The History of Meditation and the Illusion of the Seeking Self

When we look back at the history of meditation, we often see it through the lens of a timeline, a series of steps or a progression of techniques designed to lead us somewhere better. We imagine ancient practitioners sitting in caves to achieve something we haven't yet found. But we have to ask: who is it that is trying to reach a destination? If the absolute is truly total, it must include this very moment, exactly as it is. There is no distance between where we are and what we are. The idea that we need a map or a historical lineage to find our way back to ourselves is perhaps the greatest distraction of all. It is like searching for the donkey while you are already riding it. In the traditions that make up the history of meditation, such as those documented by Patanjali or the early Buddhist texts, there is often a mention of states like Samadhi or deep quiet. These are frequently presented as future rewards for hard work. But let’s be frank among friends: if liberation is "of" the separate self, it is just another achievement, like learning to play the piano or solving a complex equation. You can spend years refining the body-mind, and indeed, meditation may bring a sense of comfort or a more lucid way of thinking. It can make the mind feel like a luminous steel thread in a vast space. That is a fine way to live, but it is not a path to what you already are. What you are is the screen, not the film playing upon it. The film can be a tragedy or a comedy, it can be noisy or quiet, but the screen remains untouched, already complete. We often hear about the "awakening process," but this is a contradiction. How can there be a process to reach the present? The present is not a place we go to; it is the only thing that is. When we speak of transcending the present, we are really speaking about the collapse of the illusion of time. The separate self lives in the horizontal dimension of "better" and "later," but the absolute is vertical. It is the silence that underlies the noise. Silence and noise exist simultaneously. The silence isn't a goal to be reached after the noise stops; it is the very condition that allows the noise to happen. If we use meditation to fight against the noise of our lives, we are just fighting for peace, which is as absurd as starting a war to end all wars. It only creates more tension in the body-mind. There is no one here to choose whether to meditate or not. We think we have free will, that we are the authors of our spiritual journey, but the separate self is just a functional relay between the body-mind and the environment. It is a movement of the totality. If meditation happens in a life, it is a perfect expression of the absolute, just as not meditating is also a perfect expression. Everything is the dance of the totality. This includes the "perfect" and the "imperfect," the generous and the cruel. To suggest that we must become something else to be "enlightened" is to deny that the absolute is already everything.