"Nondual inquiry" is way of coming to understand how experience is actually nondual even now. It doesn't give you better experiences, it gives clarity that experience *is* your very Self. Nondual inquiry demonstrates how experience is sweetly unbroken, because your Self is unbroken sweetness.

Nondual inquiry is an investigation into the nature of experience, the world, body and mind, life and death. Other terms for it include self-inquiry, analytic meditation or koan study, or a Socratic dialog towards self-knowledge. "Nondual" means "not-two," which implies there is no true multiplicity of phenomena. At the conclusion of the inquiry, gone the impressions that there are separate and distinct things, gone is the feeling of a gap between seer and seen. Gone is the anxiety caused by these impressions and feelings. And gone is the sense that there was ever a ego, activities or attributes in the first place. One common way to express this is "Nothing ever happened."

Most people do it for one of two reasons.

(i) It alleviates suffering. That is, inquiry is deeply therapeutic. This is agreed upon by all the world's most beloved saints, sages and philosophers, Eastern and Western, religious and secular. Even a little bit of nondual inquiry makes everyday life sweeter and more peaceful. There is spontaneous acceptance and equanimity.

(ii) For some people, the inquiry generates its own sweetness, quite apart from any later benefit it might bring to the inquirer.

It's a warmth that resembles the familiar and perhaps thrilling feeling of returning home where you are loved. When this is how nondual inquiry feels, it's something you'd rather do than anything else. And because it requires no books or equipment, and no particular physical posture like the lotus position, it can be done almost anywhere.

People who feel drawn this way can find themselves involved in inquiry throughout the day or night when the mind is not otherwise occupied. There's an Indian phrase, "Your head is in the tiger's mouth." It refers this inquiry not letting you go until the sweetness is indistinguishable from experience itself.

There's a wide variety of ways this can be done. You inquire deeply into what life is, what experience is. You focus not on how to have a comfortable life or desirable experiences, but rather on the nature of these things. Are they really what they appear to be?

It needn't be. If it's done only as an intellectual exercise, you're right, it's about as relevant as another term paper. But actually, those who do nondual inquiry find themselves irresistibly drawn to it, almost as if life depended on it. As a child and youth, I found myself in this strange undertaking, years before I ever knew there was a term for it. It felt like a grand adventure, carrying me towards the secrets of the universe. That's how I thought about it, but I was like 11 years old at the time!

Ultimately, it's senseless to speak of progress, there is truly no movement, no inquiry, and no one really performing anything. But while you are drawn to this inquiry, it *will* seem like you are going for a goal, and it will be very difficult not to check for progress.

But don't check too often. Don't check during the same moment you're doing the inquiry itself - save the checking for later. And when you do check, check your background or average psychological state. It's the everyday level that counts. If you must gauge, don't go by your peak experiences, but rather from your baseline experience.

Here are several things that people notice along the way....

Not necessarily, though you might find some helpful pointers from guides who have traveled these byways before you. Pointers can be found through books, friends, gurus, teachers, counselors, parents, children. Even a flower can serve as a pointer. The more you feel the question, the more you'll be inclined towards a teacher.

It's most commonly found in the world's wisdom traditions. Most of the world's great religions have a mystical, esoteric or philosophical side, which includes nondual inquiry. Christianity has its mystical side (including Rosicrucianism), Judaism has Kabbalah, Buddhism has Madhyamika, and Islam has Sufism. Nondual inquiry also wears secular clothing, and can be found in the hints left by Western philosophers, including Plato, Plotinus, Leibniz, Spinoza, George Berkeley, Brand Blanshard, Ludwig Wittgeinstein, or Richard Rorty.

It leads to the end of fear and suffering. It leads to the end of guilt, envy, resentment, grudge-holding, self-doubt. It eradicates the scorekeeping impulse, the one that makes you wonder, "How does this stack up for me?"

Along the way, nondual inquiry makes everyday life more peaceful. You'll discover contentment at times and events that might otherwise have caused anxiety and self-doubt. Equanimity will be your familiar and beloved companion.
And when nondual inquiry has reached its conclusion, it is as though you "see through" the world. The sweetness of the inquiry has spread throughout all of experience. You no longer feel separate and cut off from anything. Experience stops seeming like it is filtered through a veil or screen. Activity is free, open, and ever new. Instead of losing yourself and the ability to function, you gain the world and total spontaneity. You come home, seeing that you never left.

There are thousands of traditional ways of describing this. The descriptions sound abstract, poetic and paradoxical, everything from the universal "awakening" to Zen's "having no more work to do" or Hinduism's "dancing with Shiva."

These are pointers; none of it is literal. Why not? Because you also see through the very seeing - in this way the inquiry deconstructs itself. This sounds abstract, as though there's nowhere to rest. That's just the point! All crutches and reference points are gone, and the joyful thing is that the need for crutches is also gone!

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As paradoxical as it sounds, nondual inquiry is actually one of the traditional ways to experience the truth of the "nothing to do" teaching! The ancient image for this is using a thorn to remove another thorn, then discarding both. The "nothing to do" teaching expresses the insight that the ego doesn't exist as it seems to, and that any method undertaken by the illusory self cannot possibly lead to the end of this same illusory self. A knife cannot cut itself. The eye cannot see itself.

There are two ways of understanding the "nothing to do" teaching, prescriptively or descriptively.

(1) The Prescriptive Sense — In the beginning, most people interpret this teaching prescriptively. When you do, it's natural to want to avoid any practice, method, inquiry, any doing at all. Why? Because you see all doings as falling back into those same methods that cannot possibly work. So what happens? When the yearning to search for the Truth arises, it gets blocked by the new faith in this nothing-to-do teaching. Why expect a thief to catch a thief?

This of course leads to a paradox. To take the teaching prescriptively is to take it as a recommendation for or against something to do! You actively decide not to inquire or meditate or read or whatever. You're still thinking in "doing-mode," and so you begin to do non-doing! It's still a doing, but a more subtle and un-noticed kind. This is a natural and frequent misunderstanding of the teaching.

(2) The Descriptive Sense — The descriptive sense, in a nutshell, points to this, that you're never doing anything, even now. Doings are naturalized. There were never any doings, ever. All supposed doings are actually natural occurrences, analogous to the flowing of water or the falling of a leaf from a tree. So it doesn't matter how your actions are described - washing the dishes, going to the store, or nondual inquiry - none of these is actually performed by an agent. There are no true actions, events or authors.

The descriptive sense of the teaching focuses on the emptiness (or essence-less-ness or non-independence) of all action and all actors. It is a way to point to your ultimate freedom. That is, you are free from being limited as one who acts or decides. This freedom extends to all actions. It is a powerful teaching, and even a casual acquaintance with it can engender more peace, less guilt and worry. No matter what seems to be undertaken, no matter what the sense of effort, frustration, accomplishment, pride, or shame accompanying an action, these aspects are similarly empty of substance and essence. They are not fixed and nailed down.

This emptiness is wonderfully free and thorough. It is the nature of all things - all events, activities, qualities, the self, and the world itself, are equally freedom itself. Nondual inquiry, along with its results, is free as well. So there's no reason not to pursue nondual inquiry or any other method that arises. This is freedom and peace.

Almost any block can be traced psychologically to some kind of fear. Here are two common and understandable ways that fear expresses itself during the inquiry into the ultimate nature of things.

One of the linguistic features of the term "enlightenment" is that it stands for the very highest. In this way, it's similar to the word "here." When Jane and Susan stand face to face and utter the word "here," they are pointing to different geographical spots on the ground. Nevertheless, they're using the word in an identical sense, indicating co-location with the speaker.

"Enlightenment" is similar. Jane and Susan might differ as to just which characteristics constitute enlightenment (Is it to no longer have thoughts? Or to no longer believe thoughts? Does it include the ability to levitate? To see into the future?) But as users of the term, Jane and Susan probably agree whatever the characteristics are, they indicate the highest, the summum bonum. Therefore, as the highest, enlightenment is not something that one would trade away for a gazillion dollars.

This is precisely why fetishizing enlightenment is a misunderstanding. (But it's almost inevitable, so the misunderstanding gets more and more subtle as inquiry proceeds)) No matter what your conception of enlightenment is, if you desire enlightenment in order to serve a further goal, then you're fetishizing it. You're making a tool, a juju or lucky charm out of it. A tool to allow you to remain on the scene with all the comforts of home, but free from fear, insecurity, uncertainty and problems. I've known people who have sought enlightenment for many reasons according to their beliefs, including: it would allow them stop their self-disapproval; it would improve their romantic relationships; it would make them famous and sought-after; it would improve their career. Sometimes the reason for seeking enlightenment is explicitly held, as it was for a friend of mine who sought enlightenment because her guru told her it would bring her that hotly-desired record contract.

And sometimes the ulterior reason for seeking enlightenment is not as close to the surface. One very intelligent and experienced person told me he was interested in knowing the ultimate truth of things. He confidently told me he'd had 20 years of Zen training and was well-prepared, closing in on the very end of things. I asked him why he was interested in the ultimate truth. He said he just was, that it was all that was left for him. I asked him how motivated he was, "How bad do you really want to know?" and he said it was the most important thing in life for him. I was starting to get a feeling about his take on it, and asked him, "If you had a choice, which would you prefer, (A) or (B): (A) to feel a life of emotional bliss and neverending pleasant sensation, or (B) to know the truth?" He paused for about a minute, then replied: "They are the same thing."

He had cleverly fetishized enlightenment by identifying it with his own goals. Accustomed as he was to being in an intense spiritual context, he did the spiritually correct thing by seeking enlgightenment. But he "cheated," redefining enlightenment to suit his purpose: emotional well-being. Being blissed-out certainly isn't how Zen defines enlightenment!

Not that there is a correct and incorrect notion of "enlightenment." That's just it, there isn't. It's one of the vaguest terms in the English spiritual vocabulary, probably edging out "God" for the honor! The word is systematically vague. Its very vagueness and socially-constructed nature are required to permit it to serve its main linguistic purpose: to express all of one's highest spiritual aspirations in a single word. And different people aspire to different things.

Different traditions use the word in different ways. Spiritual schools with an emphasis on psychology will have a mentalistic-sounding definition, yogic schools will have a magical-sounding notion, and nondual paths will have a clever and abstract definition that seems to pull the rug from under your feet. Even if several schools seem to agree on the term, their definitions aren't really expressing a simple true/false sentence "There's a cat on the mat."

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