Abide in Infinite Intensity – Shunyamurti Reads Hongzhi
I’m going to continue reading from the practice instructions of the great Zen master Hongzhi, even though I think that it’s very difficult for the postmodern ego to appreciate these instructions. They’re beautiful prose poems, but the subtlety of what they’re expressing, I think, passes por alta, as they say—I don’t think the ego can retain it. And it’s important to notice that if that is the case and learn from that if one cannot learn from the text itself, because the postmodern ego in its final phase of morphing into a state in which it is polarized against liberation, against its own best interests—not only is it incoherent, but it is not able to recognize its own incoherence. And incoherence becomes its new logic, its new normal, and coherence itself becomes a threat.
In the same way that the bliss of the Self is always present, but it’s perceived by the ego as anxiety. And so, the ego cannot possibly hold onto the desire for liberation because it simply increases its anxiety. And why does it get anxious? Because the ego is requiring, for its stability within its incoherence, of a tremendous and ongoing input of jouissance. And the more that one goes toward the egoless polarity, the less intense becomes one’s experience of the world, because there’s less suffering—but there’s also less enjoyment of that suffering.
And the lack of enjoyment becomes a crisis at a certain point, and it leads to a need to act out in order to get some immediate gratification that reinforces the ego and says, “Yes, the ego is my reality. I’m grounded in it.”—and is able to avoid the anxiety of the threat of the unknown and the infinite; and yet there is not a sufficient capacity to recognize that the ego is not oneself. There is such an automatic, reflexive identification with the thoughts that pass through the mind, that the consciousness cannot awaken to the fact that those thoughts are alien, they are a usurpation by an external force that has been internalized, imposed upon your consciousness, and is impersonating yourself, and operating as a system of thinking that serves the Other.
But because this cannot be realized, the consciousness will immediately side with those thoughts, and attempt to enact their desire to escape—whether to escape geographically, or to escape by taking a drug, or to escape by changing one’s situation and establishing a dependence upon a different object—whatever it is that the jouissance is composed of, the ego will gravitate towards that as its security, even though it makes it ever more insecure, more dependent, more dense in its identification with the body. But it will fool itself into thinking that that density is actually an event of liberation from its anxiety about its unknown-ness to itself. And it will have a comfort zone within a limited frame of reference, in which there is a margin of unpredictability, but within very known parameters as—let’s say in a relationship in which one has some volatile erotic transmission of energies, or in an ayahuasca ceremony, or even taking cannabis—any kind of an immediate shift of frequency—but that can be contained within the ego’s frame of reference—will give it kind of a breather in which it is able to sustain, then, its own egoic narrative at a slightly higher level of temporary coherence. But that will soon split off into a number of separate reality tunnels that will soon lead it into an inconsistency, such that it once again becomes so confused that it cannot recognize its confusion. And that’s the state of the tamasic bedrock of the ego that it has to remain completely asleep to its own infinite nature, and it is able to fall asleep under the assumption that that sleep is its awakening, and that that stunted stagnation is actually growth. It’s a fascinating thing when you study it.
So, on page 31, (we’re going in order in how they are placed in the book), “Contemplating The Ten Thousand Years”:
“Patch-robed monks make their thinking dry and cool and rest from the remnants of conditioning.”
OK, so the first thing: eliminate all the conditioned responses to reality, the conditioned narratives, the usual way of thinking, the usual cynicism, the usual way of diverting from the intention of realizing the Self. So, the thinking has to be dry and cool, no emotion, no hot and wet kind of self-stimulating erotic fantasies or angry tantrum-like thoughts, but able to see everything as it is, without judgment.
“Persistently brush up and sharpen this bit of the field.”
OK, so before you do anything else, if you do not achieve the ability to stay dry and cool, you cannot take your process any further than that. You can’t do this when there are any hot emotions going on. You have to be in a state of detachment from the ego and its constant brewing up of a new desire for some kind of enjoyment that will bring it back into body-consciousness.
“Directly cut through all the overgrown grass.”
A nice metaphor: the weeds of the mind that are constantly growing, that are causing you to lose the trail to the river of life. So:
“Reach the limit in all directions, without defiling even one atom.”
OK, the limit of the mind’s thinking: go beyond the limit of its frame of reference. Push the envelope, and then open the envelope, and then get out of it. You have to go beyond the limit, but you have to go beyond the limit without defiling yourself along the way. Because if there is one self-defiling thought, that will make you believe you are unworthy of going beyond the limit. It’s a self-limiting way that the ego maintains its homeostasis, by short-circuiting the process of transcending itself.
“Spiritual and bright, vast and lustrous, illuminating fully what is before you, directly attain the shining light, and clarity, that cannot attach to a single defilement. Immediately tug and pull back the ox’s nose.”
OK, do you remember those ox herding pictures? Those ten pictures of the Zen process? He’s got to find the ox, ride it, bring it home, tame it—right? Well, pulling the ox’s nose is the first act of taming the ox—and the ego is the ox, right? The ox is not going to lead you astray, it’s not going to think, it’s not going to pull you into a diversion from the Self—you have become the master over the ego. You have to take control over it.
“Of course his horns are imposing”—don’t be afraid of the ego, he’s not going to hurt you— “and he stomps around like a beast, yet he never damages people’s sprouts or grain.”
In other words, the ego will not be able to reach what is good and real and true within you, so don’t worry about getting hurt by it, but don’t allow its apparent force and bestiality to overcome your right to self-mastery.
“Wandering around, accept how it goes. Accepting how it goes, wander around.”
OK, very important principle: don’t assume that the closest way between two points is a straight line—you actually will only get to the goal of liberation through wandering, without a goal. The goal is goal-less-ness, because it’s not somewhere in the future, it’s not somewhere else than you are now—it is the wandering in a state of total presence that enables you to be in the noumenal at the same time as the apparent wandering in the phenomenal becomes realized as only a dream by the unchanging consciousness that no longer depends upon or identifies with the phenomenal plane.
And once you recognize that you’re not in a material world, that all of this is light, but it’s perceived as a material world because the frequency of consciousness has fallen too low to understand the true nature of where we are and what we are, once there is a freedom from the judgments and the belief system of the ego, because you have tamed the ox not to keep producing its narrative, then you will be able to wander through the labyrinth of consciousness and at the same recognize it simply as a field of light, of luminous splendor that is actually the emanation of the Godself Itself.
This Post Has 4 Comments
Alaska
12 Feb 2021How does one overcome the fear of non-existence? In your talk about sacrificing the negative inner child, you said that by disciplining yourself you should overcome fear. Is it that simple?
truthseeker
17 Feb 2021I relate to Shunyamurti’s teaching. My ego has got an even greater hold of me since the beginning of the lockdown. Due to an availability of free time it has lured me into numerous fantasies about ‘myself’. These fantasies all promise liberation from the anxiety and stress i perceive, but in the end only create more misery. How to balance the need of discipline and the resistance of the ego that for sure will come? I have experienced imposing discipline on myself don’t work either.
Lorina
17 Feb 2021Listened to this a second time gathering the pearls of what is said here thank you Shunyamurti for teachings am continuing onward. and inward to the ocean i go
Lynn
18 Feb 2021Very interesting, what is the significance of the Patch-robed monks? Perhaps the egos many facets?