P-A is characterized by conceptual simplicity and therefore clarity and simplicity in language. P-B is by contrast unnecessarily complex and fraught with confusing internal contradictions. The intellect is used by the false self as a defense mechanism to deny reality and therefore the more obscure and elaborate explanations are, the better served is the goal of denial, lies and secrets that underlie the essence of the delusion state of mind that is the current human condition. The false self is always trying to escape responsibility for its suffering and thereby avoiding the frightening prospect of changing.
We will use an article in the Shambhala Sun magazine to illustrate the contrast between an elaborate and somewhat obscure religious language (P-B) and the clear, simple and secular language that we use in describing P-A. We will italicize the essential content of the article and “bold” the key words and phrases that represent the same content found in P-A. This article describes many of the essential principles of P-A but unfortunately few people will ever see or understand it due to the obscurity of the Buddhist religious paradigm in the West or the fog of religious language. Our comments reveal a secular synthesis of what is after all a very simple, easy and effective way to achieve instant present moment awareness or in religious language—liberation, transformation or enlightenment.
“As in Buddhism, the true goal of yoga is liberation from the ego and suffering. Yoga becomes a complete spiritual path, says Chip Hartranft, translator of the Yoga Sutra, when we join the familiar postures of hatha yoga with the meditative practices of raja yoga.”
“Tranquil and motionless, the ascetic sits in a simple posture. As each breath flows in, he experiences its sensations, relaxing any effort to control or improve anything. With each exhalation, he observes a new stream, each ripple of feeling a fresh occasion for surrender. Even so, thoughts, feelings, [emotions] and identifying concepts repeatedly erupt, centered around the same dualistic notions: self/other, past/future, like/dislike. Once noticed, though, they recede.” Hartranft has described reactions, that is, thoughts, feelings and emotions. He also describes response, i.e. “relaxing any effort to control or improve anything,” which is the ultimate and only profound goal of any true meditation practice. In P-A, one’s life becomes a meditation centered on The Point of Power Practice. Living in the present moment is the highest human attainment. Compassion, joy, peace, freedom are among the natural benefits enjoyed by a person living in the Now.
“The meditative path, Samadhi, begins to emerge as the ascetic continues to sit. Sustained at first by intention, it sharpens until the need to train it gives way to effortless mindfulness and equanimity. Abruptly, in a timeless instant of cessation, nothing remains to obscure the unconditioned. An unshakeable realization arises: all things—mind, body, nature—may be known, but are empty of a knower. There is an ennobling security in this understanding that no experience nor experiencer is ultimate, but is only a dewdrop perched on a web of contingencies—dharmas—glistening for a moment before evaporating.”
We don’t know what Chip was smoking but it brought out the poet in him which is great, buuuuut it is important to acknowledge that staying in the present moment requires a moment-to-moment diligence responding to the triggers implicit in our decades of conditioning which for most of us will never be totally transcended. Even the Dalai Lama acknowledges that he occasionally gets angry. To be present, experiencing what we call “feeling” is to experience reality as it really is, which is to “experience” the perfection of all of creation and our own perfection as an intrinsic (not separate) part of that creation.
This is the same thing that Hartranft was saying—but the poetry of the Hindu-Buddhist cosmology can fail to connect with or be pragmatically useful to the where-the-rubber-meets-the-road work of changing our self-destructive unconscious behavior—plain language, simple practice and strong intention—that’s it. Leave the poetry to the poets whom we can only truly appreciate after we enter the present moment. Now Hartranft continues to describe the present moment which he does very well.
“This ineffable sense of contentment, clarity and presence can awaken us to the possibility of something far greater. What may spring originally from the desire to enhance oneself can be transmuted over time into a quest for what lies beyond the self and its desires. It is then that yogis begin to tap the ancient, meditative roots—more accessible in Buddhist practice than yoga at present in the West—and seek to draw on their enormous stores of knowledge.”
In P-A presence itself is the source of clarity and contentment not a result of enlightenment. Religion and current spiritual practices of both East and West confuse the goal and the practice and end up in a never-ending game of chasing their tails. Secondly, yogis of both East and West turn to the intellect and their “enormous stores of knowledge” when that is in fact a barrier to entering the present moment. Remember the simple teaching of Nisargadatta Maharaj, author of I Am That. “Do nothing. Have nothing. Know nothing.
“The thread that united most of these early yogis was their intense focus on self-liberation from suffering. Whether meditative trance, philosophical inquiry, naturalistic observation, extreme morality, or self-mortification, almost all the various approaches operated from a belief that it must be possible for individuals to shake the bonds of misperception that shackled them to an unending cycle of birth and death. Since one’s salvation lay not in the relationship to external gods but in overcoming ignorance, one had to transform oneself and one’s own perceptions. Even as ascetics clustered around charismatic and compelling seekers like the Buddha and Jain Mahavira, the prevailing ethos was self-empowering. Regardless of background, liberation was within one’s grasp.”
Certain principles are foundational to P-A and self–reliance or autonomy is one of those. Organized religion or any religion for that matter, gurus and priests are not needed for attaining the present moment and indeed as in the case of knowledge are impediments to that attainment. I am enough! I came into this world with perfect wisdom and indeed “trailing clouds of glory” as a certain metaphysical poet would put it. The Universe by definition cannot make mistakes or create junk—only perfection is possible in each and every ant and aardvark and anthropos. Anyone who needs to be a savior or servant is working out aspects of their false self and must be understood in that way and all will be fine. Don’t rely on them and don’t let them rely on you. You are insulting each other if you do and supporting your respective unconsciousness need for affection and esteem.
Nothing that we have tried so far in our long history has worked. Meditative trance, (TM and Zen) philosophical inquiry (Aristotle and Augustine), naturalistic observation (Rousseau, Thoreau and the environmentalists), extreme morality (the Ten Commandments and the Eight-Fold Path), self-mortification (you gotta be kiddin). Some say that we have not evolved far enough and are waiting patiently for the “critical mass” when the human condition will enter into a massive paradigm shift. What a self-deluding evasion of responsibility—what a crock!
Human beings have been capable of transcending the influence of the false self energy centers for thousands of years and are not fundamentally more conscious or unconscious than Socrates or Attila the Hun. We can change the toxic context that we have created for ourselves and we can practice the presence that is the only “heaven” that ever existed and we can do it now. We can of course choose not to enter into the joy of Simple Reality but that would be madness. Welcome to the Mad Hatters tea party!
“Stilling reveals something generally not seen (avidya) by human beings: that what actually knows nature in all its manifestations is a timeless, subjectless, unconditioned awareness.” Amen Chip! When we enter into the present moment by definition we transcend time and space. We also leave behind all afflictive emotions (suffering) and the tyranny of the false self. In short we are free.
Past lives, reincarnations, and karma are all included in the false self and P-B. P-B and P-A are mutually exclusive—to leave P-B is to leave behind all of the compulsive and neurotic mythology, theology, psychology, astrology, scientology—all of the “ologies” that are no longer needed to meet the needs of the fear-driven and self-destructive role that we created for ourselves in the tragic drama of P-B. The intellect no longer has the lead role and must accept the part that is subordinate to the new star—wisdom. The “heart” steps forward and center stage as the head acts out its supporting role downstage. Disarmed, disempowered and humbled, the ego-driven “head” can now play its proper and still very useful character to aid the heart in creating a sustainable story with a happy ending.
“It [the heart, wisdom, presence or “feeling”] lies beyond the reach of mind and its insistence on location, orientation, temporality, and attributes. What is important for a suffering being to realize is that it is this imperturbable witnessing that knows—and not one’s perceptions, feelings [emotions], or thoughts. Every one of these conscious experiences issues from body-mind phenomena that are in constant flux. When the pure, unchanging awareness of perusa is mistaken for these shifting contents of body mind, we do not see things as they are.”
This is a good description of the distinction between paradigms A and B especially the critical aspect of not identifying with the physical, mental and emotional sensations but rather with the imperturbable witness.
Now we have an excellent description of how our conditioning in the P-B context forms the basis for our lack of presence and its attendant suffering. “This is the great discovery of the ancient Indian yogis: though our bodies and their surroundings may be real, all we can actually know of them are representations appearing as consciousness, citta. Each distinct display, also called citta, is a fleeting shadow play involving one of the six types of phenomena: sights, sound, smells, tastes, tactile feelings, or thoughts. Even though separate and sequential, these cittas unfold so rapidly that we usually misperceive them as an unbroken, simultaneous flow we call “reality,” “self,” and “other.” This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between mind and matter, or between events and our reactions to them. So, our pattern of perception and volition are largely determined, automatic, and nearly inescapable.”
What was just described were the afflictive emotions, the reactions associated with the false self. These can be effectively addressed by the Point of Power Practice and our past identifications and conditioning can gradually be overcome one response at a time. The benefits are immediate and the authentic power of presence begins to supplant the illusionary power of the false self.
“The meditative intentions that move yogis down this natural path to tranquility are twofold. First, yogis train themselves to keep returning to the point of focus and sit with it. This intention, called abhyasa (“sit facing”), is the basis for sustained practice and begins with witnessing the current stream of bodily sensations. As yogis keep noticing and returning from distraction, they quickly come face-to-face with conditioned habits of thought and reaction. No matter how numerous or overwhelming these distractions, though, they always dissolve. As they continue to practice, yogis may soon begin to sense a developing aptitude for remembering the focus, a power [presence and response] that starts to grow stronger than the penchant for forgetting [reaction].”
“If meditation is to move from doing to being, the other intention one must keep in mind is softening. Again and again, the yogi unclenches, relaxes his psychosomatic grip on the moment, and allows events to be just as they are [“I don’t mind what’s happening.” J. Krishnamurti]. Success is proportionate to one’s willingness to let each new impulse to control or improve simply appear, bloom, and fade. As a result, it becomes ever clearer that each bodily contraction was conditioned by a mental contraction, arising from desire, aversion, or simply holding a self-image in mind.” Living in the present moment means that our lives become a meditation since the only valid and profound goal of all practices no matter what they are called is to experience reality as it really is, that is to say, to be present.
“This perceptual re-education, called vairagya, or “non-reacting,” involves entrusting oneself to one new experience after another.” Notice that Hartranft is describing the re-conditioning that results from the Point of Power Practice which itself involves “non-reacting” or responding to the many opportunities (triggers) that the P-B survival strategy conditioning will afford us.
The following two paragraphs describe the present moment (P-A) and the Point of Power Practice that enables the response necessary to stay in the Now. “With mental images of the body-as-entity starting to dissolve, the yogi can observe a similar progression unfold with energy, or prana, conceptualized as “breath” in the fourth limb. Becoming attuned to the flow, phase by phase, reveals ever-subtler patterns of reaction and resistance that would otherwise trigger more unconscious, automatic patterns [reactions].
So, pranayama is “breath control” [the “point of power” in the Point of Power Practice] that develops the more the yogi stops controlling. Just yoking to the process and letting it ripen is enough to cause the breathness of prana to drop away, leaving a luminous or vibratory distillation of consciousness, called nimitta, or “characteristic sign,” in Buddhist teaching on jhana. When absorption, or dhyana, fully ripens to its fourth stage, there no longer remains any sense of breathing at all (another phenomenon attested to in the buddhadharma)…”
The following paragraphs also describe the distinction between reaction and response which is the heart of the so-called paradigm shift, awakening or becoming present. “Through observing one’s consciousness of body and breath, energies become distilled into a vibrant epiphenomenon that completely unifies attention. This temporarily neutralizes the power of external phenomena to distract the yogi.”
“When consciousness interiorizes by uncoupling from external objects, the senses do likewise; this is called withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara).”
“Then the senses reside utterly in the service of realization.”
Certainly, Hartranft as a translator of the Yoga Sutra, has a great deal of knowledge of Buddha’s teachings. Now it is time to bring those and all of the eternal wisdom into the present moment with simple, modern and secular language that is inclusive and accessible to all of humanity. And along with that we must add a simple, pragmatic and effective practice that works immediately and can be used by both children and adults to begin the shift from a human narrative that creates suffering to one that creates peace, joy and compassion beyond suffering. Worth doing, wouldn’t you say?
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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Who Am I? The Second Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Where Am I? The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival
