‘Awakening,’ ‘conversion,’ ‘enlightenment’ — these are all words for seemingly esoteric phenomena that exist in the realm of saints and mystics, which few ordinary people, even modern contemplatives, even respected teachers, feel they have the right to claim to have truly experienced. For one thing, to do so would seem at best haughty and at worst completely nuts.

Yet, the fairly common experience of falling in love shares all the hallmarks of an enlightenment. It is an overwhelming, radical shift in perspective, which seems to come from the outside — unprovoked, undeserved, a grace, a gift. It happens rapidly, changing everything in its wake, challenging one’s deepest assumptions about the world and one’s place in it, most particularly the assumption that one is essentially alone, disconnected from others in a fundamental way, separated from God.

Every aspect of living is touched by it. The lover’s mental and physical processes are changed, and the shift is quite visible to everyone who interacts with the affected person.

When asked to describe what has happened — how, overnight, the lover seems to have departed her usual, mundane existence for one in which laughter and coincidences rain down upon her with such force that it is hard to see anything at all that does not appear to be drenched in beauty, and yet, at the same time, she has not truly left her old world at all, but is actually more fully immersed in it — all but the most sensitive among us are left at a loss, clinging at lyrics from love songs and sappy poetry and cliched adages that can only capture some tiny fraction of the sensation.

Just like the mystic, the lover will be asked such questions as: How did you know it was really God/love? How did you know this was the Real Thing, and not just a delusion? What makes this experience different from all the other, looney, short-lived obsessions you’ve had? Can you please tell me how you provoked this, what caused this thing to happen to you? What can I do to make it happen to me? How can I be happy? How will I spot it when it comes, will I hear it, the small voice whispering to me in the night, saying I’m the one you’ve been looking for?

And oh, oh, how the lover would like to say — is dying to say.

But she finds that she cannot.

This wisdom is not to be known intellectually. It is beyond rationality, beyond logic, beyond proof. It is to be seen, felt, experienced. It cannot be owned. It cannot be attained by grasping. It cannot be found by looking.

You do not need to worry, says the grandmother deep inside your chest: when it happens to you, and it will happen to you, you will know. You cannot fail to notice.

You will find yourself, my child, someday, looking into the eyes of someone who had only weeks ago, days ago, seconds ago, been a stranger, and seeing in those eyes your own future, as clear and recognizable as your reflection in a mirror.

You will ask this person, do you remember what it was like, weeks ago, days ago, seconds ago, before we had ever met? And this person, this other person, will reply, No, I don’t.

You will not remember either.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, reader, without whom I could not exist. My life depends critically on yours, and so I offer you this advice:

The next time you find yourself standing at the edge of an abyss — unable to see the bottom and yet sure you will lose everything you hold dearest in the fall, certain that you ought to be terrified and yet still, somehow, inexplicably, drawn forward — do not hesitate. Jump.

Expectation. Forgive me.

I miss you when you are gone, and when you are near I miss you in anticipation of your next departure. There is no such thing as closeness. Objects can be no closer than they are, co-arisen and inseparable. Everything interpenetrates and yet I long to be penetrated, as if something is missing, as if something is lost. Who am I, if you do not know me? You ask me to write the answer on your face, yet you insist that it must be spoken, it must be in words. For a moment, before you explained your request, I thought you had understood. You said, with your air, or, with your breath, but all you meant was talking. You just wanted me to talk, as if that might bridge the gap. Oh, you do not know me, and I cannot tell you, it would only prove me right. What do you know without words? I am touching you and you are writing words on a screen. You are transmitting thoughts to someone else and you are not totally here. I leave and wonder when you will notice my absence. This is the only reason I leave you, so that maybe you will experience the lack of me, as I experience the lack of you. No matter how close I pull you, even into my very body, I lack you.

We stood on a cliff looking out over the edge of the world. It is so big, I say. It is so still, you say. Back in the town we had touched the leather horse things, and you said, they are made for something so much more powerful than we are, and you said, they are made so well, better than anything for people. And I touched them all with my hands, bridles and halters and bits and saddles. Oh September. The saddles the blankets the crops. Neither of us has ridden a horse. We will talk of the trips we have taken. I will tell you to buy a certain toy for a child I do not know. I hope that child is me. Once, you bought black shoes with white lightening bolts on them. I do not care for shoes because my feet are so big. You put metal to glass with duct tape. You remind me of my father.

My father called me, thinking I was thousands of miles from where I am. I have not returned the call. They say that fathers who have been absent ought to write to their daughters and apologize, even if it is the only thing they can do, even if their daughters will never forgive them or even acknowledge them. This, God bless him, my father has always done.

I want a long dress; I want a knife; I want a baby. We talk of Henry Miller, of his honesty, and the air is so light at the edge of the world, and so many of the trails are unauthorized. Why don’t we worship our ancestors here, you ask. In my family, we do, I say. And in another world I am writing to a stranger about how Georgia is like Russia and already I have nostalgia for the future I might share with the person I would tell this to, the person who might understand. You shove your arms in a heap of manure to see how warm it is on the inside — the people give you a look.

I can feel it all through me, the future we will not act out, the future we have already had, the future we have shared from the beginning. There was never a beginning, there was never. There was the edge of the world. It was so large. It was so still. And the birds on the rocks were sensitive, and the waves were sensitive, and the eyes that saw it all were sensitive.

It was simple: I loved someone and I wanted them to know it.

I would take you with me. I would take you into the hole in the center of my chest where I do not exist, have never existed, the laughter of permeability, the air. I would take you where I cannot go myself. God, this pain is exquisite, and your face, I write on your face, I take you on my life boat, I die in your arms as you change from a boy to an old man and back again, over and over. You are a completely different person. You are a mirror. I want to walk to the edge of the world with your DNA in my body.

Last night I attended John Baker’s talk at the Interdependence Project on Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which Baker, a senior student of Trungpa’s, co-edited. The book, which I read during my great spiritual reading binge of 2007, is wonderful, probably right up under Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind in my list of essential books on Buddhism, so I was very excited to hear Baker discuss it.

Actually, he wound up spending most of the talk telling wonderful stories about what it was like to be a close student of Trungpa Rinpoche and forthrightly answering questions from the audience about the controversial areas of Trungpa’s life (he was/is just as well-known for sleeping with many of his female students and drinking a lot of alcohol as he is for his teachings). Baker simultaneously touched on a wide range of spiritual matters, and his presence gave me a particular warm, glowy feeling I tend to get when teachers and other people with very strong spiritual practices coupled with clear understanding speak to me about these issues, which is rare and wonderful.

I had not intended to take notes, but somehow wound up doing so. I think I was the only person in the room doing so. I remember experiencing joy when I realized, in an academic context, that I did not need to slavishly record everything in order to absorb a lecture, and that I could just sit there and enjoy the talk without worrying about remembering it for an exam. But, on the other hand, I regretted not having any notes from HH the Dalai Lama’s teachings in NYC on my birthday this year, which I also enjoyed but could barely say anything about when people asked me what it was I liked. So the compromise I make, I suppose, is to take short, somewhat cryptic notes that might not evoke much for anyone but me. The following might not make much sense out of context, but represents some of the lines he spoke that resonated strongly with me. Some of this is quoted or paraphrased from Baker’s memories of Trungpa’s teachings, some from Baker himself. [Some additional later commentary is added in brackets.]

* * *

The first duty of a teacher is to be completely open with his students, to be completely who is he, which challenges to the student to fall in love.

revealing ourselves -> connection -> open society

True compassion arises from open accepting communication, open hearts, being ordinary.

Compassion is acceptance, non-judging, not being sorry for someone or pity.

Meditation practice teaches compassion by teaching us to stop judging ourselves when our minds wander, but simply to accept it and return to the present moment.

Letting be.

The whole world is my body. [Trungpa's response when a student at a public talk, during which he was drinking and smoking, admonished him for defiling his body, which is his temple.]

There is a myth of objectivity in academia. Every question someone poses is a trick, because it assumes only a certain, small set of possible answers.

The only way to gain wisdom on the path is to ask your master for it, clearly.

Crazy wisdom.

The purpose of practice is to gain freedom from our own minds, in society, with people.

Create an explosion.

Aloneness to openness.

On the path, we begin with many rules to keep us from screwing up and hurting others, but we move toward insight, responding to what IS, in each moment, with no rules needed.

Be who you are. Go home to your depressions. [Trungpa to the packed audience at the end of a poetry reading which also included Ginsberg and Bly; Baker interprets this as a warning against setting up others as great heros/artists and comparing ourselves to them, rather than being who we really are.]

Do not be afraid to be a fool.

The definition of a confused sentient being is a person lost in dreams, especially future-oriented dreams, including nightmares. WAKE UP.

Love your life.

The point of practice is to become a completely ordinary human being. Striving to be extraordinary makes us subhuman.

Sometimes pleasure and pain are hard to come by. [Trungpa's response to a question from Baker as to why he would want to fall in love again, with a woman other than his wife, when that would bring so much complication and trouble.]

Compassion is ultimately reflected as the beauty of the world, unimpeded phenomena, forms, colors.

Curiosity is a virtue of the enlightened mind.