We Are The Gold We Seek From Meditation and Mindfulness

 Meditation is who you are; the person is what you do.

Jason Gregory

·       What most of us on this journey to spiritual awakening fail to remember is that we are already that which we seek…Tat Taum Asi …and we just need to get out of the way. 

       While I was away from my writing here I did a lot of listening to a lot of wise people and amongst the themes the truth about meditation/mindfulness being more of what we truly are than what we do came up. Though my citing will be off I was reminded by one of the speakers about the parable of Buddha and the philosopher. It goes a little like this:

       Once a philosopher, who spent his life painfully seeking the answers to many questions he had, came upon the Buddha.  He asked the Buddha to help him answer these questions.  The Buddha said, “Do you really want answers? Can you pay the price?”

      The philosopher was so desiring and striving for answers it was driving him cra-cra . He said, “I am in desperate need of answers…I cannot rest until I get them…I do not want to die without having them answered. So please, please…answer my questions.  I will pay the price. “ 

       The Buddha said, “I am glad you are willing to pay the price. I see how badly you want your answers.  The price for your answers will mean you will have to sit with me for two years in silence, asking no questions and at the end of those two years I will answer any questions you want answered.”  

      The philosopher thought of that but had great doubts and reservations.  First of all, he didn’t want to sit for two years and say nothing. That would be painful and how, he wondered, could he be sure the Buddha would answer his questions after two years. The Buddha assured him that if he sat still and in silence for that length of time he would answer any question asked of him.  

      There was a man sitting quietly beside the Buddha the whole time of this interaction. This disciple suddenly began to laugh and the philosopher asked him why he was laughing.  The disciple answered, “I too wanted my questions answered and was tricked in much the same way you are being tricked.  I sat here still and in silence for two years.  It is true what the Buddha said…he will honor any question we have after two years.  What I discovered after my two years of silence and stillness, however, is that I had no questions to ask him.  The answers to all my questions came to me in silence.”

       So the philosopher agreed to sit and be quiet for two years and at the end of those two years when the Buddha said the time was over and asked, “Do you have any questions now? I will answer.”  

      The philosopher began to laugh…”No I have rec’d all the answers I needed”

      I don’t know about you but when I think of having to sit for two years, I would be more than a little hesitant.  It seems like a cumbersome task one had to do.  Yet it really isn’t something we do to get answers or get somewhere.  It is who we are. We don’t do meditation because meditation is simply higher consciousness…it is who we are

      In another analogy shared by Eckhart Tolle in one of the videos I listened to (and I am not sure which one…my bad) we are asked to imagine a beggar sitting on a trunk that he never opens to look inside.  He spends his days reaching out to people and things as they move past…grasping from the outer world when all along there is gold inside the trunk. All that is truly valuable is inside us and we can access it when we stop seeking answers and satisfaction from the outside, when are still and quiet and open the trunks of our psyches to look within.  We don’t have to stay quiet  for two years maybe but every time we enter that space we will come closer to realizing who we really are and that is golden.

      Most of us, I was also reminded by Eckhart Tolle, are so busy looking outside , so trapped in this idea of who we think we are that we ( the personality)  don’t even bother to open up that lid…to still ourselves enough to make contact with what is truly precious.

       " Most of us carry the burden of the personality/self all our life…troublesome, anxious, angry, fearful, dissatisfied, always sensing that something is missing, always looking toward some other moment for some type of fulfillment…reaching end of life and realizing it wasn’t very enjoyable and you have not really found your self” somewhat paraphrased?? Eckhart Tolle

     “The most dreadful state is to be in trapped in your personality….not aware of anything beyond that…complete unawareness of the transcendent dimension.”  Eckhart Tolle

             “...you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed- or indeed only one" Luke 10 This is what Jesus said to an anxious, fretting and resentfully busy Martha...meaning there is only one thing in life that is absolutely important and it isn’t cooking and cleaning for guests...it is resting in higher consciousness, in awareness, in being as her sister Mary seemed to understand. 

     We eventually reach a point where we want to look inside and may get lost in the "doing" of it rather than the being. The most precious thing we gain from mediation and mindfulness is connection to that higher state. We want the transcendent dimension. We want that higher state of consciousness. But the thing is...it is not something we do... we are the very thing that we seek

·     “Who you are is inseparable from the present moment…who or what you are in your essence is the now…not what happens in the now but the spaciousness of now”…Eckhart Tolle

     Or Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “…you are  wave on an  ocean that has been beat around by the weather…so, so tired of going up and down, up and down…We can find peace, solidity, center when we realize that we are the water and not just the wave…We can find peace in realizing that we are a manifestation of God in these apparently separate forms.” Somewhat paraphrased.

      Hmmm! All is well!