The Returning Way
Table of contents
  1. The floor
  2. Attention and Love
  3. The Ten-Second Returni
  4. The Sittingii
  5. Metta and Tongleniii
  6. One Thing Eateniv
  7. The God Unfedv
  8. The Ruined Ordinaryvi
  9. The Bird Gatevii
  10. The Open Windowviii
  11. Boundaries and Thresholds
  12. The Hearth Boundaryix
  13. When Intensity Speaksx
  14. True Namingxi
  15. The Two Shoresxii
  16. The Rite of the Near Otherworldxiii
  17. The Width of the Roomxiv
  18. Relation and Repair
  19. Feed the Guest, Keep the Doorxv
  20. The Bowl of Namesxvi
  21. The Watchxvii
  22. The Mending Tablexviii
  23. Who Answers to Youxix
  24. Be Beside Mexx
  25. The Webxxi
  26. The Mirror at Four in the Morningxxii
  27. Coming Back Inxxiii
  28. Direction and Uselessness
  29. The Letter to the Guardianxxiv
  30. The Star Ledgerxxv
  31. The Map Without a Permitxxvi
  32. The Feast of Enoughxxvii
  33. The last pages
  34. Other ways throughxxviii
  35. When the practice must endxxix
  36. A blessingxxx
Practices

The Map Without a Permit

The point is to find where you are on someone else's map and then put it down — because the map is good, and it is not a permit.

Use this on the morning after a revelation, the year after the underworld, or the day somebody calls you enlightened.

You need a pen, a page, one hour, a map of stages that someone else drew, and the people who have lived in the wake of it.

iName which map. A map is any ladder someone else built to tell you how far along you are. The alchemical operations. The jhānas. The Progress of Insight. Individuation. The twelve steps. The stages of grief. Any scheme of stages you already half-believe. Write its name at the top of the page. Half-believing is enough; you do not have to be a devotee.

iiRead it. The stages, in order — not the summary you carry in your head.

iiiLocate yourself honestly. Which stage you are in, by the map's own description and not by your preference. Write the number or the name. Include the possibility that you are earlier than you would like. If you catch yourself reaching two stages forward because the map embarrassed you, write the honest one first and the wish second, and note that they are not the same.

ivWhat it confers. Write it out. And the answer is: nothing. Not rank. Not authority over anyone else's account of themselves. Not exemption from anything you owed before you picked up the map. Check it against your best day this year — the map did not carry you up. Write the sentence: "This gives me nothing."

vAsk the people who have lived in its wake. Ask them: "Am I easier to correct? Am I easier to refuse? Does my peace require everyone else to stay calm? Who cleans up after my awakening?"

Listen without grading the witness. Write what they say under the sentence, with the names and the things you still owe.

If there is nobody in the wake to ask, the practice is still whole: name the map, locate yourself, write that it confers nothing, put it down, act unpermitted. Being alone with it is not the same as being cleared by it, and the map still gives you nothing.

viPut the map down for a stated period. A month, a season. If the Work has depth, let it show as shade somebody else can sit in. Hold the door. Wash the cup. Make the call. Take no rank.

One instruction, flat.

Do not tell another person where they are on it.

Not to encourage them, not to diagnose them, not as a kindness. You do not know, and the telling is the permit you just gave back.

viiAct unpermitted. You have the map's word for where you are and none of its authority, and the stage never licensed a next step and does not now. So take the next real thing — the conversation, the application, the rest — and do it as an ordinary person in the middle of a week, with nothing above you saying you may.

Once in a year is enough, unless somebody has just called you enlightened.