Things and Fluidity
Cosas y fluidez
A gentle exploration of how everything we experience — body, thoughts, and the sense of self — is always in motion, never the solid thing we imagine.
Things and Fluidity
Exploring the experience of things
Let's explore the experience of things
and solidity.
What matters is to notice
how we interpret the direct experience.
It's not about intellectual understanding or about analyzing.
Just to notice that
our direct experience of things, or solidity, is fluid,
and the interpretation, the mind, labels things with concepts and names.
And then those seem to be independent.
Turning to the body
You can start with the body.
We know the body is not separate from the world.
It comes from the world, it's part of the world,
and will return to the world.
It never left the world and it never became
separate from the world.
Your experience of the body is purely through sensation,
through sight.
You explore the sense of sensation,
the field of sensations,
and notice that the entity, "body,"
which seems to be a thing, is a concept.
It's the concept that the word "body" points to.
The experience of the body is always,
always,
always a flow
of sensations,
a field, a current.
It is never experienced as an entity.
It's going to be a sense of coldness or warmth and tingling sensations in the skin,
sensations of the breath,
the seat,
and all of that is in constant motion.
Looking for the solid body
And try to find some notion of the body being a thing, still in some form.
Really look into that.
Just look at that experience directly.
Maybe it's in your hands or your neck or your head,
some aspect of the body that seems to
be some form of stable thing.
The concept is stable in some way,
but the direct knowing of the body is in constant motion.
Even the concept is in motion.
Try to stabilize the concept "body" as a thing,
and you'll see the mind is like snapshots, also glimmering,
shifting, changing.
Not even a concept is stable.
Just like watching a movie in a theater.
It's just a snapshot and another snapshot,
moving on the screen,
or a thing moving in the mind, or a thing such as the hand.
But the direct experience of all of this
is always fluid,
always changing,
always impermanent.
Noticing what this exploration stirs
Notice that this exploration has activated something, or stirred something.
The closer you look, the more this is seen.
Something might be stirred up and energetic,
that's going to be pushing towards the sense of stable, solid things,
pushing towards that point of view, that interpretation.
And that which pushes,
that pull, the push, that energy,
is also fluid,
is also not a thing.
That's all that needs to be seen.
With that seeing, you can just
get comfortable with that instability,
that fluidity.
You can't rest in it
because there's nothing that needs rest.
The sense of needing rest,
any pull, any drive, any longing,
desire, is also fluid.
You will never find a thing that is not fluid.
This is the formless nature,
emptiness in motion.
That which is knowing
That which is knowing,
that which is hearing,
that which you call "I,"
shares this same nature.
Not a thing.
Emptiness and motion.
And seeing this,
the mind will never be a problem.
It is just fluid imagination,
a stream of images,
concepts, stories,
always moving,
always changing.
No big deal.
And the struggle comes from attempting to
compress that infinite I-am-ness into a thought,
an image of self, stabilizing,
as if we could somehow capture
a river by squeezing it in our hands.
Looking at the sense of "I"
That sense of subjectivity, localized seeing.
Is that any different?
Is there something really there, or is it
flow,
thoughts,
images,
sensations
called "subject,"
called "I"?
Keep noticing, like a gravitational pull,
the tendency to collapse into thoughts,
all attempting to form
a stable sense of "I,"
a thingness called "I," located in the body.
It might be images of you and your story,
a form of sensations,
tensions.
Don't fight it, don't try to resist it.
Just notice its nature.
It's fluid.
There is no such thingness,
no thing there.
Just fluid,
perpetual motion,
alive.
Infinite.
Empty.
Transparent.
One field
All one field:
shapes, forms, colors, sounds, sensations,
thoughts, concepts, memories, stories.
We don't need to force anything.
No need to do anything.
Just notice:
the seeing is already seeing,
the knowing is already knowing,
the noticing is already noticing.