"May is my wife — beautiful, kind, humorous, intelligent and wise, graced with a strong and generous character. She’s from Jiangsu, China, and not yet a permanent resident in the U.S. We were married in July.
They took her away in August.
When the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization (INS) comes to incarcerate you, they don’t tell you where you’re going or how long you’ll be there. Being married to a U.S. citizen isn’t enough to keep you out of their clutches. They often don’t let you call a lawyer or family member.
For some reason they did call me after coming to our home and removing her. I was at work. They merely stated that May’s visa had expired, that she was going down to the local office and should be home that evening. But she was sent to the Hudson County Correctional Facility (New Jersey), with INS detainees on the 4th Floor and the felons on the 5th.
Some of her co-detainees had been behind bars for over 18 months and many were shipped directly back to their home countries.
Since the INS doesn’t tell you how long you’ll be there or when your next hearing is, you just wait. And wait. May did have lots of free time, and between bouts of worrying about me and her teenage son, she was able to make collect phone calls (at $5 per minute).
During that month I ran up close to $1000 in phone charges!
May was gone one month. Getting her out before she was deported to China was a combination of persistence, good friends, sound advice, compassionate employers (both May’s employer, and mine), an honest, hard-working lawyer, several hearings with an INS judge, lots of cash – all this and Kwan Yin!
Yes, Kwan Yin, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion, “She Who Hears the Cries of Sentient Beings.” For the first two weeks, May just worried and lost weight. But at the end of the second week, a new INS arrival brought in some Chinese Buddhist materials.
May took a look at the teachings and prayers, and saw a chant to Kwan Yin. It was a 36-line chant, invoking the name and blessings of Kwan Yin and other Bodhisattvas. The chant was accompanied by a printed form with 1000 checkboxes, to tick off each time you complete the chant. Although May was not a practicing Buddhist at the time, Buddhism had been in the air when she was growing up near Shanghai. So she felt the resonance and took up the chant.
After she’d chanted and ticked off all the checkboxes but didn’t have a photocopier, she just kept on going without the printed form. She began to chant 10, 14, 16, 18 hours each day. When they were let into the yard for their daily exercise and sunlight, she would chant outside.
Not having incense, she would roll napkins into joss sticks and burn them, seated cross-legged in the yard. She chanted more and more and more, until she was chanting virtually the entire time she wasn’t eating or putting in rack time. Several other Chinese ladies began to chant along with her. And for two weeks, there could be heard the soft melodic Chinese chanting of KWAN-YIN-PU-SA (Kwan Yin Bodhisattva). When May was released, her colleagues carried on with the chant. If it worked for her, it could work for them too!
When May returned home, she looked focused, calm, and glad to be out! She said that Kwan Yin had showered blessings upon her and her family.
She said that the chanting had kept her sane and prevented the worry she had felt the first two weeks. Now she continues the chanting and devotions to Kwan Yin. In addition to offerings at our home altar, May goes to the Buddhist temple next door to her work. Each day, she goes to say Thank You, to do an incense offering, and to pray for her family.
I can feel the umbrella of blessings from her practice, and wish the blessings upon all.
May all sentient beings be free of pain and suffering!"
~ Greg Goode works at a law firm, studied psychology and philosophy at the University of California, University of Cologne (Germany), and University of Rochester. A student of deep inquiry for decades until his search came to a peaceful and blissful conclusion.
Greg became drawn to self-inquiry through the work of Brand Blanshard, George Berkeley, Francis Lucille and Sri Atmananda (Krishna Menon) as well as the Chinmaya Mission. Since the 1990’s up through the present era of social media, Greg has been an active contributor to spiritual Internet discussions. Greg is well-known innovator for having combined the ancient “direct-path” method of self-inquiry with modern electronic media. Greg lives in New York City, where he enjoys literature, film, cycling, and spending time with his family.
“We normally feel separate from things in the world, from people and things we love. We even feel separate from aspects of our own body and mind! The sense of separation makes us feel lonely and vulnerable. We feel subject to finitude, suffering, and death. But when you deeply realize that nothing finite is the self, and that there’s no experiential basis for separation, you discover your natural wholeness. You discover clarity, sweetness, and joy—all of which become your living experience…
Awareness in the direct path, refers to an open, global clarity. If we add the function of “being appeared to” as an overlay on top of awareness, the result would be “witnessing awareness.” Awareness isn’t mental or physical. It’s that to which the body and the mind appear. In the direct path, you can come to see how the body and the mind appear to awareness, rather than being perceived by awareness.
This seeing is crucial in the direct path, and there are many experiments that facilitate it. Of course, we normally attribute such seeing to the individual person. We think the person is the seer. We think that whatever appears, appears to that person. We think that physical objects are perceived by the senses and that abstract objects are cognized by the mind. Normally we aren’t so interested in what sees the senses or how the mind itself is perceived.
But in the direct path, you examine the full range of experience, including what seems to be the very equipment that conveys experience to you. As you inquire about the body and the mind, you feel your perspective broadening, as though you’re zooming out further and further. It’s not that you’re becoming omniscient but that your perspective is loosening.
The “I” seems less and less associated with the body. The “I” seems more and more like awareness itself. As you continue with your inquiry, you realize that awareness isn’t the same thing as biological sentience. Sentience is usually defined as an organism’s capacity to perceive, feel, and respond to conditions. It’s a biological function. It depends on the health of the organism, and it may come and go in various states of wakefulness, sleep, trance, and coma.
Awareness, on the other hand, transcends the organism. It’s that to which these states appear. According to the direct path, sentience is an object—as are, for instance, color or sound. Some spiritual paths distinguish between awareness and consciousness. Although the direct path distinguishes awareness from sentience, it considers awareness and consciousness the same thing.
In the direct path, self-inquiry is your main tool for investigating the world, the body, and the mind. What’s the true nature of the mind? Is my body my self? Is the world separate from the seeing of the world? Your investigation encompasses the entire range of experience, including thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, emotions, intuitions, and states of mind. Are they separate and objectively existing things? They certainly seem to be.
In our everyday ways of thinking, feeling, and speaking, we certainly treat the world, the body, and the mind as separate. There are even philosophies and sciences that argue that they truly are separate. But if you look very closely for these supposedly separate things, can you actually find them? Does your experience verify separateness? With self-inquiry, you find just the opposite. You never confirm true separateness, no matter what you examine. Whatever you inquire into is confirmed to be your self, the “Self” of awareness.
Self-inquiry uses two investigative tools: witnessing awareness and direct experience. Witnessing awareness is awareness in its aspect of being the subject of appearing objects. Whatever you examine—whether it be a piece of fruit, your lower back, or your most sublime mental state—appears to witnessing awareness. Your thoughts, feelings, and sensations appear to witnessing awareness. Yet witnessing awareness doesn’t appear to anything. It isn’t an object. It has no color, size, shape, or duration.
Unlike the mind, witnessing awareness doesn’t come and go. It doesn’t grow sluggish when you’re tired. It doesn’t become active when you drink coffee. It doesn’t shut off if you go into a coma. It doesn’t suffer. Witnessing awareness is that to which the coming and going of sentience appears. This idea takes some getting used to, and there are many methods in the direct path to help you attune to it. You grow to be able to see witnessing awareness as the home of direct experience.
Direct experience is the other principal investigative tool in the direct path. What is direct experience? It’s a kind of experience that’s not the result of inference or interpretation. In the direct path, if you examine a table to discover its true nature, you don’t begin by assuming that the table exists in front of you. You examine your experience to ascertain what does appear. In your visual experience of the table, if it seems that “the table’s brown color” appears, then this experience is the result of an inference. Really, there’s no evidence that the brown color belongs to a table. In your visual experience, nothing establishes that the color comes from a table. A thought may make such a claim (and thoughts are examined later on in this book), but in the visual data itself, there’s nothing that proves that a table caused the evidence.
If your experience seems to be something raw and non-conceptual, something preverbal and simpler than a belief, then this is closer to a direct, non-inferential experience. A more direct rendition of your experience in this example would be “brown” or “color.” Even though these are still labels, they don’t make existential claims that something exists in front of you.”
~ Greg Goode, After Awareness: The End of the Path
“We normally feel separate from things in the world, from people and things we love. We even feel separate from aspects of our own body and mind! The sense of separation makes us feel lonely and vulnerable. We feel subject to finitude, suffering, and death. But when you deeply realize that nothing finite is the self, and that there’s no experiential basis for separation, you discover your natural wholeness. You discover clarity, sweetness, and joy—all of which become your living experience…
Awareness in the direct path, refers to an open, global clarity. If we add the function of “being appeared to” as an overlay on top of awareness, the result would be “witnessing awareness.” Awareness isn’t mental or physical. It’s that to which the body and the mind appear. In the direct path, you can come to see how the body and the mind appear to awareness, rather than being perceived by awareness.
This seeing is crucial in the direct path, and there are many experiments that facilitate it. Of course, we normally attribute such seeing to the individual person. We think the person is the seer. We think that whatever appears, appears to that person. We think that physical objects are perceived by the senses and that abstract objects are cognized by the mind. Normally we aren’t so interested in what sees the senses or how the mind itself is perceived.
But in the direct path, you examine the full range of experience, including what seems to be the very equipment that conveys experience to you. As you inquire about the body and the mind, you feel your perspective broadening, as though you’re zooming out further and further. It’s not that you’re becoming omniscient but that your perspective is loosening.
The “I” seems less and less associated with the body. The “I” seems more and more like awareness itself. As you continue with your inquiry, you realize that awareness isn’t the same thing as biological sentience. Sentience is usually defined as an organism’s capacity to perceive, feel, and respond to conditions. It’s a biological function. It depends on the health of the organism, and it may come and go in various states of wakefulness, sleep, trance, and coma.
Awareness, on the other hand, transcends the organism. It’s that to which these states appear. According to the direct path, sentience is an object—as are, for instance, color or sound. Some spiritual paths distinguish between awareness and consciousness. Although the direct path distinguishes awareness from sentience, it considers awareness and consciousness the same thing.
In the direct path, self-inquiry is your main tool for investigating the world, the body, and the mind. What’s the true nature of the mind? Is my body my self? Is the world separate from the seeing of the world? Your investigation encompasses the entire range of experience, including thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, emotions, intuitions, and states of mind. Are they separate and objectively existing things? They certainly seem to be.
In our everyday ways of thinking, feeling, and speaking, we certainly treat the world, the body, and the mind as separate. There are even philosophies and sciences that argue that they truly are separate. But if you look very closely for these supposedly separate things, can you actually find them? Does your experience verify separateness? With self-inquiry, you find just the opposite. You never confirm true separateness, no matter what you examine. Whatever you inquire into is confirmed to be your self, the “Self” of awareness.
Self-inquiry uses two investigative tools: witnessing awareness and direct experience. Witnessing awareness is awareness in its aspect of being the subject of appearing objects. Whatever you examine—whether it be a piece of fruit, your lower back, or your most sublime mental state—appears to witnessing awareness. Your thoughts, feelings, and sensations appear to witnessing awareness. Yet witnessing awareness doesn’t appear to anything. It isn’t an object. It has no color, size, shape, or duration.
Unlike the mind, witnessing awareness doesn’t come and go. It doesn’t grow sluggish when you’re tired. It doesn’t become active when you drink coffee. It doesn’t shut off if you go into a coma. It doesn’t suffer. Witnessing awareness is that to which the coming and going of sentience appears. This idea takes some getting used to, and there are many methods in the direct path to help you attune to it. You grow to be able to see witnessing awareness as the home of direct experience.
Direct experience is the other principal investigative tool in the direct path. What is direct experience? It’s a kind of experience that’s not the result of inference or interpretation. In the direct path, if you examine a table to discover its true nature, you don’t begin by assuming that the table exists in front of you. You examine your experience to ascertain what does appear. In your visual experience of the table, if it seems that “the table’s brown color” appears, then this experience is the result of an inference. Really, there’s no evidence that the brown color belongs to a table. In your visual experience, nothing establishes that the color comes from a table. A thought may make such a claim (and thoughts are examined later on in this book), but in the visual data itself, there’s nothing that proves that a table caused the evidence.
If your experience seems to be something raw and non-conceptual, something preverbal and simpler than a belief, then this is closer to a direct, non-inferential experience. A more direct rendition of your experience in this example would be “brown” or “color.” Even though these are still labels, they don’t make existential claims that something exists in front of you.”
~ Greg Goode, After Awareness: The End of the Path
No comments:
Post a Comment