"there are no persons," said the ... well, never mind

There is a practicioner I know of. I believe he thinks he is pretty damned enlightened. He is fond of saying stuff like -- there are no persons, you and I don't exist. I'm not really sure what his point is, but I think he is trying to point to something that helps him to not suffer and that he hopes will make others stop suffering as well. I guess.

It seems strange to me though. I mean, who or what is making that statement about there not being a person and who or what is listening and intereacting with that statement? Can't we just call those things "persons?" Why not? Sure, practice makes one realize that what we might be very different than what we at first thought, but we are all still here, I'm pretty sure (at least for this instant I think). Why else would there even be practice?

Practice is for persons. Until their actual living breathing bodies die. And then, I couldn't say.

I think we all have to look out for the ways in which our habitual defense mechanisms and identification patterns can fool us. They form around ideas and experiences, and give us a calming feeling, like, "Oh, I get it now. I don't have to worry about ___ anymore." But that can be another way to fall into a ditch...

I've heard Jack Kornfield say that Ajahn Chah used to give contradictory advice often. He'd say one thing to a student one day, and then the opposite thing to a student the next. Somone (probably Jack) called him on it one day. He said his job as a teacher was to guide one along the path. If someone was falling too far in one direction, and thus toward a ditch, he would call out, "Go to the left!" When the student started off to far in the other direction, he would call out, "Go to the right!" The moral of the story, I think, is that it's far too easy to fall into a rut in practice, and these ruts can be can to climb out of. The whole "everything is emptiness, there are no persons" position is just another rut. It's just as unskillful as saying, "Everything is separate. You are alone in the world. There is no way out of fixed identity as a human person." The path and fruit are beyond extremes, and this is not something easy to achieve... at least not for me.

Yeah, there's a funny tendency for some practitioners to get really caught up in a strange self-validating conceptual loop. They have used the "emptiness" concept to uproot some of their own suffering, but they just can't put it down. I've heard a lot of neo-Advaita teachers who seem to be in this place, and encountered a couple of practitioners like this on a few forums. There is a rather transparent, from the outside at least, self-contradictory strategy of dismissing any divergent perspective as the word game of someone hopelessly locked into believing their concepts. In other words, if you challenge or merely differ from my position, then you are attached to concepts and befuddled by language.

In some cases this may be an unskillful attempt at helping others. Have you guys ever heard of one finger Zen? The story goes a monk went to the master and asked his burning dharma question. The master responded by raising one finger as he gazed at the monk, and the monk attained awakening. When aspirants would approach this newly-awakened monk with their own burning questions, he would just raise a single finger-- that was the only way he could express his realization. I bet not a lot of people awoke n his presence!

In other cases it could be an instance of more obvious spiritual bypassing, and the whole thing could be a facade to protect a very fragile ego.... Narcissism is a state in which deep insecurity is defended against by a sense of grandiosity, and is often-- inside and outside of spiritual circles-- implemented with word games and other sorts of manipulation in which absolutely no critique is entertained, but rather always turned back on the critic.

So I think a good ad hoc criteria for telling the difference between unskillful attempts to help and narcissistic displays is the willingness to consider another perspective.

I think that there are certain "spiritual" states which dovetail tragically with narcissism in that they provide a convincing "understanding" that everything experienced is part of "me". So it's not that there are no persons, it's that there is only one person and a bunch of empty appearances... There is a complete lack of insight into the fact of perspective, a solipsistic sense of one's "immediate" experiential continuum being the whole of reality.

I have been considering lately based on my own experience recently that, in developmental terms, there are pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal forms of "ego" or illusory solid self, and that correspondingly there are pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal dimensions of awakening--- and that all of these of course have interactive "modes"---

I'm pretty sure that one-finger-zen student ended up having his finger cut off. If I remember my koan collections correctly.

I like the idea of a trans-personal ego (not having one, just recognizing that they can exist). I wonder if a certain teaching style or method could also become an identity, as much in need of "defending" as our ego? It's something I may have run into a few times, and though I'd like to think that the teaching should actually arise as a response to the student's question, rather than as any dogmatic system, perhaps it's just that I'm not so good at articulating my "burning dharma question" as I think I am. Or maybe the answers I've received have yet to truly sink in... Who knows?

In any case, I'd hate to think that there was ever really an END to the spiritual path. Seems like life wouldn't be quite as fun, if there were. There's always something to watch out for, and to learn from.

Yeah, totally... doesn't it feel more like, the deeper into it we get, the closer we get to the 'beginning' rather than the end of the Path? It's like--- what if Path is continually emerging fresh from the Origin in this moment here and now? All the "somewhere elses", whether "mundane" or spiritual-- all the trips of our illusory ego, whether instinctual, personal, or transpersonal-- are just mirages? What happens when I just stay at the beginning? Well, what bloody can't happen here-and-now? Aren't the possibilities wide open? Isn't this the way uncertainty appears when unclouded by hope and fear? Like a wide open Path that just unfolds here-and-now without beginning or end? And aren't all beings on this wide open way together?

oh, yeah! oh, yeah!

Nice Jake, very nice. : )

It's like--- what if Path is continually emerging fresh from the Origin
in this moment here and now? All the "somewhere elses", whether
"mundane" or spiritual-- all the trips of our illusory ego, whether
instinctual, personal, or transpersonal-- are just mirages? What happens
when I just stay at the beginning?

Because really, when are we NOT in the moment here and now? We are we not at the origin point, all on the wide way together?

"Yeah, totally... doesn't it feel more like, the deeper into it we get, the closer we get to the 'beginning' rather than the end of the Path?" -Jake

That's a provacative question, Jake. If I'm honest, I completely agree with you. The more I really dive into practice, and really allow myself to be open to experience, the more "here" I am. It almost seems like a practical joke. We embark on these World Transcending journeys, only to never move an inch from where we are now, and always have been.

I think we've all read the following quote, but it can't hurt to read it again (it's one of my favorites):

"We need to remember that where we are going is here -- that any practice is simply a means to open our hearts to what is in front of us. Where we already are is the path and the goal."

-Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

And it feels so easy and free to be here like this with each other. A phrase that continually comes up with Bankei is "seeing others' minds". it is most emphatically not reading others' minds; but he considers it a sign of relying on the Unborn buddhanature--- and I think I flash into it here and there, it is just seeing with complete directness the totally sensible logic of another being, that we are always doing what makes sense to us in some way-- every gesture, action, word expresses a logic or a wholeness, no matter how we might judge it on a relative level.

'Seeing into others' minds" is just being on the wide open way together, and "compassion" may be as simple as preserving that awareness in our being-with-others-- seeing others' awakening, here and now (nod to Kate ) IS the definition of being awake, for me. In a pure land, there are only buddhas!

I don't want to be in some special state anymore-- I just want to be on this wide open way with everyone, and to interact with everyone in a way that expresses that. No need to judge myself for falling short of this so often; I know this is the way it is when I just be here now with complete ease, judgment free, seeing clearly, being free.

And it's fantastic to have a group of friends who can support this in each other, respecting each others' unique expression of being on this Way!!