The Nine-Hundred Pound Gorilla in the Room

Reflections on seeking and practicing

The spiritual search is a waste of time? Practices are unnecessary?

We often hear such messages nowadays. If you’ve been meditating and doing spiritual practices for many years with the feeling that you are chasing a carrot forever just out of reach, coming upon the message that, “This is it,” “Nothing is missing,” “There is nothing to do,” “Everything is already whole and complete just as it is,” can be enormously relieving and freeing—at the right moment, when truly grokked, this is perhaps the most liberating message there is.

But such messages can be misunderstood, both by the person receiving them and also potentially by the person delivering them. Because, in fact, although everything is just this, there is a palpable difference between being lost in the me-story, with all the accompanying suffering and confusion, and being free of it. And in my experience, there are paths and practices that can help to reveal and awaken us from delusion and suffering. A true path or practice is always about right here, right now—and a true teacher understands that we already are what we seek, that we are always already Home. And yet, we don’t always realize that or live out of that realization.

Whether we’re seeking enlightenment, excitement, a new pair of shoes, the perfect lover, another drug experience, endless reassurance and praise, or a winning lottery ticket, most of us are seeking something to fill the hole of uncertainty, restlessness, self-doubt and psychological fear that so often pervades the human experience. And in some sense, we’re all practicing something as well, whether it is compulsive shopping, snorting cocaine, over-working, over-thinking, or sitting in meditation.

There is a certain kind of seeking that pours gasoline on that painful fire, and that kind of seeking can certainly end. In fact, that is often the goal of the spiritual search—to be free from all of that. There is also a result-oriented approach to spiritual practice that misses the mark and isn’t helpful, and that can also be seen through and can fall away. But let’s be clear about what is truly potentially liberating and what actually isn’t.

I’ve tended to avoid the word practice in most of my writing because it can sound like something rote, methodical, result-oriented, or like rehearsing for a future performance. I usually prefer to speak of exploring, discovering, realizing and enjoying the living actuality here and now. But I’m fine with the word practice if it is understood in the way Zen teacher Norman Fischer uses it, which is in the same way we speak of practicing medicine or practicing law—as a vocation, a life’s work, a calling—in this case, a devotion to presence-awareness, seeing through delusion, and waking up here and now. I’ve found that to be the most wholesome and fulfilling way of life. That doesn’t mean it’s the right life for everyone, and it doesn’t mean there is only one way to practice, explore or wake up.

Sometimes, often in the beginning, a specific form of practice such as meditation can seem like one more thing we have added to our lives, another task in our already busy schedule, a self-improvement project in which we never seem to be quite good enough. But as we go along, we realize that’s not what it’s about, and over time, the boundary between “meditation” and “the rest of life” gradually melts away, and formal as well as continuous meditation becomes just a part of life—like eating, using the toilet, taking out the garbage, caring for children, walking the dog, practicing medicine or practicing law. It’s not just something we do for an hour sitting on a cushion—it’s our whole life actually. It’s not a task; it’s a way of life. Formal practices may not be part of everyone’s path—we’re all different. And formal practices may be part of our path at one time and may fall away at another, but their essence—what they reveal and bring forth—permeates our whole life.

But still, we might wonder, why engage in such activities at all if “this is it” and we are already whole and complete just as we are—and if there’s really no one here?

The deeply conditioned identity as a separate, encapsulated self, and the old habits of seeking, grasping and resisting rarely disappear forever in a single flash of blinding light. For most of us, they are worn down gradually. And likewise, our sense of being unbound, ever-present, presence-awareness deepens and becomes more stable—although actually, it is never really absent, but the realization (or making real) of that is what deepens and becomes more stable. And in this lifelong, present moment process, I find that meditation, contemplative exploration, working with teachers, going on retreats, reading books and many other practices and endeavors can be enormously helpful. And since there is a tendency these days to downplay or even spurn such things as unnecessary or even as obstacles, I want to put in a plug for them.

Of course, these things can eventually become at times a kind of addictive way of avoiding the simplicity of just being here now, standing on our own two feet, and/or facing uncomfortable feelings. We can sometimes reach for a spiritual book or a new teacher in the same way we once reached for a cigarette or a drink. But if and when that happens, it can be noticed and seen. And the answer to that isn’t necessarily trying to renounce all that. For one thing, reaching for a meditation retreat is a whole lot healthier than reaching for a shot of heroin or another cigarette.

And in fact, we can’t decide to stop reaching or seeking. As Wayne Liquorman once put it, seeking is like having sex with a nine-hundred pound gorilla—you’re not finished until the gorilla is finished. 

I still find myself at times grasping, seeking or resisting—but I no longer seem to take it personally as a sign of how deficient the “me” character is. It’s just what’s showing up, like passing weather. Even in my darkest, most contracted moments, there is a knowing that it has no real substance, means nothing, and will pass.

For some people, all these old habitual movements of the bodymind (and the universe) may vanish and never reappear. For others, they may pop up from time to time forever. I don’t think we get to choose, as Wayne so beautifully expressed. Seeking and grasping can end in any moment of waking up, but there is no end to exploration, unfoldment and waking up—nor to enjoyment, play and devotion to what is. 

So-called “awakening” refers to a shift from capsule identity as a separate person to the sense of being boundless and seamless presence-awareness. It points to a freedom from caught-up-ness in the suffering of self-referential thinking and emotion-thought, a realization of the ephemeral nature of everything that appears, a falling away of the thought-sense of separation, a dissolving of the boundary between inside and outside, a recognition that there is only this one bottomless moment Here-Now, this aware presence, this immediacy from which we never actually depart and which includes absolutely everything. Awakening is experiential, not intellectual, and it’s not about belief. It’s about direct seeing-knowing-feeling-being. It’s never about a past experience or a future attainment. Awakening is always NOW.

In the story, awakening seems to arrive in a multitude of different ways. For Eckhart Tolle, it was sudden, dramatic, out of the blue and apparently never faded in any significant way, although clearly he spent many years settling into it, reading various teachers and so on. For Ramana Maharshi, it was like that as well. For others, like myself, there seems to be a long journey and a gradual unfolding, with occasional lightbulb moments—a journey that involves years of meditating, going on silent retreats, working with teachers, reading nondual books, and engaging in contemplative inquiry and exploration. In cases such as mine, there is no dramatic line-in-the-sand moment when everything shifts permanently, once-and-for-all, from confusion to clarity, from contraction to expansion, from identity as the character in the story to the vastness of unbound presence-awareness. It’s more like walking in a mist and gradually getting wet, or an ice cube gradually dissolving in warm water (and sometimes re-freezing).

Of course, it requires memory and thought to conjure up the story of either a sudden awakening or a more gradual journey over time. In actual fact, it is always NOW, and the remembered journey or sudden event and the one who seems to have had either of these is now an imagination. And what we “awaken” to has never actually been absent, and so in one sense, nothing happens. As Buddha reportedly said, “I attained nothing from complete, unexcelled enlightenment.” Still, there is a shift, an unfoldment, a process of recognition, realization, stability and living out of what is realized.

There is no one way to awaken and no single “right” or “best” practice. No two of us are exactly alike. Not everyone needs to formally practice meditation or anything else. And certainly, there is no need to be a monk or retire to a cave or have a teacher or travel to India or be a vegetarian in order to arrive at the place we have actually never left, nor is there any need to not do any of that. It doesn’t seem that we get to choose. Our lives unfold as they do. But in my experience, teachers—the good ones—and intelligent practices can be very helpful.

Presence-awareness is omnipresent. It is our True Nature. Thinking, story-telling, remembering and imagining are movements of this seamless presence, momentary forms it takes, and it all takes place within the vast open space of awareness. We are this vast open space, this seamless presence. It is never actually absent or lacking in any way.

But however awake we may be, thoughts continue to bubble up. There may be periods of total silence, but eventually, thoughts bubble up. Some thought is creative and functional and not a problem, and some of it is a relatively harmless activity akin to chewing gum, but a great deal of our obsessive and habitual thinking is our suffering and confusion—what Joko Beck called the self-centered dream (or nightmare). That is what can become less and less believable and can fall away more and more.

The thinking mind (and of course there is really no such thing — thinking is an intermittent activity) is a bit like having a television in the room with you. It might just be playing away in the background, nothing but distant sounds and occasional bits of intelligible dialog, but you’re not logged into the story, and you’re aware that it’s just a bunch of make-believe drama that has nothing to do with you.

But if you start giving your attention to the television, even if what’s playing is a ridiculous soap opera, in no time at all, the attention can get pulled in and mesmerized by the drama, and you may find yourself identifying with the characters and perhaps filled with emotional reactions to the situations they seem to be in. This is exactly what happens when we tune into our thoughts and storylines and become identified as the character in the story of “me.”

With the television, maybe there is a commercial break at some point, and you snap out of the story and the hypnotic entrancement in it, and maybe you pick up the remote and mute the sound or turn off the television altogether. Maybe you judge yourself harshly for having wasted a whole hour watching a soap opera, and maybe you vow never again to turn on the TV or get caught up in these mindless programs. You vow that you will now spend your days in pure silence, doing nothing other than being present and aware.

But eventually, you feel a bit bored, a bit restless, a bit uneasy, a bit out of kilter, a bit troubled, and you find yourself reaching for the remote. Purification projects for the phantom “me” have a way of falling apart. And so, once again, the TV goes on and the attention is again absorbed in the realm of emotion-thought, identification with the character and involvement in the story. And when there is another waking up, once again, the thinking mind, posing as “me,” may again chastise itself for falling from purity, and it may vow never to do this again. And then again, we fail.

Maybe eventually we see that all the vows and purification projects and self-chastising are just more layers of thought, thoughts about thoughts, all centering around and strengthening the me-story. It may eventually be realized that thought cannot free us from thought. Awareness is what liberates and transforms, simply by illuminating what is going on. Awareness allows it all to be just as it is—it sheds light on it—and it doesn’t cling to any of it. Awareness is unconditional love. It doesn’t judge or resist or grasp or take any of it personally. It is open, all-inclusive, whole. The more the old habits are seen clearly, and the more we discover the peace, joy and freedom in simply being here, the less pull the habits have and the more attracted we are to simple being. We no longer need anything to be different from how it is. We no longer harbor future fantasies of final perfection for “me”—instead, we see the perfection in life as it is, mistakes and all.

As a pointer, “give up the search” means to stop thinking about past or future attainments—stop chasing after bigger, better, different experiences. Stop giving all your attention to the television (the bubbling thought stream), and when that does happen and you do get drawn in and mesmerized by the storyline and the drama, simply notice how that happens and how it affects the whole bodymind—what is alluring about it and in what ways it is a form of suffering. Don’t judge it, defend it, or vow to leave it behind—don’t think about the thinking, in other words—simply be aware of the whole thing. Awareness is what transforms.

Eventually, there may be the recognition of the common factor in every different experience, the radiant awaring presence, and the discovery that the Holy Reality is right here in and as whatever is showing up. And of course, as the most radical expressions of nonduality are pointing out, that includes the television programs, the so-called distractions and mistakes, the entrancement in the dramas of emotion-thought—it is all this indivisible one reality, empty of any substantial or persisting form, regardless of how it appears.

When truly grokked, this opens us up to unconditional love. But adopting this radical perspective as merely a comforting new belief can become a way of closing down the sensitivity, openness, subtlety and wonderment of truly being awake. I’ve even seen this kind of radical message sometimes turn into what can only be described as a fundamentalist dogma, an ideological form of certainty that closes people down rather than opening them up.

Seeking—in the sense of compulsively chasing after fantasies of more, better, different experiences for me—can fall away in any moment of waking up. But the search to be free of suffering, to understand the sources of our confusion, to discover where happiness and peace are found, to learn how to be with stormy weather, to manifest love—that seach is a healthy part of our human nature. It is our True Nature calling us Home. And that search is not something to give up prematurely.

If we imagine that “this is it,” “nothing is missing,” “there is nothing to do,” and other radical expressions of ultimate truth mean that there is no difference between a life of suffering and confusion and a life free from that, we are missing something essential. Yes, both lives are equally an activity of the undivided whole, just as all waves are equally ocean and equally water—but there is a world of difference between the Buddha-wave and the Hitler-wave, and to deny that is to miss something vital. We can’t land on either sameness or difference—both are true. Reality is not one, not two.

And if we mistakenly think that being awake simply means accepting that “life is a bitch and then you die,” which is another popular tendency I’ve seen these days, that is also missing something. In both cases, we are prematurely abandoning the genuine search, our True Nature calling us Home, before the jewel has actually been discovered. So please don’t give up on the genuine search or on whatever practices or expressions feel helpful to you in opening the heart-mind to the freedom, joy, peace and unconditional love that is right here, right now. And don’t expect it to always feel blissful. Remember, pain and painful circumstances are part of life.

I’d like to end by sharing some excerpts from a book that I’m still slowly reading and savoring, one that I very highly recommend to all of you—Seeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life and Teachings of Sojun Mel Weitsman. Mel was my first Zen teacher and the founder of Berkeley Zen Center, where I was briefly a resident back in the 80s. This is exerpted from a section called “Practice-Enlightenment”:

We think that delusion precedes enlightenment. We tend to think in terms of before and after. Delusion is first, and we work hard to get something called enlightened… but enlightenment is our nature, our true nature that is always with us. When we say we “get enlightened,” it’s not that we actually get something. It means to bring forth light, to let go, so that light can shine forth. Enlightenment is an expression of our true nature, but that doesn’t mean that we necessarily realize it…

Enlightenment is the beginning of our practice. Enlightenment is what motivates us toward practice. The fact that you want to practice means that the enlightenment that is always with you needs to somehow be expressed. It is usual to think that we enter practice in order to get enlightened, but enlightenment is actually driving our practice… What we are all looking for is what we already have in abundance, but we don’t know that until we wake up to it… Practice brings forth enlightenment, and enlightenment creates practice. Practice is the basis; enlightenment is its expression and extends everywhere. It’s not confined to a certain place or activity. This is it…

[The question that] Dogen carried with him to China [was], if we all have Buddha-nature, if everything is Buddha-nature, why do we have to do something like practice? Why sit zazen, or do anything special, if Buddha-nature is our natural endowment? What Dogen woke up to was that although Buddha-nature is our essential nature, if we don’t do something to bring it forth, it doesn’t manifest as realization. Even though electricity is everywhere, if we don’t induce it, we can’t make use of it. It’s all around us. But we have to channel it somehow so we can use it. Once we realize our nature, everything will open to us. Since Buddha-nature is the fundamental nature of all things, we realize that all things are essentially aspects of our true self. For us humans, Buddha-nature manifests as human nature. Even though we’re born with the ability to be truly human, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we will turn out to be completely realized human beings.

— Sojun Mel Weitsman, from Seeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life and Teachings of Sojun Mel Weitsman

Mel Weitsman practiced and taught at the Berkeley Zen Center for fifty-five years:

Mel died of cancer in 2021 at age ninety-one, and this book was published posthumously in December of 2023. Mel was a very tender-hearted, wise, grounded man with genuine humility. He came across as very ordinary, and in that, he was truly extraordinary. I continue to absorb and learn from his teaching and from the way he lived. I wrote about working with Mel in my first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life.

The first part of Seeing One Thing Through is an autobiography that Mel wrote toward the end of his life, and the second half of the book is a collection of his wonderful dharma talks, which point to right here, right now, just this in a clear and beautiful way.

The autobiographical part goes back to Mel's working-class boyhood in Los Angeles, his coming of age as an artist in 1950’s San Francisco, and his discovery of Zen through Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who was Mel’s teacher. It contains a lot of history about Shunryu Suzuki, San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara and Berkeley Zen Center that will be of special interest to many people in the Zen world—but I think it will touch others as well to hear about the spirit, humility and community effort that went into all this.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from Mel: “Each one of us has our own perfection which includes all of our so-called mistakes.”

Much Love to all…