Nowhere to Stand

My Personal Journey of how I got there

Toppled by Waves

The first step of my personal spiritual journey was going from being constantly knocked over by waves and struggling not to drown to sitting on the shore and watching the waves.

I would get swept by the tide, over and and over and somehow struggle my way back to dry shore.

I guess this could be called mindfulness practice.

The Call of the Ocean

With time, I began to see the calm ocean under the waves. I guess that could be called Awareness practice or ‘Relaxing into Being’ or ‘Practice of Presence.’

As satisfying as this was, it was still a struggle — where I would get caught up and scramble my way back to dry land or polumb the depths of the ocean.

There was something that didn’t sit well with me — pun intended.

The Mindfulness Trap

With time I realized that I was subtly pushing away my subjective experience. I was afraid of the waves.

A note here: I am not disrespecting Mindfulness or Awareness practices. I am sure better practitioners than me did not fall into the trap I am mentioning here. I am just describing my unique journey.

I practiced riding the waves while knowing that I was the ocean — experiencing the roller-coaster of my subjective experience while resting in the background calm of being.

That felt a lot more satisfying and fulfilling.

Be like Water

At some point, I realized that I was neither the ocean nor the waves. I was water.

This is not a deep. lasting realization but over and over, I have had mini aha moments and hopefully the lesson is being reinforced.

The Son of Man has nowhere to rest his Head

In a retreat on ‘Dependent Origination’ last year with Leigh Brasingon, I had an interview with him where I described my journey and my current insight with a degree of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, that in hindsight was unjustified and Leigh said, “But water is also dependently originating.’

I felt the rug pulled out from beneath my feet.

Now I truly had nowhere to stand.

I was reminded of one of my favorite sayings from the Bible: ‘Foxes have holes, birds have nests but the son of man has nowhere to rest his head.’

I always took it to mean ‘do not get identified with anything’ but it’s an infinite regress because there are layers and layers of identification — starting with “I am someone who does not get identified with anything’.

This time I felt as if all identification was let go of and I was free-falling through space.

The Gate-less gate

Maybe this was just a glimpse of what is referred to by ‘Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi svaha?’

These glimpses are fleeting and I am often back to drowning in the ocean or running from waves. The journey is cyclical.

But glimpses and losing the glimpses — are also dependently originating.

As the famous spiritual joke goes: ‘it’s turtles all the way.’