The Direct Approach

Adyashanti

Adyashanti (Sanskrit word meaning, "primordial peace"), is a spiritual teacher from the Bay Area who gives regular Satsangs in the United States and also teaches abroad. He is the author of several books and is the founder of Open Gate Sangha, Inc. a nonprofit organization that supports, and makes available, his teachings.

Written by Colin Bigelow

Bert begins the conversation by asking Adya to share the path leading to his interest in enlightenment teachings and then how he came to be a teacher of enlightenment himself. Adya recounts how he got hooked on the spiritual journey at age 20, after simply reading the word “enlightenment” in a book—and the entire course of his life changed in that moment.

“A light went off, like a snap of the finger. I literally said to myself: This is it. My life as I’ve known it is over, it will never come back, this is my new life, and I’m not in control of it.”

Attracted to Zen because of its emphasis on awakening and the mind-to-mind transmission of enlightened awareness, Adya found his teacher, Arvis Justi, by flipping through the directory of Ram Dass’s Journey of Awakening. Arvis, a lay Zen teacher and mother of five, was a student of Maezumi Roshi who began teaching in the 80s.

Reflecting on his time with Arvis, Adya comments: “I spent 15 years with my teacher, and I never asked her a single question about anything other than ultimate truth. Never asked her about anything in my life, to solve any of my personal problems, any of my personal issues. I’m not saying that was right or wrong, that’s just how I saw her: You’re here for the Truth part. The rest, that’s up to me, or maybe I’ll work with somebody else about it.”

The wonderful thing about an Integral Approach to spirituality is that it explicitly allows both teachers and students to clarify what that relationship will and will not cover. For some, it will be solely the pointing out of ultimate truth. For others, it will include more therapeutic encounters. The variations and possibilities are endless, and what an Integral Model does is allow both parties to notice and agree upon what territory of the Kosmos they are going to explore together.

Because esoteric spirituality deals with the realization of the absolute nature of reality, which is radically all-encompassing, it’s easy to confuse this perfectly complete absolute knowledge with the more-or-less complete relative knowledge of the finite world, which includes ecology, art, ethics, finance, physics, psychology, and so on. Just because a teacher has gained the former says nothing whatsoever about the fullness, completeness, or integrative tenor of the latter, and this simple clarification has the power to save both students and teachers an enormous amount of grief.

Adyashanti has the ability to communicate his experience with rather extraordinary clarity, and his is a story well worth hearing. From his days as a near-Olympic-level cyclist, to the challenge of forging his own path as a teacher, this is a fascinating exploration and we invite you to join us for the ride….