River of Light
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005We’re often told: “Be with things just the way they are.”
Or: “The world is perfect just as it is.”
In my experience, these are the aspects of Tantrik View that are most open to misunderstanding and misuse.
For instance, many people feel that “Be with things just the way they are” means that they must learn to “accept” themselves, other people, and situations. This is an attitude based in a dualistic experience: there is an acceptor and an acceptee. It also hints at something distasteful about oneself or others that must be dealt with through acceptance.
Hearing that “the world is perfect just as it is,” some Tantrikas adopt an attitude of indifference. “Okay, then, I don’t have to care about the suffering of others. It’s perfect.” In stepping down from the exalted post of fixing everything and everyone, they also shut down feelings of grief and compassion. Detachment is quite different from indifference, but it takes a certain level of experience in sadhana to know this. People tend to imitate what they think detachment might be like. They sometimes end up with psychic numbness instead.
“Be with things just the way they are” tells us, not about accepting or shutting down feelings, but about accompanying. Accompanying or “being with” is more open, more relaxed, and less “I-centered” than accepting. Accompanying expresses, as near as human language can express, our natural relationship to the world.
The world is One expressing itself as two. The two are naturally related: all individual expressions accompany each other naturally because we are also one. Nothing needs to be accepted. Just be.
But how can we just be? How can we express what we already are? This is the question of sadhana; the answer is also sadhana. Tantric spiritual technologies are nothing but a means to realize what we already are so that we can enter into the dialogue of the dualistic world naturally rather than through contrivance and compulsion.
Through sadhana and grace, we learn that generosity and compassion are not emotions. They are not ways of acting. They are not things, such as acceptance, that we bestow on others because we are “good.”
Through sadhana, we discover that generosity and compassion are natural: they do not belong to us, nor do we create them. Generosity and compassion are pervasive aspects of the wisdom of the world. As we become more open expressions of the world just as it is, we naturally express compassion and generosity: they shine like a river of light through our individual lives.
Adopting a purely conceptual nondual View without real accomplishment can actually lead to a greater sense of separation. We need to be very honest with ourselves about our day-to-day experience before we profess a View, such as “The world is perfect just as it is” (Therefore, I don’t have to care about all those people in pain). Are we just parroting what we’ve heard, or are we really established in View?
The world is perfect just as it is. This statement doesn’t imply that we are living in some sugar-coated heaven, or that we have permssion to ignore or discount the suffering of ourselves or others. It is an instruction that orients us correctly within our lives as creatures in this One-becoming-two world.
“The world is perfect just as it is” instructs us to treat all manifestations of the creation as non-different, not with indifference. It instructs us to open to amazement at the creation, without exception. It guides us away from our root sense of separation and toward becoming open conduits for compassion and generosity that is applied equally and is available equally to all.
Be with what is, just as it is: happiness, suffering, joy, pain and all. Accompany everyone in happiness and pain. Accompany yourself. Allow your own life and the natural generosity and compassion of the creation to flow like a river of light shining through.
OM Shanti, Shambhavi
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