What Is Truth?

Truth is simple. It is effortlessly always already the case. Truth is simply present moment experiencing, just as it is -- this ever-changing, ever-present happening that has no beginning and no end, for it is always Here / Now.   

Apparent complication arises when the thinking mind tries to make sense of this inexplicable happening and take hold of it conceptually. To some degree, this kind of conceptual thought is functionally necessary. It works very well in a practical sense as long as we don't forget that the conceptual pictures it generates are only relatively true, but never absolutely true. For example, "the earth is a planet orbiting the sun." This is a relative truth. It is functionally useful. But in the absolute sense, there is no such thing as an "earth" or a "sun," for these are conceptual abstractions of what is actually ever-changing, inconceivable, seamless flux.

When we try to come up with a conceptual understanding of Totality, or the ground of being, or the nature of reality, we inevitably end up frustrated and confused. Any conceptual picture of reality is always subject to doubt, and no conceptual picture ever satisfies our deep longing for Truth.

What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the attempt to make sense of everything. Of course, that doesn't mean we don't still make sense of things in a functional way in daily life. But we stop trying to take hold of the Totality, or to grasp the ground of being, or to figure out the nature of reality. Instead, we relax into simply being it. We learn to recognize (to see, to sense) when we're beginning to grasp, and in that recognition, quite naturally there is an ability to relax and let go. When we simply stop trying to figure it all out, we discover that it doesn't need to be figured out, and in fact, it never can be figured out!

Relative truths can all be doubted. But absolute Truth is not a relative thing that can be separated out and pinned down. It is not something to believe in or to doubt. It is rather the utter simplicity and immediacy of Here / Now -- this boundless and seamless happening that is ever-present and ever-changing. This is not something mysterious that we need to seek and hope to someday find. It is much closer than that, much more intimate. In fact, it is only by seeking it and trying to grasp it conceptually that we make it into something that can seemingly be lost or found.

Whenever we feel confused or doubtful, it's a clue that we are lost in thoughts, trying to solve imaginary problems. When we are seeking the right understanding or the perfect formulation, or feeling doubtful about what Truth is, or trying to grasp it, it's a clue that the thinking mind is trying to conceptualize what is actually inconceivable. The mind is chasing a kind of object that is imagined to be "out there" somewhere. But this undeniable aware presence that is Here / Now, this seeing-hearing-sensing-being, this present experiencing, this requires no belief and is impossible to doubt. This is where is juice is. It is what is most obvious and most unavoidable. And yet it is seemingly easy to overlook this aliveness by looking for it somewhere else. The single-most important key to liberation is to remember that it can only be found Here / Now.

Waking up isn't about getting something that isn't here now. That very idea is illusion. So if you're lost in thoughts about how you need to have some big awakening that you think you haven't had, or thoughts about how you need to figure out what Truth is, come back to the unavoidable simplicity of this moment: the sensations of breathing, sounds of traffic, clouds blowing across the sky, these words on your computer screen, stomach gurgling, the song of a bird, the taste of tea, sunlight on the carpet, this awaring presence beholding it all. This is the Holy Reality. Nothing else really satisfies, because nothing else is real.

If you notice the mind saying, "Okay, what's next? I still haven't awakened," just notice that this is a thought. It tells a story. The story is fictional. The one who supposedly hasn't awakened yet is a mirage (as is anyone you imagine to be awake).

These ideas about needing to get somewhere, and accomplish something, and become somebody are just ideas. There is nothing you need to accomplish in your life other than exactly what is already always accomplishing itself. And only in the story is anything happening that is definable or conceivable. The actuality of this moment is impossible to capture in a concept. So if you find yourself lost in thought, trying to work all this nondual stuff out in your head, is it possible to notice that mental treadmill and wake up right now to the wonder of this moment, just as it is?

What is being pointed to is not a special experience that some people have and others don't have. It is the tension in the stomach, the sound of the traffic, the aroma of dinner cooking. What is this whole amazing happening?

Don't begin looking for an answer. There isn't one. Simply wake up to the wonder of this inconceivable aliveness Here / Now.

There are no awakened people. There is only boundless being, ever-present and ever-changing -- unavoidable and impossible to not be. You are already here. You cannot not be what you are. There is nothing that is not the Truth. Paradoxically, even illusion is an aspect of Truth.

Waking up is like the popping of an imaginary bubble, the bubble of apparent encapsulation. What remains is the boundlessness that never comes and never goes and never stays the same, the boundlessness that is all there is. There is nothing beyond it.

Experiences come and go. They are inherently impermanent and inconceivable. Life shows up as what we describe as love affairs, holocausts, blooming flowers, tsunamis, sunlight, clouds, thunderstorms, airplanes flying into buildings, babies being born, explosions in distant galaxies. Thinking divides seamless flux into apparently separate pieces. It draws boundary lines and creates the illusion of solid, persisting, independent forms and then tries to figure out how the imaginary things it has just created all relate to each other.

The thinking mind loves to categorize and evaluate and rank everything. We've got Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana, Advaita, neo-Advaita, radical nonduality, the Power of Now, and on and on, and there are little wars going on in cyberspace and elsewhere between “sudden” and “gradual” approaches, or between “be here now” teachings and “this is it” teachings. We identify with a label or a category and then have pissing contests to see who is more nondual than who. But when the imaginary bubble of conceptual thought pops, we wake up to the simplicity of this moment, just as it is. We see the beauty and perfection of everything being just as it is. We no longer feel compelled to convince the Zen folks that chanting and bowing is unnecessary, or to tell the "be here now" folks that there is no way not to be here now, or to tell the radical nondualistis that practice is as natural as the wind.

When an illusion is seen clearly, it loses its power. The mirage lake may still appear in the desert sands, but we no longer run after it looking for water. When we give careful attention to this moment, we discover directly that no thing really forms in the way we think it does. There is only thorough-going flux. Impermanence is so complete that there is really no impermanence at all because no-thing ever forms in the first place to be impermanent! Nothing is ever born and nothing ever dies. Even thinking and conceptualizing are activities of this same undivided flux. They have their usefulness and their beauty, but waking up is about being able to discern the difference between relative truth and absolute Truth. It doesn't mean no longer thinking or conceptualizing. It simply means not mistaking a mirage for something it isn't.

Realizing that no thing really exists doesn't mean there's nothing in some nihilistic sense! This vibrant aliveness of ever-changing color and shape, texture and smell, sound and sensation is undeniably appearing here right now. We can argue about how to interpret this appearance, whether it's mind or matter, truth or illusion, dream or reality, but the beingness of it is undeniable.

Enlightenment sees no other, no outside and no inside. Enlightenment recognizes that everything is as it is, and that it isn't really any way at all because it is always changing. Enlightenment recognizes that everything is grace when we see it as grace. Enlightenment is the absence of grasping and fixating, the relaxing into inconceivability and groundlessness.

There is a natural desire to wake up from suffering, to find peace, to live in the freedom that we have glimpsed. The problem is that we go looking for these things "out there" somewhere. We imagine that we must get rid of something that we think is in the way, and we must find something that we think is missing. We go in search of some special experience instead of realizing that the only Truth is this experience, right here, right now.

Instead of simply being Here / Now, we try desperately to understand Here / Now, to figure it out, to grasp it. We try to believe that “Everything is unicity,” that “There is nothing to seek,” but as beliefs, these are always subject to doubt and uncertainty. We try desperately to transcend the whole mess of everyday life with some idea that “I am not the body,” and “Everything is just a dream,” and “What I truly am is prior to consciousness.” And the more we think about all this, the more confused and tangled up we feel. Beliefs and ideas and passing experiences don't satisfy the deep hunger for Truth. But if we drop every belief, every experience, every idea about what this is all about, what remains?

Are we thinking about that, trying to grasp it mentally? Are we looking for an answer? Can that grasping, searching movement of the mind relax? Is it possible to notice the actuality of simply being here -- awake, alive, aware – hearing, seeing, sensing, breathing – not knowing what anything really is? Is this aware presence, this beingness actually encapsulated inside a bodymind, or is that encapsulation (and the “bodymind” itself) only an idea, a thought, a mental image that appears and disappears along with the entire universe?

Do you control your next thought? Do you control your next desire or impulse? Do you control where your attention goes? Even if you seem to "choose" to put your attention on your big toe, from where did the impulse and the desire to do that come? Can you choose to wake up from a daydream and pay attention to your breathing instead? It may seem as if you can. But look closely and you may discover that the waking up happened by itself, as did the thought-impulse to pay attention to your breathing. You may discover that everything happens by itself, including the appearance of choosing and making decisions, including the illusion of "you" as the thinker, the chooser, the doer. There is no separate somebody here who needs to become somebody special or who is in danger of screwing up their life. There is only the boundlessness that includes absolutely everything.

Is it possible to notice how the thinking mind always wants to make something out of nothing (no-thing-ness)? Whether this mind-creation is “me” or “you” or “my problem,” or whether it is something much more subtle such as “awareness” or “consciousness” or "Truth," can we notice that these are all words? They point to something that is not a word, and they may all be helpful pointers, but right now, can we drop the words and come back to the bare simplicity of what is? We only seem to need something else when we imagine that we are something separate and perishable. But what is it that would perish if no-thing ever forms in the first place, if there is only this, just as it is? What could be lacking?

As Zen Master Dogen wrote centuries ago: "If you cannot find the Truth right where you are, where do you expect to find it?"

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