It has been the guiding conviction of my life, since nineteen, that humankind will not see an end to violence until they have seen into and are free of the ego’s view of the universe. I felt this long before I read the many passages in the Nikāyas which say that human violence has such as this at its root. I call it a 2000-year project; and, and that’s how I can think of the tiny bit that I can do in my life, do for the common good. It’s quite touching for me, to know I am part of this movement, which includes a huge population of consciousness lovers across the planet from many, many fields. If I die today, tomorrow, or next year, or ten years hence, it’s the same project that I engage in, today.

But, as I became immersed in my path of choice, I became aware that there is division among Buddhists as to what the basic teachings mean. For instance, many think that dukkha is the bare fact that you can break a leg. The rest think that dukkha is the fact that you react to the broken leg (rather than respond). Some think that the cessation of rebirth is literal, and others think it’s a metaphor. Some say there’s an enlightenment to a non-conceptual reality which brings unparalleled peace; and others say that’s not possible, that the suggestion has been cooked up by people who came after the historical Buddha. These people say that enlightenment is realising your limitations and non-reactively accepting the facts of impermanence, non-substantiality in all things, and accepting the inherent tragedy of life. From this point of view, as I see it, the outcome is a kind of highly-skilled, caring, introspective management of life.

I was in a quandary. I had to understand, for myself, whether there was a fundamental, luminous nature to the mind, as it appeared to me; or, was this just a projection of my own wishful thinking. So, while still studying the Buddhist course in practical training, I looked around at other fields of consciousness work – read in the Christian mystics, the Hasidim, psychology, psychoanalysis, some psychiatry, other Eastern teachings, and studies of the human brain. And, I took up one other path in parallel to my main path: the body-oriented philosophy of Eugene T. Gendlin.

All along, the primary thing was to feel the answer with the whole of my being, with all of my life energy – not merely to think my way into a model. The grounding that I hoped to come upon or develop had to last me into death, so merely thinking out a model of human life wasn’t going to cut it, to cross that particular threshold.

At some point it felt settled for me, on the side of the ‘non-conceptual enlightenment’ folk. But, with a twist. So, how to convey it? I’m going to try, in the next series of posts, for those I love. It’s my ethical will, perhaps.

I had, from the late nineteen-sixties, and for a very, very long time, an idea – mistakenly interpreting my Zen readings – that I could somehow experience my mind free from concepts. Nowadays, I see that in each moment of my life, whatever I am experiencing, I am shaping, mostly unconsciously; and my shaping happens as a crossing with all the other relevant kinds of situations from my past (including the species past in me). There is no experience which is without past experiences being in it.

So, if I had anything any idea that I could contact directly something which would not be shaped, something that would be fresh and unshaped, well…. that’s not going to happen. With mindfulness and Focusing style awareness I can have the present experience freshly, but it’s still in the context of every relevant version of situations that have ever been.

(I did have several moments of cessation of feeling and perception, during my Zen practice years, but this is a special category of experience, and you can’t live an engaged life when there is no perception. Maybe I’ll return to those experiences another time, if relevant. Then, of course, the mind was free of concepts, but there was no experiencer to know that.)

So, I can, at best, shape freshly – find some fresh way (though body-based awareness) to have the continuous, human, shaping process – but I can’t have living situations without the past, here.

So, doesn’t this sound like the second group – the ‘life-management’ group? Doesn’t this sound like the constructivists, if we are continuously elaborating situations? Or, the Buddhist existentialists? Almost.

You see, there is an important experience to be had at the limit of this process of elaborating, when we turn toward that very process itself. And, this does validate an unthinkable kind of dimension. However, before I speak of it, I have to sound a warning. It took me almost four decades of practice, to understand that ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are mere conventions, which point back to felt experiencing. They have a gestural relationship toward reality, not a descriptive one. ‘Is’ and ‘is not’ (and all language polarities) shape experience, but they don’t establish any reality for us; and can’t point to reality.

So, whatever difficulties you have with what I say about the big life process, the ‘This’ – and with all my concepts – please run what you are thinking about this through the following filter, again and again. You may have no difficulty, but just in case, here’s how to see it:

“He is not claiming to establish any kind of reality based on ‘is’ and ‘is not.’ He sees language as only relevant to experiencing, not to establishing realities or establishing the absence of realities; whether they are ‘relative’ or ‘ultimate.’ This applies to everything. His descriptions don’t describe the substance of reality; nor the absence of any substance of reality.”

So, if you will use that filter, then I can say, something about ‘This.’ (He waves his hands in the ten directions, while not meaning to say that space or time exist; or don’t.)

“Whatever is seen, heard, sensed, or clung to,
is valued as ‘truth’ by other folk.
Amid those who are stuck in their views,
I hold nothing as true or false, being ‘such.’

“This snag I beheld, long before,
whereupon humankind is hooked, is impaled:
‘I know, I see, `tis truly so.’
No such clinging for Tathāgatas.”

– From Kālakarāma Sutta. Translated by Christopher J. Ash.