Depending On No-thing, Chapter 26, Find Your Own Mind

Q: My question relates to teachers of nonduality who state, unequivocally, that there is nothing anyone can do, that no practice or technique can be of benefit to spiritual awakening. I don't think I've heard any nonduality teacher say the opposite. However, this idea or perspective is totally contrary to my own experience.

I could understand if someone was to say, “I personally did not follow a path or technique, but I cannot say that there isn't one.” But this total, almost stubborn attitude that there cannot ever be one, confuses me slightly. And it is the origin of this that I am seeking to understand.

With this idea being so commonplace in nonduality teaching, I wonder whether it is now simply traditional? The established philosophy states there is no method, and thus many believe there is nothing that can be done, so nothing is done; and when some still say they have “woken up,” it seems the belief is legitimized and a self-fulfilling prophecy is born.

If it was only one or two people, then I might wonder whether it's just a matter of those who did not follow a path or technique taking their lack of a method as proof that there isn't one for anyone. But as this idea is so widespread, I feel the reason may be wider too.

The other half of this is that the belief is so deep-seated that even when a person demonstrates a technique, it tends to be dismissed out of hand as nonsense by both the teachers I've spoken with as well as any seekers. People don't seem to even want to hear of a technique or teaching that may help.

What do you think about this Robert? You seem more open-minded than most, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

A: Well, I am not a teacher of nonduality, nor a believer in that concept either, but just an awake human being who has no commitment at all to any spiritual ideas, so-called “nondual” or otherwise. From my perspective, "spirituality," including nonduality, is mostly frightened human beings making a big deal out of life and death, as if talking about it endlessly would take the sting out of it.

Honestly, I see no division at all between what is “spiritual” and what isn’t. When people ask me about spirituality, I feel like the 9th-century Zen teacher who, when asked, “What is Buddha?,” replied, “The shit stick in the latrine.”

Any “teaching” that I might appear to be offering comes down to one simple point: No one can define for you who or what you are. No one. Not Buddha, not Jesus, not Ramana Maharshi, not Rupert Spira, not Adyashanti, not yours truly. No one. It does not matter what those people believed. All of them were–some of them still are–human beings just like you. You must find your own mind, not theirs.

If you are interested in awakening, it is advisable, I say, to begin by discarding all beliefs you may have acquired, no matter what their source. Just wipe the slate clean, and make your own inquiry, starting from scratch without depending on anyone or anything at all. I explored this approach in detail in my book, The Ten Thousand Things, and I encourage you to read that.

My awakening took place over a ten year stretch more or less, from the time of an initial kensho or satori, through a time of severe illness, and then a period after recovering from that illness during which time my ordinary personality became integrated with the phenomenon of constantly noticing that “I” was not really doing anything and never had except in fantasy. I could not forget that even if I tried. But I can’t teach that, and no one can imitate it either.

As for technique, I had a mentor who suggested a method, a very simple practice, and I followed it for a time. He advised me to “remember myself,” to keep coming back to simple be-ing without questions or explanations. The suggested practice was to say to myself whenever I could recall, “I am,” meaning “I exist.” Not “who am I?” Not “what am I,” but just “I am.” So that is a technique. I used it for a time, and now never even think about it. It’s like a medicine I once took but no longer need or want.

But even such a simple practice will not be helpful if one imagines the practice as a “path.” It is not a path. There is no path from here to here. Even if you thought there was a path—suppose, for example, you now regard "I am" as a path—you have no power to choose to follow it or to avoid following it. A mentor can put an idea in your mind, but that is like leading a horse to water. The mentor cannot drink the water for you. Drink or no drink, you are exactly where you find yourself right now. If you see that--that thoughts are not chosen, but arise autonomously, and yet, those selfsame unchosen thoughts are what guide so-called “choices”--that is the recognition of what I call “awake.” Then you are free, free to flow.

You can hear that from me, and understand it logically, but you can’t will yourself to wake up, because you don’t know what that is, and there is no way but first-hand experience to understand what it is. Words from an awake perspective, including an emphasis on the inevitability of human limitation—a theme I often raise—may point in one direction or another, but the actual experience of a welcoming openness to each moment without seeking fulfillment of desires and without particular focus on myself, which is what I mean by awake, can only be alluded to at best. Nothing central to that view, I say, can be delivered or “transmitted,” no matter how eagerly it is wanted.  

When I first came out to myself as “awake,” I had a time of ambivalence. I kept it to myself for years. I feared that speaking about "awakening" from a first-person perspective—not what some traditional teaching says, but what I actually experience from minute to minute--could be taken the wrong way. I could be taken as another imagined spokesperson or salesperson for the proverbial carrot that donkeys are always chasing after which is the last role I’d want to occupy.

 I tried, but could not find a better angle or better language than straight talk to discuss these matters, and that included the A-word. Whether you see me as foolish or as an object of admiration or anything else is not the point. The point is you, not “Robert.” It is your own mind you must find . . . a mind of clover, a mind at peace with itself even in apparent turbulence, a mind that is not always looking forward to the next thing or analyzing the past, a mind that does not need anything in particular to happen, but that is fully alive here and now.

That is the message. Depending on no “thing,” find your own mind. For once, give yourself a break. Step out of the hierarchy entirely. Let all that dogma and second-hand so-called “knowledge” go and be yourself just as you are. Open yourself as best you can to this moment, not what some dead cat said about it all. You can’t help hearing all that stuff and some of it might be OK, but not if you get caught up in it.

Another human’s accounting for the equanimity that I am calling awake is not transferrable. It’s not an acquisition, but a noticing within oneself of something honest and rock-bottom. This is not a received “Truth” that you have to believe in, but your own understanding and experience. That is what is needed, I say, not some schematic diagram of “reality” from on high that’s as dead and dry as a cardboard box for lunch. There is no path, no royal road but the one you discover in silence, I say.

But those are words, and words are not enough any more than you can eat the menu for dinner. And that is the problem with the nonduality industry, and make no mistake, it is an industry. In that business model, words are the merchandise—clever words, slogans really—but words are not enough, and quickly become an impediment to those who fixate on them.

So if awakening is really what you desire, forget about so-called “nonduality.” Just put it out of your mind entirely. Don’t listen to what those self-appointed teachers say. Live by your own lights without depending upon the ideas of others or depending on anything else. You must find your own mind. That suggestion won’t sell retreats and gatherings, but to find your own mind depending on no-thing is the only real “technique” I know.

Thirty years and more
I worked to nullify myself
Now I leap the leap of death.
The ground churns up
The skies spin round.

---The death poem of Rankei Doryu, died 1278, at the age of 66.