The Ocean We Are Looking For
El Océano Que Estamos Buscando
A meditation on recognizing that what we are searching for is already present in the aliveness of each moment we experience.
The Ocean We Are Looking For
Some of you might be familiar with a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I don't remember it very well.
There's a part of it where they basically build a huge supercomputer,
and it's such an event to finally turn it on and be able to ask the most important questions.
So the first question it gets asked is: what is the meaning of life?
And there's this churning of the machine.
The answer to all the mysteries of life and everything, the answer is 42.
And so everybody's now perplexed. What?
How is 42 the answer?
The answer you can't yet see
What startles me about that is that it's not very different to the work we're doing.
You could hear the answer,
but it won't make sense.
And so the power of this answer that doesn't make sense is that it requires
you contemplate a certain confusion.
You've probably heard and are aware that in Buddhism, some of the branches have what they call koans,
which are quite famous because they can be seen as quite silly,
but they're actually quite profound,
and they serve a similar purpose.
So for example, if I say the answer to every koan is silence,
and the answer to every question you will ever have is silence,
it might make sense or sound great,
but you might still be unsatisfied
because it hasn't been seen, how that silence can answer the question.
It hasn't been seen how 42 is the answer to the meaning of life.
And so in that gap between the answer and the seeing is where we spend a lot of time talking.
But in a sense, the answer to what we're looking for is very simple.
You could say silence, or presence,
but there will be all these words which point to something,
and we might intuit, there might be a sense of, yes, that makes some sense at a deeper level
than just intellectually.
But still we remain unsatisfied.
So there's a bit of a tension between an answer that points to something
and this confusion and dissatisfaction,
in that for us, even if it makes sense, it's dissatisfying,
and potentially quite frustrating as well.
Already here
What I'm going at is: what we're looking for is very simple.
We already have it.
The fact that we are experiencing life is what we've been looking for.
But then that's very dissatisfying because there often is a dissatisfaction with what we're experiencing,
the sense of something missing or not being okay,
not being totally right.
A teacher used to say the meaning of life is to breathe,
in a sense pointing to this, which is, well, we're already breathing.
So it's given.
The meaning is already present.
And it's simple.
Contemplation
So we can take some time to contemplate.
By contemplate, I mean the opposite of think about.
I am referring to paying attention,
looking,
observing.
This looking which gets us closer to the reality of being.
And so we can contemplate:
how is it possible, if what I'm looking for is already here,
that I'm not recognizing it?
I'm not seeing it?
What might be in the way?
Maybe what have we learned that we need to unlearn?
So this is a form of meditation,
even though it's very close to just the talk.
The first barrier
The first barrier will be a set of very convincing thoughts
which will be experienced as truth, and not as thoughts.
And these thoughts will say, but no, it's not here because XYZ.
What I'm looking for is really missing because XYZ.
Something's really wrong because XYZ.
And XYZ is going to be all the evidence.
So the first barrier is a certain requirement of trust.
Trust enough that you will question what appears as your experience
but is just your interpretation.
To experience as my reality is that something is missing.
My reality is that something's not okay.
We are a fish in the ocean looking for the ocean.
Until we realize we are in the ocean, we will be dissatisfied.
Dissatisfaction as treasure
And so, don't take it as a belief.
It will be dissatisfying if that is your treasure.
Because it's your truth, it's authentic.
So only those who know their dissatisfaction can discover the true satisfaction.
Falling in love with what is
So it's in the breath,
it's in the sight,
it's in the sounds.
What would it be like to fall in love with anxiety,
fall in love with fear,
fall in love with pain?
Everything: the juiciness and aliveness of being frustrated,
being angry,
being lonely,
in the same way.
There's no need to control what we feel
because we don't feel a need to avoid any particular feeling.
We would never do that because we were told.
Sounds like a horrible instruction.
But what if we fall in love with what we don't want to feel?
We don't need any instructions then.
We can look for the beauty which will seduce us.
The beauty,
the aliveness,
the juiciness of anxiety.
We love it in movies.
The veil
That is ultimately the veil:
to not see the beauty that is there.
Love is there already as well.
We fall into it.
It's already present.
And so we don't need to learn to love.
We just need to see that the love is already there.
It is a kind of learning, but it's different.
We recognize the beauty that's already here.
Because it is, the mind becomes naturally silent,
not because we are trying to quiet the mind,
but because our attention is so immersed in what is happening
the mind quiets naturally.
So immersed in sensation, emotions,
no matter what they are.
Nothing is rejected.
An infinite discovering,
savoring.
The creator
Everything we're experiencing is being born through us.
That is the true self,
the creator.
And so everything that appears is our children.
So there is no paradox:
absolute love of everything
and saying no at the same time to some things.
For that in us which gives birth to everything,
there is a love of everything.
The love comes first.
If anger arises,
and we find the direction of that anger not appropriate in the moment,
as with a child,
we fully love and accept that it's here.
And we say no in that moment.