(Excerpts from Paul's forthcoming book)
Preface
This book is first and foremost a book of poetry.
By poetry, I mean that idiosyncratic dance, with what
is fundamentally inexpressible, but which leaves us
mysteriously revived and encouraged about the uncertain
prospects for our existence here. This book began as an evening presentation in which I gathered together several poems as the basis for a dharma talk. This grew into a small selection of poems entitled Not By Knowing, which in turn grew into this book. As I set out deliberately to write a commentary for each poem I would sometimes find myself writing instead a commentary for a poem not yet in the collection. And so this book guided me in its growth, and it has been a pleasurable friendship.
The book is a bit of a mongrel and, as such, may not really find its home anywhere, unless you are kind enough to take it into your heart. Poems do not need commentaries, especially by the author, and in presenting them in this way I am compromising their free-standing right to sink or swim. I admit it. The particular poems were gathered from many periods of my writing expressly to be offered as a sacrifice to the greater whole that this book is intended to be. Thus this book will have to be the poem.
In the second section the poems have been printed separately from the commentaries; and if you can forebear from jumping into the first section I suggest that you consider approaching the poems first, and take some time to make their acquaintance on their own terms - or on your own terms. A poem is like one half of a torn treasure map, meant to be completed in the reader's mind. There is no need to shortchange that relationship. No need to rush to the commentaries. But when you do arrive at a commentary, I hope you will be able to experience it as an extension of that same jagged line, that mysterious half of the treasure map; one that now adds new clues and new value to the complex (or deceptively simple) code that speaks through the poem. So that when you approach the poem again it echoes that much more.
I really would prefer this book to be very light; just a quick brush with the wand of consciousness, as poetry can be. The poems are really all proclamations of "good news." And, as such, they are all basically the same good news. The commentaries really want to be poetic extensions or play upon the same good news. They are not interested in philosophy as such. If this were a gallery, most of these commentaries would be watercolors. In a few, however, the paint is layered rather thick. This is especially true of the five longer commentaries, The Prajnaparamita in Eight Lines, Nothing Knows, Just Sitting, Ho!, and The Congo Women. I did not wish to be gratuitously academic or expository; but I let myself become more expository in some instances for the sake of the overall "calling" of the book as that made itself known to me. For the good news wanted to declare itself in every manner. I tried to allow a few of the commentaries to carry a little extra weight for the rest of the book, so that the others were free not to carry that weight.
Thus, though some commentaries are dense and some are light, there is some dialogue and, I hope, fresh air blowing between them. This is a many-course dinner. There is food here for the intellectual mind; there is food here for the poetic mind; there is food here for no mind. I can only pre-apologize if my humbler or more generous intentions lead unskillfully to any pedagogic bombast; or pray at least that any such instances are balanced by the occasional poetic leap; and that poetic leaps, in turn, are balanced by the simple and the accessible. And that as you slowly roll the stew around in your mouth it will ultimately prove digestable. I do make leaps; perhaps more than I realize; perhaps outrageous leaps. And if you are able to leap with me, then you can consider this all to be spiritual discourse. If the leaps don't work for you, if you can't follow me there, then perhaps you'll be generous enough to chalk it up to poetic license.
There is something wanting to be conveyed here. It is conveyed directly, in part, I hope, through the use of words spoken with some clarity. It is conveyed indirectly, in part, in the integrated whole or the overall, even subliminal, impression made by the book. There is a repetitive theme running through all the poems and commentaries, and I hope they will each lend support to each other, so that your mind needn't struggle too long with one. Just as with a crossword puzzle you only linger so long on one word until you allow other words to help fill in the gaps. One whole begins to assemble itself, perhaps even subliminally. I'd like that.
Dharma is a Sanskrit word with many meanings and shades of meaning. In Buddhism it is best known as referring to the essential truth of things, as expounded in the Buddhist teachings. So Buddha preached the Dharma, but, it is said, so do rocks and stones. I have several decades of poems waiting to be published, but somehow this book happened instead. It is my Dharma song to you, distilled from my presently sixty-two years. Everything written herein is an expression of my own personal and direct experience. But then, any true poet should be able to say the same thing.
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The Drifter
the moonlightleaning against the old
rail fence
acquires no fame
he drifts into
town
on the strains
of an old drinking
tune
and will slink
into morning unsung
as split paint
only a cricket
waked from the shadowed
grass
calls to his love
Commentary: The Drifter
The moonlight is leaning against the old rail fence. The moon is imaged as a drifter who's wandered into town, a bit intoxicated perhaps, and is spread out against the ancient contours of the world - this old rail fence. Who wouldn't be intoxicated on a night like this? This drifter is intoxicated with his own light and the way it lights up the world. In Sufi poetry wine or intoxication represents the delights of luminous reality. In Buddhist poetry the moonlight is our awakeness, or Buddha nature; the absolute truth that underlies - or enlightens - our relative experience of existence.
In one zen poem it said: "The absolute fits the relative like a box and its lid." No doubt a fine-crafted Chinese or Japanese box - not a hair can seperate this perfect fit. Or how about as perfect a fit as a drunk leaning against an old rail fence. No one can pry them apart, any more than you can seperate the fence from the moonlight that is falling upon it. Is there any separation?
But is the moonlight any more reputable than that poor old drunk? If you yourself stood out there, lost in the radiant moonlight, just leaning against the old rail fence, do you think you're going to acquire any fame? This moonlight, this illumination which is not seperate from the world, but which is not given witness by the world, threads itself through our awareness with occasional moments of revelation, uplifting our lives with its hidden promise - even if only subliminally, as with the distant strains of an old drinking tune, but never quite getting front and center recognition. Never truly acquiring any fame in our worldly eyes.
From our ordinary point of view, we strive to acquire some fame, some respectability, some justification in the eyes of the world that will make our lives meaningful. Well then, we'd best find something reputable to do - not this moonlight serenade that adds nothing to the gross national product. For the one who is drunk in the moonlight, there is nothing to acquire.
Maybe the moon leans against this fence every night and sings her heart out. But there's no fame for drifters. He's not going to make it onto the city council, or into the Rotary Club news or Who's Who, or even into the entertainment section of the local newspaper. Nor does he have a chance in the art world. Even if he paints the whole nighttime with his radiant presence, by morning there is just so much spilled paint; like a sand painting swept away and wholly unmarketable. And when the day's buisness resumes, there is not a word of him in the press.
This moonlight is always against the old rail fence, and it will never acquire fame. Still, some small creature hidden in the grass - maybe me - maybe you - maybe the soul - may chance to become awake in the beautiful moonlight and will be inspired to call out to his love - maybe an evocation of praise or longing - maybe through the creation of something beautiful. Is it to the moonlight itself he calls? Is it to his lady love? The poem doesn't say. On a night like this it is all the same love.
And that is simply how it is.
Good News
Disregarding dreams,Transparency is working
Even when we're thick.
This is like sunlight
Filtering through a lead room
As if it were glass.
Then only the lead
Believes in its heaviness
While the worlds rejoice.
It lives the perfect
Principle of nothingness
In which it rests,
Creating its dreams
Of lead in a river of
Shining emptiness
No wonder the sun
Shines anyway. The grass is green.
It has always been
Transparently the
Same. That day we are awake
To our beginning.
Commentary: Good News
Disregarding dreams, the one same light, the one same transparency, is still the case. Only our attention is turned from it, and so preoccupied with giving solidity to a world of thought forms, that we naturally get a little thick. As in the idiom, "he's a little thick." Meaning he doesn't see what's right in front of him.
Our thoughts are as natural as anything. They are just part of the natural radiance of that transparency itself. But our consciousness has the capacity to be hypnotized by their creative playfulness, so entranced or identified with the worlds they create - the seemingly concrete 'worlds of lead' - that we don't notice the light shining through. And our thoughts may take us into the suffering world of seperateness, isolation, desire and conflict. How is it that the joy-of-being can dream suffering? This is perhaps the most ancient koan. The Buddha's great revelation was that all things are inherently pure, transparent and enlightened from the very beginning. We already live that perfect fact of no-thing-ness. There are no separate concrete things fixed unto themselves, distinct or isolated or other than the transparency of the whole, perfectly radiating, manifesting, and displayed as all things out of the shining emptiness.
It is not the world that is illusion. The world is a radiant arising. It is only the tendency of the mind to project and fixate that causes us to see it in illusory terms. It takes only a little relaxation of the mind's fixation - its enchantment with spinning dreams of lead - to awaken to what has been here from the beginning. Can you imagine if the sunlight or the grass growing was dependent on our state of mind? That would truly be a disaster. Can you imagine if the perfectly penetrating and transparent radiance of the original pure light of being was itself dependent on our state of mind? Fortunately, it is not. I thought that was pretty good news.
Thinking, not thinking
Thinking, not thinking, the same light shines.Moods or their absence are the same wine.
No falling away and nothing to be fixed.
No form of turbulence can change the sea.
Illuminated shadows have no shape.
The moonlight has no quarrel with the moon.
No waves are breaking on an absent shore.
All paths, all dharmas, have already died.
Warmth and coolness play upon my skin.
Moonlight is laughing in the world of clouds.
Commentary: Thinking, not thinking
When we first begin a meditation practice we may be motivated by a desire to bring peace to our restless minds. We may even have a desire for something called "liberation" or "enlightenment." And we may naturally judge the "success" of our meditation by our ability to "focus" or to still the mind. Our experience and judgment of "success" or "failure" in our meditation may become one more go-round of the restless mind, and our desire for enlightenment may become one more picture or expectation or anxiety for the mind to fixate on.
Over years of practice the mind indeed becomes more stable and the ability to concentrate or to enter into stillness becomes natural. Nevertheless the mind is still capable of being quite active, and just as happy to seek all kinds of distractions. One morning I may sit down to profound stillness; another morning I may be no more than an unpaid babysitter for the antics of my mind in the playpen of the meditation cushion. The curious thing is that over the years it makes less difference. We discover that the growth in our meditation practice is characterized not always, or necessarily, by the absence of mental activity, but by its insubstantiality. That while the shadow-dance of the mind continues, there is another light of presence, another light of being, that continues to shine through and is never really diminished, even by distraction. And that thinking and not thinking are both creatures of the same light. The distinction of thinking or not thinking, or good or bad meditations, even of meditation or not meditation, melts away.
By that same token, moods and emotional states are experienced as ripples in the dance of one same energy; or as various boquets arising from one same wine. We are more likely simply to taste the wine than to read the various labels that come printed on the bottles. The idea that one state or another takes us closer to, or farther away from, some imagined goal, or constitutes a falling away from some ideal state that thus needs to be restored or repaired, also becomes increasingly obsolete. We more easily perceive and abide in the ocean of being itself, and are less troubled that any form of turbulence could disturb the nature of the ocean.
Before we begin to practice, we naturally give reality and authority to our thoughts, as if they were independent and commanding entities that could define our reality for us. But as we simply allow the light of our empty awareness, or awakeness, to shine, thoughts lose all shape and substance, or any defining authority over our awareness. If you shine a light on a shadow to see it more clearly, there's no shadow at all.
We may begin to perceive, in fact, that thoughts are simply a play of the emptiness itself - just another radiant arising of the original light of our awareness, like a rainbow produced by the refraction of light, playful and ungraspable. There is no separation and no quarrel between the absolute source and its relative manifestation. Remember our drunk on the old rail fence?
At some level even the notion of distinction of source and manifestation vanishes. There is no shore of relativity and no waves, no light of truth, to fall upon that shore. The notion of path, of separation, of union, of dharma, have already died because they have never truly been born as independent realities. But lest we fall into the next trap of a one-sided image of absolute nothingness: that so-called nothingness is not other than the actual relative world of our every moment experience; the familiar world of opposites, of hot and cold playing on our skin. Thus this cloudy night sky of relativity is shot through with the laughter of moonlight.
The Prajnaparamita in Eight Lines
The way things areis what there is.
The way things are
is what is meditating.
The way things are
sometimes likes to say "I."
But "I" is only
the way things are.
Neither holding nor rejecting "I,"
O friend,
who can know the way things are?
The way things are
is not a way.
The way things are
is not a thing.
The way things are
is what there is.
Commentary: The Prajnaparamita in Eight Lines
Sakyamuni Buddha, or Buddha Nature itself. Brother sun, sister moon; comfort and discomfort; hot and cold - are these also our beloved little Shakya?
There is the old zen recounting of the master and his disciple sitting together in the summer heat of southern China. The disciple observed: "In this region the summers are brutally hot, the winters unbearably cold." His teachers replied, "Why don't you go to that place where there is no hot or cold?" The student asked, "Where is that place where there is no hot or cold?" And the master replied, "In the summer, we sweat. In the winter, we shiver."
Certainly in the summer we will sweat. And in the winter we will shiver. And we are also free to do the things that are done in response to that. We step into the shade. We fan ourselves. Or we find a warmer coat or build a fire. That is the simple realm of how things are. But once we seize on the words "hot" or "cold," that opens the door to too hot or too cold, the realm of our subjective approval or disapproval; the realm of attachment to our projections; the realm of suffering. If our responses arise from the full embrace of the way things are, we achieve our freedom. If we inwardly resist the way things are as the basis for our action, we achieve only more suffering.
The teacher is kindly inviting his disciple back out of the tyranny of his objective categories, the separative activities of his mind, and his suffering. At the same time he is inviting him back to the infinite, intimate, ungraspable dimension of the way things are, here and now, beyond the mind's projections and the mind's stories. The way things are is already prajnaparamita - the wisdom, or truth, that is beyond the realm of all our concepts and all our suffering. The very ground of our awareness is not other than prajnaparamita; not other than the way things are. It is the naked surrender, or offering, of our awareness, in simple openness to the way things are, that actualizes Buddha's third and fourth noble truth: liberation.
I can still subject myself to the mental tyranny of hot and cold. But not on the occasion of writing this poem. That imaginary distance vanished, along with the imaginary me. I was like the man in the ancient fable who, wandering in the woods, comes upon an undiscovered race of people who are entirely happy and entirely at peace - although having once returned to his daily life is never able to find his way back. Fortunately, the way back is given to us by our generous teachers - such as each sound that falls upon our hearing when we are just listening.
This poem is really an invitation to investigation. Taking the first line, "the way things are is what there is", I might tell you as a student, "Go home and take a week, and see if you can find an exception to this, and come back and let me know. But remember to include everything!" You're sure to end up with a smile on your face. Why? Because in the process, the nagging unconscious distinction between "what is" and "what ought to be" melts away. Or regarding the second line, "The way things are is what is meditating," I might ask, "See if you can find anyone other than that." And the nagging distinction between "ourselves" and "what is" melts away.
Strictly speaking, however, we are not normally capable of such an investigation. To be able to investigate truly we must "employ" a naked awareness that is not lost in images or abstractions. Normally we live within such a realm of images and abstractions and shuffle them around and come to new conclusions that are just new images and abstractions. But in truth, we have no actual or direct experience of what we are thinking or talking about. That is the dream world - the world of delusion - we all inhabit. We casually speak of "me," "you," "the mind," and all the contents of our feelings and beliefs as if they were real experiences, as if they were more than reifications and images that refer to no independent, fixed or concrete reality.
Do you know what a "me" is? Me is a complex of images and assumptions that build and build; that we identify with and live with daily. But what does it actually refer to? To truly investigate this, the mind must be still for a while. Awareness must function.
Let's just sit - until we can distinguish the animated cartoon of our mental activity from the clear, steady light of the bulb that projects the images upon the screen. Until there is just that natural ground of awareness illuminating all phenomena. Until even the idea of restlessness, the sensations of restlessness, and all our reactions to the ideas and the sensations, are just so many more leaves stirring in the wind. Until the play of light and shadow in the room is no different than the sensation of your backside on the cushion, the subterranean call of the ache in your back or the thing you left undone. Now the secret joys and generosity of the breath, now the bird call, now the sound of rain, the call of wood and carpet and the geometric array of forms, the movement of thought or desire or subtle trepidation, the thought "I," all empty into the common fabric of the way things are, ungraspable, all as expression of the one ground of being, which is both and neither subjective nor objective, according to no fixed idea, not of light or dark, not even of being or non-being.
Only then may we discover whether or not this "I," this curious, creative, longing and long-suffering "I," this I-hymn of creation, is anything other than "the way things are," which includes the capacity to say "I." Gone then is the need to attach to this I or to reject this I; nor indeed is there anyone to do it. Gone then is the need or the ability to "know" the way things are; nor is there anyone to know it.
Apart from the mind's projection, the way things are is not a way. "No suffering, no path, no attainment of wisdom," says the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. The way things are is not a thing. "No realm of sight, taste, touch, consciousness," it says again. So even the phrase "what there is" must point beyond itself to a complete and inclusive emptiness or openness. This empty and open realm is the light of our own awareness. It is the complete availability to mystery, to radiance without contraction or separation, to unknowing awakeness, empty of projection, able to play in this moment.
Whitman's Truth
Whitman knew who he was.One voice without a second.
He was beyond fear of
contradiction. He knew that his
most outrageous utterances
were no more outrageous
than the rush of a brook or a clap
of thunder. And that no law
kept him from naming the
truth, which was in immediate
supply forever. And
while others diminished them-
selves, shrinking
from truth till it became a cage
to pray to, Whitman
filled out the full dimension
of his stride, knowing
truth as the swing of his arms
and the taste of supper.
No wonder he could sing.
Commentary: Whitman's Truth
Here Whitman appears as the embodiment of the one who has closed the distance between "the ways things are and what there is." Here there is no objectification, no separation, no comparison, no contradiction. He knows himself as the one who has no second. The one without a second is not the ego. It is the one who exists as the affirmation of the way things are. There is no side to defend. No identification with partial views or with partial interests. There is one self-interest. All is a diverse expression of the same self-nature. The genuine self-nature of the human being is also not to be partial; it is to uphold the life of the whole. Such a one can affirm like the rush of a brook; he can speak truth like a clap of thunder. He does not hold onto his truth.
I recall attending a lecture of Dainin Katagiri Sensei at the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 1960s. Sensei was lecturing on some particular point of Buddhist philosophy when a listener raised his hand and began to argue or to contradict the point that he was making. Katagiri just smiled and answered in his Japanese English, "This is not my big deal."
It is a phrase that has remained with me all my life. Whatever it is that I can say or think or believe; whatever position I may take; whatever can be put into words; whatever I may seem to be identified with "is not my big deal." Yet people spend their lives fighting each other over their "big deals." The "biggest deal" is one's sense of self, one's survival, and one's own rightness. Every position and belief is an extension of that. It might be helpful in our own practice to shine the light of awareness on our day-to-day and moment-to-moment responses in order to see where our "big deals" lie.
It is recounted that Buddhanandi, a famous dialectician and debater, and seventh in succession in the lineage of the Buddha, first approached his destined teacher, Vasumitra, and said, "I have come to debate truth." He is enlightened beyond his partiality when Vasumitra replies, "Dear friend, if we debate, it will not be truth."
Vasumitra is not saying, "My truth is undebateable. It cannot be contradicted." Vasumitra is pointing to prajnaparamita, that truth which is undebateable because it has no sides, no partiality; that truth which cannot be contradicted because it includes and embraces all contradiction; that truth which has no fixed ground on which ego can stand and assert itself. It has no big deal.
Whitman's truth, the direct realization of the way things are, is in immediate supply. It is not objectified or made distant. His utterances are naturally outrageous to those trying to maintain some rationality, propriety, safety, or control within an objectified view of themselves and the world.
This objectification of self, or ego, is a shrinking or contracting away from the divine life we actually inhabit - until truth itself becomes an idea, an object. We are trapped within our mental structures and we pray to this idea of Truth, or the Divine, to save us. This is the format of conventional religion. For that matter, it is the format of all conventional belief and conventional desire - in which the belief, or the object of desire, becomes the truth that will save us.
But Whitman, instead of projecting and shrinking, fills out and inhabits the full dimension of who he actually is, knowing the truth as the simple expression and experience of his own being.
No wonder he can sing.
Prayer Flags in Winter
against the snowand the barren trees,
the gentlest breeze
moves the prayer flags.
white, red, green,
blue - they lift their skirts
just a little -
their frayed edges hang
like threads of compassion
into the world.
the slow morning sun
lights up the snow
and a bright empty space
for the whisper
of their tender secrets
to bless the air.
Commentary: Prayer Flags in Winter
Prayer flags have been around a long time. They are strung everywhere in Tibetan cultures and they are becoming more popular and familiar in the west. Their sequences of brightly dyed cloth - blue, white, red, yellow, green - hang down with printed blessings for health, wisdom, peace, and prosperity. Now a gentle breeze tosses their bottoms upward. But they may fly in the most severe of climates, and the most barren of circumstances. They are an ever-present and gentle reminder of what lies at our heart. They are a testament and a celebration.
Each life is born into the world as a part of an endless string of prayer flags. The heart is open as the radiance of pure blessing. But the heart may quickly come to experience itself as under siege. The need to defend overwhelms the capacity to bless. At best we end up with a frozen possibility, a winter compromise. But the sun of our true nature is always shining; even in the winter world. And so we must stay open to the winter sun; let the gentlest breeze stir us. Let the blessings in our hearts lift their skirts a little. Let the threads of our own struggle become the the threads of our compassion.
In our vulnerability lies our great gift, our great potential. There is something venerable about our frayed edges; something quite capable of blessing. Let these frayed edges hang down into the world, dance in the wind; allow them to release more of our compassion. This is the passing world. Prayer flags will not unfray and recover their bright dyes however much the world resists, denies and pretends. Their tattered bodies will be burned and replaced; all that is left is their power to bless. That is the sum of a life.
On a morning like this it is all so simple. The sun shines on the barren trees. Our frayed edges hang down. A gentle breeze lifts them. The snow reflects. We all carry tender secrets - more tender than we know, and more capable of blessing. We needn't shut them away in endless hibernation, in endless retreat from a cold winter. We allow the slow morning sun at our hearts to gradually open up a place for them, so that the whispers of these secrets, the secrets of our true tenderness, may blossom with the possibility of true compassion.
Just Sitting
It is the beauty of just sittingthat the great sorrow, the great failure
that breaks and illuminates our lives,
stretches before us like a lover waiting to be
made love to, or like one of the great cats,
whose growl sounds like a rumble from the heart
of the world and says, "Dance with us."
And the great failure burns with the fire of
ecstatic being, and the rains come
from over the mesa, across infinite space.
Commentary: Just Sitting
The mind-body is subject to a wide spread of mental/emotional states and energies. The mind conventionally associates these states with the idea that we are feeling more or less "good" or "bad." Right at the middle of this scale of states we may have the state of "I'm feeling okay" or "I'm feeling a little off." Along the okay scale we may progress to "I'm feeling really good," and even to "trancendently blissful." On the "off" side of the scale we may discern the sensations of minor and acute discomfort, disturbance, worry, and profound unhappiness or despair. We may feel simple well-being, harmony, completeness; or we may feel that a general fault line is running through - and has been running through - our lives.
We further attach a panoply of mental stories to these states that either assign causes for these states or consequences of these states; and that furthermore evaluate, praise, or blame external circumstances or ourselves. The simple and intimate awareness of the state itself is immediately lost in, or confused with, the story; and that story consequently defines our experience or our identitiy. These states are naturally so powerfully engaging of the mind that it is normally difficult not to define ourselves through them - and through the stories we create around them - and to thus further stimulate these energy states accordingly.
Emotions arise out of a deep fund of life energy; and these energies and emotions are a vital part of our biology and an expression of organic needs. They may direct the organism to certain kinds of activity, although there is no guarantee whether that activity will be functional or dysfunctional. We have the brain/body capacity to naturally resolve these fluid emotional states, to bring them into integrated harmony with the life of the body; or we may create stories around these states that give them a life of their own.
When we attach stories to our ordinary and changing states, projecting causes, effects and judgments - and when we then evolve coping strategies based on these stories - we begin to manufacture a powerful virtual reality. We could call it a dream world. This dream world, or waking trance, which we chronically inhabit is characterized by an interweave of subjective energy states and projected realities. These develop their own casual logic of events and experiences that perpetuate each other into a personal history without any insight into its manufactured quality, and with no awakeness to the all-pervading "empty essence" and conscious being.
We may remain consciously present for these feeling states; or we may only be aware of them as a triggering sensation, labeled and subsumed in the life of the story. Inevitably, new stories and new feeling states arise based on nothing more than old stories. This is one way of speaking of samsara, the wheel of illusory or relativistic existence in which we futilely try to relieve our deep and underlying discomfort through strategies of grasping our resistance within the terms of the dream. All of which further animates the dream.
This story-making and projective activity is a natural and essential mechanism of the human mind, which can be benign and purposeful, yet can also be the instrument of bondage, delusion, and suffering. But the call and the practice of awakeness also seems to arise from within the dream. So let us look further at these processes of dreaming and awakening.
I like the use of the word "story" because it reminds us that the way the mind continually structures reality is creative, not absolute. The extent to which we take it as absolute is the extent to which we collapse the space in which we can feel, apprehend, and engage experience. We collapse the space in which we can perceive anew, learn, and grow. Our identification with story, used in this sense of fixed representation, serves to alienate ourselves from our experience by taking experience out of the realm of the receptive, the creative, and the participatory, and into the realm of the fixed, the objective, and the literal. This constitutes a flattening of consciousness that allows the manipulation of concepts and imagery to take precedence in our awareness over the direct experience of fluid reality. Hence the natural empty awakeness of our consciousness is modified in our experience to the condition of trance, or waking dream, in which our life appears to unfold. This is never more true than in the way we hold the experience of the self, or the way we hold the experience of our own feelings.
The process of story-making is operating in every aspect of our lives. We might say that any way that we structure reality, any way that we organize the data of our experience and give it meaning, is a story. This is our natural and purposeful human capacity; and this in itself is not the problem. The problem arises within the virtual mental terrain in which we impute narrowly conceived meanings and then live within the confines of these meanings, identifying with them as if they were, ipso facto, reality. By assigning absolute reality to what is only representative, or virtual reality, our awareness, availability, and flexible responsiveness to the infinite, or undefined, play of reality is restricted. As such, we sacrifice the free and open quality of our awareness, which is now captivated, or entranced, by its own interpretative activity.
How do these stories work in our life? Our simplest stories, or representations, are our names for things. When I look at what we normally think of as a chair and think "chair," I have already organized the data of my experience into a package or instant story - a shorthand, we might say - that bypasses any need to actually experience "this chair." Practically speaking, in an everyday sense, it is not really neccessary for me to experience everything about this chair in an open-dimensional way. I do not need to know, as Blake would say, that it is "infinite."
( This is incomplete, but will we'll complete typing it shortly.)