The Donkey and its Rider: Why Discipline Meditation is Already the Absolute Presence

There is a curious expression that perfectly captures the absurdity of the spiritual search: searching for the donkey while you are already riding it. We spend years, perhaps decades, looking for a sense of liberation or a state of awakening, as if it were a destination located somewhere else, in another time, or under a different set of circumstances. But who is looking? And where could you possibly go to find what you already are? The separate self is convinced that it must achieve something, that it must cross a bridge from ignorance to wisdom. Yet, in the reality of the absolute, there is no bridge, no traveler, and no distant shore. When we speak of discipline meditation, it is easy to fall into the trap of the horizontal dimension. This is the realm of self-improvement, where the body-mind tries to become a better version of itself. In this horizontal world, we practice to sharpen the mind, to calm the nervous system, or to harmonize our relationship with life. This is all well and good. If the body-mind feels better through silence, then that is simply what is happening. But let’s be frank: none of this has anything to do with liberation. Liberation is not of the "me"; it is from the "me." It is the recognition that the one who thinks they are meditating, the one who thinks they are making progress, is itself an appearance within the vast, aware presence that is already here. The separate self loves the idea of a path. It loves the idea that through intense effort or a specific discipline meditation, it will eventually reach the infinite. But consider the paradox: if the absolute is truly infinite, it must include you exactly as you are right now. If it didn't include your current state—even your distractions, your confusion, or your sense of lack—it wouldn't be infinite. It would be a "partial" infinite, which is a contradiction. You cannot reach the totality because you have never been outside of it. The wave doesn't need to practice to become the ocean; it is already nothing but ocean, even when it takes the form of a crashing, separate-looking wave. We often imagine that we are a subject looking at an object. We see a tree, and we think, "I am here, and the tree is there." We take our body-mind and place it on the side of the observer. Then, perhaps through meditation, we begin to observe our body—the sensations, the heat, the pulses. Now the body has moved to the side of the observed. Then we observe our thoughts, realizing they are like a pair of glasses we didn't know we were wearing, coloring everything we see. Eventually, we might find ourselves as a mere gaze of consciousness. But even here, there is a trap. If we focus too much on the details of the "objects" appearing in our awareness, we are like someone looking through a window so intently at the cracks in the bricks outside that they fail to see their own reflection in the glass. Aware presence is not something that needs to be expanded or deepened.