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Living Choiceless

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Living Choiceless “If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.” Zen Saying Karmaphala Karma: Neither This Nor That Living Choiceless “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” Zenrin Kushu Choiceless Awareness: The state of unpremeditated, complete awareness of the present moment without preference or compulsion. WeBster’s Dictionary The day I went to “sit” with Jiddu Krishnamurti was indeed special. He spoke of living “choiceless” in order to sustain meditation as a way of life. Later I found out that it was the third Zen patriarch Sosan who taught this magnificent insight on how to bring meditation into daily life, or as I call it, learning how to “hold my water” in order to sustain awareness in consciousness. Let me share with you Krishnamurti’s sweet insight into living in the state of “choiceless awareness,” as he calls it. Every day we see or read of appalling things happening in the world as the result of violence in man. You may say, 'I can't do anything about it,' or, 'How can I influence the world?' I think you can tremendously influence the world if in yourself you are not violent, if you lead actually every day a peaceful life - a life which is not competitive, ambitious, envious - a life which does not create enmity. Small fires can become a blaze. Peace is found in neither this nor that. How true this statement is. The key word here is found in “enmity” which, as you know, means the state of feeling actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. When we no longer feel the need for pro and con, right and wrong, we subsequently move into the Zen which Sosan spoke of hundreds of years ago as: Neither this, neither that! I first heard my Master speak on the subject in his Discourses on Sosan, who spoke of consciousness occurring through the sustaining of a judgment that is non-judgmental. This phenomenon of judgment without being judgmental, which was coined by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in India as the state of “neti neti” (neither this, neither that), was stressed in his teachings in order to show how one can bring meditation into daily life. Before I get into this subject of choiceless awareness, I need to say a few words as an intro. You see if you do not practice meditation with a sense of totality, if you only practice casually or infrequently merely to obey my instructions, you will miss. You will miss the totality of what it means to move into an inner depth that is beyond the emotional nature that most of us suffer from. Meditation is not something that promotes a philosophy about spirituality. Meditation is the state we live in with our eyes both closed, as well as open. We live in meditation as a preference that overrides our emotionality and causes the mind to be receptive to no longer being in “enmity” with itself or anyone else. So if you are not devoted to meditation, if you are not totally willing and dedicated to the process of awakening through awareness, then what I have to offer to you today will mean little or nothing. (There goes my audience!) The effort in an authentic spiritual practice is to bring meditation into daily life. To do everything in “total,” which means to be doing through non-doing by practicing the ONE THING AT A TIME exercise with all of our Heart and with our full attention towards the experience that that “one thing” can offer us. In everything that we “do” there is the blessing of Love. Yes, nothing in this lifetime is without the opportunity for Love to reveal itself. The state of Love can emerge in everything from cleaning toilets to having friends over for dinner. Everything is a divine opportunity for Love. This insight is difficult in our ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) society. We make everything a chore if it does not fit our emotional preferences. People who are conflicted emotionally (fighting “good” emotions over “bad” emotions) find it very difficult, even futile, to meditate. They can close their human eyes, but they cannot realize anything from the process of meditation due to the fact that they have no inner resolve to live beyond their own small- minded preferences that generally serve the petty aspects of our obsessive emotionality, which formulates in us as the Ego. If you can understand and become aware of the meaning that is being offered to us through the Zen phrase: Neither this, neither that, then you will find a whole new way of experiencing meditation in your daily life. It will be the meditation of everyday living and how to experience: “JUST THIS” in and throughout everything that you do. So let me begin with the powerful insight of a Zen master, Seng T’San, who said: The Perfect Way knows no difficulties Except that it refuses to make preferences, Only when freed from hate and love, It reveals itself fully and without disguise. You see it is only our “preferences” (what we like and dislike) that keep us from the authentic aspect of living more consciously. The main culprits here are the preferences we have in “hate” and in “love.” It is in these foolish ideals of emotionalism that we find our folly. When there is no more “hate” and “love,” or no more willfulness to make them our personal preferences, we come into full awareness, full consciousness, and hence do everything from and in the Bigger Picture of our beautiful lives. All Masters that have come to help us in this world have talked about living choicelessly. We just refuse to live without choices because every time we make some sort of “choice” based on preferences we believe that we are separating ourselves from the herd and becoming “individuals.” Making choices looks to us like we are “better than…” others, especially if we seem “better off” than others. What is actually happening is that we are becoming more ingrained in the “herd” of the collective unconscious than we might imagine by making our silly “choices” based in the emotionalism that causes us to become arrogant and self-righteous. Rumi, the greatest lover who ever touched this earth, in my opinion, revealed a great Truth when he said: “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” It is a very good question. Why would I choose to live in the prison of my preferences over the vastness of Love that is calling me at all times to live beyond my fears? I will tell you why! The human of us likes to believe that it is in “control” of our life, and it is only in our need to control through possessions that we become severe and unyielding to Love. It is here that we go against the grain of the Universe and, hence, cause ourselves nothing but tragedy. Every idea that we have which tells us that we are either “happy” or “unhappy” is an illusion that we act from that creates Karma. So in trying to “solve” our “problems” we merely create more for ourselves down the line. This simple fact is hard for most people to recognize in their own lives. We live as if we “know” what is “good” for us. We make important life choices based on this simple and selfish ideal. But the issue is that what might appear to be “good” for us in this world may prove to be unworthy of our Heart, and hence cause us great sorrow later on in our life. This paradox is an enigma to most people because they live as if we are only here on earth with its glass ceiling that appears to offer freedom and “happiness” through “stuff.” This is a very shortsighted point of view. You see my dear one…we will never know the meaning of our life, which is the greatest treasure of all, unless we are willing to enter into the mystery of living through Love. This means that we move out of our self-imposed prison and live into the great mystery that is Love. We cannot be concerned with what we are leaving behind or how the mind purports its interpretation of “reality” based in its dedication to emotionalism through a rationalized alibi for fear and hate. What must be of great urgency is that we are willing to be conscious of our unconscious at all costs to the ignorance and the mechanism that supports it through logic and reasoning. So let us take the mystical approach to the state of mind that is: “Neti Neti,” or Neither This Nor That. This state of mind is independent of emotionality. Hence, it negates the emotional interpretations of “self,” or as many like to call it the “ego” self. When neti neti is established as the replacement for pedestrian logic and reasoning–a new era of living is established within us. The reason being that we have disconnected from the inner violence and conflict that we constantly engage in through our unconscious minds. In every moment of our life we are in a constant war with ourselves. It is the ol’ war of “good vs. evil.” Red Skelton’s “Mean Widdle Kid” put it best when he said, “If I dood it, I dit a whippin…I DOOD IT!” We are in a constant battle with the “dood it” and actually enjoy the “whippin” that occurs as we invoke emotionality into our lives as the impulsive emotional manner of our entire lifetime.
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