Direct inquiry,
Looking into what it is that we think,
You know,
What it is that's looking,
What it is that's hearing,
What it is that's feeling.
Because it really,
What it does is it… It questions the assumption that we walk around with all day long.
That there is a thing behind experience,
That I am a thing behind experience.
And through that view,
Through that lens,
Life is happening to me,
Life is all about me,
I'm the center of the universe,
And the moment that we have that view,
Right,
The moment,
It's like we put on our,
You know,
Ego-tinted sunglasses and seeing everything through that view of me,
You know,
I'm feeling and I'm feeling what I don't want to be feeling.
You know,
I want to be feeling what they're feeling.
I want to become something that's going to feel better.
There's always this idea in my head that there's something here that could be improved,
That could be worked upon,
That could be could be better in some way to achieve this experience that I want to have.
And then kind of setting us off on this long trip to go and find it.
But what we're doing in self-inquiry,
When we're asking the question,
What is it that's looking?
What is it that's feeling?
What is it that's hearing?
What is it that's thinking?
Or just even the way that we put it a lot,
You know,
To whom do those thoughts belong?
To whom do those feelings belong?
Really?
Showing,
Helping us to see in the,
In the present moment,
That this assumption of a me behind experience is simply that.
An assumption.
That has just gone unchecked.
It's not that there's not still experience happening,
There is experience happening and it's spacious and it's open because conditions are arising and changing,
We're arising and changing and different experiences happening.
But it's not happening to anyone.
And so in seeing that,
In seeing when we question what it is that's feeling.
Or to whom do those thoughts belong?
Uh,
Or even just the question,
Who am I?
And without using,
So in any of these questions,
Without referencing thought,
Without using thought,
Without referencing memory,
Seeing that actually There is nothing solid and independent and separate here.
Experience happening,
Feeling happening,
Hearing happening,
Tasting happening,
Thinking happening,
Planning happening,
Doing happening,
But no solid entity behind the experience.
And so in seeing that,
Like it's that tightness that we walk around in all day because we feel like there's a center here,
Right?
And I feel like we do kind of feel it like somewhere around our solar plexus.
We kind of tighten up around there and there's me that things are happening to and me that's not liking it and we're lost in our thoughts all day and what do I have to do later and oh my gosh and I've got to do this and I've got to do that and what happened back there and we're constantly living in the past and the future,
Right?
Right?
And all of that thinking,
Giving this sense of a me that things are happening to a me that can't take much more,
Right?
Winding us all up.
And it's all based on an assumption.
Simply an assumption that we have not checked.
And so in asking ourselves the questions in self-inquiry,
It's like pulling back the curtain on The Wizard of Oz.
You're seeing like,
Oh my God,
I thought it was this big,
Great Oz.
And in this case,
It's just this little old man pulling levers,
But in our case,
It's just these processes happening,
Thinking happening,
Feeling happening.
Tasting Happening.
Planning happening,
All of these things happening,
All of these activities,
But no one at the center.
And what that does now,
It's like we take off our ego lens glasses then,
Or the avatar,
I'll often use that example,
Right?
We put up,
Not the avatar,
Sorry,
The virtual reality headset that we believe our little avatar is real,
That's it,
And we take it off.
And then we see the world as it really is.
We see the nature of reality.
I mean,
We don't see reality,
We can see the nature of reality.
That yes,
Everything is arising and changing,
Arising and changing.
And here,
Everything is arising and changing,
Arising and changing.
That we see this existential crisis that is happening so much in the West where people feel this sense of loneliness,
Of isolation,
Of disconnection,
We think.
And you can see like,
Oh,
This is absolutely a part of everything here.
Couldn't not be a part of it.
Right,
That the,
You know,
Meredith,
Right,
An interdependent interconnected.
Changing moment by moment,
Selfing,
Right,
Or just being.
Right,
Is a part of this.
Not separate from it.
Right there,
Think of the,
Oh my god,
I thought I had to become better,
I thought I had to kind of absolve myself of all the terrible things I've done in the past,
I thought I I had to become more disciplined.
I thought I had to look differently.
I thought I had to have more money in the bank before I could finally feel a part.
Of this living.
Of this universe.
It's that close.
It's that close.
There's no distance at all.
No distance at all.
You didn't have to go anywhere.
So the asking of the question,
Again,
It's It does a complete 180 of our view of the nature of reality and the nature of ourselves.
All the guilt and the regret.
That we're hanging on to.
I could have done something differently.
I should think better about that next time.
Next time I'm going to do this,
Right?
How much time do we spend torturing ourselves?
Over something like I could have done something differently.
No,
You couldn't have.
That's the way it played out.
That's how all the trillions of conditions were coming together in that moment.
Couldn't have been any different.
The torturing.
Right?
Because there is no one being tortured,
But there is the experience of torturing,
Right,
Of torturing ourselves,
Right?
There is the experience of it.
But in the realizing,
The seeing.
Not any one seeing,
But they're just the seeing,
Oh.
This is all just arising and changing.
And it's not personal.
I wouldn't get upset at the hurricane.
I wouldn't get angry at the rain.
Or if I got angry at the rain,
I wouldn't still be angry at it 10 days later or 10 years later,
Right?
Maybe we do see sometimes people getting angry at the weather.
But you wouldn't hold on to it and feel as it's so personal for very long.
You would realize it's just conditions arising and changing.
And everything that we say when we ask that question,
What is it that we want more than anything?
Peace,
Contentment,
Connection,
Spaciousness,
Ease,
Freedom,
Right?
We don't want anything dependent upon the external world.
The external world can't give you.
What it is that you want.
You've tried that.
We have all tried that.
And it hasn't been very successful.
All that craving,
All that grasping,
All that trying to get somewhere.
Only to have that feeling just kind of just like sand or water just going through our fingers,
Oh no,
No,
No,
No,
No,
It's leaving me now,
Right?
So turning into pain.
That short-term pleasurable feeling will always turn into pain.
Will always be the best massage in the world.
I don't care how good that massage is.
After five hours on that table,
You want the massage to be over.
You know,
The best holiday in the world,
The best chocolate cake in the world.
The best sex in the world.
There is a point where you want it to be over.
It will turn to pain eventually.
We're chasing,
What we're chasing this state,
This high that we're chasing for outside of us,
That we think there is a solid me that can somehow get to some uh some state of bliss and stay there so all the suffering that's happening in that first of all right all that suffering trying to get there trying to get there for the stress and the fear of what if someone gets there first and oh no i see it getting away from me because look now they've got it right so all of this stress to kind of have a momentary relief maybe a few minutes maybe a few days depending upon it being a pretty big thing But then eventually.
.
.
Know,
Whatever that object is,
Whatever gives you initial pleasure cannot sustain that for very long.
And yet all this effort is spent in chasing it.
And then yet,
No time at all,
We ask the question,
No time at all.
What is it that's looking?
What is it that's thinking?
To whom do those thoughts belong?
To whom does that wanting belong?
In no time at all.
The state of mind,
And we'll call it just a state of mind.
For purposes of using language.
That state of being that we were chasing out there.
The belief that there was a me that was going to get something out there.
In the questioning of that,
All of that space between me and what it is I wanted to feel,
All of it collapses.
And there's a feeling of ease.
A sense of freedom,
A sense of spaciousness.
In the absence of the me that we thought that was going to get it.
That was going to get something.
And that doesn't negate that,
Yes,
You are going on holiday.
Great.
Great.
Enjoy the holiday.
The holiday will have high moments and it will have low moments.
We get to the airport,
We're all excited,
Oh my god,
It's going to be amazing,
We're going on holiday.
Yeah,
But then now you're in the TSA line,
Right?
Oh my god,
Are we going to miss the flight?
And now the stress.
But you notice how I'm even just asking the question then,
Who is it that's going to miss the flight?
Who is it that's stressed out right now?
Oh.
The spaciousness is back.
The ease is back.
It smooths out the ride.
And of course,
Enjoy the nice holiday.
You're going to Tahiti,
You're going to Fiji,
Hawaii,
Somewhere great.
Yeah,
Fantastic.
Enjoy it.
But the reality is we don't really enjoy it anyway,
Because the more that we grasp,
The more grasping,
The more that we desire,
The more desiring.
We don't even truly.
We don't really We're never really here.
Just in our head imagining how happy we're going to be when we get there,
Getting stressed about it,
Not even realizing how we're feeling for a little momentary,
A momentary blip there.
Of a fleeting happiness.
That in fact,
The more that you recognize,
That there is no one behind the experience,
Not nothing.
This isn't nihilism.
We have to be so careful because this is where we want to go to so quickly,
Then well there's nothing,
So it means nothing,
Right?
There's no meaning in the world then,
No.
In seeing.
And you can only see this.
You can hear it.
I mean,
You can hear it now.
But you're hearing it.
Maybe the self is actually hearing it.
Oh,
I want to be the absence of myself.
It's never going to get on board with that.
It's never going to get on board with it.
You can't.
And this is what it keeps trying to do,
The ego,
The selfing activity,
The one that we think is the solid independent self behind experience,
Keeps thinking that it can improve itself to have the experience of the absence of itself.
You don't need to improve it,
And you're not going to.
But you don't need to improve it to have the absence of it.
It's never really going to.
In fact,
The reason it wants you to improve it is because then you're going to be so focused on improving it.
That you're never going to,
That in fact you're reinforcing it the whole time.
That you're never seeing its illusory nature.
You're still identifying with it because it's never enough.
You never improved it enough.
And that's why this is a path of negation,
Of seeing what we're not.
To whom do those thoughts belong?
What is it that's looking?
It takes our attention from all the objects that we're adoring,
Right?
Of course,
We adore everything.
Oh,
My God,
Look at everything outside of us.
It's so amazing.
Even just the object,
Us as an object,
As we think about ourselves in the future and me so improved and me finally living the life that I want to live and me finally free of all this stress and anxiety and this self-loathing and this unworthiness.
Even that,
We adore that object,
That idea of becoming something.
We adore the idea of the body becoming something.
Instead of seeing what it is that's actually looking.
Because the feeling that you want.
Is not in getting the object,
And it's not in improving this body.
To become something better.
It's not going to give us that feeling of spaciousness,
Of ease,
Of true freedom.
It will not give it to us.
We keep thinking that it will and of course because everything in our society feeds into that right and our society and our values really very much a reflection of the ego just getting kind of more supersized and more supersized as it has been getting over the last few thousand years right not like we look at society and politics and culture and we think oh my gosh this is crazy look what's happening well if you look at the ego the way that we revere the self The individual,
The way we see ourselves as separate,
Of course.
It makes perfect sense.
Yes.
Pop culture,
Celebrities.
Billionaires soon to be trillionaires,
Politics not doing anything for the people,
Only for the billionaires and trillionaires.
It's like,
Yes,
This is of course.
This is what you would expect.
Everyone thinking they're a separate self.
It wouldn't be any other way.
So we're not trying to fix out there.
We're not trying to fix it.
And by the way,
The billionaires,
The soon to be trillionaires,
You think they're happy?
You think they're happy if you had a billion dollars,
Say a hundred billion dollars,
Some of them do.
And your first thought isn't to go around and give all that money away.
Think of the joy that you would have in giving all that away.
Maybe you keep,
You know,
A hundred million for yourself,
Like,
Come on,
Maybe a couple million.
But the fact that they,
Oh,
We don't want to pay more taxes,
We need more,
Doesn't that tell you right there it's never enough?
It's never enough.
We do start out on this path and seemingly we need to go somewhere.
Seemingly we need to understand some things.
Because we're so caught up in this world.
Of me and what's going to happen to me,
Right?
The me that can be perfectly safe right now.
But actually can't feel OK until I know I'll be safe in 10 years.
But will I be safe in 10 years?
Will I be safe in 15 years?
But will I have a sure I'm safe now?
But will I be safe then?
Okay,
Sure,
I have enough money in the bank now,
But will I have enough money in 10 years?
Sure,
I have enough friends now,
But will I have that in 10 years?
Right?
The me that can never,
If we cannot feel the satisfaction,
We cannot feel the safety of so many of our good conditions that we have right now.
And is constantly still looking for it,
Feeling that sense of scarcity,
That sense of lack,
Because that's how it sustains itself.
That's how the selfing activity sustains itself,
Through lack.
You need more.
You got to improve more.
Meredith,
You got to get better.
To get better.
You got to be more disciplined.
You got to change your routine up.
You got to do this.
You got to eat this food.
You got to do this.
You just got to be better.
And you get there and you get better and you're like,
Well,
That was pretty good,
But a little more,
Right?
This never-ending Search for improvement.
And so we.
We extrapolate that out,
We put that on the spiritual path,
And we do seemingly need to do some things on the spiritual path to understand,
Wow,
Yes,
That path has never led to happiness.
In fact,
It has led to a lasting happiness.
It has led to a lot of stress,
A lot of suffering,
A lot of disappointment,
A lot of irritation,
A lot of self-loathing,
A lot of unworthiness,
A feeling of not being connected.
That is clear.
And that's what we talk about that a lot so that we can see you're either looking through the lens of me as the center of the universe and I'm not enough?
And I will never be enough,
Even though I keep,
The carrot keeps hanging out there and I keep thinking,
But no,
I will be next year.
Next year,
I will finally be enough.
And then we're saying,
But no,
But now let's look at the nature of reality and let's see what really is going on.
Because this path is clearly not bringing you what you think it is.
And so there are some things to understand and to know on the spiritual path that intellectually the mind,
Even in concepts,
Can start to kind of be open more to this like,
Oh,
Okay,
I didn't even know this was a possibility before.
I just thought it was all about me and the me that was eventually going to become improved and be happy,
Right?
The me that was going to finally start living their life,
Right?
Even though we get to 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and we're still waiting to live that life.
Because we haven't quite improved ourselves enough,
Right?
So we're so lost in that,
So we kind of need to be introduced to seeing the nature of reality.
This is what Buddhism is teaching.
This is what the Buddha taught,
The nature of reality.
You're fighting it.
You're fighting it.
You're so lost in the illusion.
So we need those kind of first steps as we start going out on the path.
And we are understanding things.
And we are starting to see,
Yes,
It's impermanent.
My feelings,
They come and they go.
Yeah,
I felt some anger the other day,
But where is it now?
I felt some disappointment.
Where is it now?
Know,
That we can start to see,
Yes,
These feelings are coming and going,
And in fact,
No one's really asking me.
No one asks before the irritation comes,
Do you want to feel irritation?
Just happens.
No one knows what our next thought's going to be,
But just appears,
Right?
And we start to see that,
Yes,
Okay.
And yeah,
Why did that thought appear?
And we can maybe kind of deduce from some of the things,
Like my eye fell on something,
And because of past conditioning,
This is what started,
You know,
This kind of cascade of irritation started happening.
And then through the irritation,
The my life sucks storyline started happening.
And we can kind of see how,
Yes,
How all these conditions are happening.
And so we start to see,
But wow,
But they're happening.
I'm not asking for it.
I mean,
Each of us would wake up in the morning and say,
We want to be happy.
We want to be peaceful.
We want to be at ease.
And yet,
We go about our day and is that what's happening?
We're irritated and we're frustrated and we're always imagining that,
But no,
I will be happy in the future once I'm more improved.
And so on the path,
We do experience,
You know,
There's more letting go,
There's more seeing,
We're mindful,
We're seeing what's happening.
And through the conditioning of these teachings,
Opening our eyes more to see what's happening,
There is a lot more ease.
There's less stress,
And that's a great thing.
And then there comes the point.
Where we ask the question.
Who's on the spiritual path?
Who's looking?
Or I should say,
Sorry,
What's looking more appropriate?
What's on the spiritual path?
To whom do those thoughts belong?
Right?
By each way that we ask these questions,
This path,
We're out on this long,
Windy path,
And we're meditating,
And we're going on retreats,
And we need all those things.
I'm not saying we do need all those things,
But then there's a point we ask the question,
And it becomes this realization that what I was looking for was here the whole time.
But I had to go out.
I had to go out,
And I had to start to understand what had been happening.
Because otherwise,
It could be very destabilizing.
It could be very,
There can be this sense of feeling threatened because of what we've taken ourselves to be our whole lives.
And then the absence of that,
If we're not asking the question at the right time,
It can be quite a,
It can be very scary.
It can be a very scary moment.
But there is a point at some point.
Where we're asking the question and we're really,
There's a scene.
That there never was anyone to arrive.
There never was any one to improve.
There never was any one.
That was alone.
That was lonely.
It was just a thought.
And then the assumption behind the thought that there is a me here.
That's lonely and the believing in that The soap.
Know the absolute utter trust in the belief that if I think I'm lonely that there is a me that's lonely but in the moment of questioning Who is it that's lonely?
What is it that's lonely?
And seeing there's nothing there,
It was just a thought.
And notice how everything opens up.
That in fact,
This path that we were on this long circular,
You know,
Kind of,
Actually,
Yes,
Circular path,
What we realized,
No matter where we are on the monopoly board,
All of a sudden,
We were right there.
It's where we started from.
But we do need to go off on this journey for a while.
Eventually to realize that what we were looking for was here the whole time.
And that really is the.
.
.
The paradox of spirituality and spirituality,
The world,
The universe is filled with paradoxes.
The mind doesn't like the paradoxes.
Wants things to be very linear,
Very simple,
That it can understand the concepts.
But therein lies the paradox of the pathless path that this is.
And yet to not deny the the conventional or the relative benefits of being on the path,
Of meditating,
Of listening to talks,
Being on Dharma talks like this,
Of reading books and going on retreats and doing all of those things.
And being warned along the way as we do a lot here not to get,
You know,
To keep like,
Yes,
These are the activities that are happening and they're helping.
But if you're buying into me,
The meditator,
Right,
Now you're really just going further away.
Right?
If you're buying into,
Oh,
I'm going to be enlightened when I get to that retreat.
You know,
That's the one that's going to happen,
Or it's going to happen next year if I could just do more.
Right,
Then I can make it happen.
And so we're also seeing how it kind of works its way in here.
But that also I do find is part of the path.
I think it's very rare for someone to not get caught up in that.
And it's just another aha moment because we see ourselves doing it,
Oh yeah,
There was stress in that.
Then there was stress in our meditation.
We said to meditate,
I'm going to meditate.
It's going to be a good meditation because I'm going to be,
I'm going to feel so much better.
In this meditation.
And then we're frustrated the whole meditation because we brought stress into the meditation.
We brought me as the,
You know,
Me the one meditating into the meditation.
And we wonder why the meditation becomes difficult.
Because meditation is not difficult at all.
Nothing is difficult.
When we let it be what it is and we stop inserting ourselves into it.
Everyone is capable of seeing what they're not.
It's an illusion,
And everyone here is capable of seeing this.
And maybe the conditions for you are that there's still a little bit more getting lost in it at times.
No problem.
No problem.
We're not controlling the awakening process either.
The more that we hear this message and also relax around that too,
You're actually,
You as an independent,
Separate being,
Are not doing any of this.
The more that we recognize that too,
Then as you,
As meditating happens,
Right,
There's no problem in it,
Right?
You're more relaxed around it.
Know as mindfulnessing is happening yeah and even okay mindfulness not arising right it's like huh had a little lost moment no problem not controlling this right it's not it's not going to Again,
Kind of to the extreme of,
Well,
Nothing matters then,
So I might as well not meditate.
I might as well not listen to dharma talks or read books.
I might as well just forget it all.
It's not saying that.
The ego will say that.
The ego will say that.
But there's more of a sense of relaxing around the practice,
More of a sense of relaxing around,
Or just even maybe being more aware of the,
Oh,
Me and the future that's going to be enlightened,
Right?
Saying that,
Like,
Who's going to be enlightened,
Right?
Because there is no one that becomes enlightened.
There is no one,
No thing that becomes enlightened.
Enlightening happening everything everything in this universe and it's not just the eastern religions that tell us this the you know physicists western physicists would agree 100 percent everything in this universe is a process including us it's just activity but we do have the the good conditions to be able to and by good conditions i mean Many of us have the time,
The inclination,
Not everyone has the inclination for this stuff,
But that inclination is there.
Where did it come from?
I don't know.
I don't know i didn't i didn't decide to like this right it's just it started resonating you know many many many years ago now it was resonating and it just continued to to um just kind of flow in this direction and that we have the conditions to be able to practice anything we wish to practice,
Right?
We're not in a cult,
We're not in a country that wouldn't allow us to uh practice buddhism or hinduism advaita vedanta christianity whatever it is that you know whatever it is that's speaking to you and that we have the time the time to be able to do this so we we have the good conditions for this we're very fortunate in this in that respect and uh And so I think it's just the more that we relax around this,
The better.
The more that we relax,
Do the practices,
Ask the questions.
It's not out there.
It's not in becoming something.
It's not in improving yourself.
As a,
It's not the end game,
But there are the side benefits,
I guess,
Or the pluses or the sprinkles,
That yes,
Because you're more relaxed,
Because you're less wound up,
Because you're less grasping at things,
That things do tend to look on the outside like there is improvement,
But not by trying to improve.
Because that's just going to lead to more grasping and you're never going to find it.
You're never going to be improved to a level that's going to satisfy the ego.
So,
So to just relax more around it and,
But to ask the question.
To ask the self-inquiry questions.
Right?
Because the activity of thinking,
Of planning,
Of doing,
Of comparing,
Of judging,
Right,
It's still going to happen.
But when you notice it happening,
And maybe you're doing the mantra meditations that bring more attention to it as well,
Like you can't stop that first judging thought.
Can't stop that first comparing thought.
You didn't ask and none of us knows what our next thought's going to be.
It just arises,
Right?
And so it's still happening.
But the fuel is taken out of it immediately because you realize like,
Oh yeah,
It's just that mental processing that's happening that's just doing its thing.
It's not me.
It's just doing its thing and so you don't give it any fuel it's not it's not affecting you it's not this oh my god i can't believe i judged another person i thought i was so beyond this i thought i was better than this It's not you!
It's not you.
So again,
There's just a relaxing around that as well.
We can't take the grasping mindset and bring it into spirituality and think that we're going to See what it is that's grasping.
Because that's what we want to see is what is it that we think is grasping?
What is it that we think could actually hold on and get something?
That's going to bring it lasting happiness.
This is what we're trying to point to.
And in that moment,
In that moment.
What you see was actually there was nowhere to go.
What you've been looking for has been here the whole time.
So just to keep those things in mind,
To relax around this.
Keep doing the activities that you're doing,
The spiritual practices,
They help,
Don't get wrapped up in any identity around them.
But I do think one of the most important and really it's like takes us to that last kind of last couple yards,
Right,
Or that maybe seems like a hundred yards and then it just all of a sudden flattens it down to nothing,
Is that self-inquiry question.
In any way that you're questioning,
Who is it that wants to become enlightened?
Who am I?
Who is the owner of those thoughts?
What is it that's looking?
What is it that's hearing?
That particularly,
As you find yourself just wherever you're sitting,
You're in nature,
You're sitting in your living room,
And you're just hearing the sound of the air conditioner.
What is it that's hearing?
Or your eyes are falling on maybe a bird that's outside your window,
And it's like,
What is it that's looking?
We get so excited by the bird.
Notice what happens when you ask,
What is it that's looking?
It just opens up.
Our entire experience like nothing else can,
Like nothing else can.
You
