What Is Not a Thing Cannot End
Lo que no es una cosa no puede terminar
This meditation invites you to look closely at the feeling that something is missing and discover that nothing solid was ever there to be lost.
What Is Not a Thing Cannot End
Ultimately, meditating is not doing anything,
and so all the talking that I do and the pointing during the meditation is a bit of a distraction.
But what happens is, if we just sit still without some direction, some pointing,
there's just a very big chance that there will be a lot of just getting stuck in patterns.
And so what can be called natural meditation, which is just pure sitting,
which actually can happen in movement, in walking, in working,
we won't really access or know that unless there's a bit of a process of learning,
of clearing,
of, to some degree, awakening.
Which means to see through some of the constructs of the mind.
The deepest sense
And that's the purpose or the intent of guiding a meditation,
or speaking to things in the process of meditating.
But what we can arrive at is that, at the deepest sense, in the truest sense,
we have always been meditating.
There is only beingness. There is only meditation.
But then the journey,
the so-called journey,
which is a movement without movement, it's just realizing what is here,
is to know that consciously,
to recognize that directly,
for that truth which is always true to be obvious and clear and true to us at every moment.
That is why what we are seeking is this.
It's already here.
It does not feel like it.
It feels like something is missing.
It feels like this is not it.
Something missing
By getting in touch with that part of our experience, that sensation of something missing:
why is this not right?
Why does this not feel complete,
total,
satisfying,
peaceful?
And we don't push that aside in order to make it peaceful.
We don't pretend, or we do not recommend to pretend,
that I am at peace if I am not,
or pretend that this is satisfying when it is not.
In fact, the opposite is more useful:
to dig up and acknowledge when we discover
a feeling of resistance,
a sense of something missing,
some sense of an absence of love.
And look at that directly,
just whatever comes up.
Looking at what you find
You might feel like an urge,
a subtle longing to contract
around a sensation or a narrative.
If you look, you'll recognize that all you find is
one mix
of shifting, changing appearances,
sensations,
perceptions,
sounds, colors,
thoughts.
Just like a sky with clouds.
If you look, you might see a puppy or a rabbit.
There isn't such a thing.
It's just this moving texture.
And the mind makes something appear as a thing.
A cloud turns into a being, an individual.
The same with a sensation.
A sensation, through the interpretation of the mind,
turns into "this is a pain, and it's because of this and that, and I will get rid of it if this and that."
They are like the clouds. They appear to be things, and they are not.
The illusion of permanence
A concept is just another shifting image.
Try to conceive of the simplest thing, like a circle,
and you will see it as shape-shifting.
Keep the image of a circle in your mind for ten seconds.
And then tell me it is one thing, unchanging, unmoving.
It's just the idea that it does not change.
As a circle, the sense of self is the same:
constantly imagining a boundary and a solidity
where there is just a river flowing of colors
and infinitely changing shapes.
There's something there,
but it's not a thing.
There are no things.
Just the concept of things,
the concept of permanence, which is itself changing.
Look at the concept of permanence and it will be a kaleidoscope,
like snapshots coming and going, in and out.
Waking from the dream of things
And in this seeing through the illusion of permanence,
the illusion of objects,
the illusion of things,
we enter the reality,
wake up from the dream of things,
enter the reality of flow.
Forms that are empty,
lacking inherent existence,
lacking independent essence.
All forms: body, mind, thoughts, the universe,
all of your experience,
shape-shifting, coming out of nothing.
And this has always been the case.
What awaits is freedom
The challenge in seeing this, the obstruction to seeing this,
is that it implies:
what I thought I was is not real.
What I believed to be true and real is not as it seemed.
There is no thing I can call myself.
What I am might come to an end.
The invitation is to see
more and more deeply,
more directly.
And what awaits is freedom.
Recognize "I" as empty,
unknowable,
imperishable.
What is not a thing cannot end.
It cannot begin.
Unwinding the habit
Unless we have spent many, many years making shapes into things,
thoughts into real,
you can sit and undo this.
Just unwinding that habit,
that deepest, ultimate sense of subjectivity,
and let it be seen as another cloud in the sky.
We've all experienced this, more so as children,
looking at the sky and the clouds,
capturing shapes,
projecting things.
And the peace that is:
the sky with clouds,
the silence,
a beauty.
That all of life is the same.
More diversity of clouds.
More magical.