16

The Essence of Satisfaction

Stanza 74 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra tells us clearly: “Wherever you find satisfaction, the very essence of bliss will be revealed to you if you remain in this place without wavering.”²⁸ This is saktopaya. To practice this stanza and live the sensations that a tantrika knows, experience them yourself. Each day, according to your sensitivity and your mood, choose to enter into total communication with the objects of your desire or, more simply, with the states that spontaneously present themselves and that harbor the power to bring you a kind of satisfaction you no doubt underestimate.

As soon as you awaken, enter into consciousness in your body, considered the temple of the divine. Observe physiological changes (sensation of breath, of tensions, of the heartbeat, of blood flow, of the diaphragm, of the intestines, and so on); note the start of mental activity, the flow of sensations and emotions. Do this for twenty or thirty seconds, like an extended interior cinematic moving shot of the inner landscapes, zooming forward and back; then, consciously, withdraw from this awareness and return to your habitual manner of doing things—that is, to automatic pilot.

A little later, while getting up, for example, bring the same naked and nonjudgmental attention to the movements of your body and muscles. After a few seconds, withdraw your attention. A little later, as you walk barefoot on the floor, for four or five steps be present to your feet, to your movements, to your sensations, then come back to the habitual course of things. Be present to a few sips of whatever you are drinking and return to automatism. Next, in the time it takes to butter a slice of bread, do this same back-and-forthing with presence. When you taste your piece of bread, return once more to presence and then release.

When you leave the house, give a few seconds of your attention to the sky then, after a break, to the movements of your body. Continue in this manner, consciously entering into and then emerging from presence. Be present to a face, to a look, to thirty seconds of a conversation in which you listen to the whole person who is speaking to you and not only to her words. If you succeed with this light, open awareness, in the spirit of a game, free from all religious or spiritual ideas, you will make, starting from the first day, a series of major discoveries that will help you to be totally alive.

You do not need to be Buddhist or tantrika; you do not even need to be interested in spirituality. It is a matter of but one reality: your desire to be in the world, totally, without inhibition, without fear, without anxiety. The desire to be wholly available to life suffices. You do not have to be involved in, or to practice, or to believe anything whatsoever. The ultimate things present themselves in such a simple way that it is enough to experience them by yourself.

What passionate things will you discover? You will see that each time you succeed in seizing life in its immediacy, your breath will relax harmoniously. This sensation will bring you deep pleasure; you will feel it to the very innermost part of your head. Ten seconds of spontaneous breathing, gentle and deep, is enough to release a kind of vibrating stream of warmth into your brain and sometimes into your whole body.

Next, you will discover that true presence brings you pleasure incommensurate with events. The most banal thing—a cup of tea, a few steps, opening a door, a glance at the sky—can be enough to make you happy during the time you are present and well after.

You will discover that if you can find such pleasure in presence, then your joy no longer depends on exceptional circumstances waited for in a state of neurotic tension but on simple reality, as it presents itself to you from moment to moment. In this way you will gain immense autonomy from the intense pleasures that you once needed in order to be satisfied.

It will very quickly follow from there that your quest and your expectations will no longer be focused on hypothetical or uncertain objects but on whatever your experience reveals to you about everyday ordinariness.

You will discover that nothing or no one can take this pleasure away from you. Again, your independence will increase.

You will discover that your body and your mind love this communication so much that they will unite and ask you for more of it. The habitual schism between the body and mind will progressively subside.

You will perceive that with presence to the world, there is no ego, and therefore no separation, no duality. The panic about being nothing that swells in the back of your mind will then subside, leaving room for you to experience that to be nothing is to enter into totality, and that in this naked awareness you are the world. Your body will regain a feeling of plenitude and calm. Even if, in the beginning, this lasts only three minutes a day, it will change your life to an extent that you cannot imagine.

This attention to life as I have just presented it to you is simple because it totally coincides with the rapid flow of the mind. It does not require reserving extensive stretches of time for practice; it does not require adhering to any principles or buying any materials, and you can do it anywhere. This is what in Kashmiri Tantra are called the micropractices. Nothing is more efficient, nothing is simpler, nothing is more profound. These are not preliminaries: This is the whole practice of Tantra in all its splendor. There is no higher goal.

What will happen if you decide to practice this yoga sixty times a day for fifteen seconds? You will spend fifteen minutes a day “being.” At first three or four minutes will suffice. You will increase not the duration of the practices but their number. This will be a kind of game that you can practice without anyone knowing. You will not even need to claim to be Buddhist, Sufi, or tantrika, but simply human, the most natural in the world. People around you will be much more deeply affected by your presence than by your speeches and your spiritual theories. Presence is contagious. People will ask you if you are in love, and you will spontaneously answer “yes” without quite knowing with whom or with what you are in love. It is this continuous feeling that will henceforth guide your life.

If this practice speaks to you and if you persevere for a few weeks, or a few months, you will discover that there is no longer a “practice” but quite simply pleasure, an incomparable tremoring thrill for life. At that moment you will contact the Tantric secret, and you will naturally journey toward a more and more steady pleasure of presence, because this is the profound meaning of life. Little by little you will realize that what is hidden behind the most inaccessible treatises, the most sophisticated philosophy, the most secret practices, is simply this.

You will then approach the source from which all the spiritual and mystical paths spring and, in unceasingly deepening your naked presence to the world, you will experience what we call awakening.