Inquiry: Powerful Questions That Reveal Your True Nature

By asking simply what or who you are, you can directly experience your true nature as open, spacious, awake, awareness. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations step back for a moment to show you the “being” or preexisting, simple sense of “I am” that’s always here.
This session offers a talk and practices to explore how inquiry can provide direct insight into your true nature.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noise.

Transcript

And as you are breathing,

You can,

On the in-breath,

Let the air fill the chest,

All the way up to the collarbones,

And then release,

And again,

Breathing in deeply,

Letting the air fill the lungs,

That deep cleansing breath,

And then relaxing and releasing on the out-breath.

And then one last full,

Deep inhalation,

Holding the breath at the top of the inhalation,

Feeling the contraction within your chest,

And then releasing that tension.

Just allow the breath to be natural and easy.

You can recognize your body sitting in the chair,

The points of contact between your body and the chair,

Taking a moment to feel into those different points of contact,

Your legs against the chair,

The pressure points of your feet resting on the floor,

The feeling of clothing against your skin,

A full presence of your body.

Notice the body breathing,

That the breath is happening by itself,

Without us needing to do anything or change anything.

And notice that you are naturally aware of the body breathing,

All the sensations of the breath,

Just as you're aware of the sensations of the body against the chair,

Just all of the different sensations of the breath as it enters the lungs,

That pause at the top of the breath,

And then it releases.

Notice the qualities of this simple awareness of what's happening now.

That you don't have to do anything to be aware.

You don't have to change anything to be aware.

That awareness is the simple acceptance of everything that's happening right in this moment,

The simple reception and acceptance of the breath of the body as it is.

Aware too of everything in its place,

Just the natural force of gravity that holds us,

Holds all things in place at rest,

Just where they are,

And the stillness of that resting of everything.

Awareness of the body in this one place,

Not looking for anything else right now,

But this very simple stillness of things right now as they are,

The breath,

The body in the chair.

Awareness just allowing all things to be however they are.

Awareness of the space around you that is also naturally still,

That there's space between each breath,

At the top of the breath,

And then as the breath releases,

Those short gaps in which stillness also falls.

Awareness of space outside the body,

The space between objects,

Not trying to look for anything or have anything happen,

But just aware of space outside the body as being naturally free,

Things coming,

Things going within that space.

You might also imagine yourself in a warm pool of water,

Water surrounding you,

And recalling that your body is mostly water.

Feeling the natural stillness of the water inside and outside your body.

Feeling the stillness inside awareness itself.

Awareness of the body,

Of the breath,

Of the space is not something you have to create or try to improve on,

It just naturally occurs.

It's the space in which everything goes on,

The space in which all things are present.

This just fundamental sense of being alive,

The human experience of awareness that's utterly still,

Utterly open.

Awareness of things that does not have an opinion,

But is just characteristically still.

So,

Can you rest for a moment in the stillness of awareness?

Completely still because it is just here.

It doesn't have a good feeling or a bad feeling,

It's just the open space in which all good and bad feelings come and go,

All successes and failures arise and pass away,

In which everything is known.

The sense of just being,

Of presence in the world.

Resting for a moment in this awareness itself,

Which is a rest that's deeper than sleep.

It's something that's always at rest,

Without effort.

So,

Rest just for a moment as this element of life itself,

This open field in which things are known,

Without any effort,

A complete rest and stillness,

In the space in which everything happens.

In a moment,

We'll conclude our seated practice,

But before we do,

You might just see if you can relax just a little bit more into this stillness.

And now,

As you're ready,

You can come gently back.

In your own time,

You can open your eyes,

Welcome the whole visual field back.

Anyone who's interested in meditation might naturally ask themselves how far you can take all of this.

Like watching a movie trailer,

After your meditation being like a movie trailer,

You wonder,

Well,

What's the end of the story?

What happens in the end?

And even if you've just meditated once,

And you just had that little hit of feeling like,

Oh,

For a moment,

My mind just seemed to get quiet,

And I didn't have all those thoughts chasing around and around,

And you think to yourself,

Well,

Where do you actually go with this?

And the Buddha said,

I teach one thing and one thing only,

The suffering and the cessation of suffering.

And as we've remarked here before,

Suffering is perhaps a poor translation of the Pali word dukkha,

Which might be better translated as dissatisfaction or just a feeling of life not really being right in some way,

In some fundamental way.

So saying again,

The Buddha teaches the complete cessation of a feeling of dissatisfaction or not-rightness with life.

Some people expressing this as awakening or enlightenment.

So you just might take a pause right now,

And you don't have to close your eyes or anything,

But just take a pause right now and see what happens inside when somebody says awakening or enlightenment.

And just gauge for yourself what that reaction is inside of yourself.

You might be interested,

Or you might wonder to yourself,

Well,

I'm not sure I'm a good candidate.

If there were some tests to take to get enlightened,

I might easily fail it,

Or you might just think like it seems very stressful,

Seems like a lot of work,

Or you might get excited and say,

Well,

Let's go for it.

Yeah,

Sign me up.

But I would say,

At least for all of us,

It's intriguing.

It's intriguing,

This notion of awakening or enlightenment.

And I would say that the reason that it's intriguing or it sort of captures us is that we sense that it is there someplace,

That it is there,

Out there someplace,

And even more so that we actually have a taste of it already.

Like there's a taste in your mouth of enlightenment,

Of awakening.

And so when somebody says,

Is it true,

You say,

I think so.

I think so,

Based on what I've experienced.

And you think of all of the great wisdom traditions,

And I think all of them have this in common,

That they hold out this promise of whatever that end state is.

And the fundamental orientation that I would say binds them all together is this notion that it is something that is already inside of you,

That it is part of your nature,

Buddha nature,

As we say in Buddhism,

That we all have,

Or your true nature.

The Buddha,

Again,

Said,

If it were possible to be liberated and to be free,

And if you were not capable of doing it,

I wouldn't teach it.

And I think by you,

He's talking to each of us.

It's not just for somebody else,

It's for you personally.

I think that this suggests that there is a way in which experience has always these two levels operating at the same time.

The one is the ordinary,

You might say,

Ordinary mind.

And then the second is this other dimension of experience,

Which is already here,

But in some ways hard to see,

That it's almost like hiding in plain sight.

You say enlightenment or awakening,

It's sort of like hiding in plain sight from us.

And I think that's what gets us interested.

That's what gets us excited.

And maybe that's why you come,

Why you come.

I mean,

It's what got me interested.

So last time,

I think many of you here,

Last time I taught,

We did some glimpse practices,

Which are meant to give you a direct experience,

A short direct experience,

A glimpse into this other dimension or this other aspect of experience.

And I'll do a few with you tonight too,

Very brief,

Very brief,

Very brief.

We could try one now.

So just relax,

No need to try to change anything,

But if you like,

You can close your eyes for each of these,

But you don't have to.

Can you let go of referring to thought for a moment and just feel being here now?

The feeling of I and being that is independent of I am this or I am that,

Just the I without reference to anything or just presence.

There is one way of understanding this.

That is,

It's like the foreground and the background and the normal experience in life of thoughts and sensations and emotions is what is in the foreground,

Naturally so.

But then there's the question of,

Well,

Where are these thoughts and emotions and sensations appearing?

That they appear within some sort of space.

And the question is,

For a moment,

Can you take from that background experience of the space in which things naturally appear and bring it to the foreground?

It's always right there because it's the place in which everything is happening,

But can you actually,

For a moment,

Sense what that thing is like?

And you might say that meditation,

In a way,

Is simply that exercise that we do where we simply try to unhook from the thinking mind and remember what that experience is of the space in which thoughts and everything else happen.

It's this pre-existing sense.

It never goes away.

It's always an aspect of experience.

The simple sense of I am before I am this or I am that.

In the 1890s,

There's a man named Nisargadatta Maharaj who was born in India.

At an early age,

He was very interested in the spiritual quest and his guru instructed him to focus exclusively on simply what it was,

This sense of I am,

I am before being,

I am this,

I am that.

And here's a quote.

My guru told me,

Go back to that state of pure being where I am is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with this I am this or I am that.

Your burden is of false identifications.

Abandon them all.

I did not follow any particular course of breathing or meditation or study or scriptures.

Whatever happened,

I would turn my attention and remain with the sense of I am.

It may look too simple or even crude.

My only reason for doing it was my guru told me and it worked.

He said,

You are not what you take yourself to be.

Find out what you are.

Watch the sense of I am and find your real self.

And he became one of the most foundational teachers in the 20th century.

And people would come from all over the world to talk with him,

To ask him questions.

If you go online,

You can find some very scratchy recordings,

Actual audio recordings of him.

He was a shopkeeper in Mumbai,

India.

And so these little scratchy recordings,

First of all,

You hear constant traffic outside,

Constant honking of horns.

And then you hear him and he can get very animated,

Even agitated with people's questions.

He's very forceful.

He will give you the answer right away.

Does not sound like a meditation teacher.

Very powerful reactions to when people didn't see it.

So he said that the mind will tempt you to believe that it is you.

Therefore,

Understand always that you are the timeless,

Spaceless witness.

And even if the mind tells you that you are the one who is acting,

Don't believe the mind.

The apparatus,

The mind,

Which is functioning,

Has come upon your original essence.

But you are not the apparatus.

This light of pure knowing shines in you as the knowledge I,

So long as nothing is added to it.

Tonight,

I want to explore with you a little bit this notion of meditative inquiry.

So it's in a way another form of glimpsing.

These practices in which you can sort of touch into this in kind of an immediate way,

Very short practices.

And that are meant to be done just a few times a day,

Whenever you like to reset and remind yourself.

And to make that shift from background to foreground,

Just for a moment,

Just for a moment,

Make that shift.

A teacher,

Locke Kelly,

Who some of these practices are taken directly from,

Likes to say that you,

With these little practices,

You learn to return.

A gentle learning to return.

And that with each glimpse,

Too,

You can then train to remain,

Train to remain.

So this inquiry,

It's a spiritually important question of some kind that you sort of drop into consciousness and let it reorient,

Sometimes even sort of disrupt thinking for a moment.

It's not a philosophical inquiry,

So it's not meant to be something that you debate in your mind.

But it is something that you certainly see in the Buddha scriptures.

There are many instances in which the Buddha would give a very short teaching or an example of something and someone would awaken.

They would just say simply,

You know,

And the person would awaken.

Without any preparation,

You know,

Without long years of practice,

They would just awaken.

And for me,

Personally,

I think initially in my practice years ago,

I was a little scared off from these because,

You know,

This notion of thought in meditation is often,

You know,

You want to avoid it.

You know,

That's your enemy.

Your enemy is thought.

And if you see a thought coming,

You know,

You want to try to get back to your breath or get away from the thought.

And so I was concerned about thoughts.

Naturally,

I thought,

I don't want to do thoughts.

No,

That's not good.

But these inquiries,

These little questions or little phrases,

You can just drop them in and you're not looking for the answer.

You're just looking to see what happens when you drop them in.

And then for me,

The other danger is then when I start to get it,

It's like,

Oh,

I see what it does.

It has that effect.

It has that kind of like immediate bing,

A little,

You know,

A little reminder.

Then I would start to press very hard on them.

I thought,

You know,

The more you press on it,

Then the farther you go.

And if I press really,

Really,

Really hard,

I'll just like break through and then that'll be it.

And that,

Of course,

It's not,

I don't recommend that.

So,

You know,

There is this instruction,

I think we've all heard many times in meditation,

That the importance of letting go.

And I think all of us sense that visceral sense of yes,

It really is ultimately about that.

You can feel that movement of being,

You know,

Actually how we awaken is it's not trying to get somewhere,

But it's just actually letting go.

And the difficulty,

I think,

Is always that you feel like,

Well,

How do I do that?

Like how?

I mean,

Yes,

I want to let go.

But how do you do that exactly?

And I think that this is,

These are just little indicators and little indicators too,

That you can let go in just moments.

Like you can let go in moments.

And that,

Let that teach you a little something about awakening,

You know,

And then another little moment.

So let's try another one.

We'll try another one together.

Again,

Just relax.

No reason to feel like this is difficult,

Or you have to go find the meditator to do this one.

You can close your eyes if you like.

So for this one,

When you look at awareness,

Does it have a limited shape or location or color?

Just awareness itself,

The simple experience of being aware.

When you look from awareness,

Is there a center from which you are looking?

Or is everything interconnected?

When you look from awareness,

Is there a center from which you're looking?

Or is everything interconnected?

You can think of watching a movie on a screen,

And just as the screen never appears as an object itself while the movie's playing,

But that there is this knowing that goes on that doesn't appear as an object in experience.

So the movie is happening.

You're watching the movie.

If somebody told you there's a screen,

You would say,

Of course there's a screen.

But the screen itself is not visible.

All you're seeing is the movie itself.

So in the same way,

Awareness is that screen on which all experience passes.

And the inquiry is,

Well,

Again,

Can I move that background forward?

Let the objects perceived in awareness drop away and just for a moment sense into what that background coming to foreground feels like.

In 1910,

There was a man named H.

W.

L.

Poonja,

Became known as Papaji.

He's born in what's now Pakistan.

And as a child,

He was captivated by visions of Krishna,

The Hindu deity.

And he would chant Krishna's name 50,

000 times a day.

But even doing that for years,

He felt like he still wasn't done.

He still wasn't done.

So he met his teacher,

A man named Ramana Maharshi,

Who became his spiritual guide.

And his teacher told him,

Can you have these visions of Krishna all the time,

Permanently?

And Papaji admitted that he could not.

So Ramana's response struck a nerve with him.

He said,

Well,

What kind of God vision is it if it comes and goes?

God is not to be seen.

God is the seer.

And you are that.

God is not to be seen.

God is the seer,

And you are that.

Or this inquiry,

The seeker is the sought.

The looker is what he or she is looking for.

So the awareness is what you're seeking.

And you're seeking it how?

You're seeking it in awareness itself.

So another one.

I'll do another glimpse for you.

Try this one out.

And again,

Just relax,

Eyes open or closed.

So instead of going up to thought,

To know,

You can try going instead to wordless awareness.

You can pause and notice that this awareness is both inside and outside.

And you can feel the openness of this field of awareness energy that connects with your body and knows,

But it knows from this different location.

And there's also,

I'm going to get up to show you.

There is a famous picture up here.

I mean,

This picture is not famous,

But this idea is famous.

So these are,

And I'll turn this so you can see.

Salvatore.

I don't know if you can see that very well,

But these are birds.

I don't know if you realize those are birds.

And the instruction here is,

You can look at the picture.

It's the birds and your attention focuses on them.

And then take a moment and shift from the birds to the space in which the birds are flying.

And just feel within yourself what happens when you make that shift,

That directing attention to the birds and then directing attention to the open space.

You'll just pause and see if there are any reports from that.

What happens when you do that?

Want to venture a reaction?

Yeah,

Kathy?

Yeah,

Open,

Open space.

I get a sense of expansiveness.

Uh-huh.

Something deep.

In endlessness,

Yeah.

Extending in all directions.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I was thinking of expansiveness and also I get a sense of possibility.

Possibilities.

Yeah.

Not concrete possibilities,

But a sense.

Yeah.

The space seems effortless.

Yeah.

I think that's kind of what Kathy said.

Right,

Right,

Right.

The brain has to work,

Doesn't have to work to focus on the space,

To focus on the birds.

Yeah.

Yes,

Yes.

Right,

Happening.

Yeah.

Moving ahead to 1948.

More contemporary figure.

Eckhart Tolle,

Many of you may have heard of,

Was born in 1948 in Germany.

He came to Cambridge,

England to study philosophy and fell into a very deep depression.

And I'll just read from his own account of what happened.

I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.

I had woken up with such a feeling many times before,

But this time it was more intense than it had ever been.

The most loathsome thing of all,

However,

Was my own existence.

What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery while I carry on with this continuous struggle?

I cannot live with myself any longer.

This was the thought that kept repeating itself inside my mind.

And suddenly I became aware of a peculiar thought.

It was,

Am I one or two?

If I cannot live with myself,

There must be two of me.

The I and the self that I cannot live with.

And maybe I thought only one of them is real.

I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped.

I was fully conscious,

But there were no more thoughts.

Suddenly there was no more fear.

I have no recollection of what happened after that.

I was awakened by the sound of a bird chirping outside the window.

I'd never heard such a sound before.

The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains.

Tears came into my eyes,

And for the next five months,

I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss.

Oh,

The story goes on.

He basically lived virtually homeless for the next few months,

Wandering about trying to figure out what had happened to him.

And he started to take notes to articulate the experience,

And those notes became a self-published volume,

Which a publisher then came upon and put out as The Power of Now,

Which is,

I think,

Sold about 20,

000 copies.

20 million copies around the world.

So,

And the book investigates this question of the I that is separate from that suffering self.

The I which knows the experience in all of its intensity,

But is not the experience,

Or the I which is the clear space around which the birds fly.

The same teacher I mentioned before,

Locke Kelly,

Tells a similar story.

He was a practicing psychotherapist,

And working with a woman who was suicidal,

And she described to him a voice inside of her that convincing her that her life was not worth living,

That it was too painful to continue.

And he asked her,

Well,

Why haven't you ended your life?

And she explained,

Well,

At other times,

There's another voice that's urging me to keep on living.

And so he asked her,

Well,

Who is the one who is listening to both voices?

And she left,

And then she came back for their next appointment,

And she was changed.

And she said,

The one who is listening is free,

And is not constrained by either voice.

It's again,

The clear space in which the birds fly.

So I think all these teachings point to this notion of there being some sort of fundamental background experience of life,

Which is so simple that it's almost you can't articulate it.

It's the nature of experience itself,

The very nature of being aware,

Just immediately aware that we know from the moment we're born,

And that then recedes into the background as the thinking mind develops,

But it's always there,

And it's always pristine,

And it's always clear,

And open,

And free,

This notion of being,

Which precedes any thought,

And in which everything is whole and complete already,

That there's a fundamental okayness to this foundational sense of being.

So I think that that itself,

That glimpse,

Is at least one part of liberation.

And you can just pause occasionally with these glimpses,

And just get a hit of it.

And the idea is not to think,

Well,

Okay,

Now,

So I have to kind of do that all day long.

I'd say,

But no,

No,

I mean,

You can get a little hit of it,

Just a reminder of what that is,

Because you know that there's something deeply true about it,

And as Locke Kelly says,

Trained to remain in that place.

But I would say that that's also not the end,

In the sense that once you realize that foreground background,

That it's not a question of pressing the background forward,

So you can start to understand,

Well,

What is this basic nature of life that's so obvious that you just miss it?

But that once you recognize that,

Then all of life is lived then in that same energy,

That same awake awareness,

That it's not like then life stops,

Or that you should just start to feel like everything has to be completely still all the time,

But all of life comes in,

But it comes in as this natural awareness,

Awake awareness energy of life.

But it's held completely differently than it was before,

Right?

So that's,

I think,

That then is experiencing life in a different way.

So why don't we do a closing meditation together?

We can explore this a little bit more,

And then we'll have some time for discussion.

So for the closing meditation,

I would just invite you again to maybe adjust your posture,

And look for a way that's relaxed but alert,

That you can sit.

For this,

You can close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so.

And you can just begin by unhooking awareness from thought,

From the objects of thought,

And have it rest on hearing.

Just focus awareness on hearing sounds around you,

That natural coming and going of sound,

And just the effect of awareness as it focuses on simply hearing,

That hearing happens naturally,

That there's a natural capacity of awareness to know the sounds in the room without an opinion about them,

Simply sounds being known.

That's no big deal.

Awareness empty of knowing,

Except the space around the body,

The sounds coming and going.

And again,

No big deal,

Just the space around the sounds coming and going.

And just feel into this awareness that this is the essence of human experience,

This open space.

In which all knowing happens,

That it's naturally boundless,

That it's not constrained by the borders of your own skin.

And feel where you are located within this boundless awake awareness.

And can you see life as this awake awareness?

Can you see life through this awake awareness?

And this open field is not empty,

But filled by this energy of experience.

Awareness is not changed by the experience in any way,

It's just simply aware.

Like the waves moving in the ocean,

Experience being just one wave within that awareness,

Or particles of matter forming in awareness.

And this awareness energy is like a unified field,

Both inside and outside,

Simultaneously.

So without going up to thought to check things out,

Just staying with the knowing of this awareness energy that includes everything,

Is undistracted,

It's not changing anything.

It's just a natural energetic field.

Then you can come gently back in your own time.

Reviews

Beautiful ❤️

Exploring examples of awakening to our true nature with open awareness. Thanks.