“Look Ma, No Hands”
By Michael Erlewine
Now for an extensive look at what has been going on with my dharma practice. Not sure it will interest anyone, yet I have to lay it out here for my own mental clarity and for those who might find it useful.
In a word, lately it is all the same, inside and outside, backward and forward, now and then; life is like a level plane these days. When and how did it get like that?
I don’t remember when, but it used to be a bit of a climb, especially the difference between duality (subject and object) and non-duality (complete immersion). And now, today, in many ways is not different than yesterday. What each day has always required is like the fire that comes from rubbing two sticks together, some form of friction, working the mind with the gut. Now it all is somehow the same.
Or is it?
My view is changing about this, which is why I want to discuss it thoroughly please. It is that now, these days, perhaps life itself will provide friction enough, let’s call it change, but I seldom wait that long. Instead, I tend to prime the pump, so to speak, accenting when I access the non-duality of Insight Meditation (Vipassana) and reflect on that immersion.
Meanwhile, hurtling down the track of old age like a freight-train, the feeling of that kind of force is a hard one to shake off or to live with.
My past has riveted on whatever I’ve been doing all this time, complete with whatever reification is involved in keeping up appearances. Meanwhile, locked in by whatever samsaric entertainment I take refuge in, lost in that, I feel the tug to pry my eyes and mind away from my personal Samsara, and begin to consider what’s out there in the bardos beyond death. And it’s difficult to do.
So, right there I already have two trains running, my personality or Self that I have nurtured for all these decades, lived with, and shown to others, and the other train pointing me to where I am going when I cross over at death from this life into the bardos.
So, I am torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, as they say, between the past that I have lived and the future rebirth I may have.
As to life, I have not done it all, but I have done all I can think of and am looking at repeats here. Does running in circles ring a bell? Have you too done this?
Yes, right now, it’s all of one common piece and there is no point to it, meaning no difference anywhere I can find, either here or there, just a vast plane of the same that stretches on to infinity. How does that fit into what I call everyday reality?
The future may well depend on change but not difference. I can’t seem to do anything different than I have done up to now. How can difference not change? What I mean is how can change not be always different, unless it’s the same difference, if that makes sense?
There is no need to repeat the same because the same does not differ. So, what is the difference here? With that same I am contemplating, there is no difference.
Another way of saying this is what keeps us on our toes? Where does the much needed awareness come from?
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It does not come from anywhere. It’s more like every obscuration we remove reveals the eternal awareness that is always there. Awareness is unborn. It just is.
What about the idea of a torus, turning the inside out and the outside in? If that happens, where then is the difference? What if there is no difference and never has been? It’s all just in our mind, all of it.
I seem to push the envelope until it differs. Only that is far enough. I’ve got to stop pinching myself.
For example, I can work the words until they shift, until something gives. And if they don’t? I keep working the words until they shift, etc. That is what now is missing.
What if I have reached a point where the words no longer shift, and I’m at the level plane I spoke of? What if I have reached a point where I must put to rest even that difference that I clung to?
After all, where does change come from? And where does change come from if change is constant? Is constant change itself a continuum? Is constant change a constant, and also the same? Or the big question:
Does this constant change need effort?
In other words, if constant change is a constant, why does it need effort on our part? It’s ‘unborn’. Or do we just step away and let go? That can be effortless.
Is our trying and all this effort the last to go? And do we let go of it? Do we just let it go on? It’s going on anyway. If it does not need our effort, what are we to do except nothing?
“Look Ma, no hands.”
Of course, all of this is just a reflection from immersion in non-duality.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here is the link: SpiritGrooves.net.
As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
