The One Question
La Única Pregunta
A reflection on the single inquiry that underlies all meditation and self-understanding: the question of what we truly are, and how the undoing of misidentification reveals a welcoming emptiness at the core of experience.
The One Question
A reflection on the single inquiry that underlies all meditation and self-understanding: the question of what we truly are, and how the undoing of misidentification reveals a welcoming emptiness at the core of experience.
I am only really interested in one thing here. That one thing can be said in many different ways, and that is why it sometimes sounds like we talk about many things. We can talk about anything, but I am only ever talking about one thing.
What is that thing? You could say it is the thing that cannot be named, or the thing with infinite names. You could frame it as: Who are you? What are you? Who am I? What am I? You could also say: What is this? What is the nature of this? What is real? Or you could turn it around and ask: What are you not? You cannot really say what you are, but you can say what you are not.
Meditation as a tool for seeing what you are not
We start with a meditation, but the meditation has everything to do with what I am raising here. You might think that we meditate in order to observe thoughts, calm the mind, or accomplish this and that. But ultimately, meditation is a tool. Observing thoughts is a tool for seeing what you are not. If you look at thoughts, you can disidentify from them. You disidentify because you were initially identified, which means you believed you were your thoughts.
The reason this matters is that the root of suffering is precisely this confusion, this misunderstanding about what we are and what we are not. Even when we discuss life situations, challenges around relationships and work, at the core of it what I will be pointing to, and trying to walk back toward, is a clearing of illusions: the misunderstanding, the misinterpretation. We can do it directly by contemplating the question "Who am I?" Or we can do it more indirectly, sometimes more powerfully and more practically, by looking at the issues and the suffering that arise in our life situations.
The answer is "this"
So the question: Who are you? There is one answer that can be said in a single word. The answer closest to the truth is: this.
Normally, we interpret our experience in a particular way. "I am this body. I am not that other body. I am only a human being. I am not the ocean." You cannot convince yourself through thought or belief that you are also the ocean, that you are the tree. That approach will not work.
But by seeing what you are not, by uncovering the misinterpretation and confusion, the beliefs that force us into identifying exclusively as this body, something can free up. That contraction happens through thought, through beliefs. By challenging it, by undoing it, you can recognize in your own experience that you are everything. Not through conceptual thought, but through pure, natural, ordinary, undeniable knowing.
Everything emerges from an empty self
The sound you are hearing right now, the sound of this voice, the sounds in your environment: all of it is created in the moment. It appears and it fades. It all emerges from the emptiness of self. It is created by you, known by you. The pulsating, tingling sensations in the body appear and are created in each moment, emerging from a self that is empty, an emptiness that resists nothing and knows.
At the core of this emptiness is a receptivity, a welcoming. A welcoming of everything that is happening. There is nothing you need to do to welcome; you can simply recognize that it is already happening. It is the very nature of experience. All that appears (sensations, pleasures, pains, contractions, resistances, sounds, images, thoughts, emotions) is already absolutely, completely, fully welcomed the instant it is known, the instant it is experienced.
That welcoming is so close, so intimate, so vulnerable, so heartful. And it is everywhere. It is everything.
The knowing of all rivers
So, who am I? What am I? This. The knowing, the seeing, the welcoming.
There is no pain, no fear, no thought, no force that can obstruct this. All the senses are rivers: sound, sight, sensation, thought. The sense of time and space are rivers. I am the knowing of all rivers. Welcoming. Blessing. Loving. Receiving. Allowing. Allowing to come, allowing to go. What comes, goes. Only freedom remains when the illusion is seen through.
Do not take my words for truth. They are only something to point you toward discovering your own experience. They are suggestions, pointers. The rest is yours to see.