The Myth of Seeking and the Reality of What You Already Are

We spend so much of our lives looking for a way to fix the friction of being. We find ourselves caught in the constant chatter of the internal dialogue, that relentless voice inside that insists on narrating every moment as if we weren't already there to witness it. We are told that there are mindfulness based stress reduction techniques that can help us, and in a way, they do. When we look at the body-mind, something interesting happens. We might notice that we have been holding our breath or that our muscles are chronically contracted in a state of defense. By simply noticing these tensions, they often begin to dissolve. The blood flows more freely, oxygen vitalizes the body, and the immune system finds a moment of reprieve from the constant chemical bath of stress. This is all very well for the body-mind; it makes the local experience more comfortable. But does it bring us closer to the absolute? Can a relaxed muscle lead to enlightenment? The separate self loves the idea of a path. It loves the idea that if it practices long enough, or sits in silence with enough intensity, it will eventually recognize what you already are. But who is this "I" that is going to recognize what you already are? If the separate self is an illusion, then the idea of it "attaining" something is just more of the same dream. We look through the window of our perception and get so caught up in the details of the houses across the street—the cracks in the bricks, the color of the curtains—that we completely fail to see our own reflection in the glass. We are so focused on the objects of awareness that we miss the aware presence itself. When we talk about mindfulness based stress reduction techniques, we are often just talking about learning to see the tiger before it bites us. In the wild, if you see a tiger, your fear is appropriate; it keeps you alive. But in our modern psychological landscape, we are haunted by tigers that don't exist in the physical world. We are dominated by fears of the future and regrets of the past. Meditation allows us to observe these reactions, to see the emotion of fear as a sensation in the body-mind rather than a command to act. It creates a tiny, luminous space between the situation and the reaction. In that space, we might find that we don't have to follow the old, automatic scripts. But even this is just a reorganization of the furniture within the room. It isn't the room itself. There is a certain beauty in the silence that can be found in stillness. When the mind stops its frantic spinning, the thoughts that remain can become like a thread of glowing steel in a vast, empty space. They become precise, essential, and clear. Some might call this a state of deep quiet or even samadhi. It is incredibly pleasant, so pleasant that one might want to hide there forever, using it as an escape whenever life becomes difficult. However, the absolute doesn't require a quiet mind to be what it is. The noise is also the absolute.