personality self and become who we truly are. And in that knowing, may there be happiness and infinite peace.
(Bell)
I thank you all and bid you a good night. That is all.