Simply Being Alive

Living playfully

Just being alive is enough.

—Shunryu Suzuki

Being just this here-now-aware-presence, this present experiencing, is utterly simple, uncomplicated and easy. It requires no effort, no practice, no years of study. It is effortlessly, unavoidably, always already happening. Hearing, seeing, breathing, touching, tasting, awaring, being—simply this—the sounds of traffic, the ever-changing sensations in the body, the taste of tea—the utter simplicity of what is before we think about it—this is obvious, uncomplicated, absolutely easy, impossible to doubt. You can doubt what it is or why it is, but not that it is.

Of course, thought and imagination are also aspects of this undivided happening. They, too, are effortlessly showing up. And, of course, our daily lives frequently seem to involve many complex situations in which thinking plays a part and decisions are needed.

But it always boils down to right here, right now. And all of our thoughts, intentions, interests, desires, fears, and apparent decisions and choices are happening by themselves. Even apparent effort is effortlessly showing up. No central agent can be found at any imaginary control panel, and if we cut open the brain, we won’t find this room we seem to be sitting in now.

Experientially, the awareness beholding (being and holding) it all is boundless, with no center and no location. There is nowhere it is not. The body, the world and all our thoughts and ideas appear within this boundless, seamless presence-awareness, not the other way around.

How this all works and why it’s happening is a mystery we will never solve. If we listen to a variety of different perspectives, we can end up very confused, trying to reconcile all the different and often contradictory formulations and conceptualizations of this living reality, trying desperately to somehow figure it all out and pin it down.

But it can’t be grasped, pinned down or resolved into any fixed finality. And it doesn’t need to be. If we return to the utter simplicity of here-now-presence, the confusion melts away. There is simply present experiencing, just as it is: the sounds of the dishwasher, the breathing, the play of light and color, thoughts popping up and dissolving—just this.

Our suffering and confusion always have to do with being hypnotized by the content of thinking, and especially by the root-thought of being “me,” a supposedly separate self, encapsulated in a supposedly separate body, living in a supposedly solid and substantial outside world.

Pain and painful circumstances are part of life, but the “me” views them as outside forces threatening and attacking “me.” It resists them in a way that tends to amplify the pain. Of course, the body can be attacked by seemingly outside forces of all kinds, such as predators and viruses, and it is sometimes necessary to resist these in some way. I’m not talking here about passivity or not taking action when appropriate. I’m pointing to how we see and approach all this—whether we see ourselves as separate or whether we recognize the wholeness that includes both predator and prey, illness and medicine, me and you, all as one undivided and inseparable whole.

How do we meet pain and painful circumstances? Are we coming from a sense of boundlessness or from the thought-sense of separation? Are we identified as a person under attack, or as the aware presence inseparable from it all? Are we fighting and resisting the pain, or allowing and opening to it? We may find that resisting makes it worse, while allowing transforms it in remarkable ways. And when action flows from that absence of separation, it tends to be more intelligent and effective.

That root thought of being an encapsulated little “me” mushrooms into a host of other self-referential thoughts and storylines: I’m not good enough, I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m a failure, I should have done better, I don’t get it, I had it once but I lost it, I’m not as good as so-and-so, I’m right, I’m wrong, I never get it right, I’ve ruined my life, and so on. Body and mind being an inseparable whole, the body accompanies these thoughts with muscular contractions and unpleasant, uneasy sensations, all of which reinforce the story. This belief in, and identification as, a separate me, and the accompanying swirl of emotion-thought is our human suffering and confusion, and it inevitably leads to conflicts personally and globally.

So-called liberation is nothing more or less than seeing the mirage of “me” as a mirage, seeing these kinds of thoughts, as they arise, and recognizing them as merely habitual patterns that have no validity, and in the seeing (or awaring), not getting pulled into and mesmerized by the storylines. Fighting this hypnotic pull doesn’t work. All that can happen is being aware of it. And when getting pulled in does happen, simply seeing that as a meaningless and impersonal movement of the whole universe and not as anything that means something about “me.”

Seeing (or awaring) is different from thinking or believing. This isn’t about believing a new story or trying not to think. It’s about simply seeing habitual self-referential thoughts for what they are whenever they appear. Waking up, again and again, always NOW, from the hypnotic trance of encapsulation and separation. Recognizing that everything is one whole, seamless, impersonal happening, even the hypnotic trances, and that our ideas about any of it are always over-simplified abstractions.

Many spiritual paths seem to be about controlling, training or purifying the mind, making it behave in the way we believe it should. This kind of approach tends to feel like a me-centered self-improvement project. It takes a lot of constant effort and maintenance. It brings forth endless self-evaluation, as well as disappointment and frustration because we find again and again that we can’t really control or purify our mind or the universe.

And maybe we don’t have to! Maybe spirituality is more about coming to accept ourselves and the universe just as we are. Maybe it’s simply about seeing through delusion as it shows up, not being bamboozled—and when bamboozlement happens, as it does for all of us at times, not taking it personally. Realizing it’s just passing weather, empty of substance, and that it, too, is included in this wholeness.

Maybe spirituality is about finding the wonder, the beauty, the joy, and the love right here in this one bottomless moment from which we never actually depart, just as it is. When we really see it, there’s beauty in everything.

Maybe it’s not about certainty and having all the answers. Maybe it’s about groundlessness—being here without adding a comforting spin, without needing to explain the painful parts away, without endlessly seeking something more, better or different, without needing to know exactly how the universe works—simply being alive as this undeniable present experiencing, this undoubtable here-now aware presence that we are. Living playfully rather than seriously.

Eventually, we find that even obsessive or mindless thinking, even addictive or destructive behavior, even emotional turmoil, even all the wars and horrors in the world, ALL of it is empty of any solid or persisting form, ALL of it is disappearing instantaneously as soon as it arrives, and ALL of it is nothing other than this seamless present experiencing, this dreaming consciousness.

Yes, the pain really does hurt, and at the human level, the horrors and atrocities in this world really are horrible. This isn’t about turning away or not taking action to help or change things if we are so moved. The recognition I’m pointing to doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see a therapist, go into a recovery program, take medicine, or work for social justice if we are so moved. But we recognize that our actions are the actions of life itself, as are the actions of everyone else. It is one whole undivided happening that cannot, in each moment, be other than exactly how it is. And our thoughts about it are always partial, over-simplified abstractions that attempt to solidify what is actually thorough-going flux and impermanence. When that is recognized, action happens in a lighter, more playful way. We’re more flexible, less certain of our opinions, more open to possibilities.

We can feel the ephemeral, dream-like nature of this whole movie of waking life. We can recognize the truth being conveyed by the famous Old Chinese Farmer story, that we can never really know what’s good or bad fortune because it all goes together. We can see how psychological suffering gets added on top of the bare pain and painful circumstances that are an inevitable part of life—how the stories we tell ourselves and others about what’s happening inevitably make it seem more solid than it actually is, and how they keep the suffering alive, needlessly reincarnating long-gone situations along with the mirage-like character who seems to be at the center of them.

There is no end to this exploration and discovery, this play and enjoyment, this dance. Maybe the practice, if we want to call it that, is simply being alive, being exactly as we are, being what we cannot not be.

It gets simpler and simpler. Recognizing that everything is the natural activity of life, including all our passing moods and actions, including all the wars and the pollution and the endless political dramas and even the eventual extinction of the human race and the death of our sun and the emergence of whatever comes next. In all of this, there is something that doesn’t die, some intelligence-energy, some aliveness that is endlessly forming and dissolving, appearing and disappearing.

The ephemeral, dream-like nature of our whole life and the world doesn’t invalidate it or make it worthless. It lightens the imaginary burden of believing it to be way more solid and serious than it actually is. It allows us to be less stressed out, more playful. It’s very freeing to realize you can’t get it wrong and neither can anyone else.

Simply being this whole feeling-hearing-breathing-thinking-awaring-happening. Being no-thing and everything. Enjoying the whole show, including the way it disappears every night into the germinal darkness of deep sleep and then magically re-emerges, first as night dreams and then as the dream-like movie of waking life. Playing our part. Being alive. Just this.

---

Love to all…