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Question of the Month  I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes. - Leonard Bernstein Once a month, Dean responds to a question on meditation, awareness practice, spiritual books and concepts, or any other topic related to the attempt to live a more enlightened life. Please submit your question to deansluyter@gmail.com with "Question of the Month" in the Subject line. THINKING & IDENTIFYING (JULY 09) |
QUESTION:
I have heard you say, like other teachers with a nondual orientation, that there is never a need to remove thoughts, that thoughts are no obstacle to meditation or realization. But I've also heard you speak of identification as the root of suffering. Isn't identification nothing but a thought? So isn't this a contradiction?
You're right. Identification is indeed nothing but a thought -- specifically, the thought that one is some sort of limited being. It's the mistaken identification of awareness, which is pure subject, the limitless capacity for experience, with some object of experience such as the heap of sense impressions we call the body or the heap of thoughts we call the mind or the heap of behavioral patterns we call the personality. All of those are experienced and not the experiencer. All of these also have qualities and characteristics that don't match "better" qualities and characteristics we can imagine (bigger chest? smaller nose? cooler attitude?) and hence are "imperfect." All of these are also impermanent, hence doomed. Consequently, as long as we identify, a constant background of anxiety and grief necessarily underlies every moment of our lives. So cutting through identification is the crux of liberation.
Thus we could say that while identification is just a thought, it's a special thought -- the fundamental mistaken thought that gives rise to an (almost!) endless tangle of further mistaken thoughts. The classic metaphor is that it's like walking though your garden at dusk, seeing a piece of rope on the ground in the uncertain light, and mistaking it for a snake. This gives rise to a multitude of anxious and eventually exhausting thoughts. Is the snake poisonous? Should I run for my life? Who should I call for help? Where did I pack my snakebite kit? In the same way, we spend our lives devising strategies to combat threats to (and from) a "self" that has no substantial existence in the first place.
And yet, as you've pointed out, it's just a thought. And you're right that the mere presence of a thought is no problem. In fact, the effort to eliminate thoughts, which so many people equate with meditative practice, is yet another exhausting, futile enterprise. Nondual meditative practice is the discovery that just being present with whatever is being experienced right now is complete freedom. Thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds (I'm writing this is an exceptionally noisy airport terminal) -- whatever arises, just rest in awareness as it is. Rest as awareness, within which all experiences arise and subside on their own, with no "self" needed (or able) to direct traffic.
The difference is that we no longer buy into that thought of identification. Let's say that the rope remains in the garden. Every time we see it, we might think again "Snake?" or "Man, that really does look like a snake," but we're never again going to believe it's a snake. So we can relax, enjoy the garden, and not spend our lives frantically dialing 911.