In The Presence

Standing in the darkness of Notre Dame Cathedral on a rainy Paris morning, the faint light pouring through the stained glass windows all rose red and indigo, a mixed men and boys choir began to sing a choral arrangement of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, their voices soaring between the towering stone walls. The tourists, already in whisper mode, fell silent. Every soul in the room unfurled. Then softly, another sound – people all around me quietly weeping. So I wasn't the only one.

In moments like that, seared into your memory forever, you feel the presence of something bigger, something more vast and real and beautiful and true than the ordinary world. You feel it in every fiber of your mind-body. It startles you. But deep inside you recognize it, and you know that this presence is always near, hidden just behind the veil of ordinary consciousness. You don’t need to fly to Paris to feel it (but it doesn’t hurt). You can experience it right now, wherever you are, if you learn how to grow quiet and still and open enough. Presence isn’t achieved, it’s allowed.

Call it the Kingdom of Heaven, nirvana, awakening, or simply the presence – whatever it is is beyond all of our pretty names and concepts. Still, the mind hungers to understand. So we struggle to identify and describe the sacred presence. And that’s when the trouble starts.

This isn’t easy for me to say as a philosophy professor, but when considering the mystical realm, for once it is true – feelings are more valid than facts. Facts have to do with the mind, conceptual thought, discursive reasoning, logical structures, careful definitions of words, and – shudder – empirical evidence.  But in the realm of pure, trans-conceptual experience mere empirical evidence shimmers and shifts like a mirage revealing still deeper and truer forms of knowing. This is what every meditator knows – that in the depths beneath the thought-stream there rests in immense field of boundless, content-free stillness. And the wordless knowing that we are that stillness.

Once your meditation practice reveals this depth authenticity you realize that you can endure anything – that you carry within you the solution to every problem. You shift from human perspective to holy perspective. You see the big picture, and you are filled with a peace that surpasses all understanding. “Welcome all appearances with benevolent indifference,” writes Rupert Spira. “This leads to spontaneous meditation that is our true nature and the experience of causeless peace.” When we let go, we are always meditating.

When we realize the spiritual presence that we are, every room becomes a church, every thought a prayer, every conversation a benediction, and every action a ritual. Our sacred work is the transformative alchemy of our life. It is how we strip away the veneer that hides presence from us. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” And as Meister Eckhart put it, “Our bodily food is changed into us, but our spiritual food changes us into itself.” Our spiritual practice does not improve us, it reveals us.

The presence never leaves us because it is us. The question is not How can we enter the presence? It is What made you think that you were anything other than the presence? 

[This piece was originally published in my "A to Zen" column in the July/August 2019 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Innerstanding

We need a new word, a word for that indescribable awareness within – that dawning realization that did not come second hand from another, or from a book, or at the end of a long line of reasoning. It simply arrived – a lucidity, a clarity, a simple wordless opening through which to see the world. “Understanding” doesn’t quite describe it, because understanding is conceptual knowledge – the grasping of ideas. This kind of knowing isn’t conceptual. It’s not made of ideas. It could never be described, written down, or spoken. But there it is, as bright as the morning star, re-ordering everything you know, think, feel, and are.

            We were talking about this the other day in my Asian philosophy class at Southwestern College. It’s bread and butter epistemological stuff – discussions on the nature of knowledge. What is it? How do we get it? How is knowledge different from opinion? What role does language, conceptual thought, and empirical evidence play in its transmission, acquisition, and verification?

            We’d begun the semester with a lively discussion of this question: What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? That took nearly a whole session. Then we dove into a study of Hinduism, Vedanta philosophy in particular, capping it off with a three and half week student-led seminar on the Bhagavad Gita, India’s most beloved wisdom text. Throughout this process we had to learn how to live every day with the fact that here, as in every other wisdom tradition, ultimate reality remains ineffable, that is, beyond words and concepts. And yet, as the Islamic prophet Muhammad said, it is nearer than the jugular vein.

            Then came Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Marks of Existence, Nirvana, Shunyata, Interdependent Origination, and all the rest, again having to confront and somehow make peace with the fact that Nirvana or enlightenment is a state of consciousness beyond conceptual grasping. In enlightenment one does not awaken into more accurate or more sophisticated concepts – awakening takes us instead to a field of awareness beyond concepts. Wisdom isn’t something you know, it’s something you are.           

The famous Zen story of the Flower Sermon sums it up best. One day the Buddha gathered his company together to give a dharma talk, as he often did. But on this day he simply held up a flower and didn’t say a word. Only one man, Kasyapa, indicated with his eyes that he understood what was being said. For Zen Buddhists, this is their origin story, the beginning of the wordless transmission outside the teachings and scriptures. What Buddha conveyed that day was far too vast for concepts and language.

This is why in Hinduism and Buddhism the teacher-student relationship is so important. The teacher does not and in fact cannot bestow wisdom onto the student because wisdom is not something anyone owns. It is not a thing, it is an event. The best teachers don’t teach, they co-create the conditions in which students can move more intimately into their own authentic nature. Wisdom arises in the spacious flow outside of thoughts and concepts, including the concept of the separate ego-self. The ego knows nothing of wisdom – it happens beyond the boundaries of that limited albeit useful construct. Therefore wisdom is not something you possess, just as you cannot possess the sunrise, or music, or love. In the depths of wisdom the separate self dissolves, or is transcended. As contemporary teacher Adyashanti puts it, “There are no enlightened persons. When enlightenment happens there is no one there to claim it.”

            In the Katha Upanishad this wisdom-transmission process is metaphorically called “spiritual osmosis.” In cellular biology, osmosis describes the transmission of the liquid substance within one cell through its semi-permeable membrane and through the semi-permeable membrane of another cell. This is how the substance of one cell literally becomes the substance of another cell. So too, when we spend time in the presence of powerful others, something of their wordless essence gets into us and changes us. We become ever so slightly more like them, and they like us.

            Maya Angelou sums it up beautifully, and let this be a message for every teacher agonizing over the latest fads in pedagogy. Maybe none of that matters. Maybe your students are simply waiting for you, the real you – the vulnerable, courageous, and loving you – to finally show up. To paraphrase Angelou: “People won’t remember what you said. They won’t remember what you did. But they will never forget the way you made them feel.”

            The other day in my Asian philosophy class, in the last two weeks of the semester, we were studying Daoism, the Chinese wisdom tradition that first found expression in Laozi’s immortal classic the Dao De Jing. No other tradition places ineffability so front and center. The Dao De Jing begins with this line: “The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.” Dao, the Ground of Being, is beyond all words and concepts. The concept of Dao taking shape in your mind is not the real Dao. That partial concept bears as much relationship to the real Dao as a map to a place, or a menu to food.

            But that does not mean that we can never experience it. In fact, we are it. And so is everything else. Our experience of Dao or Brahman or God is not achieved with cleverness or calculation. It is simply allowed.

            And this is when Julian Rios raised his hand. I could tell by the light in his eyes that he was getting this, all of this.

            “My friends and I were talking about this the other day,” he said. “We call it innerstanding.

            “Innerstanding?” I said.

            “Yes, innerstanding.”

            Julian grinned. The room shifted.

            “That is the greatest thing I have ever heard in my life,” I said. “I am so stealing that.”

            And we went on to have the most wonderful discussion about this mysterious mode of knowing that defies definition or categorization.

            The great Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi put it this way: “A fish trap is for catching fish. When the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten. A rabbit snare is for catching rabbits. When the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. Words are for capturing ideas. When the idea is caught, the words are forgotten. Where can I find someone who teaches without words? That’s who I want to study with.”

            Language and conceptual thought are the rafts that carry us across the river from the shore of ignorance to the shore of wisdom. But they are merely vehicles, and can never contain wisdom themselves.

            To understand something is to stand outside of it and see it clearly. To innerstand is to embody a wordless knowing that defies description, a knowing that transforms us body, mind, and soul. Understanding changes your mind. Innerstanding changes everything.

Why Travel Matters

If you think traveling is expensive, try staying home. It’ll cost you everything.

            Travel, on any budget, changes you. It destroys your old boundaries, resets your trajectories, and lets you loose in a world where anything is possible. You’re challenged, and you grow. You come home stronger, freer, happier, and more alive. Staying home binds you to a provincial way of seeing and being in the world. Home isn’t bad. In fact it’s pretty great. You’re right to love it. Yet only when you leave it to venture out into the wider world do you come to know its true value.           

The first thing that confronts you as you contemplate traveling is fear. What about all of the things that could go wrong? Can I really afford it? What if I get lost? What about the language barrier? Am I clever enough to navigate all the surprises? The thought of traveling triggers every single one of your feelings of inadequacy. Then you stop, take a breath, and realize that people have been traveling for tens of thousands of years – you are not the first and you are certainly not the last. The paths are well-worn. There are scores of strangers along the road who will help you. You’ve been fortifying your home security system so long you’ve forgotten that people are inherently generous and kind – you can count on that. I wonder what else you’ve forgotten.

            Once you commit, once you surrender to the journey, all of your fear is replaced with excitement and wonder. And there’s a life-lesson for you. Our suffering is mostly generated by our own mistaken thinking. Once you let go and say yes your misery lifts like a fog. All that’s left is a warn sun high in the sky lighting the open road before you.

            One of the greatest realizations gained from travel is the conviction that wherever you are, you are home. More than 95% of humanity lives outside the United States. Everywhere you go you are in someone’s hometown. Stop into a tavern. Feel the warmth of a neighborhood. See old friends strolling arm in arm. Walk through a farmer’s market. Hear piano music drifting out of an upstairs window. Feel the truth of Robert Louis Stevenson’s words pull into focus: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” Next thing you know, you’re lingering in a café long after the meal to swap stories with new friends and fellow travelers, your foreignness washing away with the wine. Then, walking back to your hotel in the twilight along the river it finally sinks in – I am as much at home here as I am in my own home. That’s when it overwhelms you, a feeling of oneness, of the deep interrelationship of all sentient beings, and of our primal rootedness in the earth. These realizations are hard to come by back home. But in a village halfway around the world, they come with your afternoon tea.

            Americans are timid world travelers, but we’re getting better. In 1990, only 3% of us had a passport. By 1997 that number had risen to 15%. Ten years later it climbed to 27%. And today, an astonishing 42% of Americans have a passport. We still lag far behind most other countries in per capita passports, but we’re not as provincial as we used to be. And sure, some of this is class related – international air travel is a costly privilege not available to everyone for purely economic reasons. But a few simple adjustments in most middle class family budgets could make international travel a reality. Once you make the decision that travel is a core value, you find ways to make it happen. It dawns on you – I’d rather spend my money on experiences than things.

            Lori and I are putting the finishing touches on our summer travel plans, a European river cruise with my two older brothers and their wives – the six of us on the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basil, Switzerland – a two week vacation when you add in the pre-cruise time in Amsterdam and post-cruise time in Lucerne. This trip has been two years in the making, and it’s not the kind of thing we can afford to do very often. But with our parents gone now we felt like it would be a fitting ritual to return to our ancestral homeland the Netherlands and spend some quality time slow-cruising up the Rhine with family. The benefits of river cruising are many. You unpack only once. Your room travels with you. Every day you wake up in a new town to explore. So you have the best of both worlds – the stability of consistent lodging, and the novelty of ever-changing surroundings. You and your travel party have ample opportunities for planned outings, communal meals, and alone time, as well as chance conversations over muesli in the morning or sunset drinks on the deck. And unlike ocean cruising with thousands of people to contend with, these river boats only hold 200 or so – far more cozy.

            If you add up the cost per day, counting air travel and everything, it’s a pretty scary number. But you cannot measure the value of a trip by a daily cost average. The fact is, when you go on a trip like this, every single day of the rest of your life is transformed. How do you count up that? There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about the glorious two weeks Lori and I spent in London and Paris last summer. Our lives are immeasurably enriched because of it. Not everything that counts can be counted.

            My relationship with the United States is changing. I’ll always love my homeland, but it hasn’t felt like home for a while. In some fundamental ways I don’t recognize her anymore. Her brutality and unconsciousness frighten me. More and more I see myself as a citizen of the world. Whenever I travel, I feel affirmed in the feeling that the very idea of nations is an increasingly outmoded idea, and that our deeper and truer allegiance ought to be to humanity as a whole, and for all sentient beings, and for the earth itself. The ugly squalor of nationalism is transcended by the weave of humanity that knows no borders. From a plane you can’t even see them. Travel does that to you – everything looks different from out there. Travel shatters your paradigms and reorients you into the wider cosmos. And that’s priceless.