The essential function of a spiritual guide is not, as I see it, to give instructions, practices, advice, solace, answers, solutions to problems, and so forth. It is rather to allow the total situation, as it is manifesting right now in us and around us, to reveal itself as it is and, if questioned about it, to point out as clearly as possible what is actually going on to whoever is interested in listening and looking.
– Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence
Toni Packer was a Zen teacher who left Zen to pursue Krishnamurti-inspired inquiry.
I wonder, nobody, which part of this excerpt are you interested in focussing on?
The part that refers to the “function of a spiritual guide”; or the part that refers to the “total situation, as it is manifesting right now”?
That is: are you suggesting that we need a spiritual guide to help us do this? - or are you asking if (without depending on a spiritual guide) we can do this ourselves, in our relationships with each other?
I am interested in looking at Toni’s statement “to allow the total situation, as it is manifesting right now in us and around us, to reveal itself as it is.”
What is the total situation?
Can it really reveal itself as it is? What is ‘as it is?’
What role do we play in the revelation? Do we need to do anything?
So the totality of the ‘total situation’ is me-dependent? The totality is in the eye of the beholder?
If say Jimmy and Sally experience the same situation and Jimmy sees (hears, whatever) something Sally doesn’t, it is not part of the totality of the situation?
Is there a total situation that exists independently of the one who is experiencing it?
If by “total situation” you mean the totality of what one is aware of presently, then it does not exist independently of that one. But you need to ask Tony what she means by “total situation”.
I’m not sure what she meant, though I suspect she meant the totality of what we can see of the dynamics of the situation. Here’s more from the same passage:
As the years go by I am learning more and more what it is not. The essential function of a spiritual guide is not, as I see it, to give instructions, practices, advice, solace, answers, solutions to problems, and so forth. It is rather to allow the total situation, as it is manifesting right now in us and around us, to reveal itself as it is and, if questioned about it, to point out as clearly as possible what is actually going on to whoever is interested in listening and looking. The spiritual guide’s function is not just to talk out of remembrances of past experiences, not simply to use descriptions or give explanations, certainly not to “teach you.” It is the complete entering into what is happening right here, lovingly, without any resistance, letting the meeting together percolate spontaneously—letting it all become transparent and express itself in words that arise freely, without hanging on to the words. Words can be changed. Nothing that is happening is permanent, and all is taking place in empty space without borders—“empty” meaning the absence of a self-centered network confining and fragmenting the space. When that network is in abeyance and the brain is awake, then there is the clarity to see people and things just as they are. In emptiness nothing collides with anything. Empty space does not resist the free movement of infinite happenings. In listening, speaking, and acting out of this common ground, we can awaken to the joy of wholeness—our true home.
In the question itself it refers to what is “manifesting right now in us and around us”.
Us here is ‘you’ and ‘me’ (or anyone else responding to the question). So it means whatever the total situation is - inwardly or outwardly - relative to you, me or another.
There may be a total situation that exists in itself (God? emptiness? the universe? the absolute ground?); but there is no total situation for any of us (for ‘you’ or for ‘me’) in the abstract.
Yes. Although in the new passage excerpted by nobody it says
Meaning that when the active movement of the ‘me’ is at least somewhat quiescent, then one’s brain is able to see, hear, be aware - of whatever the situation is - much more lucidly, clearly.
It’s true that one is more sensitive sometimes than usually, but I can’t say if I’ve ever had the experience of being so lucid and clear that there was no me. And if it did happen, would I have a memory of it?:
Nobody introduced the passage I quoted, so I was just trying to relate it to what had already been said. Earlier nobody had asked - as one of his supplementary questions -
(‘revelation’ here meaning the revelation of the total situation).
So I was relating the second excerpt of nobody’s to this earlier question, which might be expressed thus:
is there something that we can do to permit, allow, make possible the revelation of the total situation?
According to the passage, there may be something we can do, but it is not a positive action. It is a negative action. That is, to put it in a question form:
can the sense of ‘me’ be relatively quiescent, so that the brain has more space, more lucidity (clarity), to take in the world around it and the world within it?
For the time being - for where we are in the dialogue so far - we are surely referring to a relative quiescence of the kind you mention, when one is more available to the inner and the outer situation.
When someone asks for instructions from their Guru, that a question is being asked is not the whole situation. For example, there are a load of presuppositions about authority and probably subconscious motivations of self,