Wisdom Insight
By Michael Erlewine
For me, my writing essays like this is grist for the mill of meditation, or more correctly, non-meditation, much like worry-beads or working a mala, is a meditative coasting along the razor’s edge of immersion and nonduality. Does this make any sense?
In the busyness of the day, there is nowhere I like to go more than to what I call Insight Meditation, dipping into and out of nondualism, invoking immersion and then reflecting on it a moment later until the beads on the string of meditation fuse into a seamless stream of insight. This is Mahamudra practice.
Hovering on the edge of inspiration, bobbing for insight, and then putting its results to use a moment later is like adding fresh ink to a fountain pen and then writing out the words.
I worked hard to acquire that technique, about a year and a quarter of non-stop effort, poking and trying for pliability and NOT finding it, trying to move my Insight Meditation from photography to writing essays like this, and then slowly the two ends came together, and now my writing pen, so to speak, is full. So, what am I talking about here?
And throughout that early time after first invoking Insight Mediations, I was on my own. In a kind of perfect storm, and at one of the lowest points in my life because of losing a job, everything that happened helped me to get down from my high horse, wake up so to speak, and precipitated what can only be described, at least in my life, as a dharma insight or breakthrough. It took grounding me for that to happen. I did not go quietly.
In that time, I discovered for myself what is called Vipassana (Insight Meditation), one of the cornerstones of Mahamudra, the other being Shamata (Tranquility Meditation). This only happens for the first time, once. In the Karma Kagyu Lineage to which I belong, it is called ‘Recognition’ of the true nature of the mind. And it has to be pointed out to us by an authentic teacher because, apparently, we cannot do this by ourselves. That’s what the pith dharma texts say, and it was true in my case.
And once ‘Recognition’ happens and is vetted by yourself and your teacher, because it is a realization and not just another experience, it is irreversible. There is no going back. The toothpaste cannot get itself back in the tube.
Anyway, when all this came down, when it happened, it took me a while to realize what exactly was taking place, and how best to use the Insight Meditation going forward. I spent over half a year outside each morning as the sun came up, experiencing the complete immersion of ‘Seeing” seeing itself. I could only do this out in nature, and when I came back home each day my mind, much to my disappointment, was perfectly normal. I did this almost every day until winter drove me inside.
Now, the following is difficult to explain, but I will try. Breaking through, puncturing the dualistic veil which we are habituated to, is like punching or creating a hole in a wall, and then peeping through. Insight Meditation has to start somewhere, and it is not wide angle to start with.
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In the beginning and for a long while after the initial breakthrough or puncture through, photography was the only avenue I had to look beyond duality, like a hole in the fabric of samsara I could look through it, but not extend myself and get through. I was still on the inside looking out through that hole.
That, my friends, took a long, long time and required constant effort on my part each day, to first take the “Seeing” home to my photography studio and have it work, and then, so much more difficult, to transfer that insight skill to writing blogs like this. Trying as hard as I could for a year, I could not even lift my little finger in making this happen. Our “Will” has nothing to do with this. Instead, it our ability to let go and relax.
This is as close to impossible as I have ever come. In fact, the last words my dharma teacher said to me before he passed on was to keep “extending and expanding” the ‘Recognition’ of the nature of the mind, so that instead of me keeping my practice, my practice is keeping me.
And what that meant to me was to continue to expand the hole or window I punctured in samsara to make it wider and wider until I could eventually pass through that hole, inverting the whole thing, so that I am on the other side of it all, or better yet, balanced on the borderline between duality and nonduality and servicing both sides. I have little idea how these words will mean or work for you reading this. It’s really not a topic for words at all, this process I am pointing at.
And it’s a constant process, turning everything inside out and back again. And while it started out by sitting on the meditation cushion for a number of decades, sitting is no longer necessary, but still feels good, natural. Instead, more and more, everything I do or have to do in a day is grist for mill of non-meditation. The key is awareness of awareness, and not so much whether I am doing this, that, or the other thing. The “goodness” is the awareness not what is being done.
That describes poorly the process of invoking Insight Meditation, the door to Mahamudra. Unfortunately, this is my yidam, not yours, my process and it may not be anything like this for you. You will have to see for yourself but do look.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here are the links: SpiritGrooves.net.
For a limited time, I am doing a few Zoom astrology readings. If interested, please email me with the subject “READINGS.”
As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
