no doubt
Dust in the wind
Reading time...
“All paths lead away from truth.”
“Would you be willing, even for a moment, to let go of all teachers and teachings, all commandments and practices, in order to simply meet what arises in each moment, without guidance or reference points telling you what is true or how to live? What would it be like to no longer be identified with a conceptual framework or spiritual philosophy — not yours, not the Buddha's, not Jesus', not anyone's? What would it feel like to live without maps, without mental conclusions, without final destinations, to no longer refer to any thought in your mind about how life is supposed to be?”
This attitude might be called 'spiritual anarchism'. Anarchism in the sense of "without a guide," without an ultimate principle. But of course, even that could once again be used as a guide :-).
Life has no meaning and no purpose that lies outside of life itself — at least, not one we can know from our own experience. We cannot step outside of life to check what its true intention is. That also means there can be no path toward such an imagined ultimate goal. The truth and reality of life is precisely and only THIS moment — the moment I am typing these words, and the moment you are reading them. That's it.
"Spiritual" methods and practices like meditation, chanting, mindfulness, and so on, originally weren't meant to get somewhere, but rather to be truly present in and as this moment.
And so, the conscious and attentive experience of this moment — stripped of conceptual overlay — can open us to the ineffable [...] of this existence, exactly where we are.
You can't will this to happen or make it happen. It happens to you. During a walk in the woods, listening to music, waiting in a car, sitting on the toilet, or watching how an ant continues on its path...
And then — it stops.
There's a brief crack in the structure of thinking, and the natural, naked, wordless reality of your existence suddenly becomes completely evident. It's simply where I am now, what I see now, how I feel now, what I experience now.
This cannot be improved. There's no need to, and it can't even be practiced.
This present appearance is unmistakable. What is it? We cannot say! THIS cannot be pinned down in any dualistic or exclusive category like existence or non-existence, real or unreal, permanent or impermanent, meaningful or meaningless.
Nothing we say or think can capture the immediacy of what is.
THIS here and now is clear, unquestionable, and inevitable. It cannot be doubted.
What can be doubted are the interpretations of it.
But even those interpretations are nothing but THIS manifesting as interpretations.
“Truly, there is no way to not be this. There is nothing that must or must not happen. There is no one outside of THIS to gain it or to lose it. There is only this.”
What more is there to say? As Joan puts it: moment by moment, THIS is it. As simple as that.
And I don't need to do anything for it. I can't do anything about it. I encounter the world, ready-made.
The world is an overwhelming and astonishing experience. The night sky, all the plants and animals, the cities and villages, the mountains around me.
The functioning of my body, the dreams in my sleep, the people I meet, that damn itch on my arms. Loneliness. Memories of my childhood, nostalgia...
So ordinary, so extraordinary.
Who cares about whether God exists, whether there is life after death, whether consciousness is the basic substance of reality, and so on:
these kinds of questions are simply not relevant.
Because I can never possibly know the Answers...
So why should I actually care?
Dust in the wind.
Even a stance like skepticism is unnecessary and usually just a pose:
"look at me being all skeptical."
Same with positions like nihilism, and even agnosticism.
These quickly become identities—something to cling to, something to feel superior about.
Been there, done that.
Discussion closed.
