Non-duality can become “a topic” in the mind so easily. A category. A philosophy. A set of conclusions you can repeat.
And the irony is that this can happen right alongside real unbinding. You taste something direct, intimate, obvious—and then the mind starts taking snapshots. It tries to preserve it. It tries to explain it. It tries to build a map you can carry around.
That impulse isn’t always wrong. But it can become sticky. It can become a coping mechanism that feels like progress.
This talk is a warning and a kindness at the same time: if you’re tasting the meal, don’t put the menu back between your face and what’s here.
Realization Isn’t a Topic, a Viewpoint, or a Condition
Non-duality, awakening, realization, anatta—these are my favorite topics.
And of course, it’s not a topic. It’s not a category of experience. Certainly not a category of philosophy. It’s not a way of seeing the world. It’s not a viewpoint.
There can be viewpoints that are launching places: the viewpoint that your instinct can lead you beyond thought, the viewpoint that non-conceptuality is the first barrier.
But realization itself is not a viewpoint. It is free of viewpoints.
Realization is even free of being a condition. It sounds like something that happens to you, like an event. It sounds like something you acquire or accumulate—“I have realization now.”
It’s not just semantics to say that’s inaccurate.
It’s so inaccurate that it’s kind of a cosmic joke.
What is realized is not anything that’s gained.
Even to say it’s realized makes it sound like you acquired knowledge or a state.
It’s not that.
So language really does fail with this stuff.
Language Fails—and That’s Why Transmission Uses It Anyway
But with language we can approximate, and with language we can point.
That’s what transmission is.
Transmission is kind of using language for a purpose it wasn’t designed for: to point to something that can’t be pointed to because it’s so… well, it’s so everything. It’s all-encompassing. It’s so close. It’s ineffable.
So this genre of talking about spirituality, non-duality, and so forth—he even says it doesn’t really exist.
And he brings this up because the human mind has a tendency to categorize.
The Mind Makes Snapshots of Realization
The mind gathers information from a talk, from a video, and turns that into a category.
That can happen alongside the awakening process.
More accurately, it’s going to happen.
There’s going to be some degree of mental encoding—reflections appearing from unbinding, from the realization process unfolding.
The mind makes snapshots of it.
And they’re inaccurate.
They’re not what is actually happening. They’re not what realization actually is.
They’re paradigms, summaries, viewpoints.
And the more realization clarifies, the more important it is to see the degree to which we’re still sampling that mental texture—the tendency to formulate viewpoints, to formulate conclusions.
Even with real insight. Even when visceral insight has occurred—more real than anything the mind can construct, more real than anything a map can define.
The tendency can be strong for some people and less strong for others. But everybody has some of it for some time after an initial awakening: wanting to make maps of things.
The Many Forms of Map-Making
He says he sees map-making play out in different ways, and not all of it is useless.
But it’s “kinda useless” for clarifying realization, generally.
One common form today is neuroscience trying to map awakening—fMRI studies, research.
He’s not saying it’s useless. It’s interesting, like psychology is interesting.
But if you mistake that understanding for what will deepen and clarify your own realization, it gets sticky.
It’s easy to overlook that this kind of map-making is itself a coping mechanism.
And these coping mechanisms are deeply rooted in the identity structure.
He describes himself as a pragmatist. He tries to be simple and practical. And regardless of the flavor of map-making—neuroscience, dharmic maps, pragmatic dharma formulas, sayings—he treats all of it as map-making.
They are mind. Thought. Perceptions and impressions mistaken for realization itself.
At some point you have to let those go. You have to let it all go.
Letting Go Isn’t Something “You” Do
He immediately nuances this.
Even saying “you have to let it go” isn’t quite accurate.
The “you” that’s clinging and the thing it’s clinging to let go of each other. They both let go at the same time.
And he can’t even say who let go, because there is no one to let go.
But it does happen.
The letting-go happens.
It’s a letting-go of all the maps, all the views, all the understandings, all the tendencies to take the experience of mystery and wonder and openness and non-duality—direct, obvious, clear, intimate, empty—and turn it into a map.
It’s always a thought.
No matter how nuanced the science is, no matter how precise the dharma verbiage is, it’s still a map.
It’s still map-making.
And it’s your responsibility, if you’re going through this process, to be willing to let go of that at some point, because it will become a fixation—or it already is a fixation—but it will remain tenacious, especially if you don’t see it as such.
The Mind That Abides Nowhere
“Going off all maps.”
He mentions a shirt he’s wearing.
Someone had to tell him what it meant—a friend who knows Kanji.
It translates to a line he associates with the Diamond Sutra: “The mind that abides nowhere is the mind you should raise.”
Or another interpretation: “The mind that abides nowhere is the mind you should birth.”
He calls it beautiful. Clear. Powerful. Exactly what he’s talking about.
He didn’t plan to relate the shirt to the talk, but noticed in the video: he’s wearing a shirt that says what he’s pointing to.
“The mind that abides nowhere.”
And then he corrects himself again: it’s not even a mind. It’s a nowhere-abiding.
That’s freedom.
Never Underestimate the Forces of Delusion
He says often to people, even after no-self realization: never underestimate the forces of delusion.
Be willing to look closely at what you’re doing when you entice yourself with maps—psychological maps, dharma maps, anything.
Anything.
Any kind of mapping.
Thoughts are not a problem. Thoughts in and of themselves are not a problem.
It’s like the menu in the restaurant isn’t a problem.
The problem comes when you’re eating the food and enjoying the food, and you keep picking up the menu and putting it between your face and the food.
You keep trying to make the menu more clear—“Oh, I can talk about this in another clear way.”
Then you’re sharing menus with other people.
That’s what’s happening.
Once you taste, he says, it’s your responsibility to savor that—to enjoy the meal fully—to learn what you need to learn from the taste itself, from experience itself.
And at some point you have to put the maps down.