When the Buddha is gone, look to the Dharma as your teacher. Make the practice your teacher. The Dharma and the Sangha will be your teacher.

—The Buddha

Do not shout thy prayer publicly, nor yet speak it low in secret, but seek between these a middle way.

—The Koran

I will now close my eyes, I will stop my ears, I will turn away my senses from their objects, I will even efface from my consciousness all the images of corporeal things; or at least, because this can hardly be accomplished, I will consider them as empty and false; and thus, holding converse only with myself, and closely examining my nature, I will endeavor to obtain by degrees a more intimate and familiar knowledge of myself.

—Rene Descartes

When we begin to integrate wisdom with compassionate activity in conscious ways, we practice. Usually we assume that our spiritual practices need to happen only on our meditation cushion, or in our church or synagogue, or on our prayer rug. While all of these circumstances can help support an opening to the view atop the Mountain of Spirit, limiting our spiritual connection to the forms and ceremonies of the Path diminishes our connection with the Empty, Spirit-infused reality that is our whole life. On the other hand, if we can see that Spirit is always already here with us and everything else all the time and that we are never separate from any of it, then our entire life can become a deliberate manifestation of Spirit. As we do this, we come to realize that Spirit is never only “out there,” listening or talking to us from a place separate from us. Instead, we must uncover within ourselves the Knowing that Spirit is exactly what is both listening and doing the talking as us, as this very moment. In other words, there is nothing that is not Spirit in action. If we operate, therefore, in a way that puts Spirit or any of its divine grace outside any part of our experience, we will forever limit ourselves to lives of separation. This is the ego’s realm, oriented perpetually from its erroneously perceived sense of lack. Living from this place of lack can only work to inhibit the full experience and expression of the freedom that Spirit always delivers us in infinite abundance.

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Communicating either with those not familiar with the Path or with those who reject it outright can be challenging. Unconsciousness is just about the most contagious ailment that humans carry, but Awakening doesn’t depend on another’s ability to share each step with us along the Path. Rather, Awakening can only ever depend on our ability to relate to our own experiences, regardless of who is involved or in what state they might be. Sometimes, the challenge of another’s unconsciousness is exactly what our practice needs in order to keep us on our toes. Meeting up with another’s contracted self is a great opportunity for us to actively practice openness. We do this like we would with any circumstance: we meet and communicate without greed or aversion from a place of total relaxation. This meeting and communication offers whomever or whatever we encounter both our full presence and the spontaneous compassion that comes with it. But as this encounter is going on, we need to be aware of the intention behind our communication. Are we really trying to hear the other person, or are we trying to manipulate him into changing something about himself? Are we really trying to see the other person as he is, or are we trying to get something from him? If there is any move on our part to achieve a particular outcome from our meeting, our words and actions become reflections of resistance, and we miss the opportunity to Awaken with the other person.

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Whenever relationships are discussed in the context of spiritual practice, most of the questions concern unhealthy attachment. Whether we are conscious of it or not, dysfunction continually offers the ego a place to hide. For example, the ego would much rather attach itself to the known quantity of bad relationships than deal with the unknown aspects of healthy ones. Healthy relationships built on compassion require profound surrender, and surrender is something that the ego will do anything to avoid. The small self simply wants to be in charge of everything and everybody for all time. Surrender is the opposite of this impulse. But healthy relationships require space on the dance floor where absolute familiarity is jettisoned for a never-ending exploration of what is completely unfamiliar. Ego will resist this lack of control and begin to act from its typically defensive position. Threats to its control generate resistance, and activity that arises from resistance to what is will both inflict and perpetuate pain. Once pain arises the ego will start to move in any way that it can so as to evade, or worse, sabotage the experience.

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Among the richest areas for practice is relationship. Many of us, whether we are in a committed relationship or not, tend to have our connections with people inform most if not all of what we do. Romantic relationships, work relationships, as well as friendships and family relationships, can pull us from a Big Self expanse back into a small self contraction with amazing speed. They can also open us in the other direction if we know how to let them help us evolve into deeper levels of consciousness.

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Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions; they have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.

—Eihei Dogen

Too often, people think that solving the world’s problems is based on conquering the earth rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

—Chogyam Trungpa

By showing grace to you, by my own power, I have revealed to you my highest form.

—Bhagavad Gita

If we source our sense of being from the Witness instead of the ego, our action as well as our orientation in the world changes. This change occurs largely because our surrender to what is offers each of us a profound clarity in any circumstance we might find ourselves. This clarity works to connect us to our Ultimate Life, and in the process we become much less attached to our contracted sense of self. This flowering of deep openness allows us to see something profound. Openness to the Oneness of Spirit supports our recognition that the many is also equally representative of Spirit. Compassion is truly seeing that the multiplicity of Spirit is reflected in each and every thing in the Universe.

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At some point on the Path, we find that we are in an unsettling place where our minds begin to realize that they don’t have the capacity to take us any further. It’s as if the small self has been busy extending a board over the side of the ship of consciousness, but at some critical point the small self suddenly recognizes that it is the one who must walk this plank. This realization is devastating to the small self, and yet the reality of deep spiritual work is that Awakening to what is forever beyond the small self can’t be understood by the small self. Stillness helps us have the experience that points us directly toward this Knowing. This Knowing is an infinite opening of wisdom rather than a contracted compartmentalization of intellect. It’s not a conceptual understanding, but instead a readiness for the spiritual bloom that comes from a radically different relationship to our conventional circumstances. Unfortunately for many of us who are deeply interested in the intellectual aspects of spiritual work, Knowing this flowering blossom has nothing to do with an intellectual or mental connection to anything. Rather, this precious bloom has to do with letting go of everything even remotely related to the mind.

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In tonight’s talk, Michael talks about how our everyday mind points us toward Awakening. Putting ourselves into an alert space means that we can’t allow ourselves to simply become numb to life. Nor can we indulge our stories or the negativity that arises in our normal circumstances. In fact as we fully meet our lives and allow for anything to arise, we can open to what is True beyond our own stories. Looking at the challenges of our practices and our day-to-day lives allows us to get into a space where we can see our negativity. At the seeing of our negativity, we can disidentify from it. This disidentification is our Freedom from suffering.

When the Eighth Sense reveals itself from the tenderness of the Ninth Sense, we give our experience over to what we might call a “conscious awareness.” We have previously called this Knowing. Using the capital “K” implies that it is an unattached version of recognition, far different from the regular, attached, egoic, lower case “k” knowing that categorizes, compartmentalizes, and evaluates our experiences. Knowing is consciously sourced from the Ninth Sense, and the Witness is nothing other than an unattached Knower. The “attached knower,” on the other hand, may simply be seen as the ego. So while the Witness and the ego are not separate, it’s critical to recognize that they are not the same. Because the Witness can observe the activity of ego, it is always beyond ego’s limitations and actions.

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