the Path of the Human Being - Part 2 - the 5 Stages

1. -- AWAKENING

Here we experience an opening, kensho (Japanese word for awakening). This might happen only once or repeatedly. Here we catch perhaps a glimpse, or an even more clear experience of our true self, that life as we know it is not exactly as it appears. But instead, we have a profound realization, a knowing of the inarguable truth that we are The Way. But as time goes on, we discover that we are no longer in the state of awakening, that it is no longer an immediate felt sense state of being. Instead the experience of awakening fades into a memory that we find ourselves constantly referring back to. After this, we are possessed by a strong desire to make this a 24/7 experience and we set out on a spiritual path to make this spiritual state a permanent way of being. But yet we’re firmly removed from the experience. This presents dangers for those of us who teach spirituality because we’re teaching about awakening in the 3rd person rather than having a 1st person experience of it while teaching. We begin to fake it until we hopefully make it.

2. -- SURRENDER AND SUBMISSION

This is a lengthy process of letting go of old concepts, beliefs and opinions; the ways in which we think it ought to be, should be, might be, rather than relating directly to a felt lived sense and relating to that. In the course of this path, we may submit and surrender to a teaching or a spiritual path. We receive many new teachings and gather new ideas and concepts. But as we aspire to be truly spiritual people, good people, we begin to disown all the qualities that we consider to be unspiritual. For instance, really spiritual people don’t get angry, aren’t egotistical, aren’t depressed, etc., and so we disown these qualities and relegate them to the shadow. We’ve become even more distorted and one-sided as we try to return to the awakened experience and to be “spiritual”. Shadow work becomes more important than ever during this stage. Roshi says that the majority of us are in stuck in this stage, and that it can take many years to move through and beyond it.


Stage 3 – GREAT DEATH & GREAT LIBERATION

Any doubt about who you are is completely gone. This stage is also called Supreme Enlightenment. All concepts are entirely gone and we are living in direct contact with reality. This is also called Buddha Mind or the absolute. We feel that we have entirely been successful in eliminating the self or the ego. It feels incredibly free and a tremendous relief; but it is just another trap. We might find ourselves saying things like “I don’t feel anger or pain anymore”. But this is because now we’ve completely and thoroughly disowned the egoic self. To others, we come across as impersonal and condescending but we don’t see this. Very few people make it beyond this stage because the pseudo peacefulness is highly addictive. If we can see the trap of it, we must consciously choose to give it up.

Stage 4 – FALL FROM GRACE

This is an experience of great disillusionment. The ego comes back in full force with all its disowned emotions. But because we thought ego was gone long ago, all our filters are also gone and we have nothing to protect us from feeling the full experience of all of our emotions. What’s even more painful is that we not only do we feel our own emotions, but we also feel every one else’s. It is a time of deep despair where everything seems pointless. At this stage, the task is to completely own all our feelings, positive and negative, and to consciously choose to feel them and not disown them yet again. This is where we can work with the emotions in a tantric manner.

5. -- THE HUMAN BEING

This is the stage where we consciously choose to be a human being and to embrace the ego as an important aspect and embrace it consciously and completely. This is where we fully integrate as being human. Here we have the ultimate flexibility, to feel, to own and to experience the entire spectrum of human emotions. Very few people make it to here. It could take years or even lifetimes to accomplish.


All of this reminds me of one of my favorite stories about Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Notorious for showing up late at his own lectures, he strode into one gathering, already speaking as he entered the room. He said that the spiritual path is a very arduous one. If you haven’t begun as yet, you might want to reconsider. But if you have already begun, it’s best to finish.

The Path of the Human Being - Part 1

I’m going to try to convey the teaching that Roshi gave last weekend. It’s a brilliant bit of dharma teaching that I think some folks might enjoy. But because it’s somewhat long, this will be a multiple posting. I’m going to try to condense it without losing the flavor of it. So I ask for your patience.

What must be understood is that first and foremost, Roshi is a Zen Master, and as such, his major interest is in transmitting the dharma and finding ways to make it accessible. That is why he is so invested in the Big Mind process. Big Mind looks and sounds like a voice dialogue tool. But that’s where the similarities end. Big Mind is a process to both teach the dharma AND to give people direct experience of the dharma. In the hands of a skilled facilitator, the Big Mind process has the power to awaken us.

Another important point to keep in mind is that the range of voices generally fall into 2 categories: dualistic and transcendent. Traditional voice dialogue primarily works with the dualistic voices, the psychological identities that we are more familiar with and work with during a mat trip, e.g., the victim, the controller, the protector, the damaged self, the innocent child, etc.

When working with the dualistic voices we discover that we are actually engaged in is a process of shadow work, integrating our disowned voices. We also discover that we are using our own life force to suppress and disown these voices because they’re too painful, too uncomfortable. So freeing and owning these voices releases vital life force energy that becomes available to us. This, in an of itself, is extremely healing, allowing us to live more freely in our lives and the world. All of us have had a taste of this freedom on the mat.

But when we switch to the transcendent voices, here’s a whole different ball game. We are then engaged in a process of awakening these voices within us. They are not disowned, they simply have never been opened up before and have lain dormant. That’s where it gets really exciting. Quite literally, the Big Mind process is a practice of enlightenment, helping to fast track us through these stages.

That last sentence probably sounds very big.

I’m learning all kinds of things as to what enlightenment is. It’s been refreshing to be part of a group that speak of it so openly and candidly, as something completely achievable rather than something magical.

Simply put, enlightenment is an experience of awakening that can happen quite out of the blue. One day you’re walking down the street just minding your own business, and then WHAM! you suddenly discover that you’re not who you thought you were. Such an experience can feel ecstatic or scary. But your sense of self has irrevocably expanded beyond what you now know to be a very contracted perspective of self. But we don’t have to rely on the unpredictable to wake up. We can also intentionally court it through spiritual practices such as sex, shamanism, meditation, extreme sports, asceticism, sensory deprivation, nature and certain drugs. Or Big Mind.

Our first experience of enlightenment is as a state of being. By definition, a state is an experience of something that is at first very immediate but fades away in time and becomes a memory. We find ourselves consistently referring back to to the memory of the experience. As the experience turns into a memory, many of us will set off on a spiritual path in an attempt to regain it, hopefully permanently. For most of us, this is the stage in which we find ourselves, and it can take many years to move through it, as long as 10-40 years!

Although these are called stages, they are not linear, although they are fairly sequential. Each person reading this will likely discover that s/he knows something about each one of these stages. That is because we have had a state experience of that particular stage, not necessarily have experienced that stage fully and have completed with it. And we can have experiences of one or more of these stages at the same time.

For those who want to have an experience of these teachings, I recommend purchasing and watching Genpo Roshi’s DVD of the same name. But nothing compares to being with Roshi as he takes the entire group through the experience of the teaching through the Big Mind process.

Tomorrow: the 5 stages of the Path of the Human Being

Gratitude

I look forward to reading Pat’s posts. They are so fresh and free-flowing- so immediate. A couple of times now I’ve sat down with the intention of producing something deep and insightful, but no luck. The harder I try the less that comes out. I know this place well from my time at school and even when writing retreat blurbs for the Shalom brochure - hours and hours of fiddling with words, willing myself to be creative. It’s torture.

One thing that is definitely not torture for me these days is meditation. We sit for an hour in the morning and sometimes for a couple more in the evening. Zen is all about letting go of the thinking mind and focusing on direct experience. The Japanese Zen term for this is shikantaza – “just sitting”. Not as easy as it sounds because the thinking mind never stops. “OK, I’m going to do nothing but just be here. No wait, wasn’t that a thought? I’m supposed to just sit, not think. OK, just try harder. That’s it. Now I’ve got it! Hold on, I just did it again. How about now?” And on and on.

In Big Mind, we work with some of the “10,000 faces" (voices) of the self by giving them a name and getting to know them. Not by thinking about them, but by being them. So now I sit in meditation and play at embodying whatever voices show up. It has transformed my practice.

Tonight I start with the voice of gratitude and think about the way that Terry, Shawn and Victoria have stepped forward, doing their part to make sure that Shalom Mountain continues. And suddenly, I’m there. My chest swells up and tears of gratitude pour down my face. For a moment, I find myself thinking, “What if I completely lose it here?” And then the thought drops away and I return to just being gratitude.

How fortunate I am to be here and doing this with Pat; to be discovering my own true nature; to witness others from around the world doing the same, all of us feeling the imperative of bringing our newfound discoveries to a world that so desperately needs it. To have the opportunity to experience this thing we call “precious human birth”.

The final bell rings. We bow to each other as the timekeeper recites the closing chant:

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and Death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost
Let us Awaken, Awaken
Take heed
Do not squander your life.

And we get to do it again tomorrow morning. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Hitting the Wall

It’s been a little over a week since we’ve been here and I’m starting to feel the usual retreat fatigue. I’ve got a cold and I had a fever last night (can I fish for some sympathy out there???? ). Alistair slept on the sofa in the living room in the early morning hours because of my congested snoring. This morning I decided to rest a bit longer and skip the Sunday morning talk, only to discover that the sangha house plays host to a Buddhist version of Sunday school. There were kids everywhere, running, yelling, crying, etc. Not much rest for this girl.

The Big Mind process has been running a lot of energy through this body of mine. It seems that I’m both clearing and breaking down. The best illustration of this was during the afternoon’s session when I kept slipping back and forth from the elation of I’m getting it to the despair of I ain’t fucking getting it. I kept falling in and out of the slip stream of the experience as it was unfolding. Honestly, sometimes I’d be listening to the conversation between Roshi and someone else and I’d swear that I was stoned -- but I wasn’t. It was just that kind of expansive, we’re-in-the-experience-here-but-there-really-isn’t-a-word-or-name-for-it-and-we-can’t-know-it-but-just-be-in-it kind of experience. As my dear friend Sharon Brain wrote to me recently, she wondered if pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to write any words other than IS-NESS. She could be right.

So it seems that having a cold is both breaking down my resistance as well as messing with my head. If I can only let go and hang out with it I might really “get” it. (The Voice of My Teacher says: there’s nothing to KNOW - it's unknowable.) I do know that when I let go, I feel soft.

In a few days I’ll write more about Roshi’s teaching on The Path of the Human Being that he did on Saturday afternoon. It was out of this world. His brilliance seems to come from the way he beautifully uses the Big Mind process to illustrate AND give an experience of Zen teachings. It’s absolutely incredible.