The Warm Bath
El Baño Caliente
This meditation invites you to stop striving and notice that peace is already here, like realizing you are warm and wet in a bath.
The Warm Bath
We will begin the art of doing nothing by trying to do something to do nothing,
called meditation.
So first of all, try very hard to do nothing.
Starting now.
Really hard.
Meditation is always happening
Meditation is always happening.
True meditation is always happening
and cannot stop and cannot begin.
What can happen is we can recognize this.
So in a sense, the practice of meditation,
which is really just sitting with an intention or walking with an intention,
is to notice that meditation is happening.
Our true nature cannot begin
or end or become more or less our true nature.
In the same way, true meditation cannot begin or end.
It can just be recognized.
The illusions can be seen, but even that is not that important.
You don't need to grasp or strive or chase the ending of illusions.
This will only reinforce them,
because desiring, grasping, chasing
can only come from the illusion of trying to become what you already are.
The warm bath
Trying to do meditation is a contradiction.
It's more like sitting in a warm bath
and realizing you're wet and you're warm,
rather than sitting in a warm bath striving,
attempting to be warm and wet.
So the mind would say, "I am dry and I am cold."
And so observing the mind is only a tool and a method
for approaching the illusion.
To stop the mind is not the objective.
You could recognize it is warm and it is wet
even with a mind saying otherwise.
The blabbering of the mind: which is the more real?
Our sensation of warmth.
Do not strive
Do not strive to create or know peace,
nor strive to create freedom.
That will only come from the false assumption that it is absent.
Just look carefully,
gently,
into what this is,
what truly is happening.
What is it that seems to be the absence of peace or freedom?
Does it not come down to thoughts, emotions, sensations?
Sensations of discomfort and pain,
thoughts of worry and fear,
fear being emotions created by the thoughts.
What if none of that needs to stop?
Rather than trying to control sensations and thoughts and emotions,
what if peace is available in spite of thoughts, emotions, and sensations?
That is the freedom.
Not the freedom to control thoughts, sensations, and emotions,
but the freedom from the condition.
The belief that peace requires the absence of uncomfortable sensations,
the absence of fear,
the absence of difficult emotions:
that is an assumption, an interpretation, a belief system.
The movie theater
Right now you're in a movie theater.
You are the projector.
You are the spectator.
You are the screen.
You are the actors.
You are the filmmaker, the screenplay writer.
And when the spectator is shaken by fear, distress,
by grief and sadness,
is the enjoyment of the film lost and gone, or heightened?
Exalted.
This is a very close metaphor of life.
This moment.
Every moment.
It's just that deep enjoyment,
deep knowing of peace and freedom
might be more or less buried and veiled,
but never gone. Always present.
Just overlooked.
Mystery is here.
Effortlessness is here.
Creator and creation are here.
One and the same consciousness, one and the same reality.