04. Appreciation

We have explored how an appreciation of sheer appearance can lead us to recognize how we always already live in awareness. Seeing the world and ourselves and others all given in awareness, we looked at the mode of that givenness, at how everything is given in awareness.  In that way, we noticed how awareness arises afresh each moment.

In our little journey from appearance to awareness to arising, we touched upon timeless time as that in which awareness arises.  And in timeless time we found no place to hide.  Or to put it the other way around: the simplest way to enter timeless time is by allowing ourselves to be seen.

Amazingly, allowing yourself to be seen lets you see far more than when you actively try to see more.  Seeing requires a choice of specific focus, whereas being seen invites a much broader, more encompassing approach that invites anything to be present to partake in the seeing.  Seeing is like throwing out a net that can only catch what doesn't slip through its mazes.  In contrast, being seen in its own gentle way pushes nothing to slip out, invites everything to come out of hiding.

4.1. Hiding

Why do we tend to hide?  Hiding depends on past and future.  It is a device to escape from continuing past dangers and to protect from possible future dangers.  Hiding implies a separation between self and other, between subject and objects. Once we buy into a world view that requires hiding, we get into a comprehensive package deal.

Hiding is like an all-included vacation package, though a lot less fun.  Here are some of its perks: awareness is exchanged for experience; timeless presence is exchanged for a linear time line with a past-present-future structure; appearance is exchanged for existence; and the freshness of arising is exchanged for a lifelong sentence of doing time in the prison of neediness.

How can we forget the freshness of arising?  It is as if we go to a check-out line at a patisserie with freshly baked pastries in the shape of old people, like a grandpa and grandma; the pastries are fresh, but what they depict may look old.  Taking this `mere appearance' as a sign that the pastries themselves are old is a mistake.  Yet this is what hiding does to us: it hides the intrinsic freshness, it seems lost, as in paradise lost, and so we begin to feel needy: we feel we need to regain it somehow.

4.2. Needs

Living in linear time we are in need of all kinds of things, driven by hope and fear, hoping to get what we think we need, and fearing we won't get all that we hope for.  And once we are completely used to playing the roles of living in linear time, we are completely convinced that there is no other way.  Of course there is a world out there that exists and persists in time.  Of course we are only a small creature in that big world and we need to breathe, eat, drink, and we need to fight for ourselves; in civiled ways if possible, or in more rough ways if the situation requires it.

This `of course' shows how we are all fundamentalists. The main mark of a fundamentalist is that he or she cannot seriously entertain the possibility that his or her firm beliefs may not be true.  To imagine that we may not be condemned to a life full of needs seems ludicrous.  How could you take such an idea seriously?  Once we have bought into that very comprehensive package deal that starts with hiding and ends with a (seemingly) firmly established subject/object split, we seem to be totally and completely stuck.

What a prison we live in, once we're stuck!  Within huge stretches of linear time, we are trapped into a tiny bubble, at most a few seconds long, called now.  And within the huge stretches of space, we are trapped inside the subject, our body and mind and all the many identies that we identify with.  Past and future are `out there' and out of reach.  And even within the now, the whole world around us is also `out there' -- and when considered as objects automatically other, reachable only through the clumsy bridge of subject-object interactions.

4.3. Stuck?

Fortunately, we are not really stuck.  In fact, we have never been stuck.  In fact, we have never been -- we are not and we have never been what we think we are.  We are playing roles, something we have, rather than something we are, and we have become so enthralled with our roles that we have completely identified with them.  What we really are we cannot find, as long as we search for it within linear time.  But in timeless time what we are is pretty obvious.

The problem is that using words and concepts seems to require buying into the whole package deal described above, and once we do, we can't convey anymore the freedom of timeless time.  Or to be more precise: anything said in (seemingly) linear time, when taken literally will be misunderstood.  So trying to read vivid descriptions of timeless time is typically not very helpful.  One danger is that we may disbelieve those descriptions and just put them aside.  Another danger is that we may believe those descriptions and create a fantasy world that we then try to inhabit.  Either way we seem to be trapped.

4.4. Two Traps to Choose From

Much of the various debates between science and religion, or secular versus spiritual ways of viewing the world, boil down to arguments about which mistake to make.  One side really likes to make the mistake of believing, while the other side really is intent on making the mistake of disbelieving. Somehow, each side sees how ridiculous the mistake of the other side is, and is aghast at how any reasonably intelligent person can make that mistake.  Watching these debates unfold is an exercise in appreciating both the tragical and comical.

Disbelieving in a secular way cuts us off from the richness of timelessness as presented in so many ancient traditions.  Like a person inside a house refusing to open windows or doors, a secular attitude is a trap: a disbelief with respect to timelessness leads to a firm insistence on not even trying to open any window.  Convinced that there is nothing out there, after dismissing the seemingly silly stories of the true believers, one misses any chance to get in touch with what is actually out there.

Believing in a religious way traps us in a fantasy world filled with false promises: promises that have their roots in timelessness but are projected back into linear time and are misunderstood there.  It is like living in a house with stained glass windows.  Light can shine in allright, but all that we can see are the pictures that are painted in colored bits of glass, breathtakingly beautiful perhaps, but unconnected to what is actually out there.

4.5. Comparing Traps

We can have an authentic experience of timeless time, triggered by reading or talking about something that inspires us, or by sustained forms of practice, or for no obvious reason.  However, when we then interpret that experience by shoehorning it back into a linear time picture, chances are we fall back into a belief in a Creator God that stands above us, having created this world with all its suffering, but willing to help us here and there by give us visions and protecting us to some extent and perhaps even fighting against our enemies.

Whether we are better off disbelieving, in a secular way, or believing, in a linear-time based picture of religion, is not clear.  Trading one trap for another is not a very alluring choice.  It may seem cleaner and safer to disbelieve what makes no sense, but that kind of sterilization runs the risk of an impoverishment that is so total that we can no longer even recognize what we are missing.  But at least it protects us from infections of religious fundamentalism, and it can inspire us to lead a better life following humanist ideals.

A belief in God or Gods or any other concept of something above and beyond us also has the possibility inspiring us to lead a better life, and perhaps can even help us to get some glimpses of timelessness.  But it has the disadvantage of seducing us to close our eyes for the real timelessness while buying into a rosy picture of timelessness that stays firmly embedded in linear time -- stained glass windows.  Sadly, this may well make it harder to get real glimpses of authentic timelessness.

4.6. Trading Traps

Which trap to choose, windows with blinders shut, or stained glass windows?  In practice, we don't have much of a say in this question, it seems.  Most of those growing up in a world of believers become believers themselves; and most of those growing up in a world of disbelievers become disbelievers. Of course, most members of both groups are convinced of their own right, and of the wrongness, if not downright silliness, of the attitude of the other group.  But in practice, one's orientation is typically just a reflection of what milieu one is born into.

Interestingly, sometimes an individual trades traps.  A disbeliever can have a conversion experience, and suddenly will start to believe.  Or a believer can fall out of his or her previous belief.  The psychological effect of either transition can be dramatic and life changing.  In both directions, the effect can be very positive: an authentic move toward an investigation of a prior attitude that was received but not thought through.  At the same time, these transitions can also lead to uncertainty and anxiety, when the individual begins to notice that the new trap is not necessarily a better place to be trapped in that the old trap.

4.7. Doubts

Liberating as it may feel, at least temporarily, to trade traps, somebody independent enough to be willing to leave one trap may recognize the nature of the second trap.  Dropping the confining strictures of a religion can feel as euphoric as embracing a new religion that seems to hold the truth one has been looking for one's whole life.  But once the initial epiphany subsides, as it will, one can have second thoughts.

And it can be pretty bad, to feel that one has made a life-changing choice, convinced to be finally doing things right, only to have to confront that gnawing feeling that perhaps things still aren't really right.

Fascinating novels have been written, and movies have been produced, around these gnawing doubts.  In fact, a large fraction of the world's literature turns around these doubts. Recognizing this may give some solace, but in itself doesn't provide a real solution.

The central question is whether it is possible to live a life without believing or disbelieving.  Is there a third way? Can one be neither secular nor religious/spiritual?  In other words, is there way to avoid both kinds of traps?

4.8. Trapped in a Track

As long as we think in a one-dimensional way, the only answer is to try to take a position in the middle, trying to find a precarious balance between believing (a bit) and  disbelieving (a bit also).  Not believing too much nor fully disbelieving.  Adhering to the local religion, perhaps out of respect of the community structure, but not really buying into the belief structure that comes with the religion. While respeciting and even appreciating the arguments of disbelievers, choosing to ignore them in order to hold that precarious middle ground that seems to require a lack of interest in digging deeper.

Most anybody nowadays, when reflecting on these dilemmas, has found a position somewhere on this one-dimensional track, with its two extreme poles.  One pole is characterized by fundamentalist religous zeal.  The other pole engages in rabid anti-religious crusades under the banner of scientific thinking.  This one-dimensional track does offer a spectrum of choices: from narrow religious attitudes, to a more mild version of religion, to an almost secular way of sharing a religous affiliation, to a vague form of secular principles, to a more pronounced and thought-through form of humanism, to an almost militant attitude against anything religious -- this pretty much describes the choices that seem to be open between the two poles.

Within the one-dimensional world characterized by this secular-versus-religious dichotomy, there seem to be only two fundamentalist positions, one at each end.  Because everybody in between considers the pole positions to be too extreme, they don't consider themselves to be fundamentalist.

But what if there are other dimensions, perpendicular to this one-dimensional world of options?  In that case confining oneself to the that one-dimensional world could itself be seen as a fundamentalist attitude.  Can we in turn drop that more subtle kind of fundamentalism?

The central question is whether we can escape from this one-dimensional landscape altogether.  Rather than falling into one trap or another, or finding oneself taking up a wishy-washy position somewhere in the middle, are there other choices?  In other words, is it possible to escape not only from the poles at each end of the line, but in addition to escape from the whole line itself?

4.9. Unraveling

We are talking now about something very radical, more radical than a conversion experience into or out of a religion, or in or out of any kind of belief system for that matter, whether communist, capitalist, humanist, democratic, meritocratic, you name it.

A conversion experience comes with a shock.  After being stuck in one position within a range of possibilities, it may take a real shock treatment to get unstuck so that one can take up another position within that range.  But what about leaving that whole range?  What about not taking up any position?  What about neither believing nor disbelieving?

Each moment we have the freedom to drop allegiance to the collective package deal.  We may find ourselves continuing to play the roles that are expected from us, but we ourselves no longer have to buy into all the perks of the package: existence, experience, linear time, needs, and habitual hiding.

And we can start anywhere.  Once we seriously start to question the package deal, it will start to fray in many places.  Still, it may seem daunting to pick up the fabric of life-as-we-know-it and to work up the courage to pick a loose end, to pull that thread and to let the fabric unravel.

And unraveling may not be a wise thing to do as long as we continue to believe in the real existence of that fabric. The challenge is to assist the unraveling while at the same time beginning to see that there is nothing to unravel; that there is only appearance, including the appearance of an unravelable package deal.

4.10. Explorations

Time presents all that appears.  Sheer appearance arises from time.  So why not ask time to help us getting started with an exploration that can lead to a total unraveling?  That may seem preposterous, but let's see what we can find.  Let's again go slowly.

Each moment, time presents this whole world of ours.  And with the world comes the implicit invitation to explore.  But exploring can take different forms.  The traditional way is to explore the world that time presents.  And this we've done in quite a thorough way: we've explored most any place on Earth, we have visited the moon, spacecraft are exploring the solar system, and telescopes are exploring all the way out to the edge of the visible Universe.  All this is an exploration of the objects that surround us, here in this vast world of ours.

Alternatively, we can explore the subject, ourselves, our own mind.  This we have started to do to, although in far less detail, at least in our western society.  Through psychology and cognitive science in general, assisted by studies in artificial intelligence, we are making progress in this exploration within academic studies.  In addition, we now have access to a wealth of other traditions, other ways of knowing that may inspire us to look at our own minds in different ways.

But there is a third, more radical way.  Rather than exploring the world of objects and subject that time presents, how about exploring time itself?  At first sight, that may seem like a dead end.  How to explore time, other than what time presents: phenomena, movement as measured by clocks, changes in general?  But this way of posing the question already suggests an answer.  Instead of studying what time presents, we can explore the very presenting that time is engaged in.

4.11. Presentations

Hmmm.  How can we possibly explore the way that time presents, when we find ourselves to be part of the presentations?  Dead end?  Yes, indeed, as long as we continue to identify ourselves with the subject side of the subject/object split that governs the way we understand our reality.  As long as, first, we believe in an existing world, and second, we take up a subject role in which we are surrounded by existing objects, then, yes, we are so ensconced in what is presented that the presenting itself recedes from view.

But if we are willing to consider the working hypothesis that sheer appearance arising from timeless time is in some way more real, we have a chance.  We are no longer stuck, but we seem to have a different problem, there is no longer a "we" anymore either, at least not a "we" or "I" that we are familiar with.  In a world of sheer appearance there are no isolated subjects that are busy pursuing their needs, their hopes and fears.  So who could be doing the radical exploration we are talking about?

The question boils down to: who are we?  Or: who am I?

The first answer we can come up with is simply: I don't know.  And it's very important to give that answer, and to really feel the impact.  We don't know who or what we are, beyond the subject role that we have learned to play all of our life.  The subject is like a hand puppet, moving about busily, but without any power of itself.  Who or what is the hand moving the subject, in this admittedly rather simple metaphor?

4.12: Presence

Somehow, there is some kind of presence.  Awareness is present and we are part of the awareness that arises.  All kinds of things appear, seen in sheer appearance, and about the only thing we can truly say about it is that appearance is present. What it signifies, we don't know.  Whether there is a solid world, existing in linear time, we can't really say.  But at least there is the presence of appearance.

Okay, at least that can give us a start.  Leaving aside who or what we are, or even whether that question is well posed enough to have an answer, let us simply be present, sharing in the presence of appearance.  It may be a good idea at this point to spend a few minutes to just look around, relax, and feel/sense the presence of appearance, everywhere, in and as all phenomena, whether we normally label them inner or outer.

Anything that presents itself: a table, a tree, a sound, a color, a memory, a fantasy, an idea, an itch, a fleeting thought, anything at all, notice it as such, and also notice its presence.

This may be tough at first.  When we see a tea cup we don't normally say: I see or feel or notice the presence of a tea cup.  No, we see or touch a tea cup, that's it.  But with a little practice it's really not that difficult to shift our focus from what appears to how it appears: in their presence of appearing.

4.12. Now What

Instead of exploring the outer world of objects, or the inner world of the subject, we have just set foot on a third path. We have started an exploration of the presence of appearance, as such, before any further processing into objects and subjects.  Of course, we still recognize objects and subjects. We still know how to get up out of bed, make a cup of tea, go for a walk.  When somebody calls our name, we respond.  But instead of buying into the independent existence of all the objects and subjects we deal with, while living our daily life, we can choose to also taste the presence of appearance.

So far, so good.  But then what?  What's the exploration here?  Looking around and sensing the presence of appearance may get boring quickly.  Aren't we supposed to do something with it?

Well, do . . . without a view of subjects interacting with objects, where is the doer, and what can possibly be done?

Hmmmm.

Rest?

Perhaps we need some kind of compromise.  Just resting in the presence of appearance may seem like too much of a challenge, at least for now, so early on in our exploration.  How about mixing in just a tiny little bit of doing, to get started?

4.13. Appreciating the Presence of Appearance

One way to plunge into this third way of exploration is to start with appreciation.  We can appreciate the presence of appearance.  That at least seems quite innocent.  Appreciating is an activity that is quite gentle, and doesn't tend to let us centralize that much on the subject pole of experience.

So let's try this.  For a few days, at least, take many very short breaks, a few times an hour, and remind yourself: appreciate the presence of appearance.

There is no need to stop whatever activity you're engaged in.  At first it may help to relax, to stand or sit down and stop what you're doing, dropping whatever you were concerned with.  But after a while, you can try to continue mowing the lawn, writing your paper, or even talking with somebody, while simultanously appreciating the presence of all that appears.

At first, it is likely that this appreciation will be mostly outwardly oriented.  You can start by appreciating the presence of flowers, or the presence of generosity of friends. Perhaps you may surprise yourself by appreciating also the presence of garbage, or the presence of rude and otherwise annoying people.  Note that you don't have to appreciate their rudeness: only the presence of the appearance of rudeness.  But it may be better not to say or think too much at this stage: best to just jump in and explore.

After a while, you may find out how to appreciate the presence of appearance of what we normally consider to be inner: memories, thoughts, images, worries, hopes and fears. The previous exploration of letting yourself be seen may turn out to be a good preparation for learning to appreciate the presence of all that appears, without commentary, and without judging in terms of good or bad, attractive or repulsive.

So, take it easy, and take your time.  You could take 9 seconds every 15 minutes, for example, if you want to spend 1% of your waking time to explore an appreciation of the presence of appearance.  In fact, it wouldn't even cost you 1% of your time, once you have learned to continue what you are doing.  In fact, you might find yourself to become more efficient at what your doing, effectively gaining time, rather than paying a 1% time tax, as you will do initially.