Awakening by Rodney Smith

Author:Rodney Smith [Smith, Rodney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780834829633
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2014-03-10T13:00:00+00:00

8

Other Continua

Quietness is the surest sign that you have died.

. . . The speechless full moon comes out now.

—RUMI

I have found through teaching over the decades that offering students different perspectives on truth can loosen the certainty of what they are doing and open them to new insights. Each new perspective can change our preset assumptions and allow a refreshing new direction for inquiry. A rigid map of awakening can create its own obstacles as our minds conjure up an image of what that path must be like while we attempt to mold our journey around that idea. Unfortunately, the mind is incapable of imagining any dimension beyond its own making and fails utterly in this task. By changing perspectives we soften our reliance on forms and techniques, allowing the practices to be secondary to the formless truth that is the end of the path.

I have seen many well-intended students flounder by grasping a set of practice instructions too tightly, much as a drowning person would clutch a life preserver. The mechanics of a practice seem to become a salvation unto itself, where just the doing of the method becomes its own reward. Like endlessly repeating a rosary, we think all we need to do for repentance is mouth the words of forgiveness. Lost within the dependency on any structure is the sacred formless, infinitely available once form has been released.

All practices are a kind of ritual that allows a rite of passage through the different experiences promised within that structure. Each spiritual structure has its own progression and accompanying experiences that seem to indicate where we currently are within that path, but those progressive experiences change depending upon what system we are using, indicating that none is an absolute or the “only way.” All structures have a life span, allowing them to work for a while before they cease working. As we saw in chapter 2, form is only half of the story, missing the formless pairing, and therefore partial and incomplete, eventually working against the very process it was meant to accomplish. I am referring now to every known system, including all meditation structures and trainings, as well as every tool and practice that aids our awakening, such as the guru and chela (disciple), teacher and student, monasteries, retreats, all spiritual lineages and traditions, and all forms and expressions in between.

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