As my readers can probably tell, I’ve lately been pondering on how our spiritual experiences bear on our earthly lives in practical terms. Sri Ramana Maharshi has become a helpful model for me in this regard because he was very clear in teaching people that we should trust in the basically spiritual nature of things (God) and that we should therefore avoid interference into the affairs of others as far as possible, but that where our earthly responsibilities (karma) link up with the lives of others we must take those seriously as our part in the play (dharma). When asked pointed questions about how to enact nondual experience in the world, he responded equally directly that we should not “enact” nondualism at all; it is ever the reality of the situation in any case, and we do more good by behaving dualistically from a place of nondual realization.

I recently posted this news story on Facebook along with the following commentary:

This, like many of our present and ongoing tragedies, is a series of human choices. Somebody had to make these choices; someone else had to approve it; many others had to enact it. How many believed what they did was “for the greater good”? How many questioned it but said nothing, did not resist their illegitimate orders, went ahead with what they knew to be a grave act of violence?

Here is spiritual disease at work: dukkha generates dukkha; kleshas fuel karma which forms conditioned patterns which support kleshas; sins generate sins, rolling like waves into more and more lives. We cure the disease in ourselves individually, but only by realizing that selfhood is not at all what we thought it was — that there’s no such thing as an individual. And when we really understand that, we cannot fail to treat others better because, after all, there are no others. We frame these things as “partisan politics” at our own great peril; there aren’t two equally valid teams on whether or not we treat one another humanely.

For me, this sequence of thoughts arose directly out of this mind of mine which has been spending an increasing amount of time in nondual meditation. I don’t claim unique divine inspiration nor any sort of exalted spiritual state. For me, there is only an increasing adjustment to the experience of life from this Center; some days I seem to be “there” more than others, and I can usually tell the difference in a pretty clear way. But that is, admittedly, purely subjective. How do I know to what degree I’m projecting my own socio-political beliefs through the lens of nondual philosophy rather than allowing my ideas of how to live arise organically out of nondual experience? In other words, is there a “right” way to think, a “correct” set of beliefs, apart from my own thinking and believing?

It is notable to me that every major spiritual tradition in the world places emphasis on certain fundamental social goods: we should, as far as possible, do no harm to one another. This is articulated differently and extended further by some compared to others, but the fundament does not differ. Some spiritual traditions have more concrete notions on what constitutes a good, just, or godly society, but most don’t go into a lot of detail about it at all or provide such contradictory advice that it quickly becomes clear that all such models are either addendums or simply situational. We cannot depend on these any more than we can claim absolute value for modern systems like capitalism, socialism, democracy, and the like. We do best to cherry pick any tradition of social or political theorizing to fit our circumstances while continuing to innovate based on current need and the core value of harmlessness. But, again, they all seem to agree on the reality of a “common good” (something which the most common and influential of modern secular schools do not, in favor of theoretical “social contracts” and projected “self interest”) and on some sort of ground-level unity or at least non-difference emphasizing the interdependence of individuals.

Though I would argue that most of these spiritual traditions actually begin with the nondual experience of their founders (or of generations of influential individuals within a culture where there is no unique founder), many of them do not immediately preach nonduality. Simply put, this is because many people aren’t comfortable with the implications of nonduality, so a broad interdependence, community spirit, or affection are promoted as core values encouraging mutual trust, spiritual optimism, and charity. Though the founders, reformers, and highest representatives of these traditions always express these in the most sweeping, trans-sectarian, trans-communal of language, increasing institutionalization after their deaths more often than not shrink the scope of the message to simply “this tribe” or “the faithful”. The happiest and most peaceful — and, so, most successful — societies, too, seem to be the ones with common good at their heart rather than abstract systems, social contracts, or Leviathans.

None of this is intended to be utopian; for so long as the bulk of individuals in a community think, speak, and act from klesha (which I use coterminously with dukkha and sin for those more comfortable with Buddhist or Christian language), there will be problems. But many of those problems can be mitigated by acknowledging klesha overtly and the clear and observable existence of a common good; this way, we short circuit repression and oppression, perhaps not ruling them out entirely but depriving them of their full fuel. Though, for instance, we should certainly not be pining for a return to the feudalism of Europe, Japan, or India, we can at least acknowledge once we set aside modern market-driven prejudices that there were certain mutual responsibility loops within those societies which made even kings immediately dependent upon the explicit cooperation of other social layers which literally cannot exist in the modern nation-state.*

Each of us is individually responsible for our own dukkha — our own frustration, lack, and existential angst arising from our deep ignorance of the nature of our Self. No person or — and here’s the crux — institution can do away with it for us. Even in theistic modalities like Natha Yoga, contemplative Christianity, or Jewish mysticism, a certain impetus and effort must come from our end or we can’t be helped. For some yogis and mystics, this translates to a need for removal from the broader society (either occasional or permanent). But for others, it necessitates an overhauled or regenerated engagement with society and with the individuals whose web of relationships make it up.

When the teachings say we need to reduce our fascination with the things of this life, it does not mean that we should abandon them completely. It means avoiding the natural tendency to go from elation to depression in reaction to life’s ups and downs, jumping for joy when you have some success, or wanting to jump out the window if you do not get what you want. Being less concerned about the affairs of this life means assuming its ups and downs with a broad and stable mind.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, “The Heart of Compassion”

Even this “new approach” can not and will not be identical for everyone. This may sound strange when speaking nondualistically, but nondualism doesn’t imply a unity of appearances, only of the Being which shows forth as the appearances. But there are some common threads which can be teased out, and they’ve already largely been summarized above.

How does all of this relate to projection? Well, the fact is that we are projecting constantly. One wouldn’t be out of line in saying that projection is the closest thing to “creation” allowed by the nondual experience. Ramana Maharshi put it that the absolute truth is that nothing ever arose and nothing ever subsides; there is no creation or destruction of the universe, only the mistaken recognition of the universe as separate from oneself and/or from God (that is to say, from Awareness which is identical both to the individual and to God) and this misapprehension makes it seem as if creation, change, and destruction have happened and will happen again.

Of course, some projections are more thorough than others. The world itself is a massive, shared projection, while certain religious, moral, and political views (for example) are private projections which nevertheless impact the shape the world takes. These latter are the projections we’re asking about when we wonder whether our beliefs are “true” or merely preferences.

Certainly it can be helpful to ask those questions of ourselves, even of our most cherished values. It keeps us grounded and both signifies and encourages genuine humility. But we mustn’t get caught up in them. Our beliefs about the world are themselves “worldly” — which is to say, we’re letting ourselves get dragged a few layers deep into mental projection before we even get started. We must instead fight for the surface to catch our breaths.

When I spoke above about allowing our viewpoints and behavior to be shaped by the nondual experience (as opposed merely to nondual philosophy), what I meant was just this: we have to learn to view our own beliefs from a higher angle in which we see them not only as our own projections upon the world but in which we also see the whole world-system itself as a projection. While we may not be able to maintain this perspective all the time (not at first, anyway), having had the experience even once and keeping it in mind will already begin dissolving the knots of tension between ourselves and the world. Our beliefs will invariably change as a result.

Speaking from my own experience, I’ve seen my own political and social views soften considerably. My fundamental values have broadened rather than changed, and I have seen this happen with others as well. Those who began as ardent nationalists come to define their “neighbors” as a larger group than just their compatriots; those who were humanists will catch glimpses of sentience in places they did not expect; and the deeply religious will spot God in all forms rather than only church-approved icons. And so on. Your karma will still determine a certain bias — for as long as you are in a human body, some karma and conditioning will ride in your brain even if you were able to bump it from business class to coach — but that bias will be more easily recognized for what it is. Our philosophical projections will not therefore go away all at once, but they will lose their grasp over us finger by finger. In practical terms, this means that we will not knee-jerk so frequently or with as much force and will be able to respond more and react less. We have to make decisions about what we do and do not value, and how how our actions will accord with those decisions, but the more lightly we hold these thoughts the more able we are to adjust to new information or experiences.

Though what we believe can certainly cause trouble, even this is a symptom of how we believe. When we evaluate events in the world according to our own expectations, we are only viewing them through the lens of our own limited self-identity. When we allow our gaze to widen, we may not fully escape the danger of projection but we certainly mitigate it by attacking the root rather than the branch.

*For a full discussion of this topic, see David R. Loy’s A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack (2002, SUNY)

Duty is a tough nut. Most of us are not such big fans of responsibility. As a result, there’s a common discussion in contemporary spiritual and occult circles about so-called “spiritual bypassing”. The conversation is a useful one, and everyone should at various points do a bit of introspection in relation to it. But it is not a brand new topic! The mystics of every age have had to wrestle with the specter of Quietism: Just how much should a practitioner be involved in the events of the world? What is the yogi’s responsibility to family, community, and nation? Does the saint need to do more than be saintly? I brought this topic up recently, but wanted to explore it in a bit more detail and hopefully make it a little more practical.

The great Chan teacher Hongzhi Zhengjue was accused by his friend and fellow Dharma Teacher Dahui Zonggao of encouraging quietism and laziness (“playing dead”) among his students due to Hongzhi’s emphasis on Silent Illumination (or “just sitting”, to translate Japan’s terse but poetic term for the practice). Silent Illumination is simply the meditative practice of reversing the lantern of awareness to face inward toward its own source rather than outward toward thoughts and sense objects. Dahui preferred koan practice because it was active and could be taken into daily life by anyone, monk or layperson alike; koan, argued Dahui, relies on the reflection of old canonical stories within the experience of the individual disciple. By contrast, the private meditation of Silent Illumination forced one “outside” of the world — something not everyone is equipped for, for lack of training and/or time, and something which makes performing one’s responsibilities for society at large difficult.

Dahui’s argument was not actually directed at his friend Hongzhi, however, but at those among his students and successors who failed to enact Hongzhi’s full instruction. Hongzhi emphasized the Sōtō teaching of “Harmony” which, in philosophical terms, is the dialectic between the universal and the particular. For him, the full flowering of Silent Illumination came only after the practitioner not only experienced the Illumination itself but maintained that awareness and enacted it compassionately in daily life. In other words, one must still do one’s business (whatever that is) but will do it with greater depth and humanity once the vertical and horizontal axes have been fully integrated. While this accomplishment may require times of withdrawal, there cannot and should never be a complete separation.

Dahui’s accusations, however exaggerated they may be, are still worthy — evidenced by the fact that people are still making them today — and required Hongzhi to clarify his teachings so that hopefully his students would understand that the Dharma necessarily included every part of life, not only what was done in the meditation hall.

Sri Ramana Maharshi ran into this problem quite a bit himself. India, after all, has a long tradition of sanyasa — spiritual devotees and yogis taking vows never to own property, never to marry, renouncing family life and earning a living, etc. Sanyasa is, in theory, a complete refusal of the demands of the world in favor of a perfectly spiritual life. For some few, this works out well: they may devote themselves to spiritual goals and provide spiritual benefit to those who must lead a normal life, in return for which they are given food and occasional temporary shelter and great freedom to move about besides. More often than not, though, it is simply the transference of attachment from one set of expectations to another. For this reason and others, my own lineage dissolved its tradition of sanyasa some decades ago when moving to the West; Western needs are simply different, and sanyasa is not the freedom here that it can be in India.

Even in India, however, sanyasa has been abused by many as a means of simply avoiding responsibility. For this reason, Sri Ramana Maharshi actively discouraged his own disciples from taking sanyasa vows. Many would come to him and say, “I wish to renounce. My many responsibilities at work and at home will not allow me time enough for spiritual practice.” Ramana would invariably respond to the effect that one’s responsibilities were part of one’s spiritual practice, and that real renunciation was an inner reversal not dependent upon external conditions; he would say that if one is in the world and longs for the peace of the wilderness, once one got out to the wilderness one would long for the conveniences of the world, and so outward renunciation was just moving one’s obsessive mind to new objects. True renunciation is then just turning attention to the nature of the Self, allowing one the freedom to flexibly engage with whatever events arose from a more expansive inner standpoint. Very pointedly, Ramana would often tell people to simply surrender the sense of doership; let the Self perform necessary actions through you.

To some, this last part further sounds like trouble, a sort of Quietism which perhaps empowers those who would be oppressors. It is worth noting first that Sri Ramana Maharshi was himself an advocate for Indian independence during the days of British occupation; while he was not really political active, he nevertheless understood the necessity of Indian self-rule for social advancement. But a specific story which makes clear Ramana’s advice when it came to living up to one’s responsibilities is worth the telling.

The spiritual teacher Papaji, according to his biographer David Godman, had a number of life-changing encounters with his Guru Sri Ramana Maharshi. At one point, Papaji had entirely relocated himself to Ramana’s ashram at the foot Arunachala near the town Tiruvannamalai. He spent all his days in carefree contemplation of the form of his Guru. But he had entirely abandoned his family to their own fates: as he was not working, he was sending them no money, and being physically distant (they were in the north, he in the south) he was doing them no good in any other way. Then came the beginning phase of Indian independence and the event which still casts a shadow over modern southeast Asia: Partition.

This was a chaotic time when the British, as a parting gift, sliced off portions of India to become Pakistan and, eventually, Bangladesh. As often happens when such political moves are made to draw attention to ethnic and religious differences, conflicts broke out. Muslims and Hindus murdered one another on trains moving across newly-formulated borders. Just as Partition was kicking off, Papaji was asked by another devotee at the ashram if he was going to do anything to help his family who were just north of the new boundary in Muslim Pakistan. Papaji’s reply was that he was here with his Guru and his Guru was his only family. This concerned Sri Ramana Maharshi who, on a walk with Papaji on a day soon thereafter, turned to him and said in no uncertain terms, “Go save your family.”

Papaji asserted that, “Having knowledge of the Self, I know also that this is all a dream.” Ramana said firmly, “Do not fear the dream! Go, do your duty.” And so he did; Papaji left Ramanashramam, found his family up north, and relocated them, housed them, began working three jobs to support them while they got on their own feet, found jobs, married, took up their own homes, and so forth. This process of course took years, as Papaji had some 30+ family members, mostly women who at that time were difficult to get work for. But he took the lesson of his Guru quite seriously.

That phrase, “Do not fear the dream!,” is a powerful one. While acknowledging that our perceptions and priorities do change due to our experiences on the spiritual path, it also acknowledges that our circumstances do not vanish for our convenience. For Ramana, it’s all God’s doing, so we must continue to play our part even though we attain to the awareness that God is really the one acting through us. For the Natha, as for the Chan master, all events are an upwelling of the Absolute. We may at times experience it all as “dreamlike”, as unreal, or as a grand dynamic unity, but we must still deal with health concerns, physical dangers, political unrest, economic shifts and drops, and belligerent people. Most of us still have family, friends, jobs, positions in our local communities, and responsibilities to larger civic bodies like nations.

As I’ve emphasized again and again, no mere observer can dictate to us what our duties really are. A serious responsibility for one person may be a minor detail for another. For instance, “household” means something different for me than it ought to for someone who has children depending upon them. I still must care for my household, but it’s a very different thing when the household consists of two adults and not one or more adults and dependent children! Similarly, I couldn’t tell someone else how to behave toward their abusive family when I have a good relationship with my own parents. That person might uncover through their spiritual work a very constructive way of interacting with their family, while another may find that for a variety of reasons these relatives are not family in any sense that demands responsibility from them. These are not easy questions to answer and require Hongzhi’s Harmony to find healthy solutions.

Though often misunderstood, this all comes down ultimately to karma. The actions we take have consequences. This is an obvious enough observation, but how often do we really think through what it means for us? Consequences snake through many lifetimes — our own and those of many others. The causes of our own circumstances are the results of someone’s past actions, often many “someones” all together! Cause and effect is more a web than a single thread. For as long as we are here, we have some level of investment in the integrity of this web and in the direction in which we cast our own lines to link up with those of others. While there ultimately are no “others” with whom to interact, yet the Self is revealed in many forms — and those forms matter, even if only momentarily.

Cut the knot
The yoke drops away
Only now
Is the real union seen