Expert: Joe McSorley - 12/23/2008

Question
QUESTION: I've been grappling with heavy meta-theoretical questions about 'life' that I can't seem to put myself at ease about.  Through my own experiences and personal evolution, I agree that reality must indeed be nondual in nature.  My 'problems' though stem exactly from this; while I have a certain intellectual understanding, 'I' am not fully enlightened.  Consequently, these are the kinds of questions I continue to ponder...

If there is no reality external to or independent of me, why have I created all these things I can't comprehend (e.g. organic chemistry, Chinese Mandarin)...If there can be no perceived without the perceiver, why is this dream-like state, with other 'humans' in it (most of which seem to think it is all 'real') so elaborate? Are 'other people' real?

Despite accepting reality to be nondual and not really believing that I am the 'mind-body', I nonetheless still wake-up with my life as it is--same, job, family etc. Not being hedonistic and generally detached, how do I spend my time? It feels like a trap...there is nothing to do or to be done, yet here I am...

Does any of this make sense? I can try to clarify but hopefully you can help me out!


Amar

ANSWER: Dear Amar,
   I do not ascribe to the theory that we all create our own reality.  To those who present this to me I ask, “why did you and I both create the rapes in Sudan, the tsunami in SE Asia, genocide, wars and suffering?  What kind of bastards are you and I that we both create the same kind of insanity and suffering?  (and on this particular occasion) Why did you and I both create this cold, rainy miserable weather day?  How come I am not perceiving sunshine and beauty?”  Once when studying Hinduism with an Indian PhD one of the students commented that all life is Maya, nothing is real and with that the prof took his book and threw it in the student’s face. The student ducked and shrieked, “Why did you do that”? and the prof returned,”It’s not real”.
   So I don’t support in any way this new new age ‘quantum physics’, self creates worldview.  What I do support is that what you think is reality is not reality; it is a paper tiger, a construct of thought.  It stands in front of and behind you but your mind separates you from it.  You do not see it as it is but only in reflection.  Like a picture of a mountain in the distance, you think it is real but it is not. You did not create the world, the world created you.  You think you are something other than the world trying to get back to it but you are the world itself separated from itself looking back at it self.   Sunlight that is reflected in a drop is not confined to the drop; its source is the sun.  If the drop were to become self conscious it would think it is the source of the light, born as a drop and will die as a drop, but in fact it was never born it is just reflecting what is, now.  The self-identification of the drop gives it an identity that it sees and knows only in separation but in fact it is all light momentarily reflected in this form.  
  Shibayama once said “we are the paintbrush mistaking itself for the painter”.  By being the paintbrush, that which is trying to express reality we are separate from reality.  If the split between paintbrush and painter is destroyed then the painter, reality/universe, can now express itself fully without the illusions of the paintbrush distorting it.  Doing and being completely is pure living.  When you do something you do it as Amar, as a separate being, things effect ‘you’, you have tastes and desires, you have Amar’s viewpoint on the world.  Amar’s viewpoint is the light trapped in the drop thinking it’s the source.  Stop paying attention to what Amar wants, believes and feels.  Stop caring about what you think of things.  Just pay attention without any thought of you.  Be in the world without your viewpoint of it.  Be in a room as it is and not as you see it.   Be a parent, a worker, an athlete or whatever completely and purely as an expression of nature at its root and not as the ego trying to fulfill its will.  When you live fully you love fully, you see the world as truly yourself, not a projection of yourself or a belief that it is yourself, but as yourself in reality.  You have real compassion because you know how you saw things before and you know that others don’t see it, thus the idea of ‘selling water by the river’.  You don’t do this by believing that you are not mind body but by actualizing that you are not mind body.  Now you are spending ‘your time’ but awakened you are time, eternal time, expressing you.  There is a Zen expression “the unawakened is used by time and the awakened uses time”.
 Let me know if this is clear to you and feel free to write back.  It takes a while to really understand this so keep at it.
        Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Joe,

Thanks for taking the time to write me your thoughtful reply.  So do you mean to say that there is an objective world that was in existence before 'me' and has always been there? That there is an Earth in a solar system in a galaxy etc.? How did this world come to be?

Could it be that because what we believe and see is so ingrained in us and because we'll never really intrinsically believe we can walk through walls that we can't?

I guess the issue for me is not whether you and I created this world with all sorts of calamities but whether it's all in my head...How can I be sure that you are you if my consciousness is my only point of reference? Could it be that the world is actually perfect but it is our perception that is skewed? Just by saying that the weather is unpleasant or horrific things are happening somewhere (e.g. war crimes in Sudan) doesn't this slip back to seeing things in a dualistic lens? I once read somewhere that enlightenment was seeing 'sukh' and 'dukh' as the same...

The problem I'm finding with the Zen notion of being awake in the moment and being in the world with no viewpoint of my own is that it seems untenable in terms of day-to-day implications...Don't you have to make plans? e.g. financial planning, making sure you can come up with rent etc.? Friends will call you, asking if you want to do something and consultation...Does this mean, I should never aspire for a promotion or change jobs if I know the company may be going under a year from now? I find there are too many practical limitation to divorcing myself from the individual Amar and what he may think is the best thing to do in certain situations...Do we have free will? Is this what you were getting at? Or is it that we are being 'painted' and there is no causation...Can we make decisions? If so are some better than others? What's the point here? I don't know what to do...

Sincerely,

Amar

Answer
Hi Amar,
  You are misunderstanding what I am saying here.  When you talk about walking through walls you are referring to yourself as a body, but it’s your body, who is it that says I am this body?  When you talk about yourself you talk about physical attributes but without any of these attributes are you still you?  If you were to be in total darkness with no way to perceive anything else with your mind in the moment with no thought of past, future, like or dislikes aren’t you still completely you?  By the same token, if you wake up in a hospital bed and are only conscious, that is, you can’t see yourself, aren’t you fully you?  You might have had most of your body amputated but since you don’t perceive it you don’t have a changed idea of who you are.  Once you perceive it you then make all the judgments about your state of being and happiness.  You lie there on the hospital bed just looking at the ceiling and I say “Amar, is that you” and you say “Yes, it’s me”.  I say “fully and completely you” and you’d say “yes, fully and completely me”.  I say “no more or less you than before you came into here” and you’d say “yes, all the same”. I say “do you want to live” and you say “ Yes, I want to live’, but then I tell you that you’ve lost most of your body, then what?  Do you now grieve and are saddened over your loss? Do you now no longer want to live?  Are you now less you because you have objectively perceived a physical loss?  Before you were told of your injuries you had no way of knowing there was less of you physically because there is not less of you as a self.  You cannot add to the self and you cannot take away from the self.   This you that believes is the mind but this you that is before your thought of you is not confined to the mind and body.  Were you there at your birth?  Really think about this.  When you say you could walk through walls what you are you talking about?  If all your self-identity is with the body then you live and die with the body in an illusion but that which is your root is untouched.
There is a self that separates itself from the world to know that it is.  This is dualistic consciousness; to only know in dichotomy or by splitting.  This is what the ego is, the act of splitting away from the world to know that you are.  This splitting creates a sense of self as separate.  We don’t have an ego, we are the ego, we are the act of splitting but we don’t know who is doing the splitting or where it ends up.
  To just obliterate this dualistic consciousness is to be dead to yourself.  The question is; what is the source of this consciousness, what is the root of this that creates the split?  When we don’t know this we perceive our self as that which was born and that which will die and this causes a base anxiety.  This is the idea behind “Life is Suffering (dukkha) in Buddhism.  We are living knowing we will die so there is an underlying angst to our existence.  Without the thought of self, body, history and everything else there is still something that calls itself a self.

  Being awake in the moment does not mean being stupid in the moment.  Animals are in the moment and live and die by that.  All of their choices are made in accordance to their nature and what is best for their nature.  They can survive and thrive in nature while we cannot with our consciousness.  They know what they can and cannot eat, where to sleep and how to live; we need to be taught that.  They are not broken from the root of their existence while humans are.  They are not stupid and they rise to their potential without a sense of individual self. You cannot ignore causation, you must eat right, sleep right and live right to nourish the body.  It is the instrument. You destroy and instrument but you don’t destroy music.  The individual expression of the self has to pay attention to causation for to go against ones nature or nature is to cause problems.
One way humans experience real living in the moment is when we lose ourselves to the moment in activities.  An athlete in ‘the zone’ or in the moment performs their best because they are completely and utterly doing it with all of their being.  They navigate down the court or across the field in the moment making the most precise calculations to achieve their goal while being unaware of it or unconscious of it.  It is the highest state of athleticism: by letting go of the self you become the real self.  By hanging on to Amar’s point of view you miss the big picture, you can only see myopically, by letting go of that point of view you open yourself up to see what your point of view was blocking. Humans hang on to their point of view out of fear, we attach ourselves to beliefs and desires that do nothing to help us see reality.  It is freedom to choose more wisely, more informed and less self-centered when you do it from the root of being.  It is not a mindless meandering and dumbness but a fully alive and vital living that allows you to see what is really happening and seize the moment.  How many times in your life did you not see what was really going on only to realize it an hour later when it was too late to take advantage of it?  Living in the moment is living in the world and not living in your head.  Now, we all live in our heads and see the world as an afterthought.
  When you talk about us creating the world I am not talking about the “Amar” you are talking about.  I don’t think this is a matrix like reality created and sustained by millions of individuals in the same collective delusion.  On the contrary, we are the universe being expressed as Oman and Joe and whomever not realizing we are the universe that is doing this, not the individual.  Because we cling to the drop we miss the awesome power of the ocean.
  I hope this helps you.
         Joe