2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama had an experience which changed humankind…he “awakened”. He was henceforth known as “the Buddha”, meaning “the Awakened One”. What does it mean ‘to wake up’? Is it more than a descriptive metaphor of the Buddha’s experience?
If you are reading this, you already awakened at least once today.
Western culture commonly accepts three ‘states of consciousness’: ordinary waking mind, dreaming sleep, non-dreaming deep sleep. Both science and Buddhism think there are more, but here considering these three is enough. One moment we are asleep (dreaming or not) and the next we are awake, right? Not really. Waking up is a sequential process with steps, or stages. There is a Zen saying, “the eye never sleeps”. While asleep the ears still hear, the eyes still see. A loud noise occurs, we wake up. What was asleep?
The sequential process of waking up is an orderly integration of ordinary waking mind with the uninterrupted ongoing sensory processes. Occasionally, waking up is disorderly and hallucinatory (hypnopompic) experiences occur. These can be terrifying…or ‘awakening’. We can all wake up to waking up by a simple practice. After a good night’s sleep, notice the actual process of waking up. Notice without thinking, without comparing or discriminating. Just notice the arising sensations. The moving of the body, opening of the eyes, changes in the depth and rate of the breath…then notice what suddenly feels like being wide awake. Nothing changed, the ears are still hearing, nose still smelling, just as they were while asleep, but ‘you’ are now awake. The “I” of the ordinary mind is now in the forefront of experience. “I” is like a thief which has stolen experience, putting in its place an internal monologue describing experience. Sensation has been supplanted by perception, experience divided the subject which knows and the object which is known. The philosopher’s noesis and noema. Buddhism’s ‘original sin’, the creation of self and other.
But when you first woke up, before the separate self of “I” arose, nothing changed. It was/is all still going on, just as before AND AFTER “I” emerges. No thing changes. Waking up is nothing special. It is just being present, just showing up to what is arising here-now. Presence.
This is a glimpse into the Buddha’s awakening. He awakened to presence without mandatorily clinging to the division of experience into noesis and noema, into self and other. When that happens, everything is different, but nothing has changed. The potential agency of self hasn’t disappeared, but it is no longer the modus operandi. The difference between a body-mind and a rapidly advancing bus is known, and what needs to be done to avoid getting squished is done. But it is done without attachment to the notion of self or bus. The division is sometimes necessary, the attachment to it is not. Self and no-self, freely coming and going.
A Zen koan has the phrase, “it is like a sleeping person reaching back, adjusting the pillow”.
Enjoy your awake awakening!