Complication and Simplicity

Not that long ago, people lived in a world that was much quieter and much less complicated. There were no airplanes, no cars, no telephones, no televisions, no radios, no computers, no internet, no email, no cell phones, no hand-held devices, no Facebook, no twitter. The old Zen masters would walk on foot for days and months across miles of dangerous terrain to meet once with a teacher. The Advaita sage Nisargadatta Maharaj met his guru only a few times. Today we have an astronomical number of teachers and their videos, talks and writings available at our fingertips on-line. We can spend days surfing the net, going from website to website, trying to reconcile one person’s expression of this with that of another. We can jet all over the world going from satsang to satsang and from one teacher to the next, following still others on our hand-held devices as we travel.

This is wonderful in many ways. But it also has a tendency to turn into a kind of addictive feeding frenzy that leads to overwhelm and confusion. We have so much to consume that we never really digest anything. The very nature of the delivery system often tends to reinforce the seeking and grasping mind rather than helping us to actually see through this mind and wake up right here, right now.

Of course, in the absolute sense, none of this is true. It’s all a story. But sometimes stories and relative truths can be helpful in waking us up to the bigger picture.

So I invite you, after you finish reading this paragraph, to turn away from your computer or put down whatever device you are using to read this, and take a pause. For at least a few minutes, simply be present without doing anything special. Breathe. Notice the sounds of traffic or wind or birds singing or whatever you are hearing. Feel the sensations in the body. See the shapes and colors you are seeing in the way you might view an abstract painting, without trying to label and make sense of them, but simply appreciating them as pure visual sensation. Whenever you notice you are thinking, simply let the thoughts go and return to this simple, bare, naked experiencing of the present moment. Allow your experience to be exactly the way it is, however it is. You’re not trying to get rid of anything or accomplish anything. You’re simply being here. You may notice the spaciousness, the relief, the simplicity of simply being.

It's not that naked sensory experiencing is better or "more nondual" or more "spiritually correct" than trying to figure everything out conceptually. It's simply that all our suffering and confusion is in the conceptual overlay and in the attempt to conceptually grasp and formulate what is literally inconceivable. This present happening is inconceivable, but at the same time, utterly obvious and totally unavoidable.

Can you feel the relief in simply being here, not trying to figure anything out, not seeking experiences or searching for answers, but simply being?

Enjoy!

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