Mind / Matter

Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object, or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?

--Dogen

There is no contradiction between body and spirit, between mind and matter. These are just words we use to understand one thing.

--Zoketsu Norman Fischer

All you need to do is to get rid of the tendency to define your self.

--Nisargadatta Maharaj

As we explore the actuality of the body and discover directly that it is insubstantial, impermanent, and boundless, we find that many knotty problems dissolve into thin air along with the body. For example, there is much debate over which is primary, mind or matter, and whether consciousness is limited to the body or whether it is beyond the body. Will it survive the body or die along with the brain?  Did the universe begin with matter, and did consciousness appear much later in the evolutionary process as a feature of complex organic life, or are evolution and matter dream-like appearances in consciousness?

We cannot deny that all our knowledge and experience, everything perceivable and conceivable, appears in consciousness, and is in some sense “made up” of consciousness. We have no actual experience of anything outside of consciousness or other than consciousness. The very notion that there is a “material” world outside of consciousness can only appear in consciousness, and can never be verified. Don’t take any of this on faith, but look and see for yourself. What is always here in every experience? What must be here first in order for anything else to appear at all?

As we explore actual present moment experiencing, we find ceaseless change and complete interdependence. We find that everything is made up of everything else, and we discover that solid, independent objects only exist conceptually as ideas (and to some degree as conditioned perceptions).  When examined closely and carefully, we see that the boundaries between objects are fluid, porous and notional, and that any given object only exists (and can only exist) along with, and because of, everything it is not---that it is actually made up of everything it is not. This is sometimes called Oneness, but once it is named and conceptualized, it becomes another (imaginary) object, so Buddhists prefer to call it emptiness. As one Buddhist teacher put it, everything is empty of itself and full of everything else. Emptiness is not some mysterious vacancy or voidness, but rather, exactly this – this present moment. 

At a casual glance, we do seem to see a world of apparently solid, separate, persisting objects, and this appearance isn’t going to disappear. It has a relative reality and a functional utility within the dream-like movie of waking life. But when we look more closely and carefully, either through meditation or science, we find the borders are not solid, the objects are nothing but continuous change, and the "me" who is assumed to be seeing all this cannot be found. We have an idea that "matter" is something very solid and substantial, like chairs and tables, but when we look closely at any material, it turns out not to be in any way solid or substantial. Matter seems to evaporate into thin air when we really investigate it! Form is nothing but thorough-going flux, constant change, formlessness. There is always only this one timeless present moment that never comes and never goes and never stays the same.

We may think that consciousness is a brain creation, but no brain has ever appeared outside of consciousness, and if we cut open the brain, we won't find this room I'm sitting in. So where exactly is this room, and am I in it, or is it in me?  Indeed, every location, every happening, and everything I ever encounter, appears within consciousness. Does "the world" also exist “out there” apart from me?  Are we really a bunch of separate, independent organisms all “looking out” through the windows of our senses at a single objective reality that always exists “out there” whether or not anyone is aware of it, each of us seeing this single reality in slightly different ways?  Or is that very idea of separate people all viewing an objective external reality “out there” somewhere a fundamental misconception?  As Zen Master Dogen asked, Are there various ways of seeing one object, or have we mistaken various images for a single object? 

When we ask whether consciousness is an activity of the brain, or whether the brain is an appearance in consciousness, and which came first, the brain or consciousness, the problem itself only exists as a movement of consciousness. The entities this question brings into apparent existence ("the brain" and "consciousness") are conceptual reifications in which thought attempts to freeze the movement of life into discrete and definable objects. And in deep sleep, this whole question and the one who feels driven to answer it both disappear completely.

Clearly, we don’t “know” what consciousness is, and we never will know, because there is no way to stand outside of consciousness and observe it as an object.  And in fact, scientists are finding there is really no way to stand outside of anything and observe it as an object, perhaps because everything is consciousness! In the deepest sense, we don’t really know what anything is! And what does it even mean to wonder what something "is"?

Although we don’t know what consciousness “is,” we certainly can’t deny the reality of consciousness – it is always right here as the most intimate ground of every moment. It is the undeniable fact of being present, being aware.  We have absolutely no doubt about being here, and this doubtless certainty requires no training and no proof. Consciousness would have to be here first in order to doubt it! 

Although consciousness is the one thing of which we have absolutely no doubt whatsoever—it is our most intimate and ever-present reality, the very ground of every moment—even so, we can’t ever apprehend or grasp this conscious presence or say exactly what it is!  It has no taste, no color, no shape, no form – other than every taste and every color and every shape and every form. As someone said, it’s so clear, it’s easy to overlook.  And even this clarity is part of the appearance, for every night in deep sleep, even the barest sense of awareness vanishes completely along with everything perceivable and conceivable. The groundlessness that remains can never be perceived or conceptualized.

Teachings such as Zen and Advaita are not about acquiring information, knowledge and answers. They are about unlearning everything we think we know and waking up to the aliveness and fluidity of Here / Now.

Can we see right now that the whole problem of "mind vs. matter" is a dream-problem? Without the words, what is this, right here, right now?  Is it Mind? Is it matter? No word can capture it. What remains in deep sleep? What was here before the universe was born, before the Big Bang? What were you before conception, before your parents were born? Explore these questions not by thinking about them and trying to find an answer, but by falling into the answer-less-ness of Here / Now.

When the thinking mind gets busy trying to solve the mystery of the universe, we wonder if the fundamental reality is mind or matter.  We wonder which comes first, the brain or the mind, the chicken or the egg. We wonder if we are a brain in a vat, or whether or not consciousness will survive death. We wonder what is prior to consciousness. Perhaps questions such as these are all akin to asking what happens to me if I fall off the edge of the earth.  People used to worry about that. But obviously, the apparent problem, which at the time seemed quite serious, was based on false ideas about the earth.  The danger of falling off the edge was never really there. In reality, no separate thing is ever born and nothing real ever dies.  There is no before and after, no “out there” or “in here,” except relatively, in the world of appearances.

Realizing this doesn’t mean we lose the ability to distinguish a chicken from an egg, nor does it mean that we have no boundaries in the way psychology uses that term. Awakening does not deny relative reality or the ability to set limits and make distinctions, but awakened understanding functions within that relative reality without the stickiness and confusion that comes when relative reality is mistaken for absolute reality, or when some relative object is mistaken for absolute Truth.

Gradually, we become more and more sensitive to the way the mind divides, abstracts, reifies and then gets confused, trying to reconcile the pieces it has just created. We can begin to see this happening as it happens. And we can begin to see directly that our confusion is all in how we’re thinking and not in reality itself.  We can come back to the simplicity of what actually is.

Here / Now, we discover the extraordinary miracle that we imagined was “out there” somewhere. As we become intimate with our actual direct experience, we discover there is no separation between the seer, the seeing, and the seen. The words only seem to divide what is actually one seamless whole. There is diversity, but not separation.

Believing this as an idea is not enough to satisfy the cosmic itch. Belief is always shadowed by doubt. And even though we may know this from our own direct experience, our tendency is to forget and to once again go looking “out there” for something to save us, or even to go looking out there for “Here and Now.”  This habit of overlooking the jewel and searching for it somewhere else is deeply conditioned and tends to recur. Seeking what has never been absent is the Cosmic game of Hide and Seek. Within the context of the game, it all seems to be about "me," and it all seems very serious.

In waking up, it is realized that there is no "me" apart from everything else, and that from the perspective of the seamless Whole, it doesn't really matter whether there is enlightenment or delusion, clarity or confusion. We realize that there is no enlightenment without delusion, and that we cannot actually say which comes first, delusion or enlightenment. They both appear together, like form and emptiness, mind and matter, chickens and eggs. Enlightenment is a word for recognizing the boundlessness that is never absent. Delusion is a word for entrancement in the story of separation and lack. Enlightenment has no problem with delusion. Enlightened seeing recognizes delusion as none other than boundlessness. In waking up from the story, consciousness realizes, again and again, that it has never really been lost or separate, that wherever we seem to go, there is no way out of Here and Now.

It seems to be the nature of consciousness to explore and inquire and question. In the dream-like movie of waking life, seamless being appears as a multitude of individuals, like waves on the ocean, and “we” do this exploration through meditation, science, body awareness work, art, lovemaking, politics, philosophy, psychotherapy, and in all kinds of ways. Consciousness explores itself and then comes home from its explorations. “We” put aside all our words, our telescopes and microscopes, our computers and paint brushes and cameras and drop into the silence of deep sleep or death, the silence that refreshes us. And then, before long, the dream world appears and then the movie of waking life, which is another kind of dream, and at the end of every episode of that dream-like movie, “we” let everything go and fall back into the refreshment of deep sleep, just like the whole universe, endlessly expanding and contracting, dying and being born, inhaling and exhaling.

You may find there is no end and no beginning to this indescribable being and no need to define it. You are the Whole Show.

-- copyright Joan Tollifson 2011 --

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