Ch.10 - The Cessation of Suffering

The End of our Sense of Separation

It is a Single Process at Work, Endlessly, Everywhere

[This profound chapter investigates the purpose of our meditative practice: To Free Ourselves from Suffering and it’s causes, to find happiness in the here and now.]

The End of our Sense of Separation

The Buddha teaches that the cessation of suffering is the fading away in stages of our sense of self within the experience, so that the sense of being separate from what we are experiencing comes to an end. From within our idea of ourselves we will all have differing ideas about what we feel suffering to be and what we think would be its cessation. The breakthrough that the Buddha came to in his own search for the end of suffering was that the only reason our experience appears to be lacking or unsatisfactory is because of the elaborate pantomime of self and all its perceived needs that stands between our true nature and the experience itself.

Reaching this understanding stands upon coming to an experience, whether gradually through the practice of meditation or suddenly for some other reason, as was the case for Eckhart Tolle, that impresses clearly to us that the egoic sense of self at the centre of our experience is the root of our suffering and being freed of it (whether momentarily or permanently) ends that perception of suffering.

Trying to make intellectual sense of this as an idea will always be limited in its ability to impress upon us, and certainly will not be compelling enough to prompt us to reverse the habit patterns of behaviour, thinking and reaction to life that keep us turning in suffering. I have yet to meet anyone who has been compelled enough by the idea alone to successfully dismantle the ego. The point here is that there is an experience that we come to which, when it happens to us, prompts a choiceless dismantling of our idea of self, and it is this dismantling that we might call the process of awakening.

Awakening from what? Awakening from the confusion caused by our idea of self, to the clarity, relief and freedom from suffering that comes when we experience what remains in its absence.

Being told that self is the cause of suffering is only ever going to be helpful to a point, and indeed making such a suggestion at the wrong time to the wrong person would just as likely be felt to be anything but helpful. The role that meditation plays in bringing us gradually and carefully to this experience for ourselves - the truth behind this suggestion of self as the root of suffering and clinging to it as the cause – is to reveal itself to us as a deeply embodied truth, rather than a view we might subscribe to or not.

If it really is the truth that the idea of self within the experience is the root cause of our suffering, it is certainly not going to be the case that everyone, simply on hearing this, is going to agree with the conclusion wholeheartedly enough to dismantle the very structure of that ego. It is every bit as likely that some would reject it wholeheartedly as nonsense and in so doing be prompted to do the very opposite and resubscribe to personal views that uphold their idea of self.

Meanwhile it remains a fact that under various circumstances, throughout the centuries, there are countless stories of those who have had an experience which, although hard to convey or even fully understand, has brought a paradigm shift within them that has brought a profound sense of peace and freedom. What is more, it is never the case that such a person has then gone on to reinvent or elaborate further their idea of self, or come back suggesting in any way that the resolution to our problems lies in untangling ourselves at a conceptual level.

It is simply the case that time after time, however it has happened, those people who, through meditation or otherwise, have glimpsed a reality stripped bare of their idea of self, have emerged from that experience not only relieved but with an unwavering conviction that there is an intelligence behind our lives, and that it is the living in coherence and alignment with it that brings peace and happiness, and living in conflict with it that brings no end of suffering.

It will never be convincing enough to just read about an explanation of this process. However, all of us are capable of stopping for a moment and in a moment of inner stillness and calm honestly asking, from the deepest part of ourselves, whether there is some part of us that senses this to be true at some level, even if at this point we cannot understand why. And if we cannot go that far, then at least we can ask ourselves whether we honestly feel able to totally reject such a suggestion while it remains a fact that we just do not know.

In the end faith has always played as big a part in the process of letting go as wisdom has. In a world where we have access to all the wisdom we could possibly want at the click of a computer mouse, it is faith, and the courage that it takes to find it, that might be most lacking.

If it were the case that an intellectual understanding of life was the pathway by which we would free ourselves from suffering, then there is something of a conundrum at work in the world today in which we are more informed than ever before, but no closer to being free from that suffering.

It is a Single Process at Work, Endlessly, Everywhere

As I sit here there is a robin flitting around outside, occasionally appearing on my windowsill and then disappearing again. He is out there experiencing himself as him, while I sit here experiencing myself as me, and you are sitting there experiencing yourself as you. While it all may feel like a series of separate processes going on at the same time, the truth that we come to experience for ourselves if we enter deeply enough into our experience is that the sense of me is actually an illusory process that my mind creates continuously that gives the sense of it all being separate.

Meanwhile it is a single process at work, endlessly and everywhere. It is the same basic state of awareness that remains as witness to it in me as my ideas of self fade as will remain in you when yours do too. Right here the universe is a single process experiencing itself as me while the same single process experiences itself as you. It is a single process expressing itself as the robin outside my window, me here talking and you there listening. The only thing that makes it feel separate is our idea of self. The more elaborate that is, the more separate or isolated within ourselves it feels.

So, as our meditation progresses and the breadth of perception deepens, we start to recognise the unified or singular creative intelligent process at work in the background that is producing the arising and passing of things. It is our failure to recognise and align with this intelligence, on account of our greater fixation on the illusory idea of myself, that prompts us to make choices and behave in ways that bring us to the experience of dissatisfaction.

It is one single process at work everywhere, and it is not differentiating you from me, it is not favouring you and choosing to make you like that and me like this, it is a single unified field of intelligence.

So the more our meditative experience deepens and we land upon this basic ground, the more we experience that it is the same process. The sense of separation between that, that and that is completely gone. It is a single process expressing itself in myriad ways. At that point we are not in the slightest bit surprised that the universe expressed itself outside as the robin, over here as Burgs and over there as you.

When we say that the universe is not in conflict we are pointing to the process by which things arise. They always arise as a perfect expression of their causes, and the creative process by which they arise is the very intelligence behind our lives. It is this intelligence that we come into alignment with gradually as our idea of self fades.

I sit here now and I pay attention to things exactly the same way as you do and I see the appearance of things. But I am also resting in that place where I feel the causal process for it as being there, and I am resting on the basic ground from which it arises as well. So the field of perception is broad, and I am not intoxicated now with the appearance of things because I am just seeing it as life's rich display.

So when we meditate, as we pay attention to the physical process and the presence of our body within that, we also gradually start to see the arising and passing of the mind and the material process.

Gradually we learn to glimpse behind even the arising and passing of things and come to rest upon the basic ground from which it is arising and passing. At that point we perceive these three aspects of reality arising simultaneously at all times; the appearance of things, the creative intelligence behind their appearance, and the basic ground from which they are appearing.

This process of life will continue to express itself as a pure display of the conditions for its arising, for as long as those conditions remain, be they the conditions for continued suffering or the conditions for its cessation.