Transcendence Through Engagement

This talk expands on the notion that we can overcome (transcend) our difficulties or conflicts only by engaging with them totally. We cannot remove ourselves or avoid something and hope for it to vanish. Our conflicts vanish as we illuminate them clearly and fully!

Transcript

A couple of you are new to this form of satsang,

So let me just say for a moment what that is.

Anytime a group of people are gathered together in the name of recognizing the greater truths within our human experience,

Anytime that we are gathered together in the quest for understanding life as it really is,

Or experiencing reality,

Or understanding the nature of God,

Understanding the nature of the self,

Understanding our own consciousness,

Anywhere that that's happening could be called satsang.

And the word is made up of two separate Sanskrit words.

The first one,

Sat,

Means truth,

Or depending on how it's used.

Sometimes it's used to mean truth,

Sometimes it's used to mean reality,

Sometimes it's used to mean being.

But in essence,

Really all of those are the same.

If we really get down to it,

They're all the same thing.

And the second word,

Sangha,

Means,

In one sense it means community,

But it also means gathering or it also means association.

And so if we look at it from the perspective that we are associating with truth or associating with being,

What that means for us is that for much of our life we are associating with untruths,

Right?

We're associating with false beliefs,

We're associating with environments or situations that don't encourage our well-being,

That don't encourage peace or joy or fulfillment,

Right?

Or we're giving attention to those things.

So what satsang is,

Is really it's a shift.

It's a movement from paying attention to or associating with the things that don't promote fulfillment and well-being and inner freedom to what does promote inner freedom and well-being and joy.

And so our orientation here in our gathering is somewhat different than a usual circumstance where we're just hanging out or we're just relating to each other as friends or enemies or family members.

It's a situation in which we are coming together with the mutual interest or desire to really know what's real and true about ourselves.

And that is the uniting force.

That's the thing that makes our gathering what it is,

Right?

Of course some of us will find that we're not really interested in that and so you'll find yourself not really associating,

If you will.

Or you'll find yourself sort of going in and out,

Sometimes interested,

Sometimes not interested.

But the idea here is that we have a situation,

An environment where it's possible for us to come together in a way that really isn't like any other way that people come together,

You know?

Or at least the motivations behind it aren't like other environments.

So that being said,

One of the things that we inevitably end up toying with here is the idea of transcendence,

You know?

And a lot of people get into,

Whether they're practicing yoga or meditation or any kind of spiritual practice in any religion or discipline.

There's always some element in the religious traditions of transcendence.

And what we inevitably come into practicing with is the notion that it's possible to live in a better way and to be less afraid,

To be more open-hearted,

To release some of our aggression.

And of course we're right,

That's true.

It is possible to live in a better way.

But often with this notion of transcendence or transcending the ego,

There is a mistaken idea that we're going to find a realm,

We're going to find a cloud,

We're going to find some place where we can go to escape all this jazz,

To escape all this chaos.

And we're often fueled by that pursuit of finding a place,

And sometimes that's an outer place that's given by a religion called heaven or whatever,

Or we're driven by an understanding that that's an inner place.

But nonetheless there can be this idea that we're going to find some kind of transcendence.

In other words,

I'm going to find a way to change my life permanently.

I'm going to find a way to not experience fear anymore,

To not experience self-doubt anymore,

To not experience anger anymore.

And there's a problematic situation that we involve ourselves with then.

Because what happens,

What begins to happen when we have this attitude of transcending our problems is that we forget to relate to our problems,

We forget to actually engage with our problems.

And it can be very slippery,

Of course,

To engage with problems,

But there really is no such thing as transcendence without engaging in the very thing that we're trying to transcend.

And so we end up in a sort of dilemma if we're trying to escape or if we're trying to transcend or go beyond,

Right?

And what we see is that if our practice is motivated by that mindset,

We end up frustrated because you can never transcend the thing you're trying to transcend.

And so what it leads spiritual practitioners to do,

Or meditation practitioners,

Yogis,

Is to feel frustrated with themselves and feel,

I'm not working hard enough,

I'm not doing the practice right,

I'm not,

I don't have the right teaching,

I don't have the right guru,

I don't have the right clothing,

Whatever it may be.

And so it leads the meditator,

The yogi,

On a somewhat endless quest because there's always this feeling that if I were doing it right,

I would be transcending this stuff,

Fear,

Self-doubt,

Anger.

But you see,

That's the problematic attitude,

Is that always trying to transcend it or escape it,

We're never relating to it,

Right?

One Buddhist master said,

It's a brilliant statement,

He said,

Enlightenment is the ego's ultimate disappointment.

Enlightenment is the ego's ultimate disappointment.

If you understand what that means,

It means that transcendence is a notion that your ego is holding about escaping some part of your experience,

Getting beyond it,

Right?

And what this Buddhist master is saying is that you're going to be deeply disappointed when you find out you can't do it.

However,

That doesn't mean that it's not possible to experience freedom or liberation.

It just means that the way that we tend to go about that is off,

Right?

So anytime we find ourselves using phrases like,

I'm going to let this go,

Or I'm going to get rid of this,

Or how do I,

You know,

Fill in the blank,

How do I get rid of this,

How do I let it go,

How do I get beyond it,

Whatever,

Right there we can see there's that attitude of,

I want joy,

I want love,

I want wisdom,

And this damn self-doubt is in my way,

How do I get beyond it,

Right?

And you'll seem to find a way,

You'll seem to find a route that goes around your self-doubt,

But what happens is you go around your self-doubt and you're feeling pretty good about yourself,

And as you get to the other side of your self-doubt,

There's another wall,

And it's self-doubt.

So you've just met the same thing in a different way.

And on and on this game goes of trying to transcend,

Trying to get rid of,

Trying to fix,

Trying to change,

Trying to solve,

Right?

All the way from really big issues to really minor issues.

And when we've faced enough disappointment about not being able to transcend our fear,

Not being able to transcend our anger,

Our self-doubt,

We come to this place where we're finally at a point where we can just begin to relate to it,

We can begin to engage with it as real,

Decent human beings,

Right?

Because so long as we are in this mindset of transcendence,

There's a quality missing in us,

And it's that relatability,

It's that sense of engagement,

You know?

And it translates into a much bigger dilemma of spiritual practitioners trying to go beyond the world,

Trying to find a way to sort of rise up to another level of consciousness that is beyond this world.

And there's of course some,

There is some reality to that.

It is possible to experience a dimension of consciousness that has nothing to do with this worldly scheme.

But we don't arrive at it through trying to transcend it.

Because and we talked about this a little yesterday in our training,

Anything that we're trying to get away from,

We are bound to.

The very effort to get away from something will keep us tied to it.

It'll keep our attention on it,

Right?

It's like you may not want fear,

You may think to yourself,

I want to live in love,

Not fear.

And you may be attempting to live in love.

But all the while you're thinking about living in love because you're thinking about fear,

Right?

And so they go with each other,

They go with each other.

What happens as we begin to engage our experience or relate to our experience is we come down out of that cloud of hope.

We come down out of that mistaken view that we're going to find a way to go beyond it all and we begin working with it.

We begin facing our fear,

Our insecurity,

Our doubt and not facing it in the way we're used to facing it by indulging it and getting depressed about the whole thing and getting upset about the whole thing.

That just leads us back into that desire to transcend it.

But beginning to relate to it in a fresh and new way where this fear that's present is no longer something I'm trying to get beyond but something I'm interested in understanding,

Something I'm interested in really getting into to find out what it's all about,

Right?

To find out how real it is.

And as this approach happens in us we become more sober.

We become more sober.

And one of the ways that we see that is we're less interested in entertainment.

Now that doesn't mean you don't still watch movies and listen to music.

That's perfectly good.

It's an enjoyable part of life.

But what I mean by entertainment is entertainment seems to be a counter action against struggle,

Right?

There's sort of the struggle which is we look at as the ugly side of existence and the things we seek entertainment with which provides us with some temporary reprieve from our struggle,

Right?

As we engage with our fear,

With our sadness,

With our hopelessness,

With our insecurity,

Whatever it may be,

Then this notion of escaping really falls away.

It begins to fall away altogether.

And so the idea of entertainment changes form,

Right?

We start to see life less as a split between the bad moments and the good moments and we start to see life as a situation of constant opportunity,

Constant possibility where every moment is a moment to engage,

Where every moment,

Every feeling,

Every sensation is something that we can relate with wholeheartedly,

Right?

But that takes a kind of self-respect to get involved with.

It means respecting yourself enough that you're not trying to abandon your experience in some way,

That you're not trying to cut off some part of yourself.

Imagine if you had a,

I don't know,

A birthmark on your arm and you decided I don't like it,

I want to get rid of it,

Right?

You would be cutting off an essential part of your body.

And this is kind of what we do with our sadness.

We find parts we don't like and we want to eliminate them,

We want to cut them out,

Right?

That approach doesn't work.

That approach actually leads us into more of the problematic mindset that is a part of what we're already involved with.

However,

Beginning to engage with our sadness,

Our fear about ourselves really begins to open us in a way that sometimes is even difficult to explain in words because there's something about turning and engaging with your experience.

You know,

The old teachings would phrase it like this,

That you stop seeking heaven and you start finding heaven on earth.

You stop looking for heaven as some place beyond earth and you start looking for heaven where it is,

Right?

Even Jesus,

He said,

When His disciples asked about the presence of heaven,

He said it's there underneath your feet.

You just don't see it.

Why don't we see it?

Because we haven't engaged with our experience yet.

So long as we're believing that heaven or enlightenment or nirvana or samadhi or whatever is somewhere out there that we have to aspire to,

We miss that it's right here.

We miss that it is right here underneath our feet all the time.

That's why it's important to engage.

Because at first it seems like we're engaging our fear and we're engaging our insecurity and ugh,

It feels exhausting initially.

But pretty soon we begin to discover that we are actually relating to our own self.

We're actually relating to our own awakened being,

Our own nature.

And pretty soon that notion of heaviness about relating to our fear and insecurity turns into something entirely different.

A phenomenal display.

It actually turns into a path of excitement.

We're anxious for the opportunity for a fear to arise or an insecurity to arise because we know in that moment there's a treasure inside of it.

And we're actually excited about those opportunities.

You see the difference between being excited even about the arising of something versus oh,

Here that is again.

How do I get through it?

How do I get beyond it?

And so from that perspective we almost develop a sort of lazy,

Sloppy attitude,

You know?

We begin to relate to our experience almost in a fast food mentality.

It's like I want it this way,

I don't want it this way,

I'll complain if it's this way,

Just give it to me the way I want it.

Just give it to me the way I want it.

And within that mindset,

That attitude,

There's a kind of franticness,

There's a kind of struggle going on within us because you can never control everything,

Right?

So the whole idea here that we're getting at is to begin to look at transcendence as a real possibility but not one that comes through getting beyond or over,

Not by conquering our experience in some way,

Not by triumphing over the ego's fear.

What would triumph,

What would seek triumph over the ego's fear?

I mean just you're trying to conquer your fear,

For what?

What is it that would be conquering fear?

Do you even know?

You know what I mean?

I mean these are the sort of questions that we have to ask is,

Why?

What is it that you imagine conquering your fear will give you?

And so just getting in touch with this basic quality of conquering and understanding it and seeing that it doesn't work.

However when we begin to relate to our experience in a very intimate and engaged way,

Something in us begins to transform,

Something in us begins to shift.

And 100% of the time,

I promise you this,

100% of the time when people are actually in a state of transcendence,

It always follows,

This isn't what I thought it was going to be at all.

Because our imagination about what it would mean to transcend our limitations,

Our fears,

Is not even close to what is possible in us.

Sometimes it's said in the spiritual traditions that you're already on the other shore.

You're seeking a boat to cross the river but you're already on the other shore.

You see the problem with transcendence in that?

You're trying to get to the other shore.

But if you're already on the other shore,

What's your predicament?

You know,

That's going to be an immensely frustrating situation.

Your anger,

Your fear,

Your self-doubt,

Your insecurity,

They're over there on the other side with you.

And this is terrible news to the ego because the ego lives in a kind of split.

The ego lives in a schizophrenia.

There's heaven and there's earth.

There's the good life and there's my miserable life.

And always the ego is trying to migrate from the miserable life to the good life,

From earth to heaven,

From hell to heaven.

But with this news that you're already on the other shore and that all of your life is with you,

Including your fear and doubt and insecurity,

There becomes this moment of,

Oh,

And you actually have to begin to relate to your experience.

People find that very disheartening.

It's not an inherently disheartening situation but we're very disheartened when we realize there's no escape and there's no hope of escape.

You won't find a technique,

Teaching,

Method,

Teacher,

Or philosophy that can show you how to escape.

When we face that,

It's typically a disheartening moment.

That's why Trungpa can say that enlightenment is the ego's ultimate disappointment.

It's disheartening when you realize there's no escape.

And of course our mind is apt to misunderstand that statement by saying,

Well,

That means I'm just stuck with my fear for the rest of my life.

I'm just stuck with my self-doubt.

There's nothing I can do about it.

No,

There is something you can do about it.

You can relate to it.

You can engage with it.

But you can't transcend it.

You can't go beyond it.

But I've been relating with it for 10 years,

15 years,

20 years.

No,

You've been refusing to relate with it,

Which is why you're struggling.

Any thoughts or questions coming on this subject of transcendence?

Yeah,

What's the difference in the experience between fighting with it and relating with it once you start relating with it?

How will your experience be different?

Well,

You just nailed it.

The fight will be gone.

The fight will be gone.

Isn't that what makes fear so awful?

When I first started practicing in this way of turning toward things,

I remember being on a flight and heights have always been difficult for me.

Flying was a difficult experience.

And I remember flying and the bumps started and the fear came.

And I remember getting into this mindset,

Okay,

I'm just going to turn toward this fear.

I'm just going to face this fear.

I'm just going to feel this fear.

But all the while,

There was this subtle undercurrent of I'm going to face it so that I can get the hell rid of this stuff.

There was that subtle undercurrent.

I was facing it only to get rid of it.

And it started to dawn on me after a few experiences like that that I was actually fighting it.

I was calling it on the surface.

I'm trying to face it.

But underneath I was really fighting it.

And what was interesting is that after a few times like that,

As I started to get in touch with the fear in a real way where I wasn't trying to get rid of it and I just began to relate to it,

I just began to allow it to be okay,

To be utterly afraid from a little tiny bump on a plane,

Then there was a shift in the attitude.

And the fear would still arise,

But without the fight.

And you see,

95% of the energy of the fear was actually the fight.

5% was the fear itself,

Which was nothing.

So easy to handle.

95% of it was the fight I had to get rid of the fear.

So you see,

This is the dilemma with transcendence.

It's a word I'm using today.

Is the problem isn't the problem.

The problem is how you're relating to the problem.

The problem isn't your fear.

It's not your self-doubt.

It's not your insecurity.

It's not your grief.

It's not your anger.

It's what you're doing with it.

It's the fight you have against it that is so problematic.

So just accepting I'm scary.

Is there any part further that you can do to accept?

Well I sense in your statement a little bit of resignation,

Like,

No,

No,

No,

I'm just going to accept this fear.

Whereas acceptance is a more vibrant state than that.

So let's define,

Let's look at the difference between those two.

Resignation is a state of feeling like you're helpless to change a situation.

So you just sort of feel a little bit deflated by it.

Resignation is when you feel like you can't change a circumstance but deep down you really still want to change that circumstance.

That gives rise to that slumping feeling.

I just have to accept this?

That sucks.

Whereas acceptance is a more vibrant state.

Intelligence is a state where I'm not only accepting it by saying,

Here it is,

But I'm actually engaging with it with a quality of interest and curiosity.

I'm engaging with it so much so that I'm no longer deciding that my fear is bad or wrong or something that needs to be gotten rid of.

I'm actually taking it as something intelligent that's happening inside of me.

And then there's that,

It's that quality of interest or curiosity which brings the vibrancy with it.

And this is,

I'm glad you asked this,

Because this is a very difficult thing to comprehend,

The difference between acceptance and resignation.

If you feel resignation it'll have that slump.

Okay,

Here's my fear,

I can't get rid of it.

I guess I'll just let it be here.

You see?

But that's not acceptance.

Because if you,

Anything that you accept fully will transform.

It's the law.

If you come into a full radical acceptance of something that's happening,

It will change.

And if it doesn't change,

It means you haven't accepted it.

I hesitate to give that answer because then that provides some kind of hope,

Like,

Okay,

Now if I just accept things,

Now if I just accept my fear it'll go away.

But you see,

That's already the problematic attitude.

You're already trying to figure out how to transcend your fear again when you have that attitude.

So acceptance is about,

Really acceptance is much cleaner.

It's like,

Okay,

There's nothing,

Let's say,

You really know acceptance if you encounter a state like fear and you experience it as though it is there to stay forever and that you're going to have to find a way to live with it and you're just okay with that.

That's what acceptance is.

Acceptance is the complete okayness with something being present even if it never leaves you.

Because in resignation you get bummed about it and in acceptance you're not bummed about it,

You're working with it,

You're engaging it,

You're in a state of interaction with it.

It's like saying,

You know,

It's like the difference between,

Oh,

This depression is going to last forever versus,

Okay,

This depression is here to stay.

Let me figure out how to live my life with it,

With some kind of dignity,

Self-respect,

Self-love,

Some kind of way in which I'm not defeated by it.

Right?

So you could say in one sense it's an optimistic attitude but the optimism doesn't come from thinking you're going to conquer your depression.

It comes from being able to work with it in a full and total way.

Reviews

Not what I wanted to hear but just what I needed to hear thank you Adi

Thanks, crystal clear and wise explanations of complex and subtle challenges...

I love the subtlety with which Adi treats certain concepts. It’s been so helpful for me. Very grounding work. I highly recommend Adi’s meditations and talks. Thank you Adi and lots of love 🙏🏻❤️❤️❤️