Dear Rupert,
Your teaching is very clear: suffering is only possible when we think and feel that we are a person. That is readily apparent in my own life. Every instance of suffering is about how I want a situation to be different for ‘me’. In other words, as you say, I am rejecting the current situation.
Without the ‘me’, it’s easily seen that various phenomena are simply experienced, without judgement. Even the concept of acceptance seems too much, because it implies a ‘someone’ who needs to accept. But at the same time, my mind leaps to a situation that would seem to be intolerable, such as the loss of a child or other loved one. No matter how clearly I’ve understood that there is no person as such, I can’t imagine not feeling sorrow and regret. Would it be different in your case?
To take a more trivial example, if someone cuts me off in traffic, I get irritated. Irritation, it seems to me, is a form of suffering. Surely such emotions as irritation, sorrow, regret and resentment don’t simply disappear in the case of one who sees that grace is the totality? Aren’t such emotions suffering, an overt or subtle rejection of a current situation?
If understanding leads to the absence of these emotional ups and downs, including sorrow over the loss of a loved one, regret when one inadvertently breaks a promise, irritation when another does something disagreeable, it seems – to this limited mind – unnatural.
Love,
Michael
Dear Michael,
The child or friend may be lost, but love is never lost. Think of your relationship with your child or loved one. The objective elements of the friendship are changing continuously, that is, they are always being lost. But what is it that remains throughout? It is love or friendship.
When our companion or child leaves for a trip, or even when they simply go into the next room, we have no objective connection with them. But do we feel that something is broken or lost? No, the true content of the friendship remains. Love remains. In fact, all relationship is defined by this quality alone.
Two objects can never meet. Two people can never meet. What we call a meeting or a relationship is only the shining of this shared love. It is my experience that when a loved one departs, love shines even more brightly that usual. All that remains is the pure love in which and as which we truly meet.
The same is true of the great parting called death. The apparent other is no longer outside. They now reside in our heart as pure love, which is in fact where they always resided. Why would one feel sorrow or regret in such a case? The particular means of celebrating that love that we had become accustomed to over the years may no longer be available, but the love itself will be present and available as always.
In fact, death is simply the dissolution of an object, a person, in its source and substance, which is love. So death is not the problem. It is identifying ourself as an object, as a fragment, and thereby identifying another as an object or fragment, which seems to obscure this ever-present, all-pervading love.
Our friend is the face of this love. Their parting is the great gift of love to itself, as was their presence. Death and love are one and the same, but from two different points of view. Death is for the person what love is for the self. Therefore, we never lose a friend.
If we do not mistake our loved ones for entities in this life, we will not mistake death for separation. And how is it possible not to mistake our loved ones for entities? By not mistaking ourself for an entity.
I do not mean to suggest that when a loved one dies, we walk around with a smile on our face all the time. No. There is a melting of the heart at such a time, a tenderness, an openness, loving memories and possibly an acknowledgement that some issues were left unresolved. These are the residues of love, not the suffering of a person.
* * *
You ask if irritation, sorrow, regret, and so on, don’t simply disappear if we see grace as the totality.
If one sees grace as the totality, then being cut off in traffic is seen, along with everything else, as a gift of grace. It does not trigger suffering. We simply say, ‘Thank you, God’ in our heart, which is the proper response to grace. If we find ourself irritated or suffering as a result of such an occurrence, it is precisely because we do not see it as a gift of grace.
If we then come back and say, ‘Oh well, my irritation is also an expression of grace’, then, you guessed it: pseudo-Advaita!
You say that if this understanding leads to the absence of emotional ups and downs, it seems unnatural. Everything that appears in nature is natural: nuclear war, a daffodil, pollution, a newborn child, the ego, Ramana Maharshi, everything.
Having said that, and whilst understanding that ultimately everything is an expression of reality or consciousness, we can, at a more relative level, distinguish four types of response to situations: those that are simply practical, such as filling up the car with petrol; those that come from understanding or love, such as caring appropriately for a child or noticing that one inadvertently broke a promise; those that seek to share, celebrate or express understanding and love, such as the desire to make a work of art or invite a friend for dinner; and those that are based on believing and feeling that we are a separate and limited entity.
When understanding dawns, the first three types of behaviour flourish and express themselves uniquely in the case of each body-mind. Only the fourth type of response diminishes. It is precisely the absence of the belief and feeling of separation that enables thoughts, feelings, responses and activities to flourish. Our true individuality, no longer subjected to the dominion of the separate self, flowers, each according to the unique gifts of the particular body and mind.
This includes compassion – not compassion as it is usually understood, as one entity feeling sorry for another entity, but rather ‘feeling with’, from the Latin com andpatio, meaning to feel together. It is to feel as the other feels, to deeply share their grief or their joy as if it were our own. It isour own.
No longer clouded by the murky and distorting lens of the separate entity, we are free to see clearly, feel deeply and act efficiently. The natural state (using the word ‘natural’ in a different context now) is one of openness, sensitivity, clarity, kindness, efficiency, empathy and tolerance. The separate entity simply dulls these natural qualities.
As the separate entity dissolves, either dramatically or, as is more often the case, gradually, these natural qualities shine correspondingly brighter in our lives and relationships and flow out into our environment. Advaita is not a white-washing of our feelings and activities. It is rather the opposite.
With love,
Rupert
