I find it amusing when religiously-minded people accuse atheist skeptics like me of thinking too much, of not being in touch with direct experience, of being in love with abstract concepts.
This is a classic case of, as the saying goes, the pot calling the kettle black. Meaning, as that Wikipedia article points out, psychological projection has taken over, and the accuser claims that someone else has the attribute that actually they have.
For there's nothing more tied to thinking, indirect experience, and abstract concepts than religious belief.
The reason is obvious: since there's no demonstrable evidence that the entities assumed by a religion actually exist, the only way to bring those entries into being is through acts of imagination -- concepts unmoored from direct experience.
What sort of reality would these entities have if they weren't kept alive by the thoughts of those who believe in them? God, Soul, Heaven, Hell, Angels, Divine Grace, Holy Spirit, Enlightenment, Astral Plane, and so many more.
Absent human thought, none of these things would exist at all.
And even with human thought, they exist only as abstract concepts without any grounding in here-and-now reality that other concepts like money, gravity, and sadness have. I got to thinking about this today after reading another short chapter in Joan Tollifson's book Nothing to Grasp.
One reason I'm enjoying this book is that even when I disagree with something Tollifson says, this doesn't bother me much, because whether or not I agree with her, I like how she makes me think more deeply about issues that lie at the heart of non-religious spirituality.
Here's some excerpts from the "What is This?" chapter.
Take a moment once again to stop reading and to simply appreciate the happening of this moment. Be fully present to the sounds, fragrances, aromas, visual images, somatic sensations -- not these labels, but the happening itself, this undeniable and utterly immediate present experiencing.
What is this?
The thinking mind instantly wants to supply an answer. It wants to figure this out -- label everything, categorize it, explain it, understand it, analyze it, capture it, frame it, get control of it.
This is the function of the thinking mind, and it serves us well in certain basic survival situations such as food gathering, shelter-building, or navigating our way through new terrain. It has gotten us to the moon and to the top of the food chain.
Our conceptual maps are functionally necessary and not to be discarded, but no matter how accurate the map is, it is never the territory itself. And yet, we have a deeply conditioned tendency to mistake the map for the territory. We do this without even realizing we are doing it.
Some of our most commonplace concepts are so ubiquitous and pervasive that we lose sight of the fact that they are actually concepts. "The world," "the body," "the mind," "the self," "consciousness," "awareness," "nonduality" -- we throw these word-concepts around without ever stopping to wonder what we are actually talking about.
And next thing we know, we're lost in some conceptual confusion, very much akin to wondering what willl happen to me if I step off the edge of the earth. That's an imaginary problem, as all of us in the 21st century realize, but for people in earlier centuries, it seemed quite real.
...When we try to figure out "the meaning of life" or "the nature of reality," or when we try to come up with a conceptual understanding of Consciousness, Totality, God, or the Ground of Being, we inevitably end up frustrated and confused.
Any conceptual picture of reality is always subject to doubt, and no metaphysical formulation ever satisfies our deep longing for Truth.
What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the attempt to make sense of everything. Of course, this doesn't mean we don't still make relative sense of things in a functional way in daily life.
But we stop trying to take hold of Totality, or grasp the Ground of Being, or figure out the meaning of life. Instead, we relax into simply being life. We learn to recognize (to see, to sense) when we're beginning to grasp or fixate, and in that recognition, quite naturally there is an ability to relax and let go.
When we stop trying to figure it all out, we discover that it doesn't need to be figured out, and in fact, can't be figured out! When we stop desperately trying to get a grip, we find nothing is lacking and there is nothing to grasp.
...If we say, "This is it," the words create the very split they attempt to point beyond. If we say "All is One," it is one too many. If we call it "nothing," it seems to deny the undeniable presence of everything. If we assert that "there is nothing to do," it seems to overlook the necessity of doing whatever we are moved by life to do.
If we assert that "there is something to do," it makes it sound as if something else is required in order to be what we already are.
...The illusory bubble pops. We see that Here/Now is always unobstructed, boundless and open. It is open enough to include even resistance and contraction. Contraction is simply another form that formlessness is momentarily assuming, another fleeting appearance with no inherent reality.
Nothing needs to be different from how it is. We don't need to define or explain this present happening, and in fact, we can't! The only real answer to "What is this?" is to be awake and see.
I do find the way Joan Toliffson expresses these matters to be to be quite clear. Her words are not wasted, everything is relevant and to the point – quite refreshing.
Here, she describes what I regard as the core of the matter – the penchant of thought to: “. . . figure this out -- label everything, categorize it, explain it, understand it, analyze it, capture it, frame it, get control of it.” In other words, to turn every thought (and perhaps experience) into a series of concepts.
In my view, much of our mediation practice gets involved with chasing some goal, usually projected by thought, thought that is saturated with ideas that we have accumulated from various sources as to what we should get if we practiced well. Such thoughts of course arise in meditation like clouds of butterflies flying by and at some point, getting involved with one – and then another instead of just watching the happening.
Toliffson goes on to say: “What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the at-tempt to make sense of everything. Of course, this doesn't mean we don't still make relative sense of things in a functional way in daily life.”
She writes that in seeing this “The illusory bubble pops.” Seeing this thought/conceptualising habit seems to me to be all there is with meditation – whether siting practice or during everyday activities – where thought does not dominate leaving just an awareness, a clarity.
A.R. sensibly wondered on a previous post if Toliffson was: “… alluding not merely to intellectual understanding but to experiential realization --- IF --- then the obvious question that further suggests itself is: Does she speak from her own personal experience, from her own experiential realization? Or is she merely parroting teachings, from Zen, and/or Theravada, or whatever other tradition/s?”
Perhaps you can’t separate them easily – if at all. It seems to me that intellectual understanding (being thought), is akin to experiential realisation in that acutely being aware of the thought process is experiential. It’s just that (I believe), such seeing does not provide any extraordinary or tumultuous enlightenment experience – which may be the result of hyped-up stories, desires and beliefs. It’s just a realisation of what is actually distracting us and causing ‘conceptual confusion’ as Toliffson puts it.
In fact (I wonder), if one suddenly becomes acutely aware of the stillness beyond thought, then perhaps it may seem like an enlightenment?
Posted by: Ron E. | January 13, 2024 at 03:03 AM