The Ocean and the Waves
El Océano y las Olas
This meditation invites you to distinguish between raw sensory experience and the mind's activity, revealing a vast, quiet presence beneath your thoughts.
The Ocean and the Waves
You can keep your eyes open or closed.
Explore.
Notice the sensations, the breath.
Notice the images in the mind.
Raw experience and the mind
The mind can do very complex things,
but the way it works is very simple.
It just superimposes on our raw experience
a layer of images and sounds.
The raw experience is everything that's happening
that isn't images and sounds imagined by the mind.
It's everything you're hearing as real sound,
everything you're seeing,
even if your eyes are closed there will be some light,
the sensations in your body.
That's raw experiencing: sensations of breath, sounds.
Just notice without efforting,
without trying to gain anything or change anything.
Just notice the difference between
the experience of the raw present moment, sensation, perception,
and what the mind does with images and sounds.
Everything that's a memory,
any sense of a future:
images and sounds of the mind.
Any sense of a me different from someone else,
that's happening in the mind
with images, sounds, inner dialogue.
The true self
The true self has no concepts, no images.
It's the infinite eternal subject.
The word space points to that.
The word infinite points to that.
The word reality points to that.
It's where sensations appear,
where thoughts appear,
where sounds appear.
What we are is unknowable,
and it's always present.
Seeing things upside down
Struggle begins when we see things upside down.
We take the world of what the mind does
as primary and more real
than the world of raw experience,
the world of presence.
We ground our attention in the breath, in the body,
and we move out of the world of the mind.
We're moving towards what is more real,
what is primary.
From the awareness of body sensations
we can move towards where sensations appear.
From there, what the mind does
is a very small part of our universe.
In presence we are infinite,
the space where the mind appears.
Most of what we think is real is just thinking.
And as we see that, we instantly shift to presence.
In presence there is caring, loving, peace.
Contemplating what is real
Mystery, by definition, is always available.
We'll keep looking,
not through effort.
Just contemplate what is real.
Right now the contemplation is very simple.
What is primary and what is secondary?
What is real is primary.
What is real is the ocean.
The waves are secondary.
Images and sounds in the mind, imagined,
like the waves, secondary.
What's real is the presence from where they emerge.
Any notion about yourself is waves in the mind.
What's real, the true self,
is infinite unknowable presence.
Looking for the I
You hear the sound of my voice.
There appears a notion of a self, an I,
a center that is hearing the sound of a voice.
And if you try to find this I,
this center, that which you call I,
see if you can find it,
see if you have any sense of it
that's not just thinking.
You might discover that anything you can refer to as I
is just mind: images, sounds, thoughts, constant imagination.
Just waves,
made of the infinite ocean of what you are.
The true self.
Infinite, free, loving, real.