View From Space

Space is a most frequent and apt metaphor for pointing out the nondual view. Space points to the all pervading, everpresent, actuality of awareness, of knowing, and consciousness in all experiencing.

Interesting it is to begin with the proposal that the free in itself state is somehow already right here right now in full measure. Though like a blind spot we cannot see it, through our ignorance we are ignoring it. Through our grasping, we push it away.

So, pointing to mental and physical space as a metaphor for awake awareness and buddhanature is designed to directly free attention from the mental habits of identification and grasping, and directly bring supramundane wisdom and compassion to the forefront. Yes, easier said than done.

But where is this free self-liberating nature hiding? It's as if everpresent, hiding in plain view, yet easily overlooked like space. And that the obscuration of it is a part of it, its peculiar invisibility, as if space playing a game of hide and seek with itself. Of course space here is the metaphor for the pure being knowing, vijja citta.

Such is the innocent nature of ignorance and its inherent blind spot, the cocreation of the self and the world. In whatever way one is ignorant and does not know, well that is ignorance. To know that I do not know is the dawning of wisdom. What is it ignorant of? It's true nature as ignorance, and the gnosis nature of pure being knowing, vijja citta. What is it? The force of nature, unconditionally loving and compassionate, nonself emptiness awareness, cocreator of all phenomena, knowing itself by being itself.

So, awareness and consciousness play this game of hide and seek, as if unaware like a fish in water. Such is the self and its world, they are a coarising. As the adepts assure us, as ignorance and grasping dissolve, more and more the wisely compassionate and free coarising nondual nature is revealed and redeemed.

But reality is simply itself always. Even while ignorant of itself, it is itself. Although that's a bit steep for most of us. Recall the famous saying, 'The unreal never comes into being, and the real never ceases to be'. Recall the infamous Zen koan. The pupil asks the master, 'What is the cause of suffering?' The master says, 'Seeking enlightenment'. The pupil asks, 'What is the cause of ignorance?' The master says, 'Trying to get rid of it'. Steep. Direct. Ruthlessly nondual.

Again, consider in what sense space is always already here whether recognized or not? Consider whether everything physical and mental is happening in and of space? Like all physical and mental objects appear in space and of space, likewise sense consciousness with all its sensations are appearing in and of the space of awareness.

Of course please see the source tradition teachers and texts for beautiful precise and profound presentations of these topics.

What and how does the realization of awake awareness and buddhanature change us? The realized masters are in agreement, the path and fruit yeild genuine liberating happiness and its causes, freedom from suffering and its causes, and knowing and being true to the nature of reality itself. The entire existential dilemma is coming from this ignorance of our true nature and the true nature. Misidentifying self and self-grasping along with misidentifying world and world grasping are at the root of all the existential unfulfillment. In Dharma circles this is an uncontroversial statement indeed.

So, hiding in plain view, as they say, hence the nondual view pointing to directly recognizing the all benevolent awake awareness state. It is a step one, not two, in nonduality circles to clearly discern the pure presence-awareness, aka the buddhanature and bodhicitta, pure being knowing loving, free from conditioned self and mind, free from grasping, free like light and space, yet doing its cocreation magic of appearing as beings and selves in an experiential phenomenal world.