The Donkey and the Rider: Why Meditation to Calm Down is Not the Way Home

It is quite a funny thing, isn't it? We spend so much of our time looking for the donkey while we are already sitting on its back. We have been distracted, perhaps since the very beginning, and in that distraction, we started looking for something called awareness or peace as if it were a lost treasure hidden in a distant cave. But who is it that is looking? And where could you possibly go to find what is already animating the search itself? We talk about meditation to calm down as if it were a ladder to the stars, but the stars are already reflected in every drop of the ocean, whether the water is choppy or still. Let’s be frank with each other. There is no this moment because enlightenment is not a destination. It is not a place you arrive at after ten years of sitting on a cushion or after finally silencing the chatter of the body-mind. How can you reach where you already are? The separate self loves the idea of a journey. It loves the idea of progress, of becoming "more aware" or "more spiritual." It wants to achieve something, to add a trophy of "awakened being" to its collection. But the absolute doesn't care about your trophies. The totality includes the seeker, the seeking, and the perceived failure of the search. When we speak of meditation to calm down, we are talking about a functional tool. Let’s not pretend otherwise. If you are stressed, if your muscles are chronically contracted, if your nervous system is screaming, then sitting in silence is a wonderful way to care for the body-mind. It is like breathing. You cannot only exhale; you must also inhale. In our modern world, we are obsessed with the active mode—manipulating, solving, doing, achieving. We have forgotten the passive mode, the simple act of letting the world in. In this sense, meditation is a natural expression of the body-mind seeking balance. It’s a physiological adjustment. It may lower your blood pressure, it may clarify your thoughts so they feel like a luminous steel wire in an empty space, and it might even help your immune system. These are all beautiful, horizontal improvements in the dream of life. But they have nothing to do with the absolute. The liberation we are talking about is not a liberation of the separate self, but a liberation from the separate self. It is the realization that the one who thinks they are meditating, the one who thinks they are "getting better," is just another movement in the film. The screen remains untouched by the movie, whether the scene is a chaotic war or a peaceful meadow. Are you the character on the screen trying to find the light, or are you the light that makes the character visible? We often hear about the importance of silence. But what is silence? Is it just the absence of noise? If you try to fight noise to find silence, you are just starting another war in the name of peace. Real silence is the background that allows noise to exist. It is like the silence underneath the roar of a crowd.