Our Beliefs and Concepts are the Greatest Obstacles to Awakening
Whether you believe there’s an eternal Soul (Atman) or you believe that there’s no soul or no self (Anatman or Anatta), those beliefs are actually obstacles to realizing your true nature. For a person who holds on to such a belief there is a conditioned knowing.
Samadhi will remain elusive until identification with the belief is dropped. The ancient traditions called such conditioned mental patterns Sankaras in Pali or Samskaras in Sanskrit. The concept, if we’re holding on to it, if we’re adding it to our self structure, becomes a limitation; an entrapment for inner energies perpetuating an illusion of knowing and it prevents us from engaging in the actual investigation that would lead to the direct contact with the mystery of existence.
One of the greatest divides between spiritual systems is between those that believe in the existence of a Soul and those that don’t. Half of the spiritual masters use words like Soul or Atman, and half talk about emptiness and no soul, Anatman, anatta or No-Self. The confusion and split between religions and teachings stems from the fact that language is inherently dualistic. We do not have language for describing nonduality. These difficulties were around since the time of the Buddha, 2500 years ago.
Many people are surprised when they discover that the Buddha never said that there is no self, and that he actually admonished those teachers who taught that there is no self: “Those who teach only no-self do not become free.”
There’s a story about a wanderer who directly asked the Buddha whether or not there is a self or a soul. The Buddha’s answer was silence. He knew if he answered yes or no, he would mislead.
We have forgotten this most important lesson. We have turned Soul into a concept, into a subject for theology class. We’ve turned words like self or no-self or God into concepts, rather than allowing them to be revealed through Sadhana, through direct realization of Samadhi and Prajna.
In his later teachings, the Buddha actually spoke about an innermost essence, a Self or Soul which knows of no change and no death. He called it by various names; the True Self or the True Soul, the Buddha Dhatu or the Buddha Principle or the Tathagata-garbha, the embryonic Buddha nature latent within us. He described hidden treasury present in all sentient beings. He says of this Self it is not true to say that all phenomena are devoid of self. The Self is reality, the Self is eternal, the Self is virtue, the Self is everlasting, the Self is stable, the Self is peace. No death can touch it, no harm can befall it, no unhappiness can blight it. It is as indestructible and radiant as a diamond.
To some people this may sound monistic, but he’s pointing entirely beyond monism and dualism, or any ‘ism’, beyond the limited mind’s conceptual frameworks. He’s pointing to the realm of Nirvana, the cessation of Vana, of Vikalpa, of kleshas, Vasanas or Karma. The cessation of unconscious patterns, which bring about the limited sense of ‘I’, and it’s the cessation of the attendant suffering.
The Buddha said the Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death. The truth of our true nature is beyond the duality of the mind. It is beyond perception and non-perception. The Buddha points to a radical nonduality, beyond concepts of Self and No Self. It is this limited mind that creates the illusion of division and separation, birth and death, existence and non-existence.
As the Zen master Dogen said, to realize it we learn to meditate, which is to drop off mind and body. The path to Liberation is to awaken beyond the mind level. The idea that there is No Self, is often conflated and confused with the Buddhist term Anatta, which is not meant to be conceptual, but is a direct insight that comes through meditation.
In Buddhism, there are said to be three great insights or three marks of existence, which are realized experientially through meditation, and are not meant to be philosophical or intellectual discussion points. They are experienced through a stripping away, or cessation of levels of mind. There’s the realization of Anicca which is impermanence, the realization that everything is arising and passing away. There’s the realization of Anatta, that everything within the field of changing phenomena, is empty of self. And there’s Dukkha, the realization that the self structure is made of patterns of craving an aversion. It is a pattern of constant unsatisfactoriness.
Through deep meditation and self- inquiry, which at a certain point are one and the same, we can come to make the unconscious mind processes conscious, and only then can we drop them. If they are unconscious they keep repeating in the unconscious. The ancient practice that follows the Perennial Teaching, requires us to stop reacting to our preferences, to stop fueling the patterns of craving and aversion. To let all phenomena arise and pass away, without discriminating this or that. Everything within the field of change is Anicca, impermanence. And we observe this impermanence, we penetrate and permeate this field of changing phenomena with with our Consciousness.
Consciousness is the one thing that does not change, does not come and go. Consciousness is not a thing, and yet it is not nothing. Through meditation, Consciousness and the field of changing phenomena unite and become one in Samadhi, revealing your true Eternal Nature beyond duality, beyond thing and no-thing.
To this day some teachers still proclaim No-Self as the highest truth about selfhood, and ironically it becomes the bedrock of their conditioned belief structure. The idea of No-Self can become a sacred cow, tied to a spiritual persona with which one is identified. Spiritual bypassing is when you get caught in the idea of the Transcendent. It’s a way of avoiding what is sometimes called the Shadow Work, which is becoming free of Samskaras, or condition patterns that unconsciously rule one’s life.
To release Samskaras, we have to have a complete experience of the sensations, feelings and emotions that come up moment by moment, remaining equanimous and inwardly surrendered. We can train ourselves to become present, open and equanimous through meditation. But it also must be applied to life. The more work we do on the cushion, the more feelings will come up in life, the more we will feel life. And we have to allow ourselves to feel life.
To not turn away from anything that is arising, it requires being brutally honest with oneself. To observe how we desperately avoid the feelings that are unpleasant, or how persistently we will cling to the familiarity of patterns. How we defend the ego. How we make ourselves appear right, or always in a good light. How we distract ourselves from discomfort. How we’re constantly feeding the mind all sorts of entertainment, to avoid that deep communion with the present moment.
It’s possible to be playing out our Karma, stuck in archetypes, and hopelessly trapped in pattern, all the while proclaiming that there’s No-Self. Disconnected from the heart, while the ego remains in charge, certain that it’s right in its world view. If the ego construct thinks it knows the truth of who and what you are, then the deeper exploration stops. Your meditation or self- inquiry will become robotic.
The moment you express who or what you are in words, and believe or identify with what you said, is the moment you’ve become ensnared once again in the dualistic mind. We may start talking about Awakening as if we know, but it has become a memory, a pattern of conditioned thought, added to the self structure.
We might have a genuine Samadhi experience, an Awakening to our true nature, but in most cases the mind will come back online, and the ego will craft language around the experience. Make a story out of it, take ownership of it and before we know it, it has appropriated our insight into our true nature.
To stabilize and integrate Samadhi, requires countless Awakenings, countless humbling of the Mind, countless little deaths. It requires a steady sadhana, a continuous practice and vigilance, to watch the Mind day in and day out, constantly freeing the inner energy so that the inner Lotus will grow, and a rewiring process unfolds.
A beginner mind a not knowing mind, a mirror mind, its the very essence of meditation and self-inquiry, and it is the path to knowing oneself. To be here, in this moment without the mediation of past conditioning, is to be awake. If you are not experiencing through the filter of past memory, then there is a newness to each moment.
The Christian equivalent to this is found in the Bible quote which says: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
