Q & A: Without Hesitation

Question: I've been practicing mindfulness for a few years now. I can't say I look forward to it every single day, but there is something very centering about it. I guess nondual awakening (Oops, wrong word!) is a lot more than this.

Rodney: Considerably. It is utter peace and spaciousness. And it needn't be centered on or relaxed-into each day. At bottom, any form of practice or meditation is divisive, given that it is based on the premise that you are somehow separate from nonconceptual reality. Why struggle to be mindful of your body and breath when your own ever-present radiance is directly before you? And who, exactly, is attempting to be composed? The former question points to its own answer. As for the latter, it is thought that is saying that you are not centered (or more accurately, not centeredness). But is a thought capable of discerning who you are? No. So clearly the thought is wrong.

Further, just because an activity is "centering" doesn't mean that it is proximate to truth. That's the thinking, though: Engage in some sort of meditative discipline so that you can become calmer and calmer, and eventually "achieve" enlightenment.

Try looking at this without the Vispassana/nonduality labels. Simply see that right now, as you sit in your chair and read these words, there is--in brimming evidence--an immaculate presence of awareness within and before you. This is our natural state. It is who and what we are without the apparent complications of spiritual names and concepts. Heretofore, you have been attempting to gain some great and outer "thing," when, in fact, you were already that which you were seeking.

Question: Thanks for the reply, Rodney. Lots of good things to ponder. Maybe I should try not practicing for a while, huh?

Rodney: But there still would be this "someone" not doing something. Keep coming back to this until it is clear--that this person that you take yourself to be is only a reoccurring notion, an imaginative figment. You are that consummate grandness in which these thoughts and notions appear. The contents of your consciousness are not you. If there is anything to be mindful of, it is that. But don't turn it into a practice. This is a sudden seeing or understanding that takes you beyond the mind. Or to put it another way: The enormity and obviousness of your true reality brings you to a full stop. All this is done by the seeing. There is no "you" involved in any way. As Buddha said, events happen and deeds are done, "but there is no doer thereof."

Question: The practicing has ceased, and the enquiry has begun. And there was no hesitation! Thank you.