The perennial philosophy "nondual" spiritualtraditions (such as Nisargadatta's Vedanta, and Tibetan Buddhism's Dzogchen)hold that existence involves a monistic, enduring, unchanging, ABSOLUTE realityand a dualistic, ephemeral, constantly-changing RELATIVE reality. Through thepractices that I describe in my book TOWARD WISDOM, I too have come to see thatthis is the way it is. Describing the situation in words has always beentricky, but I found that certain "information age" concepts clarifythe situation.



The way I put it in a ZYGON paper and in Part 1 of my 2004book MATTERS OF CONSEQUENCE, the absolute reality, the foundation of all thatis, is a oneness that has both a physical aspect we call energy, and a mentalaspect we call awareness. Energy and awareness are carrier-like in nature. Thatis, they can be shaped, or formed, or modulated by information without theirown nature being in any way changed. Although informational modulation does notcause the intrinsic nature of energy-awareness to change, it does cause arelative reality to arise. This relative reality is a transient, insubstantialINFORMATIONAL reality. Physical reality is a relative world of informationsupported by the absolute-reality-carrier we call energy. Mental reality is arelative world of information, supported by the absolute-reality-carrier wecall awareness.

The evolutionary process, with its pass/fail criteria ofsurvival and reproduction, designed the human brain and its associatedmentality with survival and reproduction as primary considerations. Thecognitive system that evolution designed helps us to understand relativereality because it is in this arena that the drama of survival and reproductionis played out. Human mentality was not designed to allow us to understandabsolute reality with ease because there was no survival or reproduction payoffin that. Now, in kinder, gentler circumstances, we want to understand thedeeper truth — absolute truth — and we find that very difficult. And whyshouldn't it be difficult? We're trying to use the human cognizing system for adifferent purpose. It was designed to give us a handle on relative,informational truth, the truth about the cosmic message; not absolute truth,carrier-related truth, the truth about the cosmic medium.

Spiritual practices are tools that give us some hope ofseeing through the relative to the absolute. Vipassana meditation is a practicethat gives us a better handle on the nature of relative reality. We watch, withas much detachment as we can muster, the informational show that the braingenerates. Despite our best efforts, however, we frequently get lost in thatshow — we lose that sense of detachment from it. Experiencing both detachmentand lost-in-the-showness, we eventually come to realize that thislost-in-the-show state is where we spend most of our lives. The normal humancondition is to be identified with informational patterns, with the relativereality that the brain creates. In Vipassana we are still paying attention tothe relative, but because we are more detached from it than before, gradually,bit by bit, insight by insight, we begin to see the nature of relative reality.We begin to see the impersonal nature of the brain's churning out of information.There is no "I" that is doing it. It just happens mechanically,automatically. We also discover that the informational stuff that arises has noinherent power. With practice we learn that it's possible to watch evenphysical discomfort and heavy emotions such as fear and anger without sufferingwhen we accept that informational reality and refuse to give it power by tryingto get rid of it. We see that it is our reaction to the information that bindsus and disturbs us. Pleasant or unpleasant stuff has no power as long as weremain detached and simply watch it arise and disappear on its own. It is whenwe cling to the present, wanting it to continue or push away the unpleasant,wanting it to disappear, that we suffer and lose our innate equanimity and freedom.Vipassana gives us many insights that we need if we are to understand howtrapped we usually are in this relative realm.

Although Vipassana does not introduce us to the absolute, itis designed to help us see much that must be seen, and in my view (and that ofmost Buddhist teachers) it is the place to start. We first need to learn toquiet the mind and look with detachment at the relative reality into which weare heavily immersed and identified. The Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dzogchenand the Advaita Vedanta of Nisargadatta, on the other hand, seek to introduceus to the absolute. Yes, underlying the relative world of mental information,and allowing it to exist, is that enabling something we usually call awareness.It is contentless, yet supportive of all content; informationless, yetsupportive of an infinite variety of informational modulation. It is clear,transparent, not a thing. Other terms for it include:

• innate wakefulness

• natural mindfulness

• primordial awareness

• empty, luminous cognizance

• everpresent, inherent, utterly spacious openness

• inexpressible beingness

• isness

• one's own true nature

• rigpa (Tibetan for this reality)

• nondual awareness

• total presence

• open presence

• spontaneously present awareness

• the cognizing power of emptiness

• one's own innate wakefulness

In Dzogchen and Nisargadatta's practice the aim is to becomecognizant of this absolute aspect of mind, and in some sense to become it — torelax into it or identify with it and to view the relative world of informationfrom that vantage point. Awareness is noninformational, so it doesn't appear asthe normal kind of mind content. Even in meditation, the colors we see and thebliss we feel are still part of the relative world of brain-generated information.Allowing us to sense those colors and feel that bliss, however, is thisprimordial awareness, this cognizing power that belongs to the realm ofabsolute reality. Our deep true nature is that primal awareness itself, and notthose things in the informational, relative world that we take to be ourselves. The problem is that mental information, mind content, is so powerfuland overwhelming, and our identification with it so tenacious, that letting goof our identification as a thought-dominated person and surrendering into ourtrue nature — into our own innate wakefulness — does not happen easily. Thedetachment we develop in Vipassana readies us for this. Then, (as I see it) atsome point it makes sense to switch to one of the absolute-reality practices.

In one sense, the difference between Dzogchen and Vipassanais quite subtle. In both practices the informational arisings in the mind arewatched with detachment. The difference is that in Dzogchen and other nondualpractices one is also cognizant of the underlying ground or carrier of thatinformation — that "primordial awareness," that "utterlyspacious openness," that "empty, luminous cognizance." Itremains, enduring and pure, unaffected by the coming and going of the modulatingforces applied to it. Primal awareness watches the show of relative reality.And that pure contentless awareness is the true me. I can choose to participatein the show at any time, but I am not OF that show. I am OF the realm ofabsoluteness. That is my true home, and my refuge from domination and controlby mental information.