Going Clear

In his book THE WISDOM PARADOX, Elkhonon Goldberg states that sometimes you have to make things more complicated before finding the simple way through, before finding the inherent simplicity. For me, life has been about finding some simple, apparently irreducible something. And while Joseph Campbell talked about "following your bliss", i would say I have more followed my silence.

Life, people, and all the confused motivational stirrings have tended to strike me as unnecessarily noisy. Psychologically, and socially, people most often strike me as murky. And experiencing one's critique of life, people, oneself as primarily aesthetic, ethics and any moral sort of high ground have seemed less unreachable and more irrelevant to me. When one looks for simplicity, the complications that come from acting unethically most often make those options seem about as palatable as eating your own refuse, which is essentially what is happening in such a case. Many people feel like they get strong by feeding themselves on their own shit, and they do in a certain way, but it also maintains unhappiness...seemingly categorically. Consumerism of planned obsolescent "goods" is an obvious example of eating our own shit; for a while, we had the strongest economy that could be built on shit and we are starting to face the effects. Garbage in, garbage out as they say.

In this interest of finding silence or simplicity, meditation once seemed like a fruitful path. After years of studying all kinds of methods, techniques, and research, I have found myself wanting to divest myself of the excess cultural baggage that can come along with the pursuit of meditation, silence, simplicity, personal peacefulness. I think it is possible, and perhaps valuable for someone else as well, to strip away the majority of accoutrements. The medium is the message. It looks to me that there are two ideas that are helpful and necessary in finding clarity. Everyone's path, and therefore method, of finding clarity is unique; whatever anyone might do with clarity is also unique. Having too much extra baggage seems to only slow us down in getting there.

The first idea is that meditation is the willingness to return. No one can tell you what it is a willingness to return to and have the telling be an actual return. So if you think of meditation as balance, you can always ask yourself what would return you to balance. Sometimes rest returns me to balance, sometimes humor, etc. When we get used to the idea that it can be almost anything, depending on the situation and our current state of mind, we can begin to look for what that thing is in any given moment. And of course, we can learn from and share with others. (Sometimes communion is what returns me to balance.)

The second idea is one that describes balance. I find that it is helpful to think of six points, each one connected to one other, making a sort of line. The front/back directions/line involve whatever might be seen/felt as going forward or going back. So one part of balance involves moving forward enough, moving back enough, and being able to be still enough. When we're off-balance forward, we're too aggressive or needy of something. When we're off-balance backward, we're fearful or depressed, feeling victimized rather than competent. The second pair of points involves the up/down directional. At the base lies play and creativity, abiding consciousness is at the top, and there is a full range in between. Many theorists, teachers, and systems have presented this sort of spectrum. When, in any given moment, I'm responding from too low on the spectrum, I will be missing the big picture in some way, acting too immaturely or too impulsively or too bluntly. When I'm responding from too high, I'll seem to be stretching, seem preachy, come across as too conceptual or irrelevant by showing up with something that may be subtle but not effective. And the left/right points involve tight focus (like self-focus) or open awareness. When I'm too focused on one thing, I'll have trouble appreciating the overall situation. When I'm too focused on many things, I'll be distracted and uncertain, finding it hard to make decisions that seem to work.

The actual "point" of psychological balance is so small it isn't there; it's precise as a needle that reaches a point of nothingness. Because my mind and my situation always move, the point is always somewhere but never fixed. The more I intend to find that point and move to as well as "from" that point rather than something noisier or murkier, the more affinity or resonance I have with it, the more balanced I feel and act. When I am willing to do what it takes to return, whether I am moving or relatively still, the more I feel balanced, the more life seems clear, the more meditation seems to arise on its own. I stop feeding the imbalance that feeds on itself.

Two ideas. Balance and the willingness to return to balance.

Koans and the Matrix

In continuing to work on descriptions of balance and Clarity, an interesting thought experiment developed in an imagined conversation. Also playing in was a koan that I've carried around for a few years. With koans like this one, the ones that have struck a chord without bringing any more particular response from me, I have often circled around them, coming to different interpretations and points of insight. The more you get to know certain koans, the more you get out of them.

The one I'm speaking of struck me as fairly brief, as if there were one point to it, although that single point seems to mean different things depending on how you relate to it. "Standing at the top of a hundred-foot pole, what is your next step?" It is something like that. In relation to trying to describe six points of psychological balance, my next conceptual step with this koan is to remove the pole. This sort of process is like following the trajectory of an arrow. First there is a hundred-foot pole and the impossibility of taking a next step. Then there is no pole. Next, no you. So no one, and what's more, standing at the top of nothing.

This begs the question, is there a next step? (And I'm assuming that, if you could actually focus in on the koan enough to include only the pole, the hundred feet, and your next step, then the world around your predicament is already out of focus enough to consider it so insignificant that it was already as if the world wasn't there back when you were facing the dilemma of which next step to take. And, since there are lots of ways to relate to this koan, feel free to pick it up and see what happens for you that might be different than this description from me.)

Everything that you could possibly bring up around/within this spaciousness is your associational matrix. Being able to return to or rest in this spaciousness is what I would consider to be the quintessential experience at the level of Clarity. Being unencumbered by anything and yet taking some step gives rise to the feelings of inspiration and engagement. There being no need for "you" here opens one's self to the experience/reality of anatta. And this place or point may help one see what Dogen might have meant at times by "thinking nonthinking" or imagining nonimagining. Everything other than this spaciousness involves imagining, and imagining this spaciousness without adding more content from one's associational matrix is imagining nonimagining.

From right here where nothing is excluded a priori because no a priori thinking exists here, what step is not possible? While that question may be interesting in some way, the full-bodied answer to, "What is your next step?," is so much more fascinating. While we don't always think of this sort of spaciousness, it is as if this question is constantly posed and as if everything we do is our answer. Whether you ask yourself the question or not, we are watching and interacting with how you answer. Because everything comes "through" this no-self spaciousness, nothing that any of us do is not our true selves.

There is one single quality-feeling that encompasses all of what is written here, and that quality is exemplary of Clarity, included in inspiration. (With whom was the conversation that sparked this in me?)