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BEYOND THE KOAN (edited by Beezone) Insight, Self Observation and Self Understanding Part II (Part 1) True hearing doesn't really awaken until there is total
self-awareness and the freedom from having to identify with
one or the other half of your script in any given moment. If
you're both someone who is super committed to fidelity and
super committed to promiscuity simultaneously you can't do
either one. You can only be aware of the total and
understand it as bondage. You're not even fully aware of it
as bondage until you get to the point where you can't do
either one. Then you've really become sensitive to your
bondage and double bind. As long as you keep playing one or the other side in your
alternative moments, you will struggle, suffer and
continually seek and you will not fully be aware of it as
bondage. It's bondage when you can't move anymore, when
you're aware of the total, when you're aware of yourself
totally wholly and can't choose to be one or the other. You
can't be idealistic about it anymore. You can't be
superficial you will be unable to fully dramatize. You can
only suffer it and then you become aware of it as it is and
how it is something you are adding to what is, the gesture
of self-contraction. DISCIPLINES In the beginning people freely animate their patterns and
much of that is often self-indulgent. They want to do a
little of this and a little of that and maybe read the
teaching. At some point having studied the teaching and
having reflected on enough of themselves they realize the
usefulness of disciplines. How they reflect their tendencies
back to themselves. To some degree they frustrate your tendencies. They back
your tendencies up on themselves. In every moment, day to
day, your tendencies arise because you are living the
disciplines, you become aware of your efforts, your motives
and you begin to see yourself in more complexity. You see it even more and more the more you make the
disciplines a kind of total discipline covering all areas of
your life. You give yourself some room even in the beginning
and the discipline is there. The disciplines cover all areas
but they are not what you call absolute. You are not
required to be monks and so forth you see. So you do have
the general domain of human action in which you apply the
disciplines. It only takes a little, just little bit of
discipline is sufficient to frustrate your tendencies so
they are reflected back on yourself. Even before you do them you are made constantly aware of
the energies of your own efforts and you see them in your
complexity. You see not only the motive to be self-indulgent
rather than disciplined, you see the motive to be
disciplined. You see it as a way to satisfy yourself. You
see both sides so you must be aware of all of your
complexity and in all areas you must see yourself in pairs
of two minds of someone living in a dilemma or problem. You
see when you are fully self-aware and when you are no longer
really able to be one or the other side of any position.
If you are truly serious you become profoundly aware
of the act that is the root of both halves of every
conflict. That act is the self-contraction. It's not merely this or
that kind of activity in a functional sense. It is an
act that produces all those kinds of activities. You must
become extremely sensitive to yourself to notice that act
you see. Otherwise you see and understand these moments as
hearing. But you are only observing yourself egoically in
action and are not fully observing the act itself, the
fundamental act of self-contraction that is producing these
actions. You see yourself as ego in the form of those actions but
you do not see the action that is egoity itself. Because you
always have an act to do. You always have a functional
performance that you are identifying with. Instead of simply
observing yourself, you are being animated. So the more
profound this mere observation becomes, the more total that
awareness becomes and you begin to notice the opposites in
every moment. The more that is true the closer you are coming to a
summary insight, a direct awareness of the fundamental
action that is the root of all opposites, all complexity.
This is a most subtle observation. It is not a thing. It is
not itself a function that can be identified with a part of
the body or a part of human function. It is the root of all
of them, the governor of all of them. It's the principle of
bondage to all of them and it is what is keeping you from
becoming aware of that in which the contraction itself is
being generated. The ego is itself the ultimate koan. It's a not an
unexpected knot that is generating a kind of vision of
existence that is untrue. It is the result of an action you
are not observing. To cut through that koan is to not only
see the action that is the root of everything you are doing
but to transcended it through seeing or understanding. You
realize that in which it is arising. So you can say hearing
is a kind of satori. All release from egoity is a kind of satori, even moments
of so-called hearing and moments of insight. These are kinds
of satori or release from the bind, a kind of total
psyco-physical release or orgasm even perhaps, a free
circulation of its energies. A sense of well-being suddenly
comes over you. It's an orgasmic event and simultaneous with
it is a kind of intuitive sense of a greater condition. That moment of insight and what most fundamental
awakening is not the end of the process. It's only the
beginning of it. So much of what is called satori in the Zen
tradition, it's really the beginnings of a process that
could go on but instead they just repeat the ceremony over
and over again to have more and more satories. Satories only
are the beginning. 'I' IS THE BODY You've got to discover the ego. You must understand the
egoity or the self-contraction itself. You've got to stop
merely dramatizing it or living the dramatization of egoity
and not noticing what it is altogether. The first thing
you've got to go through is the process of understanding in
which you simply stand as the 'I' as the body without
contracting into some abstract sense of being interior,
being the mind against the body. You've got to relax from this identification with the
conceptual mind or the interior perceptual mind and be the
total which is the whole body or the total psycho-physical
person. The conditional self is the I. The 'I' is not merely
some interior mental preoccupation. It is that but it is
more than that. It is the total body mind physically
present, physically felt, not contracting. You must see this
and understanding it as it is. Before you can discover what the ego is as
self-contraction, you must simply stand as it is rather than
dramatize it. You've got to come to an ease as the body mind
and not merely dramatize egoity by becoming interior or a
becoming more physically active. That's the first step. It's
like in the Ramana Maharshi's form of inquiry. First you ask
what is arising and to whom is this arising and then you ask
who am I. It's like a two step process. You have to discover what
it is altogether and let it be. Be it. Let the 'I' be it,
but this 'I' you see which is the body mind and not merely
the mind. It is contraction. It is something being
superimposed in the present instant on existence. So this
process of listening whereby you allow the ego to be
identified with the body mind is not merely some interior
drama. It's just the first step in a process in which you
find out the 'I' . You find out the ego. The whole process of becoming 'I'
in the body is to discover the ego and understand it and
transcend it. Then that becomes the next homaly, it's not an
end in itself. The body without contracting interior to the
body is a relatively radiant position, it's not resisting
being the body. It's not altogether in resisting what the
body is which is dependent on relations, food and others.
It's become by its natural acknowledgment of itself
continuous with all its likenesse's, all things on which it
depends. It becomes continuous but nonetheless it's still
the ego. It's still contraction. This is what you must
discover. You must first come to the point of understanding
the ego because it is just a step in a process of
self-understanding. It's not an end in itself, otherwise the beginning
process would be the seventh stage of life and that's it.
It's just a moment in a process of self-understanding. Even
in the seventh stage of life however to be free of the
self-contraction altogether, it's not to be identified with
the body. It's to stand as the self-radiant divine but not
disassociated from the body, not identified with the
principle of trying to contract or disassociate from or with
the body or as the body or by the body. It's just continuous
with the body but it is not identification with the body but
it is identification with that in which the body is in
apparent identification. Until you understand yourself fully
and the contents of all the stages of life, to be the body
is not to realize the seventh stage disposition. It's to be
the body, it is to be identified as the body mind. That's
quite a different thing than the seventh stage realization.
The seventh stage of life is to be continuous with the body
mind and identified with the transcendental divine, the
self-radiant divine. In the beginning there's another kind of process going
on. It's about finding yourself out. You have to get enough
understanding of yourself to identify yourself as you are
and let it be. It's not a matter of focusing on some
interior or identifying with the conceptual process merely.
The conceptual process is an aspect of this total body mind.
You must be the ego first totally and as a whole. Simply
allow it to be observed as it is as a whole in all its
complexity, its multiplicity and multifariousness and all of
its divisions or oppositions, in its total dilemma. It must
simply be observable as it is you see, that's the first
step. What I'm addressing in this matter of the confession 'I'
am the body is a natural event associated with
self-observation. It's not the end of the process, 'I' as
the body, but 'I' is the not the divine, 'I' as the
self-contraction. That's the next thing to be found out once
the 'I' as body has become acceptable and can be observed
simply as it is in all its complexity. It must be observed
and understood as self-contraction, so that's the next step.
It's the next homaly, the next portion of the chapter which
is about self-understanding. That process has a variety of events in it. Every stage
of the Way has a progress of events or stages of
demonstration. In the listening stage there is a progress or
there are stages of the demonstration of it. 'I' as the body
is not hearing. It is simply an early event in the process
of self-understanding or self-observation. To acknowledge the 'I' as it is which is the total body
mind and not an interior dramatization merely, puts you in a
position to go further in this process of
self-observation. CONTRADICTIONS QUESTIONER: 'I' as the body as ego and 'I' as the
Transcendental Divine Condition seem to be a
contradiction. ADI DA: Perhaps in your case the major reason why
these two considerations seemed to contradict one another,
you have not yet realized the first. Because you tend to
abstract yourself and think think think think think wonder
wonder question question doubt doubt and not stand as the
body. You do don't you? You can't get onto the second until you've accomplished
the first and until you've accomplished the first, the
second seems like a contraction or a question, something you
don't understand yet anyway. Well how could you understand
it fully until you've fulfilled the first aspect of the
process. So if you truly enter into a process of
self-observation then you will observe the total complex of
what you are being as a conditional personality. It's not really a mentalizing or a moding. It's physical.
It's sensory. It's perceptual as well as conceptual. So it's
all these things. It's all totally the body mind and you
must not only notice that but having noticed it allow it.
Standing in a position of observing it allows you to allow
it. Then you have a different framework in which to continue
the process of self-observation but you will notice that
even in that sense 'I' in the body and 'I' is love in some
sense, in other words, continuous with all its relations,
even so it is the self-contraction but that cannot be
affirmed until it is truly observed and you can't observe it
until you have first come to terms with what the 'I' is as a
whole. So the listening process is a process and it has stages
and you can't really understand the later stages until you
have fulfilled the earlier stages. So that Chapter 19 is a
condensation, an elaboration of all of the sequences of the
listening process. (From the Audience) You've admonished first transcend the
mind not the body in a listening process that you describe
in Chapter 19 that that process is made very clear in terms
of how the body mind is always being an other involved in a
separate illusory abstract process that actually even
prevents itself from being sensitive to the self-contraction
as the body. ADI DA SAMRAJ: You're not only being
self-contraction as the body but you're being
self-contraction in the context of the body or the body mind
so you're creating a division in it. You're always
two-sided. You create divisions in everything. You have both
propositions in you so in the context of the body mind you
are tending to be the mind or maybe sometimes trying to be
the body without the mind. It is a whole, a totality you see. Self-observation must
come to the point where it allows that totality or that
dynamic and it's not only the conceptual mind. It's the
perceptual mind. You're not merely interior activity. The
self-contraction stands as the total body mind, not merely
within it. The total body mind is the soul if we can even
use the word soul you see, not something inside and
abstract. What you are being from moment to moment is a
dynamic full of opposites. You tend to make wrong judgments about it. You tend to
not even being able to identify it as it is as a functional
operation you see because you are playing the game of
self-contraction so the first event in the process of
self-observation, the observation of self-contraction is to
come to terms with its total manifestation which is not
merely the inside separating from the outside or the outside
separating from the inside but this whole outside inside
psycho-physical 'I'. That's the 'I', not merely an 'I' you can say in your
mind and you can say it inside you see. 'I' is the body, not
merely the mind. It is a feeling, existence but nonetheless
it is conditional. It is feeling but separate and even in
all its relatedness however continuous it may be in the
context of relations, loving even, it is still being
separate. It is observable as a self-contraction. True hearing is a matter of understanding the totality
that is the 'I' and not merely some portion. So 'I' is the
body and not merely the mind or an inward tension. The
self-contraction is not really something happening inside
the body. The self-contraction is the body. The
self-contraction is relatedness. The self-contraction covers
all of its separate parts or its dynamics or its
oppositions, mind body you see, not just mind or body. Self-contraction covers all of the opposites, includes
them all. So this is the first test you must come to in the
process of listening. Then you become more sensitized with
the wide variety of operations of yourself in relationship
from moment to moment. The body is a contraction from the
point of view of consciousness. It is a difference. It's
made of the same energy of which all other forms are made.
It is a universal force but it's displayed through
differences, separate apparent individuals, separate
bodies. It's displayed as relationship, the feeling of
relatedness. The feeling of relatedness is being displayed
as all relations as all opposites all others all conditions
things. It's displayed as the cosmic mandala, not merely as
your separate individual personality. The entire cosmic
display is self-contraction, an illusion, an appearance
added to or being apparently superimposed on that which
already is and what always already is, this is where you
stand. It's not a matter of the attainment of some object other
thing state. It's the removal of contradictions. They appear
as contradictory because you are self-contradictory. For you
the various parts of the whole are contradicting one another
or are in opposition to one another. They are a struggle you see. The self-contraction is the
display through all kinds of varieties. You identify with
one portion of a dynamic and each moment you are always
playing that game you see and you can't see the whole so the
real beginnings of the process of understanding are you
coming to terms with self-observation, coming to terms with
the 'I' as a totality rather than automatically identifying
with some portion of the dynamic of the body mind so you
must first relax as the body, identify 'I' as the body or
the total body mind, not some portion and therefore from
that point the whole is before you still displayed, still
playing its games, still displaying itself through dynamic,
through contradictions but as you, when you develop the true
awakening of hearing you see, it's not contradiction
anymore. There aren't contradictions. Contradiction is just
another word for problems or oppositions, opposites and it's
a problem for you, contradictory for you because you tend to
identify with one path in every moment. Over time you identify with every side but at any given
moment you tend to only identify with one over against the
other. You are always feeling dilemma, a sense of
contradiction. That moves you to seek something outside or
inside. But the truth is not outside or inside. It's not
some thing, a proposition or object. It's that which is
realized inherently and when all contradictions are
transcended. That's the state of mind, contradiction, of the ego. This
is what must be understood. You begin to understand it when
you allow the ego as a whole as a totality and stop
identifying merely with one portion over and against the
other. You've got to see that game. You've got to find
yourself out you see. The whole process is a matter of
finding yourself out. Koans, the traditional Koans all appear to be
contradictory. They create a doubt or a stress. It's this
and the other and you try to make to sense out of it. You
try to make it one but it's always two. The person under the
Zen discipline goes to the Zen Master having been given a
Koan and answers the question from the point of view of one
side adopting the position of one side or the other in every
interview you see. When is the question finally answered? When is it given
another Koan? No. When it stops being contradictory. When
stop being possessed by it when you stop struggling with it.
When you can assume not only the position of the whole,
that's one step but the position of that which is prior even
to the whole but before you assume the position of the whole
you are all the time assuming the position of one side or
the other. That's the struggle of the Koan. Those who do the Koan do first identify one possibility
over against the other. They keep bringing up a bunch of
dumb remarks and get slapped on the head. Then they come to
another point where they are something like rested in a
total view. They are not struggling with it. It's a totality
but they make a subtly dumb remark and that's when they get
their worst beating because the next time they come in they
must stand prior even to the whole. That's the first step in the Koan business. Then you must
find out that even the whole, even the 'I' as the body is
self-contraction. That's the great discovery. That's the end
of the Koan. That's the end of the ego but you can't figure
it out. The contradiction is not in the teaching or in me.
They're in you. They're in your matter of acting. There in
the self-contraction. It is full of contradictions. It is
self-contradictory. That's what egoity is. It's
self-defeating. It's always assuming one side or the other
or maybe it's some point resting in the whole but not
identifying and not understanding it as an obstacle, not in
other words, realizing that which is prior to it. That which is prior to even the whole is what is realized
in hearing. It is intuitively realized and it's similar to
stopping and pinching yourself you see. All of a sudden you
have the key and that key is the root of the conscious
process which is the senior aspect of the way from there on.
And ultimately it covers everything, the whole cosmic
display and all the stages of life. DOUBLE BIND The inability to make an effort or to assume a
proposition representing one or the other side of a dynamic
possibility or one or the other side of the contradiction of
the problem that you're being . . . when you can't make an
answer, when you can't go further, when you can't penetrate
the Koan, you can't penetrate the great question, only the
total is before you, you cannot move, you're in an absolute
state of frustration, you can't think what to do next, you
don't know what possibly could happen next, you could be in
this state for the rest of your life, when you get to that
point of tension, it's precisely in that disposition that
hearing awakens. It may not happen that moment but that's the disposition
in which hearing does awaken, so that's what you must move
to and through in the listening process. It is a profound
process. It's not some silly little religion business. It's
not just a preliminary you see. It's the basis of it all.
And you must come to that point of absolute frustration,
absolute contradiction. We can't make a gesture to the right
or left or inside or outside. Only the total is before you
despite its vast complex of this idiot self and there's not
a damn thing you can do about it and you can't remove its
essential stresses by contemplating it or acting. There's
nothing you can do. You're addressing the great question or the great
consideration, or observing yourself with great seriousness,
complete attention. You can't do anything but that. You're
stuck with that in that, that is the point of crisis and
hearing is the ultimate revelation in that context. It's
very much like the Koan business in the Zen tradition. This is the first stage even in the Zen tradition where
the Koan is used as a device you see. It's an early
psychological stage in the listening process and some of you
thought you were a advanced practitioners (audience
laughs)...Where's my mallet..... Where's my stick? End of
you, over! (more laughter from audience). Part II (Part 1)
a talk by Adi Da Samraj
May 2, 1987
Beginning of Listening and Hearing
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