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Message Nothing to GraspJoan TollifsonNew Sarum Press

NOTHING TO GRASPFirst edition published August 2012 by ND PT   M 2025© Joan Tollifson 2012, 2025© New Sarum Press 2025Author photo: David Lorenz WinstonCover image: Joan TollifsonJoan Tollifson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.All rights reservedNo part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher.N S P | 6 Folkestone Rd. | Salisbury | SP2 8JP United KingdomISBN: 978-1-7385296-5-0 www.newsarumpress.com

No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn’t seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what’s here now, is that possible? —T o n i P a c k e rThat which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva’s progress toward Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all. —Huang Po

vContentsPreface .........................................................viiLife .................................................................1This Is It! ....................................................... 10The Imaginary Problem ................................... 18The Original Face ............................................25Is That All There Is? ........................................28What Is Looking Out of My Eyes? ........................30No Self ..........................................................36Is the Body Real? Am I the Body? ........................44Not Taking Your Life Personally ......................... 49What Is This? .................................................54Not Making Something Out of Nothing ................59Not One, Not Two ...........................................64What Should I Do? ...........................................68Choice and Choicelessness ................................. 74Awareness ....................................................88Is There Anything to Do? ...................................98Control and Surrender ....................................120The Flow: Inhaling and Exhaling ....................... 127What If We Really Are Perfect, Just As We Are? ...132The Pathless Path to Here / Now ........................136The Art of Going Nowhere ................................145Inquiry: What is It? ......................................... 157Turning to Face the Imaginary Tiger .................. 162Am I Enlightened Yet? .....................................164Many Ways Home ........................................... 171The Simplicity of What Is .................................176Just When You Get It, It’s Over! ..........................180Acknowledgments ..........................................183

viiPrefaceThis book is about liberation. That doesn’t mean the end of earthquakes, wars, bankruptcies, unemploy-ment and cancer, and it doesn’t mean a life without heartbreak, depression, anxiety or addiction. It’s about recognizing that this is the Holy Reality, and that the Holy Reality is not somewhere else. It’s the realization that the fundamental problem can only be resolved now, and that actually, there is nothing to resolve. Liberation is finding freedom in limitation and per-fection in imperfection. It is the freedom to be exactly as we are. But what are we? What is real Here / Now? What is life all about? Who is reading these words? Is reading these words an individual choice, or is it the only possible activity of the whole universe at this moment, and is there a difference? Is there a practice that leads to liberation, or does that very idea rein-force the illusion that there is someone who is bound and that liberation is “out there” somewhere in the future? This book explores these questions.It doesn’t aim to provide answers, but rather, to undermine the assumptions behind the questions, to expose the imaginary nature of our apparent prob-lems and dilemmas. This book invites an open listen-ing and looking. It is not about acquiring new beliefs, but rather, it is an invitation to discover what requires no believing in order to be. Joan TollifsonSouthern OregonEarly Spring, 2012

1LifeLife is continually living on life. Life appears in all sorts of forms and shapes. But it is still the same life, the same intelligence-energy. And you are that life.—Sailor Bob AdamsonThe delicacy of late afternoon sunlight on a single trembling leaf, white clouds sliding through the blue sky, children being sold into prostitution, starving refugees fleeing a famine, incredible acts of generosity and kindness, the sinking ache of depression, oil spill-ing into the oceans. Life has so many faces—beauti-ful in one moment, excruciating in the next, horrific beyond comprehension, exquisite beyond words. When it is beautiful, our only suffering is in know-ing it won’t last. When it is ugly, it can feel overwhelm-ing and terrifying. Even if we don’t have to personally experience or witness the most horrific things that are going on, even if we are completely ignorant of such things, we are in fact touched by all of them, for we are not really separate from the people in faraway places or from the oceans and the air we breathe. And we each have our own personal struggles with disap-pointment, loneliness, economic uncertainty, chronic

2joan tollifsonpain, disability, addiction—whatever the particular mix is for each one of us.How do we make sense of all this? What’s it all about? Is there any way out of our suffering or the world suffering, or any way to live through it with-out falling into destructive mind-states like despair, anger, hatred, and self-pity? Like many others, I looked in different directions for answers to these questions. I tried alcohol and drugs, psychotherapy, political activism, meditation, satsang and radical nonduality. Finally I arrived at the place I had never left: the simplicity and immediacy of Here / Now—this that is ever-present and utterly complete in spite of what happens in the movie of waking life and never because of what happens. I still experience moments of heartbreak and dis-couragement, bursts of anger, waves of depression or anxiety, and periodic flare-ups of addictive and com-pulsive behaviors. Perhaps these things happen less frequently, less severely and for shorter duration, but they still happen. And the world at large is still full of suffering and injustice.What does seem to have changed is that there has been a falling away of the thought-sense that I am a separate person in charge of “my life” who is going to eventually perfect myself or the world. There is the realization that life includes the whole show, the light and the dark, that none of it is personal, that all of it is happening effortlessly by itself in the only way possi-ble, and that none of it has any solidity or permanence. There is also clarity about what the unnecessary exer-tion is that gives rise to so much of our human suffer-ing and confusion, how we make ourselves miserable.

3nothing to graspAs this has clarified, there has been a decrease in gul-libility when the siren song of delusion appears. When I find myself thinking that something is lacking or that the fix is “out there” somewhere, there is a greater ability to relax into Here / Now, the place I have never really left. Instead of trying to intentionally fix or improve “myself” or “the world,” I am more open to allowing everything to heal itself in its own way, in its own time, as it does anyway. There is a devotion to the immediacy of life exactly as it is right now, without superimposing any kind of spin. This bare intimacy is neither an effortful, goal-oriented, improvement-seeking exertion, nor is it any kind of passive or fatal-istic resignation. It is an energetic aliveness, an open-ness that includes everything and sticks to nothing. It is not something “you” achieve or acquire, but simply the boundlessness, the bare being that is always already fully present right here, right now.It is a great relief to realize that in this undivided happening, there is no perfection apart from the imperfection, that the light and the dark arise together like the crest and trough of the wave, that they can-not be pulled apart, and to appreciate the holiness of everything, exactly as it is, warts and all. The firm conviction that I know what’s best for the universe seems thankfully to be evaporating. And when it does show up, it has more of an endearing quality—oh look, there goes Joan doing her little dance of concern again.I’ve discovered that there is no end to problems. When we cure one problem, a new one emerges. But this only becomes a source of suffering if we imagine

4joan tollifsonit should or could be otherwise. In fact, the turbulent, cloudy weather is as integral to the whole as the clear, sunny weather. And it’s all a matter of perspective and point of view what we consider sunny. Every time we take a step or scratch our nose, we are killing and maiming millions of microorganisms, but we don’t give this mass killing a second thought. We regard the extermination of a virus or a bunch of cancer cells as a positive thing, and we feel no moral outrage if one ant colony invades and enslaves another ant colony. But our human drama, by contrast, seems serious and full of meaning, and our particular point of view feels very real and “right” to us.In the movie of waking life that starts playing every morning, I seem to be a character in an unfold-ing drama, and whenever I turn on the news, the world seems to be an epic battleground between good and evil. The story is mesmerizing and seems very real. But then magically, every night in deep sleep, the whole movie disappears and I disappear along with it. What remains in deep sleep can never be perceived or conceived. It is the groundless ground, that which is prior to consciousness, that which is conscious-ness. In night dreams and in the dream-like movie of waking life, this groundlessness appears as infinite forms. When we look closely, we see that these forms are nothing but continuous change, and that no solid, independent persisting thing ever actually forms except conceptually, as an idea. The whole show is one seamless, ever-changing, ungraspable happening: subatomic particles waving in and out of existence, planets circling the sun, hur-ricanes sweeping across the ocean, birds migrating,

5nothing to graspants building tunnels and hills, white blood cells battling an infection, humans clear-cutting a forest, building a meditation center, writing books, shopping for groceries, driving to work, falling in love, get-ting angry, waking, dreaming, daydreaming, wak-ing up from daydreaming, thinking, remembering, imagining, hearing the traffic, reading these words. Only when we think about this seamless flow and put it into words, does it apparently get broken up into subjects and objects, nouns and verbs, causes and effects, before and after, good and bad. Only when we think, does there seem to be an unfolding narrative happening in time with “me” at the center of the story, an apparently separate unit of consciousness (a mind) encapsulated inside an apparently separate body, someone who must make something of myself, use my gifts to help the world, be a success, do the right thing, and perhaps get enlightened. But if we look backward with awareness for the source of any impulse, thought, desire, intention, action or reaction that occurs, no point of origination can be located or found. We have no idea what our next thought will be. Recent brain research indicates that by the time a thought such as, “I need to feed the cat,” shows up in consciousness, the action this thought appears to initiate is in fact already under-way in the body. In the blink of an eye, the forms of this moment vanish into thin air, replaced instantly by an entirely new universe. When we look closely at any apparent form (a chair, a person, a thought, a feeling, a sensation), it’s obvious that none of what appears has any substantial, persisting reality. Everything is changing, dissolving into something else. It is all a

6joan tollifsonshimmering, dream-like appearance, vanishing as soon as it appears. Everything is changing, and yet paradoxically, Here / Now is ever-present. Whatever time of day or night it appears to be, whatever year it is, however old I seem to be, what-ever location is showing up, it is always happening Here / Now—there is only this timeless, placeless, ownerless eternity that never comes, never goes, and never stays the same. This aware presence, this immediacy, this seamlessness that I call Here / Now is the water in every wave. This moment, just as it is, is unavoidable and inescapable. We typically imagine ourselves to be an endur-ing, independent entity with free will, a separate fragment apart from the whole, struggling to control our life and survive as this conceptual form called “me” that we think is real. We fear death and hope that “my” consciousness and my story will continue on in some kind of hopefully pleasant after-life. But this picture of our situation is as ill-conceived as the one our ancestors had not that long ago when they feared that they might fall off the edge of the earth if they sailed out into the ocean. When we truly see that there is no separate, independent, persisting form of any kind—that no actual borders or seams exist between subject and object, self and not-self, birth and death—that there is only this ever-changing, ever-present boundlessness—then there is no body and no mind apart from the totality. Just as there is no edge to the earth, there is no independent or persisting someone who is born and who eventually dies. There is only this inexplicable thorough-going

7nothing to graspflux or boundless presence, just as it is, from which nothing stands apart—vast emptiness flowering into this ever-changing appearance.We are each much more (and much less) than what we have imagined ourselves to be. We are each the unnamable presence-awareness that has no center, no owner, no location, no boundary, no form, no beginning and no end. We are each the whole uni-verse and what remains when the universe ends. And at the same time, quite undeniably, we each seem to be playing the part of a particular character, and each of us is apparently watching and acting in a completely unique movie of waking life. Like snowflakes, no two movies are exactly alike. But we might notice that this character is a kind of intermittent, ever-changing, mirage-like appearance that comes and goes, along with all the other characters and the ever-changing scenery in this dream-like movie of waking life, and that it is only in the movie that we seem to be a bunch of separate people with separate bodies, separate minds and separate movies. We could say that everything is the play of consciousness, whatever “consciousness” is. The truth is, life is a mysterious event that can never really be captured by any scientific or metaphysical formulation. And yet being here now—this present happening—is undeniable, obvious and unavoidable. It is only mysterious when we try to explain it or make sense of it conceptually. I’ve noticed that whenever suffering or confu-sion appears, it means that consciousness is lost in thought, entranced in a kind of hypnotic dream-world. It has forgotten that it is the whole ocean, and

8joan tollifsonit is identifying itself as a particular wave and then trying desperately to survive as that wave, trying to be a successful wave. It is even seeking the ocean! When there is a recognition that no wave exists apart from the ocean, when there is no imaginary separa-tion between “me” and this present happening, suf-fering ends. The problem vanishes, and I vanish as that imaginary somebody who seemingly needs to make something of myself and save the world and fig-ure everything out and shift into some higher state of consciousness. There is simply this present moment, just as it is. This waking up from the dream of separation can only happen now, not forever-after or in the future, and it isn’t so much something that happens as it is the utter simplicity of Here / Now, just as it is. This simple, bare being is incredibly obvious and actually unavoidable. It seems elusive only because it is so close at hand, so all-inclusive. It’s not a matter of understanding all this intel-lectually, but rather, of recognizing what requires no understanding, what is truly inconceivable but at the same time completely obvious and totally unavoidable. It is about recognizing the nonconceptual immediacy that is right here, right now. And actually, this recog-nition is never not here, for nothing is not this. Even the thoughts and stories that seem to take us away are nothing other than this seamless happening—they are momentary appearances in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of Here / Now—bursts of energy with no inherent form or enduring existence. The Holy Reality is truly unavoidable, even though it can seem-ingly be obscured or overlooked. Liberation is not the

9nothing to graspattainment or acquisition of something new, and it is not the result of a cause, but rather, it is the ever-present, undivided immediacy from which nothing stands apart. Liberation is really a non-happening, a shiftless shift, or as they say in Zen, a gateless gate. It is Here / Now.

10This Is It!We habitually tend to think that “this isn’t it.” Identi-fied as a separate fragment, we inevitably feel incom-plete and vulnerable. We are deeply convinced that something is missing, that things are not quite right. Above all, we feel convinced that “I” am not entirely okay. We hear that “this is it” or that “everything is perfect just as it is,” and we cannot believe that this could possibly be true. We humans seem to have an intense desire for things to be different than they are. Maybe this is how we have evolved, through our urge to explore and our curiosity about what is around the bend. Desire and fear are part of our survival system, and in a biologi-cal sense, they serve us well. Our ability to identify errors and envision new possibilities has allowed us to survive and prosper. But these same abilities also seem to get us into self-defeating quandaries that no other animal faces. We not only desire a nourishing meal and a warm place to sleep like any other animal, but we may also desire things that will kill us like cigarettes and crack cocaine. Fueled by a mix of ordinary desires and fatal attractions, humans have come up with an entire industry devoted to creating unnecessary desire and stirring up a false sense of lack, and much of the

11nothing to graspworld is now dominated by an economic and political system that survives by encouraging suicidal forms of consumption, an addictive cycle that appears to be destroying the very earth upon which we depend for our survival. Crack cocaine and cigarettes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kinds of self-destructive muddles that no other animal has enough brains to conjure up. Of course, all of this is no less natural than the destructive activities of locusts, viruses, cancer cells, parasites, wild fires, hurricanes, exploding suns, ice ages or stray meteorites smashing into planets.Although we often think of ourselves as some-thing outside of nature or beyond nature, or perhaps as some kind of unnatural aberration; in fact, our complex brains and our human activity are as much an expression of nature as anything else. Our sky-scrapers, highways and weapons of mass destruction are every bit as natural as beaver dams, ant hills and bee stings. And likewise, modern medicine, political movements fighting for social justice, spiritual prac-tices such as meditation and books like this one are also an expression of nature, just as the white blood cells battling an infection in the body are an expres-sion of nature. Everything is included in what is. But because of our ability to engage in abstract thought and our ability to remember the past and imagine the future, we humans are always getting the idea that something is missing. We think this unsettling, gnawing sense of lack might be satiated if only we had a new car, a better job, a bigger house, a different mate, an end to arthritis, another café latte, a more just social-economic system, or a magnificent

12joan tollifsonenlightenment experience. There’s nothing wrong with wanting or having any of these things, but we suffer when we imagine that these things will truly resolve our fundamental unease or bring us real hap-piness and peace of mind. Inevitably, we are disap-pointed. What we most deeply desire is actually very close at hand, here and now. It is what we are, what we cannot not be: the beingness, the aliveness, the presence, the emptiness that doesn’t depend on what form this moment takes, whether it is a new car or a flat tire, for the real source of true happiness, peace and freedom is equally present in every form. What am I talking about?This! Right here. Right now. The aliveness and immediacy of this present experiencing, the know-ingness of being present and aware, this inescapable Here / Now—this that you always already are and cannot not be—the bare actuality of just this, exactly as it is.Still not sure what I mean? For a few minutes, after you read this paragraph, put the book down and simply be present without doing anything special. Feel the breathing. Notice the sounds of traffic, wind, birds singing, children playing, planes flying overhead, whatever you are hearing. Feel the sensations in the body. Enjoy the shapes, colors and movements that are appearing as pure visual sensation without labeling them and trying to make sense of them. Whenever you notice you are thinking, if you can, let the thoughts go and return to this simple, bare, naked experiencing of the present moment. Allow your experience to be exactly the way it is, however it is. You’re not trying to get