What is the great way sages use to become sages? It’s the spiritual path. It’s helpful to have an overview of it.

Two preliminary points are critical.

First, it has nothing to do with any particular set of beliefs, with any specific religious creed. Since I practice zen, I’ll use terminology familiar to Buddhism, but that’s only an accident. If you are more comfortable using other words or concepts, just replace mine with yours.

Second, I don’t know what I’m talking about in this post! I almost always try to discuss only topics that I understand or, at least, think that I understand. On this occasion, however, I’m relying largely on the understanding of others.

I feel like a blind, cave-dwelling salamander about to talk about sunshine!

I am not a sage. A sage is someone who is wise and lives well. A sage is a buddha, in other words, someone who is awake (enlightened).

The goal of the great way is to become a sage. Becoming a sage, realizing one’s inherent Buddha nature, is its purpose or destination. Kusan Sunim: “The purpose of practicing Zen meditation is to awaken . . .” Since awakening itself can be greatly increased, following the spiritual path is a lifetime quest. Zen Master Dogen: “Practicing Zen, studying the way, is the great matter of a lifetime.”

Why, then, should I attempt to discuss the stages of the great way?

Without some destination, it’s impossible to get started. All that is necessary is a vague understanding of where to go and, sometimes, even a misunderstood destination is sufficient.  Most people have a very poor understanding of these stages.

The purpose of this post is to encourage you to get started.

It is not to attempt to provide a perfect map. In fact, there is no such map. Just as there are many ways to reach the top of a mountain, the great way is not one way but many.

The first stage of the great way is the commitment to begin. The first turning of the dharma wheel begins with the decision to start the journey. One vows with wholehearted determination to master a spiritual practice.

Although you will naturally begin with the idea of gaining something for yourself or others, this is a mistake. Dogen: “Proceed with the mind which neither grasps nor rejects, the mind unconcerned with name or gain.” Don’t worry: as your egocentric desires burn away, his advice here will eventually make sense.

The second stage of the great way is to begin practicing. There are many different spiritual or breathing practices. There’s no one practice that works for everyone. It’s not even necessary to begin doing one practice perfectly: just pick one, start, and correct mistakes as you proceed.

Living well is a skill to be mastered. It is not a theory or set of beliefs. Mastery comes from practicing [see my The 7 Steps to Mastery].

It’s sometimes difficult to find a suitable practice, which will be one that quickly enables you to feel “at home” when doing it. I suggest a simple stilling meditation such as zazen rather than any kind of moving meditation.

Zazen is simple and so easy to learn that anyone can do it. Mastering it, however, is very difficult, which makes it like all other legitimate spiritual practices.

My own practice is a koan practice in which the practitioner inquires nonconceptually into the nature of the koan. Thoughts, particularly of past and future, eventually begin to drop away. The task is simply to sit still and investigate the heart (nub, hwadu) of the koan.

The task is to press beyond all pain, dissatisfaction, and conceptualizing as well as to keep meditating in the midst of activity.

The goal is complete identification with the koan.

[From here on I’m only making educated guesses.]

The third stage of the great way is experiencing no-thought that comes from practicing.

No-thought is simply awake, alert, thoughtless awareness. It is a break from our normal addiction to compulsive thinking.

There are different ways to experience no-thought, and it would be surprising if you yourself have never experienced it. If you have ever felt “it” happening when you played a musical instrument or perfectly executed some athletic skill, for example, you have experienced it. For six alternatives, click here.

It’s joyful, selfless (without self consciousness), and very satisfying.

A problem is that, when experienced outside a spiritual practice, it’s not transferrable. It’s wonderful when it happens frequently when you are, say, playing the piano, but it is useless at all other times.

When experienced during zazen, Dogen writes: “your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away,” in other words, all thoughts of body and mind fall away.

The fourth stage of the great way is, to use the traditional Sanskrit word, samadhi. It involves not only one-pointedness of mind, but also focused concentration that is not only intense but effortless.

Zen Master Hakuin says at this stage the practitioner “will transcend the emotions and sentiments of ordinary life. His heart will be filled with an extraordinary purity and clarity, as though he were standing on a sheet of ice stretching for thousands of miles.”

This is not yet awakening, but it is the prelude to awakening.

The fifth stage of the great way is awakening. This is the great tipping point. Here, finally, is the experience that Hakuin calls “the great ecstasy of joy.”

Unity cannot be thought by the bifurcating intellect. Awakening is direct apprehension of the truth, as Yasutani-Roshi puts it, “that the world is one interdependent Whole and that each separate one of us is that Whole.”

That, though, is just a thought. As Master Mumon famously says, what really happens is that “all of a sudden an explosive conversion will occur, and you will astonish the heavens and shake the earth.”

This explosion is the direct experience of Being, which means freedom from Becoming. Since concepts, thoughts, regularities, and so on are all forms, they cannot be used to understand Being, which is formless.

The mind is turned inside out. Everything changes, yet nothing changes. Instead of being trapped in Becoming, Becoming is experienced from Being.

Zen Master Sengcan writes, “This ultimate finality . . . can’t be described.”

He does add, though, some of what it is not. When the mind is one with the great way, “all ego-centered strivings cease; / doubts and confusion disappear.” It is a domain beyond all thought and feeling. It is beyond all discriminations, especially beyond the self/other distinction.

It is the initial unbinding of the three critical fetters of infatuation, greed, and delusion.

The sixth stage of the great way is breaking through the defilements (fetters) that obstruct fully enlightened existence. Eventually, Becoming is always experienced from Being.

There are four major stages along the supramundane path that result in the elimination of all defilements. The disciple becomes a stream-enterer, a once-returner, a nonreturner, and, ultimately, an arahant (fully enlightened sage).

It is realizing Being more and more fully. It is a more complete fulfillment of our purpose. There is increasing joy as the last vestiges of ego delusion disappear.

The horizontal axis of time (Becoming) completely collapses into the vertical axis of timeless Being (eternity).

The Buddha presented himself humbly as the guide to nirvana, as one who shows the way. According to him, “there is . . . a delight apart from sensual pleasures, apart from unwholesome states, which surpasses even divine bliss. Since I take delight in that, I do not envy what is inferior, nor do I delight therein. . . I abide . . . with a mind inwardly at peace.” [Madandiya Sutta]

Finally, there is his stock description of a sage as “one with taints destroyed, who has lived the holy life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached his own goal, destroyed the fetters of being, and is completely liberated through final knowledge.”

Should you consider becoming what used to be called a contemplative?

What is it?  Might it be a worthwhile option for you?

What it’s not is a thinker.  Our ability to think and solve problems is one of our greatest abilities.  Learning how to think well is a valuable skill.  Even though it’s natural to say that thinkers, when they are thinking, are contemplating, let’s avoid mixing the two notions.

A contemplative is not necessarily a thinker.  Nobody these days is a thinker who does not spend a lot of time reading, writing, and, usually, discussing.  Even solitary thinkers do a lot of reading and writing in addition to thinking.

By way of contrast, a contemplative need not even be literate!  They can certainly be poor or unsophisticated thinkers.  So what is it that they do?

Contemplatives focus on bringing Being into all their acts.

That’s it!  That’s what distinguishes contemplatives.

They don’t necessarily do anything special or extraordinary.  They may live alone or in groups.  Judged by what they do, there is nothing out of the ordinary about them.

It’s how they do what they do that makes them very special.  They bring a very high level of awareness into their actions.

They spend their lives attempting to open Becoming to Being.  Since joy comes from Being, they focus on generating joy from the way they perform their daily activities.

Consider, for example, walking down a hall.  When those of us who don’t usually pay attention walk down a hall, we almost always are lost in thought.  If we aren’t thinking of what will happen when we get to our destination, we are thinking about something else we regard as more important than just our walking.

[I have discussed this in the post on mini-meditation and in the post on body-practice, which are also here in the spiritual well-being category.]

We may or may not achieve our goals.  Often we do.  As soon as we do, we are off in thought to the next goal.

All goals are thoughts.  They are imaginings of a nonexistent future.  They are important because, without them, we wouldn’t know what to do.

However, if we do whatever it is we are doing while focusing on the goal or purpose of what we are doing, we get the how wrong.  Why?

Suffering comes from separation.  If I am walking while I am focused on something other than walking, I am split.  My thoughts are split from my actions.  Such splits generate dissatisfaction (suffering, not being at ease).

On the other hand, if my thoughts and actions are unified, there’s no split and, so, no suffering.  There’s no room for dissatisfaction or dissonance.

Normally, of course, walking down a hall does not generate much dissatisfaction.  However, doing most of what I do mindlessly, without paying attention, generates a lot of dissatisfaction.  It creates habits that create an enormous amount of suffering for myself and others.

Contemplatives get this.

They usually don’t generate dissatisfaction by their actions because they spend life trying to pay attention.  Instead of frequently being elsewhere, lost in thought, they are typically fully aware of what is happening right here right now.

That awareness opens their actions to being (infuses their acts with Being), which is the source of abiding joy (bliss, beatitude).

As Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth:  “Their purpose is to do everything in a sacred manner.”

Contemplatives are all about joy.  They specialize in living joyfully.  Living that way, getting the how right, brings benefits to others as well as to themselves.

Contemplatives spend their lives attempting to be right here right now.

Judged by what they do, they are usually thought failures.  Judged by how they do what they do, they are successes.

You may initially find it strange to think that walking down a hallway, raking leaves, washing dishes, preparing a meal, or cleaning a room can be done in a sacred manner.  The stranger you find it, the more likely it is that you are out of touch with how to act well.

It’s simple to find out for yourself whether or not contemplatives are onto something important.  Simply test their way of life for yourself by focusing on whatever you do as you go through the day.

If you actually try it (as opposed to just thinking about it), you’ll quickly find that spiritual exercise very difficult!  Your ego will keep pulling you back into compulsive thinking.  You won’t be able to do it very well at all.

No matter:  just keep trying even if you keep failing.  If you do, eventually, little by little, you may begin to pay attention to life as it is right here right now.

You may think that’s too superficial, that it’s only the what of our acts that is valuable.  Not so!

You may be able to force the what to achieve whatever you desire to achieve.  That may be your pattern in life.  You may automatically act on the false belief that joy comes from the content of the act itself.

If that is your pattern, you may already have discovered for yourself that what you are incessantly doing is creating more dissatisfaction for yourself and those around you.

As soon as you notice that, why not break the pattern by emulating contemplatives?  Start paying much more attention to Being.

If you do, you will discover that it’s false that joy comes from the content of our acts; rather, joy comes from Being that flows through our acts.

It’s getting the how right, it’s emulating contemplatives, that makes all the difference.

Who wouldn’t like more joy (bliss, beatitude)?

There’s plenty to go around; it’s not in short supply. It’s abundant.

Furthermore, it’s not only possible but even simple to help yourself to as much as you want!

Since all bliss comes from Being, it is available right here right now.

Taking my word for anything, especially anything important, is not a good idea. I’m not a sage.

It is, though, a good idea to consider taking the word of a sage. I don’t recommend assuming that everything every sage ever said is correct. However, if you believe that living well or wisely is possible, that some have done it, and that you may know who they are, then why not at least take seriously what they say?

Jesus, for example, is considered a sage, a spiritual teacher. According to Luke 17:21, he said that heaven is available right here right now.

What always struck me as odd is that, though I pointed that out year after year to my undergraduate students, they never seemed to take it seriously. It’s as if they thought “Impossible!” and let go of that idea as soon as they heard it.

Yet Jesus was right.

Why is it so hard to believe?

I’m not sure, but it may be because we spend so much time being dissatisfied that it seems wildly improbable that there could be another way. After all, how many people do you know who lead lives filled with joy? Probably very few.

That, though, just shows that sages are few and far between — and that may be only because few of us listen seriously listen to them!

There’s another problem, namely, it’s impossible to think about Being. We are trapped in time or Becoming and, so, unable to conceive timeless joy.

Even if we could think about Being, since all language is in the domain of Becoming, it would still be impossible to talk about it!

When sages use words and analogies from Becoming in an effort to point towards Being, they must fail. That makes it even easier to fail to take them seriously.

Nevertheless, Being is as real as it is inexhaustible. So is the joy available from it.

Please reconsider the assumption that something must be an object (a form, something singleoutable) to be real. It’s true that Becoming is populated with objects and some of them are real (existent, entities). What’s not true is that only objects can be real.

Even though Being is unthinkable, it is nevertheless real. In fact, you have probably apprehended or been aware of it many times!

Because it wasn’t an object, however, you probably paid little attention.

The good news is that, once you are aware of what might be, there are ways to open to it. I have mentioned some of those ways previously in these posts.

Furthermore, in my post on mini-meditation and my post on body practice I’ve presented the idea that every act can be an opening to Being. If so, that means that everything you do can be infused with joy!

The more you suffer constantly, the crazier that idea will strike you. You may think it just nuts that you can replace incessant dissatisfaction with the joy of Being!

I appeal to your own experience to undermine your attachment to dissatisfaction.

Think of a time when you did something without thinking. If you put your mind to it, you can probably remember many such experiences.

Have you ever mastered a movement in a sport such as shooting a jump shot in basketball or firing a wrist shot in hockey?

Have you ever mastered a musical instrument so well that, at least once, “it” happened?

Have you ever momentarily been struck thoughtless by some awesome spectacular event in nature?

Have you ever experienced culture shock to such a degree that even the hum and buzz of an ordinary moment in a wholly different culture left you speechless?

There could be many, many different kinds of such examples.

All involve total, temporary awareness to such a degree that time seems suspended. All are wholly without ego.  All occur without thinking (conceptualizing).  All are full of genuine joy – not the kind of peaks and valleys of ordinary happiness or unhappiness.

The more you let go of attachment to thinking, the more joy you will experience.

This is why, for example, I have claimed that even just walking down a hallway can be full of joy when you are fully attending to your walking.

When a sage walks down a hall, do you think his or her focus is on the goal or purpose of the walking, in other words, the destination?

Notice that that goal is nothing but a thought!

All goals are just thoughts!

This is why Sengcan, the third Zen ancestor in ancient China, wrote: “The wise do not strive after goals.” Of course, they set goals, because otherwise, in the case of walking, they wouldn’t know in which direction to walk.

However, once set, goals are forgotten in favor of the walking, the doing. Do you want to walk with joy? That is possible every time you walk!

All you have to do is to let go of thinking while you are walking. Just be aware of walking and what is around you without conceptualizing (classifying, labeling, evaluating) it.

You will fill your life with joy if you always act that way.

Don’t worry: if there’s an occasional problem that demands thinking through, you won’t lose your ability to think. You will, though, stop incessantly thinking, which is what is obscuring the joy of Being that is right here right now.

It’s simple to find this out for yourself. That does not mean that it is easy. It’s not easy to break an addiction to thinking.

If you want to lead a life filled with joy, just break that addiction.

All the sages have.

They didn’t have anything that you or I lack.

I happen to believe that your True Nature is to be a sage. It’s just that you haven’t realized it yet.

If not now, when?

Though they do it in different ways, sages not infrequently talk about body practice. What are they talking about? Is it important?

The answer may shock you!

The reason it may shock you is that you may be one of the many people who are confused about the nature of a spiritual practice.

For example, many people think of Buddhism as a religion. Buddhists, on this view, are different from other people because they accept a distinctive creed or set of beliefs.

No, to be a Buddhist is to practice Buddhism. Except for the belief that doing so might be helpful, it is not necessary to believe anything to practice Buddhism.

Another way to say this is that being a Buddhist involves practicing physically. Another way to say this is that being a Buddhist means regularly doing a body practice.

No body practice, no buddhism.

That explains why sages often talk about body practice (though they don’t always use those words).

Being wise is not thinking in a certain way.  It’s false that wisdom is a set of thoughts or beliefs. Wisdom is practiced.

John Daido Loori: “Taking responsibility for our life includes taking responsibility for our body . . . Body practice means realizing the Way with the body as well as with the mind.”

A concrete example may help. This example is a real one that’s based on the fact that it’s often easier to notice a flaw in someone else than it is to notice it in ourselves.

Years back into the last century I had a girlfriend who would visit me. She would often stride down the hall obviously focused so intently on where she was going that she would bang her heels on the floor.

It was impossible not to notice: my cottage is small and has only one hall. That was not the controlled, mindful tread of a sage.

I knew that she was very unhappy and spent a lot of time thinking about how to distract herself so she’d enjoy life more. The problem wasn’t that I felt superior to her. The problem was that I identified with her!

She walked that way because her goal-focused thoughts were separated from her body, her walking. Since separation is the root of suffering, it was obvious just from how she was walking that she was hurting.

How do you walk? Don’t you, too, often walk lost in thought?

Here’s the alternative: walk well. Each step can be a body practice or mini-meditation. Each step is a mini-meditation only if it is taken with awareness.

As you may understand, there is walking meditation as well as sitting meditation.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Being Peace, and this you may not understand, “The sitting and the walking must be extended to the non-walking, non-sitting moments of our day. That is the basic principle of meditation.”

The word ‘practice’ in the phrase ‘body practice’ is misleading. Usually we think of practicing in order to do better in the future.

The point of meditation, however, is to do better right now. After all, the present moment is the only moment we ever get to live.

The method of meditation is to focus on whatever we are doing right now. Each act becomes a mini-meditation. This avoids doing one thing while thinking about another.

Another way to talk about body practice is to talk about separating thinking from awareness [or Becoming from Being]. As long as we stay trapped in thinking (time, Becoming), we will seek the purpose or meaning of life elsewhere in time, usually, in the future.

Freeing ourselves from thinking (time, Becoming) is negating time. Once time is negated, the only place to find the purpose or meaning of life is in the present moment, in whatever we are doing right now.

Turning this around, finding the purpose or meaning of life in the present moment is negating thinking (time, Becoming). As Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth: “When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time.”

So, for example, walking down a hall can be excellent body practice. The meaning of your life when you are walking down a hall is to be walking down that hall! The purpose of the walking is to get somewhere else, but that purpose is secondary.

To have an effective body practice is to treat everything you do as if it were intrinsically valuable and worthwhile instead of treating everything you do merely as a means to some other end.

The value and fullness of life is available here and now.

Where else could it be available? The past is a set of thoughts that, at best, are accurate rememberings, and the future is nothing but a set of thoughts that are mere imaginings.

The value of life does not come from thinking about it.

The value of life comes from life itself.

This is very good news: making each act a body practice is not only simple enough that everyone can do it, but it’s the only way really to enjoy life.

Frequently using mini-meditation is an effective way to realize Being [click here for the important Being / Becoming distinction].

Though some humans have more than others, nobody is blessed with a lot of will-power. So please don’t ever beat yourself up because you don’t have much of it.

Instead, work with reality to live better. With respect to will-power, this means making the best use of a small amount.

How?

By establishing automatic behaviors, habits, that are effective in promoting what is valuable. A good example, which I’ve discussed previously, is establishing an effective morning ritual [click here for that post].

Another is using mini-meditation. What is it? Why use it frequently?

A mini-meditation is nothing but a short meditation: it’s simply being conscious of breathing for one or two or three breaths.

Since a meditation is a waking up from the incessant stream of thought forms that plague us, a mini-meditation is like a brief glance towards formlessness that can be as bracing as a splash of cold water on your face in the morning.

Since breath is formless, paying attention to it automatically weakens identification with such forms as your thoughts, body, and emotions.

There’s nothing you have to do except pay attention. That’s all that is required to realize Being, to open to the formless, to bring Being into Becoming.

Establishing a mini-meditation practice is establishing the habit of remembering to let go of forms frequently throughout the day.

The best way to do this is to link routine behaviors with mini-meditation. Here are some examples. If these don’t resonate with you, just use other ones that are similar. Do a mini-meditation each time you:

• Brush or floss your teeth.

• Put on shoes or boots.

• Open your car door and get in.

• Pour liquid into a glass or mug or cup.

• Look at the moon for the first time in the evening.

• Shiver.

• Answer a telephone.

• Stop at a stop sign.

• Enter your workplace.

• Hug someone [click here for a post on how to hug well].

Those are sufficient to give you the idea. Even if you just added one every few weeks, in a few months you’d soon be much more present in your own life.

How could you enjoy life without being aware of it?

Here’s the important fact behind this recommendation to use mini-meditation frequently: sages are always meditating.

You may have the false belief that sages only meditate during periods of formal meditation such as when they are still and seated on meditation cushions. No, the idea behind such formal mediation is not to emulate tree stumps.

Formal stilling meditation is useful for fostering stillness of mind. A still mind is fully alert, awake, and conscious —  but empty of thoughts. It’s impossible to think while simultaneously focusing on the formless. Even in formal meditation, it’s impossible to be aware of more than one thought at a time.

To live well is to live most of the time with a still mind.

We are all creatures of habit. We tend to think the same kinds of thoughts, to eat the same kinds of foods, to talk with the same kinds of people, and so on.

So the issue is not whether or not to have habits. The only issue is whether or not to have habits that are effective in promoting what is valuable.

Linking routine daily doings with breath consciousness fosters spiritual awakening. Since a still mind is free from attending to forms, it is open to Being. Since our human purpose is to be as open to Being as possible [click here for more on purpose], the habit of frequently being aware of breathing is a valuable one.

You’ll have more periods during the day when you are untroubled by forms. The more such periods you have, the more you will enjoy life and the more you will emulate sages.

Remember: life is lived in the present moment.

It is impossible to live life in the past or in the future, because the one no longer exists and the other does not yet exist. Past and future are nothing but thoughts! They are sets of thought forms. The only reality they have depends upon our thinking now about them. [Click here for more on this].

All problems exist in the past or in the future; problems require time.

Being is timeless.

Therefore, the more you open to Being, the less troubled you will be by problems. Practicing this way is a clever way to enjoy life.

Developing the habit of mini-meditation is an effective way to open to Being and, so, live better.

Realize Being.

As it is written in the Tao Te Ching: “Attain complete emptiness. Cling to stillness.” That is my interpretation of the beginning of verse 16, chih hsu chi.

No, I don’t know ancient Chinese. I have, though, learned a little about it.

It is very different from English and other modern western languages. It’s helpful to understand how it is different.

All words in all languages come from Becoming [click here for the important Being / Becoming distinction]. Therefore, there are no words in any languages suitable for describing Being.

This explains the famous opening of the Tao Te Ching, which tells us that a way that is able to be walked is not The Way and The Way that can be named is not The Way. In other words, Lao-Tzu, the supposed author, is telling is that the words he is using are inherently inadequate.

Even just to say “realize Being” is already misleading!

Also, no forms other than words could work. For example, gestures like pointing are, like words, nothing but forms. No forms can signify the formless.

Written Chinese lacks grammar. It uses pictorial representations to represent concepts. Those concepts are neither singular nor plural. They are neither nouns, verbs, adjectives, nor adverbs. They do not indicate either past, present, or future. Their use occurs in a perceptual context.

By way of contrast, English has grammar. Events occur temporally — in past, present, or future – and temporal sequences are clarified. Subjects and objects are identified, and their relationships are clarified. In other words, English has a nonperceptual context.

Obviously, then, translating from ancient Chinese to English is very difficult. It would be foolish to expect a definitive translation of any ancient Chinese work into English.

Why, then, think that Lao-tzu’s “Attain complete emptiness. Cling to stillness.” means “realize Being”?

I am relying on Jonathan Star’s edition of the Tao Te Ching, which helpfully provides a complete, verbatim translation of the entire text as well as literal character definitions that allow any reader to work out his or her own interpretation.

(A related amusing story: when I was serving in the U. S. army in Korea, I decided to learn Korean. As soon as I fully realized that doing so involved memorizing thousands of Korean characters or pictures [rather than just an alphabet], I instantly gave up! My decision to quit was reinforced when someone explained to me that Korean philosophers write in Chinese rather than Korean anyway.)

Star informs us that ‘chih’ means ‘attain, reach, cause, bring about, arrive at.’ ‘Hsu’ means ‘emptiness, vacuity, passivity, void, openness.’ ‘Chi’ means ‘highest, utmost, ultimate, climax, summit, full, complete, goal.’

So the initial three Chinese characters in verse 16 mean something like: ‘Cause complete emptiness.’ This, though, is so vague in English that it seems preposterous.

Stephen Mitchell translates it much more helpfully as “Empty your mind of all thoughts.” This is right on target. However, where does ‘your’ come from? A person cannot be identified with mind; otherwise, it would be impossible for anyone to realize Being. Being is impersonal; there is no personal Being.

(Neither is there a separate person in Becoming, but that’s another discussion.)

So “attain complete emptiness” is better. The critical point is that the phrase ‘complete emptiness’ refers to mind devoid of thoughts.

‘Attain’ can be misleading. ‘Attain’ should be understood negatively rather than positively.

Usually, to attain something is to gain something, to add something, to get more. Here, though, that’s not what it means. Again, what it means is to realize complete emptiness of mind by letting go of all thoughts. Therefore, ‘attain’ here is to be understood as a dropping, releasing, or letting go.

So ‘attain complete emptiness’ means ‘realize Being’ by letting go of all thoughts.

The next sentence translates ‘shou’ which means ‘keep, hold, cling, hold firm, maintain, abide in, observe, preserve’ and ‘ching’ which means ‘still[ness], quite[ude], tranquill[ity], still point, peace, harmony, repose.’

Clearly, ‘ching’ refers to the stillness that is Being. Why ‘cling to stillness’?

Since Being is formless and it’s possible to cling only to forms, the idea of clinging to stillness is impossible. It’s impossible to cling to the formless.

Lao-tzu is not recommending the impossible; instead, he’s probably just emphasizing its difficulty.

In any case he’s telling us that it’s insufficient merely to realize Being. There’s more than that. Describing that more is difficult.

Merely “maintaining” Being seems too passive. “Holding firmly” to Being is the right idea. Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo translate it as: “Hold fast to stillness.” ‘Clinging’ is holding fast: it suggests really holding fast.

The big idea is to realize being and keep realizing Being. In other words, it’s to break through to Being and then to abide in Being. A glimpse of Being is sufficient to realize Being, but Lao-Tzu’s recommendation is not merely to realize Being but to stay there.

That, though, is impossible. Even a fully enlightened sage cannot literally abide or live in Being.

What Lao-Tzu seems really to be recommending is to experience Becoming from Being, which yields repose. This is the reverse of what ordinary people do, which is to experience Being, if at all, from Becoming.

The recommendation to realize Being is to be understood nontemporally. Clinging or holding fast to Being means never again getting lost in Becoming, maintaining the perspective of a sage rather than the reversed perspective of an ordinary human. It is living the temporal via the eternal.

What does this really mean? What’s the cash value of the recommendation to realize Being?

It means emptying the mind of all thoughts and keeping it as close to that as possible. Let go of thoughts as much as possible – and keep doing it.

That is exactly what sages do that the rest of us fail to do.

For six suggestions on how to do what sages do, on how to realize being, click here.

Where is a never-failing source of comfort (ease, solace, peacefulness)?

You may already understand. It can be helpful to imagine yourself in extreme situations wondering how to calm down.

All appeals exhausted, you are being led to the execution room for your capital crime.

Your car is disabled on a back road in the middle of winter. It’s nearly dark and you face a very long, cold night alone.

Something awakens you in the middle of the night in your second floor bedroom. Though you live alone, you hear strange, creaky sounds from downstairs as though someone is moving around carefully.

You are fishing in the middle of a large northern lake just after ice out. You gash the underside of your boat on a sharp rock just under the surface of the water.

Don’t you already know to take a deep breath?

You might instead try to comfort yourself by saying a short prayer, but neither words nor thinking will have any real effect unless you deliberately pay attention to your breath. (The Latin ‘spiritus’ from which we derive ‘spiritual’ means ‘breath’ or ‘wind.’)

Notice that it’s not really awareness of breathing that helps; instead, it’s awareness of this breath. Breathing takes time; this breath is now. Just as you can only take one step at a time, so you can only take one breath at a time.

This breath fills the present moment. It is – thus!

Why does this work? Focusing on a breath immediately gets you out of your thoughts. It immediately and naturally brings you right back to the present moment. Although there can be pain in the present moment, without time there is no suffering.

Without distracting thoughts, it’s natural to accept the present moment just as it is. Accepting it just as it is instantly conditions you to dealing effectively with it.

Focusing on anything natural works to promote greater comfort.

Just intently observe a cloud or a lake or a stone or a tree.

Do not label what you perceive; just perceive it without conceptualizing it or verbalizing it. In other words, do not think: just observe or witness.

If you do, the cloud or lake or stone or tree will teach you Being [click here for the important Being / Becoming distinction].

From the Flower Ornament Scripture: “Beings teach, lands teach, all things in all times teach, constantly, without interruption.”

If, as I have argued in many of these posts in the spiritual well-being category, your real home is in Being, the comfort you feel when focusing on anything natural is the comfort of homecoming.

Let’s turn this around: what happens when you disconnect from what is natural and are incessantly focused on human-made artifacts?

Could anything be more uncomfortable? Could you be any more ill at ease?

Just look at how most people live. For example, observe them walking across a campus or down a street: in addition to their ordinary minds incessantly filled with noisy thoughts, many today carry with them mobile technology with speakers that creates even more noise! It’s as astounding as it is foolish.

Our ancestors of 20,000 or 50,000 years ago would consider them mad, and they would be correct.

Nietzsche: “Be like the tree that you love with its wide branches: silently listening, it hangs over the sea.” [From Thus Spoke Zarathustra, W. Kaufmann, tr.]

Silence and natural sounds are a great comfort. Human-made sounds usually create discomfort, and they cumulatively create great discomfort.

This is why a good way to torture people is simply to make them endure human-made noise for hours on end.

This is why getting away from civilization by vacationing in more natural surroundings is so relaxing. You don’t need a loud hair dryer to dry your hair.

Comfort decreases as the sale of mobile gadgets increases. We buy more and more mobile gadgets and make ourselves more and more uncomfortable. Boy, are we wise!

When the mind is purified, silence is more relaxing than entertainment.

If silence decreases your comfort level, that’s because your thoughts are out of control.

The more you require entertainment, the more your thoughts are out of control. You are using entertainment like a drug to obtain some quasi-relief from your thoughts.

The best way to obtain that relief is by purifying the mind.

The lesson is simple: if you want to enjoy more comfort and ease, decrease noise, increase silence, and get much better control of your thoughts.

What is the most important relationship? It is the foundational relationship, the one upon which all the others rest. Which one is that?

[It's important here not to be misled by words. If you are unfamiliar with it, click here for the relevant terminology I happen to use, which is "Being" and "Becoming," and then please return. You may prefer words like "Self" or "God" or "Life" to refer to what I refer to using "Being."]

The most important relationship for you is your relationship with whatever form(s) Being takes in the present moment.

Forms are objects. They are all temporal; they are all in the domain of Becoming. For example, physical objects, thoughts, and emotions are forms. You almost certainly identify with a certain set of such forms (namely, your body, your thoughts, and your emotions) and take yourself, this set of forms, to have a life span of so many decades.

If so, the most important relationship for you is dysfunctional.

If that is correct, it would, you must admit, explain a lot. For example, it would explain your whole history of dissatisfaction.

If your most important relationship were working well, you would be wholly at ease.

This is a central teaching of the Buddha. He said:

“Let not a person run back to the past / Or live in expectation of the future; / For the past has been left behind /  And the future has not been reached.  / Instead with insight let him see /     Each presently arisen state . . . ” (Translation by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi of the Majhima Nikaya, 131, Bhaddekaratta Sutta.)

The most important relationship is occurring right now.

Being unfolds in each moment. As Sengcan, the third Zen ancestor, puts it: “one instant is ten thousand years.” (Rochester Zen Center translation.)

Being is the essence of each form. In that sense, Being has many disguises. Being is what-is. Note that Being is not personal; it is non-egoic.

There are only two fundamental attitudes to what-is: nonresistance (acceptance, allowing, surrendering) or resistance (nonacceptance, disallowing, fighting). [Click here for more on nonresistance and click here for more on resistance.]

Nonresistance is identification with Being. [Click here for more on identification.] Nonresistance is realizing Being. [Click here for more on realizing Being.] This is the way of the sage.

Resistance is nonidentification with Being. This is the way of the fool.

Each of us has a tendency to be a fool. “The ego” is the name of the fool. As Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth: “The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”

The most important relationship question for you to ask is: “What is my relationship to the present moment?”  Please ask it frequently.

If there is no inner resistance to it at all, if you do not mind at all what is happening, then you will be at ease. This is identification. Without resistance, there is no ego, no fool.

If there is any inner resistance to it at all, if you do mind what is happening, then you will be dissatisfied. This is nonidentificaiton. With resistance, there is ego; there is a fool.

As Tolle argues, inner resistance by the ego manifests itself in one of three ways, which are the three prevalent failed varieties of the most important relationship.

Probably the most common one is to take the present moment as a stepping stone to a better, future moment, as nothing but a means to some other end rather than as an end in itself. This is ignoring the intrinsic value of what we do [click here for more on intrinsic value].

This fails because, since you are always trying to be elsewhere, you are never fully here in the present moment and it’s impossible to live well without being fully present.

A second way to resist is to take the present moment as a problem to be solved, as an obstacle to be overcome.

This fails because, as the Buddha pointed out, when you solve one problem another always replaces it, this is just another futile way of resistance.

A third way to resist is to take the present moment as an enemy that should not even exist. This attitude that you know what is best for the world always leads to hatred, war, complaining, and blaming.

If your “inner” reality is one of war, your “outer” reality will reflect it. Life becomes a constant battle, which is why this fails. It’s impossible to be at ease in the midst of war.

What if you were to get the most important relationship right?

What would happen if you dropped all resistance by letting go of all thoughts of past and future?

What would happen if you stopped dragging all your intellectual and emotional baggage into every moment? What if you just let go of all your desires and fears?

Here’s what would happen: the ego would dissolve! Without time, there is no ego.

You think of yourself as a separate person, a separate ego. What would happen if, as the Buddha suggests, you dropped that thought?

You think of yourself as having a lifespan. What would happen if, as the Buddha suggests, you dropped all such thoughts?

You think of yourself as being temporal. What would happen if, as the Buddha suggests, you identified with Being rather than Becoming?

Doing these things is the core of all spiritual practice.

What would happen?

Liberation.

Why? Because suffering requires separation, to drop all separation is to drop all suffering. That’s how sages enjoy liberation from suffering.

Letting go of time and ego is the only way of directly experiencing liberation.

Nobody can do it for you.

Will you find out for yourself?

Realizing Being is the ultimate value. Nothing is more important. [Click here for the important Being / Becoming distinction.]

It has astounded me for half a century that the wise have been stating this great truth in various ways at least since the beginning of the Axial Age [click here for more on the Axial Age]. In my extreme youth I was used to thinking in terms of how much better our lives are than the lives of our ancestors were. Not!

To think that way is to think only about beings while ignoring Being, only about forms while ignoring the Formless, only about the temporal while ignoring the eternal.

Isn’t that, though, exactly what we still tend to do in our daily lives? We become so preoccupied with forms that we forget the Formless. We become so preoccupied with changing forms that we forget the changeless. We become so preoccupied with time that we forget the eternal.

We make the critical mistake of attending to self while failing to attend to Self. That mistake makes realizing Being impossible.

“[T]he ego and the Self dwell in the same body.” [Mundaka Upanishad. All translations in this post are by E. Easwaram.] The Self dwells in every self; Being dwells in every being. Ignoring that truth or failing to realize it don’t make it false.

The Upanishads are the oldest spiritual literature in human history.

(Just as there is a difference between mere fiction and literature, so there is a difference between spiritual writing and spiritual literature. Fiction and spiritual writings come from the self, whereas [any kind of] literature comes from the Self.)

The Upanishads repeatedly tell us that “the supreme goal of life” is realizing Self, realizing Being. Again, realizing Being is the ultimate value.

“The Self is one, though it appears to be many.” [Chandogya Upanishad.] Being is one, though beings are many. Let go of the many to realize the One.

Language, which is restricted to Becoming, is inadequate for talking about Being. All spiritual talk can do is to provide words as signposts that should not be mistaken for what they point towards. A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

“As long as we think we are the ego, / We feel attached and fall into sorrow.” [Mundaka Upanishad.] It is only when we become detached from ego that we identify with Being and abiding joy replaces perpetual sorrow. This is The Way of Realizing Being. “The illumined sage is lost in the Self.”

“The wisdom sheath is made of detachment.” [Taittiriya Upanishad.] How do we detach from self or ego? How do we become detached enough to become wise? How is realizing Being possible?

Meditation.

The unitive Self is revealed through complete stillness. It is not a matter of doing or achieving something; it is not a matter of having or gaining something. It is a matter of dropping all egoic attachments, of fully accepting reality just as it is in the present moment, of letting go of all separation.

No meditation, no detachment.  No detachment, no wisdom.

Being foolish is the only alternative to being wise.

Is realizing Being really possible in the midst of beings? Is realizing Formlessness really possible in the midst of forms? Is realizing Self really possible in the midst of selves?

If not now, when? If not here, where?

Even if it’s true that “The Self is the source of abiding joy,” this cannot be known by the thinking mind, by “the mere scholar who knows not the Self.” [Taittiriya Upanisahd.]

If so, realizing Being is not anti-intellectual but nonintellectual. After all, if we didn’t have the thought that there is Being to be realized, why would we meditate and do what is required? It’s just that doing what is required is not a conceptual task. Realizing Being is going “beyond the various sheaths of being / To realize the unity of life.” [Taittiriya Upanishad.]

Being is life. The opposite of death isn’t life; it is birth. Why? Life has no opposite.

I am life. I am Being.

So are you.

If you have not yet realized that, all fear of death and dying will evaporate as the goal of life is fulfilled.

Of course, never take my word for anything. I am nobody. Always assume that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

On the other hand, neither should you rely on the words of anyone foolish enough not to meditate. You might not want to ignore the single message that all sages have been communicating for the last three thousand years, and you might want to ignore what anyone who does not meditate says about what is of ultimate importance.

Trust yourself and find out for yourself.

There is nothing more important to be doing.

I Am That is a book of dialogues with the 20th century Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

It is also an enlightening spiritual practice of overcoming duality by identifying with everything.

When I began a spiritual practice nearly twenty years ago I would pester my teacher for the names of books to read so that I might better understand what I was trying to do. One of the books he loaned me was Maharaj’s. After looking through it, I quickly purchased my own copy and devoured it.

I understood that I was only conceptualizing his ideas rather than realizing them, but, at least for me at that time, I needed that. What ideas they were!

To cite from one almost random page [316]: “all you can say about yourself is: ‘I am.’ You are pure being – awareness – bliss. To realize that is the end of all seeking. . . detachment is needed. It is the clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see. . . the past and future . . . are merely mental.”

Either that kind of talk is profound or crazy.

I think it profound.

With what should I identify myself?

My body? That’s a start. My thoughts? It’s difficult not to. My emotions? They come from my thoughts to affect my body. My loved ones? Who would I be without relationships?

What else? My past story or autobiography? Surely those events happened. My future? Well, my future is never anything except my thoughts about my future story.

Identifying with what is human is only a start. Cf. Terence: Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.

Maharaj says I am beyond all categories in the sense that differences don’t separate. This is why suffering, which requires separation, is optional and abiding joy is possible.

I am reality, which is not known as an object but by being it.

Ideas from books (and blog posts!) may be useful in the beginning, but, in the end, they should be discarded.

“You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing.” [339]

If so, I need to give up attachment to my ego that separates me from everything else. If I do that, of course I would need nothing! I would realize that I am everything else. Of course there would be no dissatisfaction!

Maharaj says, “You are not what you think yourself to be.” That’s because I think myself to be my ego, my self, my separate identity.

Time to drop all such abstractions and get on with the business of making the (material) identity judgments. (Click here for more on identity judgments.) Time to detach from ego.

I am the child squealing with delight as her father tosses her into the air.

I am that fanatical young suicide murderer strapping the explosives around his body.

I am that still mountain lake reflecting moonlight.

I am the puff adder slithering away in the grass after biting that child who almost stepped on me and will soon die.

I am the batter who struck out to end the World Series.

I am the alcoholic who smells slightly of urine sleeping in the park under that cardboard.

I am that co-ed who was raped last night in the woods near her parking lot.

I am the rapist who raped her.

I am that sycamore tree standing quietly near the brook.

I am the soldier who lost his legs to the I.E.D.

I am the fighter who planted and detonated the I.E.D. that blasted the bottom of the SUV carrying that soldier who lost his legs.

I am the polar bear hibernating peacefully in its den.

I am that seal desperately trying to outmaneuver the great white shark.

I am all that I think I am and much, much more.