[The following is an edited transcript from a recent exchange I had with a student in one of my pragmatic dharma classes online. I'm posting it here because it brings together several main themes that keep cropping up in how I'm teaching, which I find very important in approaching meditation practice from a pragmatic perspective.]
Mike: What would be the difference between Choiceless Awareness and someone just sitting down, not thinking or doing anything at all? When I was doing this practice, I got the sense that it’s just noticing that you’re noticing. For all of us, probably, the presence or awareness, it comes and goes.
Vincent: Yeah. Basically, someone who hasn’t trained their mind at all, they may be able to naturally sit and notice that they’re aware, and notice what you’re describing, of presence and awareness coming and then going. But it’s harder because people usually don’t have a firm grounding in presence and the perspective of presence to begin with. And so just sitting means daydreaming or being completely lost in conceptions. At least that’s the experience that most people have when they start to meditate.
But I think what you’re pointing to about presence and awareness coming and going is really profound. Because there’s usually the sense or feeling of there being a gap between being present and not being present, and what we try to do is close the gap by maintaining presence. And with choiceless awareness we’re not forcing ourselves to do that. We’re actually letting ourselves be whatever we are. I think there’s something profound in that because it’s pointing to not needing to find a solid, stable ground either in presence or in non-presence. That somehow there’s something profound or very important about the expansion and contraction of attention itself.
There’s something that happens with people when we let that process of expansion and contraction happen on it’s own without trying to manipulate it at all. We don’t feel bad that we’re not present and we don’t get excited and pat ourselves on the back when we are present. Instead we just let it happen. And in letting it happen the ground for deep awakening really gets cultivated because then we’re not clinging to either side.
Does that description resonate with you?
Mike: Yeah. Just sort of your natural process takes over and you’re not getting in the way of that I guess.
Vincent: Yeah. And there’s something about choiceless awareness where it undercuts this very subtle identification we often have as “the meditator.” Thinking that I’m the one meditating. I’m the doer. I’m the meditator. That can become a subtle clinging or identification that we don’t see, especially if we’ve been doing a lot to practices that have to do with actively doing something or trying to cultivate a particular state. This can hide a very subtle sense that I’m the meditator. I’m the doing this thing.
Mike: And maybe due to someone’s past practice you kind of develop an ability to really recognize what’s happening more. And so if you have that background then maybe coming to this type of practice, of choiceless awareness, you’re not getting lost so much. You can track things better.
Vincent: Yeah, I think that’s why it’s typically taught as a more advanced practice, for instance with Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Although it’s not always the case, because in the Soto Zen tradition the practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting,” is the initial practice often times. Sometimes they do breath meditation, but a lot of teachers teach the beginner to “just sit.” They don’t give you any instructions, besides perhaps to focus on your posture, make sure you’re upright, and that’s it.
So, it’s a little easier to do the choiceless awareness when there’s already some habit of being able to be present. You can see that too if you look at the four stages of insight. The first stage is about being prepared, preparing to practice which means starting to become aware of the distinction between being present and not being present. But then the capacity for presence starts to take on a life of its own and that’s what we call the second state of insight. And then at certain point we start clinging to presence and thinking if we’re going to find awakening on that side of the coin.
What happens then is that we’re presented with not being able to be present so easily anymore. And this is what we called the third stage of insight, or the dark night. We start to see that everything is arising and passing of its own accord including presence, including the ability to be aware of a particular object. That the subject itself is arising and passing.
At that point, there’s an opportunity to let go and surrender. And once that has happened there’s a kind of groundless surrendering, an open surrendering, and a deep equanimity that starts to emerge wherein we’re okay with the fact that both subject and object are arising and passing of their own accord. There’s nothing we can do to try to put ourselves anywhere in particular to try to make experience be a particular way. That’s the fourth stage of insight, which we sometimes call equanimity. From that place is where the unconditioned, the unborn, impersonal dimension can shine forth. Sudden awakening can happen because we’re not trying to manipulate experience, and so it reveals itself by itself. So in some way that’s how I think of it in terms of a progressive model, which can start to integrate the sudden and gradual perspectives.
Mike: Yeah. That is really really good. I really like that description. That kind of feels like it has rounded things out more. When I read the progress of insight it’s just sort of black and white. But that kind of made it come alive for me more. Yeah. Thank you.
Vincent: Yeah. Good. That’s the way I’ve been looking at it more and more. This description feels more organic to me. And it feels like it’s describing this fundamental process that seems to happen as we let go, first getting clear, practicing presence, and then letting go. Truly profound. And then that seems to happen at deeper and deeper levels of our being.
So going through those stages one time we call that stream entry, or initial awakening, but then going through it over and over at deeper and deeper levels is the kind of ongoing, continuing, polishing of the crystal of awakening.
In a certain sense the unconstructed, what we might call nirvana—the moment of seeing nirvana is like seeing the nature of the crystal itself. We’re seeing what the crystal is. It’s nature. It’s crystalness. And then we can see from every facet of the crystal–because the cycles of insight are a turning of the crystal, where each facet actually reveals the crystalness, but it reveals it from a different perspective or angle. It reveals from a perspective of compassion or stillness or suffering or letting go and so on.
It keeps moving and the opportunity of awakening for me has to do with the fullness of it. The bringing together of the sudden and gradual, of the nature of the crystal and the various dimensions or facets of it, is really an opportunity to see that to fully embody awakening from all these different perspective is our practice. Junpo Roshi talks about ceaseless practice. It’s ceaseless because it’s never done. There’s always a deeper level of wisdom or maturity that can be unfolded in that process. But the crystal doesn’t change. The nature of reality is always the same.
Mike: Yeah. That’s a great model. There is never an ending. You just keep learning.
Vincent: Yeah. There’s never an ending with revealing the depth of awakening. But awakening itself is never beginning and never ending. It’s always what it is. So in that sense there is an ending and at the same time there’s no ending.
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