Expectations and Desire, the Mirror, and Collaborating With Wisdom

STUDENT 1
Could you talk about the relationship between desire and expectation?

SHAMBHAVI
Think of those two words. Expectations. Desire.

If you had to have a food that was the correlative of either of those words, what would the food version of expectations be and what would the food version of desire be?

Expectations would be meatloaf. [laughs]

Something that you're eating, but you don't really enjoy. Something you have to slice through and slog through, and it's dense and predictable.

What is the food correlative of desire?

There's not only one, I'm just saying. There's no right answer. [laughs]

STUDENT 1
It's like a peach or something.

SHAMBHAVI
A peach! Okay, what about it?

STUDENT 1
It's juicy.

SHAMBHAVI
Juicy, sweet, colorful. It's kind of surprising. Like when you look at a peach, no matter how many times you eat a peach, that first bite is like [mimics delight]. Right?

Okay, good. There you go.

Expectations are just learned things. Expectations are different in every culture, in every historical time period.

But of course, we sometimes intensely embody those expectations. So expectations are an aspect of karma, of conditioning.

One teacher I had used to make a distinction between expectations and expectancy. If expectations are meatloaf, expectancy is like a really delicious sparkling drink.

Expectancy is just—something's going to happen. We don't know what. That's expectancy.

So to be in the world in a condition of expectancy, like someone unexpected, something new that you're going to host. Being in that state of being prepared to meet the guest, whoever that guest is.

Desire, first of all, is part of the fundament of reality. Everything is functioning because of desire. We have desires. We have desires for things, and people, and circumstances.

The desire of the whole reality, of that alive, totally enlightened reality, is objectless. It doesn't have any particular goal. It doesn't have an object of desire. Or you could say everything is its object of desire without exception.

So when we think about the desire that's at the heart of reality, it's that desire that arises utterly spontaneously to the desire for self-expression.

You could say, what's motivating a fountain? If we think of all of reality and everything, all the different experiences being created as a fountain. What's motivating that fountain is this impulse, this natural, wild, over-the-top impulse of self-expression.

That is what the purest form of desire is. The desire to self-express. Our form of desire that's most useful is the desire to find out who and what we are and the desire to be more fully expressive of who and what we are. That's what's driving spiritual practice, ultimately.

So we might have a desire, for instance, to be a little more relaxed. Some people come into spiritual life thinking, I want to relax. Or I want to have some other kind of experience than the experience I'm having. Or any number of things.

But those things will not sustain you. Those things might get you into the door. Those things might get you to take some few teachings, but you will never sustain what it requires to have a lot of realization, if your only desire is to feel a little a little bit better, if you don't have any sense that there's so much more.

But eventually, even if you come in with that little desire, if you keep practicing, it will feed into a bigger desire. And a bigger desire, and a bigger desire until you become what's called a non-returner.

Someone who is being done by spiritual life rather than doing spiritual life. Someone who's just letting themselves be taken. But that takes some time.

So desire has a wild aspect to it. Desire is at the heart of what they call a choiceless choice, when it's just you have to do that thing.

Why do I do practice? Why does anybody do this? Because you have to. There's no reason. It's a choiceless choice at some point.

But at another point, it's not a choiceless choice. It's just, well, I am a little more relaxed and satisfied. Now I'm going to stop practicing because I have other things to do.

Or we go for some more immediate gratification. The minimal type of relaxation that some people seek from spiritual life might just as easily be gotten by eating a donut.

Seriously, Why bother with all this? [laughs] No, I'm serious, actually.

One of the biggest problems of the importation of this tradition into Euro-American context is that people have no idea what they're for.

They have no idea what the extent of transformation that can happen is. They have no idea what the root impetus for doing this practice is.

And of course, we've been told, since not only have these traditions been imported and appropriated, but now they've been also appropriated by corporations and capital and they're even dumbing them down even more.

Now it's all about productivity. Mindfulness is about productivity.

If that's your idea, then you're not even going to come to it for the right thing. You're not going to know.

So you might come and think, well, this is about me being a little more relaxed. I'm hoping to be more skillful at work, and I'd like not to be so anxious or sad or whatever.

And then that happens and you're like, okay, great. I'm done. Really, I only need to practice 15 minutes a day to get that. That's cool. That's good.

But it's just out of lack of understanding of what is actually being offered.

So that desire, if you feel it, you feel an intuition. There's more happening here than I know about. There's more here than I can see and feel and understand.

And even further, I'm more than I can feel or see or understand.

If you have any inkling of that, that's what's actually driving these traditions. That moreness.

And the more you go for the more, the more the more goes for you. [laughs]

We're in a conversation with wisdom. So when we kind of get what it's actually about and we start orienting that way, wisdom is like, okay, got a live one. Now you get a different collaboration from wisdom.

I just wish people knew that there was more being offered than what they're taking. I wish they would take more from it.

But I don't really think that there's anything wrong with it. And who knows what will happen? Who knows what will happen? You never know what happens.

Even if you buy seeds at Walmart and they're all irradiated and gross, and you plant them, eventually they could, over many generations, become organic. [laughs] You never know.

We have to be okay with our relative responses to things. I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling sad about it or frustrated or whatever.

But we have to hold that in the larger picture and not take ourselves too seriously.

STUDENT 2
I was wondering if you might be able to talk about the mirror that's often spoken of, the mirror of the heart.

SHAMBHAVI
In Trika, the heart is a living symbol for all of reality, for the Supreme, for that wisdom. And specifically for the translation of the absolute into all of these phenomena.

Shakti is said to be in the heart because she's the one speaking everything into existence.

And we have our little heart space here, but in Trika, the heart is everywhere. It is all of reality.

So when we think of the mirror being in the heart and polishing the mirror of the heart, what that would mean in Trika would be that the mirror is that out of which everything is appearing.

In both Dzogchen and Trika, it's exactly the same teaching symbol. If we have a mirror that has nothing in front of it, there's just mirror.

But images are arising in the mirror without anything in front of it. So that the things in the mirror are a mirror. They're made of mirror. And In this instance, they are expressions of the mirror. The mirror is generating reflections in itself.

This is a metaphor for the creative process of God. That God is the mirror or this reality is the mirror. And from within itself, it is generating reflections of its own nature that have the appearing of distinct forms, but are actually all just mirror.

So it shows you how dualistic experience and the equality of everything can exist simultaneously.

The mirror is one of the teaching images for how we can hold those two thoughts together. Where we're not rejecting duality in favor of the absolute.

Where we can see, okay, all these forms here are rising out of the mirror of consciousness. They are made of that mirror. They are made of consciousness.

But everything also can be distinct and interesting. So there can be that sense of what in Trika is called appearings rather than appearances. Actual events of things appearing, but still being totally an aspect of the whole.

The fact that it's coming from the heart also indicates that there are qualities to the absolute, to this wisdom. The heart is the seat of wisdom in Trika and in Dzogchen.

What are those wisdoms? They're what I call wisdom virtues: compassion, devotion, clarity, intelligence, humor.

All of those things that we're always he's talking about. Those are what the mirror is made of. And everything else is also made of those wisdom virtues.

That mirror is a total metaphor for both the absolute, and the way that the absolute creates all of these experiences, and the relationship of all those to wisdom, to the heart.

So you could think that the center of reality is everywhere. If the heart is like the center, the center of reality is everywhere.

And then we have this little microcosmic heart space that we can practice in. It's like training wheels for discovering that heart everywhere.

But again, it's that trick that Trika does. It's that trick that Dzogchen does. Because these traditions celebrate manifest life. So there's no sense in which they're trying to divorce manifest life from the spiritual, or the absolute, or the soul, or spirit, or anything like that.

It's saying that everything is imminent, that God is imminent in everything. And everything made of the same wisdom.

So this image of things appearing in the mirror, the unimaginable diversity of life is there to be enjoyed in this magical way. Like it's just appearing in this magical way.

And that word is often used. Magic is often referred to. And Lord Shiva is often called the magician. Or sometimes the artist.

And there's all kinds of words used in Dzogchen and Trika both, to talk about the glamourousness of this, and the jewel-like quality, and the magicalness of it all. That anything is here.

In fact, some European philosopher said something very similar. I can't remember who it was. But he said, the root of all philosophy is amazement that there's something here rather than nothing.

There's that sense of amazement that there's something here to be enjoyed. That there's a conversation. That there's relationships. That there's different forms.

But the mirror is showing us that they're all of the same substrate. And they're not separate from that substrate.

The potential is all within the mirror. There's no space in front of it. There's no space anywhere. The mirror is everywhere.

So that's where the metaphor falls apart if you're thinking of a two-dimensional mirror. As Ma said, no metaphor is ever complete. Take from it what you will.

But there's absolutely no space anywhere. Space—our concept of space and our experience of space is a symbol of the mind of God. There actually is no space.

The metaphor of the mirror falls down if we're thinking of just a two-dimensional thing with space in front of it.

I was just saying there's nothing in front of it, just to emphasize that the reflections are coming out of the mirror without anything causing them other than the mirror.

It's the way that waves arise from the ocean, too.

STUDENT 2
So is the mirror Shiva, and the appearances—

SHAMBHAVI
Are also Shiva.

STUDENT 2
The appearings are Shakti.

SHAMBHAVI
The aspect of this reality that is the creative aspect, the aspect that can create these reflections of the self, is called Shakti.

But they are never separate. Shiva and Shakti are never separate.

It's just like talking about the heat and light of a flame. You can't have a flame without heat and light, but you can talk about them separately.

So you can't have creation without a creative force. And so we call that Shakti, but it's not separate from Shiva.

And in fact, in the Trika texts, they make it over and over again abundantly clear that although we're having an experience of separation and things appear to be separate—like objects and beings and things—that Shiva and Shakti are never having an experience of being separate.

They are always experiencing unity.

So reflectionism is also a huge part of Trika and Dzogchen, ideas about reflectionism and how the nature of the self is reflected in the creation.

STUDENT 3
You said that Shiva and Shakti are never having an experience of separation. Then I'm wondering, who is having that experience?

SHAMBHAVI
Think of it as an actor playing someone who feels very lonely, but the actor is actually not lonely.

They're experiencing the play of loneliness, and it's enjoyable because they're producing it as a work of art. But on another level, they're not experiencing loneliness.

One thing is happening because it's their nature and they're not lonely. The other thing is happening because it's their self-expression as they're playing at different roles, and tasting different emotions, and different circumstances.

So it's not that they're not experiencing separation, it's just they're not experiencing it as their base state or ultimate condition.

They're tasting it like someone would taste food at a smorgasbord. Like a cosmic-size smorgasbord. [laughs]

About ethics in general, the view of this tradition is that the base state of reality or God is goodness without an opposite. So goodness without badness.

When you're more immersed in that and more identified with that, then you just naturally do what's beneficial. You don't really need to have rules about it.

But when we aren't so immersed in it, we don't really have something called ethics, but we have precepts.

They're the functional life ways to keep people out of trouble so that we don't get all entangled and create a lot of time-wasting energy, wasting karma for ourselves and other people. So that we can practice and realize more.

For instance, if we become career criminals, then we probably are going to get arrested, and have entanglements with the law, and do harm to other people, and have them hate us, and then them trying to do stuff. It just can eat up your whole life.

So the rule is, try to keep as unentangled as you can. My Dzogchen teacher would say, just go along with whatever the rules are where you are and try to be more invisible. Not be so overtly open to entanglement. [laughs]

In this culture, our basic orientation is command, capture, and control.

So we use our senses to gather, amass, hoard, count, measure, and control things that we receive or get. And we use our mind that way, particularly.

So we bring this attitude to spiritual practice also. And spiritual practice can become, for some people, just an intellectual exercise of getting information about things and not actually doing practice.

That's an offspring of command, capture, control culture. The way that that translates is constantly measuring progress in practice, even when doing the most infinitesimal amount of practice.

Wanting to achieve things, to get achievements in practice, even when doing an infinitesimal amount of practice. And always thinking about what you can get from it, or what you have performed as a result of it.

These are all command, capture, control culture, attitudes towards spiritual life.

What we really need to do, if we want any significant realization, is to be having an attitude that we're in a conversation. That there is wisdom here, that eventually it will become palpable to us, and that our goal is to subtilize our senses and subtilize our ability to perceive, so that we can be in a conversation, be in a collaboration, be in an alliance with wisdom.

It's not about collecting anything and shoring up your sense of self, your identity, or making yourself feel more individualistically confident or anything like that.

We want to use our minds, particularly to reach out and feel into things, or feel into our own subtle energy, or whatever we're doing in our practice. There's always a sense of reaching toward, of something coming toward us and we're going toward it.

And this is the basic gesture of listening. Sounds are coming toward us. Ear is receiving, but it's also welcoming and reaching out in a sense.

So when we do that little meditation—listening abiding—the first level of meditation, and the first instruction is to be listening with your ears and to notice what is the sensation of listening? What is the movement of listening?

If you're really going to get into it, you'll notice you're not just receiving something. The hearing is going to meet the sound.

There's a beautiful Maharashtrian poet who wrote about this, Jñanadeva. The hearing is going to meet the sound. So there's a meeting. And this is what listening is about. And this is what will bring real fruit in spiritual practice.

None of us measuring, counting, expectations about achievements, feeling bad because something didn't happen after you practiced for 15 minutes or 15 days, all of this stuff.

And I would just say also there's quite a number of people in Jaya Kula who were brought up in atmospheres where you're thinking about capitalism and critiques of colonialism and all that.

And I just want to say that a lot of people's attitude in this culture towards spiritual practice is that. It's that colonialist command, capture, and control. Go out there and get, achieve, self-glorification. I'm going to tell God what this is going to be about. [laughs]

And then like this crushing disappointment if it doesn't work out with minimal effort.

So really, something different has to be going on. We have to get the colonialist out of ourselves if we want to practice well and become collaborators and good allies with wisdom.