The Veil Over What Is Always Here
El Velo Sobre Lo Que Siempre Está Aquí
A student describes experimenting with eyes-open meditation and wonders whether moments of quiet peace are "the real thing." The conversation evolves into a discussion about a glimpse of clarity experienced earlier in the week, and the teacher explains how peace is not conditional on the absence of thought.
The Veil Over What Is Always Here
A student describes experimenting with eyes-open meditation and wonders whether moments of quiet peace are "the real thing." The conversation evolves into a discussion about a glimpse of clarity experienced earlier in the week, and the teacher explains how peace is not conditional on the absence of thought.
I was just trying what you suggested. I normally meditate with my eyes closed, and I was trying today to have my eyes open. I feel like I'm a really visual person, and having my eyes open feels very distracting. My eyes wander, and I found that I needed to anchor my vision somewhere. Then I could feel myself being in my senses. But then thoughts arise, and sometimes I notice I'm thinking, so I anchor again on something I'm looking at, and then it's just a visual field and my thoughts are quiet again. I wonder: am I just zoning out, or is this actually part of the practice?
When that happens, recognize what you just said as a thought. It's a common thought, a doubt about whether what's happening is the right thing, whether this is the way or not. That's a thought.
I get that this is probably not what you want to hear, but it's literally just noticing: that's a thought, that's another thought. Because that thought opens up a whole world of illusion, where it is considered valid as a way to get somewhere, to figure something out so that you can arrive at some destination. The destination is noticing it as thought.
So what about when I'm just looking at something and I'm just seeing? It's just peace. It's static, unless there are sounds or something I feel. I was thinking about the video you shared about the default mode network, and how that's the thoughts running and the identification of "I." So when the thoughts quiet, it feels like peace. Is that where enlightenment is? I feel like it's probably some other place.
The peace you tasted is conditional
No, exactly. The enlightenment is that peace, but you're tasting it conditionally. It's conditioned on there being no thoughts.
Enlightenment is everything. It's this, everything, everywhere. It's just not seen for what it is. Seeing it for what it is makes it so.
When you focus your eyes on something, things settle. The seeing settles, the thoughts settle. But then when the thoughts come on and the peace goes, there's something to be seen in that.
It's good to familiarize yourself with that sense of peace. But then recognize: wherever it is not, there is misunderstanding, misinterpretation. If when thoughts come online peace goes down, there is a misinterpretation of thought. There is the experience of thought as something other than what it is. Thought cannot obstruct or cover the peace. It can create the illusion of that, but there is as much peace in thoughts as there is in no thoughts, as much peace in the sense of self as there is in no sense of self, when it is seen. When the sense of self is seen to not be self. When thoughts are seen to be what they are.
In a sense, that is part of the surrender that happens: there's nowhere you can hold on to in order to avoid the peace. Something in us has to end for that. That which resists it has to end. And that's what we're fighting against: "I want to remain here as what I think I am."
So you're saying that enlightenment doesn't require no thoughts?
One hundred percent. This is it, with all the thoughts that are present, exactly as any moment is.
A glimpse of reality
I keep thinking back about my experience on Monday, and how clear everything was in that one moment.
That's a glimpse, a true glimpse. What you saw is reality, always, all the time. But it often requires a temporary pausing of a certain function: the sense of self. Then you see reality. From there, a misinterpretation can arise about what caused that, or what it is at a deeper level. For example, the misinterpretation that it requires no thoughts. You've just tasted it in the absence of thought. You can then taste it in the presence of thought. You can know it in the absence of experience, then you can know it in the presence of experience. These are conventional stages.
Is that clarity always with you when you are enlightened?
The simplest way to say it: it's something like 99.7 percent. It's so constant that if it's not there, I don't notice it. It's so to the point where I don't care. I haven't, in years, had any sense of suffering. I've had pain, stress, discomfort. I've had some worries about life situations. But it's night and day. The suffering I knew is absolutely gone.
For me, and I think these stages are mapped because it's common that they happen this way (there's variation for everybody), it happened first as the seeing that what I thought I was, that mind-construct, stopped. I saw and perceived everything so differently. I tasted it, and it was so beautiful and so free of any distress, so peaceful and loving. And then the distressed "I" came back. And then you keep looking, keep looking. What I'm suggesting is: first, what you tasted is true, is real. It has been written about for thousands of years. It's practiced, it's studied. There are thousands of books on it, and the video I sent you is because the scientific studies are now becoming able to test for it and see the effect of that.
Don't try to repeat the experience
What do I need to do?
The main thing is: don't try to go back. Don't try to repeat the experience. Take with you what the experience showed you of reality.
What's important is that you recognize that which went away, which you thought was what you are, went away, and you were still there. Something was still knowing what you described as clarity, peace, beauty. And then something came back. Is this accurate to your experience?
Yes. It was so brief, but it was so full and so clear.
Trust that. Trust me telling you to trust that it is real. It's not some hallucination or a glitch in the brain. The mind will be really confused and is going to try to come up with either ways to deny it or to interpret it as something different than what it is. The mind is going to try to grasp it and turn it into something.
I want that.
That's exactly how it works. You taste that and then you cannot go back.
I'm almost scared, because I want it so much.
You've been on this call very regularly, and I've said many times: what you truly want is this. What you truly want is here. You tasted it now. You know what I'm talking about.
Trust me: that doesn't come and go. It's always here. It appears like it comes and goes because something veils it. Now you can be really curious about how that is veiled, in you, for you. But trust that it's a veil that makes it appear like it's not here, that makes it appear like it's conditioned on thoughts, as though thoughts need to stop or go away.
Peace that cannot be removed
This is one of the things that surprised me the most. Once that peace, that silence, became palpably everything all the time (and it happened from one day to the next), I realized this was always here. It didn't start. I just realized one day that it had always been here. Then, out of curiosity, I tried to get rid of it. I tried to see how I could lose it and make it go away. I couldn't. I was turning my mind into a storm, trying to obscure it and veil it, and I couldn't.
In the beginning it was the other way around. I had to look to see where it seemed like it wasn't here. There were sensations that, to me, if they were present, there couldn't be peace. Certain kinds of thoughts, if present, there couldn't be peace, couldn't be silence. Those were all false. That's the only difference. The only thing that changes is to what degree you are veiling it, and where.
You can trust me on this, but you have to see for yourself. Trust that the direction is to find for yourself that which you tasted on Monday is here always, all the time, in everything, no matter what's happening.
Your true nature is not something you control
I feel like it wasn't something I had control of.
No, you can't, you don't. It's referred to as true nature. In Zen Buddhism it's called kensho: the seeing of true nature. That's what that means. It's a seeing of true nature, but it's your true nature, the true nature of this. And whatever is the true nature, you cannot control. If your true nature is water, you can't be other than water. You have no control over being or not being water. If what you are is peace, you have no control over being or not being peace. You can only veil it. You can pretend to not be that.
I don't understand how I'm veiling, or how that veil got removed for such a brief moment.
The veiling happens because you believe thoughts. You go back to believing them. They go away because, for a moment, the belief in them pauses.
These meetings happen, and they're more effective in person. There is something called transmission: a communication that happens not just in the words, but in the presence, in the energy, in the space. There's an attunement that happens between body-minds. If somebody in the room is freaking out, stressed and angry, everybody's going to be on edge. It's going to affect everyone. Vice versa: if somebody is deeply at peace, it's going to affect everybody. It's going to resonate and amplify in both directions.
It's okay if I'm obsessed with it?
Yes, it's really okay. I'm screaming from the top of the mountain: this is what you really want. You will obsess. You will go crazy for that. It is the nectar of life. There's nothing better. You are now screwed. The good news is it's just with you all the time. Now it's just the process of seeing that for yourself.
I feel so blessed and graced by that one moment. That's all I want now.
The direction is not going back
Just know that the direction is not going back to that, nor trying to create an experience. The direction is to see: you've tasted the present moment. That is the true nature of the present moment. It's always the present moment. There's never anything other than the present moment. It is the nature of everything, all the time. It's in what you're seeing, in what you're thinking, in what you're sensing. It just appears not to be. You had a glimpse where you tasted it, but often within that glimpse there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what's being glimpsed, and my job is to help clarify.
The misunderstanding goes like this: "It really depends on thoughts shifting. It's something that comes and goes. Something was done or something happened, so I need to reproduce that, have it happen again." All of those are ways in which the mind misinterprets it. The truth is, it's here no matter what. It's just veiled. How the veil works: basically, you believe something that is just a thought.
The difference between believing a thought and seeing a thought
There's a thought, and you take that thought to be true and real. What it's referring to is reality. What it's invoking is reality. Or, alternatively, there's a thought appearing. As a metaphor: I look at a movie. Is that movie reality, or is it a projection on a screen? That's how differently a thought can be perceived.
The core of it, which I was pointing to in the meditation, is that there are basically two beliefs, and they work together as a system. If you stop one, the other goes as well. One is: something is here that is not okay. There is something in what's happening where something is missing. You can put very different language to it, but something about the present moment isn't okay, something's missing. On the other side: there's someone here who knows this, who is the one having this experience, this knowing of what is missing. That's the identification. But that identification requires projecting the veil of something missing.
What happened for you is that both of those collapsed. That process paused for a moment, and, as you said, it really disappeared. Then there was beauty, peace, and what you now cannot let go of wanting. As much as you can, let go of wanting to go back there. Because when both collapse, there is nothing missing. You see the nature of reality for what it is. People experience it and describe it in different ways. In Sanskrit it's called ananda, which is bliss. It's considered the foundation, the essence of reality. You could call it peace. At first I experienced it and for many months I called it silence. Then I changed the word to peace. I was completely shocked when, quite recently, I was reading Ramana Maharshi and he talks about it as silence on practically the first page. A silence that no thought could cover. A peace that has no conditions, nothing that can affect it.
For me it was more of clarity. For the first time, everything was so clear, no doubt. Then the mind came back and doubted it. But the experience was there.
All you need to know is that which you glimpsed is the reality, is what is true.