Throughout the world’s spiritual and religious traditions, hidden beneath the differences in beliefs, customs, rituals, and culture, runs a deep esoteric current of nondual wisdom known as the perennial philosophy. First identified by Western philosophers in the European Renaissance and popularized in the last century by Aldous Huxley, Rene Guenon, and Huston Smith, this current teaches that there is a limitless, ineffable, and unqualifiable ultimate Ground that expresses itself in, and is not separate from, the relative world of manifestation (everyday reality), and that our final end and purpose as human beings is to recognize this groundless Ground as our true identity.
This current of wisdom runs closest to the surface in the nondual traditions of Asia, particularly Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Tibetan Dzogchen, East Asian Zen (Chan), and Advaita Vedanta. Since the early twentieth century, and especially in the past sixty to seventy years, these teachings have had a major influence on spirituality in the West through the roshis, rinpoches, swamis, and sages (and their books) who have offered successive generations of spiritual seekers a more accessible alternative to the nondual wisdom that’s more deeply buried in the dualistic Abrahamic religions long prevalent here.
The universality of this current, and its tendency to keep resurfacing, even in the most challenging circumstances, suggests that it may be hardwired into our DNA and deeply programmed in our nervous systems and need merely be tapped into rather than cultivated or fabricated. In this view, nondual awareness or presence is our natural state, our birthright as human beings, and we just need to turn toward it, recognize it, and let it transform our accustomed way of seeing things from the inside. This recognition is known as spiritual awakening. As my Advaita teacher Jean Klein often said, the seeker is the sought—you already are what you are seeking. You can never get any closer to what you are, you can only be it. This paradox appears in many of the world’s spiritual traditions as the parable of the prodigal son or daughter who sets off looking for some distant treasure, only to end up discovering that it’s been hidden all along in her own heart(h).
Known as the pathless path, this paradoxical approachcalls on us to follow it from the depths of our being but ultimately goes nowhere but right here and now. The rediscovery of our natural state may seem to be our responsibility alone as seekers of truth, but in fact truth itself may be actively seeking to realize, actualize, and recognize itself through each of us. The Sufis, for example, teach that God is a hidden treasure that created human beings so it could know itself. Or, as one anonymous sage put it, that which you are seeking is always seeking you. As the chick, the seeker, pecks to break out of the egg from inside, the mother bird—truth, in the form of the teacher and life circumstances—pecks from outside to release it, in a concerted movement toward greater liberation.
Like the perennial philosophy, the pathless path is an expedient way of talking about what appears to be a universal phenomenon that cuts across cultures and deep into the heart of what it means to be human. Many of you reading this book were drawn to this journey by a deep and ineffable calling of the heart or soul prompted by suffering or curiosity or a yearning to be free of limitations. Yet you were only drawn here because you somehow already recognized the truth in these teachings and already knew the destination as your very own true self. In the wordsof T.S. Eliot from his poem “The Four Quartets,”“the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”[i]Trusting and following this calling to its ultimate denouement, spiritual awakening, rather than relying on some preestablished agenda or path, is a distinguishing characteristic of the pathless path. In the end, you are the path—the pathless path is unique to you.
My Own Journey on the Pathless Path
My own journey on the pathless path began with the loss of my mother at the tender age of fifteen and drew me first through the writers of the Beat generation to what at the time was the enigmatic and little-known practice of Zen. After years of reading the few books available on the subject back in the early sixties and minoring in Asian studies in college, I ended up in a zendo in New York City in the spring of 1969. The incense, the ritual, the bowing, the silence, all felt somehow familiar and resonant, as if I recognized them from a previous life. The talk for the evening was given by a woman my mother’s age who said, in a soft and reassuring voice, that zazen(Zen meditation)was a way to bring you to your long-lost home. As a young man cut adrift by the loss of my mother, homecoming was exactly what I was seeking. I became a born-again Zen student and ordained as a monk five years later.
Fortunately, I had a series of teachers who counseled an alternative approach to the traditional and largely formalistic Zen taught in the monasteries of Japan. My first teacher, something of a renegade who had left the traditional role of temple priest to teach in the West, advised the practice of guerilla Zen—that is, the Zen of everyday life outside traditional forms—and admonished me to never call myself a Buddhist. A poet and master calligrapher, he embodied the true Zen spirit of spontaneous and idiosyncratic expression. The natural world also became a powerful teacher, as I found myself inspired by the eccentric mountain recluses and poets of Tang dynasty China for whom the mountains were the body of the Buddha and the rivers his tongue. In the spirit of direct transmission outside the scriptures recommended by the founder of Zen in China, I didn’t read much Buddhist philosophy but preferred to find my guidance in the practice of meditation.
Eventually I spent some time in more structured Zen settings, but in the endI felt it was too restrictive and dry and set off on a more intuitive journey, informed by my many years of intensive meditation and guided only by what felt right and true for me. I sampled men’s retreats and archetypal astrology, studied Jungian psychology and Gestalt therapy, practiced Tibetan Dzogchen-Mahamudra and a little Vipassana, and eventually stumbled on another unconventional teacher, a Western master of Advaita Vedanta, who taught what he called the “direct approach” to truth. Don’t make meditation a habit, he advised, only use it as a laboratory to discover the meditator. Under his guidance I finally returned to my true home and took up my headquarters there. Through all this meandering I trusted that the different traditions all led to the same realization because, I believed, there’s only one essential truth but many pointers home.
When I look back, I can see the hidden wisdom in the path my seeking took as I followed my inner guidance, though at the time I only knew what my heart and intuition were telling me and trusted it. Rather than dabbling like a dilettante or trying to figure out which way to go by comparing and contrasting different approaches but never really diving in, I threw myself wholeheartedly into each approach, learned what I needed to learn, and moved on when I felt complete. In particular, I was drawn to teachers who seemed to genuinely embody and transmit the awakened understanding they taught—and left those I ultimately discovered did not.
Of course, everyone has their own version of the pathless path; mine is just one potentially helpful example. The most important thing is that you develop and trust your inner guidance system and discover the path that has heart for you. Fortunately, there are many more good teachers available these days than back when I was meandering, most of them steeped in, or born into, Western culture and language, and you can find excellent teachings to choose from online without leaving home. (For the value and pitfalls of teachers, see chapter 5.)Once you’re clear on which teachers and teachings appeal to you most, you have an opportunity to give them your wholehearted attention and energetic involvement and see where they take you. (For more on wholeheartedness and the other qualities that conduce to awakening, see chapter 3.)
The Direct Approach and the Pathless Path
The notion of the “pathless path” lies at the heart of the direct approach to spiritual awakening that I offer in my books, retreats, and programs. Essentially, the approach provides verbal pointers, guided meditations, self-inquiry exercises, and other skillful means that invite you to wake up directly to your natural state of nondual presence and essential inseparability from Being itself. More progressive and prescriptive approaches to truth may certainly play a part in your pathless path, as long as you don’t take to heart their counsel that you need to achieve something new or cultivate qualities you don’t already have. (For a detailed discussion on direct and progressive approaches, see chapter 4.) Remember, you already are what you’re seeking,you just need to learn to recognize it and abide there.
Beyond even the direct approach, and perhaps the most pathless of paths, is to simply recognize that this luminous, sacred, and indivisible reality right now is what you are essentially—and just be it. No path is necessary to take you there. But only the maturest of souls can even understand what this directive means, let alone follow it, so the direct approach offers an actual path constructed of steps and stages that end up leading, paradoxically, to where you already are.
After many years of teaching the direct approach in the School for Awakening, which I’ve offered every year since 2007, I thought it best to condense the teachings into a book while they’re still fresh in my mind and make them accessible to a wider audience. Over the years, hundreds of people have passed through the School, and a significant number have experienced some measure of awakening to their essential spiritual nature. Of course, the School is not just a collection of pointers and practices, it’s a living and lived experience with a group of kindred spirits and the live presence of a teacher. But I hope this book offers a glimpse of what others have learned there.
About This Book
Unlike many books on spiritual awakening, this one is not only or even primarily a collection of pointers and practices, though it does include an abundance of both. Rather, it’s more of a roadmap to the pathless path itself, a guidebook to what can’t be charted or anticipated, an overview of where the journey may take you and how to deal with the challenges and breakthroughs you encounter along the way. The book offers recommendations from my experience as seeker and teacher on understanding the nature and trajectory of awakening, choosing the right teacher, navigating the direct approach, working with challenging emotions and mind-states, engaging in awakened relationships, and appreciating the effect of past trauma on the path. Experiment with the experiential offerings and let yourself gravitate to the teachings and pointers that resonate for you. And be sure to take your time, especially if you’re new to this approach—nondual wisdom offers a radically different perspective on life that must be contemplated slowly and repeatedly, and digested and assimilated gradually, until it takes hold and transforms you from the inside
The Meaning of Nondual Wisdom
Nondual wisdom involves the direct experiential knowing that subject and object, inside and outside, self and other, are in essence nottwo (nondual) and inseparable, though they may appear to be distinct and separate at the everyday level. Only the One exists—Being, consciousness, God, spirit, the nondual field—expressing itself in a multitude of forms. Not surprisingly, this truth is inherently paradoxical and not readily understood by the conceptual mind that prefers clear-cut distinctions and polarities—black or white, this or that, me or you. Thenondual nature of reality needs to be apperceived, in a moment out of time and beyond the limitations of conceptual thought, in a unitive experience variously known as spiritual awakening, kensho (Japanese), prajna (Sanskrit), or gnosis (Greek). In the absence of such a transformative experience, the perennial philosophy is just another collection of concepts that has no power to transform our lives in beneficial ways but can be useful in pointing the way to the direct recognition on which it’s based.
A Note on the Title
My working title for this book was “Endless Awakening”because, as I explain in the final chapter, my own experience and work with students has revealed to me over the years that spiritual awakening comes in as many shapes and sizes as there are people to awaken, and that the process of awakening takes a lifetime and at the same time is constantly fresh and new. Alas, the title had already been used in recent years by another book in a similar field, as had my second favorite, “Boundless Awakening.”My editors at Shambhalathen chose “Infinite Awakening,” which they found “expansive, open-ended, aspirational, and evocative,” much like the original was intended to be. At first,I had concernsthat this new title might seem a bit presumptuous and offer more than the book could deliver. But after some discussion Iagreed that yes, our natural state of awakened awareness has no limits or boundaries, and the pathless path does indeedinvite us to awaken infinitely in every direction. In this spirit I invite you to enjoy your own infinite and endless awakening, with this book as your guide.
[i] T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: A Poem (HarperCollins, 2014).