The Myth of Meditation Positions and the Silence of What You Already Are

We often find ourselves searching for the donkey while we are already sitting on its back. It is a strange comedy, isn't it? We look for awareness, we look for peace, and we look for some grand awakening as if it were a lost treasure hidden in a distant jungle. But who is the one looking? And where could you possibly go to find what is already the very ground of your existence? The separate self loves the idea of a journey. It loves the "supermarket of meditation" where it can pick and choose from a vast array of techniques, hoping that the next one will finally be the key that unlocks the door. But the door was never locked, and more importantly, there is no one inside to unlock it. In the world of spiritual seeking, we hear much about meditation positions and the "right" way to sit, as if the absolute cared whether your spine was straight or your legs were crossed. We must be frank with each other: this stillness are not ladders to the infinite. The absolute is already absolute; it doesn't need you to sit in a specific way to be itself. If the infinite is truly infinite, it must include you exactly as you are right now—distracted, tired, or even bored—otherwise, it wouldn't be infinite. It would be the "almost-infinite minus you," which is a logical absurdity. When we speak of meditation, we aren't talking about a way to become something better. The body-mind may indeed feel more harmonious through certain practices. We might find that sitting in specific meditation positions helps to calm the ripples on the surface of the lake, making the water transparent. This is fine. It is a functional improvement at a horizontal level, much like learning to play the piano or refining a technical skill. If you want to feel better in your daily life, meditation is a wonderful tool. But let’s not confuse feeling better with liberation. Liberation is not the "me" getting free; it is freedom *from* the "me." It is the realization that the character in the dream was never the one having the dream. Think of the witness. Many practices guide us to develop the position of the observer—the one who sits on the riverbank and watches the thoughts, emotions, and sensations flow by. This is an incredibly useful shift. It allows us to stop diving into every passing current and getting swept away by the stories of the separate self. We begin to see that the body-mind is just a collection of sensations and thoughts appearing in a field of conscious presence. But even here, a subtle trap remains. We might start to identify as "the witness," creating a new center, a new "I" that is watching everything else. This is like standing on the threshold of freedom but keeping our backs turned to it because we are still obsessed with the objects being observed. True freedom isn't the witness watching the world; it is the collapse of the wall between the observer and the observed. There is just observing. No one doing it, and nothing separate being seen. We often worry about being distracted. We think that if we could just focus enough, we would "reach" enlightenment. But distraction isn't a failure of the absolute; it is just another movement within it. Just as the wave is always the ocean, whether it is a crashing surge or a gentle ripple, every movement of your mind is the totality expressing itself. Even the feeling of being a separate self, struggling to find its way home, is the absolute playing the role of the seeker. You cannot move away from what you are. Even when you feel most "lost," you are exactly where you have always been. The idea of a gradual path is a comforting illusion for the separate self because it provides a sense of purpose and a timeline. But the absolute is vertical, not horizontal. It isn't at the end of a long road of purification or years of mastering various meditation positions. It is here, prior to the next breath, prior to the next thought. This aware presence is the silence that underlies all noise. The noise doesn't replace the silence; they exist simultaneously. You don't need to stop the noise to find the silence; you only need to see that the noise is made of silence. When we sit together in silence, we aren't "doing" something to get "there." There is no "there." We are simply acknowledging the fact of our non-separation. We aren't looking for a guru to save us or a master to give us a secret formula. A frank friend can only tell you that there is no difference between us. We are just different masks worn by the same one. The teacher is just a function, like a signpost that points to the fact that you are already home. If a teacher tells you that they have achieved something you haven't, they are simply trying to sell you a map to a place where you are already standing. So, we sit. Not because it will make us enlightened, but because meditation is a natural expression of the being, just as breathing is. If the body-mind is drawn to quietness, let it be quiet. If it is drawn to activity, let it be active. Neither state is closer to the truth than the other. The screen is not affected by the film being projected upon it—whether it's a tragedy or a comedy, the screen remains unstained, open, and ever-present. You are that screen. You are not the character struggling to find the light; you are the light in which the character and the struggle appear. What if there is nothing to achieve? What if the very effort to "find" yourself is the only thing that creates the illusion that you are lost? When the seeker finally tires of the supermarket of techniques and the constant striving for a future awakening, something else might be noticed. Not a new state, but the underlying reality that has never left. It is the simple, obvious fact of being. Not "being this" or "being that," but the raw, unadorned presence that is here before you even say the words "I am." In this space, the need for answers dissolves into the mystery of what is. We aren't looking for a destination anymore because we've realized the donkey we were searching for is the very thing carrying us. The search ends not because we found what we were looking for, but because we realized the seeker was the sought all along. There is only this—boundless, whole, and already complete, appearing as this moment, exactly as it is.