When You Meet The Buddha..
As my experiences become subtler, there are fewer words I find accurate to describe my understanding. None of my insights are new or profound in any way, and hence I lean onto the masters who've done a better job of explaining what I am incapable of (so all credit to the Zen masters, to Osho, to J. Krishnamurti and many more who speak the eternal truth).
There are so many mistakes I made on my way here, but none I would replace or avoid except for one: making enlightenment a goal or a search.
This is why I have shifted the terminology to ‘self-realisation’ for there is nothing else to know, seek or attain except an experience of ‘the moment of realisation’.
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There is nothing more to achieve or gain as there is no longer a goal or objective. When there is no longer a goal, what job does the mind have but to shut down and allow self to be empty [to be nothing, to be egoless]?
An empty box, a blank page or a white canvas is full of potential. An act of creation awaits. Can we say the same thing about ourselves?
If you drop the act of seeking—seeking to attain a level in your meditation or whatever elusive thing that led you to meditate—and simply let it go, it will truly free you. Otherwise, like the many aspects of the material world that you seek, the goal may change to something more lofty, but the outcome shall still be the same: unfulfillment and illusion.
Programmed to feel incomplete without constant attainment..
Initially, you enter the world and engage in play, but soon the demands of education set in, shaping your mind to conform to societal norms. The pursuit of milestones becomes the focal point, seeking validation for your existence through achievement. Depending on how quickly you achieve material success or lack thereof, you may see the uselessness (futility) of it and lose interest. Then you ask, what else is there to achieve (without which you have been trained to feel incomplete), and your eyes go on to the elusiveness of enlightenment (spirituality, god) because you have believed that life is about attainment, one goal after another, so that you can keep moving forward.
Without this false purpose, you might lose all your motivation. Boredom will drive you mad. Amidst the relentless pursuit, the spirit silently asserts, "I am already here; there's no need for a frantic search." But you believe that all to be attained on the other (non-material) side needs the same effort and drive you need for material success.
Do not make this mistake, my friend. Drop the need to achieve, become effortless, relax. The knowledge of the self resides within, requiring only a moment of stillness to realise it.
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The reality lies in the simple act of being as is.
How can one achieve anything at all without the act of putting any effort? Firstly, effortlessness does not mean inactivity. The answer to that is in perceiving what you do as play [or surrender to any and all outcomes] and not perceive it as a gain or goal to obsess over. More on this in some other memo :)
I hope I didn’t bore you with this. Irrespective, the process of evolution will take care of your journey.
Signing off,
K
Read next: A Startup Founder's Dilemma: Perspectives from Vedic Astrology
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