Coming down the Mountain of Spirit we find that the ego has lost its grip on everything, including its own ability to manage itself. Sometimes, it is helpful to recognize this realization as “ego fully seen.” In stories like The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Wizard of Oz, both the emperor and the wizard are exposed for what they are. The Nondual traditions all emphasize the value of this exposure. Zen, Dzogchen, Taoism, Sufiism, Advaita Vedanta, Kabbalah and contemplative Christian practices show us that Spirit, Emptiness, Brahman, God, Big Self, Ein Sof, or the All is the condition of any and all states in which we find ourselves. This means that no matter where or how we might find our experience of being a self, we are still continually expressing the fullness of Spirit. We are, in other words, no longer a dualistic expression of “in here” versus “out there,” a “me” versus a “you,” or an “us” versus a “them.” No matter what state we’re in, whether it be the bliss of meditation or the pain of watching a loved one suffer, Spirit is expressing itself, and its Peace is offered to us continually as the timeless, singular, nondual flow of everything all at once.

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As man moves towards spiritual freedom, he moves also towards oneness.

—Aurobindo

Before a person studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are not waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

—Zen saying

Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise.

—The Lankavatara Sutra

From the enlightened perspective, “coming home” means that we begin to allow the expansive Ultimate Life to burst through the contraction of all of our circumstances. With each step and breath we bring back into the world the realization of fullness that exists beyond time and mind. But again, we don’t do it just to benefit ourselves. We do it for the benefit of all beings. If the Realization is authentic, we don’t have a choice about any of it. The inevitability of acting for the benefit of all beings occurs because we know that the subject and object dualism that we’d previously thought to be the whole story simply isn’t. In other words, the boundary that separates the me in here from the you out there loses its importance. Instead, the me in here offers itself only as all things, eternally and everywhere, in a spacious, fluid, forgiving, Awareness. Everyone we know and love, including ourselves, as well as everyone we might find difficult to tolerate, still exists and is recognizable, but our recognition that they are in no way separate from us begins to resonate and express itself in all that we do. When this Boundlessness brushes up against and then merges with our “boundaries,” compassionate activity works to serve everything and everyone.

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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

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.

—Yamada Roshi

When clarity and commitment create enough cracks in the walls of ego’s defenses, Spirit starts to shine through each of us as Enlightenment. Our practice becomes a simple, continual, and intentional study of our own small self, and through this work we begin to see how trivial the small self’s wants and needs actually are. Knowing this triviality first hand allows us to let go of our attachments to the entire system that our small self has established over time. In this Divine disaster, we begin to expand spiritually into an embodiment of being that is enlightened by all things. This confluence of the manifest with the Unmanifest, this merging of form and Emptiness, is our True Nature realizing itself through us as all things. And in this creative confluence of Spirit in the world, our Original Face wears an infinite smile.

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So why is it that so many seemingly enlightened masters get into so much trouble? If someone Awakens, we might imagine that he or she is beyond all of the bad stuff. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. I guess the answers to these and other questions about harmful choices made by teachers depend on what we mean by “enlightened.” On the one hand, if particular individuals no longer identify with anything other than the spaciousness of the present moment and they act from this space, then they might be considered enlightened by many people. After all, they can talk the talk and seduce the masses with the beautiful ways in which they reflect the sacred back toward everything and everyone. In order to accomplish this seduction, these “teachers” probably had an experience of a still and silent unity pointing out that there is no self, no body, no time, and no mind, but then they mistakenly chose to reconfigure this new perspective into some method of teaching reflective of a kind of personal attachment. Their insights into the nature of Emptiness may have been profound, but their integration of them into the world of form was only partial. This lack of integration is what gets the teachers, the teaching, and entire communities into trouble, and this problem always comes from a deluded view that sees itself as an embodiment of Truth.

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Choosing to become intimate with Awareness requires a constancy of both attention and intention. Neither the attention, nor the intention, is a fixed entity, and yet they can easily become attachments if we aren’t careful. On the other hand, if we don’t get hooked by them, they can be seen as manifestations of surrender supported by the ever-present Awareness of Spirit. This practice of being unhooked is exactly what keeps our vows from becoming rules that generate fundamentalist blindness. Allowing this free-flowing dance of ever-present Awareness to guide our choices radically diminishes the strength of ego’s grip on our responses to life.

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I’ve mentioned that I began my meditation practice asking teachers if there might be a shortcut to any of this work. The answers I got all came down to what I’ve so often repeated in these pages: simply practice a deep surrender into stillness and then let your activity consciously arise from this place. The thing in me that wanted the shortcut is the thing in all of us that wants to manage the experience of Awakening. No matter how great our teacher, how extensive our reading list, or how supportive our spiritual friends, no one can do any of this work for us. This means that we must orient all of our choices around the generous intention of letting go of everything, including whatever spiritual flavor we like the most. This takes courage, fortitude, and discipline.

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Grapes want to turn into wine.

—Rumi

When making your choice in life, don’t neglect to live.

—Samuel Johnson

When we begin to commit ourselves to integrating the teaching into our lives, we become clearer about how we can consciously choose the ways in which to meet each situation we face. For example, we know that our preoccupation with satisfying the needs of the small self only leads us into trouble. We begin to see that anything in our experience that we can recognize as personal must be tied directly to the satisfaction of ego. This helps us to realign our lives in ways that are deeply impersonal, and as a result, all the life that we begin to touch becomes imbued with the expansiveness of Spirit.

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It took me years to commit formally to a practice. Something about me just thought that the whole idea of taking vows and committing to a way of living was merely window dressing to mask the seriousness of one’s practice. So I chose to sample a bit here, a bit there, read a little of this and a little of that, thus gaining vast amounts of experiential square footage. I had traveled to where the ancients had taught and sat with masters in different cultures and countries, but I hadn’t formally taken on the vows. It got to the point where people around the Zen Center were surprised to learn that I had not gone through the precept ceremony. I laughed it off and made some comment about how I simply was too much of a renegade to settle into the dogma of any tradition.

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