AN AFTERWORD ABOUT WORDS
Before there was a word,
Where was separation?
Now that there are words,
Where is separation?1
If you have finished reading this book, you will have read a great number of words describing a great number of concepts. Not a single concept is Truth. If there has been any understanding, please forget the words. If there has been no understanding, please throw the words away. Printed words on a page that try to describe the so-called spiritual journey are simply lines on paper, like a map, that attempt to give the mind a sense of the terrain and a framework for understanding experience. A menu does not deliver the taste of food, however; a verbal description of a rose cannot deliver its fragrance.
Neither a map nor words are the place you currently find yourself, nor can they ensure you arrive at a desired destination. Words and ideas are neither the present moment nor a destination, and nothing that can be spoken with words is ultimate Truth. Nothing. Truth lies beyond words, beyond ideas, beyond anything the finite mind can think about. Words are only for the purpose of going beyond words. There is a place for understanding of the mind, but true understanding transcends the mind and does not depend on it.
If there has been any understanding of what these words are trying to point to, you will understand that there is nowhere to go and no separate one who needs to get there. You will understand that that which drives the seeking mind and that which ends the seeking is who/what you already are, yet that Source cannot be “found” as an object.
Imagine if I were to put my finger someplace on a photo of planet earth near the area you take to be home and say, “There you are.” You no doubt were photographed if you were alive when this picture of the earth was taken, but you will not find yourself in the photograph of the earth. Indeed, you could show me a recent photograph of yourself, a close-up of nothing else but the person you imagine is you, and still, if we pointed, you would not find yourself there. You will not find yourself in a photograph of the earth or in a photograph of your body. You will not find yourself in a mirror or in a still reflecting pond. You will not find yourself in the stories about the self you carry in your mind. You are neither a picture on a piece of paper nor a story in your memory. So who are you?
This book has emphasized Self-inquiry as a method to discover the truth about who you are. But methods are for those who take themselves to be separate, and you are not separate from anything or anyone—least of all, from the Heart of Awareness that is the living and the knowing of your experience—regardless of your thoughts, your mood, or who you imagine yourself to be. Methods are simply methods, a point of departure among teachers, but there is nothing from which to depart in the openness that is your true nature.
SUMMARY OF A JOURNEY
In my 2004 book Only This!, I summed up my own journey this way:
I searched in scriptures, sutras, and endless books, imagining truth could be found in words or ideas. I meditated with mantras, breaths, incense, Catholic rosaries and Buddhist malas, sitting before statues and pictures of holy ones, on black cushions facing white walls, with teachers whose Silence was their teaching. I searched for what I imagined was “there,” until in stillness something turned around to notice what is here.
What is here when we stop trying to arrive there? What is here, so close that we do not notice? Words will never answer. What knows cannot be known except to Itself. It is what we are. . . . This is what silences every thought and every concept, even the concepts of truth, God, Buddha, world, and “me”; yet it is simultaneously their source. . . . Here is an ever-present Silence that knows no separation between background and foreground, divine and human, teacher and student, enlightened and unenlightened, God and flea. It is undivided Silence, empty of nothing, continually moving, continually still. It is what we are. Only This!2
WHEN THE SEARCH ENDS
When the search ends, we realize that that which we were seeking is who/what we have always been! When the search ends, we realize that the Heart of Awareness, our true Self, has always been here, now. Here reading these words; here as the body is headed to work; here waiting for a doctor’s appointment; here cooking dinner; here gazing at the ocean; here hugging our child; here holding the hand of a dying parent; here sitting in silence; here as the ten thousand things; here as the awake emptiness from which objects arise. When the search ends, we return to the ordinary, freely dwelling in the present moment, open to what is, content to live an ordinary life, and yet that life is infused with the understanding, compassion, and love that want to flow from its true heart.
Perfection lies in the whole, in Totality, and in its natural balance. Trying to perfect a limited “self’ reflects one’s identification with the body-mind. When your identification is no longer limited to the body, you will honor the body’s ability to anchor you in the present moment, to respond to life, and to show you when you feel out of alignment with truth, but the body will not define who you are. Life may continue to empty you of your limited beliefs, but you are content to be where you are, doing what you are doing, for you know that you are not the “doer.” You deny neither your humanness nor your divinity, knowing they are not separate. Your life in form may be touched by joys and sorrows, health and illness, contractions and expansion, moments of feeling stuck and moments of flowing. Life is whatever presents itself in your particular form of the formless; you know that resistance is futile. And yet that which is living its life in you may move in unexpected ways, wiser or funnier or more loving than your egoic mind could imagine.
NO NEED TO BE SEEN AS EXTRAORDINARY
While you sense the extraordinary in each moment and each form as it is, including your own, there is no need to be seen to be extraordinary. Dwelling in the ordinary, you can appreciate the natural unfolding of life, moments, thoughts, feelings, body sensations, spontaneous actions, whatever appears and disappears. Even though awareness may see places of separation still wanting to be liberated, you bow to that seeing, no longer judging that you need to be somewhere else, being someone else, doing something else. Dwelling in the ordinary means laughing when something is funny, crying when something is sad, enjoying the taste of food when you eat, feeling compassion in the face of pain or suffering, accepting what comes and accepting what goes, with love infusing it all.
DWELLING IN PEACE
Ultimately, dwelling in the Heart of Awareness is dwelling as the simple and transparent peace of our true nature and the love that flows from our open heart. Peace comes not from changing life, but from changing identification, changing perspective; yet egoic ambition will not change it. It is your thoughts that “you” are separate and that “you” must change yourself or your world that keep you from being open to the moment as it presents itself in its radiant reflection of the whole. You are God’s reflection in your particular form, unfolding yourself each moment as what is. What Is sees its reflections everywhere. Consciousness, Being, the Tao, God, the Self, Buddha nature, and the Heart of Awareness are all names that have been named. But no name can contain or define what you are. No words, no concepts are it. Who you are is hidden in every moment, unseen, and yet appears in every moment, seen. What is beyond words gives rise to words. In the words of Chuang Tzu:
How can I find someone who’s forgotten words,
so we can have a few words together?3
Like a leaf floating on the river or drifting on the breeze, life is moving itself. Peace is not divided from the moment at hand. Life continues on its course with or without our worry, with or without our words. The river can be trusted. The breeze knows where it blows. Our life knows its destination even though our mind does not. Our thoughts have never been driving the bus. Perhaps it is possible to relax and let yourself be taken, to celebrate your precious life, to enjoy your Self. What began your search will end it when you least expect it . . . or perhaps there was never anything to begin or to end.
Finished, finished,
When it is completely finished,
There is nothing to finish.4