The Donkey and the Rider: Why a Meditation Retreat is Not a Path to What You Already Are

Silence isn't something we practice. It is what appears when the seeker stops seeking. But who is seeking? And what are they looking for? When we look, we find there is no one there doing the looking. There is just this—open, aware presence, already complete. We have been told for centuries that we must climb a ladder, that we must refine the body-mind through endless discipline to reach a state called liberation. But if the absolute is truly absolute, if the totality is indeed total, it must include us exactly as we are right now. If it didn't, it wouldn't be infinite; it would be "everything minus you," which is a logical impossibility. We often live with the strange sensation of searching for the donkey while we are already riding it. We look for being as if it were a distant destination, a peak to be scaled after years of effort, failing to notice that the very effort to find it is a distraction from the fact that we are already seated upon it. This is why the idea of a meditation retreat can be so easily misunderstood. In the horizontal world of time, we can learn to play the piano or solve differential equations. We start with the simple and move to the complex. But the exploration of what we are moves in the opposite direction. It goes from the complex back to the simple. It is a process of undoing, of dismantling the layers of the separate self that believe they are the ones in charge of the journey. Many come to a meditation retreat hoping to achieve a permanent state of peace, as if peace were a trophy to be placed on a shelf. We hear about states of Samadhi or profound quietude and we want to own them. But these states, no matter how luminous or steel-like in their clarity, belong to the world of appearances. They come and they go. When life hits hard, even the most solid base of quietude can vanish. If liberation depended on maintaining a specific state of mind, it would be a very fragile thing indeed. True freedom is not the presence of a particular feeling; it is the recognition that we are the screen upon which both the beautiful film and the horror film are projected. The screen is never burnt by the fire or soaked by the water in the movie. There is a common trap in spiritual circles where we use meditation as a way to hide. We find a little corner of silence and we want to stay there forever, ignoring the rest of life. But the absolute is not just the silence; it is also the noise. It is the movement of the waves and the depth of the ocean. To prefer the silence over the noise is just another form of separation. It is the separate self trying to curate its experience to feel better. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel better. Meditation may bring comfort now, it may harmonize the body-mind, and it may make our thoughts more lucid—like a thread of glowing steel in a dark room. That is a wonderful horizontal improvement. But it is not a this moment. There is no path because there is nowhere to go.