Tag: meditation

Nonduality & Meeting the Meta-Crisis

Below is the first in a series of posts, perhaps five, on what the non-dual view implies for our outlook and behavior in relation to the deepening global crisis we are facing. It is meant as an exploration, not necessarily a definitive conclusion.

Humanity is in the grip of a rising confluence of conditions which are becoming more evident, more palpable, and more pressing by the week. Some of these conditions have reached existential proportions. Taken together, they reflect a flawed worldview, a grand delusion generating deep trouble for life on earth. That delusion has us believing, as in the past, that all contingencies will coalesce into a drama wherein we will create new ‘solutions’ to address old problems. This has become magical thinking. I hope, as this commentary continues, it will become clear that this framing itself ispart of the crisis. Not as though we are ineffectual when it comes to exercising influence in the world, just that our earnest efforts cannot continue to spring from within the imaginal realm in which we live. Fortunately, our vision is clearing. We are discerning the magnitude of the consequences of our actions. But we do remain captured by a conception of who (or what) generates influence and how it is propagated. Quite simply, how we see the world is always becoming the world we see. This is the central concern. 

The primary issue addressed here is nonduality. What is this view and how does it implicate action in the world? If embodied nonduality were to replace our old ways of doing things, becoming a primary critical framework, representing our true nature as well as the necessary shift in worldview, then that embodiment, since it implies an end to separation from nature, would naturally direct our action. We would be embarking on an extended, if halting, return to sanity. Perhaps not so immediately away from a dualistic view, but deliberately integrating the non-dual into a wholistic perspective on our presence, which is what Buddhist philosophy says we are already doing anyway. Moreover, that embodiment would not rightly be characterized as a manifestation ofnonduality. We would be exploring the totality of Being itself. It is not even our nature we would become; we would be realizing the nature of nature, becoming actors aligned with the nature of reality itself.

To fully realize the nondual view, though, is not a conceptual event. It is not something to be attained. Just the opposite. It is innate. Few, if any of us, will make such a total and immediate transition to a nondual view of Being. Transition will be gradual, filled with moments of regression and confusion, carefully monitoring our habits of thought and noticing how deeply we are captured by linguistics. But along the way, we will divest ourselves of the very idea of attainment or, for that matter, non-attainment. Nonduality can be described and lived, but it is not an object of persuasion. It arrives with the collapse of intellect, of any distinction between self and the world, between so-called internal and external experience. Granted, this is a radical proposition, but not beyond our grasp.

Acting from the nondual view does not require grounding in any spiritual tradition. But we recognize there is something intrinsically spiritual about it because of this principle of embodiment. There is something deeply resonant about establishing an energetic coherence between earth and sky, between mundane existence and the Divine, the micro and the macro-universe. This is the implication of full embodiment. To establish that coherence is to approach the supreme union found at the heart of all spiritual traditions. That union is expressed in the awakening of the heart itself. No world view nor any conceptual filter is required to enter nondual mind. It is accessible to anyone at any time. Yet also, nondual mind is not just another ‘experience’; it exists beyond experience. Trungpa Rinpoche said our attachment to ‘experience’ is the medium of our capture by the world of suffering. Spiritual development is entirely about interrupting the reflexive (and almost instantaneous) attachment to the matrix of values and beliefs that drive our lives. The issue is also not solely how the nondual view may inform our expression in the world, but also how a worldview confines and inhibits our expression.

Approaching this topic therefore requires three things: 1) that we comprehend the nondual view 2) that we define the Meta-Crisis and realize its mechanics 3) that we understand how the two are related and formulate a new approach to being in—and aligning with—reality.

The Nondual View

Articulating the nondual view is the first principle to resolve toward a more effective engagement with everything. My immersion in nonduality occurred through Vajrayana and Dzogchen practice. According to that tradition, any description of the awakened state defies logic. Its nature transcends logic entirely. But we may apply a simple nomenclature to our experience which can help us grasp the essence of nonduality. The Vajrayana framework of awakening provides perspective on delusion, suffering, the self, happiness, and all the neurotic or self-limiting behaviors and obstacles we face in this interval between birth and death. That framework is distilled into three elements, or ways of understanding our individual and collective journey: Ground (View), Path (Meditation), and Fruition (Conduct).

The Ground is defined as the pure, unconditional, uncorrupted nondual nature of reality, the ontological nature of mind, deeper than any definition of self, undermining the centrality (and existence) of self altogether.  It is the truth of what Buddhists call emptiness, the ultimate nature of phenomena (lacking any intrinsic nature). The Ground is the foundation, the embryonic source, the preconscious substrate in which we are ultimately held. It is the fundamental unity of all things and from which all phenomena spring. Everything is subsumed within it. It is wholly positive. Its nature is unwavering stillness, confidence, and trust.

Path is our experience in the world of form, where we become aware of our internal responses to experience. The evolution of awakening is applied to the interval between birth and death, piercing ignorance, delusion, working with all dimensions of our internal process, arriving at an ever more refined comprehension and resolution of the elements of personality (sensations, perceptions, mental activity, and consciousness) which contribute to deluded states of clinging and repetitive habits we experience as suffering. These elements of what we call personality, our flawed and biased ego-identity, are the primary temporal limitations of our individual and collective lives.

The Fruition is the full realization, the awakened state, the choiceless condition, reflected in our intra-active presence with the world. It is the arrival of supreme confidence and trust in one’s capacities, knowing that, in the words of Nicholas Lattanzio, “you can’t really make a mistake because there is no ‘you’ that could choose to make a mistake.” The culmination of traversing a Path of awakening may take a single life or many lives, even eons of lives if we were measuring by the standards of what we imagine as time. It is the accomplishment of resolution and release from the elements of personality arising in meditation, the dissolution of habitual mental patterns, from the cycle of self-defeating interpretations of sensations and perceptions, of thought and consciousness.

This interval from the first breath to the last is the karmic realm, governed by the law of return. If we look at this seemingly linear course of events through the nondual lens, we realize that in an absolute sense, there is no such thing as isolating a View to cultivate, no Path to traverse, no Conduct to undertake, no Fruition to achieve. Such distinctions are artificial. They are all equally present and completely interpenetrating. To focus on achieving any state of realization is a relative phenomenon, not an absolute. To indulge in such phenomena is part of the ‘self-improvement project’ which captures so many of us. It is the familiar application of antidotes, conceptual remedies (solutions) to what we regard as our flawed view. For the nondual viewer, there is no linear quality to experience whatsoever. To think otherwise would be a self-deception. Within the logic of nonduality, the essence of every phenomenon is none other than the Ground, the nondual state itself. There can be no distinction between such things as ground, path, or fruition. No personality project can exist because everything is already perfect.

This awakened state is the essence nature to which all nondual teachers refer. It can be found or lost to everyday awareness, but since it exists out of time, as the substrate of everything, it is always present, always true. It cannot be lost. It can only be found. It is the bright and empty and fecund interval within every instant, always shining in uncreated beauty, transcending every form of suffering we may inflict upon ourselves. It is a resting place between raw direct experience of the world and the instant of identification with experience, safely labeling and categorizing everything so that it fits within our comfort zone.

Though uncreated, it is intrinsic to all experience. It has no identifiable source. To be more precise, ground, path and fruition are all happening simultaneously. There is no progression from one to another. There is no objective barrier preventing us from experiencing the unity and inseparability of all three, the clarity intrinsic to all three. We cannot even say there is any such thing as experience since it implies a distinction between an apprehend-er and that which is apprehended (subject and object), neither of which can be found.

In this same sense, we can even say there is no such thing as meditation since meditation implies a meditator and something to be meditated upon. In this way, subject-object duality reigns. In nonduality, no such division exists. Even so, in a relative sense, meditation reveals the nature of the world or the nature of mind. We can conjure images of the world we want or focus neurotically on self-improvement. We can extend gratitude, love, healing, and compassion to ourselves or others. We can project a multitude of things.

Meditation is entering the process of creation. Sitting like a mountain I become the sea, then the tree then the silence of abstraction. All mental and existential exigencies climax into a death rattle. Meditation is entering the process of creation. The exact moment of birth of bud to flower, of cloud bursting into rain. It is a natural process in its movement into creativity.

The ground zero where eureka manifests is meditation. It is that swampy Sundarban where man-eating tigers prowl looking for errant minds. Meditation is the moment of the big bang which sent matter oscillating into orbits creating planets and ecosystems, milky ways and blackholes. Meditation is a time warp where thoughts run parallel and in accompaniment falling off the cliffs of illusions. Then there is no parallel left.

Meditation is like the Pied Piper leading away the rats of Hamlin into the sea of ubiquity. Where the cobra folds its fangs and burrows for the winters, there is meditation. Where the sunning cat ponders the dancing wag tail, there is meditation. All that is in the big bang moment of creation, which is also destruction, there is meditation.

      —Meenakshi Negi, Dehradun, India, 2023

The nondual condition has no object of being, no experience-er, nothing to be experienced in an absolute sense. If ground, path, and fruition are in perpetual union, there is no one to meditate, nothing to meditate upon. Whatever we imagine meditation may accomplish, it is already here, arriving directly in the disguise of relative experience. If from the nondual view there is no such thing as meditation, then there is also no such thing as post-meditation. Any division between a moment when we are focusing on relative attributes, any intention, or witnessing all qualities of separation between phenomena dissolve is no longer separate from any other moment. No division of the indivisible can be found. Linear time has dissolved. Our access to the nondual view is complete and uninterrupted. Every moment becomes a meditation or, more accurately, non-meditation.

All binaries collapse. There is no such thing as freedom since there has never been bondage. There is no rest since there has never been fatigue. There is no clarity because there has never been confusion. The same can be said of every apparent polarity by which we distinguish between phenomena, good and evil, friend or foe, pleasurable or painful, constructive, or destructive acts. As we fully examine this field of being, looking beyond duality for the moment, we see no intrinsic value structure nor any means by which to measure phenomena, no code, and no law. All phenomena are thus equal, arising independently and spontaneously from an origin that is no origin whatsoever. Every phenomenon is equal to every other phenomenon. This is not a denial of the imbalances of the world as we know it. It is the basis of the uniform nature of nondual awareness.

Quantum theory supports this view. Karen Barad, in her comprehensive Meeting the Universe Halfway, claims no evidence to confirm phenomena exist prior to our engagement with them. We do not engage with the world because it exists. It exists because we engage with it. This claim is the result of decades of meticulous experiments interpreted by our finest minds. Since our engagement with and influence in the world is irrevocable, no singular phenomenon can be identified nor referred to as an isolated event. ‘Phenomena’ refers to an emergent relational flow of co-creation, an ongoing mutual engagement. There cannot be any such thing as a singular phenomenon. How could it be isolated, or even exist, if there is no thing to intra-act with it?

When we say all phenomena are equal, we are referring to ongoing intra-active mutual creation. This is an animist view of the universe, attributing agency to what the material view would regard as the inanimate. We are received and conceived by the world in equal measure. As this is so, we must accept that we exist as a holographic universe, each of us the whole manifesting as a part just as other ‘parts’ within our field of existence are expressions of the whole. What appears to us as the material world has agency, just as we imagine in our supreme arrogance, that humans alone possess agency. We are removed from our pedestal of supremacy.

Enjoyment

Awareness of awareness is a blank canvas. It has no qualities. It neither facilitates nor impedes the activity of discursive mind: thinking, feeling or sensation. It does not catalogue; it has no preconceptions, agenda or even capacity to invent anything. It simply is.

There have been periods in which meditation has felt stale, unfocused, lifeless, and boring. As if I’d lost my way. My motivation lags. I devise complex equivocations to delay, shorten or skip my sessions. If meditation is part of your life, perhaps this story is familiar.

I recently discovered something lurking at the edges of awareness. In fact, I don’t recall ever previously recognizing this presence. I realized it was enjoyment. I could not remember the last time I had simply enjoyed my practice or felt joy at completion. I’ve felt many other things including satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment and release. I realize the trap that having an objective can easily become. I am practiced in not having an objective at all. But reason creeps into what is essentially an escape from reason. At the same time, the urge to compose and enact an agenda arises repeatedly by stealth and becomes increasingly vexing until it is recognized and dissolved. Yet however many times that cycle is repeated, I don’t recall ever connecting throwing away the agenda with making room for enjoyment. 

When enjoyment suddenly became accessible, I wondered how I had managed without noticing that enjoyment had been absent. Grounding, revelation, equanimity, peace—many things arrive, but pure enjoyment wasn’t one of them.  There have even been luminous periods of discovery and moments of (seemingly) profound awakening which quickly drew me back to the bench with anticipation and wonder. But even in those times, I barely landed on the unique character of enjoyment. It was always refreshing, awakening, discovering, calming, clarifying, releasing, and maybe a healing leap into wholeness, or even emptiness. 

That was—and remains–the object of meditation, to explore emptiness. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing dry about emptiness. It truly is a journey into a brilliant realm of compassion, unity and spontaneity. It’s indelible. Whatever you know of that realm can never be erased. But what is the fruit of practice other than the non-dual view or even an open heart if not also enjoyment?

And it turns out enjoyment is a mere whisper at the edge between being and non-being, appearance and emptiness. Enjoyment has its own distinct qualities, enough to generate an authentic excitement about returning to the bench. But upon noticing all this, the enjoyment I felt was not always tied to the experience itself, but to an observation of the experience by the ego witnessing it. It was tied to an ego judging the quality of the time I spent in contemplation. That is different from discovering a pure enjoyment intrinsic to that state instead of a derivative of it, the identity of me being pleased with myself, congratulating myself for a job well-done.

Having a pleasant experience is certainly OK as long as we recognize the determination of ‘pleasant’ is an ego-state, following directly on the heels of our intention to take a vacation from ego. Indulging in a moment of ego determining whether the time we spend in contemplation is positive or negative seems counterproductive. Someone like Pema Chodron would be the first to say such an indulgence is directly contrary to the cultivation of equanimity, which is knowing that regardless of whether a particular session has pleasant or unpleasant feelings associated with it, that such feelings do not determine the value of that time. To give them any weight is a distraction from our original motivation.

Then what is the quality of enjoyment which is not an ego expression? How is it cultivated, or how do we return to it, even in the darkest of moments? The practice of Vipashyana is where enjoyment lurks, although to go looking directly for it like some hidden treasure is a fool’s errand. The objective of Vipashyana, pervasive or extraordinary seeing, is to establish a non-discriminating, pristine, unself-conscious seeing, learning to look directly at the root of mind itself without any evaluation or analysis. In this case, it is not merely to observe the source of mind, but also to become it. The extinction of the observer would be a great (and unlikely) leap, but it is still possible to observe the activity of discursive mind without being drawn into the drama.

Awareness of awareness is a blank canvas. It has no qualities. It neither facilitates nor impedes the activity of discursive mind: thinking, feeling or sensation. It does not catalogue; it has no preconceptions, agenda or even capacity to invent anything. It simply is. Even without doing anything to sustain this condition, one cannot help but relish it. This is no contrivance, no garden-variety psychological enjoyment; this enjoyment does not derive from ego. In fact, by this view we observe with exquisite bemusement the shifting games by which ego entertains itself, moving through the many games and dance moves attending its survival. 

This is enjoyment which does not dispel or hide or overcome emotion. But it can accompany us into any condition, meeting whatever arises, even what we normally consider to be negative emotions, all obstacles, all circumstances of opposition, even the terror of loss. None of these conditions go away just because we are looking from a different vantage point. We are not indifferent to them whatsoever, because, after all, they are us. But neither do they become paralyzing. The very fact that we can experience and know the possibility of having enjoyment in our pocket, regardless of our passing condition, tickling the edges of awareness, is a kind of refuge in itself, essential to our equanimity. 

One Full Breath

Maybe I could see it if I had eyes on the side of my head instead of looking straight, as if I’m a fish, perpetually suspicious about the possibility of water—as if I once knew of it but have forgotten. That is, if I, a fish, believed in existence.

Dawn is breaking. Lurking in my awareness for a long time–at least intermittently—is a perpetual presence lying just outside my field of vision. Try as I might, I cannot bring it wholly into view. Perhaps it’s an illusion, but regardless, it’s elusive, yet it also feels like something central to all understanding. Maybe I could see it if I had eyes on the side of my head instead of looking straight forward, as if I’m a fish, perpetually suspicious about the possibility of water—as if I once knew of it but have forgotten—still sensing its centrality to my existence. That is, if I, a fish, believed in existence.

My adventures in Buddhist philosophy and subsequent experiences, not merely the intellectual exercise nor any cognitive machinations, but by direct experience, have taken me all the way to the realization of water. Yet in the routine experience of relativity, I revert to a suspicion, which is accompanied by an annoying sense of inadequacy, that such clarity—enlightened clarity—is never as accessible as I might wish. This is surely a common phenomenon.

Today I noticed an essential truth housed in a familiar book passage. I recalled its past impact, this time it had no impact. It was as if my mind had closed and was no longer open to being impacted, or of having my current spell broken, not even for a moment, to permit what was once a possibility that my energy would change, that I could enter a spacious and unadorned frame of reference, that I could be lifted out of the all-too-familiar quagmire of routine discursive thought for even a moment.

It seemed that what were once anchors of a self-regulated, light-hearted, even somewhat innocent demeanor had been rendered inert, remote and inaccessible, almost completely foreign. And in their place is a frustrated, anxious, edgy, too easily angered, limited and defended, even fragile presence, helplessly attempting to regain some agency in a universe whose laws quickly undermine every presumption of agency. 

I might have called this the bardo of everyday life, this forgetting, but my temptation to also name it the bardo of death is because I suspect the sensations are nearly identical, of being lost, drifting in a sea of semi-cognition, dreams with no sensations, no handholds, no anchors, no primary orientation whatsoever, being no-body, as if I will forever drift, uncertain if I wish to or am even capable of either surrendering to the dream or waking from it. Except now, the dreamscape abides whichever way I go.

I wonder if I’m merely experiencing aging, slipping across some threshold into a permanently shrunken space where the inventory of available brain cells has diminished. I don’t seem to be able to transcend, to free myself from these limitations. Until this:

I settled and began gazing, a deliberate and progressive meditative process, eyes wide open, into the heart of Being, expanding, loosening the anchors of the physical body, a condition in which the boundaries between self and object, seer and seen, flicker and dissolve like a mirage, like a dying flame. For a moment, I am free of my story. I breathe and rise to my full stature. 

Gazing into the moment…as the moment gazes into you…the comforting stability of it, its fleeting nature and unlimited potential, the opportunity for wisdom to arrive, for benefit to arise for all beings, that is the nature, the whole (he)art of the gaze. It is not a condition of a single being gazing from or at or even with anything. Gazing is (potentially) a non-dual state, the formless form of Being, the perpetual condition of Being seeing through its own eyes. Gazing is more than looking or sensing or feeling. It is more than hearing or touching or interacting in any finite way with any thing. Gazing is taking a full breath of now. It is all things now, being now, creating now, living and dying now, absent any desire or agenda whatsoever.

Outside of meditation itself, in post-meditation, the presence of gazing may also partake of the ferment of ideas in the teeming bazaar of this time, the fertile turbulence of the evolutionary marketplace at the crossroads of this moment. Aren’t we all desperately gazing into this moment to comprehend, to extract the meaning and succulence of these increasingly desperate times? Take one full breath of this! Rise to your full stature and realize the world is gazing back at you.

Being is gazing back at your being, with no expectations, no demands, no promises, no guarantees, with no past and no future to destroy or create. We are all making the world in this moment, gazing into the future, becoming messengers to the future, rising to fullness as vital nodes in the web of life, sensing the energetics of the whole, a promise we make to ourselves as we fully breathe into the present. 

This is what the future is asking of us now, to take a full breath of this moment. Each of us, in our personal conflicts, lifelong journeys, unresolved questions, resolutions, accomplishments large or small, is called to be a messenger, an ancestor, a gift to the future. Regardless of our karma, whatever our success or failings, we are guides, changing the course of history, bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice.  That’s all we have. That’s all we’ve ever had and all we will ever have. 

Accepting the fullness of one’s own karma may not be such an easy thing, because to do so you have to tell yourself the truth. But if ever there was a moment to breath fully into life, into this long-awaited transition, this re-opening of possibility, this moment to reflect and dedicate ourselves to the task ahead, this is it. Gaze into it; and may the Being of Samanthabadra, the consciousness of all Buddhas; of Manjushri, the wisdom of all Buddhas; of Chenrezig, the compassion of all Buddhas, the nature of Being itself, hiding in plain sight, be the guidance you wish for and deserve. Take a full breath and give everything to it.

Gratitude to Rudolph Bauer for sparking this content. See his article, “Gazing as Dzogchen.”

At Sea

A portal appears. I am bathed in light, warm, soft, welcoming, forgiving, familiar. It fills me with a reminder of what has always been true. What I have known, what I have misunderstood, what I have dared to wish for, what I have forgotten, all emerges unexpectedly, like a musical styling never heard before, now returning.

The teachers always say to relax. But such a thing can only be achieved or expected to a limited degree. This quality of relaxation cannot be constructed. We cannot simply relax out of our human frame of reference, leaping beyond ego to see from an entirely different reference point. Attempting to do so relies on the very mental activities responsible for our blindness, the very behaviors we have used to climb the illusory ladder, the gradual path, to arrive here in the first place. To circumvent them now, not merely ignoring them, would be to see through them as if they no longer exist.

And that’s the point, is it not? To extinguish the very idea of a reference point? Perhaps trekchod (cutting through) is nothing so dramatic after all. Perhaps it’s simpler than it’s made out to be, more accessible than imagined. How does one “make space” for this? How can one make space for…something so elusive as this? That is the mystery. Perhaps I’m receiving an answer. The shift from ‘normal’ mental activity to a condition of relaxation, ‘cutting through,’ dropping through or ‘making space’ for a different way of seeing is quite subtle. But it truly is a relaxation. Not in the familiar sense in which we understand deliberate relaxation, doing so from within the fortress of ego. Such an approach is actually a mis-direction, a distraction. The nature of this relaxation is not even really a physical experience, though physical relaxation is a by-product. In this case, the activity of ‘thinking mind’ is cast in a wholly different and fresh light.

One cannot merely sweep away the activity of mind as if it’s some Herculean task, moving mountains of manure, searching or foraging into the most remote corners of consciousness with a mental broom or shovel, only to be overtaken by the relentless appearance of More. No, not at all. The task is to deconstruct the stable itself. Not relaxing the mind exactly; relaxing the thinker, the one entranced by the activity of mind.

But specifically, not in any deliberate way. As long as the mind is regarded as an object, as Other, and especially as Self, by the originator of that mind, attempting to relax thoughts will forever be an exhausting and ultimately misdirected task. ‘Relaxing the mind’ means relaxing the structure of mind, turning off the entrancement, allowing the entire architecture housing thought, the very idea of ‘my’ mind, to collapse. The dualistic view one has about mind as a phenomenon collapses into an awareness of Mind, infinite spaciousness not limited or contained in any way. Non-meditation.

It feels like stepping out; stepping out of thinking, out of identity, even the undoing of that identity, stepping away from the entire drama of being someone, a personality with a history, an agenda, a need to continue, to be perceived, to perceive oneself in a certain way. Such an experience highlights the random nature of all events, the appearance and disappearance of all things. And thus, wherever attention is drawn, beginning with inhabiting the structure of identity itself to the most minute and fleeting objects of attention, is determined by karma. Unless we become truly able to arrest that process, we cannot simply look away.

Everything before me, all thoughts, sensations, emotions, are only one thing: emanations from nothing, originating as nothing, unconditioned, becoming nothing; each a tiny wave upon a vast and gentle ocean. I am held, lifted and aroused, born by the mystery and the familiarity, the variety, simplicity and purity of everything being just as it is, unique, unchanging, and also being nothing whatsoever, appearing, disappearing and leaving no trace.

There is nothing to renounce; nothing to attain. There is only supreme relaxation, a surprisingly accessible, easy and straightforward condition, which is really no condition at all, only a subtle side step from ordinary awareness, without fanfare or drama, without a director and without consequence. No coming or going. Emptiness, dhamakaya, at the heart of all, fullness in the heart of all, without words or messages; nothing to do or be. Is this space? Is this the nature of what has no nature, the heart essence of the Beloved? Is this the time of having no time?

pebbles-in-a-pond-blog

Superimposed on this essence, this condition of being unconditioned, is the vividness of lucidity, sambhogakaya, an innate brightness without source. It is the limitless expanse defying categorization, Being enjoying itself, the frequency of vibration intrinsic to all space. And beyond lucidity is the manifest nature of becoming a ‘thing,’ an ongoing ‘event’ level of Being, nirmanakaya, the realm of unnamable presence, which has nothing but absence at its heart. This is the nature of the three kayas, distinct yet non-existent, in unity, separately. Not layers, not even organs of differing functions, they are distinguishable, yet inseparable. Things are not things independent of them. Yet also, because of them, things are not things at all.

So it’s come to this. All the searching, striving, study, assimilation, conjecture, telling myself the story I want to hear, breaking open, closing again, remembering, forgetting, a lifetime of compliance within a field of wandering, constructing my boat, testing myself, riding waves, winds according to impulse or duty, it all comes to this moment; falling open.

I consume pita chips without awareness just now because I’m hungry, yet am also consumed by an inner quiet. No outward motion or need, no compulsion or mechanical adherence to random inner commands can disturb me. These are the mechanics of life, of the body, all understood, accepted, un-judged, even humorous in their urgency. All are included, regarded equally, experienced and allowed to disappear like pebbles sinking beneath the surface of a pond, momentary disturbances of an otherwise implacable and impeccable presence. Or like bubbles, once distinct and magical, bursting on my open palm.