At a certain point in the continuous cultivation of effort towards enlightenment, we experience ultimate disappointment through seeing that every effort towards freedom goes against our freedom. Even the attempt to give up your striving for freedom in hopes of higher freedom also goes against us, for there is always some notion of gain behind every attempt no matter how obvious or subtle, and they are all the same in their degree of futility.
Put on your monastic robes or take them off, you are still looking for something that will end your suffering or make you more “enlightened”.
It is completely necessary to realise this. In this recognition, or rather this particular predicament we find ourselves in, we truly see the expression of cosmic humour within our own self as the individual knows that their spiritual efforts were designed to lead to an unexpected but necessary disappointment. We see that no matter what we do, even with our highest spiritual prayers or generosities in mind, we are still trapping ourselves in samsara, and yet it is in this moment we have the glimpse of nirvana. It is through this state of utter hopelessness we find ourselves in and the humour of our own total predicament that freedom is glimpsed, through the total surrender born out of relentless self-entrapment we find the emptiness that is not limited in any direction or dimension. But this hopelessness cannot be cultivated or sought, it just happens in its own time, when things fall into place.
When the fruit is ripe it falls off the tree, it is just like this. You cannot force the fruit to fall, and if you pluck it off too early it may taste quite sour. This sourness finds itself in one who gives up the search for truth too early through intellectual knowledge of seeking, without the experience of actual physical and mental futility where all energies are burned up. This early plucking of the fruit can result in the strong attachment to spiritual ego claiming one has “gone beyond”, with the feeling of only partial fulfilment. It would be like closing the case of a murder when you have not found the culprit yet. “I am a great investigator as the case is now closed!” says the investigator, but hold on why are you wrapping things up? The job is not yet done. So maybe you have to open the case back up and poke around a bit more with the suspects and gather evidence until you know for sure that either it’s an impossible case, or you realise you was the murderer all along and that you have amnesia, a total momento moment, if you can see that joke. To even say this much is not in your favour as you will gather more intellectual understanding of futility rather than direct experience, so it is important that you sit, that you seek and contemplate up until a point when you have a glimpse, a “satori” as it is called in the zen tradition. After this point you will not need any encouragement from another being, and you will also need no convincing from outside of yourself.
Before satori: No matter how eloquent the person explains reality you could never believe it
After satori: It is understood no matter how someone explains it, as you know it yourself.
The outcome of this total hopelessness that is related to satori, can be described as a figure-ground reversal. It is like being a cloud expert who is on a mission to find every cloud, but one day after trying so hard he lies down on the grass to catch a breath and suddenly realises the sky ! Wow! It is infinitely bigger and much more significant than any cloud he could have ever imagined. He is amazed at how he never noticed the sky all the time, and yet when he realises it he inevitably reports back “It was always there, I was simply too fascinated with the clouds to notice”. The equilibrium at this point has passed a tipping point because he had looked at so many clouds that it was only a matter of time before the sky caught his attention. The reason that the teacher tells you to look towards the clouds (breath, mantras etc) is for the purpose that you accidentally glimpse through exhaustion or chance, that which is not the clouds but has contained them the entire time ! Our true nature is always uncovered as an accident as it is never where we expected it to be. It is summarised by seeing that when we are thinking in terms of clouds, the sky is not even in the same dimension of our search, it is completely off the radar until it’s sheer obviousness becomes apparent. Another analogy could be that when looking for honey, we just follow the bee back to where it comes from, so when looking for ourself , we follow thoughts back to their source. We find that the clouds arise out of the sky rather than existing independently and that our thoughts arise out of an invisible field for awareness. This discovery is always an accident and is not itself a discovery of something new or special but something completely ordinary; in the same way that each cloud is completely unique, the sky is ordinary, unchanging with no boundaries or limitations and is thus infinite.
Enlightenment is a by-product of accident-proneness
The meaning of this is that during this point of hopelessness the energies now begin to shift in the wanted direction of openness and spaciousness that one was always seeking prior to the point of total hopelessness. They was always moving in this direction regardless, but now it is known to be so and goes beyond mere speculation that was previously used as a form of hope to reinforce the egoic self. There is a magnificent playfulness to it all because you can see how it was the necessity of hopelessness and exhaustion that leads to hope and energy. But this new found hope is of a completely different quality to what we normally call hope. This hope comes from our deepest sense of unknowing, of having no knowledge of how to deal with our life anymore, with a true sense of the unknown coming to life.
Somehow you come to know that you have been in checkmate the entire game from the beginning, and yet the audience is ushering you to continue on and play a move. How can you play the next move if you are in checkmate ? It is completely absurd. Stop the timer maybe? Turn invisible? Slap your opponent? Forget about the game? Whatsoever you do you are in checkmate, it is known as an irrefutable fact. You cannot even resign as it is already over. All the corners of the room close in on you and you must disappear so that all the corners may meet. To be in checkmate means that there is no choice left, you must somehow disappear and haven’t the slightest clue how. I tell you to disappear, what are you going to do? In a brief moment of this hopelessness the mind may go silent in such an impossible situation, and you find that you really are invisible, just like the story of the monk who ran around the monastery screaming “I can’t find my head” only for the master to say “Leave him, he will be fine soon”. Why was the master not surprised by the ridiculous statement of one of the monks? Simply because the master lost his head many years ago and never found it again, and oh what joy he has known since !
This point of hopelessness and utter impossibility is synonymous with the recognition that there is no free will and that we as a person do not exist, as there in no separate entity ever making a choice, that what seems to be choice is only a choice-less thought. Obviously this sort of recognition would lead to panic and confusion, which is funnily enough a great indicator of satori.
So this moment where all hope is lost, is when one actually finds hope as I have said, as they find hope and faith through their own discovery that their whole existence is being taken care of without them having to blink an eyelid. One can feel this right now by feeling the questions (without intellectualisation) “What do I do to make my heart beat?” “What do I do to make thoughts happen?”. Like this, but in a total sense, we see that “I” am not involved in any of the happenings that are experienced and that they happen by themselves and of their own accord.
Thoughts and actions are cosmic events, just like the weather and the orbits of planets.
This is recognition has a tremendous quality of release. To use religious language, the individual sees experientially that “My will is God’s will”. Up until this point it may have felt necessary for the seeker to surrender to God and to allow ourselves to be a vessel for his will, but it is at this point one knows that it was always already the case whether we like it or not! We somehow come to understand that we needed to surrender to know that there was nothing to ever surrender. This is the paradox of spirituality, and the limitations of language when speaking about something that is not a function or product of our own thought processes and is thus not completely comprehensible by the rational mind.
So now there isn’t much more to say, other than that you are already in checkmate and whether you know it or not doesn’t matter. Time is of the essence, your life is ticking away and we must use this human birth wisely. So what will you do in this most humorous situation?
– Aaron Pearson –
Reflections in the Mirror of Eternity 