The Anchor of Nothing Missing

The teacher reflects on the two sides of practice: learning to move skillfully through life, and recognizing that what we are searching for is not actually absent.

There's a lot of energy going into that. What's the motive? What are you trying to get? If you're trying to get something, then something's missing, something's not right as it is.

The two sides of practice

What I'm trying to communicate is, in a sense, two-sided. One side is how to improvise in life, the movement in life. That always has to be central and ultimately the most important. But the deepest thing that is overlooked is that what you're looking for is not missing. We simply overlook it. We're looking for something, and it's right here.

Why this is hard to see

That is the hardest thing to recognize, because there are so many paths and techniques and teachings around how to live, how to improvise life, how to address the question of how to live. We can get really lost in all of that, because we don't have the anchor, which is that sense that nothing is missing.

Clarity from the anchor

If nothing is missing right now, then the question of how to live is still really important. But I will have a much clearer sense of what's valuable. I will make choices that are far more sensible and attuned, because I'm not trying to fix something that's not broken.