PRESENCE
Whether the goal is liberation (moksha) or enlightenment (nirvana) the necessary preliminary will be the experience of nondual realization. At the base of dualistic and relative perception is the subject-object relationship, subject being the perceiver and object being what is perceived. Yet, in the vision of unified Being these are not two, not a duality, since clear vision has finally determined that subject and object are interdependent function. When the entirety of phenomena are experienced as pure functionality, then there is no presumed necessity to attach oneself to anything or act upon ego-based separative motivations. Everything perceivable is somewhere in the chain of action-reaction sequentiality, and as such, all is in harmony, already. The certainty of this recognition is the end of delusion.
Mental contractions called attraction-repulsion, preference-prejudice, love-hate, and all the rest of the discriminative pseudo-dualities, are just mind fabrications, so just recognizing such is a basic discipline. We don’t want to get absorbed in the delusion of them, and the way to avoid the habitual delusion is to attentively stay in an unfabricated state. This means that the mind has to be mastered. There is an old saying in Buddhism:
“Learn to be skillful;
Overcome unskillfulness;
Master your own mind.
Such is the advice of all Buddhas.”
In order to master one’s own mind there must be a spontaneous continuity of attention in the present moment, the refusal to be entangled in daydream and distracted modes of attention. These are binding activities of mind when it is allowed to run loose and stray off into unskillful and habitual obliviousness. This negation of unskillfulness can be known and recognized in the present moment as the freedom from mental constructs. Attention gets captured so easily because of prior conditioning and reactive habits. But it is possible (and essential for progress toward peace, moksha, bodhi, nirvana) to free the attention from old functional habits. It is like a de-programming of prior programing, a deletion of delusion. The essential point is to notice how frequently one gets distracted or loses control of attention, then become relaxed and stable in the present moment, not allowing the mind to run toward distraction.
The absence of distraction is the freedom of liberation. Liberation is the experience of nondual realization. This liberating experience starts as short moments, gaps in the almost continual mode of distractedness we get captured in. The gaps get longer with practice, then the distractedness starts losing its hold. Those who do not understand and do not practice will never notice this. The mind has ability to stop its incessant motion; it can come to rest. Then there is a most extraordinary kind of perception, an apperceptiveness which is not polluted or adorned with presumptions and superimposed ideas. Looking at this apperceptivity, nothing can be seen except the brilliance of subjective and vigilant awareness and understanding. Apperception is the relaxed but vigilant awakened state of being, but it is nothing specifically objective at all; it is the ultimate fullness of nondual knowing. It comes to those who conduct themselves in non-attachment.
Mental projections can run on and on when attention is passive, but not when actively mindful. Getting attached to passive thoughts and wildly running concept-making is a fetter of delusive distraction. The mind is like a drunken artist and it is easy to get seduced by its pictures and words. Relaxed and stable in the present moment will put the mind at rest. Attentiveness is the prerequisite. When the mind runs on in its mechanical way, we are distracted slaves to it; when in relaxed presence we are the masters of it.
