Dear Sundari and James
For a few weeks I experience an impasse. A feeling of total loneliness, desperation struck me. I think it is a big vasana that triggered me. Well, I don’t, but at the same time it is a gift from Ishvara.
For years I did meditation in different traditions. In those years I got in touch with Zen after Tibetian Buddhism. There is a lot for sale in the spiritual marketplace. With Zen I was particularly interested in how to live a meaningfull life with the knowledge that I am. Except for zazen, I was caught up with the beautiful mystic phrases of the zenmasters. It appealed to me, maybe because they linked it with Christianity, my roots, and in particular mysticism and devotion to Maria.
The last six years I followed logic. I listen, read, and contemplate Vedanta (the Gita and Upanishads etc) on a daily basis. Meditation never went away. I just ‘completed’ the Bhagavad Gita for the fourth time. (First James, then Swami Dayanada HSC, again James and then Swami Tadatmananda). There was a wave of doubt. From the past. I ask myself where is the compassion in Vedanta? Is knowledge enough? Don’t I have to do something? Is it that ‘easy’? Don’t I have to work hard and be disciplined to ‘get it’? It is overwhelming. Is this my so-called spiritual ego? Is this a wake-up call to leave scripture and assimilate the teaching? Or did I take the wrong turn to Vedanta?
I know it is the jiva in me that wants know. So, I began searching again, reading again. Doing comparisons between Vedanta and Buddhism. It is fruitless. It is the battle between those two giants. The battle I don’t want to get involved with. But the jiva is running away with it. It drags me down the drain of my memory of all the books I read and all the teachers I spoke to. They yell at me like fishwives at the market. Do I have to turn back to Zen? Do I take refuge in the Buddha, join a Sangha and do sesshin. “Because that is always what you wanted,” says the voice in me. Friends say the same, you always wanted to do that. Why not? Go for it!
But what is it that I want to do? In my environment there is nobody that is interested in Vedanta. And when they are, they only want a quick fix. There is no sangha (except online). It is a lonely road. And I did take it very cognitive. Only knowledge can deal with the ignorance. But this is at the same time the problem. I know, but I don’t know. I can talk like a parrot repeating the knowledge from scripture. But knowledge isn’t moksha. It is a path to moksha. It is only mind, not heart, at least for me.
So after six years, here I am. Knowing less, doubting more. I can tell who I am, but when I tell it, it isn’t true, because not a single word, a single scripture can. It is only a finger pointing to the moon. Nothing gained, nothing lost. 30 years of meditation didn’t do it either. I know there is not a big lasting event, a satori. So why should I bother myself with Zen?
For now the only thing I can do is stay with it. Staying with the knowledge that I don’t know. In silence, without books, without scripture. All I can say is that I see the struggle of my mind that wants to know, but finally can’t know what it already knows. Somehow it opens up, but at the same time it is terrifying…
Do you have any further suggestions to deal with this impasse?
Hi Dave,
Well, your words say that your mind is an object, in which case it can’t be you, the ever-free Self, but if that were true you wouldn’t be so depressed. You are second guessing yourself, questioning whether or not all the effort you put into seeking was worth it and you seem to have come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time. At the same time, you say it is a gift.
It will be a gift if it causes you to let go of the idea that moksha can be gained by spiritual practice. It can’t because you are already free. The problem, however, is that you have misunderstood freedom as loneliness, which causes despair. Freedom is aloneness, not loneliness. When are there ever two yous? Or when is there anyone else that experiences your loneliness? Everyone is alone because there is only one of us. It is pointless to want reality to be different. it is ignorance. Accepting aloneness is freedom. It is knowledge.
So, you need to come to the conclusion that what you have been doing all these years is not the way to happiness and stop. Seeking is a bad habit, like smoking. Or, you can rightly conclude that you are not the person who has been doing all this stuff and let that person go. This is what we call karma yoga. When you quit identifying as a doer, you default to the only other option, the knower of the doer and its doings.
It is obvious that you are the witness of the doer because you have accurately reported its thoughts and feelings. The “weeks long” despair (tamas) is an accumulation of the results of frustrating (rajas) actions. These are normal feelings for someone who has pursued an unworkable path for a long time.
So, there are two solutions, both of which you need to accept. First, you need to accept the fact that you are free already. You have never been a doer. If you can take a stand as a finder, a free person, you will feel differently about yourself. The frustration and despair will leave. Seeking stops when you discover Vedanta. If it doesn’t, you haven’t accepted Vedanta’s central teaching; you are free.
And second, you need to find something to do that gives you joy apart from the understanding that you are free. If you do, your self love will return. Think back to the time when you weren’t consciously seeking, when you did simple things that made you happy and look at your circumstances now for the solution. It is present. What made you happy before won’t work now but what you need is always present in the form of a pleased Self and in the form of pleasing activities. Please yourself by doing something pleasing. More spiritual practice doesn’t work. As you say, nothing is going to happen to solve the problem for you.
Yes, following these suggestions is not easy because your self-confidence seems to have deserted you. But it will return if you just admit that you were barking up the wrong tree and let the whole seeker mind-set go. Yes, it’s difficult because somehow you have been perversely enjoying the suffering, but letting go of Dave is freedom by default, as I said above. All the best and
much love,
James
