Adyashanti - The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts From the Teachings of Adyashanti

Excerpts from the Teachings of Adyashanti

Foreword

Introduction

Poem: Who are you?

Chapter 1: The Evolutionary Impulse to Be Free

Chapter 2: Insecurity and the Unknown

Chapter 3: Meditation and Spiritual Practices

Chapter 4: Moving Beyond the Impulse to Struggle

Chapter 5: Ceasing to Become

Chapter 6: Awakening

Chapter 7: Embodiment: True NonDuality

Chapter 8: A Love Greater Than Oneself

Chapter 9: What is Liberation?

Chapter 10: The Student-Teacher Relationship

Chapter 11: Relationship

Chapter 12: The Courage to Question

About the Author

When I was a Zen monk, I learned to distinguish between "live words" and "dead words." Most of the words we read and hear are lifeless, in the sense that they're rooted in concepts and intended to appeal to the mind. Of course, such "dead words" have an important role to play on a relative level, in helping us to negotiate the world of apparent objects and people.

To point us beyond the body-mind to the Source from which this relative reality arises and in which it abides, however, we need "live words," like those we find in the teachings of the great nondual masters and sages. The sayings of Ramana Maharshi, for example, or the Tibetan master, Tilopa, or the Third Patriarch of Zen have the power to short-circuit the mind, light up the Heart, and quicken the revelation of who we really are.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, such words are called pith instructions or heart wisdom. As Jean Klein puts it, they are saturated with the perfume of the Source from which they come.

The space in which live words are spoken is called satsangliterally, "being together in Truth." When we speak Truth with one another, we're creating satsang. In this brief collection of satsang dialogues, Adyashanti reveals himself to be a master of live words. Although he trained for many years with several American Zen teachers, he does not use Zen jargon. In fact, like the great Zen masters of old, he has breached the bounds of conventional Buddhist discourse and instead speaks directly from Being itself. His words are fresh, spontaneous, and vital.

In addition to his passionate call to awaken to our identity as the Self, rather than as the body, senses, and mind, Adyashanti puts particular emphasis on what he calls embodiment. In this, he provides a much-needed counterpoint to some contemporary teachers of Advaita Vedanta, who seem to suggest that awakening is complete after the first glimpse of Truth.

Rather, Adyashanti teaches that awakening is a never-ending process of opening and deepening, in which we're often faced with difficult old patterns and stuck places that rush to the foreground of our experience to be liberated and released. As this liberation unfolds, our lives increasingly become an expression of the unfathomable mystery we have discovered ourselves to be. The process of embodiment culminates in the elimination of any vestige of separation. Awakening continues, but there is no one who is awakened.

In the many hours I've spent with Adyashanti, I've been impressed not only by his intimacy with the subtlest and deepest levels of realization but also by his seemingly inexhaustible capacity to welcome whatever arises in satsang with empathy and love. He has a penetrating way of engaging in dialogue with people, in which layers of false understanding drop away in the radiance of awareness, leaving the freshness and clarity of the living moment. He embodies what he teaches, and his approach is truly nondual; nothing is left out, not even the ego!

I trust that this little book will be merely the first in a series from this vibrant young teacher. May his "live words" help awaken all beings to the joy and perfection of their essential nature!

Stephan Bodian

Mill \'alley, California

March 2000

Stephan Bodian is a psychotherapist, personal coach, and a Dharma teach in the Zentradition. He is the author of Meditation for Dummies and former editor-in-chief of Yoga Journal

When you come to the point in life where you are ready to inquire directly into the unknown core of your being, you are ripe to awaken from the dream of separation.

The direct path of spiritual inquiry begins not with seeking something that you yearn for, but with seeking the seeker, the essential "I."

In order for inquiry to be powerful and liberating, it needs to be understood that spiritual inquiry is not something to be performed by the mind. Inquiry is a tool that points you directly back to your own being, to experience before the mind. Ii you read this book with your mind only, you are wasting your time. But if you read it with your whole beingif you listen to it, feel it, sense it, resonate with it, and digest it slowly, you may find that it is worthwhile after all.

I am not speaking to who you think you are. I am speaking to You, the Awareness behind the mask called "me." This book is for You. You will see your Self celebrated on every page.

Adyashanti

You Are ...

beyond the body-mind and personality,

beyond all experience and the experiencer thereof,

beyond the world and its perceiver,

beyond existence and its absence,

beyond all assertions and denials.

Be still and awaken to the realization of who you Are.

In this realization of no separate self,

the Supreme Reality which you Are shines unobscured

in all things, as all things, and beyond all things.

Having returned to the formless Source

and transcended all separateness,

do not stop or cling even to this Source,

but go beyond to the Supreme Realization

which transcends all dualities,

yet does not deny even a speck of dust.

The enlightened sage abides

as the eternal witness,

wholly unconcerned, yet intimately engaged.

Resting beyond all definitions,

he neither clings to transcendent freedom,

nor is he entangled by the dualistic world;

therefore, he is at one with all of life.

Living in the perfect trust of Supreme Realization,

he has nothing to gain or lose

and naturally manifests love, wisdom, and compassion

without any personal sense of being the doer of deeds.

Having abandoned all concepts and ideas,

the enlightened sage lives as ever-present consciousness,

manifested and manifesting in the world of time and space

That which is eternal, ever new, and whole.

In this unobscured realization,

Supreme Reality shines Consciously

in all things, as all things, and beyond all things.

Shining unobscured, it penetrates the entire universe.

Penetrating the entire universe,

it knows itself as SELF .

~

Do not seek after what you yearn for, seek the source of the yearning itself

~

The impulse to be free is an evolutionary spark within consciousness which originates from beyond the ego. It is an impulse toward the divine, unity, and wholeness.

It is an impulse originating from the Truth itself. This impulse to evolve is often co-opted by the ego, which then creates the illusion of the spiritual seeker. This impulse, which is inherently innocent, is something that, in and of itself has nothing to do with any seeking to attain. It is only when the ego co-opts the impulse and then tries to attain something, that the seeker is born. This impulse, this spark of evolution, becomes almost instantly corrupted by a wanting which gives birth to the seeker.