S5E5 Contemporary Definitions of Liberation
There are many different ideas about what enlightenment is: some come from the dogma of particular schools; some come from individuals only vaguely associated with a set of schools, etc. What follows is a list of “contemporary definitions” from teachers important to the Shala. The list is gleaned from Marianna Caplan’s very valuable book: Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. Are there desires after awakening? Does liberation mean that all of my problems are going to disappear?
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Edited Transcript
Last time we began a conversation about enlightenment with an open admission that we may be confused about what it is. But we also must admit that we have intuitions about it that are real, though these are couched in a self conscious understanding that we don't know exactly what we're talking about. As practitioners of yoga, we also understand that all the techniques, principles, and philosophies that come in its various traditions aim in the direction of this transformation called enlightenment.
Rather than trying to establish an axiomatic definition of enlightenment, we identified it as a qualitative transformation: a kind of transformation that transcends mere psychological modification, where our deepest layer of values and desires is altered. In that sense, awakening is itself a unique species of value. So because Yoga practice is ultimately oriented by enlightenment, it is likewise working in the area of value realization.
We saw that the work of value realization requires a specific kind of agency, primarily because one cannot simply choose to change oneself at any significant level of depth. Calling on the work of D. Agnes Callard, we identified the unique species of agency involved in value acquisition as aspirational agency. When we aspire toward something like awakening, we do not, as of yet, fully grasp its significance. We do, however, imperfectly recognize its significance. So to aspire is to exist in a kind of liminal space, where we have a vague understanding that something calls us towards the acquisition of a new value - like radical self transcendence - but we don't exactly know what that means, because we must pass through the experience in order to fully understand who we will be on the other side.
When we do the work of aspiration, we are called to fertilize and grow our love for the real and for the meaningful, and yoga is one of the great offerings to the world in service of this process.
Contemporary Definitions of Enlightenment
This episode is about contemporary definitions of enlightenment, so we're looking at some of the things said by contemporary teachers who still live, or who have lived in our lifetime, in order to flesh out the general idea of value acquisition. There are many different ideas about what enlightenment is: some come from the dogma of particular schools, but many come from autodidactic renegades who are only loosely associated with a school; and sometimes their teachings explicitly rebel against the dogma of a particular school. These contemporary teachers are important to the Shala in some fundamental way. This list is gleaned from Marianna Kaplan's very valuable book Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment.
Shattering of Mental Constructs
The first teacher is Georg Feuerstein, a very important practitioner and researcher of yoga, who I discovered some 30 years ago. He was a Sanskrit speaker and a scholar who was also a devoted practitioner, and therefore someone who moved in spiritual circles and lived in ashrams. So he wasn't only qualified academically, he was deeply invested in these traditions: he had “skin in the game” as we say.
Feurstein has written many books, perhaps the most famous being The Encyclopedia of Yoga, which came out more than 30 years ago. I still think it's relevant in the way that it outlines the development of the philosophies, techniques, and traditions that comprise Yoga. Feurstein says that “enlightenment is the shattering of all mental constructs.”
Let’s flesh the idea of shattering mental constructs out a bit. One of the metaphors that could be used to illustrate the nature of a mental construct is a pair of glasses that have lenses colored in a certain way. Before enlightenment, we don't really know we’re wearing glasses, so everything appears in the color that they add to our perceptions. If awakening is the shattering of all mental constructs, it’s like realizing we are wearing glasses, and taking them off for the first time: the experience destroys the habitual, conditioned perceptions and responses that the glasses generate - everything appears without their color. So the awakening event makes us aware that we've been wearing glasses for a long time, and that we have been perceiving a highly conditioned version of reality. It also means that we now have the option to keep the glasses off, or to put them back on, but with the new knowledge that we're wearing them.
Responsiveness
The next definition is from Lee Lozowick. Lee was a very important teacher, and is affectionately known as Mr. Lee in many circles. He was the teacher of one of our dearest mentors and teachers, Red Hawk, whose work is central to everything at the Shala. Mr. Lee says, “enlightenment is responsiveness.”
So being awake is here correlated with action, namely the ability to do what is needed in each moment, or to generate a wise response. Enlightenment is then synonymous with a new degree of responsibility. In this space, we're free from rigid agendas that limit the way we interact with reality. When one is free from dogmatic agendas, one is open to respond to anything that arises with skill and sensitivity. So when one lives in responsiveness, rather than in reaction or projection, there is a freshness to action, an implicit creativity; and this, in turn, also looks like spontaneity. And spontaneity is certainly one of the characteristics that's classically ascribed to the awakened masters in many, many traditions. I'm thinking in particular of Taoism.
A relaxed Mind
Next we have something from the famous French teacher, Arnaud Desjardins: he says, “enlightenment is a relaxed mind.” Desjardins also calls this, “accepting everything in the moment as it is without trying to change it.” At the Shala this is called non interference, wherein we meet what is arising with a kind of affection, of what we often call the “big yes”. In this orientation, we're really interested in understanding what is happening, rather than judging or manipulating it, and in particular our knowledge of what is arising is always grounded in sensation/feeling. As Red Hawk would say, we encounter reality free from judgment when we receive it “below the neck”. In this sensory rich state called Presence, we practice relaxing any impulse that tries to change what is arising. In another way, this is simply the practice of non-attachment.
This brings up a common question from students: after they hear that being awake is contingent on being free from attachment, and consequently free from the desire to manipulate, a fear tends to arise in young students which assumes that to be an accomplished yogi or yogini means not wanting anything at all. This shows that the everyday ego is composed largely of fear that its desires will never be fulfilled. It is common to feel as though genuine satisfaction can only be realized when all my desires have been fulfilled. So what does being free from desire and attachment - or embodying a relaxed mind - really mean?
Because we’re ultimately talking about Yoga, we should answer this by referencing the Bhagavad Gita, which is a central text for a majority of the traditions in India, and also a cornerstone here at the Shala. In the 55th sloka of the second chapter, Prince Arjuna - the main character - asks Lord Krishna about the qualities of the wise: “How does one describe him who is steady of wisdom, who is steadfast in deep meditation, Krishna? How does he who is steady in wisdom speak? How does he sit? How does he move? Krishna responds in the next sloka by telling the Prince that the wisdom is steady in one who has, “[abandoned] all desires emerging from the mind”. Let’s look closely at this.
The Sanskrit word for mind in this case is manogatan. The root of this word is manas, which generally refers to “lower mind”, or “sense mind”. So it's not all desire that is to be abandoned in the pursuit of wisdom. It is rather a certain class of desires: those that emerge from the sense mind, that region of the mind composed of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and speaking, grasping, moving, procreating, and eliminating. This level of mind - in itself - is devoid of genuine intelligence and intuition, and is thus a reactive slave to pleasure and pain: it is not, as Desjardins advises, relaxed as a matter of course. It finds its true usefulness when guided by the higher levels of mind: intelligence, intuition, and essential bliss. We can surmise then that desires emerging from these higher levels are not problematic in the same way, or at least to the same degree.
Now the Gita does not list specific desires arising from the lower mind that inhibit wisdom: this would require listing the endless sense objects that correlate with foolishness. Rather, it reveals three predictable outcomes, which signal that it is wise to abandon any particular desire/object that produces these outcomes when frustrated. These outcomes are known as the three poisons: anger, greed and fear. So if, when the desire for x is frustrated or fails to reach consummation, anger, fear, and/or greed arise, let it go. This will go a long way to understanding what it means to experience a relaxed mind.
All things are transitory
Here is something else from Lee Lozowick, and a student of his named Purna Steinitz: “Enlightenment is the knowledge that all things are transitory, including enlightenment”. This is essentially a teaching about impermanence: knowledge of this means accepting that things come and go, and this is one of the central teachings of all the wisdom traditions. Trying to hold onto things that are transitory is foolish, like trying to hold water in your hand, or trying to catch the wind. This is an image of foolish attachment, which produces a continuous sense of frustration that ends up being a kind of madness if the nature of the error itself is not seen.
Take a second and try to actively imagine living and acting from a place where all of your choices emerge from a deep knowledge that things are transitory, even enlightenment. So there twist here is: knowledge of impermanence itself has to be taken as transitory. There isn't any concept or epistemological construct that doesn't come and go. So ultimately, those sorts of things are not worth investing in too much. When we understand that impermanence is the law, and begin to see things as being unstable in a really, really deep way - like slowly melting wax near a flame - we are awakening, but this does not entail residing in a space free from change. This also means that awakening is coincident with existing in a kind of exquisite vulnerability, which in turn means that awakening involves the heart in a crucial way.
When knowledge of impermanence is seated in the heart, true transformation of our tendency toward foolish attachment begins. This state of being seated in the heart is called by many of our teachers, radical surrender. It is understood to be a mixture of gratitude and compassion: that is a sense of fullness that compels thanksgiving and sharing, and a willingness to suffer with others.
Impersonal Energy
Next we have something from Carl Jung, the great transpersonal psychologist, genius interpreter of myth and the alchemical tradition, origin of the idea of the collective unconscious, and teacher of the active imagination as transpersonal therapy. Jung said, “enlightenment is an impersonal energy.” So the power that runs the process of awakening is beyond the reach of me and mine, or what our beloved teacher Red Hawk would call Me Myself: the ego-personality. Marianna Kaplan comments, “one does not experience the energy of enlightenment because of one's good deeds, or because of one's extraordinary nature. The moment of enlightenment is an unemotional force indifferent to personalities and personal preferences, and this force uses the most suitable human vehicle to fulfill its needs.”
Though Kaplan emphasizes that this force is “unemotional”, I think it's important to understand that this doesn't mean waking up happens without feeling. Feeling is different from Emotion: technically, emotion is more of a mechanical, automatic event. Inside the word emotion is “motion”, and this emphasizes that emotions initiate an action program that involuntarily changes a person's observable posture: one becomes strangely still, or shifts position, or changes facial expression, and so on. In this way emotions are a public phenomenon: others often know our emotional reactions much better than ours, because they are literally unfolding in real time without our conscious participation.
By contrast, feelings are private. They reside in our inner world. For example, anger is an emotion that overtakes us without our consent: our jaw tightens, our pulse rate increases, our temperature rises. But all of this happens without our conscious participation. The feeling of anger arises when I realize that all this is happening to me, and begin to consciously experience it. The qualities of this conscious experience are not public: others do not know our feelings unless we share them.
Given Jung and Kaplan’s emphasis, because awakening transcends the personal ego, it transcends the realm of mechanical emotional reactions, and moves in the realm of genuine feeling. Likewise, ego-transcendence grants the possibility of disidentification from emotional reactions, which does not interfere with them directly, but rather facilitates their transmutation into conscious feeling in a way that fertilizes the sensitivity of our organism. So now we can see that Kaplan’s use of the term “unemotional” to describe the state of enlightenment actually indicates a space of profound sensitivity, where one’s capacity for feeling, and therefore a deep intimacy with one’s inner experience, actually expands. I believe Jung would agree with this analysis, as he is known to have said that most of our psychic problems stem from a malfunction in our “feeling mechanism”.
Lastly, this impersonal space of non-identification can also be understood as a kind of objectivity. Objectivity, as a sensitive space of deep feeling, is very interesting because it has a dual meaning: when our objectivity is turned toward ourselves and our own process it is called humility; when it is turned outward, toward others it is called compassion.
Connectedness
The next idea is from Roshi Joan Halifax. She is the headmaster at the Upaya Zen monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Roshi Halifax said that “enlightenment is the realization of connectedness”. This is a classic perspective on enlightenment, and an element of this is common across both theistic and nontheistic contemplative traditions. It is the recognition that the average-everyday-state (avidya or, “ignorance”) is manifest as a conviction that we are separate, self-sustaining, autonomous beings. With this conviction comes a selfish set of emotions, feelings and actions, which perpetuate and entrench the original conviction of separateness and the suffering it causes.
This orientation has many pernicious consequences, but one could sum them up simply: when we believe and act as if we are separate, we don't realize that everything we do to “other things”, is simultaneously something that we do to ourselves. So we're kind of forced into an adversarial, consumer, or instrumental relationship with the rest of reality: nature and other people/relations get treated simply as means for my ends. Whereas in the realization of connectedness, nature is also me, and other people are also me, and since it seems like madness to mistreat or neglect myself, it is madness to do the same to any of my relations.
So to be awakened is to understand myself as deeply related, or interconnected, with all things. As my first teacher was fond of saying: none of this is mine, I am responsible for it.
Knowing Nothing
Here's something from the great teacher of Zen, Mel Weitzman, “enlightenment is the realization that you know nothing”. This makes me think of Socrates, who was, in many people's estimation, the greatest philosopher who ever lived. What is interesting is that Socrates was considered the wisest precisely because of the fact that he was acutely conscious of his own ignorance. He was too wise to be certain, so his intelligence was always turned toward optimizing the process of inquiry in which he was engaged, and he was transformed continuously by evaluating and improving the method by which he came to certain realizations. So rather than being overly concerned with the ends toward which he reasoned, he was constantly looking at the assumptions of the arguments he encountered, inquiring into what he was identifying with, and paying attention to how he was paying attention.
If enlightenment is the realization that we know nothing, it cannot be equated with knowledge. Enlightenment that is equated with knowledge is called conceptual enlightenment, and it is something about which teachers continuously warn us. Conceptual enlightenment is a kind of educated, erudite knowledge of what a transformational experience is, without actually having gone through it. Or, it is having gone through an experience that is potentially transformative and to have misunderstood it - and therefore failed to integrate it - precisely because of an orientation toward it and oneself that is conceptual in nature. This kind of orientation actually blocks genuine transformation.
Awareness of Endarkenment
Here's something from the great transpersonal psychologist Charles tart, “enlightenment is more easily recognized through understanding one's in endarkenment”. The Yoga tradition shares this emphasis on sharpening awareness of the things that hinder our awakening: for instance, the Bhagavad Gita teaches that there can be no wisdom, and ultimately no love, without coming to terms with the powerful unconscious forces that compel us (guna), and mask as genuine agency. If Tart is right, when we aspire in the direction of enlightenment, we would do well to shift our focus from ideas of the goal toward the persistent patterns of avoidance and attachment in our words, thoughts, deeds, and emotional reactions.
So the process of awakening largely involves repeated encounters with bad habits, and then getting to the root of those. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the roots of our selfish bad habits are called klesha. Klesha means hindrance or affliction. The kleshas define a set of conditions that determine a set of common impulses which are rooted deeply in us, which produce unreflective, mechanical desires and behaviors. There are five of them: ignorance (avidya), ego-possessiveness (asmita), attraction-attachment (raga), revulsion (dvesha), and fear of death (abhinavesha). There are important details about each of these, but for the purposes of brevity we construct a sentence for our students that sums their influence: “when I act as if I know and I really don’t, I come here to take what is mine, experience only pleasure, avoid all pain, in hope that I won’t die.”
So when we aspire toward enlightenment via coming to terms with our endarkenment, we're actually doing self correction in response to a very reliable set of mistakes that we continue to make. In this sense, mistakes are the most important things that we encounter in the spiritual journey, because they - more than anything else - guide our course correction. This is especially true if we are working with teachers and other practitioners who share a protocol where dialogue, inquiry, and reflection are sincerely practiced.
Degrees of Enlightenment
Here's something else from Arnaud Desjardins: “enlightenment has degrees”. So, it exists on a continuum. This means there are “mini-enlightenments”, medium level events, really big transformative events - and that the experience of these is not necessarily a linear progression. In our experience, this seems very realistic. By contrast, the idea of a “One and done”, where we realize something very important and boom! we’re free forever; no more ignorance; no more self centeredness. This seems much less likely - though we can’t deny that these kinds of things do happen. It just doesn't seem as likely because epiphanies can feel life changing, but they tend to fade quickly.
So mere mortals will tend to experience an extended, non-linear process composed of punctuated, very powerful events, along with less intense epiphanies, and also plateaus, or periods of dormancy. In this regard Marianna Kaplan points out that, “ the Zen tradition makes a clear distinction between shallow and deep enlightenment. It claims that while it's possible for the awakening event to penetrate individuals so profoundly as to produce a radical change in every aspect of their expression, very often, initial enlightenment is more shallow, and it needs to be stabilized and deepened over time.”
Freedom from the Spiritual Path
One last comment, again, from Charles Tart, “enlightenment is freedom from the spiritual path”. So the rigors and constraints of various traditions can facilitate the commitment and sacrifice that is initially helpful on the journey, but with the advent of the genuine article, the specifics of any given tradition are transcended; and, though awakened individuals may decide to remain practitioners of their native tradition, there is freedom from constraints in that they have served their purpose and are no longer necessary. But more than this, the awakened individual is free from the trappings of identifying with a tradition to the extent that it subsumes the core of her identity: so awakening is freedom from attachment to any spiritual persona.
Each time I contemplate somebody who is completely identified with the image of what a particular tradition assumes one should be, I think of a poem by the great Sufi master Kabir. This is called The Spiritual Athlete, and it's an image of someone who is deeply committed to a path in that they really look the part, but nonetheless, they are deeply lost:
The spiritual athlete often changes the color of his clothes
and his mind remains gray and loveless.
He sits inside a shrine room all day so that the Guest [God] has to go outdoors
and pray to the rocks.
Or he drills holes in his ears;
his hair grows enormous and matted;
people mistake him for a goat.
He goes out into wilderness areas, strangles his impulses,
and he makes himself neither male nor female.
He shaves his skull, and puts his robe in an orange vat;
he reads the Bhagavad Gita and becomes a terrific talker.
Kabir says, actually, you are going in a hearse to the country of death, bound hand and foot.
I'm guessing that some of those definitions are unusual, because most people in various contemplative and self actualization circles realize they have very firm assumptions about enlightenment, assumptions that in light of these ideas may now seem mistaken or naive.
Happiness?
Let’s conclude by saying a few things with regard to naive assumptions about enlightenment. One primary misconception is thinking that enlightenment will be something like happiness. Now, though we can’t assume that awakening involves no element of happiness, it seems a bit naive - given the magnitude of self sacrifice and suffering manifested in the lives of the saints, and the lives of the great gurus - to think of enlightenment as a simple intensification of our pleasure seeking function. In this vein, Marianna Kaplan says, “If we knew what enlightenment was, we would run from it.” Indeed, from the accounts of many, many of the great masters, reality or enlightenment, is not the heavenly salvation that most people hoped it would be. There is tremendous suffering in reality, in addition to the joy that is there, and the Enlightened vision sees all of it just as it is, unable to defend against any aspect of it.”
This is why it is said that rather than happiness, the saints actually receive something called the gift of tears, and these tears are the awakened response to a clear, unmediated vision of reality. Remember that Kaplan equated enlightenment with reality itself, and so when enlightened, no aspect of the real can be excluded: everything will touch us; everything will be felt deeply. So we should take great care not to let the idea of awakening become too intermingled with notions of conventional happiness. Kaplan reiterates,” if most people understood that instead of swimming in an ocean of bliss, their enlightenment would mean a life of heartbreak, a life of service and suffering on behalf of other people, many people would leave the path before they ever began.” We’re not trying to curb the enthusiasm of those being called to self transcendence. Let's just not be naive.
So our work at the Shala unfolds in relation to all of these ideas. Given all that has been said, we're well aware of how pretentious it is to speak of enlightenment from the unenlightened state. Nevertheless, awakening is the orienting metaphor for everything that we do, and wisdom is a place at which we arrive along the way. So we exist and work in an aspirational relationship with the nature and value of awakening, and we self consciously reason and act from a conscious knowledge of our imperfect grasp of it. This is what it is like to be genuinely called to self transcend. In particular, we hold dear Charles Tart’s conviction that enlightenment is more easily recognized through understanding our endarkenment.
Our method is called Self Remembering and Self Observation; these two things go together like two sides of a coin, and specifically this means we are trying to move in a way that systematically overcomes egocentricity, opening the heart through the practices of active open mindedness, service, the cultivation of humility, strengthening concentration, and our ability to remain Present. This is the way we're committed to understanding wisdom and its place in the awakening process. Our teacher Red Hawk has, in a provocative sense, called what we do the way of failure: we learn in a way to fail in a way that is constructive.
Summary
If we take all of the ideas about awakening from above, we can see that when awakened, we are freed from habitual mental constructs. We're responsive and spontaneous. We have a relaxed mind, and in our hearts, we rest in the knowledge that all things are transitory. Awakening is animated and driven by an impersonal energy that seems to have its own agenda, and we know nothing. We should endeavor to remain unattached, even to the specifics of spiritual practice itself, all the while continuing to engage in it. We should be very careful that we don't conflate enlightenment with the popular fantasy that it means the end of all our problems, or the end of all of our suffering, or something like simple happiness. It's also important to remember that wisdom becomes a focus more and more and more in this discussion, because whereas it's really difficult to speak of enlightenment, wisdom is within our grasp.
Thank you for listening. God Bless you all.
