From self to śunyatā
An experience of śunyatā that is quite common is its manifestation as the core of our being. It is apparent, usually within meditation initially, that our very deepest nature is open, free and pure – that all the conditioned elements of the personality are held within this spacious and compassionate presence. It is quite incontrovertible that this is what we most truly are, at this point. It is our true nature.
This is not the only way we can experience śunyatā, but it is very useful for the purpose of contrasting it with our ordinary experience of ourselves. There is something of a journey, from a narrow, pain-filled and judgmental sense of self, complicated and tetchy, to this relatively free state. I will explore some elements of this journey here, particularly in terms of the energetic transformation involved (which is in itself an unusual way of looking at it). This will I hope lead to a usable model for the resolution of dukkha within the fluid realms of Formless Practice.
If we only occasionally touch on śunyatā in the way described above, or are otherwise too busy, such experiences of śunyatā may seem rather disconnected from the narrative thread of before and after. While our experience remains thus linear, these illuminations will seem as though we are being blessed by a random grace. They seem to have nothing to do with us, but are very welcome all the same.
At some point, the frequency of their arisings, or the deepening longing for śunyatā within, will demand some kind of integration from us. Our wish for this integration will cause us to question our baseline state(s), and encourage a process of turning towards what might be in the way of that. This will lead us to explore what had been previously compartmentalised or locked away in the body, for the purpose of our current convenience or comfort. I have discussed this process of turning toward dukkha in depth on previous occasions, and do not wish to cover this same ground again here, or at least in the same way.
The energetic nature of dukkha
If suffering that is buried in the body is seen as an energetic phenomenon, as a nexus of energy that has been turned away from, rather than reified as some kind of separate thing that we ‘have’, we can appreciate the process of integration differently. For starters, this new approach does better justice to our general meditative experience of dukkha as having a location, though not a sharply boundaried one; and to our sense that it is alive with quickly-changing sensations, rather than being a unitary lump. We can notice how meeting and resolving dukkha results in a clearer psyche, with more energy available to flow, especially the first few days after resolution; a more pervasive experience of freedom and wholeness, quite literally. Whatever the historical conditions that led to what seemed initially to be an intractable dukkha-knot, it is quite clearly gone now, even if our history is nominally the same as it ever was.
We thus see how dukkha is assimilated by śunyatā/awareness; though the energetic and free nature of the latter was much more obvious to us initially, we now also see that dukkha is made of energy too. We generally have far fewer nouns with which we reify or limit our experience of positive states. We do tend however to reify difficult experiences, as part of the process of disidentifying from and ‘protecting ourselves’ against them in the ordinary deluded way, and this makes them rather lumpy and ‘not-us’. Seeing both dukkha and śunyatā as on an energetic continuum means that they can no longer be seen as poles apart, that they are indeed intimately related. This being so, we cannot persist quite so wilfully with trying to get ‘somewhere else’ apart and away from our dukkha to the land of milk and śunyatā. Dukkha therefore becomes much more our relevant and immediate problem.
Dukkha and the formation of personality
So we have drawn some basic conclusions about the relationship of dukkha to śunyatā at the direct experience level. What conclusions follow from a broader examination of how śunyatā is assimilated within nāma-rupa? Where does it fit in there? Well, we can track elements of this process of assimilation which are quite universal, and express these too in specifically energetic terms, and so have a better understanding of the broad processes of the self.
Broadly speaking, the personality often takes the forms it does as a defence against turning towards. It crystallises or sets so as to bury unfelt discomfort in the body – we might be said to be the shape of our avoidances. This constellation of avoidances (avijja) limits and traps the self in a very ordinary experience of space-time. In acceding to this process, we lose our relationship with the freedom of śunyatā; so for such a convenient payoff (i.e. relative sense of control, relative freedom from immediate discomfort) there is in the end this spiritually unacceptable consequence. Thus we have our third kind of dukkha – feeling trapped in a spiritually unbearable way, knowing obscurely that our soul is divided, our energies tied to a post, and hopeless about finding our missing pieces. This awareness of sankhāra-dukkha will be a fundamental motive for the serious practitioner, and drive them on.
Coming into meditative relationship with dukkha
One can usefully envisage the transition between you as you usually experience yourself, and the dukkha locked away, as consisting of a defensive layer which has experiential characteristics. One might also see the dukkha as the last aspect of the disruptive layer on the way through to śunyatā, and therefore as the gateway to it (which is of course no more than a traditional exposition of dharma).
A dynamic metaphor which shows the two ways of relating to this defensive layer might be helpful. Imagine effervescent water in a tall clear glass. The surface of the water is quite disturbed, and fragments the light and all the images that are reflected on the surface of the water. This is like the ordinary experience of the discursive mind. However, if we look from the side, we see what is going on more clearly. We see clear trails of bubbles emanating from particular points deep in the glass where it meets the water. The bubbles are like endless strings of thoughts which disturb the surface of the water, and represent that little bit of personality excitement as we try to insist that we exist and are separate. However, tracing the bubbles down into the depths of our somatic experience will show us where the dukkha is buried. This simple process represents the application of the four satipatthānas in meditation, by means of which we can find the sources of our suffering. The bubbles of our thoughts and feelings are not the fundamental dukkha, but the reactivity of our personality, as we try to separate from what is in fact ineluctably close at hand. It is the energetic expression of our defensiveness, perhaps a shriek or perhaps a drawn-out whimper, but it is not the end-point. That would be to touch the glass at the point the bubbles emanate from. This is what will bring that stream to an end.
The energised bubbles of the water represent the somewhat blind and automatic defensive response of the self. It is disruptive, and seeks to turn you away from seeing what is really going on. It is genuinely quite or even very uncomfortable, takes many and various forms, and yet is not in itself the end-point. Seeing it as a defensive and transitional layer is very helpful for disidentification in Formless Practice, and therefore for moving through and beyond it rather than turning back. The ordinary self knows nothing of śunyatā, being only able to conceive of it as some kind of annihilation – hence the defensive and avoidant response. Awareness though is of the nature of śunyatā and is doubt-free, and thus will feel into whatever is hidden, or sore, or unacknowledged. So you have a basic tension here. Entering mindfully and compassionately into the disruptive layer means that you will be less side-tracked and put off, and resolve dukkha much more sweetly. You are also in so doing aligning yourself with śunyatā/awareness, which cannot be over-valued.
Reading the Disruptive Layer aright
Until you get used to enough of a range of such experience to be comfortable with the process, you will tend to feel that the disruptive layer is scary and ‘wrong’, and that you are under threat. It is usually energetically active, and you are alerted at a neurological level, sensing threat (quite genuinely – the ordinary ‘you’ IS under threat). There is a feeling of turning into the stream and going against the current. Misread, one will be turned round and thrown back upon one’s ordinary understanding, perhaps feeling obscurely defeated. Read correctly, you appreciate that as a serious practitioner you head for the difficulty, not away – you take the disruptive layer as a positive if uncomfortable sign. You read it in the opposite way to the ordinary self, which will want to run for cover.
So, it is usually rather like this – except when it isn’t! In the same way that we have ‘fight, flight or play dead’, the disruptive layer can manifest energetically, or as emotional stasis and deadness. I would generally suggest that this latter is a more severe or profound response, and can happen when you bump into something too soon, or into something which the self is unable to manage or manipulate. One can feel empty, rudderless, and actively seek over-stimulation to ‘make’ yourself feel ‘alive’ or at least normal. I suggest it is the more severe, because with energetic forms of disruption you at least have a sense of yourself that is half-familiar as you turn into the gale. You know who you are, even while you are railing against existence. Being becalmed in this way doesn’t even allow you that luxury. Buckle up though – if you can skilfully manage this kind of calm transition, you are pretty much unstoppable. You are anyways as a serious practitioner going to come across periods of negotiating such transitions. It is important in Formless Practice to be able to be with everything.
Orienting to the Disruptive Layer
The usefulness of talking about this layer is to clarify its nature as a transition. If one can recognise it, there is hope of disidentification, and you can navigate the choppy waters more skilfully. Which is to say, without feeling fundamentally threatened. This enables a moving through into the realms of śunyatā, which is what this transitions to. The disruptive layer is not in itself that useful or requiring of any special acceptance in its own terms. It is much more like an electric field or no-man’s land that you pass through on the way to a deeper and much more genuine somatic mindfulness. It is that space that is relatively speaking the end-point, and much more deserving of our attention in itself. This is the realm in which the self is quiet or attenuated, and there we have a much better chance of seeing how things really are.
Because you have been corralled within these electric fences for much of your life, these layers can feel like the old enemy you’ve never had the courage to meet, but always slunk away from. Bumping into the fence repeatedly, feeling the shocks, turning back to old patterns of life.
Seeing the transitional and defensive nature of this layer makes disidentification easier, alerting you to the fact that you are heading toward the realms of peace and stillness that you treasure. Notice how different this is from seeing this layer as a fearsome boundary of your being… Awareness is leading you on through these phases, and their manifestation is evidence that there must be love of wholeness sufficient to bring about just such an exploration. In the end, the self is hoist by its own petard – it kicks up too much of a fuss for its own good. The qualitative experience of the defensive layer gives the game away. The mindful meditator is alerted by the dust-devils that the self kicks up, and holding firm makes use of them as a string of lights to guide her on her way.
Even positive transitions, from a skilful to a more skilful state, have this disruptive layer in between, at least while the transition is unfamiliar. Entering into the first jhana, or making the transition to the second or third jhanas, can require a negotiation of energetic discomfiture and resistance, until you get the hang of what is happening.
The importance of View and Review
In jhana, as elsewhere, one needs to have confidence in the place at which you will arrive, so to speak, otherwise you can lose your bearings while in the disruptive layer, and fall back. You are training in the recognition of the self’s unhelpful defensiveness, as it is experienced energetically. The purpose of the defensive layer is to protect the comfortable sense of self, and turn you away from a deeper experience which will be difficult and indeed undermine that limited sense of self. The usefulness of orienting in the middle of challenging meditative experience suggests there is a great value in evoking and reviewing one’s deepest meditation experience at other times – perhaps writing about them, communicating with others who can hear you, or some other form of expression. Śunyatā is subtle in its embodiment even though profound and releasing (we are much more viscerally alerted by dukkha), and not so easily remembered as the electric torment of the passage to it. Here it is though, beyond the roiling surf, past the torments and fears, in its way constantly known because constantly oriented to even in times of darkness.
As the truth and inherent stability of these states of being are established in your minds, you can see clearly how self resists the assimilation of śunyatā, in quite a blind or automatic way. There’s no blame to the self, because it knows not what is beyond itself; there’s no castigation at all, because the process is not much better than instinctive.
Shield emotions – the sand in the ointment
When we buried unbearable experience in the past, we may well have done it under pressure from a relatively more superficial emotion or response, perhaps induced to do so by our dependence on significant others. This common phenomenon is important in our understanding of some of the turmoil of the disruptive layer, as it largely consists of what I am calling shield emotions (and their corollaries). Which is to say that the basic dukkha we need to come at is often shielded by other responses, which can seem part of our current response, but are in fact part of what is being uncovered and released. They are like the lid on the pirate’s treasure-chest on the sea-bed, marked with a skull & crossbones, seeming like a threat, but hiding pieces-of-eight.
It is important in Formless Practice to include and take a stance beyond ALL aspects of the disruptive process. This happens to be a broader point about Formless Practice, but has a particular relevance here. Note how you are pushing, how you might be in a reactive cycle, how you are bargaining, how you are feeling judgemental about yourself and other, all these things – and relax around them in non-fixing mode. This will enable a moving into the original dukkha, and the resolution thereof. It might be apposite to give some examples.
Three examples
Experiences of inappropriate boundary-invasion can give rise to fear and loss of confidence. So as we come into disruption, and closer to the dukkha of when our basic sense of safety was threatened, we may experience lots of fear and lose confidence in our practice. This is a secondary response which can turn us back. Or we can see those responses as part of the funeral ceremony which buried the original dukkha, and be willing to re-experience them without believing in them. When the dukkha is met and released, the fear can transform into vulnerability, a characteristic of śunyatā.
We may have had an excruciating experience of being shamed by others, and feel that something about us has been forced out of sight, even though we had no sense of wrong-doing. So in disruption the sense of shame might convince us that we are going to a wrong place, even though we end up here because of relaxed and effective practice. Compassionately holding the feelings of unlovability enables a meeting with the fundamental dukkha, and a releasing of the shield emotions too as a great ease with our being, the basis for delighting in solitude (we don’t have a simple term for this, though it is symbolised by Vajrapani’s Royal Ease).
We may have been severely chastised for a behaviour or a non-behaviour, and made to feel selfish, worthless or otherwise thoughtless about others. So in disruption, we may feel guilty and bad, a selfish woman to be doing all this ‘personal’ practice. Not letting this be a show-stopper, but investigating the delicious taste of guilt and uselessness, we move into the primal dukkha. We release it into the purity of motive, called in Christianity the Sacred Heart, in which our non-violent and loving essence is directly apparent to us.
Always include
It is useful to reflect on our various reactions before practice in a disruption phase, so as to sit prepared with a skilful view. Otherwise the primal nature of the sensations and emotions involved may quickly drag us down, creating a vortex in combination with our old reactive thoughts. Also after practice, reflect on what may have not been included in mindfulness – what if anything was effectively driving you on by its being unacknowledged, as it were standing behind your shoulder. Shield emotions and their progeny are the servants of Mara, and shifty about being seen. Complete inclusion is the gateway to Equanimity, out of the disruptive layer into the deep waters of real life.
P.S.
In all this, I am aware that by introducing this notion of a transitional disruptive layer, that I am also introducing a stratification into Formless Practice. This is untraditional, I appreciate, as Formless Practice is completely level about whatever is arising, eschewing all signs. I do this mainly as an aid to equanimity within the most turbulent reaches of our experience, and hope that clarifying experience in this way proves useful enough for it to only to need be taken up temporarily. Once stability in śunyatā is normalised, the disruptive layer is much less problematic, as the landscape of the mind is become discernible.