Other-awareness

“Just imagine what it is like to carry the other-awareness like on carries a mantra. But how difficult it is to be aware of the other! It is not that our awareness slips; it just never gets established. How rare is the occurrence of other-awareness. We have no taste of what it is to truly hold-the-other-in-awareness. We cannot stand such joy! We are afraid. To hold the other-awareness-in-fullness is to voluntarily embrace the dissociation. The ego I-ness framework has to split. How could it be otherwise? One just happens. One is not a happen-er. The other-awareness is not just knowing that he or she is there. It is knowing that the other has a being-for-him/her-self as a self-limitation-of-the-whole. The other is a symbol of the self; the self, a symbol of the other. Ha! But to hold such an awareness: that is truly an act of sanctification. A benison for the beloved is to hold the other-awareness before-the-self. One must never forget that there is only one real I-ness. Before-the-self is not self-denial; it is other-self renewal. The other-self is a multi-unity. But, of course, one must embrace the split to real-ize that. 

Why is it that no one is interested in experiencing the multi-unity of the other-self? Why is woman no leader? She should know! She should feel it in her abdomen. She should demand a fullness of the other-awareness. But she, too, never remembers the miracle of being-ness, or reaches for the fullness-of-the-context in moment to moment awareness. She, too, lives in a fog. What is it with woman that she does not know? Why does her inner taste not tell her? Why does she believe what she is told? Why she not already learned? If anyone should have deep sensitivity to the omni-multi-relation at the root of existence, it should be woman. Man-woman relating should highlight this omni-multi-ness. Why does she not know and insist? Why is she, too, afraid to embrace the being-branching at the heart of existence? Is not to birth a child, to experience the multi-unity? Where is her integrity? How can she let the intellectual aporia of enculturation short circuit her acting-from-the-being?” 

– an excerpt from “The Moon of Hoa Binh” by Cong Huen Ton Nu Nha Trang and William Pensinger.