Sailing out from my mooring on the sunfish, Friends Lake, 2014
August blog 2, for august 6 – final written Aug.3 Floating Nonduality: continued
Question from Barbara and Karen: Regarding Aaron’s statement from last week, “ … because its first expression was as neutral, expansion, change and flexibility are part of its essence.” What about “the Unborn, Undying, Unchanging, Uncreated?” Are these two different uses of the word “change”?
Aaron began by asking Barbara to read from P. 29 of Vimalakirti, (The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, Robert Thurman, translator, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976. ) re: impermanence. “...one day after the Lord had given some brief instructions to the monks, I was defining the expressions of that discourse by teaching the meanings of impermanence,… Vimalakirti came there and said to me,…do not teach an ultimate reality endowed with activity, production and destruction.
Reverend Mahakayayana, nothing was ever destroyed, is destroyed or will be destroyed. Such is the meaning of ‘impermanence’.”
(Barbara: for 40 years Vimalakirti has been one of my favorite writers on nonduality and dharma. I’ve spent many hours sitting with it and learning from it)
Aaron: I am Aaron. This cannot really be set in words. A map of the Grand Canyon does not express the experience of the Grand Canyon. I can only offer you the map. Your meditation must provide the experience.
Every construct of the phenomenal world is composed of non-self elements. Therefore, everything is in constant change as those elements become magnified or diminished within the structure of the seeming whole. The mountain is composed totally of non-mountain elements. It is in constant change because soil will wash away, trees will grow, fire will burn it, water and wind will affect the rock base. The mountain is impermanent on the relative plane. It seems to have arisen from conditions and will cease when those conditions cease.
We turn toward this “Unborn … Unchanging.” Looking at the mountain, every element in the mountain has as its core one true nature or essence. They are not different divine essences; there is only one.
Please regard the starfish. The arms seem to be independent and separate; each may experience a different aspect of relative reality. One may break for example, but all are not broken. Yet these arms have but one core, one reality. If there are one thousand starfish, each with differentiated consciousness, they all have this same divine essence or pure awareness as their core.
On the relative plane, the mountain is composed of non-mountain elements. One with a relative plane bias would consider those elements as separate but interrelated, yet every element within that mountain has one core, one Buddha-nature. On the surface, the mountain seems to change. When a million years have passed and it is eroded away into a desert, in relative reality it has changed. We say it is impermanent. Has anything changed beyond the way it manifests itself? Is the true nature of the desert any different than the true nature of the mountain?
I offered “change” as an attribute of this pure awareness/ pure energy/ pure light. “Change” herein is the fluidity to manifest its energy on the physical plane and, once entered into that plane, to reconcile its expression with the laws of relative reality.
We might think of this pure energy as a river. It reflects the sky as blue or grey. Its temperature changes as it moves from icy mountain peak to sunny plain. It will pick up impurities – distortions from soil or waste that it encounters. Maybe it will evaporate completely. Is its true nature any different? God is unchanging and its expressions are infinite. It is always permanent and impermanent, changing and unchanging.
Why should the Unconditioned exhibit the characteristics of the conditioned, such as change? Can you see that it must be both, changing and unchanging, or it denies relative reality? “Fluid,” “open,” even “infinite” cannot exist without change. What if this “All That Is” was unchanging, was unfluid in its expression? How could it expand? We have talked of this question, Can an infinite God expand? If it already is everywhere, where would it go? If our answer is “No, it cannot expand,” then we put a finiteness on infinity. We limit the unlimited.
This is not a paradox. If it is already infinite and already everywhere, and yet is still fluid, changing, expanding, then “Unchanging” is its ultimate reality and fluidity, change, expansion are the ways in which it manifests, or its expressions. Because there is no duality, unchanging and changing are nondual. Again, no paradox. Here is where your meditation must carry you when words fail. Rest in that place where you are the Unchanging and then you will know. That is all.
Reflections – Photo by Mike Rothbart on August 1,2026, while mountain climbing in NH
Are the rocks and spring more or less real than the reflected trees and sky?
Taking this writing to today, August 2, 2026:
Joy and sorrow; hope and despair; love and separation; patience and impatience…can I feel how each contains the other and not get caught in either the positive or negative stories? Taking joy in what is positive and possible can only truly happen if I see the loss right there with the gain and stay balanced in both, no grasping at the positive.
This beautiful blooming lily and the dead one, the same…
And they are the same as the spruces behind them, all growing from one soil; one earth, same sun and rain! Can I feel the lily in the trees? Can I feel myself in the trees? In the garden? See the lilies lower left!
I’ve found myself doing my PT to “get stronger” toward an unseeable future, rather than just doing it to move, to enjoy the fact that this body can move, today! So, I decided to just get onto my exercise “horse”(it does gallop!) and not time my daily exercise period so much as FEEL it and stop if there’s pain or strong fatigue. How does my body feel as it moves? Is there JOY in the movement? When I swim in the lake, it’s never to “get stronger” but for the pure joy of the movement, the texture of the water, under a beautiful sky.
Today, observing intentions, and asking if they arise from a very kind and open-hearted place. What fuels the intentions? Can I watch intention with kind curiosity free of reactivity, just see it arise, manifest (or not) and pass away. If the intention arises from an old story, can I observe that and not get caught by or pushed into action by the story? Where is freedom? Where is the non-dual?
This blog evolved from where I paused above. Throughout the day, I’ve had an intermittent conversation by text and phone with our son Mike as he climbed 5,367-foot Mount Madison in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, with his small Jack Russell Terrier, Odo (a dog he adopted 5 months ago from a neighbor headed into hospice). This 17-pound bit of joyful determination made it up but is now riding in Mike’s arms! Down seems harder; Odo’s exhausted! Small rocks are huge boulders to him.
I remember climbing this mountain, part of a 5-day camp hiking trip up Mt. Washington, across several presidential range peaks, and finally down Madison, in1957 when I was 14. It was my first long mountain backpacking trip and opened me to the joy and struggle of such a challenge. I’Il never forget either the aching muscles or the beauty and satisfaction …non-dual!
“The view” (of Pure Awareness) is always available when we’re open. (photos from Mike)
That small bit of white, the river you see at mid-lower right, is their summer home.
They made it back about 3AM. Watching with a smile how “mama awareness” stays vigilant.
I was ready to send this, but I have two more days before the office needs it, and I’ve been reflecting recently, am I open to new challenges greeted with joy, or do I contract with a new challenge? Resting in spacious awareness, there’s always joy. The personality self can become caught in fear and its stories. But awareness and mundane mind are one! More on this theme next week.