“I understand that the answer is to discover I am unlimited and unbound.”

The problem with questions is that one may find answers. When really there is no answer. Because any answer comprehendable by the mind falls wide of the mark. An open heart is what matters here. To the heart open wide concepts such as bound and limited, or unbound and unlimited, quickly cease to have any meaning.

Of course this is a somewhat frustrating response. Because we want answers, we want happiness, or perhaps we just want. And we want now. Hence talk that seems vague or off the point, or worse refuses to address what we deem as the ‘practicalities’ of living in society, seems rather unsatisfying. Responses that say things we have heard a thousand times before, such as ‘look within’ seem not to address the problem that is usually foremost in consciousness - namely that we are unhappy and want a quick and easy solution. A solution which we like to call ’spiritual’ rather than something more mundane like ‘take the pain away’.

However the vagueness and off-pointedness appear so for a simple reason - we have become habituated to look at the finger pointing, rather that to what it points. We clutch to ourselves the surface meaning and ignore the fact that metaphor is needed because the indescribable cannot be described. Or as Zhangji once said, the tea cannot be understood until one drinks from the cup. Our habits and training are to look anywhere but toward the light shining from within our own hearts. And so questions arise, since they are the ultimate distraction - an entertainment for the assumed persona of who we think we are.

“How can I have a quiet mind?”

We assume that the thoughts we perceive are our thoughts. We forget that the persona mixed up in those thoughts is itself merely a thought. Instead we create a magic box called ‘mind’ in which thoughts sit, and which sifts and weighs and decides. Investigate and see if these assumptions are indeed correct. When the ‘mind’ is seen for what it is, it will cease to be a problem.

“What are the methods of investigation?”

There are three paths:

1. The path of surrender: Surrender total and complete, to God, to love, to beauty, to truth, etc. Surrender so deep that there is no room left for anything else. Everything is obliterated by the total and complete surrender of everything - every thought, every assumption, every need. Everything is obliterated, including the person doing the surrendering, as well as the object to which one is surrendering. All that remains is a fullness and completeness. One surrenders according to predilections. For some this may mean total and complete involvement in say, the beauty and joy of higher mathematics. For others it may mean surrender to the love of a pet. For others, to their particular version of God. It does not matter. This was the path of Brother Lawrence, of Rab’ia, of Rumi. Surrender so complete that neither self nor other is needed.
2. The path of knowledge: Deep seeking for knowledge, with such a hunger that one is consumed by it day and night. Every action, every event, every beat of one’s heart is turned toward discovery. A seeking so deep that everything becomes useful, everything illumines the search. This is the path of great art, of great science. It was the path of Omar Khayyam, Meister Eckhard, Jigoro Kano, of Kepler, and of Buddha. A thirst for knowledge so strong that both the investigation and the investigator are subsummed and no longer needed.
3. The accident: Here there is a sudden spontaneous relaxation and ease that just happens and is permanent. All that remains is freedom. Very rare, but it does happen.

If we wish a quiet mind, we will walk some variation of these paths until the need for a path, or for anything at all, vanishes. However if the urge for truth is strong, it will become obvious very quickly that most thoughts and problems are a distraction and an excuse to avoid the center of our own being. It then will also become obvious that it is a personal decision to be distracted or not, and that jobs, relationships, lack of money, fear, illness, and all the other games of the supposed mind, are just excuses. We know what we truly are. And whilst we appear to be lost in the miasma of our own thoughts, in fact we are using that ‘confusion’ as an excuse to put off surrender or seeking, whichever way draws us.

“I know from experience that will and effort won’t do the trick.”

Perhaps, but what we call will is usually little other than self-aggrandizement, or a form of ego building. What we call effort is usually difficult only because we do not want to do it. Hate is tiring. We get worn out by the effort to keep hating some situation or person. But love, true selfless, deep love, is easy and energizing. We smile when we love. True love requires no effort or will. It just is. We do not need effort, we do not need will power. Except perhaps, to avoid love.

 It is frightening to follow this path because it removes
the foundation of life as I know it. It is like taking a step into
the abyss. It takes a lot of trust. One never knows where he is
going to land.

The things said about ‘awakening’ fill libraries - ‘eternal bliss’, ‘all knowledge’, ‘permanent peace’. Ho ho, everyone likes a good story, like the fairy tale of ‘enlightenment’. There is no such thing as enlightenment. For that which never existed in the first place, namely an individual persona, cannot awaken.

What one really must abandon is confusion. Nothing else is lost! Then it becomes quite clear that the very idea that there is a ‘me’ to have ‘eternal bliss’ falls naturally away. There is no need for peace when there is no one to whom it can occur.

Everything else is at it ever was. The world goes on, you still do the laundry, watch TV, and play in the sunlight. The only difference, is that you are free. Free of confusion. Free to just be. Free.

We think that ‘awakening’ requires some sort of abandonment of everything we love. Chocolate cake must be foreswarn so to speak Again, nothing needs to be given up except confusion.

Awakening is not about emptiness or sitting in some sort of holy contemplation. It is about a simple ease of being, that is full and complete. We are free to love and be loved. A freedom to simply be. Full to overflowing, and fully alive. It does not mean there is no pain, for indeed, there may be just as much as there ever was. In fact some pain may even be felt more deeply since there is no longer the impediment of habituated avoidance to get in the way. And this is so for joy as well. But the difference is that there no longer remains anyone left to clutch the pain or joy, laughter or sorrow, to oneself as if it is theirs.

Of course words are but pointers. Find your own way. And know that if you decide to ‘jump into the unknown’, it is only frightening because you think it is. Fear is another way of delaying, of obfuscating for the sake of avoidance. There is no death of the ego - you cannot kill something that never was.

The only way to taste tea is to take a sip. You might like it.