The Donkey and the Rider: Why Meditation for Tranquility is Already Here

There is a peculiar humor in the spiritual search, a kind of divine comedy that we all seem to play a part in. We spend years, perhaps decades, looking for something we imagine is missing. We look for peace, for clarity, or for that elusive state we call enlightenment, as if it were a distant peak we must scale. But have we ever stopped to ask who is doing the looking? There is an old expression that captures this perfectly: searching for the donkey while you are already riding it. We are so distracted by the movement of the search that we fail to notice the very thing that carries us. When we speak of meditation for tranquility, we are often caught in the trap of the "active mode." Our culture is obsessed with doing, with manipulating reality to achieve a result. We treat our internal world like a problem to be solved or a project to be managed. We think that if we sit in a certain way or follow a specific technique, we will eventually reach a state of grace. But this is just the separate self trying to improve itself, trying to add another feather to its cap of achievements. The separate self wants to become "enlightened," but the irony is that liberation is not *of* the "I"—it is *from* the "I." The separate self is not a solid entity; it is a function, a way the body-mind relates to its environment. It is a series of stories and labels we've inherited. We use words to frame reality, to fragment the seamless flow of existence into "clouds," "rain," and "me." This linguistic cage creates the illusion of distance. But where is the distance in the absolute? The absolute is already here, appearing as the noise and the silence, the perfect and the imperfect, the generosity and the greed. It includes everything. Meditation for tranquility may indeed bring comfort now. It might make the body-mind feel more regulated or the thoughts feel less chaotic. In the horizontal dimension of our daily lives, where we face challenges and seek to improve our health or our focus, this stillness have their place. But let us be clear: they are not a ladder to the absolute. The absolute is vertical. It is the silent background that allows the noise to exist. It is like the silence beneath the roar of a crowd—the noise doesn't destroy the silence, and the silence isn't waiting for the noise to stop to be itself. They are one and the same. We often find ourselves frustrated in silence because the mind keeps talking. We try to fight the noise, but fighting for peace is like fighting for the sake of quiet—it only creates more exhaustion. If you find yourself sitting in meditation for tranquility and a thousand disturbances arise, who is it that judges them as "bad"? From the perspective of the totality, a distracted thought is just as much a manifestation of being as a profound insight. The wave is always the ocean, whether it is a crashing breaker or a gentle ripple. It doesn't need to become still to be water. In many traditions, we are told to close our eyes.