Nonduality & Mangoes: How to Know It's All Okay
🥭 note: this essay may challenge your assumptions...
“Being equals enlightenment. Period. If any condition IS, it is inherently absolutely perfect. The clouds in the sky, the shit in the toilet. Tag, YOU’RE IT. You may as well sell your mala and trade in your meditation robe for a bikini and go work on your tan, it won’t make the tiniest bit of difference to the ACTUAL condition of anyone or anything whether or not you do.”
— Peter Brown, Dirty Enlightenment
I’m going to say something odd and then share ~2,900 words trying to articulate what I mean:
You can know that what is happening is okay because…
It’s happening.
You can know that what is happening is perfect because…
It’s happening.
If any condition whatsoever is appearing in experience…
It has already crossed the finish line.
It is finality.
It is pure perfection.
It can’t be fundamentally improved upon.
I know this type of language can seem strange.
“Sounds like some nondual gobbledygook!”
I understand you, my friend. Let me try to explain.
The Human Perspective
I’m not saying this stuff to negate the human experience.
From the human perspective, situations are often defined as ‘problems’ that need to be ‘solved.’
We define them this way and then we viscerally experience these definitions. Definitions are magic in this way.
I know that life is often very painful from the human perspective. I’ve experienced plenty of this myself. My heart goes out to those suffering. What I am attempting to do here, is point toward a different possibility. A possibility of freedom and completion available here and now. This possibility doesn’t eliminate pain but it does re-frame it, reveal it as not what we assume it is, and greatly reduce a certain form of our suffering.
You see, tremendous suffering arises simply from our definitions. It is arises because we believe our thoughts. As ‘awakening’ progresses, it is seen that all thoughts are false. All beliefs are false. All fixed ideas are false.
That’s not to say that thoughts and ideas have no correlation with our experience—they do. But they essentially operate on a principle of gross over-simplification. Thought massively simplifies, solidifies, and objectifies experience—creating a video-game-like overlay of ‘me as tiny main character moving through a giant universe of separate objects.’ This overlay is projected atop naked experience and hypnotizes us. We become ‘true believers’ in an unquestioned assumption that we and the world and all these things ‘out there’ are actually ‘real,’ solid, findable, objectifiable, definable, and knowable.
But what if experience isn’t actually like that?
If you get very honest and look directly at your immediate experience, you can notice that it is completely indefinable. It’s utterly slippery. It continually morphs and shifts in every instant. It does not stay the same for even a microsecond. It is a completely new iteration of itself in each moment. This is quite fascinating to notice.
You may also notice that the past is completely gone. And the future is nowhere to be found. All we ever actually experience is immediate experience itself.
But what is experience? Do we actually know what it is? We believe we’re ‘holding a pen’ or ‘eating pizza,’ but aren’t we actually having an *experience* of holding a pen or eating pizza? Doesn’t everything appear within experience itself? Can you find anything other than experience? Can you make experience stop? Can you step outside of experience?
This investigation reveals that experience itself is all that we ever know. So perhaps it would then be pertinent for us to get curious about the question, “What is experience?”
Thankfully, this inquiry is assisted by the fact that experience is always right here. It is completely obvious and unavoidable. It is laid bare for our investigation. We cannot escape experience. Even when we ‘fall asleep’ at night and ‘the body’ disappears, experience continues. To make this more clear, we could also simply say that awareness or being-ness continues.
So what is awareness? What is experience? What is this inescapable ever-present being-ness that we are always engaged with?
Surprises Beyond Fathoming
This turns out to be quite a stunning inquiry, revealing surprises that are beyond human fathoming.
One surprise is that experience is a wholeness, a completion, a finality. It is seamless. It has no parts or pieces. It is entirely at one with itself. It is in total harmony with itself. And it never departs from itself. Even as it appears to constantly morph and shape-shift as a spontaneous freshness, the simple fact of what it actually is—which cannot be named but which we could call ‘experience’ or ‘presence’—remains constant. It is what it is. Nothing ‘we’ ‘do’ has ever or will ever change the actual nature of presence one iota.
Another surprise is that it is unconditional freedom. Because it is free from all definition—totally beyond any possibility of being resolved as being ‘this’ or ‘that’—no ‘problems’ ever get defined into existence. As we investigate, we find that even our definitions and interpretations are themselves indefinable apparitions of this one wholeness. So definitions are not a ‘problem’ either—because truly they too are indefinable and simply need to be noticed as such. Clear seeing is the laser that dissolves solidity—or more accurately, reveals that solidity was never there to begin with. And as non-solidity is revealed, the flavor is one of freedom and lightness—especially in contrast to the ‘consensus human worldview.’ The apparent ‘weight of the world’ dissolves. There is only indefinable being.
Another surprise is that presence is unconditional love. This aware-ing presence—your experience itself, right here and now—has zero resistance to itself. It has no qualms about anything. All is entirely allowed to be as it is. And there is no actual ‘it.’ There are no objects. There is only the timeless-spaceless-objectless radiant spaciousness of this one indefinable being. So nothing can actually be at odds with anything else. There are ‘not two’ things to be at odds with each other. This is the meaning of ‘nonduality’—advaita—not two. Being is entirely at one with itself, and in this wholeness resides an intrinsic love beyond measure.
The number of liberating surprises revealed through this inquiry are essentially limitless. The unresolvable nature of being turns out to be the mother lode. This, right now, as it is, is what is truly longed for in the heart of hearts.
Acknowledging How Weird All This Sounds
Again, I know this can sound totally wonky-bonkers-batty from the human point of view. This is because most humans are so thoroughly invested in their beliefs and solidifications that they have no idea they’re living in a world they have defined into existence.
And this is not to say that an appearance of a ‘world’ does not show up. Again, experience (awake-being-ness) presents as a continuously morphing ‘light show’—a continuum of radiant energy that includes all the normal sense-fields as well as infinite other subtle unresolvable dimensions and sense-fields we don’t typically acknowledge—and if you don’t look very closely, this continuum of energy can easily seem to be a solid, coherent world. To see it as a solid, coherent, definable world is a valid perspective. It’s real and true as far as it goes—it just doesn’t go all the way. It is a partialization. Numberless partialized perspectives drift through this continuum of radiance. They are real and true within their own context. But they exist within and are ultimately entirely ‘made of’ a vaster (spaceless, timeless) context that is unresolvable, indefinable, totally inconceivable. Like writing on water, these mirage-like perspectives arise and fade within the ‘ocean-less ocean’ of pure mystery.
These partialized perspectives are largely self-referential. They refer primarily to the imagined worlds they themselves have defined into existence. Now, again, remember that definitions are magic and have an incredible power to create lifeworlds that we then viscerally live within. So to merely refer to ‘perspectives’ made of ‘definitions’ doesn’t quite do justice to how vivid, immersive, and intense our self-created worlds can feel. We actually craft entire ‘reality-tunnels’ or ‘ether-cathedrals’ via our definitions and other forms of vibration that we emanate. These worlds we create then seem to be totally real—sculpted into the very fabric of radiance itself. And again, in a sense, they are—at least in their own context.
Training to Notice Infinity
Yet if you look honestly at anything whatsoever in your experience, you can notice formlessness, shapelessness, nebulosity. Everything is indefinite and indeterminate. There is a fundamental, inescapable ambiguity. A continuous buzzing-ness and morphing-ness and dancing-ness that eludes all description. Nothing is simply ‘this way’ or ‘that way.’ There’s a both-neither-far-beyond-either-ness. If you look closely at any tiny patch of detail within experience, it opens up into a groundless infinite sparkling-ness beyond all conception.
In the yoga of radiant presence we train to notice this infinity that is inherent in all phenomena. And simply noticing this infinity is powerful. It quickly reveals how over-simplified and heavy-handed our ‘normal worldview’ is. It reveals inconceivable infinity as an omnipresent condition of all phenomena and all noumena. You discover that our actual condition is literally a pure mystery—even to ‘God,’ the all-pervasive supra-personal loving intelligence of being itself.
Even God does not know God’s secret. We may say metaphorically that God is endlessly curious to explore God’s own bottomless infinity and engages in a never-ending exploration of itself. This exploration is pure intimacy and pure heart-cracking poetry and unearths never-ending revelations—yet none of these revelations ever contain the ‘final answer,’ as there is no final answer.
“When you know with certainty that you can’t know what THIS is, then you know what THIS is.”
— Peter Brown, This That Is
God is the unanswerable. Unresolvability is woven into even the most rarefied gnosis. You never get to the ‘bottom’ of anything. And thank heavens for that! For this unresolvability enables open-ended play and graces all phenomena with total freedom.
And meanwhile, inseparability ensures that all phenomena ‘go together’ and cannot be pulled apart—woven cozily in and as one unknown hyper-tapestry of pure loving lightness and wholeness.
Returning to Our Original Question
So, once more, how to know that all is okay?
How to know that whatever is happening is perfect?
Well, of course you can take it on faith that God makes no mistakes—which is a powerful approach—yet eventually we all want to see for ourselves…
Eventually we inquire directly.
And what we discover through this inquiry is immeasurably strange from the human perspective.
What we discover is that phenomena never actually become anything at all.
All that can be found when we look closely is an instantaneous apparition.
The past is nowhere. The future is nowhere.
We discover an instantaneous infinity of radiance that never becomes anything solid.
In Dzogchen they say, “All phenomena self-liberate upon arising.”
What they mean is that everything vanishes in the moment it appears. Before it can even become an ‘it,’ it is gone. Its arrival is its disappearance. You can verify this for yourself by looking closely at any patch of your experience.
If you close your eyes, for example, you directly see an unpatterned infinity of ‘dancing light.’ Numberless pixels of radiance instantaneously morph and dance. We have no words for what this radiance is. With eyes closed, this is fairly easy to notice. The next step is to open your eyes and realize that all experience is like this. We usually filter it out or ignore it as ‘noise in the machine,’ but this subtle indefinite buzzing-ness, morphing-ness, and dancing-ness pervades all experience.
Noticing this, we can realize we have no idea what is actually happening. We can’t find anything definite whatsoever. There is only this apparition of instantaneous radiance—completely fresh in each nanosecond, vanishing as soon as it appears.
We can directly ‘taste’ any of the numberless sense-fields—which are truly one seamless continuum of unknowable ‘energy’—and discover this same instantaneous, unfindable buzzing-ness and shape-shifting-ness.
What shape is music?
The question reveals itself to be absurd. And all is seen to be ‘music’—an unpatterned patterned-ness of vibratory harmonious fluidity.
‘Self,’ ‘family,’ ‘world,’—all are revealed as this unresolvable etheric dancing-ness.
Weightless innocence with ‘nothing behind it.’
As this is seen, it turns out to be too much to say that ‘everything is okay’ or ‘everything is perfect.’
Any signification turns out to be too much.
All language is seen to be heavy-handed spin-doctoring that confuses the pointless point.
Again, we gradually notice that phenomena never actually become anything at all.
In a profound sense, nothing has ever happened or become anything.
Because we don’t know what words like ‘happen’ or ‘become’ or ‘thing’ refer to. We don’t know what words like ‘time’ or ‘space’ or ‘world’ or ‘people’ or ‘me’ refer to. Ultimately they don’t refer to anything. They are arrows we fire off willy-nilly in a desperate attempt to pin ‘this’ down yet the arrows find only bare spacelessness. We scramble for some ‘thing’ to hold onto yet we are grasping at shimmering vapor.
And yet—miracle of miracles—the flavor of this instantaneous unknowable radiance turns out to be pure peace. When the view-less view is discovered, the implication is one of total relief and release. A “release into unknowing,” as Jim Newman gorgeously puts it. The ‘weight of the world’ evaporates—slowly, or all at once.
There is then a direct seeing of radiance as infinite loving intelligence. The world is seen as pure musical grace self-orchestrating as vibrant aliveness. All is seen to be animate and dancing. Heart-full boundless wisdom is writ large in every detail. The finality of luminous fullness is forever here and now, beyond space and time. Nebulous sensual meaningfulness erupts omnipresently. The simplicity of biting into a juicy mango turns out to be a “lightning bolt from God.” Watch this video to understand more about what that means:
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So all phenomena are then seen to be far beyond ‘okay’ or ‘perfection’ or ‘divine’ or any other descriptor. All dream-like appearance is seen to be delightfully ordinary and simultaneously miraculous. God is the burrito. Unknown, uncreated, unblemished holiness shines forth as unknown, uncreated, unblemished light. A pure unicity of unknown holy light that sparkles eternally without ever becoming any ‘thing.’ A completion of pure transcendence. Nothing else whatsoever can be found.
This is the ‘true reason’ why ‘everything’ is ‘always’ ‘perfect.’
There is no way to step ‘outside’ reality and assess its ‘success’ or ‘failure.’ Because reality is all there is. You are reality. So all ‘mistakes’ and ‘non-mistakes’—all ‘imperfections’ and ‘perfection’—cannot be found and are ultimately defined into existence. What remains cannot be said. What remains is simply rest.
Returning to the World
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
― Dōgen
What I have said would be incomplete without an acknowledgement of our return to our delicious, wondrous world.
We inquire in order to notice that the ‘world’ is not ‘really there’ in the way we had always assumed.
Our inquiry blossoms into the discovery of inherent unfindable freedom, peace, grace, harmony, divinity, and love.
We then return to the human perspective of a solid world of separate objects. Perhaps circumstances drag us unwittingly back to this perspective.
In my experience this can happen many times: Sublime glimpses or awakenings followed by periods of ‘being human again.’ Back and forth, back and forth.
Near as I can tell, this gradually culminates toward a space of being “in the world but not of the world.”
A space where you arrive fully in the human experience with a wise and open heart, equipped with a clear unshakeable seeing that “THIS is always THIS”—and what ‘this’ is, is unresolvable.
“It’s very strange — at first you train in seeing this, and then you train and see that what’s not ‘it’ is ‘it.’ And it’s the second half that confuses people.
On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about the second half until you’re fairly advanced. But then you can handle it.”
— Peter Brown, This That Is
Yes, we return.
And we are still ourselves. And our family is still our family. And the world is still the world. Mountains are mountains. Lakes are lakes. We chop wood, carry water, surf the ‘net.
The heartbreaking intimacy and poetry of the human experience is right where it’s always been—calling for our caring attention.
And we are there for it. We are available for it—more available than ever before.
Because now we are aware of a certain secret that grants spaciousness…
A larger freeing context has been discovered…
“I’m Peter Brown, a neurotic and psychologically damaged imperfect human being at the same time as being literally the creator of the universe.”
“The inherent perfection of imperfection.”
“In the world but not of the world.”
Fully ‘here’ and fully ‘human’ while knowing we are also ‘not here’ and ‘not human.’
Solid or not-solid?
Both, neither, far beyond either.
“All of these partialized perspectives are just drifting through infinity as you drift through these partialized perspectives. There’s no hierarchy of not being annoyed as true and being annoyed is not true. The annoyed is just as true as the not annoyed. The nothing is just as true as the everything. The world is just as true as a sea of infinity.”
— Peter Brown
Peter would often note that actuality is absolutely inclusive.
There is nothing that is not ‘it.’
“Being equals enlightenment. Period. If any condition IS, it is inherently absolutely perfect. The clouds in the sky, the shit in the toilet. Tag, YOU’RE IT.”
Good ol’ Peter. A hilarious trickster.
So, yes, we gradually discover that all is God.
Our most petty human squabbles are nothing other than Divine perfection.
And this ever-present perfection cannot be found.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
With Love,
J
jordan adores mangoes and burritos. he is a rapper, space-holder, & author of five books. consider joining brothers of the ever innocent heart or his free upcoming 4-week course, lion heart leadership
jordan’s other substack: the ever innocent heart
The Dude abides 😎
Love this — so well done. One of my favorite experiments in this vein involves listening. Music is great but anything will do. “Where” is the sound? Someone might say it’s in their ears, but is that so? Someone else might say it’s in their mind, experiencing it, but is that true? We could say that the sound *is* us, but what is us and what is happening when the sound begins and when it ends? And so on. Thank you for sharing. 🙏