Today's Column

No Mind

There is no “mind,” no thoughts, no beliefs. Awareness is not in time or space. Awareness is that which has no relationship with anything. That’s why it’s unexplainable, miraculous. The ordinary mind that conducts the day to day business of life has one purpose: to distract awareness from its own obvious ubiquity and impregnability. This is not a conspiracy, or the result of evil, or even ignorance. It’s just one of things that happens; the way it is. As the ordinary mind – or the appearance of ordinary mind – encounters more evidence that it is an illusion, it becomes more and more transparent, until a threshold is crossed. The balance between what we ordinarily agree is the way things are and the way things really are becomes undeniable.

Samadhi can happen as this tipping point is crossed, and the relief of laying down the unsupportable burden contrasts so wildly with ordinary life that it’s usually perceived as bliss. But bliss isn’t the point. Awakening has no drama. It simply is. And what is awakened to is that there is no one to have that dramatic experience. Or any other dramatic experience. Experiences, like everything else, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, float past, like clouds. They don’t cling because there’s nothing for them to cling to. The “I” in “I am thinking,” becomes just as unsupportable as the “It” in “It is raining,” simply a linguistic convenience.

Weightlessness.

Well, we’re “all” space travelers, aren’t we?