Is Spirituality More Than Just Awakening?
Written on November 22, 2008 by Tom Stine
In case you can’t tell, I’m a bit of a puritan purist when it comes to spirituality. Awakening or enlightenment is what it is all about! But isn’t there more to spirituality than just awakening?
I suppose it depends upon what we mean by spirituality. If you look at it as an observer, you would think that spirituality was about everything but awakening. At least, if you listen to the voices in the world of spirituality speak, you will rarely if ever hear anything about awakening. So, yes, spirituality deals with far more than awakening. In it, we find everything from angels to zen and so much in between.
Let me hear from you. Is it more than “concerned with spirit,” ie, the non-material? Is it more than enlightenment? Is it about talking with spirits, channeling, manifesting money, relationships? And why?
I wrote about this topic before in What Is Spirituality? Really. Take a look.
on November 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I’ve had this debate a lot with friends, especially my friend Vince–host of the Buddhist Geeks podcast.
He’s more of a Theravada Buddhist, focused on awakening, the practical ways of getting there, and the maps of insight.
I tend to be more interested in how one lives one’s awakening in the world, especially in the realms of emotion, behavior, relationships, career, etc.
Vince calls focus on the world “ethics.” I tend to call it the path of the Bodhisattva, or living consciously, or The Great Work.
In a truly non-dual spirituality, and especially for Western householders, both awakening and living one’s awakening are important. Spirituality is not separate from living in the world. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. Samsara is nirvana, etc.
On the other hand, in order to have a word “spirituality,” it has to designate something or else be meaningless, and it is important to distinguish the focus on awakening itself from all worldly things in order to actually make it happen.
And in fact, it is quite useful to spend extended time on retreat, apparently separate from the world, in order to awaken successfully.
I am very grateful for the 50 or so days I’ve spent on retreat, even though this is tiny compared to many monks, for it has given me the chance to deepen an awakening I couldn’t have ever achieved in the world.
As far as channeling, talking with spirits, and manifesting money, this is all interesting stuff which is neither awakening nor totally in-the-world stuff either. It’s a strange middle ground, the Buddhist realms, or Jung’s collective unconscious, etc.
From my small amount of experience in these realms, I’ve found that they can either be another thing to investigate (noticing the 3 characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and not-self), or something useful for engaging in the world.
Attachment, as always, causes suffering, and attachments to subtle realms and wacky experiences can lead to very subtle attachments due to feeling spiritual and being “otherworldly,” and often praised as the goal by certain spiritual communities.
I think the focus should be on awakening or insight, and then learning how to skillfully live that insight in the world. Easier said than done!
on November 22nd, 2008 at 5:54 pm
More thoughts…(you got me thinking!)….
Insight or awakening is always insight through or of something. E.g. insight into the lack of a permanent, separate self sense at the phenomenological level, or insight into the nature of cause and effect (karma), or psychological insight into why one has been caught in certain patterns, etc.
It seems to me that consciousness can be seen as “wanting” to penetrate everything: the sense of a separate self, how one human being relates to other human beings, how commerce functions, what one’s work in the world is, and even such things as archetypal forces (personified as spirits, gods, angels, etc.).
So what should be called spirituality? I consider the question to be a koan! Spirituality is awakening, but awakening is awakening in and through form. Awakening happens in a body, in a mind, in a natural environment, a socio-political-economic context, etc.
Curious to hear your and other people’s responses to this wonderful discussion topic.
on November 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Isn’t Spirituality a deepening connection with God?
All kinds of different ways there but essentially “Oneness. “Once attained the rest of it is enhanced, every moment..
on November 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I think that spirituality embraces our behaviour (ethics).
For those of the no-division approach then it must.
For me spirituality means a real change. If this doesn’t issue in different behaviour I question the reality of the change.
on November 23rd, 2008 at 6:41 am
I see spirituality as encompassing everything that we can know by direct experience. That contrasts with all of the things that we believe, and thus provide our basis for judging the world.
After all, what is awakening? Is it anything other than finally seeing reality, rather than illusions based on how we believe the world should be?
Are things like channeling and angels aspects of spirituality? By my definition, it would depend on whether they’re real, or something to believe in. Are they still there even after a person lets go of the belief? Or, like most of the world, does their existence crumble under the light of self-inquiry?
on November 23rd, 2008 at 10:20 am
It involves having a clear mind, not fooled by vanity, ego.
on November 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
@Duff Thanks for the responses! I think you really hit the nail on the head. Awakening is wonderful, transformational, and even blissful. But it isn’t the whole story! One of my favorite sayings from Zen points this out: “To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.”
Many people have experienced “an” awakening. Some people have actually had that stick, where they truly know what they are 24/7. But even then, this awakened Self ventures forth into the world of form. It knows Itself to be the very forms that it interacts with. And yet interact it does!! Sure, there have been the few off in the cave somewhere. But the majority move silently through the world, acting in ways that would often surprise us in their utter normality! (Hint: enlightened or not, all humans take a dump.)
Spirituality is a bizarre beast. It has many, many facets. But all in all, the spirituality that makes the most sense to me is that which assists awakening. And most of what goes on under the guise of spirituality (and religion for that matter) can barely be said to do that. Or maybe it does? Who knows?!?! I’m inclined to see all of life as spirituality, just as you are.
Thanks for the response!
on November 23rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
@Diane I like that. Very simple. Yes, I would agree. One question: who or what is God? If you are like me, then the answer is: you and me. To quote my favorite martian: “Thou art God.” (Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein)
@Evan You know, I think I tend to agree with your notion about change. The “I’m awakened but I’m still an asshole” doesn’t usually cut it with me. Sure, there’s the idea of crazy wisdom, but still. There are far too many “enlightened” people out there that are real jerks. And about as enlightened as a stump.
So, I guess we could say that true spiritual awakening is USUALLY accompanied by a softening, an opening of the heart, and quite often a real generosity and kindness. Why not? If all fear is gone and death has been overcome, the loving kindness seems to be a given, eh?
@Louise Yes, clarity would be a characteristic, too. An open, clear mind. Quiet, or at least often ignored.
@Jim I like your comment about channeling and all that. I’ve never yet run across anyone who really feels fully awake who worries much about those kind of things. Maybe I need to broaden my horizons? I don’t know. I know some really cool people who are into these things, and they can be helpful to so many on their journey. But…. well, I can’t say that they have much to do with awakening. But I guess seeing them in the direct light of Truth would be better than musing about them on my part.
Jim, I see that you are more in the “spirituality is all of life” camp. It is the clear seeing, the direct experience of life AS IT IS without beliefs clouding the view.
Thanks for the comments everyone!
on November 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Transformation occurs (neurological reprogramming by way of sadhana, discipline or transgressive action), realization comes, enlightenment follows. Neurological transformation continues, albeit in a subtle yet powerful new context, leading to changes in attachment. [DANGER: occluding metaphor ahead] It’s like jnana is a swiftly flowing river, reshaping the bottom (our current state of synaptic connection) in a directional, laminar way.
on November 24th, 2008 at 5:05 am
I thought spirituality mainly concerns faith and beliefs with the inner self devoted to each factor of this faith but after reading your insight, I found out it’s much broader than that.
on November 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I think that it depends on what you mean by ‘awakening’. My understanding of Zen enlightenment, for instance, requires very similar responses in the way one lives in the world to what an encounter with an angelic herald requires. I think that spirituality is about the process of ‘awakening’ and how that process changes your life and how you interact with the world. For all but the most remote hermits, these processes are and should be intrinsically intertwined….
on November 28th, 2008 at 10:50 am
@Jody I have a friend who takes a more physiological/neurological approach to enlightenment. While I’m fairly certain that this type of things occurs, I can’t help but think that there is more to the story. The recognition that all is One seems to go to the very foundation of the Universe as a whole. It sure seems like we are dealing with something beyond neurophysiology. Just something to think about. Thanks for the comments. Namaste.
@UpTake Suz On the whole, I think I have to agree that awakening and enlightenment have to be intertwined with how we live. Not as in a prescription for living, but as a new response to life and everything in it. But it flows from the complete awareness of what we are: we are THAT which we interact with. Cool, eh? Thanks for the comments.
on November 28th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
“It sure seems like we are dealing with something beyond neurophysiology.”
Agreed, if we are talking about jnana, or satori as defined by Zen, as I understand the term; a sudden reckoning of an ongoing aspect of everyday awareness. It’s a question for cognitive neuroscience whether this aspect leaves a measurable trace or leaves a particular pattern of activity on an fMRI scan. I suspect that it wouldn’t leave any trace directly, although it may set up a brain into a recognizable pattern of activity that could be associated with nondual understanding observationally, provided you got enough realizers into an MRI tube to establish an adequate sample.
I was trying to make a point about what occurs *before* an awakening to nondual truth. That surely happens in the mind/body—the process whereby we come to new understandings about ourselves as psychic (mind-defined) beings. Anything we “experience” we are experiencing by the agency of the mind. Nondual truth is not an experience in that sense of the word, so we can leave it off our list. But any other spiritual “experience” (and I understand we’ve just cast a very, very wide net) is surely a reflection of neurological activity and patterning. This indicates to me that the existence of such experiences are ultimately free from their ideological origins (many different ideologies lead to similar experiences,) and that spirituality is ultimately something separate from religion, insofar as it reveals the functional activity of religion: to give us a framework of concepts which are to be “enlivened” by our belief, leading to neuropsychological transformation. To wit: “as many faiths, so many paths,” to quote Ramakrishna.
on November 29th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Awakening? That would imply not being awake. When it is cloudy we say the sun is not shining. But it is! It is merely obscured. So it is with awareness. It is never not there.
Ask “Who is it that is awake or not awake? Who is it that believes in this dualistic construct?” When one sees that there is no one to awaken, all that is left is genuineness, true nature. We see that we are what we awaken to.
This has been my experience. Perhaps it is/will be different for others.
I know Tom had a more worldly focus in mind, so please excuse if you find my comments not pertinent. It’s just where my “mind” went.
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
on December 1st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Great Insight, I really enjoyed stumbling across this blog and all the points were made were great to read, very informative. Thank you.
on December 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
Interesting article. I was searching this all day. Thanks
on December 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
@Eric Ah, yes, I couldn’t agree more. Awareness is always here.
@Sharon Thanks for the comment.