The Homeland of the Self

There has never been any real division

Nic asked, “How do we cease conceptualization and become one with the unnamable void?”

Louie Wing said, “First of all, you do not ‘become one with the void’. You are the void. Awakening is just realizing the fact. The unnamable void is your own mind. When you conceptualize, you are abstracting partial aspects from the whole. That is, you are dividing the one true reality into this and that, self and other. This can be done skillfully only when you realize that in reality, there are no such divisions.

“When you cease conceptualizing, you realize that your own awareness is pure, clear, and luminescent, that it is the unnamable void. You then grasp the fact that all the myriad things are not separate from the void, but are in fact the void itself. All the myriad things are nothing other than your own miraculous awareness, which is infinitely vast and eternally present.

“Once you realize your own identity with the unnamable void, you realize that there has never been any real division between things and times, self and other-than-self. All such divisions are merely delusions based on conceptualization. Then, knowing your own unity with all things and events, you enter any environment and participate in any activity without ever leaving what Dogen called, ‘the homeland of the self’.”

~The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing Peace, Ted