2006 Author Preface to AWAKE IN THE HEARTLAND

This is a book about what could be called Zen or Advaita or meditative inquiry or radical non-duality in the context of an actual life with all its messiness. Reading the book now, three years after it was first published, I am mostly pleased with it. I do find a few places where I now see or would express something differently, where the writing seems to reify or make someconceptual thing out of the ungraspable no-thing-ness of actuality, where it seems to lack sensitivity or in some way miss the mark. Although I have not changed the original text in this new edition, it seems important to remind the reader that life is fluid and that words are temporary pointers, approximations always subject to revision. Waking up is not something that happens once and then it’s done. This book isn’t intended to provide final answers, but is rather an invitation to question some of our most basic assumptions, to look more closely.

When I speak of questioning or inquiring or looking, I’m not talking about seeking. Seeking is result-oriented, driven by dissatisfaction and restlessness, a kind of addictive or compulsive habit that frequently leaves you with a bad hangover. Questioning or inquiry, on the other hand, is a lifelong (moment to moment) exploration and discovery that grows out of curiosity, interest, and love. It is listening, clarifying, seeing, touching, being -- never repetitive or rote, but always new, full of astonishment and wonder. I read something recently in a book by Steven Batchelor that captures the spirit of such inquiry quite beautifully. He writes: "The penetration of this mystery requires that one not foreclose it by substituting an answer, be it a metaphysical proposition or a religious belief. One has to learn how to suspend the habit of reaching for a word or phrase with which to fill the emptiness opened by the question." He also says: "One relaxes into an uncontrived, open spaciousness which is neither a state of self-conscious meditation nor an inattentive state of distraction." It is to that delicate balance, that kind of spacious investigation and open presence that this book points. At times, it falls short. It’s easy to learn and spout the spiritually correct answers, to say that “All is One.” It’s much more challenging and infinitely more interesting to let all concepts go (even Oneness), to see this habitual tendency to conceptualize and seek answers as it arises, and to stay with the aliveness of actuality rather than foreclosing it with an answer, however “correct” that answer may seem.

The title of this book may be somewhat mystifying to readers outside the United States. The heartland refers to the center of this country, a region in the U.S. that has the reputation of being ordinary, down to earth, and plain. I was born in the heartland, in Chicago, and this book tells the story of my return there in middle age to be closer to my mother in her final years of life. In the title, I am playing not only on the location itself and the sense of ordinariness, but also on the nuances and implications of the heart.

Advaita (which means “not two”) and Zen both point to seeing through the illusion of separation, realizing that there is no independent autonomous self (no subject and object), that there is no-thing apart from everything, that there is only Now (the timeless, spaceless totality). Zen and Advaita both invite the direct discovery of what remains when all beliefs and concepts fall away. What remains in the absence (or transparency) of conceptualization is presence-awareness, the non-dual absolute: the sound of traffic, the taste of tea, the chirp of a bird, the rising of the chest, the cool breeze, the shapes of these words.

Awakening isn’t about getting something. It’s more about losing something, seeing through what is false. The truth isn’t some thing that is going to be seen or grasped or possessed at long last. That is illusion.

There is much debate in spiritual circles over whether meditation is eye-opening or misleading, whether waking up is a process or a sudden event, whether there is choice or no choice, whether this teacher or that one has the Real Goods, whether the suffering in the world matters or whether it is only a dream. The answer to all of these questions is both and neither. Getting caught up in philosophical debates and mental speculation about such questions is both fascinating and unsatisfying. The truth is something much simpler and much more direct.

When we really see a flower, or an ant, or a bird, or a human being, or a stone, or a rug, or a plate of cheese, that very seeing (or awaring) is unconditional love. Naturally, we care for all beings (including stones and rugs and plates). Not because we have taken some Bodhisattva vow, but because it is the natural action of clarity. Such natural activity has nothing to do with ideas about saving the world, improving myself, or eradicating so-called evil and imperfection. Clear seeing (awareness, unconditional love) includes everything. It is wholeness or unicity, undivided by thought.

The imaginary divisions created by thought are apparent, not real. They only exist conceptually, mirage-like, but they bring forth very real suffering on the personal and global levels. Is it possible to wake up from this entrancement? It has been said that nothing real can be destroyed, that the fire in the movie never burns up the screen. What does that mean?  One of my favorite sages, Nisargadatta, said, “The heart of things is at peace.” What is that heart to which he refers, and to which the title of this book points?  We can’t find it with the mind, with thinking. We can’t grasp and possess it mentally. We can only wake up to the reality of being it, and of there being nothing real outside of it. Waking up can only happen now, not yesterday or tomorrow. And actually, “we” don’t wake up; it simply becomes transparently obvious that “we” are an idea or an after-thought; that Now is boundless; that there is literally nothing to attain and no one to attain it; that the only reality is this.
As a bunch of concepts, this non-dual understanding can be easily misunderstood and adopted as a rather facile belief system, an answer that is clung to for pain relief or to provide a false sense of security, comfort, or meaning -- a way to pretend that things such as the holocaust or 9/11 or a failed relationship don’t really hurt or don’t really matter, a way to avoid seeing and feeling deeply. But as far as I’m concerned, what is truly liberating is seeing directly through the conceptual overlay as it arises and waking up now to the undivided immediacy and aliveness of what is. Nothing else really satisfies, because nothing else is real.

When I subtitled this book “The Ecstasy of What Is,” I wasn’t pointing to ecstatic experiences. Experiences come and go. They are inherently impermanent. The subtitle points instead to the ecstatic nature of life in its entirety: love affairs, holocausts, blooming flowers, tsunamis, sunlight, clouds, thunderstorms, airplanes flying into buildings, babies being born, explosions in distant galaxies – the full catastrophe, as Zorba the Greek called it.  I don’t think I would use this word ecstasy now because it lends itself to misunderstanding and seems somehow extra. Certainly liberation has absolutely nothing to do with feeling ecstasy all the time, and I did not mean to deny the reality of pain or horrific cruelty and ignorance.
Enjoy this book and take from it what feels alive and vital and true. Please don't adopt anything in it as a new belief system. I hope that it will invite you to explore for yourself, to question, to stop, look, and listen. If you find any answers in this book, let them go.
Endlessly liberating to let all the answers go, and to discover what's left.

Joan Tollifson
Chicago, May, 2006

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