Waking Up from Suffering

Being present experiencing

Nondual reality is effortlessly always right here, right now. It’s nothing other than this ever-changing, seamless, here-now experiencing.

Most of our suffering and confusion is unnecessary and self-induced. It is possible to be at peace with life as it is, even when it involves pain and painful circumstances. That’s what spirituality or awakening is all about. This doesn’t require acquiring anything that is currently absent, but rather, it’s about seeing through false beliefs and relaxing our tendency to grasp for security, comfort and certainty.

How does this seeing through and relaxing happen? Is there anything “we” can do?

It happens in all kinds of ways, and there are many things that can be helpful, but the one who imagines that “I” will do it, that “this isn’t it,” and that “something different or better needs to happen,” is a powerless mirage. That very activity of seeking, grasping and selfing is the contraction and suffering it is trying to eliminate.

So you might look to see if you can find the thinker of your thoughts, or for that matter, the one who is looking for the thinker. Is there a thinker? Are “you” authoring your thoughts? Or are they simply happening unbidden? Do you know what your next thought will be? Can you find the one who is doing this looking or the one who is reading these words? How exactly are “you” instantly translating these funny little black squiggles on a screen into some kind of apparently coherent meaning? To what does this word “me” or “I” actually refer?

Feel into that question. Can any “I” or “me” be found? Or do you simply find experiencing appearing in various shapes? For example, you may find sensations. Maybe a sensation in the chest. You may have an idea, for example that “you” are inside your head, and believing this can even make it feel as if this is true. You may find a mental image like what you remember seeing in the mirror. You may find memories and stories about this character who has seemingly been moving through life. But how substantial is any of that? And where is all this happening? If we cut open your head or your brain, we won’t find this room or any little self peering out through the eyes at some outside world. Where exactly is this “I” who is supposedly at the controls? Is there actually a center to present experiencing or is it centerless?

What is impossible to doubt? Isn’t it the undeniable fact that something, which we might call present experiencing, is showing up? And aren’t all the labels we put on it, and all the thoughts and ideas about it just more shapes that this here-now experiencing is momentarily taking? Is there actually a “self” authoring “my” thoughts, making “my” choices, living “my” life? Or is there only this boundless, seamless presence, sometimes appearing as a thought-sense of separation and encapsulation, but never actually being any separate or persisting form?

Even if we think that we are pure consciousness or boundless awareness in which all of this is appearing, isn’t that simply another shape that experiencing is taking? Even if we remove everything except the bare sense of presence, what exactly is the “I” in “I am”? And isn’t this present experiencing very much like the dreams that happen during sleep? How solid and substantial is it? You can’t say it’s nothing because here it is, but is it actually something with a substantial, persisting, observer-independent existence? Or have we just learned to think that it is?

Rather than thinking about all this, feel into it directly. Look. Listen. Sense. Feel. Explore these questions experientially with open attention.

You might enjoy taking time throughout the day to do nothing, to simply be present, even for just a few minutes. You can do this in an armchair, on a bus, on a park bench, in a waiting room, while sitting or while walking, whenever it invites you. It can happen while drinking a cup of coffee or tea. Listen to the sounds, enjoy the shapes and colors of ordinary things around you, feel the breathing and the sensations throughout the body. If you’re drinking a cup of coffee or tea, smell the aroma, feel the hot cup in your hands, see it, taste it, savor it. Be awake to this whole happening, without trying to conceptualize, explain, label or modify it in any way. Simply notice how it is. Simply be what you cannot not be—this present happening, this one bottomless moment, this here-now experiencing, just as it is.

You’ll probably notice that attention moves around, that thoughts come and go, that moods change or pass through, that sometimes the attention gets involved in a kind of mental movie or daydream. Simply notice all of this without judging it or trying to make it stop happening. Don’t go to war with anything that appears. Simply discover how life actually is, rather than how you think or believe it is or how you think it “should” be. And notice that all of this is nothing other than here-now experiencing.

And that, too, is just another label. There’s no way to pin down what this is with any word-concept or formulation, and the very effort to do so is all about grasping for control, security and certainty. But what happens if the grasping lets go? Could that be the very peace and freedom we are seeking?

If you notice that you’re caught up in worried, anxious, angry or judgmental thought-stories, or if there is seeking for something or resisting something or trying to “get” something mentally, be curious about all this. What thoughts generate and sustain this? Where is it felt in the body? Is there a thought-sense of a “you” at the center of all such experiences, someone who feels endangered, threatened, attacked, deficient, incomplete, or whatever the story is? And if so, is this “you” really here, or is it a kind of mirage made up of sensations, thoughts, stories, mental images and ideas?

Approach the kind of experiential exploration that I’m suggesting not in some heavy-handed, effortful, goal-oriented, result-seeking way, but in an open, playful way, as a form of enjoyment, exploration and discovery. Relax, take it easy.

Enjoy the sounds of rain pattering on the roof, the sounds of traffic, the hum of the refrigerator, the cheeping of birds. See the lizards running over the warm stones, the colorful cigarette package crumpled in the gutter, the bright yellow car passing on the road, the light dancing on the wall. Feel the tingling in the toes, the breathing, the cool breeze on the skin. This is effortless, simple, and yet infinitely rich and full. You may feel that everything is sacred, luminous, alive—that nothing more is needed.

You may notice that the appearance is constantly changing, but that it never departs from the immediacy of right here, right now. There is infinite diversity, but it all shows up as one whole seamless movie, the dream-like movie of waking life. You may find that you can’t actually pin anything down, and yet here it all is. For example, what exactly is “the body,” or the city or town or country you’re in, or the planet you’re supposedly riding around the sun on? You can’t deny the appearance and the conventional reality of these things, but if you look closely, can you ever actually nail them down? And do they ever show up as anything other than present experiencing?

If you find yourself compulsively reading spiritual books or watching endless nondual videos long after you’ve gotten the message, and doing this in very much the same way you might reach for a cigarette, a piece of cake or a shot of heroin to escape an uncomfortable feeling, maybe try exploring the uncomfortable feeling instead. Is it really unbearable? Does it even persist or stay the same? Books and videos are great, but tuning into experiencing itself is what brings it all home.

If there is physical pain, explore the sensations themselves. Go right into the center of them. Is the pain solid and unchanging, or is it pulsating, vibrating, coming and going? If you resist it, does it get better or worse? When you resist it, you seem to be separate from it, someone who is being attacked by it, someone trying to get away from it. When you open to it completely and go right into it, there is no someone being attacked by something else. There is no separation, just sensation. Notice the difference.

Experiment with all this. Explore. Be curious. Have fun. Enjoy! Liberation is not some great mystery that only a few achieve. It’s not some finish-line that “you” cross or some permanent state that “you” abide in forever after. It is utterly simple, always available, quite ordinary. Simply stop trying to get hold of what this living reality is, or what it means, or why it’s happening. Just be this here-now experiencing, just as it is. Be what you cannot not be.

In the simplicity of hearing the rain or feeling the breathing, without thought, there is no gap between subject and object. There is no “you” apart from “the rain” or “the breath.” There is simply this utterly ungraspable, unavoidable, indescribable thusness. It is infinitely diverse but inseparably whole, at once ever-changing and ever-present. It cannot be found because it cannot be lost. It has no inside or outside, no place where it is not.

Everything is just this, even the moments of feeling contracted or confused, even the moments of delusion or upset—it’s all just passing weather. None of it is personal. None of it needs to be or can be other than exactly how it is. And how it is never stays the same. Just stop trying to grasp it in any way, and if grasping happens, simply recognize that it, too, is just another momentary impersonal unresolvable shape that the kaleidoscopic, ever-changing Rorschach blot of experiencing is momentarily taking. Already it is gone—the river has flowed on, without ever going anywhere other than right here, right now.

Your true nature is something never lost to you even in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of Enlightenment… Above all, have no longing to become a future Buddha; your sole concern should be, as thought succeeds thought, to avoid clinging to any of them… Do not permit the least movement of your minds to disturb you. This alone is what is called liberation. Ah, be diligent! Be diligent!”

— Huang Po

Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment....You will continue to pursue every kind of means until you realize that all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away. There is nothing complicated about it. But previous to that, it is an immensely complicated problem... The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside... We are never at any moment in the dilemma we fear ourselves to be.

— Adi Da

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

— Dogen

If you need time to achieve something, it must be false.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Love to all…