Song and Meaning

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NON DUALITY FOR THE LAYMAN

by Brian Holmberg

Many of the songs on Fishwagon refer to a worldview known loosely as “Non-Duality”. Because this perspective is probably foreign to many people, I will give a brief synopsis of some of it major points, so that the ideas expressed in some of the songs on Fishwagon can be seen in a clearer light.

Non-Duality is a generic term that represents the common points about existence as expressed in the Upanishads (Eastern Mystical Texts), Taoism, Buddhism, and many other mystical systems. Although these doctrines have different terminology, and approaches, there are essential commonalities that they all share. These common factors have recently been enhanced by the discovery of the evolution of consciousness around 1950, and further developed by Ken Wilber in the late 1970’s.

Some of the basic ideas associated with the viewpoint are:

Our physical world, our very existence is literally God at play, and we are literally that being itself. There is no real separation or boundary in the entire Kosmos (Non-Dual). Although we believe that our being ends at the boundary of our skin, this is just an illusion that we actually maintain unconsciously. As you are aware of, say your fingertips at this very moment, you could just as easily be aware of the clouds in the sky, or the winds blowing on the farthest planet in our universe, for they are just as much you as your fingertips. This belies or shared, common experience but this idea is an uncompromising tenet of Non-Duality.
Since you are the entire Kosmos (always have been, always will be), but you experience yourself as a finite, mortal being, there will always be an incongruity in your identity until we can come to an awakening or realization of our true nature. We are very good as a species at ignoring this, and keep ourselves busy so as to not have to directly face our essential identity.
By way of analogy, its something like this: If you went to sleep one night and had a very long dream about a world, something like ours with beings, like us living there. And as you watched this dream, and its ‘dream characters’ you realized that everything in your dream was the product of your dreaming self, the world, the landscape, and the people in that world. And as you continued in your dream, the people gave themselves names and spoke a language, and interacted with one another, and played games and had fun, and sometimes did bad things and hurt each other. All of this occurring within your dreaming self. But the people in your dream don’t notice you at all –even though you are literally the source of their existence as well as the very existence of their world. And instead of noticing you directly, they made up stories about various Gods who made their world, and who made them, etc., and they go on to make churches, and worship and pay homage to their creators. And as you listen to these stories, you know that are all untrue – YOU are the Source of them and their world.
Our current situation is something like this. We are like those dream characters who have forgotten that we are dreaming ourselves and our world for the fun of it. Before the big bang, there was nothing really going on, and it was boring, so we decided to create a physical universe, and evolve all the way back from primal atoms to God Awareness. Our existence as humans today represents our point in evolution and awakening on the long, sometimes lonely road back home.
The details of stance are actually quite fascinating, and they have been elaborated by Ken Wilber, in many of his books – particularly Up From Eden, and The Atman Project.
It is this incredible story, and the interface of our mundane world vis-à-vis this dream that we are sharing that fuels the lyrics in FISHWAGON, SMOKE FILLED ROOM, BLAKE RAIN, and naturally THE SIMPLE FEELING OF BEING.
FISHWAGON: is a journey, a quest for knowledge about existence and the Sacred. What is this all about? Who is, and where is God? One of the dream characters senses that there is ‘something wrong with the world’, and dares to confront the inner depths of his being (despite their terrifying nature – ‘fight the dragon’), because “there is something he must know”. Getting on the train, on the Fishwagon is a metaphor for a vision quest – and as any good Shaman will tell you they are never without their terrifying aspects. But the rider on the Fishwagon, confronts his fears and learns of the “sacred truth”, namely that God is not out of reach, or dead, but that He is the one having the dream. That’s why he could never find God, because he was that which he was seeking all along. “I am the one that’s never found, not dead, but dreaming”.
lyrics

Ken Wilber had a great quote about this point: “Too close to be grasped, too effortless to be reached, too present to be attained. The Buddha’s attained this, sentient beings never lost it. Who will believe this?”

You can’t find or attain something which you already are.

SMOKE FILLED ROOM
This song is about the flashing realizations back and forth from the mundane to the sacred. (Even though technically ALL is equally sacred, that’s not how we generally experience the world or reality). The metaphor of “Waking Up” and Finding the Way appear. He had a dream; a true nightmare that he never came to the realization of what this is all about. Zombies represent lifeless avatars of the ongoing mundane illusion. There is also a reference to time as it is experienced in Non-Duality as well. There is only the Now, only “simple Moments” in this “Sacred Haze” (an metaphor for our ongoing and distorted dissection of the sacred substrate of reality). A world in which the dream characters have forgotten the dreamer, and replaced him with their own Deity is indeed a nightmare!
lyrics

BLAKE RAIN
William Blake was an English Mystic who saw through the illusion. When he penned his famous lines “To see the world in a grain of sand…, etc”, he was directly conveying the idea that all is sacred, and that we are experiencing reality in very limited fashion through only mundane eyes. When one gains the perspective of the Dreamer, having a Kosmic dream – that we are both of them simultaneously, like a dream within a dream – this moment has been called Realization, or Awakening, or the sound of one hand clapping; and this is the point of the Non-Dual schools. Note that there is nothing that you have to DO- you don’t have to pray, chant, go into a trance or whatever to realize that you are the Dreamer of this all. You are free do any of those if you like, but they are requirements for this “Simple Feeling of Being”. You could indeed, simply hear something as commonplace as the rain falling on the roof, and remember that you are dreaming this, and that you are the rain, and the clouds, and the sky, and the entire Kosmos – always have been, always will be. It’s a lot easier than we could ever have thought. You don’t have to search for the sacred, to look for God anymore! It’s right there at the very tip of your nose, at every simple, sacred moment of you life!

As Dogen has written:

"This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful!
What dreamwalkers we all are
Awakened, the one great truth
Black rain on the temple roof"

When our lives are consumed with our private, little collective dream we call reality – we are indeed Dreamwalkers. We must Awaken to the larger Dream that we are also having at this very moment – and this is the great truth, the Way!

(Plato’s parable of the Cave is also alluded to from the Republic)

THE SIMPLE FEELING OF BEING
And finally Wilber’s quote says it all, so beautifully and eloquently. You are the author of this dream and this Dream. Small d = your inpidual life, big D = the bigger, Kosmic Dream, the container of all the little dreams. You are both at the same time, but have forgotten that you are dreaming it all – like our dream example earlier! Wow! This is the essential interface that has generated all of mankind’s musings about religion and spirituality! Of course, we were present from the start – we were there before the big bang, not our inpidual personalities, but the spirit that animated our being at birth, before we became Joe or Mary, that Spirit was there. So lonely and boring just sitting in the Kosmos, without anyone else to play with – lets make a dream, and a universe, and start an evolutionary process where thinking being would eventually appear, and perhaps even remember one day what this life is all about. “Was it not fun to get lost in the productions of your own wondrous imagination, and pretend it all was other?”

CONCLUSION

Its all about noticing something which has been there all along. It can be tough because its too easy, and not generally part of the everyday experience that we are so accustomed to. By just resting in pure awareness, (relaxing the self-contraction), you have the opportunity to notice the author of this play, you have the opportunity to notice that you are the Kosmic Dreamer having a dream of your own awakening. There’s nothing to grasp for, nothing to look, or listen for, nothing that you have attain because you never lost it.

I hope this clears up some of the ideas in these songs!

By the way, the rest of songs are straightforward!