Exploring and Enjoying

right here, right now

I often encourage or invite taking time to be silent and still, doing nothing other than giving open attention to direct present experiencing, without trying to change or correct it in any way. In this, I’m describing a kind of pathless path of exploration, discovery and enjoyment of this living reality, just as it is. And I’m inviting the discovery that the actuality can be wildly different from how we think things are.

This exploration and enjoyment can happen while sitting or walking, while riding on a bus or an airplane, in a waiting room or a hospital bed, in nature or downtown in a busy city—in other words, it can happen anywhere.

Instead of being completely engaged in the thought realm, this is an invitation to turn attention to bare experiencing—hearing sounds, seeing colors and shapes, the dance of light and shadow, fully tasting a beverage or a meal, feeling bodily sensations—being knowingly present to the sensory-energetic aliveness and bare actuality of this moment, rather than completely lost in and hypnotized by the abstractions of conceptual thought. It might be described as putting aside the map and diving into the unmappable living territory. It invites an opening to the felt-sense of presence itself, the spaciousness of open awareness, and the luminosity and beauty that is everywhere.

I also point to the fact that there is no one apart from the flow of experiencing who is doing any of this, that everything is happening choicelessly by itself, including reading this article right now. Nothing could be other than how it is in each moment, including the urge to change it in some way. The apparent thinker-doer-author-controller-choooser-decider that we believe we are is a mirage with no actual existence. It cannot be found. Our urges, impulses, abilities, inabilities, talents, interests and actions emerge unbidden from the whole universe. No wave can go in a direction other than the one in which the whole ocean is moving. In this sense, there are no mistakes.

Someone devoted to meditation and “being here now” is no better or worse than someone devoted to mass murder. They are equally what is, and both are equally unpindownable and empty of any persistent, observer-independent existence. Moreover, like different waves on the ocean, they cannot be pulled apart, and there is no real boundary where one ends and the other begins. The ocean expresses and contains them both. They are momentary aspects of a single indivisible whole.

Of course, from our everyday, human, conventional perspective, meditation is regarded as a wholesome activity, while mass murder is seen as an unwholesome, harmful activity born of delusion.

This living reality shows up as both of these perspectives—the one that sees only wholeness and the one that discerns and evaluates differences, and both perspectives have their function. This isn’t about denying, ignoring or getting rid of conventional reality, nor is it about having no sense whatsoever of ourselves as a person, or never thinking and conceptualizing. All of that is the activity of the whole ocean.

Regardless of how it appears, which is always changing, this here-now-being is one seamless, boundless, indivisible, all-inclusive whole. There is nothing to do or not do other than exactly what is happening. There is nothing to overcome, vanquish, perfect or attain, although such changes may appear to happen.

There is simply this one bottomless moment, just as it is. And we can never pin down how it is, for it is constantly shape-shifting and disappearing. We are moved by life to think, want and do whatever we think, want and do. This doesn’t make us robots being pushed around by some separate universe outside of us, but rather, it points out that we are an expression or a movement of the whole universe doing what it does.

It is by giving open attention to direct experience that we can discover or confirm all of this for ourselves. It can be helpful to read or hear someone talk about all this, but what truly brings it home is attending to our own actual direct experience here and now.

For most humans, this goes against a deep habit. The pull of thinking is very seductive and strong, and the map-world of apparent reality is a very convincing illusion. Because of this, it can seemingly take some effort to shift attention from thinking to sensing, but it’s important not to force any of this. This is not about will-power or self-improvement. It’s more about relaxing and the total acceptance of what is.

Simply allow this nonconceptual exploration and enjoyment to invite you whenever it does. And when thinking, restlessness, upset, compulsive behavior, or anything that seems undesirable happens, be curious about it. Recognize that this too as an ungraspable, ephemeral, impersonal movement of the whole with no actual substance or inherent existence.

Some of this can sound nihilistic, fatalistic or disempowering if it isn’t fully grokked experientially. But when truly grokked, it frees us from guilt, shame, blame, judgment, the desire for vengeance and retribution, useless regret, self-hatred and the sense of lack or deficiency. It puts us completely at ease, even with our uneasiness. It allows us to find peace in a world that often presents us with unwanted circumstances, even with acts of extreme cruelty and brutality. It gives us a bigger perspective, beautifully exemplified in the famous old Chinese Farmer Story. And it doesn’t exclude the possibility of taking action if we are so moved. It simply removes the attachment to results and the identification with causes and opinions. We know that whatever arises is a movement of the whole that cannot, in this moment, be otherwise.

Some expressions of nonduality emphasize “being here now,” while others focus exclusively on pointing out that all there is, is here-now-being. Both expressions have a potential shadow side, and they can each potentially correct the other’s shadow.

Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness practices (“being here now”) can inadvertently reinforce the sense of a “me” who is doing them in order to improve and get somewhere, as well as the judgments about how well or how poorly “I” am doing. On the other hand, radical nondual “all there is, is here-now-being” pointers can be taken on conceptually, and sometimes quite dogmatically, as a comforting new belief system and used for a kind of spiritual by-passing that ignores or denies relative reality. But together, they function beautifully to liberate us from the delusions that bring forth our suffering and confusion.

This liberating process always only happens NOW, and it is unending. There is no finish-line. There is nowhere to go other than right here. It gets simpler and simpler. What could be simpler and more effortless than being this moment, just as it is? Clearly, there is actually no choice. This moment is as it is.

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Love to all….